Look Up

Benjamin sat in his recliner. He looked around the room, seeing only the things that were missing. His eyes avoided the slender box on top of the television, but his mind was on nothing but.

He had decided that if this was what she wanted, he would sign without a word of protest. If she didn’t want to be with him anymore, then his being with her wouldn’t be worth a damn.

She had wanted him to fight for her. All of this had started because she wanted him to show some reaction, or maybe she just wanted him to see.

Benjamin didn’t know for sure what had made her dance with Clive. Maybe she couldn’t say either. Maybe she’d only had too much to drink, but before she got up from the table at Sean’s Tavern she’d looked at Benjamin. Waited for him to look back.

He was losing his second game of pool as he waited for his turn and she’d looked at him with her cheeks flushed. Something was there. She had some purpose in mind when she wiped the sweat from her lip and went to dance with Clive.

She used to ask if he’d fight for her, and he always said that he would, without thinking it over. Without wondering what she meant.

When the time came, he realized he wouldn’t because needing to fight for her meant there was no reason to. He’d rather lose at pool. Or maybe that idea came after. Maybe he was just afraid of Clive and that made him pretend not to see.

Benjamin stood from his recliner and zipped his coat. He slipped the slender box under one arm. He locked the door with the key and sat in the car and let it run until the snow fell off on its own in soppy clumps. He listened to the frozen wipers grind over the frozen glass until there was an arch cleared enough he could see through. He put the car in gear and went.

The roads had been cleared that afternoon and he was the only one on them aside from a police officer hiding with his lights out on a side road. Benjamin watched his mirrors but after a half mile the squad car hadn’t followed, so he went back to watching the road.

When you’re driving in the night with your mind on other things it’s easy to lose your sense of space. The mind wanders, vision blurs and in the periphery you see a tree that’s planted in just the right place to trigger your brain to pull up the wrong file. Then that moment of confusion until focus corrects the error.

For a few seconds it seemed to Benjamin that he was on a road he hadn’t gone down since he was a boy. Every morning and every afternoon his school bus would turn down this road. The anxiety this road always held for him fluttered in his belly for an instant during that moment of confusion.

The memory had gone unused for so many years that he worried he wouldn’t be able to find his way there in the night. He made a couple of wrong turns, but slowed on the farm road when he saw it. He could see a mile ahead and behind and no other cars were out so he sat there, looking down this terrifying and exhilarating road. He rolled down the glass and squinted against the cold wind.

In the mornings there was a certain girl standing at the end of this road waiting to get on the bus, and making the turn meant he was seconds away from seeing her face. Seconds away from letting another opportunity pass. In the afternoons making the turn meant he was seeing her for the last time that day, and he could start pretending that he would seize tomorrow’s opportunity.

He remembered how he’d have to fill his lungs and blow out the anxiety each morning, hopeful that today was his. Then again in the afternoon as time was running out. The dread of being on the verge of speaking to her would rise up in him, but he finally knew he wouldn’t try it because the few lessons he’d had on the topic had taught him that embarrassment was the cost of courage.

Her name was Lacy, and she was a year behind him. He was a sophomore then. He had made the mistake of confiding to an acquaintance on the bus that he thought she looked like Julia Roberts. Thinking anyone he knew there could be trusted was a reckless thing to do being in his first months at a new school.

The teasing began the next morning and he sat there in a seat by himself, smiling in response. After a few minutes, the driver’s assistant in the back of the bus told everyone that was enough, but she was grinning as she said it.

Lacy got on the bus and he realized she knew already because she glanced at him before taking her seat across the aisle. She’d never done that.

There are some kids, like some adults, who have a reflex reaction to Benjamin’s sort of timidity. They carry some primate’s instinct to poke at any weakness they discover in others. He saw them looking back at him, and when his eyes went out the window they advanced on him. His crippling shyness excited them.

Lacy was not like him though. She was kind for a kid, but not timid. She spoke up in his defense and glared with narrowed eyes. The teasing seemed to stop in an instant – the primates retreating upon the recognition of her strength as quickly as they had advanced on his weakness. Benjamin’s eyes jumped from one hay bale to the next as they passed farmer’s fields going to school.

A few days went by and Chance offered Benjamin the best opportunity it could manage.

There were two lines that fed into the front of the cafeteria. The cooks handed trays over the counter on either side of the table that both lines went to for silverware and napkins.

Lacy was in the opposite line and they came together in the center at the same time. Their hands were inches apart as they collected their forks, spoons and napkins. At the edge of his vision he could see her looking at him squarely, waiting.

Thinking back as he sat in his car, Benjamin thought that maybe she just needed him to take a step before she’d go the rest of the way to meet him. She held up her line watching him before finally shaking her head and going on. The next week he saw her walking with another boy.

Benjamin wondered how his life might have gone differently if he’d only had enough courage to meet her eyes. It probably wouldn’t have changed anything, but maybe it would have changed everything that’s important.

He rolled up his window and decided he was just one of those who tended not to look up at the right time.

He followed his old school bus’ route back to town and dropped the slender box in the big blue mail box outside the gas station.