“No. Don’t be. Passion is physical. Romance is all the trappings, which you can whip up without real passion. You know, Clark was very romantic when we were first together, a million years ago. But when I look back on it, I don’t think that we ever felt passionate about each other.”
“But you married him.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice, dear. You know that.”
“You could have gotten an abortion.”
Dorothy blinks, an almost bewildered look on her face. “You can’t imagine how frightening an idea that was.”
“Right,” Ruby says. “The coat-hanger days. But if you really wanted to—we learned all about these women’s collectives in the sixties that were doing almost like an Underground Railroad for pregnant women.”
“Just because you learned it in school,” Dorothy says, and then swallows hard. Something passes over her face. Dorothy rubs her hands on her thighs and then stands. Ruby senses that the limit has been reached. Of course. There’s always a limit.
Dorothy says, “I’d like to get on the road before it’s too late. Perhaps we can continue this conversation in the car?’
“I’m not coming with you.”
“Why not?” Dorothy blurts.
“I told you, I gave him this number. I need to wait for this phone call now.”
“If that’s what you want,” she says, her voice cool—the same old Dorothy again.
“I can get back to the city by bus.”
As they hug good-bye—wrapping stiff arms around each other, their cheeks brushing—the familiar smell of her mother’s powdery-spicy perfume is suddenly everywhere, and Ruby almost changes her mind. It would be easy to get in the car and go back to Manhattan and sleep in her real bedroom tonight. It would be nice to imagine that the drive home would allow them to keep talking things through, and that this would be a watershed moment. They’d end the night huddled over the New York Times crossword puzzle, something that had once been part of their Sunday ritual. They’d eat the food Dorothy had cooked, and even sip a little wine, something Dorothy only does in moderation now. It would feel like a special occasion, and tomorrow she’d wake up refreshed, ready to start her life over again, free of Calvin, and move ahead with Chris.
But Dorothy’s embrace is brief, and the awkwardness magnifies as they pull apart with nothing more to say.
The door shuts behind Dorothy and Ruby is left staring at its blank back side—wood painted white, gone dingy, full of tiny pushpin holes and scraps of Scotch tape, remnants from the teen-magazine posters that used to hang there. She’s newly aware of the bloated feeling in her gut, the way her abdominal muscles ache, and above all her desire to sleep.
Lying in bed, she runs through everything she just told her mother and sees the conversation for what it is—a surprising level of honesty wrapped in a lot of avoidance. Selective details. A lack of trust in her mother’s ability to respond. Dorothy isn’t going to warm up to Chris, assuming she ever meets him, which is something Ruby would actually like to put off for as long as possible. And Chris might be in danger, and she couldn’t tell her mother about it. So what does that say about fantasies of being close?
She hears Dorothy across the hall, saying good-bye to Robin, their voices muffled and conspiratorial, intimate in tone. There’s a bit of light laughter between them. That’s just the way it is. It’s always seemed unfair that Robin has always been, will always be, the favorite. Now it strikes Ruby as a relief. A kind of freedom. She can do what she wants, and if her mother doesn’t like it, well, too bad, because her influence can only go so far. If there’s anything that’s been made perfectly clear this weekend, it is this: no one is ready for her to grow up, to be a woman, and make her own choices. No one except Ruby herself. She is done waiting for their permission.
After a while she knocks on Robin’s door. He calls her in, and there, amid all that loud wallpaper, he lies on his bed. He’s flipping through a notebook—one of those speckled composition books, black-and-white, like something from middle school—but as she comes into the room, he closes it quickly and turns it facedown. She says, “I’m not going back to the city with Dorothy.”
“So I heard.”
“Was she pissed?”
“You know Mom. She takes everything personally.”
She points to his notebook. “What’s that?”
“An old diary. From high school. I used to get myself quite worked up.”
“Used to?”
He smiles. He really does have a great smile—she thinks for the millionth time how Robin’s life has gone the way it has because people have wanted to get closer to that face of his. If she didn’t love him, she would probably hate him.
He says, “There are things in here I sort of forgot about.”
“I never keep a diary. What if someone else reads it?”
“Apparently, I’m an exhibitionist.” He thrusts out an arm theatrically. “When I die a famous actor, you can sell these to the tabloids. I promise to leave a beautiful corpse.”
He means it as a joke, but hearing his words is like being forced to swallow more alcohol. Her stomach flips. There’s just too much talk about death this weekend. It’s gotten under her skin. Maybe there’s no avoiding it, given what day it is. But with Chris still missing she feels the sourness of the very thought—she feels a sudden resolve.
“OK,” she begins. “I guess I’m on some kind of honesty kick tonight, so—it was nice of you to come and find me, because you thought something bad had happened. I do get that.”
“But?”
“But I’m worried that you ruined my chance to be with Chris. You came too soon.”
“I’m suspicious of him, Ruby. When I met him, he was kind of in a state.”
“He’s just emotional.”
Robin nods reluctantly. Emotional he seems to understand.
“I like him. A lot. I care about him. With Calvin—I always thought Calvin was cool and unique, but I never felt, you know, passion.” She can’t stop the word from coming out. Score one for Dorothy. “You understand.”
“I guess.”
“I want a real lover.”
“Only one? Having just one is so passé—”
“Be serious, you queen.”
This makes him smile again, and then he sits up, adjusting his posture, and announces, still smiling, though it now seems a little forced, that Peter broke off their relationship. And there’s more to it than that, he starts to explain—which is when Ruby flashes to the car ride up the Parkway, and then to the cemetery, and she knows what he’s going to tell her. “Does this have to do with George?”
“Yes.” He grabs the notebook and reads, “Too bad George isn’t my boyfriend. That’s from high school, before I even knew he was gay.” He begins to tell her about his weekend. She listens with a kind of amazement about a near fistfight in an alley, about hiding from the cops, about the two of them going back to their apartment and having sex for the first time. It’s not the details that surprise her—nothing that happens to her brother really comes as a surprise, given all that she knows about who he is and what he’s capable of—but rather it’s the fact that their lives seem, for the first time ever, to be made up of the same material. Maybe separate from each other, but at least parallel, which is something. He tells her that it’s not just the sexual connection that has been the revelation with George, but the fact that he actually possesses all the qualities Robin wanted Peter to have: stability, trustworthiness, sexual safety. He asks, “Do you think that’s weird?”
“No, because you can fall in love with someone slowly, or it can hit you hard, right away. With Chris, it just was like—” She snaps her fingers.
“I’ve fallen in love at first sight many times. I was so into Peter when he first walked into our seminar. But that kind of thing never seems to last. Do you remember Alton?”
“How could I forget? You used to go on and on about him.”
“That wasn’t love. It was just, I
don’t know. Hormones.” Robin points to the notebook and flips through a few pages. He seems to scan them as he frowns and says, “I have no idea if George is feeling it. Did it seem like that to you? Did you notice anything?”
“I noticed that George seemed, like, less sheltered?”
“He’s turning into like, I don’t know, an activist. But he still doesn’t have a lot of experience. With guys.”
She tells him, “When I saw you two you at the cemetery, I thought, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you holding hands with a guy before.”
He looks back at the notebook and says, “I guess that’s probably true.” He seems to drift into thought, memory—she can only guess where he’s just gone.
She had been amazed by the sight of them with their hands intertwined, by its out-in-the-openness, and by how it seemed perfectly normal to her—or rather, a perfect fit for Robin. A natural expression. And even though she was sad that Chris wasn’t there with her—that she had left him behind instead of figuring out a better plan than I’ll call you—she still felt like there was some possibility for them. For her and Chris. If Robin could have this connection with George, more romantic than their usual friendship allowed, then she could find some way to fit Chris into her life, even though there were all these strikes against them.
She moves to sit down on the bed. And then she’s hit by a rush. She thinks it must be the turbulence in her stomach threatening to come forth. Then she thinks, no, not my stomach, something else, lower down—it feels like her period, but it’s too early for that. Then she feels the warmth, and excuses herself to go to the bathroom.
She touches herself, looks at her fingertips. Yes. There it is. She’s started to bleed. She must have calculated her cycle wrong. Or maybe it’s just come early—perfectly, joyously early.
She thinks, I should always have faith.
Back in her room, she lies down again, and she feels fifty pounds lighter. Cleansed. (The fact that that Clark has a girlfriend has worked in her favor. Tucked under the sink, she found what she needed. Never before has a box of Tampax seemed like such a gift.)
At last she is able to rest, to sleep. She even dreams, wild images of the ocean that are both scary and beautiful, as she floats on the surface in the sun and then dives into blue depths. There’s a far-off landscape, a lush green shore, Chris is in the water with her, swimming ahead, and he’s telling her, “We’ve got to get to the place.” He keeps saying it, “That’s our place,” but she can’t quite keep him in her sights and then he’s gone and there are birds circling overhead, their calls becoming louder and menacing, mechanical. The sound of machines grinding away.
She awakes, but the dream carries noisily into the room with her. Quickly she understands that the phone is ringing. She finds it, tangled up in the blanket with her.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
It’s him.
“Are you OK?” she asks.
“I’m OK,” Chris says.
“I called the motel, you weren’t there.”
“Sorry.”
“Did they give you my message?”
“I got it when I was checking out, so I had to wait to get to a phone and didn’t have any change, and I couldn’t find my phone card. I couldn’t find my wallet.”
“You lost your wallet.”
“Yeah. My driver’s license and my money and, well, everything.”
“That sucks.”
“I didn’t want to call collect.”
“I thought—” She’s not sure she should say it. “I was starting to freak out.”
“Sorry. You probably had a lot of dark thoughts. Why wouldn’t you?”
“So you’re not still wanting to—do anything?”
“I’m not gonna off myself.” He says this a labored way, almost as if he’s embarrassed, but it’s hard to feel reassured, because just hearing him voice it makes the possibility of suicide reassert itself. He says, “I’m back at my mom’s place now. How are you?”
“My family’s been pretty difficult. But I’m trying to tell them everything’s OK.” She rubs her face, feeling the weight of the dream still moving in her skull. “I mean, everything between us. Isn’t it?”
“Sure,” Chris says.
“Really?”
“I meant what I said, Ruby. I fell in love with you all over again.”
“I love you, too.” She rushes to say more, because even those three important words aren’t enough. “I’m sorry I said mean things.”
“I have so much respect for you. No one ever fights for me.”
“You’re the one who fought for me. I heard that you punched Calvin.”
“He threw a chair at me.”
“God, I’m so done with him. I never want to see him again.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Except now my brother’s supposedly going to work with him on some dumb movie.”
“Let’s not talk about him. He’s a chump.” She laughs, but she notices he doesn’t. He says, “So you really didn’t have sex with him?”
“No. But—look. I don’t want to talk about virginity. It’s just this patriarchal construct, and it’s so fucked up that people put all this value on it—”
“I wish I’d been a virgin for you,” he says. “I wish I hadn’t boinked a bunch of airheads I didn’t care about.”
“It doesn’t change anything,” she says. She thinks, a bunch? She wonders, Do I want to know?
He says, “I have to tell you something. I’d rather tell you in person, but I don’t think I can wait.”
“When can we see each other?” she asks. She starts proposing plans—should she take a bus down to Princeton? Does he want to drive up here, or could they meet in Manhattan? Should they try to find another hotel room?
He’s quiet as she throws out all these ideas. Why isn’t he saying yes? She feels a stab of panic—it’s that dream all over again, but now she’s way, way out in the ocean, and the ocean is finite, and like some kind of Old World vision it ends in a waterfall plunging into the void, and she has to swim with all her strength to avoid the fall.
Then he says, “I’ve been talking with my mom. She’s had this plan in the works for a while. She wants me to go to this camp.”
“Summer camp?”
“It’s for young people with substance abuse problems.”
“Really? Like, you’d be a camp counselor?”
“No…”
“I don’t get it.” She’s not sure why she can’t follow this.
“I’d be there to get off cocaine. Once and for all.”
“Oh.” And now she’s out of the dream entirely. The water has gone still. Chris is there saying, the place we have to get to, and she’s waking up all over again. There was no edge-of-the-world plunge. There is just his voice on the phone, in the darkness of her childhood bedroom, where she lies wrapped in a blanket, with the sensation of blood fresh upon her.
“My mom’s been trying to get me to go to this place for a while,” Chris says. “And I’ve been saying no, because I don’t trust anyone to really help me, you know?”
“Yeah, I know that feeling.”
“And actually it was one of the reasons I was thinking about killing myself. I mean, she wanted me to go to this camp, and I wanted to do anything in the world except go there. I brought all this money down the shore thinking I could do so much coke that I’d…I don’t know. Just surpass what I’d done before. But then, when I got to the point that I was actually writing a suicide note…”
She feels herself recoiling for a moment. Thinks of Robin’s suspicions, thinks that he was right after all, that Chris is too much trouble. And then is fighting back against that vision, which she does not want to believe.
Chris tells her that after she drove away, he spent part of the afternoon at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, on his knees, head bowed, struggling to figure out what to say. “I didn’t want to pray to that mean old man on his fucking throne in the cloud
s. So I figured, I’ll just sort of make a list of what I want, like, what’s important. Like, I don’t want to be high all the time. I really don’t. And I can’t lose you again. I almost lost you because I was high.” It sounds to her like he might be crying now. There’s a hoarseness to his voice, a sniffle between the words. “So now I have to do something about it, right? Because you can’t just speak the truth and then ignore it.”
“No.”
“So, maybe I have to give this rehab camp a try.”
“For how long?”
“Six weeks.”
“The rest of the summer,” she says quietly. It might as well be forever. How can she let him go for six whole weeks when they’ve only had a day together?
“Will you wait for me?” he asks.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because I’m a drug addict.”
She pauses. “That’s an intense word.”
“It’s a pretty big deal, Ruby. More than I probably let on.” He says, “College has been one big coke party.”
She listens as he tells her about this problem, its escalation, its greedy hold over him. He talks about sniffing flyaway bits of powder out of the upholstery of a sofa, of spending money meant for textbooks on buying more coke, of carrying around too much cash all the time and buying from scary men in the dark alleys behind nightclubs. He says he will probably drop out of school again, probably find some kind of job when he’s done with this camp. Work for a living, keep himself busy, stay away from people like Benjamin and Alice. Stay away from temptation. She thinks this must all be a good thing, that his confession is what she needs to erase the worries she’d had about him. If she can just be with him again, look into his remarkable eyes, kiss that lip with its tender, innocent scar, she’ll know that all will be well.
But this is when he tells her that camp starts tomorrow. In a Midwestern state.
He has a flight out of Newark Airport first thing in the morning.
His mother is already packing a bag for him.
And in this moment her entire life realigns. What matters and what doesn’t. What is passion and what is just passing time. What everyone else has wanted for her, and what she wants for herself. I’ll wait for him, she thinks. What else would I do?
Robin and Ruby Page 31
