The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker Page B

just the opposite. The relief was so strong, it was all through my body, like I’d finally confessed to a murder. Afterwards, I was on such a roll, I didn’t even try to stop myself. When Ben asked what my dad was like, I volunteered the whole story of going to his apartment, and how depressing it was, but later when I remembered the Laundromat, how much better I felt because I knew I’d loved my father. That was very important to me, I said. Knowing I’d loved him, even if he was kind of nuts.
    The Rockford Files was over and so was some game show, but I was getting to a big point. I could feel it coming as I spoke, even though I didn’t know what it was. It was the strangest thing, how much of this was news to me, too. It was like my voice was telling my brain what I really thought.
    “I’ve wondered a lot what happened between my mom and dad. Like, why did he leave and was she sad about it? I’m thinking maybe she wasn’t. You know, cause she hated weakness.”
    “I see what you mean,” Ben said quietly.
    “It wasn’t her fault, though. It’s like Mary Beth says, people can only be who they are. Even if she kicked him out, she couldn’t help it I guess.”
    I was picking my thumbnail, vigorously, because I’d just realized that last part wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true, because Mom had stayed married to Dad. Why would you stay married to a man—and continue to wear your wedding ring—if you wanted him to leave you?
    Which meant the big point, the thing that was coming next, wasn’t true, either. But I heard myself saying it anyway. I heard myself say that maybe my mom didn’t relate to me very well because I reminded her of my dad.
    “In what way?” Ben said. A perfectly normal question, but it convinced me for sure I had no idea what I was talking about. I didn’t look like Dad, and I certainly didn’t act like him. We had nothing in common, as far as I knew.
    I paused for a moment; then I sat up straight. “I think this theory lacks substantiation.”
    It was what Ben always said when he didn’t agree with some science article. I figured he’d start laughing and he did. But when I tried to tell him that everything I’d said was probably crap, he shook his head. “Even unsubstantiated theories usually have a grain of truth in them, Leeann.”
    “Maybe,” I said, but I feigned a sudden interest in the TV. Mary Beth and Tommy were due home any minute, and I was feeling both embarrassed and really anxious. Of course he’d have to tell my sister about this conversation—why hadn’t I thought of this before? Even if I asked him not to, it would just backfire and make him more convinced that he should, for my sake.
    I spent the next few days in a nervous fog, but by the weekend, I was okay again. As strange as it seemed, Ben obviously hadn’t mentioned our talk to Mary Beth, because she never mentioned it to me. Maybe he just assumed she already knew all this. Or maybe—and this was what I liked to think—he understood that I wanted this to be kept strictly private. This could even be the point of sharing something big, I thought: that after you did, the other person really understood you.
    Ben and I never had another discussion about my parents. Within days it was Christmas, and then he went back to school, and when he came on the weekends, there was always so much to do with Tommy and Mary Beth. But still, I was sure something had changed between us, and I convinced myself he thought so, too. When he would bring me an album, I would listen carefully to every word, in case he’d picked this one because there was a message in it for me.
    I never found the message, but I was still looking when he left. And then it all suddenly fit together: the reason he’d never mentioned the topic again and the reason he hadn’t told my sister about it and the reason he hadn’t sent me a message. He wasn’t all that interested. He was just being nice, the same way he’d been nice to Tommy. He’d