Goodbye To All That

by Judith Arnold

  Another song, or maybe it was two, and Ruth decided she ought to take a break. God knew how she’d feel tomorrow morning after all this boogying. If Wade wanted to remain on the dance floor, fine, but when she pointed toward herself and then in the direction of their table, he nodded and followed her.

  A stranger had planted himself at the table with Hilda. He looked a little older than her and Wade, and his shirt had one too many buttons undone in front. He wasn’t particularly good-looking, either. Despite the contorted little barbell puncturing his eyebrow, Wade was much more handsome.

  The stranger stood when they reached the table, although he leaned possessively over Hilda, who appeared bored. “Hey, taking your mom dancing?” he asked Wade, smirking at his profound cleverness.

  “She’s my friend,” Wade said, then turned to Hilda. “Who’s this bozo?”

  “Just some bozo,” she replied with a shrug.

  “Well, thanks for keeping her company,” Wade said, nudging the guy out of the way and sitting next to Hilda. Pleased that she no longer had to hover between them like a referee in a boxing match, Ruth took her seat on the other side of Hilda, sandwiching Hilda and making clear to the bozo that there was no place for him at the table.

  “Well, okay,” he said with what appeared to be forced amiability. “So, I’ll see you around.”

  Hilda shrugged again. Wade chased the bozo away with his stare. “Who the fuck was that?” he asked Hilda.

  “Don’t use that language,” she scolded, shooting Ruth a glance. Ruth shook her head and waved her hand to show she wasn’t scandalized by Wade’s word choice. Hilda turned back to him. “He was just some creep. I could handle him.”

  “What a dork. He looked like—who was that actor? The one who made all those stupid movies about moonshiners and redneck sheriffs?”

  “Burt Reynolds,” Ruth said. The guy had looked a little like him in some of his sleazier roles. She took a sip of her wine, which had warmed up enough to taste like cleaning solvent. She ignored the flavor. All that dancing had made her thirsty.

  “You really know how to move out there,” Wade praised her, gesturing toward the dance floor. “You were fly, Ruthie. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  “You tired me out, for sure,” Hilda said with a grin.

  “Fly? What’s that?”

  “Cool,” Hilda translated.

  “Me? Cool?” Ruth laughed and took another sip of wine.

  “We ought to take her dancing with us all the time,” Wade said. “She’ll keep us on our toes.”

  “Literally,” Hilda added.

  “No.” Ruth shook her head for emphasis. “You’re not taking me dancing all the time. In fact, I think you should go back over there and dance, just the two of you.”

  “Ugh.” Hilda curled her lip. “What are you, a matchmaker? We’re breaking up, remember?”

  “I’m not breaking up,” Wade said.

  “Fine. You don’t have to break up. I’ll break up for both of us.”

  Wade sent Ruth a despairing look. If Hilda weren’t sitting between them, she would have given him a firm lecture, ordering him to fight for what he wanted.

  It occurred to her that she might have enjoyed doing things like this—going to clubs in Boston, drinking lousy wine and dancing until she was dripping with sweat—for years. But she’d never demanded that Richard take her dancing at clubs. She’d never even asked. He would have considered it out of character for her, and inappropriate. She’d been a suburban wife and mother, for God’s sake, not someone who was fly. And so she’d never fought for what she wanted.

  Until now.

  Ruth couldn’t say all those things to Wade, so she just gave him a stern frown. He straightened slightly, stood, and closed his hand around Hilda’s. “Fine,” he snapped. “You can break up for both of us. But first, we’re dancing.” With that, he tugged her out of her chair and dragged her back to the dance floor. Not really dragged. She wasn’t resisting him, Ruth noticed.

  Alone at the table, she smiled and settled herself more comfortably on her stool. Either they’d break up or they wouldn’t, but at least they’d dance. And that was what tonight was about: not saving relationships, not figuring out the future. Just dancing.

  Chapter Twenty

  The queasiness was returning. Richard swallowed several times, tightened the knot of his tie at his throat and squared his shoulders. He’d brought patients back from the edge of death. He’d restarted moribund hearts. Surely he could have a cup of coffee with Shari Bernstein without vomiting.

  He and Doug had played golf on Saturday—probably their last outing on the links until spring. They’d worn fleece jackets for warmth, and they hadn’t indulged in drinks until they’d finished all eighteen holes and retired to the clubhouse to thaw out. But the ground wasn’t frozen or covered with snow, so they’d played.

  And talked.

  Somewhere between the fourth and the seventh hole, Doug had told Richard that, according to Jill, Ruth intended to go out dancing that night. Doug might as well have swung a nine-iron into Richard’s gut. Dancing? Moving to the music in some other man’s arms?

  Richard had been unable to conjure a picture of Ruth as he knew her, dependably familiar in her unflashy way, dressed in jeans, an old sweater and her battered leather loafers. Instead he’d visualized her with her hair swept up and her body draped in silk, her head tilted back to gaze into the eyes of a guy Richard couldn’t identify but wanted to pummel. He’d visualized them swirling around on a stereotypically romantic dance floor, with gauzy lighting and a combo playing a schmaltzy tune Ruth would never listen to in real life, given her scholarly knowledge of music. He’d visualized sparks of brilliance flashing from her earlobes as the diamond earrings he’d given her caught the light.

  The possibility that she’d wear those earrings with another man had made him nearly crazy.

  Doug had lowered Richard’s blood pressure by saying that, as far as he knew, Ruth’s plan involved going out with co-workers. That she was socializing with the sort of people who worked as clerks at First-Rate didn’t thrill Richard, but it was much better than his first image of her with her left hand draped on some creep’s shoulder and her right hand clasped within his while they floated across the dance floor to the strains of “Strangers in the Night” or “Moon River.”

  Still, he’d needed a stiff belt of scotch at the clubhouse to restore his equilibrium. He’d wondered why Jill hadn’t mentioned Ruth’s dance outing when he’d found her in his house, collecting clothing for Ruth. If he’d taken her up on her invitation for dinner, would she have told him over a dessert of rugelach that his wife was going club-hopping with First-Rate clerks? Had she ever intended to mention this news to him?

  Obviously not. She wouldn’t have wanted to upset him.

  Doug hadn’t wanted to upset him, either. At least Richard was pretty sure that hadn’t been his motive. No, what Doug had wanted to do was light a fire under Richard, to prod him into meeting Dr. Shari Bernstein for coffee.

  So, here he was. Walking down the hall to a staff lounge at five-fifteen Monday afternoon to drink a cup of coffee. Or maybe tea. Or maybe ginger ale, to settle his stomach.

  He entered the room cautiously, surveying it with his gaze while trying to act as if he was just strolling in. People sat at tables, some in scrubs, some in street attire. Gert had claimed Dr. Bernstein was gorgeous, but Richard didn’t let that limit his search.

  Forget gorgeous. Not even an ugly woman was sitting alone in the room.

  All right, so he’d arrived ahead of her. Maybe that was good. A gorgeous woman shouldn’t be kept waiting. Who knew—if she was gorgeous enough, someone else might swoop in and buy her a cup of coffee while she was waiting for Richard.

  That wouldn’t happen, because he’d gotten to the lounge first. He didn’t mind waiting. It would give him a chance to relax before he had to meet her.

  He sauntered over to an empty table, sat and wished he had a newspaper
to flip through. Or a book. A patient’s file. Something to make him appear as if he wasn’t waiting.

  A slap on the back jolted him. He turned to find Maury Slovisky hovering behind him, beaming. The reflection of the overhead light on Maury’s bald spot was almost as bright as his smile. “What are you still doing here?” Maury asked. “Aren’t you usually out the door by now?”

  Maury was a hot-dog cardiac surgeon, always boasting about the punishing hours he kept and the high-risk procedures he performed. Every surgery with him was dire and rife with complications. The man was a good doctor but also a bullshit artist. Too bad he wasn’t as adept at closing his mouth as he was at closing a chest.

  Richard didn’t care to discuss his coffee date with Maury, of all people. If Maury found out he was meeting another woman because he and Ruth were separated, everyone at Beth Israel Deaconess would know about it.

  He scrambled to come up with a cover story. “I’m meeting someone to discuss some collaborative research,” he said, silently congratulating himself. Not only did it sound distinctly unromantic, but it also made him seem important.

  Sure enough, Maury deflated. “Research? I didn’t know you swung that way, Richard. Since when are you vying for a Nobel Prize?”

  “It’s just something we’re discussing,” he said cryptically.

  “What area? A new product? You know the problems patients have had with some of those stents. Problems followed by law suits. Can you say class action? You could be walking straight into a minefield.”

  “I’d rather not go into it now,” Richard said. Even better—let Maury think this imaginary research might involve patentable products that could earn Richard millions. Maury would eat himself up with envy and curiosity.

  “Well, you know my expertise, Richard. If there’s anything I could contribute . . .”

  And get your greedy hands on a third of the licensing fees? Not a chance, Richard thought, then reminded himself that his supposed research collaboration was a lie. No licensing fees existed for Maury to get his greedy hands on. No Nobel Prize in Medicine loomed in Richard’s future.

  A woman entered the lounge. Middle-aged, shoulder-length reddish-brown hair, not exactly gorgeous but even from across the room her skin seemed luminous. She was dressed rather plainly, in a tailored blouse and slacks and a colorful scarf that hung around her shoulders, serving no purpose Richard could fathom. He’d never understood the whole thing with women and scarves. In his world, you wore a scarf to keep your neck warm, or else you didn’t wear a scarf.

  She scanned the room, just as he had when he’d arrived. Her gaze slid right past Richard, perhaps because Maury was hovering over his table, perhaps because she wasn’t Shari Bernstein. But when she did a second scan, she lingered on him for a moment. He nodded slightly. Was that how it was done? he wondered. Was that how two people who’d never before seen each other connected? Non-verbal signals had never been his forte.

  She nodded back and smiled.

  “My colleague is here,” he said in a sharp tone, hoping Maury would take the hint and disappear. Unfortunately, he didn’t. And why should he? He wanted to meet Richard’s potential co-Nobelist.

  Richard stood as she wove among the tables in his direction. Definitely not gorgeous, he concluded. Her eyes were close-set and her nose had the chiseled, not-quite-right appearance that indicated a rhinoplasty—an older one, probably done when she was in her teens. Plastic surgeons were much better at shaping noses now than they were thirty years ago, when all the noses sculpted by a given surgeon wound up looking exactly the same, regardless of the surrounding face. Richard recalled three classmates in high school who’d all gotten nose jobs done by the same surgeon over summer vacation. When they’d returned to school the following September, they could have passed for cousins. They all had exactly the same nose.

  Shari Bernstein’s nose might have qualified her for membership in their family. Her complexion really was amazing, however, smooth and creamy, an excellent advertisement for her dermatological expertise. “Dr. Bernstein?” he asked, extending his hand, hoping his palm wasn’t too sweaty with nerves.

  She returned his smile and gave his hand a firm shake. “Dr. Bendel?” Her gaze shifted to Maury.

  “This is Maury Slovisky, also a cardiologist,” Richard said quickly. “He’s on his way out.”

  Maury’s eyes shifted between Richard and Shari. “Don’t leave me in the dark,” he said, nudging Richard in the ribs. “You get something cooking here that I can contribute to, just let me know.”

  “I’m sure I will,” Richard mumbled while a faint frown creased Shari’s forehead. Richard glared at Maury until he shambled off toward the door. Not until Maury had left the room did he gesture for Shari to sit.

  She did. “What did he mean, contribute?”

  “Nothing. He’s a putz. You want some coffee? Tea?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, as if she needed confirmation that Maury was truly gone, and then settled in her chair. “Decaf, please. Black.”

  Over at the counter, where Richard filled two thick porcelain mugs from the decaffeinated machine, he realized why she’d seemed so rattled by Maury. She thought she and Richard were on a date, or at least something that might lead to a date, and there Maury had been, offering to join in. Shari Bernstein must have thought Richard was a pervert, interested in threesomes. He shuddered. Just thinking of Maury naked made him queasier than he’d ever felt while anticipating this meeting with Shari Bernstein.

  They’d started out on the wrong foot, as the cliché had it. He hoped he could redeem the situation.

  After paying for the drinks, he carried them back to the table. She smiled and thanked him. Very mannerly, very polite. Very stilted.

  “So, you’re a cardiologist,” she said once he’d resumed his seat across the table from her.

  What was the appropriate response? Yes, I’m a cardiologist. He didn’t really want to talk about his work. He decided to let her do the talking. “I understand you worked miracles on Gert’s son. He had a birth mark or something?”

  “A port-wine stain. And it was hardly a miracle.” She trilled a laugh as light as crystal, so delicate it could splinter.

  “Well, Gert spoke very highly of you. I’m sure if I asked her son, he’d speak highly of you, too.”

  “Doubtful,” she said, then took a sip of her coffee. Her fingernails were polished a startling red. Doctors didn’t have red nails, did they? His daughters—a lawyer and a freelance catalog writer—didn’t wear red nail polish. Nor did his lovely daughter-in-law or his magnificent granddaughters. Red nails didn’t happen in his family, and thank God for that. “Gert’s son is a teenager,” she went on. “Teenagers never have anything good to say about anything.”

  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

  “I’ve got two teenage daughters,” she said, and then that was that. For the next—by the time he looked at his watch, fifteen minutes had elapsed—he got to listen to her rant about her daughters. They spent more than the gross national product of Botswana on hair grooming products. They slammed doors rather than closing them. The older one believed that having a driver’s license was the same thing as owning a car, and ever since she’d gotten her license she’d acted as if Shari’s car was her own. The younger one believed that she could learn to play the piano through osmosis, and after Shari had spent a fortune on piano lessons for her, this younger daughter had decided she no longer needed to practice. But God forbid she quit taking lessons.

  Richard listened as Shari told him about her daughters’ cell-phone habits, their musical tastes—“when I say ‘musical,’ I’m being facetious,” she noted—their exploits in field hockey, their apparel budgets, their bickering, their messiness, their idea of home cooking—“if it can’t be zapped in the microwave, they won’t make it”—and their forgetfulness when it came to walking the dog.

  She eventually wound down, leaving Richard to understand that he was supposed to
say something. “You’ve got a dog?”

  That turned out to be an effective conversational gambit. Shari launched into another monologue, this one about the dog, a shih-tzu—which sounded kind of obscene to Richard—named Hayley, who had to be the stupidest dog ever to utter a “woof-woof,” and her grooming cost more than the gross national product of Swaziland. Hayley refused to sleep on anything but a velvet cushion, and Shari had had her spayed despite her pedigree bloodline because, as a dermatologist with a demanding career, she simply didn’t have the time to breed her. “Do you have a dog?”

  “No,” Richard said, feeling a toxic blend of panic and desperation bubble up inside him. What else could he say? He had to say something more than no. But what? He’d never had pets, and his children were adults, accomplished, a source of pride. How their spending habits compared to sub-Saharan economics, he had no idea.

  Shari Bernstein had teenage daughters. She was too young for him, although she didn’t seem that young. He’d become a father right after he’d finished medical school—he still remembered Ruth waddling around in her eighth month at his graduation ceremony—whereas Shari had obviously become a mother later in life. So she had teenage daughters. He had a nearly-teenage granddaughter. Six months and Abbie would be bat-mitzvah.

  He groped through his memory in search of something to say. “There was a documentary about dog breeders on PBS the other day,” he remarked. He’d caught a few seconds of the show while he’d been channel surfing, searching for something more interesting to watch.

  That was good enough to get her going again.

  He leaned back in his chair, sipping his coffee and letting her voice wash over him. Her hair was sleek, evenly colored, not a hint of gray in it. Ruth’s hair was streaked with gray, but it looked more natural. His fingers flexed, missing the feel of her dark, ordinary hair. When was the last time he’d stroked her head? When was the last time he’d cupped his hands around her cheeks and kissed her?