Saving Ruth

by Zoe Fishman

  “I mean, I don’t know the whole story, but I heard it from a sorority sister.”

  “How would your sorority sister in Tuscaloosa know about David dropping out in Atlanta?”

  “No, not someone at school with me. Someone in my sister sorority at Mercer. We all know everything. It’s like the Mafia,” she explained matter-of-factly.

  I stared out the window. “I love how you’re being so blasé about this. Just dropping this bomb on me like my brother secretly dropping out of school happens every day.”

  “Wass, come on, this may just be a crazy rumor. I thought you knew. And by the way, people dropping out of college is something that happens every day.”

  “Not to us! Not to David Wasserman especially. C’mon, Reed, what about soccer? His scholarship?”

  “Honey, I really don’t know.” She made a left into our neighborhood. “I’m just telling you what I heard, which unfortunately involved no details whatsoever.” She glanced over at me and put her hand on my knee. “Want to come over?”

  “No, I should get home.” I sighed.

  “Are you pissed at me?”

  “No, I’m not, I swear. I’m just confused. I mean, if it is true, my parents are going to go nuts.”

  “Like I said, it could very well just be a rumor that someone started.”

  “Why would someone make up a rumor that he dropped out of school? How does that make sense?”

  “I don’t know.” She pulled into my driveway. “Listen, you know how tiny this town is. I mean, you walked into Bootsie’s party a couple—okay, a lot—of pounds thinner and everyone and their gramma was convinced that you were a coke whore. It’s probably not true. I’ll call you later, okay?” I nodded and got out, slamming the door behind me. She began to pull away, but stopped and stuck her head out of the window. “Maybe you could ask Chris if he knows anything?”

  “Maybe.” I waved a limp hand in good-bye.

  In my bedroom, I shut the door, leaving an outraged Maddie outside. Why would David drop out of school and lie to my parents about it for an entire semester? I mean, my classes weren’t easy, but it wasn’t like I was a physics major at MIT. How could David’s be any harder? And he was smarter than me! A hundred times smarter. He was third in his graduating class. And how had he managed to keep our parents in the dark? These were people who smelled beer on our breath a week before we drank it. And what about soccer? How do you just throw a scholarship in the garbage? Wouldn’t there be letters to my parents and meetings with coaches? You couldn’t just walk away so neatly, could you?

  Or could you? He was walking neatly away from the accident. No one would ever know about the weed, thanks to me. Is this the person David had become? Someone who covered his tracks without a second thought? I flipped over on my stomach and relished the feeling of my ribs pressing into the mattress. No, that wasn’t him.

  The truth was that the rumor didn’t seem so far-fetched. He hadn’t spoken about soccer once this summer; he smoked cigarettes and weed, which I had never seen him do before; and he was acting strange and withdrawn—so much so that he had my parents seriously worried. I had taken Psych 101—these were the habits of a stressed-out, possibly depressed person. And maybe he was stressed out and depressed because he had something to hide. I buried my face in my pillow.

  My shorts felt tighter than they had the last time I’d put them on. The rational me knew that they had just been washed, but the crazy me said that I had gained weight. They battled like two yapping terriers inside my head. There was a knock at the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I come in?” It was my dad.

  “Sure.” I sat up and tried to compose myself. I had managed to avoid my parents and David since M.K. had dropped me off. Investing an obscene amount of time in the way you looked awarded you that privilege. Chris was picking me up in a half-hour.

  “Hi,” he said as he entered my room. “You look nice.” He sat down on the bed next to me.

  “Thanks. Having a bit of a meltdown. Nothing looks right on me.”

  “Ruth, everything looks great.”

  “Righto.” I rolled my eyes. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine. I’m handling a tough case at the office right now, so today was a pain in the neck.”

  “Oh yeah, what about?”

  “Just a family contesting their dead mother’s will. Ugly stuff.” He shuddered. “But I wanted to talk to you about the accident.”

  “Dad, I thought we went over this. What else is there to say?”

  “You’re right, you’re right, there’s nothing else to say right now. I just wanted to know if the board had made any moves yet.”

  “We have a meeting tomorrow night.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me, David, Jason, and the board, Dad. God.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so annoyed with me. I’m asking you pretty basic questions here.”

  I rubbed my temples. “I know. I guess I’m just anxious about everything.”

  “Did anything happen that you’re not telling me about?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly what you think I mean.” Sure, two things to be exact. One, David smoked a bowl of weed about ten minutes before he assumed the stand, and two, it is entirely possible that he’s dropped out of school and has been lying to you for an entire semester.

  “No!” I exhaled sharply. “What is this, Law and Order? You’re my dad, not a private fucking detective.” My internal Jacuzzi of nerves pumped bubbles of heat through my bloodstream.

  “Your mouth is like a sewer!” He shook his head. “I thought you were an English major. You can’t think of a better adjective?” He paused. “So you’re sure? Nothing with David?”

  “Dad, I told you already! Enough!” I stood up.

  “Hey, Ruth.” He took my hand. “I’m not trying to upset you, I promise. It’s just that if this girl’s parents do move to sue you two, or the pool, we need to know everything.”

  “The only reason you’re making such a big deal about this is because you still can’t accept the fact that David screwed up. It’s inconceivable to you!”

  “Honey, I’m telling you that that’s not it.”

  I pursed my lips and jutted my chin toward him as if to say, Right.

  “Okay, if I’m being really honest, yes. Maybe there’s a part of me that’s having a hard time understanding how David could be so out to lunch. Who knows, maybe it’s because he’s been so strange this summer, period.” He raked his hands over his scalp. “Part of my job as a lawyer is to ask the questions that everyone wants to know the answers to. The bottom line is that David’s track record makes his irresponsibility suspect.”

  “And my track record makes irresponsibility a given. If I had been on the stand, everyone would have just shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Eh, that makes sense.’ But since it was David, everyone assumes that some sinister secret lurks beneath the surface. It’s so messed up, Dad. I got busted for drinking beers a couple of times in high school and my reputation is soiled for life? What’s the big deal? That’s what every normal kid does.” He looked at me. “Except David,” I added.

  He put his arm around me. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. Your mother told me to take it easy, but I charged in here anyway.” He threw up his hands. “I can’t help it.” He pulled me into him.

  So much was swirling in my head. What if this rumor was true? It would mean, among other things, that David had been lying to my parents for months. They hated lying. Once after kindergarten, when my mom and dad were still at work, I had climbed up on a stool searching for sweets in a high cabinet and fallen—taking my mom’s crystal decanter with me. It had crashed to the ground, and I had spent what felt like a million years picking up each individual tiny shard in an attempt to cover my tracks. When she got home, of course she disc
overed the few pieces that I had missed.

  “What is all this glass from, Ruthie?” she had asked.

  Panic produced my very first lie. I had told her that I picked it up off the playground because I was worried about the other kids getting hurt. She had put her hands on her hips and given me her really? face. A few hours later, when my dad came home, they had gathered David and me for the first of many talks about the dangers of lying. Talks like that had had absolutely no effect on my rather illustrious lying career thus far (other than a profound sense of guilt), but David—as far as I knew David had never told a lie in his life. Until now. And if this rumor was true, he had really saved up his reserves wisely.

  The doorbell rang, and I sat up suddenly.

  “What’s wrong?” asked my dad.

  “I’m so nervous,” I confessed.

  “Sweetie, he should be the nervous one. You could eat poor ole Chris Fuller for lunch.”

  Lunch. I had skipped dinner. I nodded at my dad, gave him one last hug, and grabbed my bag. I turned off the light and jogged to the door with Maddie at my heels.

  “Hey, Ruth.” Chris smiled mischievously at me.

  “Don’t you look guilty,” I said, smiling back. “Do you have a body in your trunk or something?”

  He laughed. “Just happy to see you, I guess.”

  I patted Maddie good-bye and closed the door behind me. I hugged him hello, relishing the warm firmness of his chest and the impressive musculature of his back. The faint odor of cigarettes lingered underneath his crisp, citrusy cologne. I fought back the surprising urge to lick his neck.

  “Hey,” he whispered. “You smell good.” His breath tickled my skin.

  I pulled back and looked him in the eyes. “Thanks. Let’s hit the road, shall we?”

  “So, I’ve been thinking about the accident,” he said in the car.

  “Yeah?”

  “You ever wonder what it was that made you look over there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, the whole concept of destiny and all that.”

  “Whoa, this is a surprise. Chris Fuller asking me about destiny.” I laughed. “I wouldn’t think you’d go for that kind of stuff.”

  “What, you don’t think a jock from the country can be sensitive? I do yoga. I know what’s up.”

  I laughed. “You do yoga?”

  “Yep. Well, I had a girlfriend who was into it. I went a couple of times with her.” I tensed at the mention of a former girlfriend. Who was she? What did she look like? Was she blond? When she sat up, did her stomach stay flat? Did she like sex?

  “Your boys know about that?” I teased, hoping that sarcasm would mask my neuroses.

  “Ruth Wasserman, you don’t know me at all. I don’t give a rat’s ass about what my boys think. Never have.”

  “All right then. I stand corrected.” He looked forlorn. “Hey, I’m sorry. I guess there’s a lot we don’t know about each other. And I haven’t really thought about why I looked where I looked. Except that I was worried about David.”

  “Why were you worried about David?”

  “Oh, not worried,” I backtracked. “That’s not the right word. It’s just that there were a lot of Kiddy Kare kids near the pool.”

  “Oh yeah. It must have been pretty hectic.”

  “It was.”

  “Do you feel different now, now that you can say that you saved somebody’s life?”

  “Not really. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, though, that’s for sure. About that and, you know, the South.”

  “What about the South?”

  “Well, she’s a black girl at a white pool, you know? I’ve heard some pretty awful opinions.”

  “I bet. But can you say that’s necessarily a southern thing?”

  “What, racism?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think that kind of stupidity is ours alone.”

  “That may be true. I guess it’s just more expected here.”

  “I can see your point. I’m sorry that we’ve met your expectations, though. That’s bullshit.”

  “It’s interesting that you say ‘we.’ Like you and the South are one and the same.”

  “Well, we are. It’s in my blood. My parents were born and raised here, and my parents’ parents, and so on and so on. Y’all are different.”

  “Who’s ‘y’all’?”

  “The Wassermans.” He grinned. “You come from New York. It’s a different thing, even if you’ve lived here all of your life.”

  “That is true,” I agreed. “Plus, the Jewish thing.”

  “Yeah, that too. You don’t exactly blend seamlessly.”

  “Rude!”

  “You know I mean it in the best way, Ruth. That’s something I loved about my friendship with your brother. As easily as he was embraced here, he was always different. In a good way.”

  “Different how?”

  “I dunno. His sense of humor, the way he looked at things. That crazy bar mitzvar he had.”

  I laughed. “Oh my God. That was nuts. Remember the theme?”

  “Seinfeld, right?” We both burst into a fit of giggles. “I mean, how is that a theme?”

  “Why is that a theme is more like it.” I laughed. “To be honest, I think my parents got a little desperate. David was the last of his age group to go. The other three thirteen-year-old Jews in town had already monopolized the sports market. Nothing was left.”

  “I don’t remember David even watching Seinfeld,” said Chris.

  “Me either.” I shook my head. “Sam and Marjorie cracked under the pressure.”

  “I think I was sitting at the Kramer table,” said David. “We all got bubble gum cigars or something.”

  “Oy.”

  “Did you ever have one?”

  “Have what?”

  “A bar mitzvar thing. Wait, is that what it’s called?”

  “It’s bar mitzvah, actually. That’s what a boy has. The girl has a bat mitzvah.”

  “Oh. Well, did you have one?”

  “Nah. I didn’t really care about being Jewish back then, you know? I thought the whole bat mitzvah thing would be a waste of everybody’s time. Plus, I didn’t want to go dress shopping with my mother.” Dress shopping as an overweight tween was torture. Nothing was designed to make you feel worse about yourself than a dress. Once, my mom and I had spent every weekend for four months searching for an eighth-grade dance dress, finally settling on a peach bridesmaid monstrosity. Horrifying.

  “Huh. Wasn’t David super into the whole Jew scene around that age, though?”

  “Yeah, he was. It was really annoying, actually.”

  “Yeah, what was that group called? BBY something?”

  “BBYO.” David had spent his early teens as a super Jew. BBYO stood for B’nai B’rith Youth Organization and was, in a nutshell, a national (if not international, I certainly didn’t know) group of Jewish kids who got together to do charity work and read the Torah. Or something like that. My interest level had been zero, much to my parents’ chagrin. One look at his BBYO leader, who had a ponytail, high-waisted pleated shorts, and a Dodge Neon plastered with Dilbert stickers, and even the remotest chance of my participation was destroyed.

  “You weren’t into that?”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “How come?”

  “I dunno. Maybe because it made me feel even more different than I already did. And who wants to feel different in high school?”

  “Aw, c’mon. Everybody liked you.”

  “I mean, maybe I was liked, but I had to work double time at it. Because I was Jewish.” And fat.

  “Ruth, no offense, but I think that’s bullshit. You don’t think your sense of alienation is as much your fault as it is the South’s?”

  “How so?”


  “You’ve always had a little bit of a chip on your shoulder, girl. Always a little bit better than everyone else.”

  “Get outta here! All I ever wanted was to fit in!”

  “Well, that may be so, but it didn’t seem that way from the outside.”

  “You’re bullshitting me.”

  “Nope.”

  “No way. How could that possibly be true?”

  “That’s just the way I saw it. Maybe I’m the exception to the rule.”

  “You’re trying to tell me that if I had just been ‘sweet,’ my phone would have been ringing off the hook? I’ve always stood out like a sore thumb here, and not in a good way. Whether you admit it or not, the South is a pretty homogeneous place.”

  “So how did your brother defy the odds?”

  “He’s an athlete! And he’s super good-looking!” I covered my mouth with my hand. “Oh wow, I’m yelling. Sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s okay. But I think there are some big holes in your argument here. Just sayin’.”

  “I need a drink.”

  Chris laughed. “I can get you that drink.”

  “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “How do you feel about bowling?”

  “I’m not sure that anyone actually feels a certain way about bowling, but I’m game.” Honestly, I despised bowling. But being with Chris was taking my mind off of David somehow, even though we were talking about him. It was almost like the more we spoke about the David I had always known, the less possible it became that this new rumored David could even exist. “And I’ll try to remove my shoulder chip before we strap on those ridiculous clown shoes.”

  “Do that,” he replied. “See what happens.”

  18

  I swung around the corner on my bike, nursing the pit of dread in my stomach with some deep breaths.

  In . . . hold for five-four-three-two-one . . . outttttttt. In . . . hold for five-four-three-two-one . . . outttt.

  I was on my way to the house of Miss Carol (or Carol Cummings, as the rest of the world knew her) for the board meeting. I wasn’t sure why I was so terrified—I mean, really, what was the worst that could happen? It had already been established by the sibling code of silence that I was never ratting David out. Whatever consequences stemmed from that decision were par for the course: a jail sentence, an afterlife in the pits of hell, a guilty conscience that sat on my shoulders like an iron cloak. All of it was worth it, right? For this wonderful relationship with a brother who was completely open with me and loved me beyond a shadow of a doubt. Right.