I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

  “Ben.”

  I spit on my thumbs and index fingers, move my fingers around her nipples slow then pinch her nipples hard. The sound that comes out of Ruth could be a sound that comes out of me.

  Between her legs, Ruth’s hair is soft, not pubic hair wiry. Wet. My God, the mysteries of a cunt. The way it scares me how overwhelmingly deep and complex it is. How her cunt could swallow me up. Folds and folds. The wetter it gets the larger it becomes. Right there in the center, the ecstatic mound of flesh. I try and touch her the way I feel when she massages me. That’s what I think as I touch her clit, how Ruth can stop the pain. And I put that intention, that heart strength into my hand, and my fingers pull up slow back and forth along the sides. I rub and pinch and stroke her clit with all my heart. It is a prayer. My chin on her shoulder, my legs curled over her legs clamping them down. My hand inside her is wet up to the wrist. The smell of peat moss burning. Ruth’s arms are above us, pulling on my hair. Her back arches and arches. There’s not a sound coming out of her.

  When she comes, I mean really comes, she holds her arms up to the sky. Her long slender hands waving. I put my hand over her cunt, my fingers inside her. She pushes up against my hand and up and up. Screams so lovely, so long, the pain, the transcendence of pain. My other arm’s around her holding her to earth. She comes like a rock.

  It fucks me up the way she comes. The way she’s alive and comes and comes. I get really sad and start to cry. And Ruth sees I’m crying and she thinks it’s because I’m full of joy. But we promised to tell the truth, so I tell Ruth it isn’t joy why I am crying. I’m just jealous, man. The way she is alive, I’m fucking jealous.

  NOW THERE’S A moment. The moment, right there. Where things start to fall apart for Ruth and me. I mean not right off. It takes months and months. But for sure, that evening, Ruth waving her hands in the air screaming her delicious scream was when it all started. The worm had started to turn and face its asshole.

  What I mean to say is, after all these years of trying to figure out Hank and Ruth and me, what happened and how and why it happened, that night that I felt jealous of Ruth, her orgasm, the lifeforce she had a hold of, was the first time. Before that night, as far as I can remember, Ruth and I got along just fine. I mean I wasn’t sleeping and I was irritable and the fucking world felt like it was out to get me, but I never made it Ruth’s fault. Of course, there were little things. Her long red hair in the bathtub. Her rocks and feathers and pieces of wood all over the place. Her crazy fucking car. But I didn’t let it bother me. Ruth was always there, helping me out, and I was grateful.

  Strange how quickly gratitude can turn.

  For example, in September, I take a gig teaching a six-hour Saturday writing workshop at the Sitka Center. Lord knows I’m too fucked up to teach a class that long, but I really need the money. Ruth, of course, teaches with me, I mean how could I manage a class like that alone. And she could use the money, too. Plus we get a free hotel room in Cannon Beach to spend the night and we have the next day on the beach to relax. The prospect of the weekend makes Ruth crazy happy. Me, all I can think about is all the shit that can go wrong. Ruth drives us to the coast because I can’t drive.

  The class is eleven middle-aged women and one young man, a poet. Andy, Andy Gronik, I think. In a wood-paneled room with windows facing the Salmon River Estuary and the Pacific Ocean. Sitting in a circle of wooden chairs. The kind of chair you can pull the panel up from the side and make a writing desk.

  Pretty much you can figure on at least one asshole in a class of twelve. But this class is great. As we’re going around, introducing ourselves, each woman has a story to tell. Marriage, divorce, child-bearing. These women have been through the wars. All eleven of them, one after another, are hungry to talk. When it comes Andy’s turn, I have to ask him to speak up because we can’t hear him. All he can say is his name and how old he is, twenty-one, and that he likes poetry. I feel a kinship with him right off. Bad skin, curly hair he’s pasted down. Thick black horn-rimmed glasses. Bitten fingernails. An old leather briefcase next to his feet on the floor. Pointy black shoes. Pink socks.

  But what’s important about the class that day is what happened between Ruth and me. Three different things. Things that had never have happened before.

  The first is sometime after lunch. We’re on the fourth student, a woman named Edna. She’s written a piece about being fat and how her husband has had an affair. It’s during that discussion I notice it. Ruth is finishing my sentences. I stop and check myself to see if I’m just making this shit up, but I’m not. I start a sentence and Ruth finishes it. I mean not every time, but most of the time. Then I wonder if Ruth has always been finishing my sentences and I’d just never noticed it before. So I start speaking up so she’ll stop speaking for me. But it ain’t easy.

  By the sixth or seventh student, Ruth and I are dueling banjoes. I say something, then Ruth says more, then I say more. Then she says more. This back and forth between us just won’t stop. Unless I stop. It happens with three different women, three times in a row. Ruth has to have the last word.

  At the afternoon break, two-thirty, Ruth goes out to stand on the deck. The bright sun brings out the highlights in her hair. Usually, when I see Ruth beautiful like this, I’d put my arm around her, or touch her hand, but I’m angry and don’t understand why I’m angry, and I’m feeling like a shit because I’m angry. Just as I stand myself next to her, a gust of ocean wind blows back her hair. Ruth turns and gives me a smile. Still, I don’t touch her. Just stand, lean up against the porch railing.

  “What’s going on?” I say.

  “Doesn’t the breeze feel great?” Ruth says.

  “It feels weird today,” I say. “Between you and me.”

  “It must be the long drive,” Ruth says. “Why don’t you rest for a while. I can take over.”

  “Take over?”

  “You know, silly,” Ruth says. “Take a little rest, then you can come back feeling refreshed.”

  The thing I promised Ruth, the only thing I promised, was that I would be truthful, so I take a deep breath, try and make my mouth move to say the hardest thing. When I speak, my voice is the high-pitched Catholic boy.

  “Ruth,” I say, “why is it that I feel that you’re one-upping me?”

  “What?”

  “I feel like I’m competing with you to be heard.”

  “You mean now?”

  “Here,” I say. “Now, right in class, the last four students.”

  The flush of red up her throat and onto her chin. Ruth pushes her glasses up onto her nose, then covers her neck and chin with her hand. She looks straight ahead, out to the ocean.

  “Ben!” Ruth says. “I don’t know what to say.”

  The ocean wind on our faces, the sun, October and there’s sun, Ruth and me leaning against the cedar rail, not touching. It’s hard to keep my eyes on Ruth. They keep wanting to look away like she’s looking away but I make myself look at her.

  “It kind of makes me crazy to say it,” I say, “but I just had to.”

  Ruth doesn’t say anything for a long time. The flush has her whole face red. Pretty soon, her shoulders are shaking and her chest is going up and down. In a moment, one long tear streams out, tear duct to chin. Ruth turns, quick puts her arm around my neck, pulls me close in. Her stomach muscles tight, little bumps of sobs against my belly.

  “I’m really really sorry, Ben,” Ruth says. “I was only trying to help.”

  “I know,” I say. “Maybe I’m just being a bitch.”

  “Do you have a tissue?”

  I go back inside the classroom. How closed-in and stuffy the room feels. I grab a couple tissues from the Kleenex box in the middle of the circle, then close the sliding doors behind me. When Ruth takes the tissues from my hand, her fingers stay touching my hand for a moment.

  “You’re probably right,” Ruth says. “I think I’m just used to handling my own class.”

  The wind in my ears. The wind in Ruth
’s hair is wild. The way the wind has pitted the cedar railing. Ruth’s blowing her nose. The end of her nose is scarlet red.

  “I shouldn’t have even said anything,” I say.

  Ruth cries and then stops crying then cries again. I’m pretty sure I’m crying too. We stand for a long time, holding on tight to each other. Waves crashing on the beach sound. It takes a prayer or two, and some deep deep breaths, but after a while our regular breath comes back. I take Ruth’s face in my hands. Really look at her the way she lets me look at her now. Both of us are just so fucking relieved. Nose to runny nose, arms wrapped around arms. What I say next surprises even me.

  “Loudmouth bitch,” I say.

  Then it’s Ruth’s chance to surprise herself.

  “You men are all alike,” she says.

  Just like that we’re laughing our asses off, Ruth and me, and the world that only minutes ago looked so dark and full of trouble now is bright, cloudless as the sky and fucking free.

  “Thank you,” Ruth says.

  “For what?”

  “Keeping your promise,” she says.

  THREE O’CLOCK, ON the deck that afternoon, after Ruth and I pull ourselves back together, when we go back inside the classroom, when we’re the fourteen of us all in circle again, it’s Andy’s turn to read. Andy pulls a stack of paper from his old leather briefcase. Passes the pages around the room. It’s a poem full of shit and romance.

  When he finishes reading I could kick my ass for telling Ruth she talked too much. I look across the room at Ruth and her lips are puckered up like they’ve been glued together. She’s got a fuck-you grin on.

  It’s tough to point out to a young man how his language is flowery and overwritten. But I used to be one of those flowery boys. The way I talk to Andy is how I wish a writing teacher would’ve talked to me. Kind, but still tough. Always giving examples when I throw something new at him. Andy keeps his head down. Those black pointy shoes, his pink socks. I keep at him, keep asking him how he’s doing, trying to get him to look up. It takes a while, but Andy sits up, pulls his shoulders back, starts looking around. As if he’s surprised there’s other people in the room. Once, then once again, Andy takes the chance. Looks at me right in my eyes. That’s a good sign. But after class I go looking for Andy just to make sure.

  There’s a path down to the beach, and along the path a bench. Tall grass all around sticking up out of the sand. Andy’s sitting on the bench. His dark curly hair doesn’t move at all in the wind. The old leather briefcase is sitting next to his pointy black shoes and pink socks. He’s leaning over his notebook, writing like crazy.

  “May I sit down?” I ask.

  Andy’s eyes are dark green. Kind of startling. And his stiff curly brown hair, something rust-colored about it. When I sit down, our knees touch, just for a moment. We both pull our knees away fast.

  It’s nice sitting with him. The sun is still out and there’s still a couple hours of daylight left. I haven’t noticed before Andy’s ruby red lips, and full. Marco. Tony Escobar. I’m just talking talking, checking in with this young man. I’m happy to find out he’s still in one piece. At some point I say fuck or something inappropriate and Andy laughs and it’s great when he laughs. An all over laugh like Hank’s.

  That’s when Andy, from out of the old briefcase, pulls out both my books.

  “Mr. Grunewald,” Andy says, “would you sign these books for me?”

  “Ben,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Andy says, “Ben.”

  There they are, my two novels, in plastic covers. In Andy’s square hands, his chewed fingernails, he holds my novels as if they are the most precious things. My books handed to me by a young man who has made those books his own. Gets me in the throat, real fast. I can’t really speak, so I put my hands on the books while Andy still holds on to them. When he lets go the books seem so heavy.

  It’s while I’m signing All My Best, Ben Grunewald onto the first page of my second book is when Andy tells me.

  “Ever since the day I picked up your first book,” Andy says. Those full ruby red lips. “Since your first sentence, really,” he says. “I’ve loved you.”

  I stop writing. Look up into Andy’s dark dark green eyes. I want him to take his glasses off and then I think of Ruth and her glasses and that’s when the second thing happens. All of a sudden it is Ruth, walking up to the bench. She’s behind Andy, though, and Andy doesn’t see her and he just keeps talking.

  “I mean,” Andy says, “not in love but I love you that you can make me see and feel things, understand things I’ve never understood before.”

  Andy’s hand is on his crotch. On his hard-on.

  Even though she’s so close and getting closer, the way the wind is off the ocean, I doubt if Ruth can hear.

  Words are coming out of Andy’s ruby red lips fast but I can’t hear them either. The moment, the sunlight, the breathless voice of a young man, so intimate. Ruth walks right into that moment. Then somehow the moment is hers. Something I cherished that was mine is now hers. And there it is again. That feeling that’s so awful to feel.

  I finish signing the book and quick lay both books onto Andy’s lap.

  “Hey! Ruth!” I say too loud.

  THE NEXT MORNING, when we wake up, sun again, what a miracle. Ruth and I drive to the Otis Cafe. It’s 9:30 on a Sunday and there’s a long line and I’m freaked because if I don’t eat by ten the world goes fucked up Francis Bacon on me. I’m hanging on tight to Ruth’s hand. While we’re waiting, Ruth buys me a thick white mug that says Otis Café on it.

  We get in at 10, order by 10:10, and have our food by 10:30. Things in the world are definitely bouncing around, but soon as I start eating I’m okay.

  It’s in the middle of my spinach and mushroom omelet. Ruth’s on her second cup of coffee and she’s chattering away about how we should spend the afternoon when I get this yearning: I want to walk on the beach. Just get away for a couple hours and find some place in the shadow of a big piece of driftwood and be with the sun and the ocean and the day. Alone.

  Alone. I feel like an asshole.

  The night before, Ruth surprised me with reservations at the Haystack Rock Restaurant. So strange to walk into a beauty of a restaurant with duck on the menu and lamb chops and fresh salmon. Waiters in black pants and white shirts, black ties. Big white aprons. Took me back to my restaurant days in New York. When I was a person. It had been so long since I’d enjoyed food. Celebrated it. And wine. I ended up ordering lamb chops and a half-glass of an Haut Medoc for Chrissakes. All the while praying I wouldn’t have some shit disaster or maybe the food and the sips of wine would disturb my sleep. If what I was doing lying in bed at night you could call sleep.

  That night, when we got back to our hotel, Ruth took two dozen beeswax candles out of her backpack and lit them on little tin stands all around. It was a cathedral in the room, the firelight and the smell of the beeswax. Queen Lowlighta loved it. Ruth brought her boombox too and made a CD of all my favorite songs.

  The massage Ruth gave me that night was different from other massages. At first I thought it was the massage oil. Lavender, not geranium. But something else was different, too. She was massaging my cock and balls and she’d never really touched them that way before. I try to tell myself it’s my own trip, all just old propinquity shit, but then she was coming. Up and down my legs, my whole body, really, sticky wet with her cum.

  Breaks my heart when I think back on that night. How much Ruth wanted me. How far away I was from wanting her. But still I didn’t get it. There was a piece to the puzzle that was Ruth that was missing. I mean the pieces were all there, I just hadn’t put them together yet. Not yet.

  That night, though, with Ruth in the cathedral room of candles and the beeswax and “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” really I would have done anything, anything, to touch Ruth the way she was touching me.

  AFTER BREAKFAST, WHEN we get back to the hotel it’s almost noon. I’ve got my turkey sandwiches with gluten-free bread all
ready to eat by one o’clock. Ruth’s on the bed. She’s got the maps out for trails we can walk on, beaches to visit.

  My promise to always tell the truth.

  Fucking promises, man.

  My heart’s beating in my throat. My face feels flushed the way Ruth’s face gets.

  “Ruth,” I say.

  “We could hike down to Ecola Beach,” Ruth says.

  “I’d like to spend the afternoon alone,” I say.

  “We can swim naked if we stay to the south.”

  “Just for a couple hours,” I say. “To clear my head.”

  “There’s a public entrance to Ecola just down from the Minot House.”

  “Ruth.”

  In a moment, Ruth slams her fist down onto the map. All those neat map folds all fucked up.

  “Christ, Ben,” Ruth says. “We get one day away and you want to be alone?”

  High-pitched, my voice. That fucking Catholic boy.

  “That’s right,” I say. “You want me to lie?”

  Ruth, right then, the way she looks at me. All that hurt. Red rims under her blue eyes. Something so tired about her face. Maybe that’s the moment for her.

  “Fine,” Ruth says.

  When she walks out the door, she slams it behind her.

  No matter how hard I try, that slam stays with me all day.

  I PUT MY sardines and my rice crackers and a bottle of water in my backpack. Check myself out in the mirror in the bathroom before I go out. As if to remind myself I still am who I am. At the hotel room door, there’s a moment I stop, just as my hand is about to turn the knob. It takes me a while to admit I’m afraid to walk out the door. Alone. I tell myself there are toilets and I’ve got my protein and I’ve got a napkin and I have water and a plastic fork and there’s a public shitter that’s clean not far from the beach. Toilet paper, just in case.