I Loved You More

by Tom Spanbauer

  Hank always did love his women, gold and silver on their arms.

  Gorgeous. Ruth is fucking gorgeous. But there’s something, I don’t know, something so done about her. A way a lot of women were beginning to look those days. Polished, finished. Sleek. Ready to get down to business.

  The waiter comes to the table, stocky, clean-shaven, blonde. He’s shiny, too, like Ruth. Straight white teeth, gay. He doesn’t look at me. He’s staring at Ruth’s hair. He says good afternoon, puts the water glasses down, gives us each a menu, walks off.

  Ruth pays no attention to him. Since she’s sat down, her too-blue eyes, that new thing about her eyes, that gaze right into me.

  “Happy Birthday,” I say.

  What Ruth says next, how she says it, is a challenge. Right off, a fuck you Ben Grunewald.

  “I just read my horoscope,” Ruth says. “According to what it says about being born on this day, a year from now you won’t even recognize me.”

  It takes my breath away, really, her power. I’m beautiful and young and healthy and you aren’t. Daddy loves me more than you.

  I almost throw my glass of water in her face. But I take a breath. Really, if we could just get to the bottom of all this. If we could start talking about what was really going on, maybe there would be a chance.

  I take the chance. The only way I know how. I start talking about my feelings. After I broke it off with Ruth, all those hundreds of hours I sat and listened to her, how she was hurt, how she wasn’t good enough, what could she do to change so that I would love her. I figured now it was my turn to talk, Ruth’s turn to listen.

  The Catholic boy with a big apology, my voice is high at first, but then I settle in. I’m just at the part where I’m telling Ruth how left out I feel, just about to mention the last time Hank was in Portland, the whole week he was here and how I didn’t even know about it, when Ruth, the slender arm with the expandable gold bracelet with dangly gold charms, waves her hand and that arm and the dangly gold in between us, eye level. It’s a gesture the way a mother shuts up her child or the principal when she catches you daydreaming, or when your sister lorded it over you that she was the only thing that stood between you and your crazy mother and your fucked up father.

  It’s right then I realize Ruth and I are sitting only one table away from where we sat the night in that very same restaurant, how long ago was it now, that Buster Bangs came in high and kissed me. And I’d left with him, leaving Ruth alone in front of everybody.

  “For Chrissakes, Ben,” Ruth says, “let’s be sensible.”

  And with that, all those hundreds of hours of Ruth talking my ear off, the payback I think I deserve, all goes down the drain. This time, I’m the fool. And I fucking hate it. I look for the flush of scarlet up her neck, but there is no flush of scarlet. When I throw my menu down, I knock my water glass over. I don’t stop to see the damage I’ve done.

  As Big Ben walks out the door, he’s got only one thing to say to Ruth. Well, two.

  “Fuck you, Ruth.”

  “And your fucking hair.”

  HANK FLIES INTO town that night. After the lovely birthday lunch with Ruth, I don’t expect to see him. But that night I get a call. It’s from Ruth. But I don’t want to talk to Ruth and I ask for Hank and Ruth tells me Hank’s too angry to talk. I tell Ruth to tell Hank I’m tired of talking to him through his beautiful corporate assistant and if he don’t want to talk to me personally then he ain’t going to talk to me at all. Hank tells Ruth that I should get my fucking ass over there to Ruth’s fucking house. I tell Ruth to tell Hank to get fucked and he’s got to haul his sorry fucking ass over to my house if he wants to talk so bad.

  Four days later we meet at the restaurant three blocks down from me. The restaurant where in three months Hank and Ruth will get married and I won’t be invited to the wedding. You know, that fucking restaurant. I know. I know. Don’t ask me why I kept going back to that damn place.

  Look at us, the three of us, two of us with dark sunglasses on, sitting in a triangle around a square table covered in white butcher paper. Hank’s got a Florida tan and Ruth and I are frog-belly white. It’s early and we’re the only people in the restaurant. This time it’s the same exact spot in the restaurant where Billy Bangs kissed me, where Hank and Ruth and me sit.

  Somehow or another, it’s got into Hank’s head that Ruth and I are still in love and we’re having an affair behind his back and we’re hiding the truth from him. How the hell he came to that is beyond me, so I ask him.

  “How did you come to that fucking conclusion?”

  As soon as those words are out of my mouth, I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever talked to Hank that way. Challenging him. With anger in my voice.

  He’s talked to me that way. That day in Pennsylvania with the flowers and the cop when I stepped between him and Olga. And that night after the Spike when Hank threw up in the street. All of a sudden, that night how Hank turned into a smoldering piece of rage I didn’t know how the fuck to deal with. Wasn’t until I figured out he was scaring me like my father scared me, that I kept on talking to him. And after that night he disappeared for months.

  The three of us, a triangle at a square table, butcher paper. Hank and Ruth and me, four days after Ruth’s birthday, Hank tanned, Ruth and me frog bellies, sitting right there in that fucking place, the restaurant, that fucking restaurant.

  As soon as those words come out of my mouth, Hank’s face. Like he can erase any feeling from it, his eyes go cold and far away and all of a sudden he’s a big slab of marble staring you down. Zeus is pissed and something big is going to blow. God the Father’s going to kick some ass. The Pennsylvania working class straight guy, the brother who hunts down his sister and beats up her boyfriend and hauls his sis back to mom. All that macho Italian Maroni shit. A nuclear blast coming off Hank and he’s not moving a muscle.

  There’s no breath. All those big mean men I’ve been afraid of and now Hank’s one of them. All I want to do is run.

  Frank’s First Call Boiler and Repair. My white Key West shrimper boots. There was no going back. Nobody is ever going to scare me like that again.

  My voice is clear and clean and smooth.

  “Hank,” I say, “Hank, look at me.”

  But Hank won’t do it. He’s afraid, too, of the Raging Bull going on in him.

  “I’m the guy who’s in your heart, remember?” I say. “Gruney. And I’d never lie to you. And Ruth won’t either.”

  Hank slams his fist down hard on the table. Ruth jumps out of her skin. I jump too, but fuck it.

  “Then why are you guys fighting with each other the way you are?” Hank says. “Only people still in love fight with each other like that.”

  The chef, a heavyset guy with pit stains, pushes open the swinging door of the kitchen.

  I look over at Ruth. Ruth looks back at me. Believe me, between us there ain’t no hidden love nowhere. And, if I may speak, once, for both Ruth and me, if we could have comprehended all the levels and nuances of shit that was going on between us, we both would’ve stepped forward and spoke the truth out loud to Hank, to the whole fucking world to hear. But we didn’t know. You know that Jeske thing. We knew but we just couldn’t bear that we were capable of such darkness.

  “I’m not in love with Ruth,” I say.

  “I’m not in love with Ben,” Ruth says.

  “Then what the fuck is going on with you two?” Hank says.

  Hank’s good eye is bloodshot, weary, full of fury. His glass eye rolls out a bit, staring out at nothing.

  Ruth lifts her chin, turns her head, her mass of straight copper hair swings to behind her shoulder. She reaches over, puts her hand on Hank’s arm, rubs his arm.

  “We both love you,” Ruth says.

  When I say it, there’s got to be a touch, but it’s definitely got to be a guy touch. Hank’s pissed and I have to be careful. I make my hand into a fist, not hard, just close my fingers in, pull my thumb around. I take my not-hard clenched
fist and pop Hank one, a blow of love, right in the middle of his chest.

  “Porca Miseria,” I say.

  A COUPLE DAYS later, ten o’clock at night, my phone rings. It’s Hank and he wants me to come pick up him up.

  “Maupassant,” Hank says. “The cat hair is driving me nuts. Can I spend the night with you?”

  I fill my pocket with Xanax, get in my Volkswagen, drive one more time across town. When I get to Ruth’s house, Hank is sitting on the front steps. The sky is clear and it’s a warm night for June. Hank’s wearing a white T-shirt and cutoffs, white socks and white tennis shoes. New shiny white tennis shoes that glow in the dark. Pretty much the same thing he wore that first night in Manhattan when we started arguing at Night Birds about who should walk through the door first.

  As ever, my Volkswagen is making a lot of racket. When I turn the corner, the horn honks but Hank just sits there on the cement steps holding his head in his hands. The headlight shine on the top of his head. Hank’s thinning hair. Purple.

  I shut the car off, pull up the emergency brake, and get out of the car. The horn’s still honking, then I kick the fender.

  That’s when I hear it, inside the house. Dishes breaking, big thuds, crashes, all sorts of hell breaking loose.

  Hank looks up his black eyes at me. In the night his right eye is a dark star.

  “Hey, Gruney,” Hank says.

  Inside the house it sounds like the roof ’s caving in.

  “What’s going on?” I say.

  Hank, that half-smile of his. Part bewildered, part amused. The expression on his face the same as the photo on the back of his book.

  “It’s Ruth,” Hank says. “As soon as I called you, she started going apeshit.”

  “She all right?”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Hank says. “That fucking cat, man.”

  Just then the lamp on Ruth’s nightstand goes sailing through her bedroom window. Loud breaking glass. The lamp and the lampshade land on the ground and roll out into the front yard.

  “What the fuck, Gruney!” Hank says. “I couldn’t breathe.”

  As soon as we get to my house, Hank says he ain’t feeling so good. That’s Hank’s way of telling me he doesn’t want to talk. So I make up the couch for him and as soon as Hank hits that couch he’s asleep.

  In my bedroom, I lie on my bed listening to Hank Christian snore. Ruth’s broken bedroom window and her broken lamp, and the lamp shade, man. Rolling out into the front yard like that. I start laughing and can’t stop. Really really laughing. That kind of laughing where you look down at your belly because it’s jumping around without you doing anything. I have to put the pillow over my face to keep from waking up Hank.

  Ruth Dearden.

  You’ve come a long way, baby.

  That next morning at breakfast, Hank and I are sitting at the kitchen table. The batch of eggs I’ve scrambled up are sitting in a bowl next to Hank. Hank’s on his second cup of coffee when he starts to talk.

  “I guess I’ll just never figure women out,” Hank says.

  My special bread toast pops up out of the toaster. One for Hank, one for me. I start buttering.

  “I mean it’s just for one night,” Hank says. “Why she have to go get all bent out of shape?”

  I ain’t saying nothing. I stack Hank’s piece of bread on top of my piece of bread, slice them on the diagonal.

  “Seriously, Gruney,” Hank says, “I’m asking. Why do women act that way?”

  Straight men are from Mars, man.

  I look into Hank’s black eyes. Even with his one good eye, Hank can’t see worth shit.

  “Pass the eggs,” I say.

  PASS THE EGGS. The message I saved on my voicemail for years and years.

  That message only existed because of a letter I wrote to Hank. When Hank was back in Florida. Not the Got to go pal letter. A long, long letter I wrote before the Got to go pal letter, explaining to Hank something he’d asked me once. About the thing Ruth and I’d had.

  In that letter, I told Hank the whole long story, every sordid detail of Ruth and me, from that first night she was dancing alone in the moonlight ’til Buster Bangs kissed me in the restaurant and I walked out on her. Didn’t leave a thing out. Nothing. Even the way we did, or didn’t, have sex.

  It was a last-ditch attempt. To make sure Hank didn’t have just one version of Ruth and me.

  For years, so many times, when I picked up my phone, and the automated voice of the woman on the line would tell me I had too many saved messages, I’d have to go through each saved message and listen to it and then decide if I was going to keep holding on or just let go. I mean how else do you remember your life? Every time I’d come to Hank’s message, I got to listen to Hank, beloved Hank Christian, once again, even after he was dead, his voice on that day right after he’d got my long letter. Funny and a little weirded out by all the detail. Still full of love.

  “I don’t know,” Hank’s voice says. “I sure don’t have the answer.”

  Then it’s Hank’s laugh, the way it rises up in him, shakes him all around.

  “As a wise man once told me,” Hank’s voice says, “when I asked him how to figure out women. This is what he told me: pass the eggs.”

  Hank Christian. That laugh of his, man. I’ll never forget it.

  AND NOW ONE more last event in the long tragic story, the maze of three, of Hank and Ruth and me.

  An afternoon, early October. For some damn reason or another, Hank and Ruth are supposed to be at my house at one o’clock. I think it was a Sunday and the three of us were going to go to the movies. I’m pretty sure it was the movies. I didn’t go many other places besides the movies, and toward the end there, Hank and Ruth and I, we never did things together, except once in a while go to the movies. Hank and I love movies.

  Wherever the hell we’re going, they’re late. Hank and Ruth that morning had gone on a hike and with Ruth, even with her new hair and her new her, on a hike you just never could tell. She’d get lost in the beauty of a fucking flower or the wind on her face or whatever and they’d be gone all day.

  Two hours late. Nothing pisses me off more than having to wait. Especially for those two. And that summer, by the end of July, toward the end there, the tension, man. You never could tell, any little thing could set any one of us off. Usually me.

  At three o’clock, I get in my Volkswagen and figure what the fuck I’ll just drive for a while until the cops pick me up. Just as I pull out onto Southeast 30th, in my rearview I see Ruth’s silver Honda Civic pull up to my back door on Morrison Street. I pull over, shut my car off. Watch in my rearview as Hank runs to the back door of my house and knocks. And knocks and knocks. Even as far away as I am, looking through a mirror, I can tell. Hank’s upset.

  Hank walks back to the car, gets in. Ruth drives off. I follow them. At 39th Avenue, rain starts pouring down in buckets. My fucking windshield wipers. But nothing’s going to stop me. As loud as my car is, they have no clue I’m behind them. Maybe it’s the hellacious downpour of rain. When Ruth parks in front of her house, both Hank and Ruth stay in the car. I park right behind them. I can see Ruth lean over and embrace Hank. Later on, I’ll find out Hank’s crying because he thinks for sure this time, he’s lost my friendship.

  A flat tire. Up on Powell Butte, Ruth had a flat tire and even though a year from now I’ll supposedly never be able to recognize her, today she’s still fucking Ruth. No spare.

  I open the door to the Honda Civic on Ruth’s side. Ruth quick turns around and Hank looks over. I squat down square, framed in the doorway, so the both of them can see all of me. Two sets of dark glasses stare back at me. They’re both in the same outfit. Wilderness Backpackers. I pull my shoulders back, my arms down, make my hands, fists. I’m already soaked to the skin.

  “Who wants to go the first round,” I say, “the fucking Amazon or the fucking Maroni.”

  Porca Miseria. We’re all screaming and yelling, cussing, slamming doors, running around fro
m car to car. Fucking rain, man, is pouring down on us. We all end up on Ruth’s front yard. Squishy grass. Hank pulls his shirt off and so I do too and we square off, dukes up. Ruth’s running around Hank and me, pounding on us, yelling at us to stop. Her long copper hair is frizzing up and her dark glasses are hanging off one ear. She’s yelling, but we’re all yelling, and with my ringing ears I can’t hear a fucking thing.

  That moment squared off, the macho moment that has always freaked me out. Now this time I’m squaring off, it’s with Hank. It’s fight or flight, and I’ve promised myself I’d never again flight.

  Such a long sad moment standing with my fists up in the rain. I don’t know what to do. My head’s telling me to stop, but something about Hank’s dark glasses, his Beat Generation cool dark glasses, and that he’s wearing them, even in a fistfight in the fucking rain, pisses me off.

  Hank and I are circling circling. Finally, I can’t stand it no more. I throw a punch, but just as I’m throwing the punch, I think of Hank’s eye, so mid-swing I change my mind and aim low. Hank jumps back and I go sailing and land on my back on the wet grass under a shrub.

  The grass is so wet it’s mud. Can’t keep my eyes open for the rain. I jump up fast and run at Hank. Hit him hard.

  Hank and I, we’re front to front.

  New red potatoes in a shovelful of earth. Hank’s cool dude fucking glasses go flying. We’re stumbling around, slipping in the wet grass, we’re smacking each other on the back. We fall together, a thud of air out of the both of us, then Hank and I are rolling around in the mud. I call him a fat fuck. He calls me a crazy asshole. Ruth is yelling stupid fucking men.

  Hank and I have rolled out to the corner of the lawn, just at the cement embankment. If one of us falls over, we’ll fall almost six feet. About that time, suddenly Ruth’s right there, and while she’s trying to pull us apart, her big hiking boot steps on my right hand. Grinds my fingers into the concrete. I’m yelling so loud Hank gets up.

  Ruth kneels down over me, her knees in the mud. One of the dark lenses is busted out of her glasses. That one too-blue eye. Hank’s looking over her shoulder. Ruth’s frizzy hair, Hank’s thin purple hairs sticking up. A bad hair day for the both of them. Don’t ask me what I looked like. Then I don’t know how it happens, but as Ruth is helping me up, she elbows Hank in the mouth. Instant blood mixed with rain flowing down Hank’s chin. Fuck. The Keystone Cops, man. We all end up on Ruth’s front yard in a heap. Hank on one side of me, Ruth on the other. On top. Me on the bottom.