“I’m glad, I’m glad,” Ben said, still looking at the side of his hand. “I’ve thought about you a lot over these years, been wondering about you. That’s what you do in here … think and wonder. Every once in a while someone’ll write me about you. But it’s not the same.”
“No,” I agreed. “Are they treating you OK?” I asked, stupidly, my eyes glazed, and suddenly I was crying and all I wanted to say was sorryI’msorryI’msosorry. Instead I said nothing, looking only at a constellation of acne scattered around one corner of Ben’s lips.
“I’m fine, Libby, Libby, look at me.” My eyes to his. “I’m fine. I really am. I got my high school degree in here, which is more than I ever prolly would have done outside, and I’m even partway to a college degree. English. I read fucking Shakespeare.” He made the guttural sound that he always tried to pass off for a laugh. “Forsooth, you dirty bugger.”
I didn’t know what the last part meant, but I smiled because he was waiting for me to smile.
“Man, Libby, I could just drink you in. You don’t know how good it is to see you. Shit, I’m sorry. You just look like Mom, do people tell you that all the time?”
“Who would tell me that? There’s no one. Runner’s gone, don’t know where, Diane and I don’t talk.” I wanted him to feel sorry for me, to float around in my big empty pool of pity. Here we were, the last of the Days. If he felt sorry for me, it would be harder to blame me. The tears kept coming and now I just let them. Two chairs down, the Indian woman was saying her good-byes, her weeping just as deep as her voice.
“Ya’all by yourself, huh? That’s no good. They should’ve took better care of you.”
“What are you, born again?” I blurted, my face wet. Ben frowned, not understanding. “Is that it? You forgiving me? You’re not supposed to be nice to me.” But I craved it, could feel the need for the relief, like setting down a hot plate.
“Nah, I’m not that nice,” he said. “I got a lot of anger for a lot of people, you’re just not one.”
“But,” I said, and gulped down a sob like a kid. “But my testimony. I think, I may, I don’t know, I don’t know …” It had to have been him, I warned myself again.
“Oh that.” He said, like it was a minor inconvenience, some snag in a summer vacation best forgotten. “You don’t read my letters, huh?”
I tried to explain with an inadequate shrug.
“Well, your testimony … It only surprised me that people believed you. It didn’t surprise me what you said. You were in a totally insane situation. And you always were a little liar.” He laughed again and I did too, quick matching laughs like we’d caught the same cough. “No, seriously, the fact that they believed you? They wanted me in here, I was going to be in here, that just proved it. Fucking little seven-year-old. Man, you were so small …” His eyes turned up to the right, daydreaming. Then he pulled himself back. “You know what I thought of the other day, I don’t know why. I thought of that goddam porcelain bunny, the one Mom made us put on the toilet.”
I shook my head, no clue what he was talking about.
“You don’t remember that, the little bunny? Because the toilet didn’t work right, if we used it twice in an hour it stopped flushing. So if one of us crapped when it wasn’t working, we were supposed to close the lid and put the bunny on top, so no one else would open the lid and see a toilet full of crap. Because you guys would scream. I can’t believe you don’t remember this. It was so stupid, it made me so mad. I was mad I had to share a bathroom with all of you, I was mad I lived in a house with one toilet that didn’t even work, I was mad about the bunny. The bunny,” he broke into his confined laugh, “I found the bunny, like, it humiliated me or something. Unmanned me. I took it very personally. Like Mom was supposed to find a car figurine or a gun figurine for me to use. Man, I would get so worked up about it. I’d stand there by the toilet and think, ‘I will not put that bunny down,’ and then I’d get ready to leave and I’d think, ‘Goddamit, I gotta put the bunny down or one of them’s gonna come in here and all the screaming—you guys were screamers, high, Eeeeeeeaaaahh!—and I don’t want to deal with that so fine here’s the goddam bunny on your goddam toilet!’” He laughed again, but the memory had cost him, his face was flushed and his nose was sweaty. “That’s the kind of stuff you think of in here. Weird stuff.”