Paul Is Dead by C. C. Benison

Author:C. C. Benison [Benison, C. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Signature Editions
Published: 2018-11-01T19:15:15+00:00

20

“What would you have done if your mother had decided to sell the cottage after your father died?” Dorian asks Lydia in a low voice. They’ve moved to a pub down the street, surprisingly devoid of patrons on this hot afternoon.

“If I couldn’t change her mind, I would have bought it.” Lydia folds her sunglasses and slips them into her bag. “Real estate prices were lower in the late ’90s. It seems there wasn’t a real jump in prices here until a few years ago. For years, Ray and I were living in essentially a rent-controlled house. No real money worries … how life changes in an instant.”

The server manifests himself in Viking glory before Dorian can respond, uncertain if her last words alluded to their shared wrongdoing. How life changes in an instant. He is young, tall, blond, and built—yes, a Viking, but it’s the horned plastic helmet he’s wearing, an assertion of this Icelandic festival the town is in the middle of, that does the trick.

“‘Martha? Rubbing alcohol for you?’” The line from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf lands unbidden on Dorian’s lips. He had the LP recording of the Broadway production in high school and played it over and over.

“‘Never mix, never worry!’” The rejoinder floods Lydia’s memory and she is her teenaged self again, after school, smelling the new paint on Dorian’s bedroom walls, camping George and Martha, and wondering if Dorian will make a move. She feels her face crumple, helpless to stop an unexpected, wrenching sob.

“Lydia, what is it?” Dorian puts his hand over hers.

“I’ll have a martini,” she rasps to the waiter.

“Perrier,” Dorian orders and the waiter bustles off. “Lydia, what—?”

“Ray makes me a martini every evening after work.”

“… you’re missing him.”

“That and …”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

Dorian takes her hand in his, lifts it, kisses it. He says what he’s sure is a lie: “It’s going to be all right.”

“I’m frightened, Dorian.”

“You think I’m not?”

“I’m old—”

“You’re not.”

“—too old for this.” Lydia lets go her hand, fumbles in her bag, lifts a Kleenex. The waiter returns—unhelmeted—and places tiny mats and their drinks on the table with the kind of studied gravity of an extra in a play.

Dorian watches her dab at her eyes, feels the weight of the moment. “I’m an alcoholic, did you know?” he says, turning from the departing waiter to his Perrier.

“I know.”

“Briony?”

“She got one of your Twelve-Step letters.”

“In which I apologize for all my manifold sins.”

“I didn’t get one.”

“I didn’t know where to find you.”

Lydia examines the mascara streaks on the Kleenex with distaste, pockets the thing. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

“Women marry, change their names—”

“Briony married, changed her name. I married. I didn’t change mine.”

“Would a letter have been sufficient?”

“I don’t know, Dorian. I really don’t. It’s not like you’ve not crossed my thoughts over the years.” Lydia sniffs, fumbles into her bag again. “But I try to think of times … you know, before …”

Dorian watches her lift something from her bag, not another Kleenex, but a tiny bottle—hand sanitizer. She opens it, splashes gel on her hands.

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