The Later Journeys - 19. Acceptance
All I got from Warren -- all I had time for, really -- was a quick horizontal shake of his head as I met his gaze with the silent question of whether anything interesting had been found in Ben’s pockets during the change. After everything I’d already seen, I wasn’t too surprised.
Probably the thing Ben had enjoyed the most about the car wash was watching the water gush endlessly from the outside hose, and the attached sprayer. In truth, everything delighted him. Warren and Trevor shared later that Ben had inspected the tires, the windshield wiper blades, the lights, mirrors and license tag minutely. He asked about a political bumper sticker, too, and the guys both declined to explain. They said it was opinion-based and they wanted him to make up his mind. Printed stickers were fascinating all on their own, anyway, for Ben.
I’m sure that while he was in his room resting, he was also making use of the notebook to record this new experience. He had ducked into the study and grabbed the book and pen before retiring to his room.
Now I was eager for Gerry to appear, get Ben’s photo and create a fake ID so that we could carry him outside the confines of this farm. During my own downtime, I used my smartphone to get online and refresh the information I had about Ben’s life and all he’d accomplished. I felt shocked and a little guilty to see how physically and mentally active he’d been before detouring to our century. True, he slowed down considerably in the last 2-3 years of his life, as illness overcame him, but from a very early age he’d been almost ridiculously active in public affairs. This idleness in and around the house must be really chafing, despite all the new things he had to discover. I knew that if any of us were to travel to the 18th century, Ben would be running circles around us all.
I brooded on the issue of Ben’s health. It seemed more than likely he wouldn’t be returning to his own time, ever. He was stuck here. And with his lively mind, it seemed a real shame to think that he’d be permanently gone in five years, just when he was at the dawn of some incredible discoveries. I re-read some of the information that detailed his last hours. There seemed to be a strong link between the maladies that ultimately overcame him, and his weight. The gout, for example. His death in 1790 had come from pleurisy, and I wondered if at some point he had decided that simply lying back and “resting” would help speed his recovery, when perhaps a 21st-century physician would advise him to get up, move around and cough a lot, in addition to ingesting powerful medicines. Would better preventive care have prolonged his life? At the very least, more physical activity and food choices, especially here at the end, would have given him more stamina, or so I believed.
The next time we gathered for our meal, we discussed some of these matters. I’d been gradually shifting the balance away from the heavier, cholesterol-laden favorites of Ben’s time and toward what conventional 21st-century wisdom recommended. More raw vegetables, leaner meats, and a lot more water than wine to drink. Ben had assurances from us that unlike Philadelphia, New York or even Paris in the 1700s, New Jersey in the 2030s had safe drinking water. We had a filter pitcher that stayed on the table. It had an indicator light that showed whether the filter needed changing, and it reliably flashed green every time we used it. Ben acknowledged that the water was clearer and better-tasting than nearly anything he’d ever experienced. So we encouraged him to stay hydrated, and we were careful to practice what we preached.
I thought exercise might go a long way toward this rehabilitation process. So I proposed that Ben be put in charge of tending our horses once or twice a day. He was quite agreeable. Handling horses, for someone born in 1706, was every bit as natural as riding a bicycle or driving a car was for one of us. I didn’t bother to explain my purpose in this assignment, and apparently, Ben didn’t think to question it. He believed in physical activity and more than that, he believed in “earning his keep.” More than once he’d inquired with Warren and Trevor about the household budget. He saw that none of us appeared to have daily gainful employment. We explained about Gerry and the various circumstances of our lives. He accepted this but seemed to wonder about the apparent disconnect between our physical comfort and our seeming lack of daily industry. He saw loads of food coming in the door at least weekly, and none of it except the eggs originated here. Some things couldn’t be conveniently repackaged, and so he was beginning to see plastic milk jugs and plastic wrappers. The charade was ending and the realities of our wasteful lifestyle were becoming obvious. He didn’t see price tags, but his mind was astute enough to discern that none of this was free.
The next time we were in touch with Gerry, we determined he’d be coming to visit the following Friday evening for dinner. We asked him to prepare to answer questions honestly from Ben, who by now understood that Gerry was our benefactor.
We were reasonably sure that Ben had never experienced pizza or what passed for Italian cuisine in the modern day, so we were pretty excited to sit on the information that Gerry planned to come calling with a full-course dinner from his favorite ristorante. We found pizza perfectly acceptable on any given day but having subsisted on more conventional American fare for over two weeks now, we saw it for what it should always have been: A treat. Ben had come to accept the daily rhythms of meal prep and service, and wondered why we didn’t seem to be mulling over the menu for Gerry’s visit. We explained that the evening meal would be a welcoming gift and that we hoped he’d enjoy it.
“He must have servants, then,” inquired Ben.
“Actually, no. He’ll just be, um, phoning in the order to a restaurant and picking it up on the way.”
Ben then got what I’d taken to think of as his “dictionary look.” If he’d never heard a particular word or phrase, his head would tilt to the side; he’d look off in the distance somewhere. Sometimes I could see him softly repeating the word under his breath, trying to figure out the meaning, based on the context or whatever language it appeared to come from. My mistake was in thinking he was hung up on “phoning in the order.” But he surprised me.
“Restaurant?”
I later discovered the term didn’t come into popular use at all until several decades after Ben’s death, but just figured I’d mispronounced it, and that he would know it from his time in France.
“A public house, or an inn.”
“Ah! Excellent. So they have telephones as well, do they?”
“Absolutely. Some of them even deliver. But Gerry figures it’s just easier to pick it up on the way.”
“What is the name of the...restaurant? I should like to go there one day and see what has changed since the last time I visited.”
I knew there were a very few restaurants that had been in operation, or at least restored, since Ben’s time. Most were in New England and Virginia, but I didn’t know of any in New Jersey. Gerry would be coming from East Rutherford, where he had bought an investment property and was fixing it up.
Ben could recall a few good places. “Is it the Black Horse, perhaps? The Clinton Inn? The Rocky Hill? The Cranbury?”
I waved a hand, laughing, for him to stop. “Sorry, Ben, I don’t know! I think Gerry probably knows every Italian restaurant in the state, at least the good ones. Wait till you taste the food.”
From the look on his face, I could tell he didn’t want to wait. The man, like Gerry, loved all things food-related and the thought of a new dining experience had really piqued his interest.
We kept Ben as busy as we could, but had decided to hold off on a few revelations, at least until we had Gerry’s help explaining them. Gerry seemed to know everyone and had more political connections than we did. When it came to history and the ripple effect it had brought to the present-day, we knew we’d have a job helping Ben sort through the information and try to make sense of it. Quite often, it didn’t make much sense to us, and we’d been living with the political and technical evolution for at least four decades. So we were grateful for any help Gerry might provide. Once Ben was comfortable with him, we would start moving to the missing pieces that were bound to accelerate the learning process:
Television and computer technology.
Thanks as always for reading. Comments welcome. Here's the next chapter.
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