by Lynne Hugo
10
TWELVE HOURS LATER MOTHER and I were on the road, alone again, she furious, I dazed and terrified in equal measure. She had returned to the motel room where Roger and I lay, each awake but rigid and unspeaking on separate beds, at a little after three in the morning. I had tried to talk to him a couple of times; my mouth opened noiselessly as though the words were floating out there to be caught and instruct my tongue.
But it remained dumb. For the first time, an unbridgable chasm had split the earth we shared. Anything I could have said felt unpredictable in its effect, and so, in the end I said nothing. Neither did he.
In the car, I tried to trace the thread back to its spool, but, of course, there was no telling if Roger had decided he would refuse to come home for the summer before we ever got there. I searched the previous day and a half for the echo of his exact words, but most had dissipated and distorted into the killing fog of what had transpired between us. This much I could remember, all of it after the fact: Mother outside the door, fumbling to fit the key in the lock, and me flying across the room to open it for her. She had barely glanced at me, but directed herself to Roger.
“We’ll leave after it’s light. I assume your things are ready to be picked up.”
He was already sitting upright, his both feet on the floor. His fists were closed and I saw a muscle jump in his cheek. Against my own heart, that moment I felt sorry for him, although I had no idea what he was about to say.
“I won’t be going.”
“Excuse me?” Acid.
“I’m sorry, I’m…not going. I’m staying here. I can work in the department—Dr. Chase told me months ago—as an undergraduate assistant. I can pick up an extra course, and I can manage it if I work in a restaurant, too.” He picked up speed as he spoke, as though gathering strength from momentum.
“No.” It was flat, unambiguous and nonnegotiable, a line to which neither of us had ever touched our toes. And certainly never crossed.
His eyes briefly pleaded. “I hope you can understand….”
“No,” she interrupted. “You heard me. No. I will not hear another word on the subject.”
He braced himself; I saw it, he physically, viscerally, braced himself and I understood why.
“Mother, I’m sorry, I’ve made up my mind. I need to stay here.”
Something shifted. Mother seemed stunned, while the whole scene waved as though atoms were breaking up and rearranging themselves forever. She didn’t know what to do. Her mouth opened once and shut, as mine must have been doing in the dark just a short while before, and then I felt sorry for her. I had no power to discern what was best for Roger, best for Mother, best for myself. All I could do was react to the moment in front of me, laden with history as it collided headlong with an unthinkable future.
She whirled and picked her purse up, as though to leave again. Then she must have thought better of it. Where would she go, unless she were to leave me here with Roger? She had already played the hand that used to work.
“Then get out. Get out now, God damn you,” Mother said to him, her face flaming and deadly. She meant it, I could tell. She meant to call God’s curse on him.
Roger held on to himself. “Okay,” he said, very softly, and stood, but he’d not yet taken a step toward the door when he turned in my direction and paused. “Ruthie, I’m…”
I was broken in perfect, congruent halves, like a peach with a split pit. I needed to connect with Roger however I could about what had happened between us, and here he was, speaking my name like an entreaty. At the same time, he was breaking every promise, refusing to help me, when he knew I was barely hanging on.
“You have nothing to say to your sister. And she has nothing to say to you. I said get out.”
Maybe he would have changed his mind. But now Mother’s only power lay in forcing what she’d put herself on the line to prevent. She instantly covered the several feet between them and roughly grabbed Roger’s upper arm, simultaneously pushing and pulling him at the door. She flung it open and shoved him. When he hesitated, she shouted, “Get out, get out,” and in an impossible gesture, raised her knee up and sideways in order to use the flat of her foot to kick at his rear. The last I saw before she slammed the door and fastened the safety chair were his eyes, white and round as a boy drowning. He looked exactly like he was drowning, about to go under for the last time. When we left the room, perhaps four hours later, after a fitful, exhausted collapse into dreamlessness, he was gone.
SHE WAS SPEAKING VERY LITTLE, and I couldn’t read her. Both of us looked like death, I knew that. Deep circles ringed her eyes like carvings in wood that cast their own shadows. Her cheekbones did the same over the hollows in her cheeks, strangely gaunt over the extra flesh beneath her chin. I’d glanced at my reflection in the motel mirror when I’d washed before we left. My hair was dirty, stringy and dull around a face so pale as to make freckles leap out, three-dimensional in contrast. There was nothing to be done. I had used an old rubber band to secure my hair and looked away from the rest. My eyes and throat were scratchy, and I ached from tension or the onset of illness. I didn’t know or care which.
I kept my head facing straight forward as we left Boulder. The University buildings, and orderly, tended gardens appeared like a dream in my peripheral vision, then receded into the unknowability of Roger’s life. Without a missed turn, Mother went north to pick up Route 80, then headed us east. As quickly as I got over the fact that I’d not had the campus tour Roger promised, that glimpse into the possibility of a separate life, I started longing for home, although I couldn’t see how anything would be different if and when we ever made it there. I was grateful she didn’t ask me to drive, though it was predictable. She was in control.
“Well. Are you hungry?” she said briskly, after perhaps a hundred miles of silence. It was a trick question; they always were. If I said “no,” it could be interpreted as uncaring for her needs, being too upset by Roger when it was her place to be the upset one, or any variation of the theme. If I said “yes,” then she could say that I must be utterly insensitive to what Roger had done to her if I could think about food. As I wrestled with which way to go, it never occurred to me to consult my stomach—to consider whether or not I was, in fact, hungry.
“Whenever you want to stop will be fine with me. I’m okay for now if you want to go farther, or you want me to drive.”
“We’ll stop, then. I never got dinner last night and I need to keep my strength.” She had, of course, had dinner—most of what had been on her plate was gone before she left the diner.
“You must be starving. Of course, let’s stop.”
Two exits later, there were restaurant signs, and she slowed for the ramp. I was watching her closely, trying not to appear to, for a clue as to what frame she was putting around the previous night, but she gave none, except that she ordered a combination plate of pancakes, eggs and bacon and ate all of it. Roger’s name was not spoken. I dabbled with tasteless scrambled eggs and toast.
“Will you eat that? You’re much too thin. How are you ever going to get a boyfriend if you look like a board?”
More trick questions. I was too exhausted to sort through the ramifications of various answers, and just smiled weakly in her direction and took a forkful.
“We need to get on home as soon as we can now. You’ve got to get back to school.”
“There’s only another week, then finals. I don’t see how I can take them…I…I’ve missed a lot.”
“Well, then, I guess you’ll just have to arrange makeups,” she said. The conversation had the aura of unreality. Even though the subject matter was mundane, and welcome for being so, I couldn’t change gear quickly enough.
“Mother, about Roger…”
“We’re talking about you. If we push, we can get home in three days. You can go in Friday and talk with your teachers. I’ll give you a note, of course. They’ll have to excuse your absences.”
“All right.” I should have been
relieved, but even relief was too heavy to pick up and feel. “All right,” I repeated dumbly. She looked at me, then, and smiled.
“Finish up. I’m going to the bathroom.” She got up from the table, which wobbled off of the matchbook someone had stuck under one leg. Her coffee sloshed in the saucer. “Damn,” she said. As she picked up her purse, she gave me her penetrating look and a non sequitur, which I still knew how to insert in its place. “He’ll learn,” she said. “He’ll learn.”
INDEED, THREE DAYS LATER we were home, and Friday I did go in to school. Mr. VanFrank sighed and shook his graying head, when he read Mother’s note about a family death and I thought he was angry with me.
“I’m sorry, my grandmother lives…lived in Seattle, and we had to…”
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “I understand how things are. Do you want to talk about it?” He took off his glasses and cleaned them elaborately before replacing them on a Roman nose. He’d grown a mustache since I last saw him, more brown than gray, so it didn’t match his hair. I busied myself noticing such things while I waited for his question to dissipate in the air between us.
“I’d just like to arrange to take finals late, if I can, or make them up. Is there any way I can still be a senior in the fall?”
“We’ll work it out—for you,” he said, the you laden with emphasis. “We have to get teacher consent. If any of them won’t agree, you’ll have to go to summer school. Can you promise me you’ll take those S.A.T.’s the first time they’re offered, in September? I wanted you to take them as a junior for practice.”
“I know. Yes, sir. I’ll take them.”
“Any thoughts yet about which colleges to apply to? Maybe you’d like to go out to Boulder with your brother?”
“I don’t think that would work, sir. My mother would never go for that. She wants him to transfer back near here.”
“Oh, dear. That’s not good.” He shook his head. “He needs to stay right where he is, an excellent program, and they’ve given him a first-rate financial package. Can you help out, maybe explain to your mother? Would you like me to call her?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. Anyway, Roger said he’s not coming back.”
“Well, then, that is good. And next it’s your turn. You keep those grades up and we’ll find something just as good for you.”
“I’ll need to stay around here.” Here we were, discussing my future, which I didn’t believe I had, tiptoeing on the edge of Mother’s long skirt, talking about her without talking about her. I was nervous and he sensed it, easing his gaze off me to adjust the volume on the classical music radio station he kept on all the time, and picked a dead leaf off a plant on his desk. Pictures of his children were framed on a bookcase in the tiny office, and there was a brightness to the room because of the travel posters he had put on the walls. “Florence,” “Paris,” “London,” they proclaimed. He saw me taking them in.
“Would you like to go abroad? Someday, I mean,” he asked.
“I’d love it,” I said, an honest answer and, I thought, safe enough.
“Maybe you should look at places that offer a year abroad. It would be…. good for you.” Another meaningful, laden sentence. “Especially if you don’t go far away to school.”
I shifted in my seat. “That sounds great.”
Mr. VanFrank gave me a long look, as though he knew I was putting him off, but let it pass. “Good,” he said. “We’ll keep that in mind. For now, I’ll write you an admit slip. Have each teacher sign it, then get it back to me at the end of the day. I’ll get a note out to each of them about makeup work and finals.”
“Thanks, Mr. VanFrank. Really, thank you.”
“Ruth, I have to say, I really think…you, well, your mother, but that’s another issue. I think you could really benefit from some counseling. I can set something up…I’d just need your mother’s permission, you know, because you’re underage.”
“Oh, no thank you, sir. I don’t think…”
He forced me into eye contact. “Look, it would be a way to get her in. The doctor would say he had to talk with her about you, and then…” Mr. VanFrank didn’t know how she’d react, but I sure did.
“Thank you. It wouldn’t work, sir, but thank you.”
He nodded and sighed. “We’ll have to hold out for Europe, then,” he said.
SOMEHOW, I PASSED. It took me most of the first month of summer vacation to get in all the makeup work, and when it was in, Mr. VanFrank met me at school four mornings in a row to take the finals, each of which was in a sealed manila envelope. My grades dropped, more B’s than A’s, and a C plus in trigonometry. I guess I should have expected they would, and it occurred to me Mr. VanFrank would think he’d misjudged me, that I wasn’t as smart as Roger. I tried to shrug it off: What does it matter? She’ll never let me go, and I’ll never do what Roger did. I wasn’t sure whether I’d want to; somedays I’d answer a hypothetical yes, but on others, loyalty overtook me like a poison gas. That’s the way I see it now, anyway. Still, I got a job waitressing and the part of each paycheck I got to keep went into a savings account. Just in case.
We didn’t hear from Roger for weeks. I wanted to write to him, but didn’t even know where he was living for the summer, or if he was angry with me, as he’d seemed that last night. The hurt I’d felt was wiped away and returned on a regular basis, like a dusty residue on top of all my mental furniture. That night in Boulder was unsalvageable, but murky as a long-sunken ship glimpsed from a great distance; I wasn’t sure at all what had happened. Surely the bond between us transcended whatever bizarre glitch had occurred.
But there was this long silence. What could either of us say now? Indeed, what could Mother say? What would she say if he called? His name was rarely mentioned, and then only by her and in a matter-of-fact context such as, “Oh, that’s just an old glove of Roger’s. You can throw it out,” a remark that could mean the “God damn you,” she’d spit at him still held, or that things would return to normal. I agonized over nuances of interpretation.
The summer was cool and wet, which—along with having spent so much of June with schoolwork—made it seem almost no more than an idea I’d had when school started after Labor Day. I kept my word to Mr. VanFrank and took the S.A.T. exams the last Saturday of September. Coincidentally it was the day we heard from Roger.
“Your brother called,” Mother said when I came home that afternoon. I’d let her think I was waitressing that day, afraid to stir her with a mention of college, so my first reaction was one of gratitude that she was distracted and wouldn’t ask me how my tips had been.
“Oh. What did he say?”
“That he’d like to come home for Christmas.” A certain smugness crept into her expression.
“What did you say?”
“The prodigal son returneth,” she said cryptically. I wasn’t sure if she was quoting herself or commenting. Afraid to ask, I just waited.
“I told him I’d been praying for him, that he’d be able to forgive himself for what he’d done.”
“So he’s coming?”
“I suggested he take a little more time to think it over, you know, to make sure he is ready to come home.”
She was saving face, pretending that Roger was begging and she holding out to be sure he’d learned his lesson. For the first time, it occurred to me that Roger might win; she made no mention of his transferring. But this is just as much the truth: it did not occur to me that I could do the same.
MY S.A.T. SCORES CAME BACK, high. Mr. VanFrank called me into his office. A Beethoven piano sonata was playing, and there was a new poster, this one for Amsterdam, on the wall. He smoothed his mustache, grown into a little bush. “I don’t think there’s any need for you to retake these. Let’s go with what you’ve got. Achievement tests are next. Meanwhile, what are your top three choices? Financial aid applications are going to need to go in with the admissions material, you know…will your Mother cooperate?”
�
�I don’t know.”
“I can play it the way I did with Roger, you know. How about I call her? Look, Ruth, I’m going to be honest with you. I’d like to see you get away from home.”
“I don’t know, sir. She may not take that very well.”
That was a decided understatement. When Mr. VanFrank called and asked to see her, she let him come. Only this time she was prepared. She wouldn’t fail on her own turf again. He was on the blue Goodwill chair, and she across from him on the maroon couch when she declared her mind.
“No, Mr. VanFrank. It’s out of the question. Ruth may apply to schools in this area, provided she can earn enough to cover the expense. I’m not having another of my children so far away.”
None of his arguments worked. He brought out brochures from a number of schools that had programs in Occupational Therapy, which I’d mentioned I might like. Really, I knew nothing about it, except that it didn’t look too taxing. I was worn down.
“How about Columbia? It’s a fine program. I think they’d be generous with their financial aid.”
“Too far.”
“Not really, Mrs. Kenley. She could take the train.”
“No.”
When I think back on it, the whole exchange was like a verbal chess match. I wasn’t even a player. I knew about Columbia, and had told him I liked it, but little or nothing of the other schools he was touting. Finally I realized that each glossy brochure and catalog he brought out of his briefcase after Columbia was farther than New York City. He was smart.
Nothing shifted suddenly, I’m sure. When my awareness came into focus, Mother was leaning forward, her heavy breasts as precisely defined as an English teacher’s dream words. She smiled and sat up straighter, crossing her legs and arranging her skirt around them.
“Well, I can see that these schools have fine programs, but Columbia appears to be the best to me.”
“I’m still hoping that Ruth will take another look at Pennsylvania’s program. Actually that’s probably the overall best, given their internship opportunities,” he said, meeting her eyes steadily. He handed her the catalog, which received a cursory thumbing from her.
