by Lynne Hugo
“Tell me about it,” he said.
“It’s beautiful. The air is different, well, I guess it’s the light, but the dunes and the ocean…”
Evan interrupted. “I meant tell me your good memory.”
I’d been thinking of how I loved the Cape from the moment we’d crossed Sagamore Bridge, the house on the dune cliff and Ben Chance. But then the end of the trip intruded in my mind, convoluted and impure, and no memory could be extended as a gift to Evan because each had its unspeakable aspect.
“I was,” I lied. “I just meant how beautiful it is, that’s the good memory.”
“I’LL GET IT DRY MOUNTED and framed,” Evan said. “Then next time you come we’ll hang it together.” We were back in his apartment briefly before I had to catch my train. “Ruthie, you haven’t really said anything about what’s going on, the business with your mother. Does she not want you to see me? The age difference?”
I shook my head. Even if I had all day left and did nothing but try to explain, how could I?
“Is it me? Maybe you didn’t really want…”
“No. I promise you, it’s not that. It’s just so…hard…to explain. She’s a wonderful person, but she…I don’t exactly know myself. I’m not sure she’s very stable. She’s been through so much, I mean.” I was stumbling, not completing any thought.
“Is your dad around?”
I felt my face flush, and looked down. “I don’t know my father. I’ve never known my father. My mother…oh, God, Evan, look.” I managed to look directly into his face for a moment. “My mother has always insisted she’s a virgin. Do you see what I mean?” I looked back down, tears starting.
He lifted my chin with his hand, bent and kissed me gently on the cheek. Then he pulled me against him and just held me, one hand tangling itself into my hair while I cried.
“I’m sorry,” I croaked. “I’m sorry. I don’t usually fall apart like this.”
“Shh. You have nothing to be sorry about. Nothing. You cry whenever you want to. It’s okay.”
“I’ve got to go,” I said. “I can’t miss that train.”
“How can I contact you? Can I call?”
“That wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“I’ll write the nursing home then, okay?”
“Yes, that’s good.”
“And you can write me back. Wait. I know. You call me. You call me collect, any night. Reverse the charges.”
“My mother…”
“Do it from work. Do it from a phone booth. But, Ruthie, sooner or later…she’s going to have to accept that it’s your decision, right?”
I completely ignored the second part. “I’d have to pay you back—that’s expensive.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I have a job, too, you know.”
“I don’t care. Let me do this. Just call, please. Promise.”
“I will. I don’t know when, but I will.”
MOTHER WAS DISTANT when I got home, even though, as I’d planned, it was well before dark. “So how did the meeting go? Was your advisor helpful?” I couldn’t tell whether sarcasm edged her voice, or guilt affected what I heard.
“Yes. Dr. Santivica helped me preregister for a couple of classes that fill quickly. See, he signs a form that says I need a certain course during a certain semester to graduate on time and then I get priority registration.”
“I see,” she said, and then repeated, “Oh, yes. I see.
“And your friend…Evan, is that his name? He wouldn’t have been registering, too…would he?”
“He’s not a student, Mother. And, no, he wasn’t registering. Look, here are my copies.” I opened my purse and pulled out the student’s copies of each course registration form.
“Oh, I don’t need to see those. I believe you. Good God, Ruth.” But I saw her glance at them and after that she softened.
“Let’s go look at the garden,” she suggested. “It’s cool enough to pull a few weeds before dark.”
The flowers were flourishing. They always did. Mother had a way with flowers. They always leaped up like bright kites for her.
“Look at how pretty those zinnias are,” I said. “I’m glad we put them in.”
“I still hate them,” Mother said. “But those do look nice.” As dusk began to rise off the ground like mist, the zinnias seemed to hold their own illumination, the colors darker than in daylight, yet glowing. The stems and narrow slices of leaves receded, leaving the bright heads to appear unsupported and brave. They made me sad.
“Why don’t you like them?” I asked again. This time she was in the mood to answer.
“My mother always planted a big bed of them because her birthday and mine are both in August, and zinnias are the August flower. One year after Dad…well, I went out and pulled out every one of them by the roots.” She spilled a mirthless, bitter laugh that sounded more like choking.
“What did she do when you did that?” I asked, gentling my voice. Mother hadn’t ever told stories about her girlhood. I wondered if I could keep her going.
“Nothing that helped the situation, I can tell you that much. But she never planted them again.” She snapped her jaw shut and bent awkwardly at the waist to pull a few weeds. I squatted to help her, trying to keep my skirt out of the moist dirt border. “Oh for heaven’s sake, Ruth, go in and change. I’ll do this myself. I’m used to being alone.”
FOUR DAYS PASSED BEFORE I was able to call Evan. I had figured out that when I worked second shift, the day supervisor’s office would be empty during my dinner break, affording me both comparative privacy and a phone. It was also evening, when Evan would be at home. As I placed the collect call, I studied the framed school pictures of Mrs. Morrisson’s son and daughter, and thought yes, I’d like to have children.
Evan didn’t even let the operator finish her sentence. “Yes, I accept,” he said, and then, “Ruthie! I’m so glad you called.”
“I’m sorry about calling collect. I’m at work, and…”
“I told you to call collect. Call collect every day. How are you?”
“I’m okay. Work is…well, it’s work. I hardly feel I keep the patients occupied, let alone doing therapy. It’s a little disenchanting to work in a nursing home. It reminds me of my grandmother, and…well, it just does, and it makes me sad.”
“Does she live near you?”
“No. She lived in Seattle. She died almost three years ago.”
“I’m sorry. This is your mother’s mother, I take it. Were you two close?”
“No. I wish we had been. Wait! Enough about me! Is the job getting better? More comfortable I mean? I’ve been thinking about you so much.”
“I’ve been thinking about you, too. Yeah…I guess it’s a little easier. The secretaries seem to be coming around, although the men seem pretty standoffish.”
A wrench of jealousy twisted my insides a notch. “Are there any women executives?”
“Two. They’re okay. They just don’t fraternize much, period, so it doesn’t seem like it has anything to do with me.”
Good, I thought.
“Did you see the news last night?” he went on. “I was hoping you did, because a new study about the future of health related careers came out and the report was profiled on CBS. Occupational therapy was mentioned.”
“No. What did it say?”
“Well, I was afraid you might have missed it, so I cut the write-up of it out of the Times this morning for you. Basically it said it looks like an expanding market because of more emphasis on rehabilitation, more insurance policies paying rehab costs in order to get workers back on the job more quickly. Some services that were previously excluded are more often being covered now. Anyway, I’ve got the article. But it’s not going to do much good if you’re deciding you don’t like the field much.”
“That was so sweet of you, Evan. Thank you.”
“Hey, don’t thank me. I’m interested. So, are you thinking of changing? I couldn’t tell from what you
said about the nursing home?”
“Not really. Or not actively, I guess I should say. I don’t think about it much, because I don’t think I’ve really got a choice. I’d never get the money to start over—a lot of my classes wouldn’t carry to another field.”
“Ah.” He muttered. “I hate the thought of you feeling stuck.”
I laughed, to cover my seriousness. “I’m used to it.”
But Evan heard what I really meant. “Well, you’ll have to get unstuck,” he said. “It’s your life.”
“Maybe. But I doubt it,” I said, leavening my tone with teasing to cover what I knew. “You sound like my brother. Gosh. I’d better get going. My break is almost over and I didn’t get anything to eat yet.” I would have happily not eaten. I was worried about running up his bill. And about the direction the conversation was taking.
“Next time, grab something first and eat while we talk. Then we can talk longer. I want to see you soon, too. I miss you.”
“I’d like that. I’ll try to work something out. I just don’t know…I miss you, too.”
It was hard to say those words, dangerous, like a door cracked to a future. But then it was hard to hang up. I wanted to hold on to his voice, deep, confident, warm. Without his prompting me, I’d been trying to come up with a reason to go back into the city. I was thinking about him all the time, it seemed. I’d see his hands in my mind, the heavy gold ring he wore on his right hand from his undergraduate years. Big, older appearing than his face and body, his hands seemed to know how to do anything. More than once, I’d imagined them on me.
18
WEEKS OF SUMMER HUNG like the stifling humidity while I tried to bring myself to tell Mother about Evan. I’d begun staying after work whenever I had second shift, settling myself in the day supervisor’s office to wait for the phone to ring, which it did seconds after eleven, when the rates had gone down. Evan had conceded that much to alleviate my worry about the size of the bill we were running up. We were talking about ourselves, the sides we hid from others; sometimes we even reached the bedrock of what we usually hid from ourselves. When the summer night was alive with stars, I’d open the window to the left of the supervisor’s desk and roll her chair in front of it so I could lean on the sill and imagine myself next to him, somewhere, anywhere else. We two, alone in honeysuckle stillness punctuated by peepers. I played it out in my mind, cradling the phone.
Still, there was a fair amount I didn’t reveal. I kept the worst to myself, and, of course, how Grandmother had died. I avoided talking about her when I could, but painting Mother sympathetically was crucial, I thought. Evan knew that she’d had some “episodes,” as I called them, and I even told him how she’d seemed to worsen—deteriorate, I may have said—in the past year, that I’d been writing the checks, billing her students’ parents for their lessons. How could I ever make it work if I didn’t tell him that much?
Evan was fairly quiet about Mother, which I mistook as uncritical acceptance. What he was vocal about at first was Roger. I could picture him, glasses laid on the coffee table, leaning forward as he sat on the couch. He always leaned forward when he was intent.
“I don’t get it, how he could just dump you with this. I can’t believe he couldn’t come back to relieve you during the summers.”
If Evan had defended Roger, I believe it would have bothered me. Instead it was I who defended him.
“I think he just sees it differently. You know, it’s like there’s no halfway. You either give up your life and take care of her, or you go live your life and send postcards.”
“Are you saying you’ll give up yours?” He was incredulous. It was obvious to me, in the late amber of the supervisor’s office, door closed to the two night nurses whose silent shoes might allow them close enough to hear me, that the very idea was insane to him.
I was careful. “No, I don’t think so, not exactly. For a while I thought I’d have to—you know, he got the first chance, took it, and only one of us could. Now he wouldn’t say that. He’d say I should do exactly what he’s done, that neither of us, together or separately, can save her. That’s almost an exact quote.”
“Maybe it’s true. But that doesn’t answer what you think about you, your life. Do you get to have one whether it’s true or not?”
“For a while I thought not. Now I feel like maybe…I can do both, have my own life and take care of her. No, actually that’s not it. I guess I don’t see those as different things…whatever life I have has to merge with hers. That’s it. It’s a question of whether I can add…my life to hers.” It’s hard to say. I held my breath for Evan’s reaction, imagining him shaking his head back and forth at the other end of the phone, no, no, no.
“That’s a tough one” was all he said at first. Then he went on. “If you get married, if anyone gets married, I think their first loyalty has to be to her…or his…husband or wife.”
“But either or both can choose to take on the other’s commitments, right?” How daintily we were talking around it now.
“Right…I guess that’s right,” he said. “Yes.”
After we hung up that night, it was clear to me that I had some backtracking to do. I had to pretend to Mother that I wasn’t already involved with Evan so that I could somehow get her approval to become so. I’d have to convince him I was my own woman, while fooling Mother into thinking I was still all hers.
I ASKED EVAN TO WRITE a formal little note of invitation to dinner with him, one that sounded as though we’d not been in contact, and mail it to our house. He agreed, though I could hear that he thought it was ridiculous. When I arrived home from work two days later, it was lying open on the table, rocking back and forth on its folded white spine in the breeze created by the movement of the screen door. I’d worked first shift, so the airless heat of the day was still present, the late afternoon sun glaring into the kitchen.
“There’s mail for you,” she said, gesturing sideways with chin and elbow.
I was careful not to look at her directly, but instead opened the refrigerator and took out the water I kept cold there.
“What is it?”
“It’s from your friend…that Evan.”
I poured water and stood near the sink while I drank it. Then I leaned over and used the faucet to splash some cold water on my face
“Okay. Whew, what a long, hot day. The Bicentennial fireworks are supposed to be spectacular, I heard it on the radio, but I hope it’s not this hot. Oh, Mrs. Hodgkins finally finished that wallet. And guess what? They approved my purchasing a pottery wheel for the activity center. I never thought they would. I love clay. I wish I could do it myself. I loved throwing pots at Rockland. But at least this way, I’ll get to help the residents make things. Some of them won’t want to get their hands dirty, like Mrs. Sills, but I know some will love it. They like it when they have something to show, I think it helps them feel productive…maybe we could set up a display area…I wonder if we could sell anything, if they can make any really nice pieces, that is.” I hoped I seemed to be musing aloud, my mind still at work.
“If they like you that much, maybe you don’t even need to go back to school. Maybe they’ll offer you a permanent job.”
“Maybe they will.” I washed my glass, hung up the car keys and, as I walked toward the kitchen door, pretended I happened to notice Evan’s note. I picked it up and read.
“Oh, he wants me to go out to dinner with him,” I said, tossing it back down. “I don’t know. I’ve already been into the city twice this summer.”
Mother seemed to relax, grow almost expansive. It was my having said, “Maybe they will,” sounding cheerful and optimistic about a future at the nursing home for which I had neither desire nor intention. But wouldn’t she just love it if I did?
“It is a long way,” she agreed. “Of course, you might have a good time, though.”
I’D BEEN BREATHING INplease, God, please, and holding my breath. “Mother, this is Evan Mairson. Evan, this is my mother, Elizabe
th Ruth Kenley. I’m Ruth Elizabeth, you know,” I added as though in a spontaneous aside to him. Mother beamed.
“Well, come in, Evan. It’s nice to meet you. I must say, my Ruth had a lovely time when you took her out to dinner.” She stepped back from the screen door and gestured him inside. I’d put on a dress, but she, as if to emphasize that the evening was nothing special to her, wore cotton slacks and a yellow sleeveless blouse, from which her upper arms spilled excess flesh.
But Evan had guessed exactly right as to how to dress for the occasion—navy blazer, tie, light blue oxford shirt, khaki trousers—without making it obvious. He looked respectful, respectable, reliable.
“I have so looked forward to meeting you, Mrs. Kenley. Ruth talks about you all the time. What a lovely place you have,” he added, looking around. “I love the way it looks so warm and homey.”
How did he know enough to say that? I felt a flush begin to rise up my neck onto my cheeks as my gaze followed his. Had I told him “homey” was her word for it? How shabby it was, the threadbare blue sofa, the area rug with our traffic pattern across it obliterating a swatch of the maroon “oriental” pattern, the age-yellowed lampshades, mahogany-veneered end tables scratched and mismatched. Set on the mantel, of course, were Mother’s cross and several votive candles, beneath a cheaply framed print of St. Francis of Assisi. Only the bay windows, with the covered window seats that held Roger’s and my heritage, lent dignity to the room.
“Why thank you, Evan,” she said, pleased. “I’ve always felt that way.”
“Oh, yes, I do, too,” I chimed in like a ninny. And unnecessarily. She was busy being charmed by Evan. He praised the baked chicken she’d made, the broccoli she’d overcooked, the minute rice. He let it slip that he didn’t drink, which, of course, he did on occasion. He talked about his parents, how he felt family was the most important value in life. If I’d read a transcript of the conversation at dinner that night, I would have found it obvious, overkill, and been sure that my mother’s eyes were narrowed with suspicion and distaste by seven-thirty. But I was there, I saw him reading her, responding to nuances, and getting it exactly right. I did not sense a trace of his mocking her, nor that he didn’t genuinely like her.