The Four Temperaments

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  “I'll just go and get some paper towels,” Ruth said, glad for an excuse to leave. Mrs. Vogel closed her eyes and said nothing.

  The rest of Ruth's visit was soured by the encounter with Mrs. Vogel, despite the warmth with which she was met elsewhere on the floor. Mr. Blustain was happy to get the New Yorkers—Ruth had three issues today—and she played several hands of gin with Mrs. Dienstag, who beat her every time. “You're not paying attention, Ruthie,” Mrs. Dienstag scolded as she took the deck from Ruth's hands to shuffle. Mrs. Fishbein was so eager to see Ruth that she actually came to find her in Mrs. Dienstag's room. They played a hand together, and then Ruth walked Mrs. Fishbein back to her own room, where she showed Ruth the package she had received from her granddaughter in Los Angeles: several bottles of nail polish tucked into a small wicker basket and tied with a gold ribbon. “Did you ever see such colors?” she exclaimed, holding the little bottles up to the light. “Sky blue? Lime green? Black?”

  “That's what the girls are wearing these days,” Ruth said, remembering that William's wife, Betsy, was sporting those light blue nails the last time Ruth saw her. When was that? Thanksgiving? What an awful day. Maybe Mrs. Vogel was right, Ruth thought. She came here to escape her own problems.

  “Well, I could give it a try, couldn't I?” said Mrs. Fishbein. “What do you think, Ruthie? Green or blue? No black for me, though. Not yet. Time enough for that, right?”

  “The blue suits you best,” Ruth told her firmly. “I'll paint your nails and we'll take a picture. Send it to your granddaughter. We'll show her that East Coast ladies still have what it takes.”

  “She'll be so tickled!” said Mrs. Fishbein and she spread her fingers wide, imagining the effect.

  But even after the quiet rewards the morning had to offer, Ruth still replayed the exchange with Mrs. Vogel in her mind on the way home. Why couldn't she have said something that would have broken the spell the woman seemed to cast on her; something kind and wise that would have helped her. Because if there was no point to making these visits to the home, why was she doing it? Maybe Oscar was right when he said that she should spend more time with her own family.

  It was this thought that guided Ruth's hand to the telephone later that evening. Oscar and she had been so worried about Gabriel and Penelope that Ruth had scarcely spoken to either of the other boys since Thanksgiving. Of course, Ben hadn't been in New York; he and his new wife left for London before Christmas. But William and Betsy were close enough, in New Jersey, just across the river. It was their number that Ruth dialed.

  “Oh, hello, Ruth,” Betsy said, sounding not at all pleased. “Will's not here. He's going to be late tonight.”

  “I'm happy to talk to you,” Ruth said, ignoring her tone. “We hardly had a chance on Thanksgiving.” There was a pause, so she kept going. “Someone at the nursing home today had a bottle of sky blue nail polish and it made me think of you. I remembered how pretty yours looked.” Ruth, she berated herself. Is this the best you can do? No wonder your daughters-in-law don't want to talk to you.

  “Actually, Will and I have some news for you,” said Betsy, not seeming to have heard this last inane remark. “Good news.” But her voice didn't sound happy. “We're going to China. To adopt a baby girl. We just got the call from the agency and we have three weeks to get ready.”

  “Betsy, that's wonderful. We had no idea you were even thinking of adopting—”

  “We've been trying for over two years,” Betsy interrupted. “And we can't do it. I mean, Will can, but I can't. And so we're going to adopt.”

  “Honey, I'm so happy for you both. Oscar will be too. I can't wait to tell him.” This was a lot of information to assimilate all at once, but it did make many things fall into place. The kind of discomfort she sensed in Betsy whenever the subject of children came up. The way she looked at Isobel. The way she avoided Ruth.

  “Thank you.” Why did she sound so sad? Ruth kept wondering. But she herself was not sad, not at all. This was the best news she had heard in a long time and she was thrilled.

  “Betsy, let's celebrate. What about you and William meeting us somewhere for dinner? In Chinatown? Wouldn't that be just perfect?”

  “All right,” Betsy said, hesitating only slightly. “I'll tell Will you called.” Ruth realized that the conversation was over, and despite the fact that she was brimming with things to ask, she instead said good-bye and hung up the telephone.

  They all agreed to meet for dinner at the Red Dragon Inn, on Mott Street, one night when the ballet company was between seasons. As Ruth and Oscar ascended from the subway station, the air felt warm and moist; even humid. Not truly spring weather, but not winter either. Ruth was glad for the change. They all needed one, she thought, as she walked through the crowded streets, holding on to Oscar's arm. There was going to be a new baby in the family; that would be something good to focus on. God knew she needed it. They picked their way through the shop vendors, whose wares spilled out onto the sidewalk, and the true itinerant merchants who set up with tiny folding tables and blankets just inches from the curb. Eels and skinned ducks, persimmons and embroidered slippers, lobsters, fans, key chains, watches, sweatshirts, suitcases. So many things in so small a space.

  As always, when confronted by such an array, Ruth wanted to buy something for someone. Wouldn't Ben's new wife like a padded silk jacket with silken frogs in place of buttons? What about those painted hand fans? Surely some of the ladies at the nursing home would like those; they're always complaining that the rooms are overheated. But Oscar said there was no time to stop, so Ruth clutched her handbag tightly under her arm and hurried alongside him, until they reached the restaurant.

  William and Betsy were already there and hugs and kisses were exchanged all around as they took their seats. Large, plastic-coated red menus were placed in their hands almost immediately, so all conversation centered around the food for a few minutes. It was only when the order was taken and the menus swiftly whisked away that Ruth could sit and look at, really focus on, her middle-born son. He was tall—all Ruth's boys were tall—with dark brown hair and eyes. His looks were neither astonishingly good nor displeasing, though she did notice that he had put on a few pounds. No matter. Seated next to his wife, holding her hand as he talked to his father, he looked happy.

  William had always been the defiant one. Ruth was ashamed of herself for thinking this way, especially after so many years. She could remember how her mother did the same thing, sorting her children into neat categories, like the mail or the bills. In her eyes, Molly was the one with bad manners and a good head for math; Ruth was refined but reticent and retiring; a wallflower to Molly's showy blossom. She vowed she would never define her own children this way, like so many butterflies, fixed and immobile under the scientist's stark pin. Yet she'd done it anyway, despite her best intentions.

  Gabriel, the eldest, was both clingy and remote, the sort of child whose kisses seemed rationed but who was apt to burst into tears even when she left him merely to go check the mailbox in the lobby. Ben was the cuddler, always climbing into Ruth's lap, or snuggling up beside her on the sofa. “Mommy, your skin is so soft,” he would say; “Mommy, my toes are cold—will you rub them?” How Ruth loved that. But Willy was the one who said no before he said anything else, and it seemed to her that once he started, he didn't stop saying it for the next twenty years. Ruth heard no at bedtime, bath time, mealtime and everywhere in between. He said no to haircuts, to homework and to music lessons, and though she managed to prevail in all of these things, more or less, it was never without a struggle. Finally, when he got too old for his parents to tell him what to do, all the nos seemed to melt away, and he had been transformed into a successful and prosperous doctor. “Though how he got through medical school without telling his professors no to every exam, quiz, paper and report is a mystery to me,” Oscar used to say.

  “So tell me about China. About our new granddaughter,” Oscar said now, while William smiled and Betsy looked anxious
.

  “She's seven months old. Black hair—of course. But her face, Dad, wait until you see her face.” William pulled a picture out of his pocket. Ruth and Oscar peered down to look. Ruth saw an Asian baby in a knit cap and bulky, dark clothes. She had a full, round face, and a small, serious mouth. Ruth stared at the photograph and then touched the precious image captured within it. Her new granddaughter.

  “We're going to call her Hannah,” William added.

  “Hannah,” Ruth repeated. Hannah was her mother's name. Then she turned to Betsy. “She's beautiful.” Instead of answering, though, Betsy burst into tears. Oscar and William looked alarmed and the waiter came hurrying over, but Betsy, her head still bent over her blouse, waved him away.

  “What's wrong?” asked Oscar and William, nearly in unison. There was no immediate response, but when Ruth offered her a packet of tissues from her purse, Betsy took one and began to dab at her wet eyes and cheeks.

  “I'm so sorry,” she finally said.

  “Sorry for what?” William said.

  “I didn't mean to break down like that. It's just that we haven't told you”—she gestured toward Ruth and Oscar—“about what the last two years have been like. Wanting a baby, trying to have a baby, enduring every damn treatment under the sun and still not being able to have a baby. And then watching Penelope and Gabriel have Isobel just like that! It's been really hard.”

  “But now we are going to have a baby,” said William with a quiet authority that made Ruth proud of him. “We're going to China. In two weeks. And we're bringing her home with us.”

  “I know. And I'm happy about it, I really am.”

  “Then why . . .?” asked William. Oscar and Ruth were silent; they had nothing to say here, they were outsiders, intruders even.

  “It's just that getting her, finally getting her, feels like I'm saying good-bye to the other thing.” William looked confused. “I guess it's hard to accept that I'll never have one of my own.”

  “Oh, but she will be your own,” Ruth couldn't help saying. “You don't know that yet, but she will be. She is already.”

  “How can you say that?” asked Betsy, staring intently into Ruth's face. She seemed not hostile, but curious. “You've had children of your own. Three of them. How can you know what it feels like for me?” Her voice sounded as if she were ready to cry again.

  “I don't,” Ruth said, desperate not to offend but equally desperate to comfort her. “I just know that what makes them yours doesn't have that much to do with carrying them and giving birth to them. It has to do with the way it feels when they're in your arms. Holding them, feeding them, bathing them, loving them. That's what makes them yours.” Ruth's face felt all red and flushed. She saw that Oscar and William were staring, not sure what to make of this. Just then, the waiter appeared with the appetizers—prawns, baby egg rolls, soup with curls of steam that rose from its golden surface—and they all looked down at their plates and chopsticks until he was gone.

  “I never really thought of it that way,” Betsy said slowly, looking at Ruth as if she were revising every single thing she had ever thought of her. “But now I will.” She picked up a spoon and began to eat her soup. William casually draped an arm over her shoulders, managing to eat his food with surprising grace despite using only one hand to do it. The rest of the meal passed without incident. When they said good night, Betsy hugged Ruth tightly.

  “Thank you,” Betsy said into her ear, “so much. I'll call you before we go, all right?”

  “Do that,” Ruth said, returning the embrace. Then she turned to her son, who kissed her not once but twice, on either cheek, like a dapper European gentleman.

  Later, as Ruth was lying next to Oscar in the peaceful oasis of their bed, he turned to her, hand propped under his head.

  “You amaze me, you know,” he said quietly.

  “Amaze you? After all this time?” Ruth's tone was playful; surely he was teasing.

  “Yes, you really do,” he said, and she realized he was not mocking at all, but instead quite serious.

  “In what way?” she asked, turning to face him so that their noses were almost touching. She had always thought Oscar had a fine, beautiful, even noble nose.

  “It's your desire to mend things. Most people don't bother to fix what they've broken. But you're different.”

  “Well,” Ruth said, not sure how to respond to this unexpected and lovely compliment. Was it true? She couldn't say. She only knew that she had to keep trying, as Oscar said, to put things together again.

  They made love after that and when Oscar rolled away from her, back to his part of the bed, Ruth thought some more about what he had said. He seemed to have great faith in her power. But as she watched her husband's recumbent form relax and drift into sleep, Ruth herself felt strangely powerless. She wanted to physically shake the feeling off, as if it were an annoying insect hovering around her head. Still it persisted, buzzing steadily and quietly all through the night.

  GABRIEL

  Gabriel had always been a collector. As a boy, he gravitated toward the usual assortment of boyish things: bottle caps, seashells, polished rocks, mint-condition coins that winked brightly in their protective plastic cases, albums filled with page after page of lavishly colored, exotic stamps. He also collected ticket stubs and programs from the ballet performances he went to with his mother; he even saved a few pairs of signed point shoes—the dancers often gave them away to fans—but he quickly abandoned that. The shoes were bulky and hard to store, and he didn't want to hear his brothers' teasing about them anyway.

  As he got older, his collections grew more arcane and specialized. There were the vintage game pieces: Bakelite dice, poker chips and faded wooden markers that began with the thirty-pound carton he bought on a whim at an auction in Massachusetts. Then there was the outmoded scientific equipment—hydrometers from the 1930s still in their crumbling, cardboard boxes, turn-of-the-century glass beakers and cork-topped test tubes—that he purchased from a dealer in Queens.

  Most recently, he had started to collect old neon signs, a habit that Penelope would not abide, at least not in their apartment. “You mean you would bring those awful things in here?” she said when she saw the first one, a green sign that read HOT COFFEE on one line and ROLLS on the line below. In between was a stylized, green neon coffee cup with a vivid orange plume of steam emanating from its surface. “Isn't neon a poisonous gas?” When he assured her that it was contained, she didn't believe him. “What about seepage? Don't you read the newspapers? Don't you know anything?” She also objected to the colors, which she found garish, and the noise, a soft but raspy buzzing sound, rather like the intermittent humming of insects on a hot summer night.

  Gabriel hadn't intended to collect the signs, but that was true of most of his collections—he didn't set out to do it, but somehow the object, whatever it was, found its way to him, like a signal, a portent whose meaning was only that which he conferred upon it later. The first time he became interested in neon, he had been visiting with clients up the coast and, on the drive home, had to stop because of construction in the road. At the same time, a group of men were dismantling an old, roadside diner. As Gabriel slowed his car to a halt, two of them were carrying the HOT COFFEE/ROLLS sign almost directly past his open window, to a large Dumpster nearby. “How much do you want for that?” Gabriel found himself saying. The men looked around, not sure what they had that could be of value. “The sign,” Gabriel said, gesturing toward it. “The one you're carrying. How much?” The two looked at each other and then back to Gabriel. The shorter one said, “You mean you want this? What for?” Gabriel couldn't answer that, but got them to agree to put it in the trunk of his car. At first they didn't want any money, but eventually they accepted the pair of twenties that he pressed into their palms.

  The rest of the way home, Gabriel was acutely conscious of the sign he was carrying. He felt warmed and reassured by its humble promise of food and drink; the steaming cup was an unexpected visua
l delight, a gift of sorts. He could hardly believe it was his. When Penelope vetoed it, he was not surprised or even bothered; he just took it to his office, where it seemed to fit right in.

  After that, he began hunting for signs, tracking them down at out-of-the-way places: a family-run drugstore about to succumb to the might of a large, national chain (he loved the stout red cross surrounded by a red circle he found there) or a shoe repair shop (where he was drawn to the deep blue cat's face that was meant to advertise the once popular Cat's Paw brand of soles and heels) whose owner had recently died. These signs, and many others, came back with him, and joined the first on the large white wall of his office that he had cleared just for that purpose. There was a blue rectangle with the word OPEN inside it; a set of crimson block letters that spelled out BERKELEY MEAT MARKET; a sign in pink script that read LOLLY'S HOUSE OF BEAUTY and showed a woman's face in profile. Her features were not rendered, but her long hair was wonderfully articulated in delicate curls and waves of pink neon.

  They began to attract notice, these signs Gabriel had been accumulating. First the other architects in his firm would stop and comment on the shape of one, the color of another. Then it was a client. “They're like poems that you just find in the urban landscape,” said Austin Levy, the husband of the couple from Santa Barbara, the ones Gabriel had pretended to be visiting the time he flew to New York to see Ginny. Austin asked if Gabriel could get him a sign for his living room. So Gabriel came up with a pair of rakish green-and-yellow neon cocktail glasses that floated in a yellow oval of neon. The word BAR was written in green script above the oval. Austin was delighted, couldn't stop exclaiming about it. Soon other clients started requesting them too and Gabriel found himself tracking down the perfect vintage neon sign for a health clinic downtown, an upscale art gallery and a fancy house in Palo Alto. His boss, the senior partner in the firm, was pleased with the way Gabriel's idiosyncratic hobby had turned into a sought-after design element.