Page 97 of Living at 40

The best of friends in the best of men.

“To thirteen-year-old girls,” I state, and Mason groans.

“Do you know how wrong that sounded?”

“Just drink,” I tease, and Mason does, but I glance back at Ben, whose gaze has fallen on my son, tucked into my chest.

“This is the best,” Ben whispers, eyes still on my child, and I’m not certain if he means a sleeping baby or a child nuzzled to a chest. Or just sitting on the beach with friends. I’ll take all those moments and roll them into one.

“I’ve had the best of lives,” Ben says. “Because I lived every moment of it.”

“Ben,” I choke, sensing he’s trying to impart some wisdom on us. He slowly smiles and turns back to watch his own boys torturing the younger ones.

In a maudlin moment a while back, Ben asked me: “If you live another forty years, my friend, what will make you happiest?”

The answers were simple and came quickly. His sister. My daughter. Our new child. The home we were building together. The life we planned to share as a family.

“That’s all I’d ask of any of you,” he had said because Ben knew what was important. In his cycle of life theory, he recognized that we followed a pattern.

And while we might be forty-year-old men, we’re still those four college boys inside, striving for what we wanted most in life.

And when we were forty, we still had so much life left to live.

As Ben intended we should.

Second Epilogue

[Zack]

July

Ben was dead.

There was no easy way to sugarcoat the truth. Our best friend had died after a short life and a brief struggle with pancreatic cancer. I’m still dressed in my funeral attire minus my sportscoat. My tie is loosened, and I gawk out the second-floor, bedroom window into the yard next door. Anna’s family calls this place Lakeside Cottage, but for the past year it was the permanent residence of one of my oldest friends and their family. My family used to live next door—once upon a time.

Swiping a hand through my hair, I sigh. The past eleven months have been hell. Just shy of a year ago, Ben told us about his diagnosis. He’d already been through treatment without success. Ben Kulis. Clueless Kulis, we teased him in college. The nickname came about because he only had eyes for one woman. That woman would become his wife, Anna. They were sickly sweet, madly in love, and now she was a widow too young. Ben was the best of men. Loyal to a fault, he saw the good in most people even when they didn’t recognize it in themselves. Having been Anna’s friend first, my friendship with Ben happened second but was no less important than hers.

Staring out the dark window, I’m distracted when a light from the house next door illuminates a portion of the yard. A yard that was mine once upon a time. My childhood dreams were built there until everything shattered when I was a teenager.

I hate this room. I hate that it faces what I once had. I hate that facing what I once had reminds of all that I’ve lost.

A house. A home. A wife. A friend.

Ben would have told me to let it go regarding that house next door. I’m certain he said something similar to that before the phrase—let it go—became so popular. It was only a house, he probably said, but it had been my house. My home. Home is where you plant your garden and sow your seeds, he might have added being a landscape designer who loved planting metaphors. Instead of that house being a special place, I was uprooted as a teen and forced to bloom elsewhere.

Regarding my ex-wife, he told me to let her go as well, and I did.

Suddenly, a woman enters the yard, distracting me from my thoughts of shattered dreams and broken homes. Her hair appears golden in the dim light, flowing behind her like she’s a mystical creature from a child’s bedtime story. She wears a dress that’s light in color and fabric, covering her from shoulder to ankle and yet leaving nothing to the imagination. In profile, I see the outline of her form. Pert breasts. Long legs. And that hair like a veil drifting behind her in the light wind.

She looks like an angel.

And I must be losing my mind.

This must be the neighbor who arrived around the time we visited last summer. Anna and Ben claim they never formally met her, only passed friendly hellos through the tall shrubbery between the homes. Anna’s best guess is she’s roughly our age. We all turned forty the year of the great reunion where Ben dropped the bomb about his situation. Now, we are forty-one.

Roughly loosening the remainder of my tie, I continue to stare into the mostly dark yard. The patio is illuminated by the soft glow of light coming from the house. The kitchen. I recall my mother cooking there, my brother doing homework at the oval table, and my father’s laughter. Tonight seems to be a night of memories. My childhood home. My best friend’s passing. And this woman is invading them both.

With my room two stories up and steeped in darkness, I remain submerged in my dismal mood but mesmerized by her presence.