“Last time I saw him he wouldn’t even stay for breakfast.” Her heart beat against her ribs just as it had the morning she watched Marco pull on his blue jeans, even out his shirttails, and button from the bottom up. She watched from bed, wrapped in sheets that smelled of sex, sour and metallic. “He just got up, and kissed my forehead.” All their partings made her anxious. “Didn’t even tell me he was leaving for Europe.” It was the first time she’d admitted his omission to herself or to anyone else. Until now she’d tried to tell herself she just hadn’t heard him say it, or it had slipped his mind.
The wind picked up bits of leaves, paper scraps, and fallen petals from the brick courtyard. She watched the debris rise and then collapse.
“What about your parents?”
“That’s a joke. My dad’s too busy being a prick and my mom’s too busy letting him. It’s all melodrama. I don’t know what . . .” It started to rain. “Shit.” The clouds broke open the way they do in Florida in August and within seconds they were drenched. Steam rose up from the ground in front of them. She smeared her bangs off her forehead. “Ira, see you at the Pond. I’ve got to walk.”
“Wait. I’ve got nowhere to be.” This was an event for him, a chance to be loyal.
She patted his wet shirt to show she didn’t question his sincerity. “No, I’ll be in later.” She held her cheek out for him to kiss. “Thanks for coming.”
Her feet slapped one in front of the other down the buckling sidewalk, past the pastel clapboard houses with weathervanes and widow’s walks. Did women throw themselves from roofs? She imagined herself, hand shielding her eyes from the sun, a dress blowing about her legs, gazing out to sea for a sight of Marco’s boat. And when he didn’t return, she would have the sympathy of neighbors.
Where was the dignity in rejection? Slogging through the puddles she felt trapped by her own healthy, busy reproductive system.
The last time she’d seen Marco he’d arrived on a Friday night, late, and they’d spent two days in bed. She was studying for her English literature final, warning herself that he probably wouldn’t call. That it was just as well he hadn’t invited her to his parents’ home for his graduation dinner, she had exams anyway. Then he’d knocked. The knot of his tie loosened, his breath sweet with vino santo, he leaned against her doorjamb, grinning so wide his gums showed slick and pink. His arms were loaded with supplies from his parents’ Italian market: Chianti, dry salami, Romano cheese, bread, and her favorite, a large red tin of amaretti cookies.
“I’m starving,” he said. “Are you?”
Opening the door just a few inches, she filled the space with her body, as if she had something to conceal.
He peeked over her shoulder. “You have a surprise in there for me?” He leaned in very, very close and said, “I’ve saved a surprise for you too.”
“Have you?” she asked, cocking an eyebrow, suppressing a smile. If only she hadn’t let him in. If only she’d made him wait. If she hadn’t let him kiss her collarbone, press his knee between her legs, and whisper, leaning into her, “I’ve missed you.”
“At least you knocked with your elbows.” She took the cookie tin from his hands and pulled him in. “I was getting bored.”
The sheet rested on her bent knees and covered them both completely, like a child’s fort, turning the light beneath soft and opaque. Her skin, she knew, would be lovely as cream, and she hoped he noticed. With Marco leaning over her, poised to touch her, she felt she could breathe his exhalations, feel her own breath catch at the back of her throat when he pushed inside of her. She felt herself slipping, her chin and heart lifting toward him, his arm wrapped tight around her back. When Marco came, he moaned a combination plea and exaltation. She listened for her name, for love, but heard only syllables.
Her tiny dorm mattress, squeezed into a corner, left them no space. Their bodies wedged tightly together, he slept and she crammed Dickens, delicately turning the pages so she wouldn’t disturb his arm tossed over her shoulder. Her prescription, which she’d meant to fill the day before, which she would absolutely fill on Monday, was in the bottom of her pocketbook. Surely, she’d reasoned, missing one, two pills at the very most, wouldn’t make a difference. Between naps and sex, she fed him cookies, licking crumbs from his lips, tossing wrappers on the floor. Monday morning, when she wanted to go out for coffee and poached eggs, he buttoned his shirt. “I’ll call you.”
Even if she knew how to reach him now, what would she say? She imagined him on a Vespa, on a cobblestone lane, his collar blown open by the wind, his teeth flashing in the sunlight. How could he even hear her calling, see her waving at him from the sidewalk, saying, “Marco, I’m pregnant”? She could imagine herself neither in Europe nor pregnant. It was only over the telephone that she could imagine telling him, a long black cord snaking over a fluffy, down-covered bed, the Alps out the window, the phone clutched in his hand, his face horrified as he listened to her distant mousy voice bothering him in his hotel room all the way across the Atlantic.
She fought to light another cigarette in the rain. At this moment she needed to be outside her own life. She thought if she could pull far enough away, imagine her life was a movie, she might know what she was supposed to do. She pictured her own wet hair, gamine face free of makeup, drenched blouse clinging to her breasts, thin wrists, fingers striking the soggy match tip until all the red was worn away, tears mingling with rain. She was scared and furious and stupid. Poor little match girl. Water dripped into her shoes, and she could think only in fucking clichés? The rain showed no signs of letting up and she was still blocks from the hotel room she’d rented in June, planning to stay only until September, when she would return to school. Her father had hung up on her when she told him she wouldn’t be home for the summer. He needed her in the house, as a buffer, someone to speak to her mother for him, as in Tell Mrs. Put-Upon I’ll be late. If she called home with this news, her father would explode with loud disappointment. At the very least, couldn’t someone as smart as Ruby have chosen some original path to screw everything up? Ultimately he’d take it out on her mother, who would absorb everything with quiet disappointment.
The neon tuna beacon of the Blue Fin Motel blinked at her from the roof. For forty-five dollars a month, her room came equipped with a hot plate, an icebox, and once-a-week fresh sheets. She kicked her pumps off at the door, abandoning them next to the bathing suit she’d dropped yesterday after her swim when she was still just Ruby, a cocktail waitress at the Pond, summering in the Keys, waiting for classes and another chance with Marco. Sitting on the edge of her unmade bed, surrounded by damp towels and flat pillows, an electric fan short one blade on the windowsill, she was overwhelmed by how pathetic her summer, and now her life, had become. Even if the nurse hadn’t told her about the beating heart, she still would have been terrified by the alternative, pain and blood. Death. She watched herself unbutton her blouse in the bureau mirror. Her wet hair, clinging to her skin, looked greasy, as if she’d totally let herself go. Tears fell down her cheeks to her neck and admirably fuller breasts. Rain clattered on the metal roof. A fresh pack of cigarettes sat on the nightstand. She lit one, stared in the mirror at the pretty girl alone in the depressing room.
It was still raining when she woke up, though not as hard. She was chilled, and her mouth tasted of stale cigarettes. The bedspread did little to warm her. She lay there, staring at the phone, willing it to ring, though she knew if it did it would only be Ira, checking in. She couldn’t stay trapped and dejected in this room all day. She couldn’t become someone whose life was defined by accidents. She’d already let that occur by thinking Marco would have a plan for their summer, and here she was, alone in the Keys. Certainly she had choices.
In the bathroom, she vigorously brushed her teeth, then peeled her skirt down her hips. Red ridges were carved into her flesh from the zipper and the waistband. If she wanted to wear this skirt in the near future, she was going to have to take over, trick her own body. It was simple, r
eally. She’d wear herself out, move furniture, throw herself down stairs. Miscarriages were common; her own mother had had two. She would start right now. She pulled on her swimsuit, ran the four blocks to the beach, and plunged in. The ocean, compared to the rain, was warm. She dove through waves and was quickly past the shore break, pushing herself, waiting for the moment when she could no longer touch bottom and was simply taking her daily swim, supported by the hammock of deep water. She concentrated on the mechanics of her own body, the pivot of her shoulder joints as her arms circled through air and then water. Straining forward, she felt muscles stretch across her abdomen and hips. She kicked hard, straight-legged, fighting against the choppy sea. As her heart beat with the exertion, she thought she could hear blood speeding through her veins. She could see it too; each time she turned her head to breathe deep, salty gasps, she could see her blood in the private red sky behind her eyelids. A tide of blood flowed through her body, and she willed just a little to flow out between her legs.
At the mile buoy, she turned in a slow circle, treading water. The beach, empty of umbrellas and beachcombers, was a sandy smudge. To the right, a jetty thrust out, one solid line of rock until it disappeared in water dark as the sky. The horizon had vanished. How easily her problems would evaporate if she just stayed out here with everything so impossibly far away. Gone. Empty and gone. Everything stretched away from her; the sound of wind and water filled her ears, stopped her thoughts, covered the sound of her gasps as she struggled to avoid swallowing water, and then her mouth was full of it, salt stung the back of the throat and she panicked, turned her face straight upward. The buoy swayed heavily nearby, its bell clanging, loud and forsaken, with each swell.
Water the color of bourbon gushed from the tub spout. She ran it hot as she could bear, hoping to raise her core temperature, to make her body inhospitable. To that end, she poured herself a glass of vodka as well. Her legs and ass itched terribly from the heat as she hunched in the tub, forcing herself to take it. She ate maraschino cherries out of the jar she’d pilfered from work, dropping the stems into the bath, one after another. With a rusty Brillo pad she’d found under the sink, she scrubbed at her legs and arms, her abdomen, thinking heat would seep in easily through wide-open pores. Once, Marco had scrubbed her back in the shower. She’d pressed her hands flat against the tiles as he soaped her all over. They’d made love there, her hands pushing her against Marco’s chest, the water pouring down into her open mouth. She ran her palms over her chest, cupped her breasts the way Marco had, only now they were tender; had they been this sore yesterday or was it knowledge that made them ache? Cherry stems and soapsuds floated around her in the bath. Her hands explored her belly. It had always been soft, a layer of baby fat just below her bellybutton. Soon the skin would be stretched taut, itching, leaving marks. Down her hips her hands stroked, and then between her legs, inside her. She felt her cervix with the tip of her finger, rubbery and tight as a fist. Never had she been so accommodating, so passive as she was with Marco. It hadn’t always been so; at first she was self-assured, happy to have him fetch her a drink, light her cigarette, sneak into her dorm, beg her roommate to leave for half an hour. When Marco had become aloof, his time taken up with vague obligations, he unhinged her.
She finally stood, her legs wobbly, whether from the vodka, the heat, or the swim, it didn’t matter. She gripped the towel rack to steady herself. Wisps of steam rose from her red and chapped body. If there had been a snowbank outside, she would have dived in. Instead, she turned the shower on cold and shivered beneath it for as long as she could stand, and then she made herself count slowly to ten.
She smoothed her sheets and blankets, jammed dirty clothes into a pillowcase, hung the towels and her swimsuit, lined up her shoes along the bottom of the closet. By six thirty, the time she had to leave for work, she was exhausted.
Her black bolero uniform fit—one good thing. Before she left she slipped a tampon into her purse, just in case.
Uncle Iggy’s tubby back was the first thing she saw every night when she arrived at work. That and his cocktail-onion head parked at the bar near the waitress station, where all night long he popped olives and offered advice. Tonight was no different except for his baby blue party hat with festive cursive claiming IT’S A BOY!
“Kitty cat . . . She’s here.” Ira sported a pink IT’S A GIRL! hat at a jaunty angle on his forehead. He grinned behind the bar and held up a bottle of cold duck.
The door closed behind her but she made no move to enter. Uncle Iggy, his plump white hand clutching a Gibson, his hat crooked on his slippery head, was smiling shyly. “You’re okay?” He swallowed a mouthful of salted peanuts. “I worry, you know.” It was the first time since she’d found out that anyone had looked her straight in the eye and asked how she was. She swallowed hard, blinked.
A balloon bouquet hung at the corner of the bar with IT’S A BOY! and IT’S A GIRL! balloons all in a crazy mix. “I didn’t know what to do when I watched you schlep off in the rain. I thought you could use a new point of view, so . . . voilà!” Ira leaned over the bar, held out a handful of dimes. “Go put on the Lady Diana or something. Make us move while I pop the cork.” He continued in a stage whisper. “I had to tell him.” He twitched his head toward Uncle Iggy, who as far as she knew was nobody’s uncle.
“You realize how completely fucked up this is?” Her voice shrill, she waved her freckled arm in a grand gesture, taking in the entire Pond. The kidney-shaped bar with glasses hanging in easy reach, the plastic flamingos perched around the edge of the scuffed black-and-white dance floor, the sticky pink vinyl booths, and now the glossy balloons. Uncle Iggy slid the hat from his head and crushed it in his hands. “I’ve known for exactly seven hours.”
“Any excuse for a party?” Ira said, his voice tipping up at the end. “Look, I’m sorry, I just didn’t want you moping around all night.”
She grabbed the dimes, went to the jukebox, selected the Supremes and then Mel Tormé for Uncle Iggy. Ira flipped the switch for the mirror ball, and bits of light sputtered along the walls. The Pond was empty except for the three of them and a couple of bored, sunburned tourists who had stumbled in to get out of the rain. “Come on, kitten, take this.” Ira held out a champagne flute.
“I deserve to mope.”
“And you’re so good with that lower-lip thing.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and squeezed as if all she’d suffered was a pulled tendon. The full implications, what this meant to her real life—things like parents, and school, and Marco, things that kept crowding in on her—all that stuff obviously escaped him. But here at the Pond, Ira was her only friend; he and Uncle Iggy were the only people she knew.
She tilted her head back and swallowed the entire glass. “You know, my mother had two miscarriages.”
He refilled her glass too fast. “A toast then.” Bubbles, vigorous and delicate, foamed up and over the sides onto her fingers. “To miscarriage.”
She gulped this glass down just as quickly as the first. Ira caught her, swiveled, shimmied, and snapped his fingers. He was long and lithe, made for dancing; she was limp and dizzy and bloated and tired and pregnant—expecting, with child, knocked up, a bun in the oven, preggers—there was a parade of words that could describe her state. Through two songs they passed the champagne bottle back and forth between them like a third partner. The tingling started in her feet and spread up her legs to her pelvis, across her belly and breasts, to her armpits. Her scalp prickled.
“There’s a bloom in her cheeks,” Uncle Iggy called out. Mel Tormé singing about April in Paris brought him to his feet, and he swept her into his arms. With his soft hand at her back and his amazingly nimble feet, he guided her around the floor.
“Why, Uncle Iggy.” She smiled at his agility, rested her head on his shoulder. All summer he’d been looking out for her. Making sure she ate, walking her home when she’d had too much to drink.
“Promise me you won’t try anything risky?”
&nb
sp; “I can’t,” she said.
“What do you mean? Of course you can. It would be dangerous and wrong.” He gripped her hand. His stomach pressing into hers made her wonder what it would be like to dance with him in a few months when they both had bellies.
“I mean I can’t try anything. I’m too far along.”
Uncle Iggy lived alone. As far as she knew, he did the same things every day. Read, walked, gardened, and came to the Pond to nurse three Gibsons.
“I want you to remember, I go home to a television.”
“How’s that supposed to make me feel better?” His was just the first in a long line of opinions that would come at her. Everyone would have one. When she finally told, and she would have to tell, her life wouldn’t be her own. Ira was right. She needed this party.
Ira clanged the bell at the bar. “We’ve got customers.”
A birthday celebration blew in and she clustered tables together along the edge of the dance floor. They were loud and sloppy-drunk, swaying in their seats, dancing in a clump to Chuck Berry. Any other night, she would have insinuated herself into the group, swayed her hips while balancing a tray full of cocktails, charming them with her customer service. But tonight, she felt graceless, both heavy and hollow, like a pumpkin, solid in your arms but light enough to float.
It was the second to last Friday of the summer. The Pond kept busy with heavily drinking holidayers desperate to connect before the season ended. Men sent drinks across the bar, lit cigarettes off the butts of the last, and rubbed up against each other on the dance floor. Ruby and her reproductive system were completely irrelevant to the scene. She kept imagining cramps, hoping for damp, rusty spots in her underpants. In the bathroom, she slid the tampon in just to see, and for most of the evening, she thought about it, felt it, invested it with all her hope. She nursed a Manhattan until Uncle Iggy filled the glass with orange juice. The birthday party kept drinking. He ordered her French fries. In between serving cocktails and complaining about her headache, she gobbled the fries down. He ordered her a second, greasy plate. When she took two aspirin from his palm, she thought of her mother’s kitchen and the bottle of Bayer aspirin Sally kept above the percolator. Her mother might still be up if she decided to call.
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