Hank takes off his coat and his dark glasses, his black baseball cap, and unzips his sweatshirt. Pulls down the hood. He sees my eggs and I can tell he’s hungry. Ruth never did get it how much a man can eat. So Hank sits down and I crack a bunch of eggs into a bowl and all the while Hank is talking talking. I smile and act like I’m listening while I’m scrambling eggs, but I’m not listening. Hank’s talking about Ruth. Ruth this and Ruth that.
What I’m really paying attention to, what I start obsessing about, is the time. I’ve got yoga at eleven o’clock and I still have to get my shit together. I mean, what the fuck. Hank’s come back over to my house, an hour early, without Ruth, to catch up with me. And I could easily blow off yoga for one day. But why should I interrupt my schedule because it’s convenient for him. He knows I go to yoga every day at eleven. And during the past five days he’s had all the time in the world to drop by and chat. Or even call just to check in.
So instead of being thankful that I can see and talk with my dear friend for a whole blessed hour long, all I can think is that if his L.L.Bean toiletry bag and his green toothbrush and his Crest and his razor and Barbasol shaving cream and his Mennen stick deodorant weren’t hanging in my bathroom, he’d probably be calling me from the airport.
So when I turn around, dump the scrambled eggs on his plate, I tell him:
“Sorry, Hank,” I say. “Don’t have the time to talk right now. Yoga’s at eleven and I got to get there early to get a good spot.”
“You all right?” Hank asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say. “Leave the door unlocked. Call me when you get back to Florida. We’ll have some real time to talk.”
We hug once again, before I leave. Hank’s eyes, Christ, he’s got so much to say. But I’m late and I waited for him so now he can wait for me.
After yoga, about twelve-twenty, I’m walking up a side street when Hank and Ruth drive by on Morrison. I quick duck into a bush so they don’t see me. Late as always, Ruth’s shifting into second. She’s got the silver Honda Civic floored. They don’t look like they’re stressed, though, Hank and Ruth. Both of them big smiles. And the damndest thing.
Ruth’s wearing dark glasses. Just like Hank’s.
TWO DAYS LATER, two phone calls. The first one’s from Hank. He knows what time to call exactly. Pacific time after yoga and my shower and after my tuna salad sandwich on my special bread. One-fifteen. Hank’s doing good. He’s rested and feeling strong. Me too. My stink eye’s nowhere around and it’s like we’re back to being Hank and Gruney again. Just talking as if we’d never stopped.
In a moment, Hank takes a deep breath I can hear all the way across the United States. His voice gets lower and full of all that Hank love. He thanks me for listening about Boomer. What a good friend I am and how much he loves that I was there for him.
I don’t know what to say, but I know Hank would do the same for me, and so I tell him that. Then Hank asks a question. And when he asks the question it’s as if everything we’d been talking about so far was just a prelude.
“So tell me about you and Ruth,” Hank says. “The two of you had a thing going for a while there, didn’t you?”
Ruth Dearden and I, a thing. All that I want to say to Hank, beloved Hank, about Ruth, fucked up beloved Ruth. I try, really I do, to come up with some shit that means something not just some bullshit. But I can’t. I mean, what can I say about Ruth Dearden and me, the thing we had, on the phone on a cloud-covered January day in the middle of the afternoon. Fuck.
“Yeah,” I say, “we had a thing.”
“It’s over now, right?” Hank says. “I don’t want to be stepping on any toes.”
“All Ruth and I have left,” I say, “is one more session with my novel.”
“That’s what Ruth said,” Hank says, “that she’s editing your book for you.”
Fucked up the way Hank saying editing your book makes me want to scream. Like Ruth is all of a sudden the Grand Chooser or something. What pisses me off is not what she says about my writing. It’s that I’ve given her the power to say it. This time it’s my deep breath all the way across the United States.
“Yeah,” I say, “she’s helping me out.”
“So tell your old Hankster buddy about her,” Hank says. “What’s the scoop? Anything I don’t know? Something I should watch out for?”
Don’t dump her then introduce her to your best friend.
“Be careful,” I say. “She’s strong and she’s clumsy. She’s damn near knocked me out three times now.”
Hank Christian, man. The way that man can laugh.
THE SECOND PHONE call is from Ruth. I’m surprised it’s Ruth and at first I don’t know what to say. Her voice is upbeat, cheery. Hello. How you feeling. New Year’s Eve was nice. Are you sleeping. What did you think about the edits I made? Is your computer all right?
“My computer?” I say.
“You know,” Ruth says, “the Y2K thing.”
My computer. Ruth just spent four days fucking my best friend and what she wants to talk about is my computer. But don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Ruth was a conniving evil bitch trying to manipulate me. To tell the truth at this point, I don’t really know what Ruth’s motivations are. She probably doesn’t know either. But really that day on the phone, she just sounded like the old Ruth I knew and she wanted to talk and the something she wanted to talk about wasn’t easy for her.
“Looks like you got Hank to the airport on time,” I say.
Ruth never could hide a thing from me. As soon as I mention Hank, there’s quiet that’s too long, then her laugh like a little girl.
“Traffic was a nightmare,” she says.
Then: “Ben?” she says. “Are you okay with this? I mean Hank and me?”
All the things I could’ve said. And that day, all I really knew was Hank loved redheads and Ruth got to fuck a rock star. My own jealousy and feelings of being passed over? Same as with Hank. Where do I start.
The maze of three, man. Fuck.
What I say surprises even me.
“Well, he sure as hell ain’t me,” I say. “If that’s what you’re looking for.”
Quiet that’s too long again.
“I know he’s not you,” Ruth says. “But what’s he like? I mean is there something I should watch out for?”
“If you catch him writing fuck poems to a woman he works with,” I say, “throw all his stuff out the window.”
Ruth’s laugh isn’t a little girl’s anymore. It’s Ruth and she’s really laughing. Maybe too hard.
“You know, Ben,” Ruth says, “Hank said you’ve really changed a lot. From the old days.”
Then something new in Ruth’s voice. The first time I ever hear it.
“He said he doesn’t feel as close to you,” Ruth says. “How were you in the old days?”
My mother. My sister.
Ruth Fucking Dearden, man.
THREE MONTHS AND one more run through, alone, on the novel later, Ruth calls me on the phone. She’s been to Florida to visit Hank. That’s all I ever find out about it. That Ruth flew down to Florida and for one week Ruth visited Hank. No news about where Hank lives, his friends. Nothing about the weather, or a good crayfish restaurant they ate at. How different the cultures are, Northwest and Southeast. No alligator stories or how a four-night fuck fest has turned into a cross-country love affair. Nothing. From Ruth or from Hank. Oh yeah, Ruth fucking loved the sun. That’s it.
But Ruth does have a surprise. She and Hank have come up with an idea. At least Ruth says Hank was in on the idea. When Hank comes to visit in the spring, the three of us should teach a weekend workshop together.
It was the first I’d heard of Hank’s spring visit and it felt weird Hank hadn’t called to talk to me about teaching together. I didn’t know it then, but this was how it was going to be. Hank would talk to Ruth and then Ruth would talk to me. I bought into it, though. To teach with Hank again. The chance to hang out and talk about writing. I’d have
done anything. Then there was the extra money. Hank was finishing up his dissertation and he was having trouble finding a job, and I was barely scraping by and, now that I look back on it, that’s about the time Ruth’s alimony started to run out.
So the second week in April, on the weekend Ruth has scheduled the class, a bright warm spring day, probably the only bright warm spring day Portland’s ever had, I load up on Xanax. My old Volkswagen and I make it one more time over to Ruth’s.
At Ruth’s front door, in the arched alcove, I’m standing on the bienvenue mat. On the other side of the dark wood door, the sound of people. Ruth’s front door, just a damn door. The Running Boy wants to bolt. I pop a Xanax, then another one. The doorbell that sounds like Beethoven’s Fifth. The step you got to take.
HANK’S BEEN IN Portland for over a week and I had no idea.
They make it like a surprise. I come walking into the crowd of people in Ruth’s living room and ta da! Hank jumps out from behind the dining room door and everybody laughs.
Really, that moment, the way Hank just jumped out like that. The guy that told Ruth, the guy that didn’t tell me he doesn’t feel close to me like he used to. Ruth’s visit to Florida, and now he’s a whole fucking week in town. How that might make me feel. That’s the moment right there I got it. The three of us, the fucking endless nuanced painful maze it was. A bull in my china shop, man. Hank Christian didn’t have a clue.
Hank grabs a hold of me and actually picks me up in his arms and holds me the way Mary held Jesus. I only weigh maybe a hundred seventy-five pounds, still it’s weird, a grown man, being held like a child. Hank makes a big deal about kissing me on the lips in front of everybody.
I felt like a gay circus ride.
The day is so warm, Ruth wants to have the class outside. I don’t care how warm it is, I’m always freezing, but I don’t say anything. Hank and Ruth and me, everything feels so delicate, so I just go along with the plan. On the picnic tables in Ruth’s backyard, the sun shining down through the dogwood branches, there’s chips and dip and dried fruit and pasta salad and three bean salad, coleslaw, three stinky cheeses and dill pickles. Paper plates and plastic forks and decorated napkins. A decanter of French press and assorted coffee cups.
Hank and Ruth and I sit at one end of the picnic tables. Ruth’s on one side of me, Hank on the other. Hank’s still heavy, trying to slim down, all in black. Ruth’s skinnier than ever. Her hair so long she can pull it into a rope and tie it up on top of her head. She’s wearing the blue taffeta vintage dress I bought her years ago, the pink sweater with the pearls on it.
Look at us. The three of us. Hank and Ruth and me and ten students sitting around two picnic tables in the springtime in the sun. Above us, pink dogwood blooms. Hank’s got his dark black sunglasses on. Ruth’s sunglasses are white, and the glass is dark too, like Hank’s. Ruth is talking. She has to talk loud because her voice is small in the big bright day. The flush up her neck, onto her cheek. Old friends, new friends of the new millennium. Behind my back, Ruth’s hand and Hank’s hand are clasped together. In the middle of my back I can feel Ruth holding on tight to Hank. Along the side of my leg, it’s Ruth’s black cat, Maupassant. Sun. A warm sunny spring day in April. I’m wearing my winter coat and stocking cap. When I close my eyes and look at the sun, on the backs of the lids of my eyes, all I see is red.
THE CLASS WAS a success and the money was good, so Ruth comes up with another idea. In the summer, we’d schedule another workshop. Hank would be finished with his dissertation by July and the class would be a good excuse for him to get away from the Florida summer. Hank’s all for it. I’m not so sure. In that point of time, the Hank Ruth Ben dance, I was confused to say the least, and all I wanted was for everything to work out. One thing for sure was we could all use the money. So we schedule the class. On one condition, we hold the class at my house.
But in June, there’s some problem with Hank’s dissertation, and Hank has to cancel.
You’d think I’d have a lot of memories about that weekend. Ruth in my house again, sitting across the table from her again, the dueling banjos. The rich history of shit between Ruth and me and all the new shit that was going down with her and Hank. But there’s only two things I remember. I mean two things I’ll never forget.
It was nothing new for Ruth and me, teaching the workshop. It was during the afternoon break on the last day. All the students were away from the table. Ruth had just sat down in her chair with a fresh cup of hot tea. More than likely, I was eating my sardines. It was the way she said it and how it came out of nowhere:
“You know,” Ruth said, “I’ve got twelve people in my regular Thursday class and not one of them have any idea who Ben Grunewald is.”
I looked over at Ruth. She was still wearing her dark sunglasses. Her hair down past her shoulders. Hank Christian loved long hair on women. Maybe it was because the light from the floor lamp was behind her, or maybe it was my tired eyes. Whatever it was, even though I knew Ruth Dearden was the person sitting right across the table from me, except for the scarlet flush on her neck and up her chin, I never would’ve recognized her.
The other thing happened later that afternoon at the end of class. Five o’clock and the students were gone. The lights were out, the paper recycled, and I’d just locked the basement door.
Back in the old days, that last day, after Ruth and I’d finished teaching, we always gave ourselves a little time and space to talk to each other about the class. That afternoon, as I was walking up the stairs, I remember looking forward to checking in with Ruth.
Upstairs, Ruth was on the phone. In my kitchen, at my kitchen table, on my telephone, in front of me. Ruth was laughing and talking all about the class she’d just taught.
To Hank.
For a moment, I think she’ll hand the phone over to me.
But then she hangs up.
EARLY SEPTEMBER. HANK calls me from Florida and leaves a message that he’ll be in Portland for a month. It’s been too long, Dear Heart, Hank says, We’ll get to spend some quality time together, man. I promise.
In my kitchen that day, after my shower, making up my tuna salad sandwich, I’m standing with a piece of toast in my hand. My special wheatless bread toast. On the table, the bowl of tuna salad, the lettuce, my glass of sparkling water. One-fifteen, I’m listening to Hank’s voice on my voicemail.
He’d called when he knew I’d be in yoga.
Still, I was surprised. Dear Heart and I promise. Fucking Hank Christian, man. Really, it was great to hear his voice again.
Since the ta da! moment last April when he stepped out from behind Ruth’s dining room door – for about a month after that, when he got back to Florida, Hank had called me a bunch of times. But I didn’t call him back. The truth is, I can fold up my cards, too, and disappear. It’s survival, man.
So that day of the voice message, after hearing Hank’s voice, I get to thinking. Since Ruth and I’d finished up the edits, for several months now, we hadn’t talked at all. And Hank and I weren’t talking. Everything had got so confused. And I think what the fuck. Really, things didn’t seem they could get much worse. All that weird silence. I was so far away from Hank, and it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to get any of Hank without Ruth, so I figured it was time I held up a white flag. I mean the shit was piling up in me.
It’s almost Ruth’s birthday, so I call Ruth up and ask her out to lunch.
“Out to lunch?!” Ruth says. “Ben, are you all right?”
Ruth knows me pretty well, too. Lunch to me is a nightmare. Lunch is about bread and bread is about wheat. Or lunch is about salad and salad is about not enough protein. Lunch for me is either the expensive fish dish at the bottom of the menu, or it’s some kind of fucking grilled chicken breast. And fuck me, if I never eat another fucking grilled chicken breast again, I’ll be just fine.
“For your birthday,” I say. “Let’s go down the street to your favorite restaurant.”
THAT NEXT WEDNESDAY, Ruth an
d I meet in the restaurant just three blocks from me. Ruth’s favorite restaurant where the following September Ruth and Hank will get married and I won’t be invited to the wedding.
Ruth is late. She breezes in the restaurant with her sunglasses on in an off-white summer dress. As she walks toward me through the tables, the sun’s behind her. I can see the silhouette of her naked legs. Her sandals have a low heel and no strap on the back. The sandals snap against the bottom of her feet. She’s carrying a shopping bag from Nordstrom’s.
But the most amazing thing. Ruth has done something to her hair. Her hair and all of its unruly thick curls is totally straight. It hangs down almost to the middle of her back. The incredible weight of it, the shine. The blonde highlights are gone and the red of her hair is almost copper. She sets the Nordstrom’s bag down, tucks her dress in, and sits down on the chair across the table. She takes off her sunglasses, folds them, and puts them in a case, and puts the case in her purse, one of those new huge designer leather purses, puke green.
Really, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ruth look so beautiful. For a moment I think she’s had some face work done. Then I realize she’s so thin, the shape of her face has changed. She now has major cheekbones. And there’s something new about her makeup, around her eyes. Mascara, eyeliner, dyed eyelashes, I can’t figure. I’m looking close but can’t look too close. Ruth is watching me look at her. Her too-blue eyes jump out at me like never before.
Ruth pulls her chair closer to the table. Then she does what I’ve seen so many beautiful women do. She moves her head, lifting her chin, so her mass of copper hair swings to behind her shoulder. She sits up, lifts her chest, her new Wonderbra, checks the bra strap and the scooped neckline of her dress with her fingers. She brings both hands up to her forehead, and with her fingers along her hairline, pulls her new straight hair behind her ears. Gold hooped earrings. Her long thin white arms. On her right wrist an expandable gold bracelet with dangly gold charms.
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