Extraordinary

  For close to three incredible minutes, the bunting preened and posed, and Phoebe and Benjamin watched. Then the bird flew into the marsh grass and disappeared from view.

  “That was amazing,” Phoebe said. “Thanks, Benjamin.”

  “I’m just glad he stayed. Do you want to hang out here a while and see what else shows up? And the bunting might come back out too.”

  “Sure. I was counting on it.”

  Benjamin lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t need to get back?”

  “Not in a real big rush to do that,” said Phoebe honestly. As if to make her point, she settled herself down onto a rock.

  “Yeah.” Benjamin sat as well.

  Phoebe took a deep breath. “Though—I should tell you—I’ll apologize to everybody when I do get back. And if you want to come over tonight for supper, I’m also planning to ask Mallory to tell the rest of her story. I’ll just suffer through it and behave myself. So, if you want to hear the end, you’re welcome to come.”

  “I guess I do,” said Benjamin. “It was pretty interesting. And she’d just gotten to the good part.”

  Phoebe felt his gaze on the side of her face. She turned to look directly at him, and then she smiled ruefully, because he looked so uncomfortable, but also determined, and she knew that look of his. She nibbled lightly on the inside of her cheek and then said, “Okay, go ahead. Give it to me straight. You know you want to.”

  Occasionally, in the course of their friendship, Benjamin had asked Phoebe a question or made a comment, and what he said had jogged Phoebe into an important new place in her mind. A place of truth. You let her boss you around, he had said once, about Colette Williams-White. He’d barely been eleven when he said it. A couple years later, he had said: Your father doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him. In a way, he’s much more confident than your mother. It makes me wonder what she’d be like without him.

  It wasn’t always easy to cope with these zingers; in fact, it usually took a while before Phoebe was glad of having heard one. Anxious now, she steeled herself.

  Benjamin was looking at his feet. “Last night, you said I was staring at Mallory and—and everything.”

  Phoebe felt her stomach tighten. “Yes.”

  “I guess I was. Staring at her.”

  Phoebe’s stomach clenched again. “Mallory’s beautiful,” she said evenly.

  “Yeah, but.” Benjamin sighed. “Yeah, but—Phoebe, I look at a lot of girls. I like to look, okay? It’s, uh, it’s what guys do. We look at girls. We think about them. We wonder. I do that with nearly every girl I see nowadays. Not just Mallory. It’s just that maybe you haven’t seen me doing it before now.”

  Benjamin looked even more awkward than before, but he continued determinedly. “Probably until I die, I’ll be looking at girls. I really like looking. That’s my point. I enjoy looking. So I look.”

  “I’m getting that.” The knot in Phoebe’s stomach was dissolving. This was interesting, but it wasn’t one of Benjamin’s worldview-shaking comments. “I think you’ve made your point three times. Or five. I lost count.”

  Benjamin actually laughed, a single snort. “Yeah, okay, but I’m still not done.”

  “All right. Sorry for interrupting. Go on.” Phoebe rearranged her legs under her.

  “Thank you very much. What I’m trying to say is it’s like a fantasy. A girl I meet in person, like Mallory, is more real than some girl I’d see on, uh, on the Internet, but it’s still just me looking and wondering, and, uh, fantasizing a little, which is just something I do, sort of on autopilot. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter to me, because, uh, it does—”

  “Because you enjoy looking.”

  “I’m talking here, remember? What I’m saying is that it’s all in my head, which is where it belongs and where I like it, mostly. So when I was looking at your friend Mallory—your ex-friend Mallory, whatever—it wasn’t because I fell in love with her at first sight or whatever it was you were thinking. I know she’s your friend—was your friend—and that makes her more interesting to me than some random girl. But still. So you, uh, don’t need to be jealous. I like looking at you more. Which is, in fact, my point.”

  And then Benjamin sat there, his eyes calm behind his glasses, and his big ears sticking out, and his knobby knees poking sharply through the fabric of his jeans, and his feet looking oddly large in his dirty sneakers, and his face ever so slightly red.

  Everything is fine and normal, Phoebe thought in shock. Everything is fine and normal, and then Benjamin goes and says the thing that changes everything. Just like he always has. He’s always the same. How could I forget?

  But maybe what he had said this time didn’t mean—maybe Benjamin didn’t mean—what she had instantly thought he meant.

  She sat up straight. Her voice cracked a little. “Jealous? I wasn’t jealous!”

  “Okay,” said Benjamin. “Fine.”

  She put on anger that she didn’t feel. “That’s a pretty arrogant thing to assume—”

  “I know. Sorry. We don’t have to discuss it. I’m not sure I even want to discuss it. Not right now, anyway. I was just saying it, because you need to know I’m not interested in Mallory. Except for liking to look—”

  “You enjoy looking at girls. I got that part.”

  Phoebe had been astonished, and now she was aghast and even a little frightened. Did all this mean—did Benjamin have a crush on her? Was that his point? Or was he saying that he thought she had a crush on him?

  It had always been such an easy friendship. Biking. Birds. Honest talk, yes, but no hint before of—of—and he was younger than she was, and ... and compared to Ryland, Benjamin was a boy. So he couldn’t think that she—that they—could he?

  “I’m not jealous,” Phoebe said.

  “Okay.”

  “It‘s—it’s—” Abruptly, she realized that she didn’t want to tell Benjamin about Ryland, even if she could have done so without breaking her word about keeping it secret. You couldn’t say to a sixteen-year-old boy (okay, nearly seventeen) who might be in love with you, or at least have a crush on you, or even just think that you had a crush on him, that he couldn’t compare to this twenty-four-year old man you loved.

  She thought of the painted bunting, preening for the female bunting who wasn’t and never would be there.

  “If I seemed jealous of you and Mallory,” Phoebe said carefully, “it was probably because of how bad it is between me and Mallory these days. We’re not friends anymore. Well, you guessed that. And I don’t see how it can be fixed. I’m not actually sure I want it fixed.”

  Benjamin turned toward her. “What went wrong?” He said it quickly, as if he too was relieved to have a change of subject.

  “Mallory’s changed,” she said.

  “How?”

  Suddenly Phoebe was eager to pour it all out, and not only to leave the dangerous subject behind of what Benjamin might or might not feel for her. That gift of truth that Benjamin had—she needed it now, for this, for Mallory.

  “She said something awful to me not long ago,” Phoebe said. “And I realized she doesn’t think much of me.” She tried to choose the exact right words to convey to Benjamin what Mallory had said.

  “So,” she finished, “here’s my best friend—my best girlfriend—telling me that I’m a bratty toddler and an empty name.” She stopped for a breath; it was amazing how much it still hurt to say this aloud. “And that there’s nothing even remotely special about me as an individual.” She stopped for another breath. “Well, so, that’s it. Anyway.”

  Benjamin patted her shoulder, and Phoebe had the sense that if she were to turn to him—just turn to the left and face him, and lean in—

  But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. Phoebe was appalled that the thought had even crossed her mind. Ryland, she thought. Ryland. He’s the only one I should be kissing. She sat up straight and swiped at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Sorry. I’ll stop now. It just—it hurt. That’s all.”

/>   “Yeah,” said Benjamin.

  “Do you . . . do you—” Phoebe stumbled over the question. It was ridiculous, she knew it was ridiculous, but she suddenly couldn’t ask Benjamin why he was her friend. Whether he thought she was special.

  But then she didn’t have to ask.

  Benjamin said, “I’ll tell you why you’re special to me. It’s because you treat me like I matter, and you always have.”

  “Well, you do matter.” Phoebe contained her disappointment. So, Benjamin hadn’t noticed something amazing about her, something that she never had noticed herself but would instantly know was true. Basically, he liked her because she liked him. At least it was more than what Mallory had said.

  “Why wouldn’t you matter?” she said. “Everybody matters, right?”

  “Really? Does everyone believe that?”

  Phoebe sighed. “Well, everybody matters to somebody. Everybody’s special to somebody, even if they’re not special to anybody else.” She waved a hand in the air, trying to work out what she thought. “Okay. There’s being special in the ordinary way, the particular way, in your own little circle of family and friends. Then there’s being special in the world, like my mother is. Very few people have that. And Mallory was saying that I don’t have that special-in-the-world thing and never will, and you know what? I guess she’s right. And that’s okay. I mean, it sort of hurts that she believes that, and part of me thinks, who is she to judge what I might be someday, when I grow up? Who can know? Don’t people grow into themselves as they mature? But it’s okay. Probably it’s true. Probably I’m never going to be truly special like my mother.

  “But I’m not special to Mallory. That’s what I learned, simple as that. And I can’t stand it. Which maybe is shallow of me. But she—she’s special to me. And it has nothing to do with whether or not she’s, you know, special-in-the-world special. Or wait, what was that word from her story about Mayer and his sons? Extraordinary. I don’t need to be extraordinary, and I don’t need anybody else to be. You can be special without being extraordinary.” She tried to laugh. “Maybe that was what hurt, about her story. She’s judging me against my ancestors, and I come up short.”

  Phoebe knew she was babbling. She hardly made sense even to herself. She was groping for some thought that was out of reach.

  “Phoebe?”

  She looked up to see that Benjamin was frowning.

  He said, “I’ve got a question for you.”

  There it was again: that thoughtful, focused note in Benjamin’s voice. It arrested Phoebe, even though in the back of her mind she thought that maybe she couldn’t stand and did not want a second big revelation today. She sighed. She leaned toward him anyway. “What?”

  “I’m just wondering,” Benjamin said. “Mallory’s been thinking about your family a lot, and she’s even done research on it. Assuming she got it right, about Mayer and his five sons and all?”

  “Yes,” said Phoebe. “Mayer existed, and so did the five sons. Excuse me. The five extraordinary sons.”

  “Well,” said Benjamin. “I knew basically about your family, but I didn’t know any of that. I wonder why she’s so interested. Why would anybody go and make up a fairy tale about your family? It was a lot of work. And she told it like—well, Pheeb, you actually said this last night. It was like she was Scheherazade and her life depended on her story. She was a pro.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Only that it means something; that Mallory is obsessed with your family and made up that fairy tale and did it so well. She had a reason. It’s all pretty weird. Don’t you think?”

  “Last night,” said Phoebe slowly, “I thought she was just trying to entertain my parents. And they loved it, they really did.”

  “But it’s you she was watching,” said Benjamin.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I was watching her watching you.”

  Phoebe chewed her cheek thoughtfully. “If she wanted a reaction from me, she got it.”

  “You got angry. But was that what she wanted?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know either, but I don’t think so. I think she wanted to finish the story, and she wanted you to hear it. When you got angry, that stopped her. She didn’t want to finish it without you there.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” said Phoebe.

  “I didn’t say it did.”

  They lapsed into silence.

  “Palm warbler,” said Benjamin conversationally after a minute. “Over there by the reeds.”

  Phoebe lifted her binoculars, failed to locate the warbler, and lowered them.

  “I’m baffled,” said Benjamin. “But I think we want the end of the story.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Phoebe? Why did the story make you so angry?”

  Phoebe rubbed her temples. “I don’t know if you can understand, Benjamin. You’re not Jewish.”

  “So?” said Benjamin. “Your parents are Jewish, and religious to some extent, and they weren’t upset by what Mallory had to say. And anyway, Phoebe, you always used to tell me you thought religious differences just made trouble in the world by encouraging people to hate each other.”

  Phoebe sighed. She said, “You’re right. I do still think that. But it’s a cultural thing too, being Jewish. It’s like remembering and honoring your roots. And it was important to Mayer and his sons that their families stay Jewish. And the daughters too, of course.”

  “There were daughters?”

  “Yes, five of them. But anyway, the family did not marry non-Jews, period. It was a huge deal, until you know, very recent generations. That faerie-worship nonsense completely undercuts everything that Mayer was and that he believed, and also what the family was about. They were Jewish! Not pagan! And that matters!”

  “You need to calm down again.”

  “Sorry. It just upsets me.”

  “Yeah. I see that. I just wonder if there’s some other reason you’re upset too.”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  Benjamin shrugged.

  “I mean, Mayer was an extraordinary man, and one of the ways in which he was extraordinary was that he was loyal. He didn’t get rich and powerful and ditch his people, all right? He identified as a Jew and was proud of it, and that’s just how it is.” Phoebe was talking rapidly. “Imagine if Mallory had said in her story that Mayer secretly converted to Catholicism. That would be offensive, right? So she said he worshipped the faerie queen. It’s just the same.”

  “Don’t get mad at me, but I’d be more convinced if your mother had taken offense, too.”

  “Benjamin—”

  “You didn’t want to listen to Mallory, Pheeb. Maybe because you were hurting over that word extraordinary. She mentions these extraordinary Rothschild sons and she’d just told you that you weren’t extraordinary. So you blew up.”

  “When did you become a psychiatrist?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  Phoebe felt exhausted. Benjamin’s thinking was flawlessly logical and she didn’t know how to explain that nonetheless he was wrong. She had blown up because—because—she didn’t really fully understand why, but Benjamin was still wrong. Well-meaning, but wrong.

  “Are you mad at me now?” Benjamin asked.

  “I’m confused. But I already said I’d let Mallory tell the end of her story. I’ll let her tell it even if I have to put a gag in my mouth the whole time.” Phoebe thought suddenly that she’d been wrong earlier: Benjamin wasn’t in love with her. He’d been talking just now like the friend he’d always been.

  It was a relief.

  “You know something?” she said. “When I was a kid, I thought extraordinary ought to mean somebody who was even more ordinary than usual. Extra-ordinary. Get it?”

  “Got it. And I guess that means we’re done with the heavy stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Benjamin lifted his binoculars again. “And I think that was another palm warbler just no
w. But it flew.” He got up. “I’m going to get the scope, so we can get some real birding in before we go back.”

  “I’ll hang out here,” said Phoebe. She was glad of the alone time. She closed her eyes and put her head down into her arms.

  She never knew quite how long it was—but only minutes— before she heard Benjamin shouting her name, and then crashing loudly down the path in a way he never did when he was birding. She was on her feet without even thinking about it, because somehow, somehow, she knew. And she knew it was bad.

  chapter 24

  Benjamin had his scope slung over his shoulder but had neglected to steady it with his other hand. It was as if he hardly realized he was carrying it. “Phoebe, your mom—”

  His face was so pale that his freckles stood out on it. “Phoebe, come out to the parking lot. My parents are here in the car. They need to talk to you.”

  “What? But—” Phoebe put her hand to her pocket where her phone was. Benjamin had a phone too. Why hadn’t they just called? Half a dozen confused thoughts raced through her mind. She turned and ran back toward the bikes. She could hear Benjamin right behind her.

  She burst out into the little parking lot. Benjamin’s parents, Gina and Justin Michaud, were waiting for her, and so was—she was shocked to see—Ryland. He was standing a little behind the Michauds and leaning against their car. He was watching her with a serious face.

  What was Ryland doing here? How could he possibly be here?

  She ignored him; she had to. She thought her heart had never beaten so fast and so frantically; she could feel it in her throat. She looked right at Benjamin’s parents.

  It was Gina Michaud who spoke, although Phoebe was unable to take in more than fragments.

  “Phoebe, there’s been an accident. Your mom seems to have fallen—hit her head—we’re not really sure what happened, but she’s being airlifted to a hospital in Boston now. Your dad’s with her. We won’t lie to you, it seems to be serious, but there’s hope—”