Our Infinite Sadness

Silence

Ben took his usual seat at lunch and disassociated himself from the surrounding banter. He'd been detached from his surroundings all morning, gliding in a state of calm.

The Cullens ignored him, and there were only four. No Edythe.

She didn't show up for Biology, either.

Ben put a positive spin on her absence: she had come to school this morning solely for him. In home room, minutes after their meeting, he had carefully uncrumpled and flattened their sheet of letters. Then he had meticulously folded the sheet down to wallet size and had tucked it into a hidden slot behind his Social Security card.

That night he went to bed early, no longer entirely certain that he hadn't injured his head three mornings ago.

He couldn't sleep. He faced his bookshelves. His eyes roved from one framed photograph to another, his thoughts irresolute and wistful. He had last spoken to Zoey on Wednesday, at lunch, shortly before going into Biology. It seemed like an eternity ago, and yet his fate seemed like a crazed, ravenous thing, straining furiously at its chains. The phone lay at his side. For three hours he dared not touch it.

She contacted him first, by text. He stared at her laconic message for a half hour.

"I am here. If you need me."

Ben tapped the phone for the time. One half hour to midnight. And he had turned in early. He sighed and requested a Facetime connection.

She lay on a pillow. She had a sheet pulled right up to her neck. She wore nothing to bed, a fact she'd mentioned once in passing, to torment him. She smiled and whispered, "Thank you."

"I haven't been avoiding or ignoring you."

"I know."

Zoey studied him with excessively tender, almost matriarchal concern. He looked so worn and tired. She worried that he might have downplayed the injuries sustained by the tree attack. He'd been hospitalized, after all. Most of all she worried about his heart. He looked battered in spirit.

Ben confessed, "Things are moving too fast. I can't order them. I can't express them. I've just been waiting for it to make sense, with the intention of calling you, when it did. But it hasn't. To wit: I sound like a blithering idiot."

She shook her head with a patient smile and encouraged, "Things moving too fast, that's said to be a good sign."

"I'm not so sure," he said darkly. "I reached out yesterday. It went awry somehow."

"What did she say?"

"She never opened her mouth. Zoey... it was bad."

Zoey nodded in affirmation. She could see on his face that it had been the worst.

"But this morning she came to see me. And it was better."

"What did she say?"

"Nothing."

"Okay... well, what did you say?"

"Nothing at all."

_____

Ben arrived early on Friday, to observe the parking lot and see if Edythe would return to school. He hoped that she would approach him in the parking lot again, as she had done on the previous morning, and perhaps speak to him this time. Pathetic, he knew.

The Cullens arrived in their silver Volvo twenty minutes later. All five of them. Today she wore a cream-chiffon dress with brown buttons down the back, as far as her waist, wrapped by a glossy brown belt. The bottom half of the dress billowed with pleats, no doubt held aloft by petticoats. She looked like a young maiden in a Jane Austen movie. Her eyes had changed to bright gold, much lighter than yesterday, complementing her off-white earthtone outfit. She neither approached nor ever looked directly at him, although she had to know of his presence.