About Face

by Carole Howard

  Carlos opened the door. There was a breathless moment while the three old friends squared their memories of the other faces with the reality.

  He was much older. His hair was still long, but not so thick, not so dark, and he now wore it in a ponytail. His long, thin face was lined and tired, though his dark eyes were still steel-bright under stern brows, and his gaze was firm. Tall and trim as ever in what looked to be the jeans he wore in the Peace Corps—like him, a little older, a little more worn—he hunched over just a little, as if something hurt.

  Ruth imagined a video of Carlos’s younger face gradually aging until it got to its present state, like police projections of kidnapped children’s faces. It didn’t feel like her life passing in front of her eyes, exactly, the way people said happened at times of great urgency, but it was coming up against the passage of time.

  Ruth let out her breath first. “Carlos, I’d know you anywhere, you look exactly the same. You haven’t changed even the tiniest little bit.”

  Carlos looked down. “I don’t know about that,” he said in the husky voice she’d last heard in Africa, now with the addition of a slight Spanish accent.

  David said, “Oh Carlos, allow me to let you in on Ruth’s code. Now you’re supposed to say, ‘Neither have you, Ruth. You look exactly the same as you did when you were twenty-five. Actually, you look even younger. And thinner.’ Not that she’s lying about your looking good, though. You do.”

  Carlos looked back up to meet David’s eyes and smiled gently, as if to say he got the joke, but wasn’t playing the game. “It’s good to see you two. It sure has been a long time. I remember once, maybe it was the last time the four of us were together, when we were at the Café de Paris. In Dakar.”

  “Probably playing Scrabble,” David said.

  “Even though half the pieces were missing,” Carlos said.

  “And we were probably arguing about something,” Ruth said.

  “Like whether ‘beatnik’ is allowed in the game,” David said.

  “Which it was, just like I said. I looked it up later on.”

  “I can’t believe you did that. Okay, okay, you win.”

  “We were probably also wrangling about who’d pay for the beers,” Carlos suggested. “I’m pretty sure it was your turn.”

  “Or about how long it would take us to save the world,” Ruth said. She instinctively stepped forward to hug Carlos. He was so stiff she felt like she was hugging a coat rack.

  Carlos and David shook hands energetically. “Come on in. It’s muy bien that you’re here. Vivian’s so excited, she’s been telling everyone we know. Talking even faster than usual.”

  As they entered the apartment, Vivian emerged from the rear. “Ohmygod David. Oh. My. God. I can’t believe it. It’s so incredible to see you again. Incredible. You look terrific, you haven’t changed at all. I’d know you anywhere. Oh, I can’t believe it, here you two are, in my house. I’m sosoSO happy to see you.” She hugged David warmly, standing on her toes, patting his back, breaking away from her hug to take a step back and look at him, then hugging him again.

  She approached Ruth. “It sure is lucky we were in the same place at the same time and both had to pee.”

  Vivian showed them around the apartment. A floor-through on the bottom of the brownstone, a half-level below the street, it was dark, even at mid-day. As she led them into the living room, she turned on the lights.

  Crammed among a couch covered with threadbare Indian-print fabric, two painted rattan armchairs, and pine desk was a hyperactivity of objects. Photos filled the walls, the bookshelves, the desk. Ruth and David walked around and watched Vivian and Carlos’s daughter, Ida, grow up in pictures. The proud parents silently observed their rapt attention. Ruth gave an occasional “Aaahhh.”

  There were also photos of Vivian and Carlos at work, she with her clients at the Brooklyn Shelter for Women, where she was a counselor, he at his desk as the Assistant Executive Director of the Prisoners’ Rights Foundation. Some photos showed them at political rallies and retreats where the causes and the clothing changed, but the energy remained constant.

  When she saw the photo in the African print picture frame on the windowsill, Ruth brought her right hand to her chest as something between a sigh and a gasp escaped her mouth. There she was, twenty-five-year-old Ruth, in the hut she and Vivian had shared in Djembering, surrounded by crintin, Ada the refrigerator, the orange crate bookshelves, and a bunch of smiling children who would now be about thrty-five years old. She turned to look at Vivian, who was already looking at her. Vivian’s silence was more expressive than her words ever were.

  Besides the photos, there was a traffic jam of African art on every wall and horizontal surface, as well as on the floor. There were wood sculptures and masks, some with metal trim, some with straw, some with cowrie shells. There was an assortment of fabric hangings, the black and white mud-painted Korhogo cloth from the Ivory Coast, the brightly-colored Abomey toiles with fabric appliqués of animals and traditional symbols, and the striped blue Malian weavings. All the art was African, even after all these years. Houseplants added to the frenzy, big ones on the floor, smaller ones competing with the photos for room on the desk and bookshelves, and hanging baskets. The small space was filled to bursting.

  The clutter didn’t bother Ruth as she would have expected. Nor did the water stains on the walls or the creaking and uneven planks in the ancient wooden floor. She knew this place was very different from her own orderly home and recognized the irony of her envying a life that had yielded fewer material possessions than her own. Carlos and Vivian had taken a different path than she had, and she wondered what it would have been like if she’d chosen that path too. No fancy house in the suburbs, no debt-free tuition for Josh, no corporate perks, but maybe idealism. Maybe passion.

  “It’s beautiful,” Ruth said.

  “Well, we like it here, we really do. It’s kind of funky, sort of like us. But we can afford it and it’s a decent commute to our jobs, so that’s good too. I know you probably live someplace that’s much more—”

  “And the neighborhood’s great,” Carlos added. “The block association holds pot luck dinners every month. And a great public library a few blocks away. Too bad Ida’s grown up, because the public school’s terrific, a nice mix of middle-class and working-class kids. Very progressive program.”

  They continued through the living room and out the other end, careful not to knock over any of the items they slalomed around on the way. The apartment was laid out in a long line from the living room on the street side of the brownstone to the kitchen at the back. As they entered the next room, Vivian turned on its lights while Carlos doubled back to turn off the ones in the living room

  The bedroom had only a bed in the middle, a dresser on the wall to the left, and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, stuffed full and running over, on the right. The bedroom’s comparative emptiness brought its shabbiness into relief. The paint was peeling badly, and the bed was supported by three legs and a pile of books. They continued into the kitchen, where the chaos that was missing from the bedroom had taken refuge. A long narrow battered oak table was in front of them, set with four unmatched places. The cooking area was to the left, and a counter filled with jars, collectible chotchkies and telephone paraphernalia, was in between. Beyond the kitchen was a neglected garden in an interior courtyard that provided a little natural light.

  “Well, now you’ve seen it.” Vivian spoke louder than she needed to and shrugged. “Believe it or not, it’s a big step up from our place in Washington Heights, but that place went co-op a couple of years ago, so we had to leave. We were lucky to find this, boy we had to look and look, and you wouldn’t believe the places we saw and turned down. So here we are, all snug and at home.”

  David said, “Hey, this place is fabulous. I think if we’d seen a place like this when we were looking around for—”

  “So, mi amigos, have a seat everyone.” Carlos turned out the lights in the bedroom
and led everyone to the table. He took his place at the narrow end near the door, while Vivian directed Ruth and David to his right.

  “Carlos, my friend,” David said, “you seem to have gotten more Spanish than you used to be. I know your father’s Puerto Rican, but is this some kind of time-release ethnicity? Or have you changed parents?”

  “A lot of people at work have Spanish accents. I guess it’s catching,” Carlos said to the table top.

  “Anyway, I hope you still like Bloody Marys, ‘cause I still make the best ones you ever had,” Vivian said. “Really and truly, the best. You’ll see, the very best.” She reached into the refrigerator and took out four glasses and a pitcher, all thick glass with bubbles trapped inside, a blue stripe along the top. She stuck a celery stalk in each filled glass before passing them around. Ruth held her glass out and said, “In the immortal words of those wise volunteers who preceded us… ”

  “Don’t let the bastards get you down,” came the enthusiastic chorus, followed by clinks and gulps.

  Everyone sipped until Vivian insisted they bring each other up to date on their lives. “You can go first, then us. We have all day. Moderate bragging about kids is allowed, okay?”

  Ruth pointed her celery stalk at David. “You do it, okay?”

  “Where should I start?”

  Vivian jumped right in. “Start with how you went from being friends, you know, the platonic kind of friends, which you always insisted you were even though I knew better, even back then, and wound up being married and proving that I was right all along, even though I had to wait for you guys to catch up to my superior wisdom.”

  “Right,” Ruth said. “Superior wisdom. Honey, start with the trip to Woodstock and how we got turned back by the State Police and arrived at my parents’ house, covered with mud.”

  He took a big sip, then launched into the oft-told story of their muddied arrival at her parents’ house where, because of a houseful of guests, they’d had to share a bedroom. Since they were platonic friends, no one thought much of it, but the sleeping proximity resulted in a seismic shift in their relationship. The new relationship took root quickly and grew.

  He took the scenic route for the story of their lives and Ruth herded him back to the chronological thrust whenever she felt a side-trip was only marginally relevant. When he started telling about their visit to John and Janet, mutual Peace Corps friends who’d become sheep farmers in rural Vermont, Ruth burst in. She pointed out that, though it had been more than thirty minutes, he was only up to 1983. So David left John and Janet in the lurch and switched to Josh, indulging in the allowable bragging, showing the three pictures they’d brought for this purpose. He summed up their work lives by describing his work at the high school and his new plan to retire soon, then Ruth’s work as the means through which she’d been able to express her creativity, plus put Josh through college.

  “I made it in under an hour,” he announced. “Your turn.” He pointed his glass first at Carlos, then at Vivian, then drank.

  “First, let’s fill those poor empty glasses,” Carlos volunteered.

  “And how about some food to absorb all that alcohol? Who’s hungry?” Vivian and Ruth brought platters of bagels, cream cheese, and lox from the refrigerator to the table and passed around the chipped plates and mismatched silverware.

  “Anyone want coffee yet?”

  “Right after I finish this Bloody Mary,” Carlos said, taking a big gulp.

  Vivian told how she and Carlos had continued seeing each other after Peace Corps, as they worked for the same anti-war groups. They got married and continued to work for “the movement” for about five more years, he as an organizer (and part-time bartender to pay the rent), she in a printing shop that produced leaflets and brochures. Carlos contributed a description of their economically marginal and sometime nomadic existence, while Vivian giggled and looked nostalgic.

  Then she turned to Ida’s birth and neo-natal emergency surgery to repair a hole in her heart and a malformed esophagus. Ruth occasionally stole a glance at Carlos. He fingered a silver and turquoise bracelet on his right wrist, rubbing it one stone at a time. Once, he looked up at her and they remained locked in eye contact for a long three seconds. For most of that visual game of chicken, Ruth had the feeling he wasn’t looking at her so much as through her, to the past, but then he snapped out of it and saw her. He shrugged.

  Ida’s problem was completely corrected with her surgery. “The doctors told us she’d have one permanent side effect,” Carlos said solemnly. “She’ll never be able to eat upside down. So she can never be an astronaut.” Passing pictures of Ida around, Vivian added, “I can live with that.”

  Sometime after Ida’s birth, around the time she started school, Vivian and Carlos got their more sedentary jobs. “And here we are,” he concluded, “regular middle-class Amuricanos. Sort of.”

  Vivian reached for the full coffeepot at the far end of the table. She poured four mugs-full and passed them around. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick, and two of them had bloody cuticles. Were her fingers that way when she started the story of their lives? Ruth wondered. Or did this story cost her a few fingernails?

  Carlos crossed his legs in a lotus-position on the bench as he said, tight-lipped, “There’s just one li’l bit I don’t understand, Ruth. You work at a make-up company?”

  Her stomach tightened. Oh no, here it comes. “Yup, I do. Yes.” She kept an even tone, concentrating on not feeling apologetic or defensive.

  “You’re a manager?”

  “Mm-hmm, I am. Yes indeed, a manager.”

  Vivian put her hand on Carlos’s arm. “Carlos,” she said more slowly than Ruth had ever heard her speak. “Have some coffee. Don’t do this.” She raised his mug to his mouth.

  “I wanna ask one more thing, okay, just one, pretty please?”

  “Go ahead Carlos,” Ruth said, forcing herself not to look away from his gaze and not to furrow her brow into a headache.

  “I was just thinking that it’s bad enough you’re management on the backs of labor, but in an industry that, well, let’s just say it’s … not food, not clothing, not shelter. Just something that goes along with the Barbie Doll image women seem to be persuaded to buy into.” He looked at her and raised his scraggly eyebrows.

  Vivian rushed in with “Oh Ruthie, don’t mind him, really, it’s okay, you know Carlos has strong feelings about everything, I’m sure you’re not surprised, right? That’s the way he was and that’s still the way—”

  “Hey guys,” David said. “You know we’re just here to get reacquainted and have a nice time, have fun, not to solve the problems of the world.”

  “That’s just the point. Solving the problems of the world is fun for us. Always has been. And,” Carlos added, “it used to be fun for you too. So what happened to you guys?”

  Ruth took as big a sip of the hot coffee as she could and forced herself to speak slowly, thinking she’d sound confident that way. “So I see, when all is said and done, you’re still not the most tactful guy in the world, Carlos.”

  “Si, I’ve been told that. But tact isn’t important to me. Truth is.”

  She thought back to her anxieties in the car and was at least glad that they’d been justified. “Is this Marxist shorthand? The workers should own the means of production, capitalism is evil and all that?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Ruthie, why don’t we—” David put his arm around her.

  She shook it off. “No, David, why don’t we not? Don’t do that. That’s you, not me.”

  Then she turned to Carlos and forced herself to make eye contact. “Just for the moment, let’s ignore your smug superiority, and just talk about what you said.” Her mouth seemed to have a mind of its own, but at least it covered the sound of her heart knocking at her chest to get out. “You’re pretty glib about the evils of capitalism, but communism hasn’t exactly worked out so great.”

  “Si, si, that’s true in some parts of Eastern E
urope. But you need to take a look at Cuba. It’s different there. You know, we went down there for the Venceremos Brigade.” The twinkle in Carlos’s eyes had returned, giving Ruth the clear impression that he was enjoying making her mad. And that just made her madder.

  “Cuba? You’re talking about Cuba?”

  “There’s Sweden, too, if you prefer. Socialist more than communist.”

  She knew that if he weren’t so arrogant, she might tell him she agreed with a lot of what he said. Well, some of it anyway. And, besides, he wasn’t an innocent bystander when it came to capitalism. He bought those paper towels over there, and the coffee, the peanut butter, the newspaper, and everything else in the house, including the film for family photos, all from companies with bosses and workers. And that bit about being on the backs of labor was ridiculous. She was a great boss.

  “Did you ever stop to think about—”

  “Calm down, love. Maybe that’s enough for now?” David asked.

  David didn’t have to join in the argument if he didn’t want to, but at least he could stop being Mr. Reasonable, Mr. “We Can Discuss This Like Mature Adults.” He could at least be angry at Carlos, couldn’t he?

  “Ruthie seems to be holding her own, David,” Vivian said.

  “It’s just that—”

  “David, you don’t have to argue if you don’t want to, but I can if I want to.”