The New Man

“Ben had a brain tumor. It was…drawn out.” Those few words barely began to hint at the agony of the two years that followed his diagnosis. “Your wife?”

“Leukemia. She started feeling tired, went to the doctor, and six weeks later she was dead. That quick.”

“You were very, very lucky then,” Helen said simply.

His mouth twisted. “It…didn’t feel that way. But I know you’re right. If she couldn’t get better…”

Her voice hardened. “Watching a person you love suffer is a living hell.” Especially when you knew you were the one responsible. The one who insisted one more treatment be tried, that—however irrationally—hope not be abandoned.

“Yes.” That was all he said; all he had to say.

Together they turned and started down the hall again, shoulder to shoulder.

“You haven’t remarried?” he asked after a minute.

“No.” She thought of all the things she could say, but chose not to. “You?”

“No. I’ve barely dated. Helping the kids through this has consumed me. Linda and I were involved in starting up this arts and craft fair and administering the scholarships we give with the proceeds, but I didn’t even come last year. I just…couldn’t.”

Hearing the anguish in his voice, Helen asked, “Did Linda come the year before?”

Looking straight ahead, he talked. “Sick and shaking, she insisted. We both knew she was dying, but we pretended. She bought a hat to cover her bald head. She wouldn’t wear a wig.” He was silent for a moment. “She died eight days later.”

“I am so sorry,” Helen whispered, reaching for his hand in an instinctive need to comfort.

He glanced down in surprise, then turned his hand in hers to return her grip. The smile he gave her—tried to give her—was flavored with grief and lacked the charm of his earlier ones. “Thanks.”

They were gaining on Ginny, who was spending long minutes in deep concentration on works of art that interested her. Helen gave his hand a gentle squeeze before letting go. The last thing she needed was to have to explain to her daughter why she was being so friendly with a man she barely knew.

“Hey, kiddo. See anything you like?”

“This one.” Ginny turned her head several ways, as if to change the perspective. “I wish I could draw like that.”

In the colored pencil work that had attracted her attention, a boy and a puppy wrestled on a shaggy lawn, scattering fluffy dandelion heads. The detail, shading and lifelike quality were extraordinary. Especially for an artist who was only…

“Seventeen,” Helen said. “The girl who drew this has nine years on you, Ginny. Imagine what you can learn in nine years.”

“I don’t know if I can learn this much.” Ginny sighed and said abruptly, “I’m hungry. Can we go eat?”

“Sure. Did you decide what you want?”

Ginny, of course, was a connoisseur of fair-type food. “I think I’ll have a gyro today. A chicken one. With feta cheese.”

“Sounds good.” Helen bent to kiss the top of her head. “I’ll have the same.”

“It’s one of my favorites,” Alec said. “Do you ladies mind if I join you?”

Ginny eyed him but remembered her manners. “No, that’s okay.”

Alec did know how to talk to kids well enough to get her chatting about what things she especially liked that were for sale outside.

“There’s pretty jewelry,” she conceded, “but I don’t like jewelry. I’m not old enough. I like some of the paintings, but some of them aren’t very good. The stained glass right next to Mom’s tent is especially beautiful. I wish I knew how to make stained glass.”

“More expensive lessons,” Alec murmured out of the corner of his mouth to Helen.

“Lots of the stuff looks kind of alike,” Ginny continued. “If I had the money today, I’d buy—” she frowned in thought “—one of those mosaic mirrors.” Pushing out her lower lip, she gave a decisive nod. “Have you seen them? You can stand them on your chest of drawers, or hang them on the wall. The lady had one last week with green and blue tiles mixed with silvery ones. It was like a swimming pool. Somebody bought it, though.”

As they emerged into sunlight to the noise of a band tuning guitars in the pavilion set up behind the gym, Alec asked, “Have you seen the porcelain dolls a couple of rows over?”

Ginny gave him a look that spoke louder than words. Why would she have any interest in a doll? But, very politely, she said, “No, I haven’t.”

Alec hid a grin.

“Does your Lily collect dolls?” Helen asked.

“Actually, she does. She doesn’t play with them, but she still seems interested. I thought of picking one out for her birthday.”

They joined the short line to order at the Greek gyro booth.

“When is her birthday?” Helen asked.

“August thirtieth.”

The person ahead of her stepped away and Helen ordered for herself and Ginny. “Lemonade?” she asked her daughter, then confirmed their order with the teenager inside the trailer, “Two lemonades.”

Alec tried to persuade her to let him pay for all three lunches, but she was already handing over bills. Ginny gave him a suspicious look. Helen poked her under the guise of moving her to the next window where they waited for their gyros.

“He was just being nice,” she whispered.

“Why is he being so nice?” Ginny asked, her voice carrying.

“Because he’s a nice man!” Helen hissed, then gave him a bright smile when he joined them. “Your kids here?”

He shook his head. “Lily went swimming with friends, and Devlin…well, in theory he’s mowing our lawn and several of the neighbors’ lawns today. He’s set himself up in business.”

“Enterprising.”

Alec grunted. “Honestly, I think he just wants to buy more CDs and go to more movies with his friends than I’m willing to pay for.”

“But at least he’s willing to work for them.”

“True enough.”

His frown hadn’t entirely cleared, though, telling her that he worried about his son. Helen thought perhaps she was lucky that Ginny had been so young when her father died. The two awful years of Ben’s illness had changed Ginny forever, of course. Helen hadn’t had the time and energy for her the way she once had, and, at four and five years old, Ginny just hadn’t understood what was happening. She became scared of her daddy near the end, and Helen had feared that she would be haunted because she hadn’t said a proper farewell. But so far Ginny hadn’t asked questions and hadn’t expressed regrets.

Maybe it was worse when children did understand what was happening. Alec’s son would have been twelve, a transitional age anyway. Helen remembered how confused she’d been at twelve and thirteen. What if she’d had to say goodbye to her dying mother? She shuddered at the idea. Did the boy blame himself somehow, as kids so often did, for his mother’s illness? Was he mad at her for leaving him? Did he fear that his father would die or desert him, too?

The dreadful thing was, Helen hadn’t been able to afford counseling for Ginny, and she had no idea whether her own daughter harbored anger or fear or guilt. By the time Helen had crawled out of her own grief enough to worry about Ginny, she didn’t want to talk about the past. She claimed she didn’t remember her father that well. Maybe she didn’t. She’d only been three when he was diagnosed, and by her fifth birthday he was a skeleton with tubes going into his veins and nose, the hiss of the respirator enough to drown out his feeble voice. By then all she knew was that her mother cried constantly and spent hours of the day at the scary man’s side. He wasn’t Daddy; couldn’t even pretend to be.