About Face

by Carole Howard

  Pictures of Josh dominated, sprinkled throughout the display: Josh being breast-fed by a tousle-haired Ruth, Josh in his SpiderMan Halloween costume at the day care center, David and Josh in orange life vests on a canoe trip, Josh doing magic tricks in middle school, Josh being comforted by his parents after a disastrous performance with the high school debating team, Josh and his deer-in-the-headlights prom date, Josh being suave on the college tennis team, Josh graduating from college.

  Interspersed among the Josh-growing-up series were vacation shots of them with friends from one part of their life or another: on a barge trip through France, in a rented house in Italy, at a health spa, and assorted skiing, biking, hiking, and beach trips. There were family pictures, too: Ruth and her sister Marge, Ruth and her diminutive mother just a year before she died, David and his blond Midwestern parents. A wedding picture had all the family members from both sides looking as if they actually came from the same friendly planet.

  At the far end of the corridor, closest to the bedroom, were three shots, side by side. There was one of each of them in front of the huts they lived in as Peace Corps volunteers—young, filthy, happy. And there was one of a six-year old Josh in Ruth’s village, surrounded by village kids, when they’d all gone back for a visit.

  Looking at a picture or two when she passed through the hallway was her version of stopping to smell the flowers. The pleasure was mingled with the recognition that the moment captured in each photo was over. This photo gallery was the place where happiness and sadness intersected, leading her to observe, on one of her many trips through it, that she thought the hallway could be her obituary.

  In the bedroom, she started ruffling through the hangers in the “dress-up outfits” section of her closet. “Tonight’s event is something Jeremy would probably call a ‘do-gooder kind of thing,’ so part of me wants to stick it to him with something outrageous.”

  David made a move towards his favorite, the cherry-red dress with the deep-V neckline that made her blush the first twenty minutes she wore it.

  “Wait. I’m thinking maybe I’d do better to look powerful, especially after today’s meeting. Maybe tonight I need to look like ‘one of them.’ A real corporate suck-up. With an outfit that says,” and she placed both hands on her hips and dropped her voice, “‘Jeremy, what in the world are you thinking, I’m a bottom line girl, a powerful bottom line girl.’”

  “This is a lot of message for one outfit.” David’s eyes were unblinking, his mouth horizontally neutral, but she was fluent in his body language and knew he was struggling to stay on topic.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. And there’s actually one more thing. There’s Pat. Young Pat, thin Pat, cranky Pat who’s sprinting to get on Jeremy’s good side.”

  “I can’t believe you haven’t won her over or gotten rid of her.”

  “She’s too good at what she does to get rid of. And I’m too good at relationships to give up on her. Soon she’ll realize I’m not the enemy. And I’m not her mother. Meanwhile, I want to look like a middle-aged knockout.”

  “Sounds like a night for …” He reached into the closet and pulled out, with a flourish, a sparkling black sequined top. “… sequins.”

  “Sequins. I could wear that top with the long swishy skirt, which hides my tummy bulge nicely. Or maybe the plum dress”—she reached into the closet to pull it out—which shows off my legs, but it’s a little tight right here in the danger area.” She put her hand across her abdomen. “What do you think? And then I’ll let you go.”

  “I think the skirt and top are beautiful and dignified, but the dress is beautiful and powerful and says ‘Watch out, Pat.’”

  “What about the tummy?”

  “Ruth, I swear, it seems to be all you can see, but the rest of us don’t notice it. Especially with those legs. And I think I officially can’t take any more of this.”

  As they finished dressing, Ruth provided an overview of tonight’s likely cast of characters, including those who needed buttering up and those who could use some therapeutic snubbing. They took a final side-by-side look in the full-length mirror near the front door.

  David’s graying hair and white neatly-trimmed beard framed sensual features he’d once feared were effeminate. He looked like he was born to wear a tuxedo with matching purple and green bow tie and cummerbund decorated with math formulas. At six feet tall, he didn’t overpower Ruth, but created the perfect counterpoint for her slight frame, especially when he put his arm around her shoulder. She fit right in. And she didn’t look too bad, either.

  “Not bad,” he said. “If only Mrs. Sills could see me now. Back in third grade, she never thought I’d amount to anything.”

  They headed for the door. Ruth asked about David’s day. “Wasn’t today that last-minute hush-hush faculty meeting?”

  “Yep.”

  “So? What gives? Is the principal resigning? Did they finally find out about all that special help, that very-special help, he gave the social studies teacher, what’s-her-name?”

  “Gloria. No, not that. Not quite so juicy. But it was pretty … pretty intriguing.”

  “Well? What? Tell me.”

  Ruth slid in on her side of the car, her movements deliberate so she wouldn’t snag her pantyhose or dress. David hesitated for a second before he folded his body into his seat, buckled up, and started the engine. He turned to face Ruth and told her the meeting had been about saving money, especially on salaries, because of the recent defeat of the school budget.

  He faced forward and eased the car into traffic.

  “You weren’t laid off, were you? Even they wouldn’t lay you off to hire a younger teacher for less money. Would they? I mean, you’re their best math teacher. And besides, you’ve got more tenure than God.” Ruth’s alarm was not so much about job security as concern for David’s emotional well-being.

  David adjusted the heating controls, then the position of the side view mirrors, then the radio. “No, nothing like that.”

  “Well?”

  He explained the one-time only, take-it-or-leave-it early-retirement deal proposed by the district with buy-in from the state: teachers between fifty-two and fifty-six could choose to retire at the end of this school year or next. They didn’t have to wait until they were fifty-eight and they didn’t have to have the requisite thirty years on the job. In terms of their pension, they’d not only get credit for the years they’d worked, they’d also get a bit of a boost.

  “It’s really a….” His voice trailed off.

  “It sounds to me like it’s really a scheme to replace the older teachers with ones they can get cheap. Honestly, don’t they care about the quality of the education they’re paying for?”

  Traffic was heavy, but moving. David looked in his rear-view mirror and adjusted its position. He looked over his shoulder at his blind spot as he slipped into the left lane for an upcoming turn.

  Ruth tried to console David for what she thought was troubling him, that some of his friends would retire. She was sure he’d still enjoy being there, being the best geometry teacher they ever saw.

  At a red light, David stopped, more suddenly than necessary, and turned his whole body to face Ruth again.

  It was starting to rain, and Ruth worried about getting from the car to the concert hall without getting wet. Or did they still keep that umbrella in the car?

  “Ruthie, you’re not hearing what I’m saying.”

  She looked over at him. The streetlight shone behind him, so his face was largely in shadow, but he looked funny. His mouth dropped off a little bit on the left. And his brows were furrowed. That wasn’t like him at all. He was turning his wedding ring around. Uh oh, a bad sign.

  She folded her hands like a school-girl. “So spell it out.”

  The light turned green. He faced forward and drove more smoothly as he told her about the details of the one-time offer. He needed to let them know in the next thirty days or else he’d wind up working until he was fifty-eight.

&n
bsp; “And I want to take it. And—”

  “You want to retire? You can’t be serious. Retire?”

  “Retiring at fifty-four is not outlandish. Besides, you knew I’d be retiring in four years anyway.”

  “What would you do? Another job? What kind?”

  “No new jobs. Actually, I thought maybe … maybe we could both retire. Especially with your new boss being such a pain. And then we could play all day. It’d be fun. Don’t you think?”

  “You want me to retire?” Ruth looked out the side window, the front window, over at David, then back out the side window again, her eyes bouncing like pinballs. It was really raining now. Little puddles accumulated on the roadway, though not on the streets. She noticed the reflections in the puddles, of the street lamps, the tops of the buildings and even their car. But it went by in a blur, too fast to catch a good glimpse. She didn’t like that blurriness and would have liked David to slow the car down so she could see her own reflection in her own car in one of the puddles.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before instead of springing it on me now?”

  David didn’t answer for two blocks.

  “I didn’t spring it on you. We were busy talking about other things. Anyway, I did try. But…. And then you asked. It was….” He shook his head.

  “David, we’re not old enough to retire. It’s too soon. Isn’t it? Retire? Oh God, I didn’t know you were thinking of retiring.”

  “I have thirty days to tell them if I’m taking the offer. But that’s what I want to do. And it would be more fun if you did it too.”

  For the next twenty minutes, David pretended to be concentrating on his driving and Ruth pretended to be calm. He’s crazy, she thought. We’re not really old enough to retire. Isn’t that for old people? Older than us, for sure. Let’s see, when my mother was fifty-four, where was I? In the Peace Corps with Vivian. We certainly did think our parents were old back then, older than we’d ever be.

  Ruth insisted she couldn’t retire. She had too much to do at work. And she had to leave on a high, without looking like she was being forced out. “You wouldn’t retire without me, would you? Jeez, David, we haven’t talked about retirement at all. I like working. I don’t want to wear plaid shorts and play golf.”

  “Can we be serious?”

  “You’re right. You don’t wear plaid shorts. Sorry.”

  “And how can you say you like working? You complain a lot. You’re tired all the time. And you’re always agonizing about being so corporate and so involved with make-up, you talk about not being who you used to be. Maybe it’s time to—”

  “Oh, sure, I complain, but I really like the challenges and the problem-solving, I like the people. Enough of them anyway.”

  She felt the vertical crease between her eyebrows starting to deepen into the Grand Canyon of the Forehead as the antagonists in her familiar internal battle started warming up: Why had she stayed at this job? Because she liked it. Why did she like it? For the creativity and the validation of her talent. Was that enough, and was it time to leave? Yes, and don’t be ridiculous

  David started a sentence he chose not to finish. It wasn’t distraction, she could tell, it was a self-stifle. “Go ahead,” she urged.

  “I think what you like is being good at what you do, even if you don’t exactly like what you do. You’re addicted to competence, you’re an achievement junkie. You could do volunteer work, maybe, and then be competent at something you believe in.”

  He looked over at her. “C’mon, don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad. Not exactly, anyway. If you were thinking about this, why didn’t you tell me? I feel kind of betrayed. You were clearly open to this idea, and I had no inkling.”

  “Ruthie, you want me to tell you everything I might conceivably be open to thinking about? That’s nuts. Even I don’t know that. And even if I did….” his voice dropped off.

  “I’m just trying to figure out and explain how I feel.”

  “I don’t actually need precision about the ingredients and proportions of your various emotions,” David said. “I get it. Enough of it, anyway.”

  “I just wanted to be clear. So you’d understand.”

  “It’s time you knew. Your need to be clear is much greater than it is for your audience.”

  “But it is a need for me, David. Maybe it’s because I felt so misunderstood growing up. Or because I’m short, so I feel like—”

  “Ruthie!”

  “What?”

  “You’re doing it again.”

  “Oh. Okay. Let me just calm down, okay?”

  “Good idea.” After a few minutes, they pulled up to the concert hall, into the designated “Big Shot” parking spaces. It had stopped raining. Ruth took a deep breath and looked at her watch.

  Hoping David would come to his senses in a day or two, she said, “I need for us to talk about this later. I don’t like it at all, but I’ll think about it. Later. But right now, more than anything else, I need to glow. Okay? Glow now, think later.”

  “If that’s what you need, you glow, girl. I’ll be right beside you.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Face-to-Face in the Women’s Room

  RUTH GRABBED DAVID’S HAND as they entered the concert hall. They strode directly to the far right corner of the dazzling glass-and-brass lobby, to the Adams Room, where Mimosa was hosting a pre-concert party for employees who’d bought one of the specially-priced tickets that included a charitable contribution.

  The Adams Room boasted fragile antiques upholstered in navy blue velvet, heavy curtains, and huge ornately-framed oil paintings of white men. When she entered this room with the pre-concert champagne and elegant dessert nibbles designed to entice donations to the Foundation for Children with Scleroderma, she felt as if she were leaving the twentieth and nineteenth centuries behind.

  Pat had volunteered to come early to help set up and greet people as they arrived. Ruth was surprised but glad to be shed of it, and also thought it would be good career-development for Pat. That is, if Pat’s long-range career plan included anything resembling charity benefits.

  Ruth immediately set to work as hostess, making people feel included and appreciated, glad they’d come, and motivated to do it again.

  First she approached the Keatings, tall and standing stiffly as if posing for a picture. His white hair and her white dress, combined with their height, made them hard to overlook.

  “I’m so glad you could come. Jay, I never see you at work, so it’s great to get a glimpse of you here. And Charlotte, how have you been? Last time I saw you, you were quite eloquent about the horrors of parenting an adolescent. Have things improved?”

  Charlotte vented about her daughter’s independent spirit and bragged about her PSAT scores.

  Ruth moved on to a thin woman in a black suit looking around for someone to talk to while trying not to look desperate. “Hi Clarissa, how’s it going?”

  “Ruth you’re such a genius. And it’s so good of you,” said with hand over heart, “to raise all this money for these poor children.”

  “It’s a terrible disease. Imagine what it must be like to have your own immune system attack you. To count yourself lucky if it’s only your skin that’s affected and not your organs.

  “Their friends are probably worried about acne, and these kids would give anything to have acne be their worst skin problem.

  “And the most heart-breaking part is that these kids have no idea why this is happening to them. No one does, really. All they know is that their skin gets thick and stiff. That’s why it’s so important for us to raise money for research and treatment. Thanks, Clarissa, for being part of it.”

  Next was diminutive Rita, with the huge eyeglasses and even huger earrings, who wondered aloud if the corporate benefits were cost-effective while her eyes ceaselessly roamed the crowd like a lighthouse beam.

  “Come on, Rita, you have plenty of time at work to arm-wrestle with me about the bottom line. Tonight, let’s just be
music lovers, okay? Who knows, tomorrow I might actually agree with you.”

  Cameron’s son was considering the Peace Corps, which made it a convenient topic whenever they needed one.

  “So there I was, running a health dispensary at the tender age of twenty-two, seeing people with diseases ranging from polio to elephantiasis to scleroderma. And also meeting David, the volunteer in the next village. Little did I know he was my future better half.”

  Charm on command was exhausting, she thought. It was necessary social lubrication, she knew, and, even though David, the natural-born storyteller, had helped her learn to do it, she still preferred one-on-one intimacy. No one could tell she was a recovering introvert whose shyness had sometimes been mistaken for snobbery. And she’d even managed to stop worrying about how she looked in her dress.

  Flickering lights signaled Turandot would start in five minutes.

  As people ended their small talk and drifted out to the Mimosa block of seats in the first mezzanine, Ruth started towards Pat to tell her what a fine job she’d done. But Pat was busy talking to Jeremy. From her body language, she might easily have been talking about how big a fish she’d caught. She really shouldn’t suck up so soon and so obviously, Ruth thought. You just never know. Office Politics 101.

  Ruth tended to three others who needed herding into the theatre, then found David’s waiting arm.

  “How’s it going so far?”

  She commented on the gratifying mix of “regular” people mixed in with the rich folks. “I’m not sure, but I think we’ll set a record. Lots of people paid at the door. Which means they paid a lot. I can’t wait to see the figures tomorrow. Plus, Mark Bloom pulled me over. Remember him? He used to be CFO at our place, and everyone thought he’d be our new CEO but now he’s being groomed for some top Big Daddy job. He went on and on about how great my charity benefits are, so he’s okay in my book.”

  Seated, Ruth quickly did an inventory of who was sitting with whom just as the lights dimmed and the overture welcomed her to the spectacle.