Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

“Okay. Leon did something right. You’re good. But...“
    “You don’t think she’s alive, do you?”
    “In here,” pointing to his perfect slicked-back hair, “no. In here,” now pointing to his chest, “I hold out hope, but only once in a while, those times when I miss her the most.”
    “You were close?”
    “I don’t think Sally got close to anyone, but we might have had the closest thing to a friendship she ever had.“
    “Why do you think that was?”
    “I never asked anything of her she wasn’t capable of giving. I wasn’t her husband or her kid. I didn’t count on her emotionally. We just hung out sometimes. The truth is,” both of us leaning forward this time, “she came down here a lot, to be by herself.”
    “When you weren’t home?”
    “Either way. But even when I was home, we’d talk a little, then she’d pick up her book, wiggle it at me and go into the bedroom and close the door.”
    “That seems . . .“
    “Odd?”
    He nodded. “You know how friendships are, Rachel. Whatever works you stick with. I liked having Sally around. Sally liked to read.”
    “Because she was going to school?”
    “The other way around. She went to school because she liked to read. It wasn’t possible upstairs. Leon wasn’t a problem. But Madison was a real chatterbox and Sally was always telling her to be quiet. It was just easier here.“
    “Where did Leon think she was?”
    “Oh, he knew.” He shrugged. “She had to study, and anyway, Leon would have done anything to make her happy. He just wasn’t able to.”
    I opened my mouth but Ted continued.
    “It’s not the usual story, that he was the wrong man, that she loved someone else. It wasn’t that at all. If anything, Leon was the right man for Sally, the perfect man. He adored her and he didn’t ask much of her.”
    “Just that she stay.”
    “Just that,” he said.
    I finally picked up the tea. It was in a bone china cup like the kind my mother had collected.
    “Perhaps she didn’t leave him,” he said. “At least not intentionally.”
    “There’s always that.” I took a sip of tea. For a while neither of us spoke.
    I could picture Sally here, curled up on the white couch or lying on Ted’s bed, using his apartment as a sanctuary whenever she could. I bet it happened quickly, their friendship, or, more accurately, their arrangement. Maybe it was because of his occupation and the easy intimacy of theater people. Whatever it was, it had worked for Sally. For both of them.
    “What else did she like to do besides reading?” I asked.
    “Not much. Not that I know of. Once she started school, she didn’t have much time for anything other than her studies and that,” pointing to the ceiling.
    “She cooked?”
    “Never. They ordered in. Or Leon made eggs. Or spaghetti with sauce from a jar,” grimacing at the thought.
    “She cleaned?”
    Ted blew some air out of his nose.
    “She spent time with Madison?”
    Ted rubbed his forehead. “Yes and no. She wasn’t much of a take-the-kid-to-the-zoo type of mom. But she’d do things for her and she worried about her. Before the...“ He made an eye twitch. “She told me Madison seemed very tense. That’s when she painted her room like that.”
    “Sally did that?”
    “Sure. What? You thought maybe Leon did it?”
    “I thought Madison had done it.”
    Ted shook his head. “Sally thought it would relax Madison, all that blue, the fish, the coral. She thought it would make her feel better.”
    “But it didn’t.”
    “Not one little bit. She liked it. She was very excited by it. I can’t say how much of that was because it was so cool or how much of it was that her mother was doing something for her. But Madison needed more than fancy walls to fix what ailed her. She needed . . .“ He stopped, picked up his cup, put it down again. “She needed more traditional parenting than she was getting.”
    “What would you say she was getting?” I asked.
    “Benign neglect.“
    “I used to be a dog trainer,” I told him. “You could tell the whole story by the way someone touched their dog.”
    “Or didn’t.”
    “True, but very few didn’t touch them at all. Of the rest, the majority, only a few touched the dogs as if they were theirs.”
    Ted stared at me for a moment before speaking. When he did speak, his voice was small, the opposite of a stage whisper. Even sitting this close, I could barely hear him. “You’re right. That’s what the story is upstairs. Leon