In Case We're Separated

by Alice Mattison

  Three months after they’d begun living together, Jeremy said one morning, “I’ve fallen in love with a woman of thirty-four.” Ruth put down her coffee cup. He continued, “She’s pregnant with my baby. I love you, too, but I want to marry her.”

  “If you let me keep this apartment,” said Ruth, rising abruptly, “you don’t have to feel guilty.” She said, “Don’t tell me her name.” She moved away from the table.

  “But I feel bad. And I want to tell you her name.” Jeremy had black, shiny curls. How she would miss his curls.

  “If I learn her name, I’ll make you miserable.”

  She picked up her two handbags—a big black purse and a black tote bag full of manuscripts—and left the apartment, dressed but with unbrushed teeth. All the way down in the elevator, she screamed. Ruth Hillsberg—Ms. Insight—had guessed nothing. On the way to work she bought a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a new hairbrush, in case she hadn’t even brushed her hair that morning. Her lover had done wrong, yes, but people do wrong. She was angry because for all his easy regret, he did not know he’d done wrong.

  On the other hand, she’d gained the apartment, and in exchange for nothing more than saving her screams for the elevator. It was a sunny place with square moldings outlining each much-painted wall, a style Ruth associated with parents and grandparents, with Milton Avery, Moses Soyer, and Diego Rivera prints. Ruth was all right during the two weeks it took Jeremy to remove his belongings, which he accomplished when she was at work. She would come home to find a promising bare space replacing an uncomfortable chair. She cooked a dinner for David, who’d never liked Jeremy. When nothing remained but her possessions, they looked only slightly meager.

  The day after the second key had been left in her mailbox with a poorly written, sentimental letter, Ruth began to feel bad. Her mood persisted—worsened—through winter and spring. She turned fifty-seven, while Jeremy’s new wife remained—in Ruth’s mind at least—thirty-four. Now summer had come. Ruth didn’t believe in air-conditioning, but she had a big fan, and in the evenings she’d sit on her bed in front of it, a pile of manuscripts nearby, a book nearby in the other direction. Often she looked at neither.

  One night David phoned to suggest dinner the next evening. “I found another sushi place,” he said. It was a happy thing that her child enjoyed her—or maybe it was pathetic that they both lacked other company. “And I want you to meet my new girlfriend,” David added.

  “Oh,” said Ruth.

  “Is that bad news?”

  “Of course not. But how long? Is it serious?”

  “Couple of months.”

  “You’ve been dating someone for two months?” Just the day before, she’d insisted to a friend that David had been “self-sufficiently celibate” for a year, after a painful breakup.

  “I really like her,” said David.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Her name is Binnie Levy.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She’s a midwife.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “She bought a cookie,” he said.

  “David.”

  “What? Are you going to tell me not to get hurt?”

  “I wouldn’t say that!” said Ruth. “I got hurt myself.”

  “You suffer over me.”

  “I don’t!” she said. “But is that a good way to meet people?” She hesitated. “You don’t really sell cookies, do you?”

  “Sometimes I do. Someone I know works for a baker. Sometimes he calls me.”

  “This woman could be anybody.”

  “The restaurant doesn’t take reservations,” said David. “If you don’t see me, just get in line.”

  Next day Ruth arrived at the restaurant before David. She stood watching a tall, narrow young woman with a boy’s haircut, who couldn’t be Binnie because she was talking exuberantly to an old woman farther up the line. Ruth didn’t hear anything until the tall woman turned, saying, “But I should find her.” Then, to someone Ruth couldn’t see, “Are you Ruth?” Then, “Are you Ruth?”

  “Binnie?” Ruth said, when the tall woman reached her.

  “Ruth! Of course! You look like David,” said Binnie. Ruth didn’t look anything like David, who took after Charlie, his blond, thin father. She tipped her head back to look up at Binnie, who had protruding brown eyes. Then, to Ruth’s discomfort, she imagined dying while gazing at this mobile, pointed face, which had dark hair carefully cut in short spikes around it. No such alarming image had come to her through the tenancy of David’s previous girlfriends or her daughter Laura’s boyfriends.

  “I was sure that woman was you,” said Binnie. “Of course she’s too old. She was interesting, though.”

  Hands came down heavily on their shoulders. David had come. “I knew she’d spot you,” he said to his mother, holding the two of them apart like someone breaking up a fight. He stood on tiptoe to kiss his girlfriend’s lips. Presumably Binnie didn’t love David, or she wouldn’t have been so offhand, meeting David’s mother. Yet David, waving his arms—his light hair rising—was obviously crazy about Binnie. He left a calm space in the air right around her and agitated all the rest of the atmosphere he could reach.

  The sushi, eventually, was fresh and tasty. Binnie deftly inserted sushi into her mouth with the tips of her long fingers. Exclaiming about the tuna, David continued to swing his arms in the air, colliding with passing strangers. “Did he tell you I’m a midwife?” Binnie asked. “I guess you used an obstetrician, twenty-seven years ago.”

  “I had a midwife. She wasn’t nice,” said Ruth. She’d been wondering how to talk with a midwife without making her own womb the subject, and apparently it couldn’t be done. The table was small. Twice, Ruth’s legs and Binnie’s collided.

  “In what way wasn’t the midwife nice?” Binnie wanted to know.

  Ruth had to admit the midwife was only irritating. “She called David Bunny Rabbit before he was born,” she said. “She called his father Daddy Rabbit and me Mommy Rabbit.”

  Binnie said, “You should have just told her not to, Ruth.” Then she said, “Hey, David, should I call babies rabbits? They’re sometimes duckies, but not till they’re born. Before that, it’s ‘Hey, Buddy.’ ”

  “I was not in a position to make demands,” said Ruth. As brightly as she could, she asked, “What’s it like to be a midwife?”

  “Nothing,” said Binnie, putting down her chopsticks and gazing into Ruth’s eyes, “prepared me for the cord. They’re people—these babies you deliver—but they’re connected to somebody, and connected by this strange object. Umbilical cords have a life of their own. Did you touch David’s?”

  “I cleaned the stump,” said Ruth.

  “Doesn’t count. When it’s still connected, it’s alive—thick and alive and so interesting!” She paused. “Then you cut it and—next stop, driver’s license. Voting.”

  “Babyhood first,” said Ruth.

  “Well, you know what I mean.” Binnie picked up her purse from the floor and Ruth was afraid she’d pull a long fat umbilical cord out of it, but it was only a tissue she wanted.

  After dinner, they walked toward the subway. “We’re talking about living together,” said Binnie, pausing before a furniture store. “My furniture is shabby, and David’s is disgusting.”

  “I’m dumping some stuff,” David said.

  “Living together?” said Ruth.

  “My father will take your old stuff,” said Binnie. “He’ll love it.”

  “Your father loves disgusting furniture?” Ruth said.

  “He runs a homeless shelter. They help guys who find apartments—he’s always looking for furniture.”

  Ruth said, “How long have you known each other? Two months, did you say?”

  “It’ll be two months next week,” said Binnie. “I love this guy. My dad loves him. My dad makes decisions even faster than I do.”

  “You’ve already met her father?” said Ruth. “What about her mother?”
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br />   “My mother lives in Denver. He hasn’t met my mother.”

  “Don’t worry,” David said, turning from the spare, brilliantly lit sofas in the window and patting Ruth’s shoulder. “You’re the first mother.” They walked her to her subway stop, then said good-bye. Ruth descended with a wave. Everything she’d said had been wrong, and nothing she ought to have said had been spoken. She’d made some terrible mistake when she brought up David, or he’d never have cared for this woman. Subway platforms are not invariably images of loneliness, but this one was.

  I’m moving in with Binnie on Saturday,” said David, not long after, on the phone.

  “I hope you’re not getting into the same shit I did,” Ruth said.

  “Yeah,” he said, “you’re not a great romance role model.”

  “Shall I help you move?”

  “Oh, no. Binnie will help, and her father is bringing a van from the shelter.”

  “I want to. Get plenty of boxes.” Then, “Come to dinner by yourself,” she said, “before you move.”

  “You don’t like her,” said David.

  “I do.”

  “You don’t, but I do,” he said.

  “Will you come to dinner?” But David had no time.

  The morning of the move was hot, so Ruth put her hair into a ponytail. She was in a bad mood, and though the harbor was healthy with purpose, and the ride on the ferry breezy, she stayed that way. She took a bus to the apartment David was leaving, on the second floor of an old frame house. He’d done no packing. Shadow, a gray cat with a thick tail, inserted himself between Ruth’s legs, purring imperiously. “Is Binnie coming?” she asked.

  “She has to work. We’ll meet her at her place.”

  “So it’s just you and me?” said Ruth.

  “And Bob. Binnie’s father. He’s bringing the van.”

  “Bob,” said Ruth.

  “You hate the name Bob?”

  As Ruth put David’s books into boxes, she asked herself what she wanted. She didn’t think David and Binnie would stay together—despite the startling image of herself, dying and staring into those brown eyes—but it would do her son no permanent harm to live with her. She wasn’t hurt that he’d kept Binnie a secret for two months. But she wanted to have guessed—to have looked at him, talked to him, and known.

  There were many books. Nobody but Ruth ever got enough boxes. She threw away photography magazines without asking, then pulled them from the trash and asked. “No, I need that,” said David. She stared at his prints. He’d been photographing Binnie, she saw, and Shadow, and maybe his Staten Island neighbors—people who looked Irish and Italian, leaning over barbecue grills or getting out of cars.

  David left in his car to find more boxes. Ruth began working in the kitchen. As she emptied a cabinet, Shadow leaped to the counter, grunting, and shoved her arm. David had a thirty-year-old chipped orange enamel colander with feet that Ruth remembered giving him, after using it herself for years; it had been a wedding present. The kitchen was hot. Ruth found ice water, then began emptying the refrigerator. She filled two garbage bags, then decided to carry the trash out. Holding the first bag, she opened the apartment door, using her foot to guide Shadow away. She pulled the door almost shut behind her, careful not to lock herself out.

  She carried the bag downstairs, set it next to a couple of garbage cans, and returned, leaving the house door standing open. But as soon as she opened the apartment door, a gray blur rushed past her downstairs. Ruth felt Shadow’s tail brush her leg, grabbed at it, and watched the cat disappear through the doorway.

  Fifteen minutes later, she met David as he got out of his car. “Something terrible. Shadow got out.”

  “Is he—dead?” he said instantly, his voice breaking, gesturing toward the street.

  “Oh, honey, no—but I can’t find him.” She told him what had happened.

  “But how could you leave the door open?” he said.

  Ruth couldn’t speak.

  “Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  He was sweaty; the air conditioning in his car was broken. He searched the same shrubbery Ruth had been searching. “There’s no point in looking,” he said. They went upstairs, where David took off his shirt, shoes, and socks, and began taping boxes together with angry energy. He was thin, younger looking without a shirt. Every little while he’d go downstairs again. Through the window Ruth watched him search. The second time, he returned limping. “I got a splinter,” he said. He sat down and picked at his heel.

  Ruth couldn’t bring herself to offer to help, but David said, “Would you look at it?” He lay down and lifted his foot. The splinter was deep. “Just get a knife and dig it out,” he said. Then he remembered that he owned tweezers, but the splinter was too deep to reach.

  “Do you have a needle?” she said. Ordinarily she’d be all but weepy with gratitude, allowed to remove her grown-up son’s splinter, but now she kept reliving the moment when she snatched at the cat’s tail. She was unforgivable. For a year or more, she considered, she’d had no judgment and no sense, and everyone had known it and fled, now even the cat.

  David had a needle. Ruth stuck the point into the flame of the gas stove, because her mother had done that. She sat on the edge of the sofa and grasped his heel. She pressed the sharp point of the needle into his skin and began to dig, though she was afraid of hurting him. “Hey!” said David.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Just do it.” She almost had the point of the needle under the end of the splinter. Someone was on the stairs. “Anybody home?” said the person who had to be Bob.

  Not looking up, Ruth pressed an elbow onto David’s leg, to keep him where she had him.

  “Hi,” said David, and Ruth turned her head to see a gray-haired, shaggy man, who started to close the door.

  “Leave it open, Bob, would you?” said David as Ruth brought the tip of the splinter out of his skin.

  “Hi, Bob,” she said. “Would you hand me those tweezers?” She gestured with her chin.

  Bob handed her the tweezers and bent over to watch. “This is my mom, Ruth,” said David. “Unfortunately she let my cat out.”

  The splinter—enormous, for a splinter—came out. They passed it around, Ruth to David, David to Bob, Bob to Ruth. Bob’s hand was callused and lined. “Should I go look for the cat?” he said.

  “No point,” said David.

  Bob looked as if he’d take charge, but he nodded, then waited for mother or son to tell him what to do. If they couldn’t find the cat—if she and David were going to have this between them forever—Ruth at least needed to make the coupling of David and Binnie—misbegotten or not—happen. Maybe it would symbolically complete her own uncoupling at last. She had packed no boxes when she and her lover separated, strained her back on no furniture. Ruth needed to carry furniture so as to arrive at the next segment of her life, and possibly she needed to drop it on the toes of these two men, to complete her own undoing.

  Bob’s shelter was in Brooklyn, and some furniture was going there. It would come out of the van first, Ruth pointed out briskly, so it should go in last. She told David it was time to make some decisions, and at last she and Bob picked up an upholstered blue chair and maneuvered it downstairs. By the time they shoved the blue chair into the back corner of the van, they’d had two polite disagreements on the best way to move a wide chair through a narrow doorway. They climbed the stairs again and took the desk. Ruth rather liked carrying furniture with this man, whose arms and body she appreciated.

  The three of them filled the van, then David’s car. David went for sandwiches and they ate. He returned, a long time later, looking disappointed. Obviously he’d been driving up and down the neighborhood streets. Now it seemed to make sense for Ruth and Bob to go to the shelter, leaving David behind. “You’ll see where I work,” Bob said, as if they were friends. The van was air conditioned. It smelled of cigarettes, but Bob didn’t light up. Ruth sank into the stained seat, with nothin
g to do, at last—nothing she could do—but finger the heavy seat belt buckle in her lap.

  “This is good of you,” she said.

  “I like going to Binnie’s place. Fix something, carry something.”

  “I wish I could do more for David,” she said. “Or do less. I wish I could be useful.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I thought I’d be so helpful today, but all I did was let the cat run away.”

  “It’ll come back,” he said. He was either a wise man, or a pest. He continued, “You’ve got to know something they need. What do you know?”

  He sounded irritatingly pleased with himself. “I know editing,” she said.

  “Well, that will come up. Plumbing is good.”

  “You know plumbing?”

  “The shelter’s in an old building.”

  They crossed the Verrazano Bridge—distanced by the air conditioning, the bright day looked perfect—and soon left the highway. Ruth the Brooklynite was quickly lost as they drove down shabby streets, making many turns while her son’s furniture shifted behind her. At last they drew into the driveway of a former elementary school. Men stood around the steps and the door. “We let them in at five,” said Bob.

  As soon as they opened their doors to the afternoon heat, an old man came toward them. “Look at this, Bob,” he said. “Look at this.” He unfolded a map. Bob slowly got out of the van. It was hot in the driveway, but before they could move, this old man and his map must be scrutinized. It was a bus map, Ruth saw, and Bob studied it as if it mattered. “This is a crime,” said the man.

  “What’s a crime, Hank?”

  “Either the map is wrong or the driver is wrong. In this heat. At my age. I’m fifty-seven, Bob.” Ruth stared at him. They were the same age.