Undeliverable (30 page)

“But I can’t find him,” Ben whispered, eyes still fixed to the painting.

Sylvia gently took the canvas from him. “It’s time to let him find his own way back.”

Ben thought about that while he looked at the picture. “But Benny is still just a baby. What if he can’t find us? He needs us to find him.”

“And if you kill yourself looking for him, what use are you? Your wife may have the right of it when it comes to trying to build a life for Benny to come back to. If you lose your job at the Recovery Center, how will you have the resources to print the flyers? Or even have the databases you need?” Sylvia stood and replaced the portrait on its easel and covered it again with the cloth. Ben made a protesting noise, but she shook her head. “It’s not quite done. Come sit with me for a moment.” She gently guided Ben back to his seat on the sofa, a wretched floral three-seater that had seen better, paint free days.

Slouching back far enough for his head to rest on the seat-back, Ben threw his arm over his eyes. “I know I’m pushing too hard, I know that. But no one else is looking at all anymore, and I have to make up the difference. I can’t stop looking.”

“I’m not saying you have to, you just have to realize what you’re doing to yourself. You’re destroying yourself one sleepless night after another.” Sylvia curled up on the cushions beside him and started running her hand gently through his hair. “How long has it been since you slept, really slept?”

Ben shrugged. “That cold I got, I guess. That put me out.”

Her hand continued its soothing path. “No, that was drugs and antibodies. When did you actually get a full nights rest and woke up feeling like yourself in the morning?”

“I don’t remember. It has to be more than a year ago now. I can’t sleep because of the nightmares, and the only thing that seems to help those is alcohol of one sort or another. But nobody is looking, not the cops, not the feds, they all gave up and went home. Just like Jeannie gave up. I can’t give up, but I just want to…to rest. Sylvia..”

“Shhh.” Sylvia kept up the soothing rhythm and watched as his breathing evened out and his arm slid slowly back down to his lap. Once she was sure he was actually asleep, she pulled the crocheted throw off the arm of the sofa and gently draped it over him. “Sweet dreams, Ben.”

B
en woke the next morning to the soft sounds of a brush on canvas. Owney lay under the easel with his son’s portrait on it while Sylvia worked on the texture of Benny’s shirt. Pulling himself upright on the small sofa, he winced at the knots in his back and legs where he had curled up to fit on the tiny antique. His head throbbed and the sunlight was entirely too bright, but he felt more at peace than he had in a long while. Unwilling to disturb Sylvia as she worked on his son’s portrait, he quietly stretched first one leg then the other while watching as she leaned in close, applied a deft stroke and then stepped away from the canvas. This was a different Sylvia than he was used to seeing at the warehouse, on the streets with him, or even last night. She was quiet and steady, her full attention on the work in front of her, and there was a softness to her eyes, a contentment he was loath to spoil.

The rustling blanket drew Sylvia’s attention, and she put down her palette and came to stand in front of him, hands on hips. “And how do we feel this morning?” The painter was gone, and he was confronted with an entirely too perky young woman once again.

He couldn’t help but notice that there was a small smudge of blue on her nose. “Better, I think. I can’t believe I fell asleep here; that was so thoughtless of me.”

“Yes, I’d say you’d stopped thinking about an hour before you got here. But that’s neither here nor there as my grandmother’d say. Come on, I’ll make us some tea.” She bustled off, and Ben rubbed his hands over his face, trying to bring himself more fully awake. “What would you like?”

Hauling himself off the couch, he stretched a bit more as he made his way into the kitchen. The terrarium with the bearded dragon sat on her counter, and Ben stared absently through the glass. The lizard glared malevolently up at him and started to puff himself up, but decided to hide in a log instead. You and me both, buddy, he thought. Hiding after his behavior last night seemed like a much better idea than confronting it, but he felt like he was done with hiding from the problem. And what was burying yourself under mountains of useless paper if not hiding from the truth of the matter?

“Anything but chamomile.”

Sylvia gave a short bark of laughter, which drew a glimmer of a smile from Ben. “See, a little humor is good for you.” After she filled the electric kettle and set it to heating, Sylvia pulled down a delicate porcelain cup, changed her mind, and exchanged it for two enormous clay mugs. These went on the table along with cream and sugar. “You just needed to take a break, recharge. Or maybe have a break, one of the two.” She came over and pulled out a chair for Ben

He sank into it slowly. “Still, I’m really sorry.”

“Shush.” Leaning against the table, she idly rearranged the tea things. “The only way I’m going to be mad about last night is if it didn’t do anything good for you. Sometimes you just need to let go of everything and let it all out before you can see your way clear. Am I making any sense?”

“Yeah, mostly.” She was right, he did feel empty, but not the same kind of empty that he had for most of the last year. That was a gaping wound, festering and malignant. While it wasn’t entirely gone, it felt like the edges had been cauterized, the poison drained.

“Look at it this way, if you’re this tired, you won’t see something significant even if it reared back and slapped you in the face.”

He needed to believe her. If he tried to go one more day like he had been, he knew he would fall to pieces—well, worse than he already had. Taking a deep breath, he admitted to himself, “I don’t think I know how to take a break anymore.”

The teakettle clicked off and Sylvia went to pour the tea. “I suggest a good starting point is getting rid of the stuff on your living room wall.”

Ben thought back to his rampage and grimaced in pain. All those hundreds of hours of work laying in tatters on his carpet. “Done.”

Sylvia paused after pouring the first mug. “Really? No fight? I was expecting that to be harder.” Once both mugs were full, she put the teakettle back on its station.

“I was so mad, so horrified, I just…I tore them down. I can’t believe I did that, all that work, gone.” He blew hard on the tea and was engulfed in a cloud of lemon and mint.

She sat in the chair next to him. “It’s run your life for a year, I say good riddance.”

Now that, that wasn’t quite right. Yes, he could see now just how much his search had taken a toll on him and on his life, but it wouldn’t be right to just get rid of it. “You know I can’t stop looking. That really would make me a horrible father.” He tried to take a sip and burnt his tongue.

She laughed as he hissed, trying to draw cold air over his tongue and she got him an ice cube from the freezer. “I know you can’t. Frankly, it’s part of your appeal, and if you did stop looking altogether, I would think less of you.” The cube plunked into his mug and they both watched it melt in silence. When he tried again, the tea was cool enough to drink.

Ben frowned suddenly as he realized what she had said and tried to meet Sylvia’s eyes. “My appeal? So that night, it wasn’t just…”

She avoided looking at him and played with her mug. “Just what?”

Ben tried to think of a different way to put it, but couldn’t. “Just a pity fuck.”

“So that’s why you got all weird on me. Why on earth would you think I would screw you out of pity?”

“You like lost causes.” He gestured at the beardie’s cage with his mug and nearly sloshed the hot tea over the edge.

She smiled and shook her head, blowing softly on her tea to cool it. “In animals, yes, it’s endearing. In people it’s annoying and time consuming.”

It had been a long time since Ben had to have this kind of conversation, and he felt awkward and out of practice. “So why did you sleep with me if it wasn’t because you felt sorry for me?”

“Because I like you, Ben. You seem to think that when people look at you and your search, all they see is something sorrowful and bad. I see a loving and devoted father with the strength to keep looking.” She paused, then added. “That and I think you’re super cute.”

“Ha, right, thanks.” The knot in his chest started to fade at her light banter, though it did nothing for the sorrow sweeping over him in waves.

He still couldn’t believe that he’d begged for the detective to tell him his son was dead, but at least now, he somewhat understood why he did. Sylvia was right, he was exhausted, completely drained from trying to do everyone’s job—his, the police’s, the FBI’s. He needed to slow down, as much as that would hurt, as hard as it would be to make the search anything but his first and foremost priority.

Sylvia was watching him quietly from over her tea, her damnably perceptive eyes reading each wave of emotion as it came. He finally got to the point in reliving the previous night where he had driven drunk through the city and crashed through her door a mess and his face burned with embarrassment. “God, Sylvia, I’m sorry I just barged in here like that last night. How are you being so nice about it?”

“We’ve already covered this: I like you and you needed someone to slap you in the face with your real motives since you couldn’t seem to see them for yourself.” She took a long sip of her tea before adding, “Plus I was tired of not talking to you. That was hard.”

“Well, I owe you an apology for thinking terrible things about your sexual motives. And apologies for coming at you with all this terrible baggage.” He paused berating himself over everything that he had dragged her into over the last couple months. “And for dragging you into everything at work.” In the mess of the last 24 hours, he had almost forgotten work.

“Not terrible, just misguided. Though apology accepted for being an ass about the sex.” She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “But you shouldn’t apologize for having emotions, Ben. They are what make us human. And if you think you got me in trouble at work, look around you, I should have gotten in trouble a long time ago.” Ben smiled, looking more carefully at the canvasses that lined nearly every surface of the house. She must have collected hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of mail, photos, and detritus from the bottoms of the bags over the years. He wondered idly when she had started and how she gotten everything to blend so seamlessly together.

After a moment, he let the mug drop heavily to the table and rounded on Sylvia. “How come when you say this stuff it makes so much more sense than when I was trying to talk to my wife about it?”

Sylvia laughed and used a napkin to wipe up his spilt tea. “Because I’m an outside observer, that’s why. You trust my judgment because I wasn’t involved in the trauma. Or that’s what my shrinks told me. But let’s change the subject for a while, let you calm down some more. What do you plan to do now? How was your review yesterday?”

The image of her running out of the office earlier came back with a snap. “Crap, here I am unloading on you, totally forgetting about what happened to you yesterday. Are
you
alright?”

“Uh-uh, you first. What are you going to do? With everything?”

He sighed, slouching in his chair. “I’m not sure yet. I think it’s pretty obvious that I need to take a break from the search at least. Not long though. Just long enough to…rest up. I’m so tired I can’t even think anymore. You’re also right, I can’t lose the job, so maybe I’ll write a note of apology or something, offer to pay for the copies that went out, promise never to do it again. Maybe then they’ll let me stay.”

“Which you will.”

Ben nodded at her. “Of course. I won’t stop looking, nor will I ignore any resources at my fingertips. I think I’ll just need to play things closer to the vest. And lay off for a while till I’m sure the Gestapo have stopped looking over my shoulder.”

“Sounds like a plan. A good one, too.” She dropped a spoonful of sugar into her tea and stirred gently.

“And you?” Ben prompted. “What happened?”

Sylvia waved her hand dismissively. “I’ve had worse. He hit those whole you’re unstable buttons, and, yeah, I was in a snit, but I got over it. These things always blow over. I decided to take advantage of the enforced time off and cash in on a friend’s offer to go participate in a show in New York. I met her in college, and she’s working for this small gallery now and keeps pestering me to bring stuff up. I figure by then the audit will be forgotten, like it always is. If anyone asks, I’ll just say I went on a mental health retreat.”

“A show? In New York City? But that’s huge, isn’t it?”

Sylvia blushed and waved a hand. “Meh, not so big. It’s a fairly small gallery, but it is cool. It’d be my first show ever.”

“I thought you were in trouble for stealing things from the Recovery Center as is, won’t you get in even more trouble if you display those collages?”

Sylvia laughed. “That’s the best part about it. I only take things doomed to the shredder, which haven’t really been read anyway, or cataloged. How could anyone prove they came from work? I’ll just tell people it’s all found material; that’s real big right now.”

Ben drained his mug. “Well, as long as you come back. I don’t think I can do this without you.”

“What, run the warehouse, find your son, or stay sane?”

Ben paused before answering, giving her question serious thought. “I think it’s a little bit of each.” He reached out towards her paint-spattered hand and she met him halfway, squeezing his hand briefly before resting comfortably in his grasp on the table.

Sylvia smiled, her eyes once more taking on the soft concentration he had seen while she was in front of her canvas. “Just try and keep me away.”