Talk Before Sleep

  Ruth is wearing her wig, charcoal eyeliner, black mascara—“How old is this?” Helen asked, “I had to spit all over it to make it work!”—blush and lipstick. Her white silk blouse is tucked into her jeans, and she’s put on her red ostrich-leather cowboy boots. She turns sideways before the mirror. “How do my falsies look?”

  “Excellent,” L.D. says. “You’re definitely my kind of girl.”

  “Let me sit a minute,” Ruth says, and squeezes between me and Sarah on her bed. Then, “Whew! I’m beat!” You can see her fatigue like a veil she is wearing, but, also like a veil, you can see her great beauty through it.

  “If you’re too tired, we can get rid of him,” L.D. says. She is full of hope.

  Ruth smiles. “No, I really want to see him. I want you guys to meet him. And then you have to leave for a while.”

  “What for?” I say.

  The doorbell rings. We stand immobile, all of us, and then Ruth takes in a breath and gets up to answer it. Sarah straightens her bed while the rest of us wait nervously, picking at our nails or looking out the window, around the room. We hear Ruth say something, then a man’s deep voice, then Ruth’s laugh. L.D. sternly adjusts the bill of her hat so that it is centered & over her forehead, then strides forth into the hallway to inspect him. Like ducklings, the rest of us line up and follow.

  He still looks like a stupid movie star,” Helen says. “I hate guys like that!”

  “He brought her a rose,” Sarah says. “He was nice. It was a good beginning.”

  L.D. snorts, finishes her beer. We are in a pizza parlor consoling ourselves, eating garlic bread and drinking beer—except for Helen, who has to go to work in a little while and has been told never to come to work after drinking again. (“The irony,” she said, “is that I sold more books that night than I ever did. People trust drunks about art.”)

  “Well, I just want to know what this means,” I say. “I thought … you know … I thought she was dying.”

  “She is dying,” Sarah says. “Everybody always forgets that you die the way you live. She will keep on being herself until the end.”

  “What?” L.D. asks, her forehead wrinkled.

  “You know, you stay the same person until the end.”

  “You think you know so much, Sarah,” L.D. says, “just because of what you went through with your father. But that was one fucking death experience. You don’t know everything. In addition to which maybe Ruth’s not dying anymore. There are cases where people who are told they’re terminal survive. They do a complete turnaround. They live. You might want to keep that in mind.”

  “I know that happens,” Sarah says, not unkindly. “I also know that some things have got to be taken care of, in case it doesn’t happen. Ruth asked me to help her do that. And I intend to.”

  Helen and I look uneasily at each other. Then Helen pushes her chair back slightly, says, “I think I know what’s happening here. We’re starting to take out on each other the fact that we’ve been dumped for a man.”

  L.D. takes her toothpick out of her mouth, stares at her. “We haven’t been dumped. He’s a visitor. He’s not us.”

  “I know,” Helen says, though I wonder if she did know, before now.

  “We’ve been here long enough,” L.D. says, and signals the waitress for the check.

  I don’t want to leave yet. I want to talk some more about the possibility of Ruth not dying. But it’s not the kind of thing to push too hard.

  How is she?” Joe wants to know at supper that night.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s weird. She seems like she’s getting better.”

  “Who?” Meggie asks. “Ruth?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s better now?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, with some irritation. “Eat your dinner.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Meggie says.

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  “You’re crabby,” Meggie says, and I say I’m sorry.

  On Saturday, I pick Helen up at the bookstore. We are going to Ruth’s together. I arrive early, browse a little while I wait for Helen to get off. I like this bookstore. Scattered here and there are voluptuous overstuffed armchairs to sit in, with little area rugs beneath them. The smell of bread is always in the air from the bakery down the street. There are no business books as a matter of policy. A black cat named William wanders in and out of the room, makes silent assessments of various customers before choosing one. He stands beside them until they reach down to pet him and then walks away, looks for another admirer. Helen says she wants to change his name to Everyman.

  When she finally steps from behind the cash register and pulls on her coat, I ask Helen, “Should we bring Ruth a book?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve brought her a whole bunch, but I don’t think she’s been reading like she used to. She keeps falling asleep when she reads now.”

  “Maybe a really tacky romance novel,” I say.

  “Maybe she’s living that.”

  “Is he going to be there again today?”

  “I suppose. It seems like he’s with her all the time. I talked to him the other night when I was over. Michael had stopped by, so Joel and I went in the kitchen. He said he called her again because he’d never stopped being crazy about her, and he wanted to see if the old stuff was still there, and if it was … Well, he said it is still there, and that he wants to be with her now, no matter what. It’s kind of suspicious, if you ask me.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “I mean, maybe he just likes the drama.”

  “Right.”

  “But,” Helen sighs. “I like him. I mean, I can’t help it.”

  “I know,” I say, and I do. Joel Fratto is the male equivalent to Ruth: bright, irreverent, handsome, irresistible. And best of all, not scared by cancer. Ruth said when she told him, he went through about five minutes of shock and then he asked, “What can I do? What do you want most?” and Ruth said it had been a long time since a man put his arms around her and just held her. “So he did that,” she told me. “He kissed me and then he just held me. Like a bird’s egg or something, really gently. And I fell asleep. And he just stayed still for a good half-hour. When I woke up, he told me to take the wig off—it was sliding off anyway. And then he raised up my shirt and took my falsies off.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “And it was okay,” she said. And then she stopped talking.

  Helen climbs the steps to Ruth’s apartment ahead of me, and when she opens the door, I hear her gasp. I follow quickly, alarmed, and see Joel standing in the living room, his head completely shaved. He looks like a mannequin not quite dressed.

  “What did you do?” Helen asks.

  He grins. “Do you like it?”

  “Did you do this to be like her or something?” Helen asks.

  “Yeah!”

  Helen stands still for a moment, staring, then takes off her coat. “How is she today?” she asks, and I note with satisfaction that there is some coolness in her tone.

  “She’s fine. She wants me to take her to her studio.”

  “Are you going to?” I ask. “Can I come?”

  “Sure. L.D.’s here; she’s coming, too.”

  I go into the bedroom and see L.D. sitting on the foot of Ruth’s bed eating out of a party-sized bag of ripple chips. She, too, has shaved her head. There are faint red nicks on her too-white head, and tender wrinkles, like a baby’s, revealed at the top of her neck. I swallow, start to say something, but cannot.

  “Well, shut your mouth, girl, or the flies will get in,” she says.

  “I don’t believe this!” I say.

  “It’s not that much of a difference,” she says, and holds the chip bag out to me. “Want some?”

  I shake my head no. I can’t keep from staring. Whereas Joel’s head is perfectly round, I see that L.D.’s has some interesting lumps.

  “I had a fucking crewcut, you know. It’s not that different!”

 
“Okay!”

  I look at Ruth for the first time, leaning back against her pillows, holding a magazine across her chest and smiling.

  “Well, do you like this, Ruth?” I ask. “I mean, does this make you feel better or something?”

  “Yeah!” She is wearing a lavender T-shirt and blue jeans and her baseball hat, and her sneakers are on and laced tightly. It is a pleasure to see her ready to go somewhere.

  “Well, fine, I’ll do it, then,” I say.

  Behind me, I hear Helen say, “Me, too.”

  I turn to look at her, regretting a little her hasty support, which I realize now makes my decision a little more definite than I had meant it to be. But together we go into the bathroom.

  “You go first,” I tell Helen. “I’ll help you do the back, and then you can help me do mine.”

  Helen hesitates briefly, then takes a pair of scissors from the medicine chest. She opens and closes them nervously. Then she loosens a thick strand of her hair, holds the scissors up to it. “We probably need to get nearly all of it off before we use the razor.” She takes in a deep breath, then stands perfectly still, staring at herself in the mirror. Then she puts the scissors down and sits beside me on the edge of the tub. “Shit. You go ahead. I don’t think I can do it.”

  I exhale deeply. “Good.”

  “But I want to!”

  “Well, me, too!” I say.

  Helen puts the scissors back in the medicine chest and I follow her into Ruth’s bedroom. “We can’t do it,” she says regretfully.

  “That’s okay,” Ruth says, laughing.

  “We want to but we can’t,” I add.

  “I know,” she says.

  L.D. frowns, blows up the potato-chip bag and pops it. “Wimps.”

  “Let’s shave Sarah next time we see her as a symbol for both of us,” I say.

  “Oh, I’ll be the fucking symbol for all of you,” L.D. says. “Relax.”

  The phone rings, and Joel answers it, then calls Ruth. She starts to get out of bed, then sits back down on the edge quickly.

  “What?” I say, moving toward her.

  “I’m just dizzy for a second when I get up,” she says. “It’s nothing.”

  The rest of us look at each other and then Ruth says again, “It’s nothing. Your blood pressure gets real low when you he around all the time. You know that, Ann. I just need to get moving.”

  She goes to the phone and Joel comes into the bedroom. “How is she, really?” I ask quietly.

  “I was going to ask you that.” He sits on her bed, leans back on his hands, and I note with some unkindness the familiarity with which he does this. Has he earned it? “From what I understand, it sure doesn’t sound very good, but she looks all right.”

  “She looks great,” L.D. says.

  “Well, I don’t see how long this can go on,” I say. “I mean, she was told ‘weeks to months.’ It’s been weeks already.”

  Ruth comes into the room and I stop talking. She looks at me, and I see that she has heard me. “I’m not going to die,” she says. “I changed my mind.” And then, to Joel, “You’re ready, right?”

  We are once again in Ruth’s studio, this time having the party she said she wanted. When we first envisioned it, I thought Ruth would be at home lying in bed, receiving visitors one by one. Knots of women would take turns consoling each other in the kitchen. All the sounds of conversation would be low and sad.

  Instead she is seated before her easel, laughing loudly, drinking wine and surrounded by other people who are also laughing. It reminds me of the first time I met her, except that this time the people are all women except for Joel. He is sitting by me at a table covered with newspaper and smears of dried paint. “She’s incredible,” Joel says, watching her.

  “I know.”

  “I’ve never met a stronger woman.”

  “I know.”

  “She used to be game for anything. Anything. And she’d never complain.”

  “She still doesn’t. I went with her to the doctor a few weeks ago and heard her tell him she’s been staying up a lot at night because of pain in her back. She said, ‘It’s kind of bad. I sort of lie there and writhe around.’ And I thought, What? You never told me. You never said a word about it.”

  Joel nodded, looked down into his paper cup of wine, then up at me. “So, what do you think, Ann? Do you think she really has a chance?”

  “Do you?”

  He shrugged. “I went to the library and did a lot of reading about this disease.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Of course, the books are all old by now. No book could keep up with the progress that’s being made.”

  “What progress is that?”

  “Well, you know, I mean things happen every day.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They do!”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  He looks away, crumples his cup in his hand, then looks back at me. He doesn’t have to tell me what he believes will happen to Ruth. “The biggest mistake I ever made was walking away from her,” he said. “Major fuck-up. She was perfect for me. I think we could have …” He stops, swallows, looks over at her.

  “She never told me a thing about you,” I say.

  I don’t know why I’ve said this.

  He smiles. “I never forgot her. I never did.”

  “Well,” I say. “Who could?”

  Sarah walks by us with a camera. “Smile,” she says, and Joel and I put our arms around each other.

  “Get ready,” she says.

  Together we say, “We are.”

  I don’t see Ruth for three days. When I call, she is cheerful and unwilling to admit to any discomfort, if she’s having any. Joel is always there. I ask if he doesn’t have to go to work sometimes, and Ruth laughs and says, “He’s an artist, remember? He’s working. He paints when I sleep.”

  He’s staying there all the time,” I tell L.D. on the phone.

  “I know. The fucker.”

  “Well … I guess she wants him to, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “I guess it’s good, right?”

  L.D. sighs. “It’s not that. It’s not that I begrudge her any happiness. It’s just that I miss her. All of a sudden I don’t know what’s happening anymore. I’m jealous.”

  “Yes,” I say. “That’s it. Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you’re welcome.”

  “Okay.”

  Wednesday morning, Ruth calls me after Meggie’s gone to school, asks me to come over. When I get there, I see that she is alone, and I feel a sniffy kind of self-righteousness. I sit on the bed beside her, take off my coat, kiss her. “It’s about time you called me.”

  “Ummm, your face is cold,” she says. “It feels good.”

  “Are you hot?” I say. “Do you have a fever?”

  She smiles. “No. No.”

  “So how are you?” I ask, and the tone is careful and ignorant.

  She looks at me, tears in her eyes. “He’s been here way too much, hasn’t he?”

  I look down, shrug.

  “Do you feel like I’ve rejected you?”

  “No, of course not!”

  “Do you feel like I’ve rejected you?”

  “Look,” I say, “it’s good that he showed up.”

  “Do you feel—”

  “I don’t know!” I say. “I mean, I miss you, that’s all. I got used to being here.”

  “I told him to leave.”

  “Why?”

  Ruth smiles, shrugs. “Oh … you know. What’s the point? It’s too late. God. Did you ever hear of worse timing?”

  “What do you mean, ‘too late’?”

  She looks at me as though she is trying to memorize me. I don’t say anything. I’m afraid to.

  “Did I ever tell you that I sort of … broke in on Jani and Eric?” Ruth asks.

  “No. What do you mean?”

  “It was r
ight after I found out about her. Before I went into the nuthouse. I’d been out to dinner with Michael, and then dropped him off at a friend’s house to sleep over. And then I went to Eric’s. I wanted to talk to him again, about … I wanted him to let me come home. I thought if he saw me again, he’d change his mind. I walked up to the door, and I heard this music coming from inside. Thelonious Monk. And you know, Eric hardly ever listens to music. Especially good jazz. Clearly this was a courtship thing.”

  She stops talking, holds up a hand. “Wait.” She rests for a moment, then says, “So I went up to the window to look in, and all I saw were these shoes by the sofa, his and hers, you know. Obviously, they were in the bedroom. So I went in.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. I went in, really quietly.”

  “Oh, Ruth.”

  “I started up the stairs to the bedroom and then I heard their voices, they were sort of panicked, they must have heard me. I was just going to open the door when Eric opened it. He was in his bathrobe and his glasses were off and his hair was all messed up and it just … I was just enraged! I bought him that bathrobe! I pushed past him into the bedroom and there she was, lying there with her hair all messed up, too.”

  “I can’t believe you did that,” I said. “And I can’t believe you didn’t tell me when you did!”

  “It gets worse,” Ruth says. “I went up to her and said I’d heard so much about her and it was so nice to meet her and I put out my hand for her to shake. And I meant it to be really mean and sarcastic and everything, but all of a sudden I had this thought: Wait. We’re both women, here. Let’s talk. Of course, she didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to shake hands, either. And I just stood there for the longest time, my hand reaching out to her.”

  She stops talking, looks at me. I say nothing.

  “So she says,” here Ruth adopted a whiny, nasal tone, “‘Well, I don’t think this is very respectful. This isn’t very nice.’”

  “Are you kidding?”

  She holds up her right hand. “The God’s truth. That is exactly what she said. Anyway, after that, Eric sort of threw me out.”