Sasha collapsed at the kitchen table weeping, her arms folded across her knees, her head resting on them, the slight scratchiness of her sweater making her want to shout. Rudy rubbed her shoulder. She could hear Gabor back at the refrigerator, taking out the wine she and Rudy were going to finish—a special bottle from their tri-tip dinner the night before. Gabor probably couldn’t imagine the fact that someone—two people—wouldn’t finish a bottle of wine.
“Fancy,” she heard Gabor say.
“Help yourself to a glass,” she heard Rudy say. His voice was calm, not unkind, but not bright or inviting. Don’t offer Gabor more alcohol! She supposed Rudy was just trying to placate him.
“Let’s all have a talk,” he tried reasoning with their unwanted guest. Unwanted, yet they’d waited so long to locate him!
Sasha nodded into her lap. She felt as though she might never be able to lift her head again. Still, she sat up straight, yanking tissues from a box on the table. Turning to Gabor and Rudy by the island in the kitchen, she realized that Gabor was probably even drunker than she’d realized. He slid a bottle in a paper bag from his beat-up brown leather jacket and took a swig from it, telling Rudy suddenly that he didn’t like fancy yuppie wine.
“Gotcha,” Rudy said, pulling a medium-sized glass from the cupboard and dropping a few ice cubes into it. “May I?” he asked Gabor, reaching for the brown-bag bottle. Gabor allowed Rudy to pour him a drink from his bottle, which Rudy then set on the counter, and Gabor quickly pocketed again.
“One moment,” Rudy said, excusing himself as he stepped over to the little built-in kitchen desk, which housed a small computer and some shelves and drawers. Rudy pulled out the manila envelope with the divorce papers in it.
“Sasha has something for you,” Rudy said, lowering his voice so that it was grave and gravelly.
Maybe Gabor suspected trouble, because he drained his glass, set it on the counter by the sink, and said, “No thank you. Actually, I should be going.” With that he lunged toward the door from the kitchen to the garage. He must have thought this was a back door to the driveway or carport, as it had been in Sasha and Gabor’s house. But as he opened the door to the garage, the automatic lights blinked on. Still, he stumbled down the two concrete steps, closing the door behind him.
By the time Rudy reached the garage, Gabor had climbed into Rudy’s car. While he didn’t have the keys, the locks in the car thumped as Gabor snapped them down.
Rudy clicked his keys so that the locks popped back open.
Gabor clunked the locks shut again. Sasha had always had two children, really. She took the manila envelope of divorce papers from Rudy. He stood in the doorway and watched her as she clomped defiantly down the two concrete steps from the kitchen, lurching toward the car in her clogs. She rapped on the window of the car, then twirled her fist round and round in the air.
“Roll down the window there, mister.”
“He doesn’t have the key,” Rudy pointed out, just as Gabor opened the door about eight inches.
“You order the burger and fries, medium Coke?” Sasha asked.
Sasha was scrappy and resourceful, and she could be very funny. As this part of her personality had emerged, Rudy felt almost quixotic for having imagined her—perhaps from her love of Chopin, and the delicate watches she handled daily—as a damsel in distress. As delicate as the ballerina that popped up out of CeCe’s childhood musical jewelry box with a little pink tutu. This wasn’t really how he thought of her, but the image appeared now to chide him as he realized how brave she was, how proud he was of her for her bravery.
Sasha produced the manila folder from behind her back. “This came in the mail for you.” Gabor reached for it, seemingly encouraged by the official look of the front of the envelope. Maybe he thought it contained a check for unemployment, or disability. Sasha stepped up to the window, speaking into the glass, as Gabor closed the car door and the locks clunked shut again.
“For you. From Santa Clara County Court. I want a divorce.”
“Health insurance,” Gabor only said.
“You can COBRA. By law, you can COBRA. But you better get your own job, because it’s expensive.”
“You are Cobra!” Gabor yelled at the window, stabbing the glass with his stubby square forefinger. “You are snake, witch, kill our daughter.”
“That’s enough!” From behind her, Rudy bellowed the words. “Sasha, come here, please.” His voice was kind, not bossy. She turned from the car. Her husband had locked himself in her boyfriend’s car, but at least she had managed to serve the deadbeat with divorce papers.
“Useless process server overcharging attorney,” Sasha said, clearly shaken as she passed Rudy and stood partially behind him on the threshold into the kitchen and family room area.
“Gabor, you can stay in the car as long as you want, until the police get here,” Rudy said loudly and calmly—like a pilot on a rocky flight describing the details of the situation to the passengers. “I am going inside to call them now. You may get out of the car while we are waiting for them to arrive . . . I’d appreciate it if you not vomit in my car, but my suggestion to you is to get out, and go on home now.” Rudy rolled up the garage door so that Gabor could scramble out.
Sasha backed into the house.
Gabor opened the door, threw out the manila envelope, and locked himself in the car again.
Idiot, Sasha thought. This was what always got him—and them as a couple—into trouble. His illogical, stewed thinking when drunk. He had a perfectly good escape, he had a new family. A divorce would surely be appreciated by the mother of his baby. He was broken. Not a broken soul—more like a broken-down appliance.
“Go home, Gabor,” Sasha advised.
Rudy took Sasha’s elbow and encouraged her to go into the house and sit down.
“Listen, Gabor,” he calmly called into the garage. “You can throw away those papers, but you have a court date to appear, and you have been served with the papers. It’s not difficult and it doesn’t have to be acrimonious. All you have to do is show up and we will do the paperwork. Don’t make it harder. Take it with you and go. You don’t even have to read it. Just look at the date and be sure to show up.”
“I will sue you, piano player dime store!” Gabor shouted.
But Rudy had already turned from him. He closed the door to the garage just in time to see Sasha, who had clearly heard Gabor, spit a sip of red wine she’d taken straight over the kitchen sink and onto the window.
“I’m sorry,” she said, starting to cry.
“It’s okay,” Rudy said, turning her from the sink to give her a hug. “You missed your sweater. The window’s easy to wipe off.”
Sasha collapsed into him, breaking into sobs.
“You are strong,” Rudy told her. “Against all these odds, you are strong and good.”
“I am not strong,” Sasha said, standing up and turning to splash her face with cool water from the sink.
“Well, you don’t have to be,” Rudy replied. “You know, the doctor at the hospital asked me who I was being strong for. He said, ‘We are too strong and we snap in the breeze. You ever see palm trees in a really big storm? In a hurricane, even category five—the worst, they bend all the way down, like giant feather dusters sweeping the ground.’ He said it was one of the most remarkable things he’d ever seen. This uncanny resilience we somehow muster.”
Sasha seemed to take heart with his words. Rudy appreciated her strength. Yet wanted to alleviate some of the relentless stress that pressed into her always-sore back.
The police came sooner than they’d expected. When they opened the door to the garage, Gabor was gone. The police hovered over Rudy and shone their flashlights into his car, as they made sure the car had not been vandalized. It had not. And along with Gabor, the big brown envelope of divorce papers was gone.
25
Bethany knew by their second date in college that she would marry Rudy. And she was hardly a romantic! In her English Lit cla
ss she found the doomed heroines in Edith Wharton’s novels much more authentic than the happily-ever-after wedding church bell tales of Jane Austen. It was after Bee and Rudy seceded from their group of dining hall and pub friends and ventured out on their own that they finally embarked on what you could call a proper date. They went out to dinner in town to a Thai place with white tablecloths and delicious food, topped off with a dessert of mango and sticky rice with coconut milk and coconut ice cream. Rudy had given Bee a choice of restaurants for their outing, paper menus collected ahead of time, so that she could choose the restaurant. He was a foodie even back then, but never a food snob. He always loved admiring others’ preparation of food, and feeding friends, as much as he enjoyed eating. Not pleased with the restaurant’s wine list on that date, though, he had called ahead and asked if he could bring a bottle and pay a corkage fee. Bee was impressed that Rudy had worked this all out ahead of time. She learned over dinner that Rudy’s mother had died rapidly of pancreatic cancer the previous year. This experience seemed to plunge him into the grown-up world ahead of others his age, and explained how he did seem the most mature in their college group of friends.
“So fast,” Bee remarked, on how Rudy’s mother had only lived for a few months after her diagnosis.
“There really are no symptoms before it reaches stage four,” he explained, “next thing you know your mom’s in a hospital bed in the living room.”
Bee’s eyes welled up for this sweet boy.
Rudy scooped more noodles onto her plate. “The pancreas should get its shit together if you ask me.”
Next thing, Bee cracked up, spitting out a bit of her Thai iced tea onto her plate. “Oh, that is not funny,” she apologized. “I just . . . you rarely curse!”
Rudy blushed. Then he started to laugh because it was so awful it was funny and he had clearly been so angered by his mother’s senseless death and they were both laughing and crying at the same time and trying not to choke on their food.
“I love you,” Rudy told her.
They slept together that night. “I put out on the first date,” Bee giggled in the years to come.
“We’d known each other for months,” Rudy reminded her.
They had. Study sessions and long group gabs after dining hall dinners, with cups and cups of coffee. All of them procrastinating on their papers due, singing Monty Python’s “Bruces’ Philosophers Song.”
“EEEEEmanual Kant was a real pissant.” Rudy, with a beautiful voice, Bee couldn’t help noticing, would get them started, and they’d all stay until the dining room closed and they were kicked out.
On their second date Rudy made beef Bolognese for Bee, explaining how the little bit of milk you added to the browning meat helped break down the fat and give it a sweet, nutty taste.
They slept together again that night, and talked until dawn. Rudy was the most completely authentic human being Bee thought she’d ever met. Serious, funny, patient, happy, even if prone to dark moods, always complimentary to her, way too hard on himself. A bundle of contradictions that somehow made her feel comfortable, relaxed, and safe.
Well into their marriage they sang the philosphers song in bed. They also continued to play a silly game they’d invented in college, lying tangled in the sheets after making love, staring up at the ceiling and stating:
“If I get hit by a bus . . .”
“Play ‘Wish You Were Here’ by Pink Floyd at my funeral.”
“Play ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’ at mine.”
“If I get hit by a bus, the $200,000 in cash is hidden in the walls in our cabin in Tahoe.”
“We don’t have a cabin in Tahoe.”
“Oh, right.”
“If I get hit by a bus, please get remarried,” Rudy said to Bee one night when they were in their forties, lying in bed, listening to the cars splash by in the rain-soaked street below their bedroom window.
Bee rolled over and kissed him. “Have you noticed how few buses there are these days, anyway?”
“I mean it.” Rudy drew her closer, kissed the lace of her camisole, the top of her head. “But not that guy at the bagel shop. I don’t like the way he looks at you.”
Bee pulled away from him, pinched his nose, which he hated.
“I have a secret celebrity crush on Bill Hader. I’m going to marry him if you get hit by a bus.”
“AGE INAPPROPRIATE!” Rudy declared.
“Yessssss,” Bee said. “And very cute and hilarious . . .”
“He can’t sing,” Rudy declared. “And I bet he can’t play the piano.” Rudy’s tone took a more serious turn. “Seriously, I’m not kidding. If anything happens to me, don’t wait around forever. Remarry, promise?”
Bee rolled over and he spooned her. “Just not that jerk who admires the garden so enthusiastically when you’re out there in your tank top, weeding. I see how he looks at your beautiful arms!”
Bee gently elbowed Rudy in the gut. “If I get hit by a bus, promise me you won’t be too hard on yourself,” she said softly.
“Don’t you worry.” He lifted his wife’s hair and kissed the back of her neck in the place where it was especially soft, and a little damp. “Besides, you’re going to outlive me by years. Statistically proven.”
26
Since Sasha first began staying at Rudy’s house, they had taken longer and longer walks together around the neighborhood, and up into the surrounding hills, where Sasha was delighted to see deer, and rabbits. It helped Rudy work out the hospital kinks, and helped Sasha curb her jitters.
November had arrived and it was raining. One morning there was a particularly big storm: the rain gutters plonking, a few roof shingles flying on to the lawn. When the storm let up in the afternoon, they ventured out for their stroll. The sky darkened, though, and it began to rain harder. The leaves clogged the sewer drains, and water pooled up in the street. They had bundled up in raincoats and hiking shoes. Rudy brought along two huge golf umbrellas. It was nice to be outside and breathe the cold, moist air, watch the steam of their breath billow before them. Rudy crouched down in the street and began to dig at the leaves clogging the sewer drain.
“If I had a shovel . . .” he mused.
Sasha crouched down with him, and together they cleared a path for the water to run into the drain, as they tossed leaves and muck onto the grass at the edge of the sidewalk.
“Yuck! Cold!” Sasha laughed. “Stinky!”
Rudy laughed. Sasha laughed harder, gulping and coughing.
“Why are we laughing?” Rudy asked her, rain dripping from the hood of his raincoat onto his nose, then his chest. They were out playing in the muck. He was sticky and warm under all the layers now and looked forward to getting home to a quick shower, dry fire, and glass of wine.
Sasha pulled a package of tissues from her pocket and handed a wad to Rudy. They wiped off their hands. Sasha rinsed her fingers again in the cold, cleaner flow of water. “Ayeeee!” she cried. She used the last bit of tissue to wipe her hands, then buried them into an old pair of woolen mittens from her pockets.
“I would like new gloves for Christmas,” she announced.
Christmas. Before Rudy met Sasha, he never could have imagined Christmas again.
“We can pick out together,” she said, “with my discount.”
“You are practical to the point of being unromantic,” Rudy told her. They were on the sidewalk again. Sasha picked up a huge, perfectly shaped orange leaf. She put it in her pocket where the tissues had been, careful to keep it flat.
“Besides,” Rudy said, “I might like to shop at a different store. I’m not sure I want to see Dinner Theater Darren and the whole crew.” There was no crew, really, just the headless mannequin, and the worry that the sadness that had haunted him those months playing at the store after Bee died might return. Might wrap itself around his head like one of those nearby dramatically wide and long cashmere pashminas, until he choked.
“Suit yourself,” Sasha said.
They wal
ked in silence, making one last loop around another block, until they’d reached the house. Rudy never called it his house anymore. It was the house. Where he’d hoped Sasha and her kitty, and even her own grief, would feel at home. He’d swiped, blown-up, and framed a black-and-white photograph of Stefi and Sasha that he had loved at first sight. She kept it in a box of her things, though, and he wasn’t sure if it had been out on display back at her house. “Trigger warning,” he’d said when he presented her with it, adding that they could hang it or shove it in the attic crawl space if it was too sad. Sasha wept, but chose the former option. It now hung in the hallway, near a photo of CeCe as a girl, sternly running a strawberry lemonade stand at the foot of their driveway.
The holidays—Christmas, he thought—and then his birthday, December 30. Back when Bee was alive, when Rudy’s landmark fiftieth birthday had been approaching, he’d obsessed over it so much that he started to think he would turn fifty-one that year. After she died, he felt one hundred. He hadn’t even thought about his birthday this year. He realized now that he hadn’t been able to imagine his birthday without Bethany. He hadn’t really believed he was going to live that long, get that far. It wasn’t a suicidal tendency. He didn’t think so. For a while there, he just didn’t think there was a reason to get out of bed anymore. Next thing, he was in the hospital. CeCe was there, crying. And then Sasha. And then he was sitting up, playing cards. They still played gin rummy some nights. Tonight when they got home—it was five o’clock already, nearly dark—Rudy was going to build a big fire, and have cheese, crackers, and wine with Sasha. Then he’d pull out the coq au vin he’d started in the morning, put it in the oven, sit down with her until it was time to heat the bread and toss the salad. Someone for whom to cook and eat with. That was not something you could put in an antidepressant pill. CeCe stopped by for dinner many nights now that Spencer had moved out, so they all could eat as a family. Keira even took her bath and put on her pj’s before she and her mom left because she would fall asleep in the car before they got home. Rudy and Sasha had the pleasure of reading her stories after her bath. CeCe repeatedly told her dad how much these evenings helped her.
Me for You Page 22