Page 80 of Backslide
He exhales. “Lately, Cara is kind of struggling, I think. And it’schallenging.”
This surprises me. Cara has always had her shit together. Maybe more so than anyone else in our friend group. Even since we were kids, she was the one who organized every gathering, every night out. As far as I know, she works her ass off rising through the tech ranks by day, then manages to make it home to cook some elaborate nutritious dinner at night.
“Struggling how?”
“Well, at first, she was sad a lot of the time and kept talking about how she didn’t know who she was anymore.”
“Right. I get that,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “I mean, it’s easy to lose sight of yourself when you’ve got so much shit to do for other people.”
“Right. So, like, I tried to be more helpful, pitch in. But she wants things done the way she wants and I can’t always do it the ‘right’ way, so… she does it herself. But then she’s overwhelmed.”
He fiddles with the blue cloth napkin and unused butter knife lying askew in front of him, like he’s going to use the components to build a fort. And it’s hard for me not to see Ben as his eight-year-old self, creating scenarios for his action figures. I always wanted to play sports and he always made me play He-Man.
“Have you talked about it? How you want to help, but don’t know how?”
“Yeah—and maybe it sort of helped for a minute. But then things took a turn.”
“A turn?” My heart rate elevates ever so slightly. ’Cause if there’s a real problem, if Ben and Cara can’t make it work, then there’s no hope foranyof us.
“Yeah, she said she realized she needed to, like, blow off steam. And now suddenly she wants to go out all the time, try every new restaurant and bar, get wasted, do drugs again—and she planned this whole thing,” he says, gesturing around like he doesn’t know how it all materialized. “And like, she wants to have sexall the time, which—at first—I admit seemed like a good thing. But now, man. It’s like she’s out for revenge. And I can’t keep up! I am just fuckingexhausted. And honestly, I think she is too, if I could get her to admit it. She doesn’t seem happy! I mean, right now, she’s literally lying on the bathroom floor of our suite, groaning. I don’t know what she’s trying to recapture, but I am an old man—and I like it that way. I want maybe a little scotch with dinner and bed by ten p.m., so I can be up at six with the kids and do it all over again. I want our old boring life back.”
He rubs his eyes with his fists. Yawns. Like he’s the toddler.
“Oh, man,” I say, ’cause I’m not sure what else I have to offer. “That’s tough.”
“We have these few days off of parenting,” he says, his hair now standing on end from all the messing with it. “I just want tochill, you know? Just for a sec.”
It’s hard to age gracefully. Hard to accept new versions of yourself, when that also means saying goodbye to the old versions, the formative ones, the ones that made youyou.
I know that firsthand even from way back after my injury. When you feel like you’ve lost your identity, where do you look? Where do you go?
I understand Cara’s dilemma. But also Ben’s.
“What’s up with tomorrow?” I ask, because I know it’s the one day without any real itinerary.
He groans. “Cara has this idea that we’re going to drive to the coast and pick up all this shit for the big party on Saturday. Some flower farm and oyster farm and I don’t fucking know. Things wecould have paid someone else to do—we’re already spending a billion dollars on this whole thing. It wouldn’t have mattered.”
I took for granted that Ben and Cara both wanted this days-long debauched celebration. It never occurred to me that he might have wanted off the roller coaster.
“I know people have much bigger, way more legit problems,” he continues, “but I just want to do nothing—lie by the pool, play Connections, and read the latest Erik Larson for one damn day.”
“No problem,” I shrug. “Done.”
“No problem?” He scrunches his nose.
“I’ll do it for you,” I say. “Cara will probably feel like shit tomorrow, anyway. I bet you can convince her. Let me pick up all the stuff on the coast. I have a car. I’ve got nothing scheduled. I’m not going home to two toddlers in a few days. Let me go and give you your free Friday.”
Ben gazes at me like I’m an archangel descended from heaven. “Really?”
“Really. I’ve never even been to the Sonoma coast. Seeing it sounds nice.”
The relief on Ben’s face is palpable—like he’s just been awarded a stay of execution instead of been released from a day of errands. “Thanks, man,” he says, resting a hand on my upper arm. “You’re the fucking best. I mean, for a Dodgers fan.”
I feel a small pang of guilt. Because of course I would have done this for him anyway. But it’s also self-serving. I need to escape this place for a day, solo. Get my head on straight. Try to shake off this shit with Nell. Because it’s all I can think about. And judging by the massive implosion at the spa, something between us is probably not workable. She can’t get over her distrust—and maybe vice versa too.
She can’t see that I’ve changed. And, the truth is, I get it.
Somehow, some way, I need to stop feeling whatever I’m feeling for her. I need to move on, for real.
