Last Rights

by Lynne Hugo

  Because of that comfort, it didn’t seem especially strange when, in April, Sandy whirled into our room one Wednesday evening and said, “Mark wants to talk to you,” and gestured in the direction of the floor phone, down the hall.

  “Huh? Me? Why?” I was already in pajamas, my hair on giant rollers, bent over a statistics problem from mathematics hell.

  “You’ll see. Go.”

  I scooted down the hall and picked up the receiver she’d left dangling.

  “Mark? Hi, it’s me. What do you need?” I’d guessed he wanted to check Sandy’s size on something or other; he’d had me do that more than once already.

  “Actually, you.”

  “Huh?”

  “I need a favor. Will you do it?”

  “Of course. Name it.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that. My brother Evan—he’s the oldest—is looking for a job in the city. He’s been at the University of Chicago for the past five and a half years, if you can fathom that, getting his doctorate and he’s actually finished next month.”

  “In what?”

  “Well, it’s in the School of Business, something to do with marketing management. But he wants to teach at a university in the long run. Right now, he’s looking to work in business for a few years to pick up practical experience.”

  “Is that like advertising?” I was stalling, afraid of what was coming.

  “It’s related. Anyway, he’s coming for interviews next week, and I’d like for you to go out with him—and Sandy and me, of course.”

  “I’d really like to, Mark, but I’m going home for the weekend. I really have to.” The automatic answer.

  “Hah. I knew you’d say that. The thing is, he’ll be here all next week. This is for interviews—that’s when businesses operate, Monday through Friday.”

  I cast for an excuse, nervously repinning a hair roller while I held the receiver between my ear and shoulder. “Mark, I…I really don’t think it’s a good idea. First, I have a huge paper due in Theories of Personality, plus you know what’s due in Statistics. Secondly, he must be what? Twenty-five? I’d feel stupid, what would he want with a twenty-year-old sophomore?”

  “Twenty-seven. He’s a slow learner, what can I say? Well, that, plus he was in the service. I’m telling you, he’d like you and you’d like him. He’d be good for you.”

  “What do you mean by that?” A little defensive, but I liked Mark so much that he could get by with a lot.

  “I don’t know, Ruthie, I just think we’d have a good time, and that would be that. No big thing. I just don’t want him to feel like a third wheel with me and Sandy, but Mom and Dad want me to take him out on the town. I’d want to anyway.”

  I was thinking that the last kind of man I’d be interested in would be one in the field of business, especially advertising. That was nothing but professional lying.

  “Come on, Ruth, please? You said you’d do a favor. You can pick the night, Monday through Thursday, if it’s okay with Sandy. I’m clear. He’s tall, almost as good-looking as me. Lighter hair, too bad for him. He’s a nice guy, I swear.”

  As I glanced up the hall toward our room, Sandy stuck her head out of the door to see if I was still on the phone. “Yes,” she called, when she saw I was. “You’re saying yes.”

  I turned my back. “Yeah,” I said to Mark. “And I’m sure he’d be just thrilled to spend an evening with a skinny undergrad with orange hair and freckles.”

  “Whoa. What’s this garbage? You’re pretty, Ruth. The only reason you don’t have a social life is that you don’t want one.” His voice dropped its teasing tone and turned brotherly.

  “I wasn’t fishing for a compliment. Get your eyes checked. I’d really rather not do this. Couldn’t you ask someone else? Nancy Bradford would jump at the chance.”

  He ignored the latter. “I could, but I don’t want to. It would be easier for me with you, too, it’s easier to talk with you. Nancy comes on like she’s looking to get laid. Excuse me. You said you’d do a favor. For me. Please.”

  Back in the room, I flew at Sandy. “Did you tell Mark to ask me? You know how I feel about blind dates.” The roller in my bangs came loose and bounced off my nose, which made her giggle.

  “No, I didn’t tell him to ask you, but it is a good idea. I’ve met Evan twice, the last two Hanukahs. He’s a great guy. And he’s good-looking. I’m serious. You’ll have a good time. I’ll be there, for heaven’s sake, what’s the big deal?”

  I retrieved the roller from under Sandy’s desk. “I don’t know. It just is.” It sounded lame, even to me.

  She was rummaging through her top desk drawer, ruining its neat organization, which bothered me. “Look. Here’s a picture of him.” I took a snapshot from her extended hand.

  “Which one?” There were perhaps ten people in the picture, Mark’s extended family posed between a Christmas tree and a menorah, Sandy and Mark kneeling in the front, their arms draped over each other’s shoulders and grinning.

  “The tall one with glasses next to Mark’s mother. You can see he looks something like Mark only lighter hair, sort of dirty blond. They both look like their mother—she’s the one who’s not Jewish. Did you know that if the mother is Jewish, the kids automatically are? If only the father is, then the kids aren’t. It’s because you always know who the mother is and you’re not necessarily sure who the father is. Isn’t that disgusting? Thanks to me, our kids will be kosher.” Sandy rolled her eyes.

  I studied the picture. Indeed, Evan did look like Mark, with the same broad cheekbones, roundness of chin and even-toothed smile. I’d noticed how Mark’s nose was a little larger and his face a little more round than “handsome,” strictly interpreted, would have allowed, yet everyone commented on how handsome he was. Evan was taller and looked to be a little narrower of build, but there was certainly a family resemblance. Only Evan was better looking.

  “It’s not about how he looks, Sandy. I’d like to think I have a little more depth than that. It’s…”

  “Never mind what it is. We’re going. You told Mark you would. What night? I’m supposed to let him know tomorrow.”

  “Oh, God. I hate this. Monday. Let’s get it over with.”

  “You can wear my black dress if you want. I can wear the red one.”

  “What? I thought this would be like a pizza night.”

  “Nope. The Russian Tea Room. Mark’s parents are paying.”

  I DIDN’T MENTION ANYTHING about it to Mother that weekend. It was dry enough to turn the garden over to ready it for flowers, and that’s what we did. We took turns with the spade, the other using the hoe to cut down the size of the clumps. The New England soil yielded its usual spring harvest of stones. How did new ones keep rising year after year? Piling them into the Jensens’s ancient wheelbarrow and finding a place to dump them fell to me, but I didn’t particularly mind. Mother loved flowers. Even in her worst years, she never missed planting annuals. Wherever we’d lived, it had been an issue between Mother and the landlord: could she plant some flowers, even if it was only a few in a puny square of concrete-edged dirt? The Jensens had a real yard, though, and thought Mother was doing them a favor. She’d had me dig up an area twice the size we’d ever had before. Caring for it was a chore, especially since she demanded that it be kept pristinely weedless. Sometimes, we’d work together for hours, though, and it was then that she’d be in her best humor and my love for her broke the surface again, perennial as the stone harvest.

  When we could, we started flowers from seed. Usually Mother couldn’t wait for July when they’d finally bloom, and we always ended up buying some bedding plants to go in the front of the green shoots. That, though, wouldn’t be until mid-May, after the last silvery breath of frost had given up, even in Connecticut. New York and Jersey were a couple of weeks ahead of us. In April, if the ground wasn’t too wet and no extended cold was forecast, we could get seeds in, and Sunday morning, Mother said impulsively, “Let’s go ahead today and put in a cou
ple of sections of seeds. I think they’ll be all right. If it’s too early, well, we won’t have lost that much.”

  I poured us both another cup of coffee. “Sure. We can do that. Do you have what you want?”

  “Not a one. I’ll write a list and you run and get them. The A & P will have them out.”

  A half hour later, I was back with packets of marigolds, asters, pinks, sweet william and daisies. I had also picked up a packet of zinnias, not because they were on Mother’s list, but because we’d never had them and I thought they looked so pretty from a distance, bright splotches tall enough to stand out. The Jensens would enjoy them from upstairs, where they lived whole days in rockers by the window.

  “Zinnias weren’t on the list,” she said sharply as she went through the bag.

  “I know. I just like them. Can we stick them in the back?”

  “I don’t want them. I hate them. I’ve always hated them.”

  “Oh. Okay. I’m sorry.” Possibly disappointment was evident in my voice. I hadn’t meant it to be so.

  She was quiet for a few minutes, sorting the seeds into the order in which they’d be planted. “Okay. You’re doing so much work, I guess you should get to pick something that gets planted. I’ll see if I can stand some zinnias.”

  “You don’t have to, Mother. It’s okay.” I was cramming my feet back into my old sneakers, ready to go plant.

  “No. We’ll try these seeds. Maybe I’ve gotten over my aversion,” she said. See, Roger? I thought. You said I couldn’t help her, but see? You’re wrong. She’s trying and she’s getting better.

  “Why don’t you like them?”

  “A long, old story. Never mind.”

  AS IT HAPPENED, I STAYED at home that Sunday night. The weather had been soft and sunny again and we’d put all the seeds in. Monday, I caught an early train to New Haven, where I changed, as always, for Grand Central. I remember the rocking of the train, half-empty in midmorning, as it churned past the backyards of houses. Some housewives had already hung wet laundry in the April breeze on those clotheslines that look like the skeleton of an umbrella, and I distinctly remember thinking that those women had such wonderful lives. Why would I have thought that? I leaned the side of my head against the window, watching backyards and undersides of bridges as we passed through stations on the express run. I remember how my reflection looked in the window when I focused on it: half a face, a colorless transparency. On the unoccupied seat next to me was a bouquet of lilacs I’d cut from the Jensens’s bush before I left, wrapping their woody stems with wet napkins, wax paper and a rubber band to take them to our room. The scent was heady, ripe, tart and sweet at once, utterly distinctive. I picked them up and buried my nose in them to feel myself real. A whiff of lilacs still immediately transports me to that train as it lulled me to the beginning of more than I could handle. More than any of us could handle.

  EVAN, WHEN I MET HIM, was almost shy, which I mistook for being stuck up. I assumed he was assessing me, wondering what had possessed his brother to ask me to come, looking again and still finding me lacking. If it hadn’t been to please Sandy and Mark, I never would have put myself out as I did, trying to sparkle a little, trying to be intelligent if not interesting. It was this simple: I didn’t want to reflect badly on them.

  “You look sensational,” Mark had said to me when Sandy and I came down. I had on Sandy’s slinky black dress and had stuffed my bra with Kleenex to fill it out.

  “Excuse me, sir. Your eyes are supposed to be on me.” Sandy laughed, grabbing his face with her hands and depositing a loud kiss on him.

  “Oops. And so they are, I swear. But, Ruthie, you do scrub up good. Told you, Evan. Evan, this is Ruth Kenley. Ruth, this here rube is Evan.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Evan and I had said almost simultaneously as I shook the hand he stuck out. The whole evening began that way, a difficult mixture of Sandy and Mark’s intimacy and Evan’s and my awkward formality.

  We took a cab to the Russian Tea Room, again courtesy of Mark and Evan’s parents and I remember thinking it was going to be one long disaster, this favor I was doing Mark. We ordered in stiff, polite voices and looked around, making predictable comments about the decor. There wasn’t an identifiable time it began to switch. It was more like the tide at the Cape, going out and out until at some moment when you looked again it was coming in. I found myself laughing at something Evan said, and then something else, and something else, slowly realizing what a genuinely funny wit he had, feeding himself straight lines and then playing off them. I could tell he found my laughter gratifying, but I wasn’t laughing to flatter him. I wanted him to go on and on.

  The pink walls, dark woodwork, enormous arrangements of fresh spring flowers and candles, the whole aura of elegance, contrasted with our inelegant laughter in a way that made our table seem like a gathering of members of some esoteric underground, tightly bonded and set apart from all others. And I fit. Then, between dinner and dessert, I took a drink of water at a moment exactly inopportune, as Evan finished a story with a oneliner and I tried so hard not to spit the water out that it backed up and came out my nose. I was horrified and that so delighted Evan that he spit a little bit of wine onto the tablecloth trying to contain his own hilarity.

  I’d never enjoyed myself with such abandon before. The earth spoke that night as though it were a giant pinball machine: tilt, it said.

  16

  WE STAYED OUT TOO LATE considering Evan had an interview at nine the next morning. Tuesday, he left a message while I was in class. Before I had a chance to respond, he’d left another. Pink message sheets fluttered from the bulletin board on Sandy’s and my room door. Until now, they’d always been for Sandy.

  “I had a great time last night,” he said when I called him at Mark’s fraternity. I smiled to myself and twisted the phone cord.

  “So did I. How did your interview go?”

  “Hard to judge, but pretty well, I think. I’ve got more education and less experience than they want, but who knows? I’ll tell you about it, but I called to see if we could get something to eat tonight.”

  “With Sandy and Mark?”

  “No. Mark’s got some meeting tonight. Just us, no big deal, maybe pizza and beer if you want. I don’t care.”

  “I would…” A short hesitation, which Evan interrupted.

  “But?”

  “Not really a but, just that I’ve got this statistics project due and if Sandy can’t walk me through it, I’m dead.”

  “Hell, I’ll walk you through it. I’m pretty good at that stuff.”

  “Oh, I’d feel bad, that wouldn’t be much fun for you.”

  “No, I’d like to, really. Bring your stuff and if we can’t do it over beer, we’ll hit the lab. Have you got a decent calculator you can bring?”

  “I can borrow Sandy’s. I always do,” I added with a laugh. I didn’t notice how readily I was falling into step, it felt so natural. Of course, before I met him, I’d decided it couldn’t go anywhere. There was the big age difference and even if there wasn’t, what would I do with someone who wanted to devote his life to business of all things? I didn’t even have to list Mother as a possible impediment, there were enough other ones.

  “That’ll work. So, where and when?” he asked.

  “D’Amato’s? It’s real close, Mark can tell you how to—”

  “Passed it last night, I know exactly where it is.”

  “Good. I’m finished with classes now, so anytime you say.”

  “Perfect. Now.”

  “Are you serious? It’s only three-thirty.”

  “Sure I’m serious. Grab your stuff and let’s go now.”

  “I’ve got a paper to do, too. It’s only half written.”

  “No problem. I’ve got to be in early—another interview tomorrow, nine sharp, suit and tie, the whole shootin’ match, ma’am,” he said.

  I took the time to brush my hair and put on some lipstick before I gathered my statistics material and Sandy
’s calculator, but that was all.

  Evan and I saw each other twice more before he returned to Chicago, once when he brought me an analysis of variance he had redone because he was sure I had a mistake in it, and once for coffee and doughnuts when I had an hour free between morning classes and he had no interview until one in the afternoon. I was licking a dusting of powdered sugar off my fingers when he said he was sorry he was leaving, that he’d really enjoyed my company. I thought maybe he was being polite.

  “And I’ve enjoyed yours. I wish you weren’t going, too.” It was easy to say. I didn’t think about what it meant.

  “Really? If one of these jobs pans out, I’ll be back. I’d like to see you.” He had a way of looking straight into my eyes, not hiding, not protecting himself. The coffee shop clinked and rattled with spoons and cups and orders, but I heard him clearly.

  I was surprised by the flush of pleasure that came over me, and embarrassed, tried to cover by busying myself with my napkin. “I’d like that, too. Except, you know, I’ll be going home for the summer.”

  He didn’t say anything while the waitress refilled his coffee, and for a moment, I thought it was a done deal. “That’s only up in Connecticut, though, right? We can handle that.” He wore a white shirt and a green and gold tie that highlighted his coloring. Handsome? Yes. Good, sturdy hands, too.

  “Well…it’s a pain, though, a subway and two trains.” In that moment, I felt wary, as though Mother were about to catch me with my hand in her purse stealing her hoarded currency of my time. And I couldn’t imagine he’d want to make such a tedious trip anyway.

  “Worth every minute, no doubt.” He smiled. When we parted, he gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you,” he called as I left, like he really intended it. When I turned around, he was still there, ready with a wave.