lfad 11

Life From A Distance

Ben

Chapter Eleven

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During the time when my mom was away, I spent my weekends with the Kettengers while my dad was with her, and my weekdays at home with my father. He had finally pulled his head out of his ass after he had a little talk with Dadtwo. I never found out what was said or what happened, but my dad apologized to me and promised to do better. He even took me shopping for clothes and supplies I would need the following week when school started.

August 25, 1997 was my first day in junior high as a seventh-grader. There were a lot of people I knew from my elementary school that had transferred with me to 8^th Street Junior High School, and because I knew them, they knew Mike as well. It was one of the hardest days of my life, trying to tell everyone who asked that he had died over the summer without breaking down and crying. Ian hovered over me protectively when he was near, warning people off by telling them the news himself.

What made that first week nearly unbearable, as if the constant stream of questions weren’t enough, was the fact that Mike wasn’t there. My entire life he had been by my side in everything we had ever done, and for the first time I was alone when it mattered. Well, not alone; I had Ian with me.

Ian and I shared four of our seven classes together: Math in first period, PE in third, Social Studies Fourth, then lunch, and Biology in seventh. My other classes were English in second, Computers after lunch and Art in sixth.

As the weeks passed, I grew accustomed to the hole Mike’s absence left in me, at school and elsewhere. Starting school had brought a lot of the pain back to me, but I had worked through it quickly. I had to. There were too many other problems that demanded my attention.

Matt Garrett was one of those. None of us had ever liked the guy. He had the annoying habit of saying mean things and threatening to beat us up. Mike’s presence had kept the threats to just threats. Matt wouldn’t attack us when we were together, and we were always together. Now that Mikey was gone, I had to depend on Ian to blunt Matt’s aggressive tendencies.

“Ben, your parents are home!” Called Ed’s baritone voice from the front room.

Ian, Murray and I exchanged glances. Their faces displayed a supportive compassion. I wasn’t sure how this would turn out, but it helped knowing that I had them and their parents in my corner. The Kettengers had agreed to wait with me while my father picked up my mom from the hospital to bring her home. She had been there nearly three months, trying to work through the impact the death of my twin had on her. In the time she had been at the Sequoia Mental Health Institute, I had not been allowed to see her only once, and only a week before she was due to come home, and only for a few minutes. The visit left me feeling cold and unwanted.

My mom was home. It’s hard to describe what I was feeling at the prospect of seeing my mother again. The last time I’d seen her at home, she threw an urn of hot coffee at me and managed to bury some of the glass in my body. Now that she was outside, my stomach was turning flips and I felt nauseous.

“Ben?”

“We’re coming, dad!” Ian called back. “Are you ready for this, Benji?”

I swallowed hard. I had never told Ian that the use of Mike’s favorite nickname for me hurt every time I heard it. In a way I suppose I was torturing myself by allowing it to continue out of a sense of guilt.

“No,” I admitted, “but I’m as ready as I’m going to get. Come with me?”

“Of course we will,” Ian said gently as Rayray nodded.

Together we made our way from my room into the family room to await my mother’s entrance. The front door opened a few seconds after our arrival. My mom came into the house without a pause. She glanced around, looking to see if anything had changed, and then her eyes fell on me.

I’m not sure what I expected from her: anger perhaps, or hatred. When I’d seen her while she was in therapy she had been very nice, but I wasn’t sure if it was genuine or not since there was a doctor with us the whole time. Maybe she had put on a show for his benefit.

Mom knelt, placing both knees on the floor, bringing her eyes more or less even with mine. She opened her arms, entreating me to come to her. Warily I approached, studying her for the signs of the betrayal I expected. I stopped one step from her, staring in her eyes.

“Hello, Ben.”

“Hi.”

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she said with tears in her eyes.

I didn’t move and continued staring into her eyes. If she was for real, it was time to find out.

“Mike’s dead,” I grated brutally. “I killed him.”

“Benjamin Michael Foster, you did not kill your brother!” My mother was livid. “It was an accident that could have happened to anyone. It was not your fault.”

She reached out and pulled me to her. I let her wrap her arms around me but did not return the gesture. After a moment, she looked up at me, fear and confusion in her eyes.

“Ben,” she started quietly, “I’m sorry for what I did to you. I’m sorry I hurt you. I don’t want you to think that I don’t love you, because that isn’t true. I love you more than anything in the world.”

“What about Mike?” I questioned harshly.

“I love him and I always will, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you. You’re my son, and I love you.”

“Even though I killed him?”

“Oh, honey, please stop that! You didn’t!” Mom insisted.

She pulled me to her again, and this time I hugged her back. She began to cry softly, and I felt my own tears starting to form.

“I missed you so much, Ben,” she informed me. “I’m sorry I left you. It won’t happen again.”

I suddenly felt like I was five again, a small, vulnerable child frightened of the world and terrified to be without his parents. I pulled back and stared into her eyes.

“Promise?”

“I promise, baby. I promise.”

A moment later I hugged her again and we both broke down and cried. I didn’t notice Ian and his family leave as I wept.

The three of us, mom, dad and me, ate dinner together. Mom told us about what she had gone through while she was away. I began to feel guilty when she said that I had pushed her far enough to briefly lose touch with reality. Even though she said it was actually good that it happened because it helped her move on from the place she was in, I pulled into myself and lost my appetite. When I asked to be excused- again for the second time in my life- mom and dad stared at me for a moment before acquiescing to my request.

I’d been in my room for fifteen minutes, sitting on the bed and staring into my closet when they knocked on my door. I expected them to come with a sense of inevitability and dread. What could I tell them? I had just begun to allow myself to believe that I was not responsible for Mike’s death, and now I found myself responsible for my mother going away from me because she had been crazy. One was a direct result of the other. If I was responsible for her breaking down, how could I not be responsible for his death?

“Ben, can we come in?” She called through the slightly opened door.

“I guess.”

The door opened revealing my parents standing there, my father with his arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders. Dad pulled out my desk chair and sat while mom took a seat next to me. I couldn’t bring myself to look her in the face.

“Ben, look at me.”

I turned my head and stared at her chin. There was no way I could meet her eyes.

“Ben, honey, what’s wrong?” She asked worriedly. “Don’t you understand what I explained earlier? Me going away was a good thing for us, sweetheart. It helped me become whole again.”

“If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have had to,” I said, my tone low and forlorn. “You wouldn’t have gotten like that.”

“Benjamin Michael Foster! You did not kill your brother! You did not force him to do what he did. You did not cause the accident.” She put her arm around me. “You don’t have any blame at all, Ben. Mike may not have known what was going to happen, but it was his choice. He knew that you weren’t supposed to play around the canal.”

I snapped, “I did too! And I still did it!”

“Did you ever think,” she asked calmly and quietly, “while you were making that jump, that you were risking your life, or that Mike would be risking his? Be honest.”

I stared at my knees. I didn’t want to answer her. To do so would be to admit that my twin and I had done as we did in deadly ignorance, and that was a concept I simply could not accept: that I was blameless.

“Neither of you did, and I know it, son,” Dad gently remarked. “When you’re twelve years old, you don’t think about dying. The only thing you thought about was whether or not you could do it, not what would happen if you couldn’t. Am I right?”

I nodded grimly. A sudden realization struck me: I wanted to be responsible for Mike’s death. I needed to be responsible. If I wasn’t, if no one was to blame, then his death was somehow made less significant. That was intolerable for me. The guilt was what kept Mike alive within me.

Tears started to fall again, and my self-loathing grew. Mom and Dad both hugged me as I wept, but I know that they saw my tears as from something completely different than their true origin. What was equally frustrating for me was that I couldn’t gain any sense of stability emotionally. One day I was fine and at peace with the terrible events that had taken my twin from me, and the next I was completely consumed with guilt. If I couldn’t come to a resolution soon I was afraid I would end up as crazy as my mom had been.

Later, when they left me in my room, I silently queried for Mike’s presence. I needed to talk to him, but he did not answer me. I was alone.