Page 49 of Living at 40

Anna pulls back and pats Ben’s chest before turning to leave the room, and Ben returns to his seat.

We wait for Mason to return. He brings four glasses of amber liquor with him, dispensing one crystal tumbler to each of us before lowering the bottle under his arm to the low table before us.

“I’ll drink yours if you won’t,” Mason tells Ben.

“I’m counting on it,” Ben mutters to the glass, and Mason downs his first round. There’s always been a layer of animosity mixed with the love of friendship, but something is even more off than usual between the two of them.

We each remain quiet, taking turns to lift a glass and drink after mouths open and shut, words unable to find any of us.

“This is stupid,” Mason finally speaks. He’s downed a second lowball, filling it higher than his first. “You want a better quality of life at the end of your life, so be it.”

Startled by Mason’s interjection into the silence around us, Zack shifts on the couch, looking over his shoulder at our friend.

“Okay . . .” Zack turns back, facing the glass in his hand, and swishes the liquid inside. “Okay. You’re right. This is Ben’s life.” He speaks as if Ben isn’t present before addressing him. “We’ll do things your way, but I want a promise.”

“Jesus, Zacker,” I hiss, shaking my head.

“If things get really bad, you promise me you’ll get medical attention. You won’t just let yourself suffer in pain but do something to aid yourself. Do something to lessen it.”

“Maryjane for medicinal purposes. She’s my kind of woman,” Mason teases.

“Isn’t it legal here in Michigan now anyway?” I question, no longer up on which states have legalized marijuana use.

Ben chuckles. “I promise I’ll use something. I’m not that much of a martyr.”

We’re quiet for another second before Mason chimes in again. “Remember when we were young . . . er . . . younger, and we had a plan.”

Zack glances over at me.

“We were going to be our own business. No dads. No bosses. We’d be in charge. Logan would design houses. I’d build them. Benny would make them pretty outside, and Zack would make sure we stayed out of trouble. At least, legally.” Mason laughs. Vaguely, the details come back to me. It was probably a night just like this, somber and silent, when we were drinking too much, discussing fathers and futures. Ben already knew he didn’t want to take over his dad’s business because he wanted to follow Anna. He didn’t want her to give up her dream for his. Mason never got along with his father, which is how he found himself working for Ben’s in the summers during high school, and Zack had his own issues with his old man, a known criminal. My dad was dead and had been since I was five.

“What happened to that dream?” Mason asks.

Zack chuckles, bitter and ironic, while Ben admits, “I married Anna.”

“Yes, women. How fickle they can be.” Mason takes a hearty pull of his drink. Ben narrows his eyes at Mason but doesn’t speak to contradict our friend. “We were the four seasons.”

“The four points,” Ben corrects. “We were going to name the business The Four Points for the direction each of us came from.” Mason was north. I was south. Zack was east while Ben was west. We sounded like Power Rangers, and if anyone suggested we wear matching outfits in bright colors, it might have been me, making a joke about the glory of wearing a morph-suit. But as I recall that conversation and we sit here some twenty years later, I wonder . . .

“Why didn’t we do it?” It was more than Ben marrying Anna. Why didn’t we ever follow through on that dream to work together, to be a team?

Ben shrugs, but Mason stares down at his glass. Zack is just thinking. It’s written in his expression. He might have even zoned out of this conversation, but he’s still sitting here, listening. He’s uncanny like that.

“To The Four Points,” I say, lifting my glass like the Power Ranger-wannabes of the past. Mason slowly smiles.

“To The Four Points,” he adds, raising his glass as well.

“To the future,” Ben whispers.

“And the past,” Zack adds as if shaken out of his revelry. “And friendship.”

To that, we all drink, even Ben, who takes a small sip of the sharp alcohol, and then coughs, reminding us that dreams fade, life shifts, and it could all end sooner than we think.

19

[Autumn]

Accepting the early fate of my brother was difficult. Ben told me months ago when he’d learned the truth and began chemotherapy treatments. The prognosis was desperate. The outlook inevitable. I wanted to curse God, poor genetics, and the universe, but the diagnosis came down to cancer is not selective. It seeps into anyone, at any time, without explanation or reason. We were a healthy family. We were heart attack and stroke people, not cancer victims. Our father died of a heart attack. Our grandfather died of an allergic reaction to something. Even on my mother’s side, her family simply died of advanced age. The men in our family had not been subject to cancer, yet here it was in Ben.