Kit
“I mean I’m not saying you have to narrate it. But I am saying I haven’t had sex in eight and a half months, so if you did…”
It’s Sunday morning, and instead of brunch, Zoe, Greer, and I have met for a walk in Hazleton Park, one of the historic gardens not too far from Zoe’s condo. It’s a gorgeous day, a perfect, clear blue sky and a breeze that carries the smell of roses from the west garden, and it’s finally, finally, not too hot for a mid-day walk. Brunch was out on account of the fact that I’d overslept, waking up after nine with Ben’s chest pressed against my back—the way I’d woken up most of the mornings since I’d found him on my stoop six days ago. I wasn’t the type to cancel plans for a guy, ever, so I’d been prepared to throw on whatever clothes were closest to me and go to brunch with the worst case of bedhead I’d ever had in my life, but when I texted Zoe and Greer to let them know I’d be late, Zoe had sent a bunch of hot pepper emojis and told me to stay in bed for another hour, that we’d meet up later. Although now I realize the error of my ways. Clearly she thinks I owe her details.
“I’m not going to tell…”
She’s not even really listening at this point, just pressing on. “I mean think about it,” she says. “I could have gestated a human being in the time since I’ve had sex.”
“It’s only a dry spell,” Greer says. “You’ll get back out there.”
I seize this opportunity. “You know, Zoe, there’s some very nice men at the university…”
“Who, like your pal Diego from the English department? Nope.”
I have to laugh, thinking back to my one ill-fated attempt to date someone from the university. Diego had been sweet, soft-spoken, but he clearly had some kind of clinical impostor syndrome about being a professor. He smoked a pipe even though he confessed to hating it, and he had at least one sport coat with elbow patches. Then on our third date he’d taken me to a poetry reading, and I’m an open-minded person but frankly I draw the line at Diego doing an open mic rendition of the poem he wrote about the infant trauma of losing his foreskin.
“I saw him kiss her,” says Greer, out of the blue, and I shoulder-check her off the path. She laughs, coming back, linking her arm through mine.
“Tell me,” says Zoe, her eyes going comically wide.
Greer shrugs casually. “Yeah, last weekend. He leaned right in and laid one on her. It looked good to me.”
“You guys. I don’t need your assessment.”
“Because it’s so awesome, you mean? Like we couldn’t even possibly assess something that awesome?”
The smile I try to hide is the only answer Zoe requires. “God. I’m so jealous,” she says.
“Jealous and really, really happy for you, Kit-Kat,” says Greer.
“Well, we’ll see.” Suddenly, I feel—not embarrassed, not with these two, but—cautious, I guess. I’ve spent a lot of time with Ben this week—at my house, at the salvage yard, even one evening spent at his dad’s house, where we ate pizza with Henry and Sharon, who showed me an old picture of Ben wearing frog-printed swim shorts over a pair of sweatpants. But in all that time, we’ve never said anything about the fact that Henry’s moving around pretty well now, scheduled to be out of his arm sling full time next week and in a walking boot that allows him to get around pretty easily. There’s no way Ben doesn’t have to get back to Texas soon, but every time I’ve tried to talk to him about his home there, his work, how it’s going with his partner, he gives me a noncommittal answer, telling me work’s fine, everything is fine. I’d press him, but I’m not even sure I want to know. I only want to keep going on this floating, perfect island of Ben—sex with Ben, laughter and conversation with Ben, light home improvements with Ben, just Ben in general.
“So has he given up recruiting you?” asks Greer.
“Yeah—conflict of interest, I guess. Anyways I think I’d pretty much convinced him already that I wasn’t interested.”
“You weren’t even a little interested?” says Zoe. “I mean, that thing he said, about you being the gem? That was pretty convincing.”
I pause where I am on the path. Greer stays with me, her arm linked to mine, and she seems to know, instinctively, how I’d take this, because she draws herself a little closer to my side. “Did you—did you think I should have been?”
Zoe stops, turns to look back at me. “Kit, you are insanely talented. You love what you do more than anyone I’ve ever met. All I mean is that it’d be perfectly understandable if you thought about going to do it somewhere where you’d have a lot more opportunity.”
“I don’t think about it,” I say, too quickly for it to be convincing. “I’m really happy here. I don’t want to leave.”
Zoe’s brow furrows in concern, her eyes serious. “I know you don’t. And I’d never want you to. God, I’d probably have to be sedated for weeks if any one of us ever moved away. But sometimes…” Here, she breaks off, looks toward Greer, maybe hoping she’ll take over, but Greer just looks down at her feet.
“Sometimes what?”
“Well, you know the paper you told us about, with Dr. Singh?”
My face heats. I have to give my answer to him tomorrow, and it still makes me feel edgy and unsure. I don’t want to upset the balance I’d created at my job. I don’t want to change the relationship I have with Dr. Singh. All this week, I’d let myself be distracted from thinking about it, which was easy enough, really, given what I’d been up to with Ben.
“Just thinking about something doesn’t mean you have to do it. And putting your name on this paper, it doesn’t mean you have to start—I don’t know—totally changing the way you do your job. You get to decide what you do with your life, Kit. That’s the best luck we got on the day we bought that ticket. And considering things, trying new things—actually letting yourself take credit for something you worked really, really hard on—that doesn’t force you to decide one way or another. And whatever you’d decide—even if there was some light sedation involved—it’d be okay. We’d all be okay.”
Gah, Zoe’s speeches. They always hit you right in your soft parts. I look toward Greer, who nods in agreement. I breathe out a sigh, and we set to walking again. After a minute, I say, “It doesn’t always feel that way, though. It feels—I just want to stay in my lane, you know? And if I get in the passing lane, even for a little bit, what if there’s no room for me to get back over?”
Greer unlinks her arm from mine, but only so she can grab my hand, squeezing slightly. Then Zoe moves to my other side, grabs my other hand so that the three of us are walking all together along the path—it’s silly, what we’re doing, swinging our arms as if we’re kids in the park, nothing to do or think about but play. “Kit-Kat,” Zoe says, after we walk a bit. “You can get in that passing lane whenever you want. With us, there’s always room for you to get back over.”
* * * *
Dr. Singh is frowning at his computer screen when I knock on his open door on Monday morning, but as soon as he raises his head and sees me there, he smiles the way he always does.
I first met Dr. Singh when I was twenty-one, on a campus visit I’d done in my senior year of undergrad. There were three schools on my list for master’s programs, all of them top ten in materials science, all of them with a PhD program too, in case I’d decide to go that route. It should’ve been an exciting time—I was top of my class, had one of my summer research projects headed toward publication, and had full fellowship offers for all three schools.
But, predictably, I’d been terrified. I’d stayed in Ohio for college, at least close to the general region of my nomadic childhood. I hung out mostly with other students within my major, dated a little, had a boyfriend for all of junior year until he got sulky about how high my GRE score had been compared to his. At the time, it’d seemed I was maybe making my way, finding a community, and the thought of moving on, uprooting everything to go to a new place, had me up late at night, every night, reading everything I could about my prospective schools.
When I’d come here, though, I’d realized quickly that I didn’t have the community I thought I did at college, and it was Dr. Singh who showed me that. The first night, he’d had me and the four other visiting students over to his and Ria’s house for dinner. We’d all sat around a big dining room table and talked about everything from Feynman’s lectures to our favorite movies. The next day, Dr. Singh and Dr. Harroway had taken us on a tour of the labs, then they’d handed us off to some second-year grad students who’d shown us around town. By then, I’d been sold—the facilities weren’t state of the art, but we were seeing them during the height of the semester, busy and full of small groups of students, and then I’d loved Barden itself, how much history it had, how many neighborhood enclaves there were, each with its own character. When I’d had my one-on-one meeting with Dr. Singh on my last morning, he’d been the first professor I’d ever had to really ask after the way I went about learning. He paid attention to what I liked best about the science, thought hard about what projects I’d work best on.
When I’d moved here, he’d been a steady, calm presence, giving me exactly the right amount of guidance and freedom. He was an incredible teacher, an ideal mentor, and just a good, kind person who wanted the best for me.
I keep my mind on that as I sit in my regular seat across his desk and tell him that I’m okay with being lead author, and as he clasps his hands together and does this cartoonish victory shake with them, which makes us both laugh.
“I’m so glad,” he says. “I thought I overplayed my hand last week, threatening to pull the article.”
“You wouldn’t have?”
He shrugs. “I wasn’t kidding about being uncomfortable publishing it as it is. But it is such good work—it would have been hard to pull it. So I’m so glad you’re going this route.”
“Me too,” I say, and I am.
Last night in bed, as we were drifting off to sleep, I’d told Ben about the paper, and he’d gone from drowsy to awake faster than I’d ever seen, propping himself up on his elbow and asking me question after question. “Do it,” he’d said. “You’ve got to do it. Finally, it’ll be you out front!” He’d sounded so proud of me. I hadn’t known what to do except to kiss him hard, delaying our sleep for even longer. It may have been Zoe and Greer to convince me to say yes, but it meant something to me to have Ben in my corner too.
We talk about some light revisions to do, and when I turn to go, I notice Dr. Singh looks a little tired. “Everything okay?” I ask.
“Sure, sure. I didn’t get the Handel grant, though. So it’s back to the drawing board.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” The Handel would have covered him and two grad students for three years of funding on his fractography project, and I knew he’d had high hopes. Funding was brutal in our field, competitive, money scarce, and Dr. Singh was selective about the grants he’d apply for—I’d learned a lot of my values about corporate science from him.
“Ah, it’s part of the job,” he says, but I know it’s more than that—of the faculty here, he lags behind in funding, and it’s important for his upcoming review for promotion. But he’s already cleared his face of any strain, and he’s looking across the desk at me fondly. “Ekaterina, I must say, I’m very happy about the paper. Very proud to have my name after yours.” This is too new for me to be cool and collected about, and I know my face has pinked up. So I’m grateful when Dr. Singh waves a hand and says, “Now wrap up your day early today. Get out there and celebrate.”
* * * *
Ben, too, insists that we celebrate. He picks me up after closing down the yard, a bottle of champagne tucked in between our seats in his truck. “Where are we going?” I ask, fiddling with the radio. I find a top 40 station and beam in triumph across the seat at him. He hates it when I pick the music. Last week when he taught me how to switch out the wall boxes for my electric, I’d had a full-on girl group playlist blaring, and Ben had complained so much I thought he’d pull a muscle. “You have the worst taste,” he grumbles.
My answer is to sing back, off-key, rolling my window down.
When he can’t keep a straight face anymore, I nudge him again, ask him where he’s taking me.
“Just this place I know about. You’ll love it.”
“Is it the science museum?”
“No. I figure you’ve been to the science museum at least ten times.”
“Oh, twenty, probably. I gave a lecture there once, for an exhibit they had on railway construction. It was awesome. I met this man who has two and a half total miles of miniature rail built all around his backyard.”
“Oh, you mean George Billingsley?”
“You know him?”
“He was my fifth grade teacher,” Ben says, smiling. “I think my dad used to date his sister, way back before he married my mom.”
“What? That’s so great! That’s—I love that,” I say, and Ben sends me a sidelong glance, curious, so I explain. “I love how you know so many people here, in all these different contexts, you know? From your neighborhood, or from going to school around here, or from people you meet at the yard. I always wanted that, but it was hard to get any traction with the way I grew up. You’re so lucky.”
“I suppose I never thought of it that way.”
“Do you know a lot of people in Houston?” I ask, tentative. I usually strike out on this, but I’m so curious—in Houston, is Ben more like that guy I met in the lab? Or is he this guy too, jeans and a t-shirt, tan, stubbled, his hair still wet from a shower?
He takes a minute to answer, thinks about it. “I know a lot of people through work. Not just my company, but other professionals in the area. I suppose—no. I don’t know people the same way there as I do here. But that was a good thing for me, I guess.”
I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t, so I reach over and nudge his thigh with my hand. “Because why?”
“Well, because around here, I knew so many people, but as the guy I was. The guy who set fire to a house, the guy who almost killed someone.”
I shift in my seat, so I’m turned toward him more. “I’m sure no one thought of you only that way,” I say.
He flips on his turn signal, lowers his speed as we head down a gravel path. “I was a pretty bad kid. Not only that time. I was always tearing shit up, getting into trouble. I’m sure it was exactly only that way.”
His eyes are on the road. There’s a muscle in his jaw that ticks, and I figure he’s done with this topic. I try not to sulk about it—so what if Ben’s a bit slower to open up than me? Not everyone cracks themselves wide open the first chance they get. Still, though, he must see some change in me, because he sets a hand on my thigh, warm pressure that gives me that familiar, pleasant flutter in my stomach. I lean my head back, close my eyes, and feel the breeze that’s blowing in the window ruffle my hair, caress my face.
I must doze, because when the truck rolls to a stop, we’ve pulled into a circular gravel driveway. To my right is a massive house, Tudor-style, a little worse for wear with a few windows boarded up, some half-timbers missing from the facade. “Is this a haunted house?” I ask. “Because I am not into that.”
He chuckles. “It’s the dead of summer, Kit.”
“So? A house can be haunted any time of year. Ghosts don’t take vacations.”
“It’s not a haunted house,” he says, laughing, getting out of the truck and coming around for me. “It’s called the Ursinus Mansion. It’s getting restored—it used to be a pretty famous home in the area, way back before World War I, because the house itself was dismantled and brought over from England. Lots of the materials are actually seventeenth century.”
“Wow,” I say, seeing it through new eyes. It makes me feel immensely better about my own house.
A man comes out from the front door, wearing coveralls and a carrying a big toolbox in one big hand. When he sees us, he offers a casual nod in Ben’s direction. “Hey, Tucker.”
“Good to see you, man,” Ben says, walking up to shake the man’s hand. “Kit, this is Rick Jarvis. He’s the lead contractor on this restoration.”
“Hi,” I say, shaking Rick’s hand. It’s dry and scratchy enough that he could probably do sanding just with his skin, but his eyes are kind, his smile twitching beneath his full beard.
* * * *
I guess he’s a man of pretty few words though, because once he lets my hand go, he only looks over at Ben and says, “Out by dark.”
“Sure thing. Thanks again.”
Rick raises a hand in farewell as he walks over to his own truck, puts his toolbox in the bed. He pauses, looks back over his shoulder at us. “You don’t got any matches on you, do you?”
I stiffen next to Ben. I’m ready to open my mouth and defend him, but Ben laughs. “You always were a dick, Jarvis.” There’s no heat in it, just that teasing familiarity Ben has with his dad too.
“Let’s get that beer sometime,” Rick says, and then he’s in his truck, driving back down the gravel path, the tires popping as he goes.
“That wasn’t very nice,” I say.
“Ah, Rick’s all right. He was there that night. He was a good friend.”
“Still,” I mumble, pissed on Ben’s behalf.
“Anyways, one good thing about knowing so many people around. You’re going to get to see this place now, before it opens this fall for tours and all that stuff. You thought your house was a handful, you know?”
I grab his hand, linking my fingers through his. “I can’t wait.”
We can’t go in all the rooms—some are taped off, or covered entirely with big swaths of plastic sheeting, particularly upstairs, where some of the bigger jobs are still underway. But downstairs is breathtaking—the floors wide-planked, textured with hundreds of years of nicks and slight depressions, the walls thick and roughened. The windows that are in are leaded glass. In the largest room, a banqueting hall, there’s a panel of stained glass that takes my breath away with its intricate leaf pattern, and I wish I could see it with the sun streaming through. Surrounded by the heavy, cherry paneling that lines the walls, some carved with rosettes, the window makes the room feel like a church, even though so far as I can tell, there’s nothing in here that suggests religion. We spend an hour wandering around, Ben telling me what he knows about the construction.
When we’re back in the foyer, me looking up again at the huge, elaborate staircase, Ben wraps his arms around me from behind. “What do you think?”
“I love it. Thanks for bringing me. I had no idea this was even here.”
“Most people don’t, but it’ll be a big deal when it reopens. You’re getting the insider track here, honey.”
I flush in pleasure, both at having this special local knowledge and at Ben’s endearment, which seems to slip out occasionally, though he betrays no embarrassment over using it.
“Now come on. Let’s go have some champagne and toast your victory,” he says, pointing me toward the door. “It’s almost dark.”
Ben spreads out a blanket on the bed of the truck, hoists me up so that my legs are swinging pleasantly in the warm night air. It smells faintly of sawdust from the house, but mostly out here it smells green, the air carrying with it the slight lemony smell from the magnolia trees that surround the house, their waxy leaves rustling in the breeze. It’s the best celebration I can think of.
Ben pours me a glass he’s taken from the cab of the truck, giving himself about half as much, and he raises his to mine. “Next stop, Nature,” he says, leaning forward to give me a quick kiss before we drink.
The champagne is sweet, bubbling deliciously in my mouth. I take another sip and laugh. “Not Nature. That’s not for me.”
I lie back, my feet still swinging beneath me, the scratchy blanket against my skin and the hard steel of the truck bed pressing into my shoulder blades. It’s worth it to look up at the sky, orange and pink and purple with the setting sun. Ben steps between my legs, humming his pleasure at my new stretched-out posture, leaning down to kiss that spot on my collarbone that makes me shiver. “Could be for you,” he says, against my skin, and I go a little cold.
I prop myself up on one elbow, place one hand on Ben’s chest. “I know it could be,” I say, ducking my head a little so I can look right into his eyes. “Ben—we’re not doing this again, are we?” I mean—we’re not doing the thing where we talk about my job, about how I should be doing more, about how Beaumont could help me get there.
He takes a long look at me, those eyes roaming back and forth between mine, over my cheeks, down to my mouth, back up to my eyes. “No. I know. I’m sorry.” He pushes away from me, shifts to sit next to me on the bed of the truck. “I think I’m—ah. I’m not being a recruiter here. I’m being this guy who…” He trails off, takes a deep breath. “Who lives in Houston. Who is going fucking crazy thinking about not being with you in a couple of weeks.”
“Oh.” The way that oh sounds, it’s not what I mean. It sounds awkward, embarrassed, when really my heart is pounding, thinking about what Ben is trying to say here, whether he is trying to say it. But I don’t want to lie to him. Beaumont can’t be an option for me. It can’t. I belong here. Even considering something else is a betrayal. “Ben.” I take his hand, tugging a little, hoping he’ll look over at me. But he doesn’t, so I go on. “The night we bought the ticket, of the three of us, I was the only one who said she’d go back to work the next day, as if nothing ever happened. And that’s because I love my job, even though it’s not at the cutting edge of everything. I know it’s not top-of-the-line equipment or a lot of money or a bunch of chances for patents. But I want a full life, a life I chose for myself, a life I didn’t let happen to me. That’s really important to me, that I choose, that I’m not getting shuffled around by circumstance.”
Ben looks straight ahead, off into the distance, where a line of trees is lit from behind by the setting sun. He’s so still, so quiet. I want him to say something else—I’m waiting for him to say something else. Tell me it’s not about the job, I’m thinking. Tell me that I’ve got nothing to do with the job.
“Yeah,” he finally says. “That makes sense.”
I’ve said what I meant, what I really think, and Ben squeezes my hand and smiles down at me, then leans in to press a kiss to my forehead. “We’ll figure it out,” is all he says, and even as I’m opening my mouth to talk that over, what figuring it out might mean for us—long-distance? Calling the whole thing off?—it’s as if he flips a switch, case closed. He’s pouring me more champagne and changing the subject, to some story about River setting up a new computer system at the yard, and even though it’s fun, and we’re laughing and talking—I don’t know why, but I get the feeling I’ve spoiled my own celebration.