“It just . . . shook me up,” Doug said. “The whole thing. Her going so far away for a haircut.”
His father twisted to study him. “You’re having problems? You and Brooke?”
“No. Not at all,” Doug insisted. “We’re fine. It just . . .” He shrugged. “She went all that way, and she never even told me she was going. And it’s . . . Melissa’s boyfriend.” Another shrug. He didn’t want to come across as desperate. He wasn’t desperate. Shaken up, that was all.
“So? Was it worth the trip? Does she look two hundred miles better?”
“I don’t know.” Doug sighed and stared down into the small-bore opening of the bottle in his hand. “She looks great,” he conceded.
His father didn’t miss his glum tone. “You like her hair better the other way? Let her know. Tell her to let her hair grow back out the way it used to be. Communication is important. Like I should be giving anyone marital advice.”
Doug managed a smile. Back when he was a teenager, when he was schtupping Lynette Baker every chance he got, he’d never asked his father for advice on his social life. Nor had he confided in his father during his college years, when he’d squeezed a semi-decent social life into his pre-med schedule. Certainly not in medical school, when he’d had a bizarre relationship with Jennifer Zelnik, a fellow med school student who disliked him as much as he disliked her but, Christ, they were good in bed together, so they’d fucked and fought throughout the four-year slog and then gone their separate ways. Not once, in all those years, with all those women, had Doug turned to his father for guidance on how to survive a relationship. The last time he’d discussed women with his father, as he recalled, was shortly after his bar mitzvah, when his father had bought him a package of condoms and said, “God forbid you should use these. They expire in three years—see the expiration date?—and I expect you to throw them out because you’re too young to need them. But better you have them and don’t need them than you need them and don’t have them.”
Doug admitted that that was pretty wise counsel, actually. “The fact is,” he said, “Brooke’s new hair looks really good.”
“Well, of course,” his father said. “She’s so pretty, that wife of yours. Not that pretty is everything. There was a popular song when I was in college, about how if you want to be happy you should marry an ugly woman. Calypso. That was very big then, Calypso music.”
“I know that song,” Doug muttered. It was one of those catchy, bouncy tunes that, once lodged in your mind, plagued you like tinnitus. “Mom was pretty and you married her.”
“And look at me now. Ironing my own shirts.”
“Making a coffee date with a dermatologist. Who’s also pretty, according to Gert.”
“I shouldn’t have called her. I should have asked Gert to introduce me to some ugly women.” His father laughed. “So, this is why you came here? To tell me about Brooke’s new haircut?”
When his father put it that way, it sounded remarkably stupid. “I just wanted to see how you were doing,” he said. “Maybe I had a premonition about your struggles with the iron.”
“It was good timing, your coming here. You want something to eat? I picked up some cold cuts and torpedo rolls. Sliced turkey, low-salt. And some lettuce and tomatoes, and a couple of pickles. I’m eating terribly since your mother left.”
The cold cuts didn’t sound as terrible as anything from Colonel Ping. Doug would have eaten take-out from Lotus Garden. But Colonel Ping, and Brooke’s hair, and the girls spending all afternoon at a friend’s house because their mother’s tresses were being ministered to by Melissa’s boyfriend . . .
“Nah. I’m not that hungry,” he said, which was true. He was actually kind of queasy. “Anyway, Brooke’s got food waiting for me at home.”
“Then go home, eat her food and count your blessings. I don’t care what the song says—if you’ve got a pretty woman who cooks you dinner, count your blessings.”
Doug didn’t bother to mention that Brooke hadn’t cooked his dinner, that in fact she was an unenthusiastic, uninspired cook. Truth was imbedded in his father’s statement—he had Brooke, and he ought to count his blessings.
Really, everything was perfect between them, hairstyle notwithstanding. It was as perfect as it had ever been, wasn’t it? It would be even more perfect if he could get his parents back together so they could baby-sit for the girls in February. Brooke would be so grateful if he accomplished that. He’d be her hero—more heroic in her eyes than he already was.
“Do me a favor, Dad,” he said as he drained his beer bottle and stood. “Don’t fall in love with the dermatologist. Work things out with Mom.”
“We’ll see,” his father said, sounding both cryptic and weary. He rose, too, and ambled with Doug to the kitchen to drop off their empty bottles. From there he accompanied Doug to the door. “Do me a favor, Doug. If you hear anything about your mother having coffee with some other man, let me know, okay?”
“Sure.” As if his mother would share such news with him. With Jill, perhaps. Doug ought to give her a call.
“And let me know if she changes her hair, too,” his father added. “I like it the way it’s always been. I don’t want her to change it.”
Doug thought about handing his father’s advice back to him, telling the old man he ought to communicate with his wife. But they’d been communicating when they’d decided to separate, hadn’t they?
Jealousy might bring them together again a hell of a lot faster than communication.
Chapter Fifteen
The morning air was gray and clammy as Ruth waited for the traffic light to change so she could cross the street. Francine had yet again asked her to do the pre-opening set up. All this meant was setting her alarm clock a half-hour earlier than usual. Not a big deal; she lived just across the street, so getting to the store earlier was easy. And Francine was so prickly—Ruth still wasn’t sure Francine believed that she’d started work the day she was supposed to—that Ruth didn’t like to say no to her.
She turned up the collar of her jacket and shoved her hands into the pockets. The cars speeding down the street left cold, swirling gusts in their wakes, and she turned her face away from the wind as she waited for the light to change. When it did, she hesitated before stepping into the crosswalk, just in case some jerk chose to run the red light. The street was too busy, especially at rush hour.
But Ruth felt a kinship with the drivers. They were all commuters traveling to work, after all. I’m a commuter, she thought. The novelty hadn’t worn off yet.
The first time Francine had asked her to do the pre-opening set-up, she’d been excited. Making sure the shelves were neat and well stocked, the cash registers humming, all the lights turned on and functioning had seemed like a huge responsibility. Now, her fourth time, the task was routine. Open the staff room, hit the light switches, ascertain that the public trash cans had been emptied overnight, position the portable displays correctly, make sure the end-caps were neat, and generally spruce up the store before Francine arrived and unlocked the front door for customers. Arriving early meant Ruth had to enter through the rear of the building, where either Frank or Carlo would already be hard at work, supervising deliveries. God knew when they had to arrive to do this, but whichever one handled the morning deliveries got to leave by three in the afternoon, so Ruth didn’t feel sorry for them.
An impatient driver revved his engine as she crossed in front of it. It was like an automotive leer, the car lurching aggressively into the crosswalk, stopping just inches from her leg. She turned and glared. Part of being a member of the family of commuters meant being allowed to glare at jerks. Even flip them the bird, if Ruth felt particularly daring.
After arriving safely on the strip-mall side of the street, she walked around the parking lot to the rear of the building. An eighteen-wheeler, its sides adorned with the fluffy-teddy-bear logo of a toilet paper company, was being unloaded by a driver as Carlo watched. Ruth waved, then turned toward the back door
and noticed the young man leaning against the cement wall. She immediately recognized his lanky build, the woolly hair tumbling around his face, the red apron extending below the edge of his battered leather jacket and the glint of silver at the outer corner of his left eyebrow.
He was smoking.
“Idiot,” she muttered, stalking across the asphalt to confront him. “Wade Smith, what the hell are you doing?”
He gave her a crooked smile, then eyed the cigarette in his hand. “Smoking?”
“Do you know how unhealthy that is?”
“Hey, come on,” he said amiably. “Don’t give me a hard time.”
“You think this is a hard time? You should hear my husband.” She never talked about Richard with her coworkers, but this morning the statement slid out easily, without thought. He was still her husband. She could still use his expertise to make a point. “My husband is a cardiologist. He treats people who smoke cigarettes. Their arteries are a mess. Their hearts, their lungs, their throats, their gums and teeth, they get strokes, they get cancer, they get phlebitis—”
“Okay, okay.” Wade’s smile hadn’t been big to begin with, and now it was gone. He turned away and took a defiant drag on his cigarette.
Ruth wasn’t that easily silenced. “It’s a terrible habit.”
“It’s not a habit. This is the first smoke I’ve had in six months.”
“Second,” Carlo noted with a smirk. Apparently he’d been eavesdropping from his post near the truck. “First one was five minutes ago.”
Ruth clicked her tongue in disgust. She’d gotten used to Wade’s hair and his facial jewelry. She’d grown fond of his low-key personality, his patience, his surprisingly unsarcastic humor. She was not going to stand by while he sucked poison into his body. “Put that thing out, Wade. Let’s go inside and get you some nicotine gum. Or one of those patches. With our employee discount, it won’t be that expensive.”
“A lot cheaper than cigarettes,” Carlo added.
Ruth sent him a grateful look.
“Get off my back, all right?” Wade snapped, more at Carlo than at Ruth. He turned to her, obviously seething with resentment. “You’re not my mother.”
Ruth had raised three children. A little backtalk didn’t faze her. “You’re practically done with it, anyway,” she said, gesturing toward the shrunken cigarette. “Put it out and come inside.”
She might not be his mother, but he obeyed anyway, lifting his foot and snubbing the cigarette out on the thick black sole of his shoe. Scowling, he accompanied her into the building. She noticed that he deposited the butt in a trash can en route to the staff room. Defiance and backtalk notwithstanding, Wade didn’t litter, at least not in front of her.
Neither of them spoke while she turned on the staff room lights, set up the coffee maker and pressed the brew button. Not until the room was filled with the rousing scent of coffee—strong enough to overtake the cigarette smell that clung to Wade’s hair—and she’d filled two cups did she confront him. “You quit six months ago? Only an idiot would start smoking again after quitting for six months.”
“So I’m an idiot,” Wade shot back before taking a swig of coffee. “Shit,” he said appreciatively. “Your coffee tastes so much better than what we used to have here.”
“That’s because I’m not an idiot,” Ruth explained—a non-sequitur, but she didn’t care. “Now tell me what’s going on with you. And don’t use the s-word.”
Wade sighed. “Nothing.”
She glared at him.
“Okay,” he relented. “My girlfriend and I had a fight last night, that’s all.”
Wade had mentioned his girlfriend once or twice before. Ruth recalled that she had an old-fashioned name—Bertha or Ernestine or something. “What did you fight about?” she asked.
“The fact that she was breaking up with me.”
“Ah.” Her stern-mother attitude melted slightly. Poor Wade, suffering from a broken heart. Not a valid excuse to resume smoking after half a year, but a little sympathy might be in order. “You’re better off without her,” she said.
Wade opened his mouth, then shut it, then gave her a dubious look. “How do you know that?”
“I know these things. I know how to make a good pot of coffee and I know smoking will kill you. I’m a smart lady.”
“If you’re so smart, what are you doing working here? You’re married to a doctor. You don’t need the money.”
“We’re not . . .” It was Ruth’s turn to sigh, hesitate, then grin. “Let’s just say he and I had a fight.”
“He broke up with you?”
“I broke up with him. But that’s neither here nor there,” she said, busying herself at her locker, removing her employee ID card from her purse and letting the building’s warmth seep into her. She scanned the card into the time clock, because even though she was married to a doctor, she did need the money.
It wasn’t as if she was broke. She’d always been frugal, and she could manage on what she earned. But the thing she’d so looked forward to—supporting herself, paying her way, not depending on Richard and feeling obligated to him—required extra attention and diligence. She was a working woman now. Self-supporting. Self-sufficient.
“You broke up with your husband? No shit? Sorry,” Wade mumbled as the s-word slipped out. “Why?”
Ruth’s automatic reply was that the subject was none of his business. She didn’t say that, though. Here she was, making his smoking and his girlfriend—or ex-girlfriend, as the case might be—her business. She owed him a little reciprocity. “It’s hard to explain,” she said, then sipped some coffee. He was right, her coffee was tastier than anyone else’s. Maybe that was why she didn’t mind doing the pre-opening set-up. Whoever came in early wound up making the first pot of coffee in the staff room, and better she did that than anyone else. Especially Bernie, whose coffee put Ruth in mind of raw sewage. “Really, it was nothing in particular.”
“You left your husband over nothing in particular?”
“I left him because it was time for a change.”
“That’s what Hilda said,” Wade muttered. “It was time for a change. What kind of crap is that? Hey—” he held his hands up defensively, before she could criticize “—I said crap, not shit.”
Hilda. That was the girlfriend’s name. “Maybe Hilda’s right,” Ruth suggested. “Maybe it is time for a change.”
Wade shook his head. “We change all the time. She’s tired of Mojo’s, we go to The Hut. Those are clubs where we hang out,” he clarified. “She’s tired of pizza, we eat sushi. She’s tired of beer, we drink bourbon.”
“Could it be . . .” Ruth struggled for a gentle phrasing, then gave up. “She’s tired of you?”
Wade appeared more shocked than insulted. “How could she be? I love her.”
“Did you try making up with her?”
“I don’t know what I’m making up for. She wants a change. That makes as much sense as nothing in particular.” He slumped into a chair and gazed up at Ruth, his eyes pleading. “You think I should send her flowers?”
“Flowers are a cliché,” Ruth pointed out. “If she wants a change, maybe you should send her something different. Something she would really like.”
“Weed?”
“Why would you send her weeds? Oh, you mean pot?” She pursed her lips. “That’s illegal.”
Wade snorted.
Ruth sat across the table from him, ignoring the tasks that awaited her out in the store. Right now, Wade was more important than turning on the lights and straightening out the end-caps. “When a woman says she wants a change, it means she’s not happy with things the way they are. Men—and I’m not saying you specifically, but in general—it doesn’t take much for a man to be content. He likes his recliner, and as long as he can sit in his recliner he’s happy. He likes his TV, he likes his car, he likes pot roast—that’s pot roast, not pot—and if he has those things, he can’t see what the problem is. Whereas women—and again, I’
m speaking in generalities—spend the majority of their lives making sure men have all those things that make them happy. And no one does that for women. No one makes sure they always get to sit in their favorite chair and eat their favorite dinner. Unless the women make that dinner themselves, of course. What’s Hilda’s favorite dinner?”
Wade frowned. “I don’t know. She was on that sushi kick for a while, but she’s over it now.”
“You don’t even know what her favorite dinner is. I bet she knows what your favorite dinner is. I bet she prepares it for you all the time.”
“It’s Big Mac’s,” he said. “She doesn’t have to prepare anything.”
“I bet she agrees to go to McDonald’s with you all the time.”
Wade considered, then smiled sheepishly and nodded. “So that’s what your husband did? Made you eat at McDonald’s all the time?”
“My husband is a cardiologist,” she reminded him. “He would never eat at McDonald’s.” Though, God knew, maybe he was eating at McDonald’s now. She couldn’t picture him coming home after a long day with his patients and colleagues and whipping up a healthy vegetarian stir-fry for himself. Or even a steak. In all the years they’d been married, his grand contribution to meals had amounted to shaking the bottle of salad dressing or filling a pitcher with milk. And carving the turkey at Thanksgiving. He claimed that as the family’s expert in anatomy, he ought to be the one wielding the carving knife.
So what was he eating now that she wasn’t there to fix him his meals? Cold cereal in the morning, she’d bet. Eggs, toasted bagels, pancakes or even oatmeal would be beyond him, but pouring Cheerios into a bowl he could manage. For dinner, sandwiches, probably. Maybe a salad. He had such talent when it came to shaking a bottle of salad dressing.
“What would he have to do for you to make up with him?” Wade asked.
“Don’t compare your situation to mine,” she said. “My husband and I have a long history. We were too close for too long, rubbing up against each other.”
Goodbye To All That Page 18
