Page 58 of What Boys Learn

We’re done?I’d laugh if I wasn’t close to crying.

“I’m trying to protect you, Benjamin. Even if you’ve done something very wrong.”

It was the first time I’d said it out loud.

21

Thirty minutes later, Curtis showed up. I’d texted him a long message about the lawyer-approved intervention needed for Benjamin, but I hadn’t expected him to come right away, after everything he’d said about being unavailable. I didn’t even know how he had our address.

“Still getting moved in?” he said after I opened the door, making his way past several empty moving boxes, hands occupied with a stack of take-out containers.

“Not exactly.”

We settled in the kitchen, under too-bright fluorescent lights, and divided up a pad thai and green curry, leaving a second pad thai untouched for Benj, still in his room. The apartment’s chaos was plain.

“This was kind.” I gestured to the food. “Should I call Benjamin to come out here?”

“Not yet. Like they say on the plane, put on your own oxygen mask first. At least have a few bites before we talk strategy.”

“Okay,” I said, forcing myself to swallow two mouthfuls.

He set his fork down after a moment, watching me. His eyes were warm and patient, but inquisitive, too. It was hard to keep eating when I could feel him studying me.

“Let me just say,” he started slowly, “that when we first met, I noticed that you seemed to be coming out from under the long shadow of trauma. I didn’t know what it was, exactly, but I saw something.”

His comment jarred me. We were here to talk about Benjamin. Still, I knew he was prying because he cared.

“I was in foster homes as a teen,” I said, matter-of-factly. “I never expected to go to college. By the time you met me, things had turned around. I was doing better—I’d like to think I had some confidence—but I might have been feeling out of place. If that’s what you saw.”

“Hmm,” he said.

He took several bites of pad thai, chewing thoughtfully.

“One thing that concerns me,” he said, “is that you don’t allow your past to color this situation with your son. Because that’s the really important thing, right? Your son was arrested. They may decide to question him again, or charge him. That should be the focus. Not catastrophic fears rooted in the past. Just facts.”

I nodded. Facts. But whose?

I told Curtis about the police interrogation, trying not to sound overwrought as I recalled the details unearthed, the puzzle pieces that still didn’t fit.

“Benjamin claims he hasn’t lied,” I said. “In fact, he thinks I’m the big liar in the family.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out sounding hollow.

Curtis got a faraway look. “I don’t doubt he believes in his own superiority. His own morality. And your brother, was he the same way?”

I frowned. “My brother?”

“The one in prison.”

I touched the back of my hand to my forehead. I pushed my fingertips against my hot eyelids. God, I’d had so little sleep. Ninety minutes this morning. Four or five nights of broken sleep, before that.

“Did I already tell you about Ewan?”

“You still haven’t eaten much,” Curtis said, nodding at my plate of sticky noodles. “Too spicy?”

“No. I can’t eat.”

I looked past Curtis to the living room and the mess I’d made. The worst part wasn’t just that I looked under my son’s mattress and in his messy box of shaving stuff under the sink. The worst part was that after an hour of semi-logical searching, I started upending boxes and digging through drawers like a madwoman. I opened ancient CD cases, looking for the twinkle of an earring. I dug through pockets in search of hidden love notes or folded twenty-dollar bills that hinted of illicit arrangements. Half the time I wasn’t even thinking of Benjamin. I was thinking of all of them. The boys. The men. The ones I wanted, the ones I feared, the ones that split my life in two. Had I really talked to Curtis about Ewan?