About Face (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

David's Bombshell

 

 

SHE STARTED SHEDDING HER WORK CLOTHES the instant she was inside her house. David, a teacher at the local high school, had gotten home even earlier than she and started an early dinner by inspecting the fridge contents and giving his creativity free rein. Tonight's palette had consisted of chicken thighs, left-over Brussels sprouts, peas, rice, and beets. Had it been her turn to cook, she'd have looked for a recipe.

Over dinner, she filled David in on Jeremy's interpretation of the Lipsticks & Scarves campaign and his “I want to get my hands dirty” speech.

“Dirty hands are bad?”

“Dirty hands are bad?”

“No one needed to look over my shoulder on ‘Glamorous Glimmer.' A big success. Same with ‘Red, Red, More Red.' Hundreds of others. I'm good at this stuff, I have a great record.”

“Maybe he's not doing it to check up on you, but, like he said, to get to know the business. It doesn't seem—”

“It may not seem so bad to you. Believe me, you had to be there.”

She speculated that maybe Jeremy wasn't happy about being sent from a mega-corporation to a little bitty company. But then why micro-manage? Maybe he just didn't like her because she wasn't cut out with the standard corporate cookie-cutter. Didn't worship at the altar of buzz-words, didn't like professional associations, didn't dress like a store-dummy. He'd probably even call her a “women's libber.” Maybe he was planning to put a B&D guy, a Big Daddy, in her job. Then why hadn't he done it yet?

“It feels like he's marking his territory, pissing on the hydrant.”

“Why don't you think about—”

“There's got to be more to him than meets the eye. Because, really, not much meets the eye. Judy said she has a friend who used to work for the Big Daddies so maybe she can get some gossip.”

David had cooked, so she insisted on cleaning up, even though it was the night of the benefit. “Fair's fair. I have time.”

Just before leaving the kitchen and switching off the light, she adjusted a plate in the dishrack. It was the one they'd had made from Josh's drawing, years ago, with a face whose eyes were V-shaped blue birds and the big smiling mouth was a series of red flowers. When the face was right-side-up, she smiled back at it.

“I can't put it off any longer.” She walked over to David and stood between him and the TV. “Time to get dressed up.”

He picked up the newspaper. “It's still early. I only need fifteen minutes to put on my tuxedo, and, really, seven of those minutes are spent putting on my tuxedo frame-of-mind.” He peeked over the top of the newspaper.

“Yes, but I need your help. As usual.” She pulled him out of his chair.

He saluted and started towards the bedroom. She took the paper from the chair, folded it and put it on the side table.

They headed down the corridor, plushly-carpeted in forest green, past walls that could barely contain the jumble of photos. Ruth thought she must be the only person she knew whose favorite room in her own house wasn't a room at all, but a hallway.

Pictures of Josh dominated, sprinkled throughout the display: Josh being breast-fed by a tousle-haired Ruth, Josh in his SpiderMan Halloween costume at the day care center, David and Josh in orange life vests on a canoe trip, Josh doing magic tricks in middle school, Josh being comforted by his parents after a disastrous performance with the high school debating team, Josh and his deer-in-the-headlights prom date, Josh being suave on the college tennis team, Josh graduating from college.

Interspersed among the Josh-growing-up series were vacation shots of them with friends from one part of their life or another: on a barge trip through France, in a rented house in Italy, at a health spa, and assorted skiing, biking, hiking, and beach trips. There were family pictures, too: Ruth and her sister Marge, Ruth and her diminutive mother just a year before she died, David and his blond Midwestern parents. A wedding picture had all the family members from both sides looking as if they actually came from the same friendly planet.

At the far end of the corridor, closest to the bedroom, were three shots, side by side. There was one of each of them in front of the huts they lived in as Peace Corps volunteers—young, filthy, happy. And there was one of a six-year old Josh in Ruth's village, surrounded by village kids, when they'd all gone back for a visit.

Looking at a picture or two when she passed through the hallway was her version of stopping to smell the flowers. The pleasure was mingled with the recognition that the moment captured in each photo was over. This photo gallery was the place where happiness and sadness intersected, leading her to observe, on one of her many trips through it, that she thought the hallway could be her obituary.

In the bedroom, she started ruffling through the hangers in the “dress-up outfits” section of her closet. “Tonight's event is something Jeremy would probably call a ‘do-gooder kind of thing,' so part of me wants to stick it to him with something outrageous.”

David made a move towards his favorite, the cherry-red dress with the deep-V neckline that made her blush the first twenty minutes she wore it.

“Wait. I'm thinking maybe I'd do better to look powerful, especially after today's meeting. Maybe tonight I need to look like ‘one of them.' A real corporate suck-up. With an outfit that says,” and she placed both hands on her hips and dropped her voice, “‘Jeremy, what in the world are you thinking, I'm a bottom line girl, a powerful bottom line girl.'”

“This is a lot of message for one outfit.” David's eyes were unblinking, his mouth horizontally neutral, but she was fluent in his body language and knew he was struggling to stay on topic.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. And there's actually one more thing. There's Pat. Young Pat, thin Pat, cranky Pat who's sprinting to get on Jeremy's good side.”

“I can't believe you haven't won her over or gotten rid of her.”

“She's too good at what she does to get rid of. And I'm too good at relationships to give up on her. Soon she'll realize I'm not the enemy. And I'm not her mother. Meanwhile, I want to look like a middle-aged knockout.”

“Sounds like a night for …” He reached into the closet and pulled out, with a flourish, a sparkling black sequined top. “… sequins.”

“Sequins. I could wear that top with the long swishy skirt, which hides my tummy bulge nicely. Or maybe the plum dress”—she reached into the closet to pull it out—which shows off my legs, but it's a little tight right here in the danger area.” She put her hand across her abdomen. “What do you think? And then I'll let you go.”

“I think the skirt and top are beautiful and dignified, but the dress is beautiful and powerful and says ‘Watch out, Pat.'”

“What about the tummy?”

“Ruth, I swear, it seems to be all you can see, but the rest of us don't notice it. Especially with those legs. And I think I officially can't take any more of this.”

As they finished dressing, Ruth provided an overview of tonight's likely cast of characters, including those who needed buttering up and those who could use some therapeutic snubbing. They took a final side-by-side look in the full-length mirror near the front door.

David's graying hair and white neatly-trimmed beard framed sensual features he'd once feared were effeminate. He looked like he was born to wear a tuxedo with matching purple and green bow tie and cummerbund decorated with math formulas. At six feet tall, he didn't overpower Ruth, but created the perfect counterpoint for her slight frame, especially when he put his arm around her shoulder. She fit right in. And she didn't look too bad, either.

“Not bad,” he said. “If only Mrs. Sills could see me now. Back in third grade, she never thought I'd amount to anything.”

They headed for the door. Ruth asked about David's day. “Wasn't today that last-minute hush-hush faculty meeting?”

“Yep.”

“So? What gives? Is the principal resigning? Did they finally find out about all that special help, that
very-special
help, he gave the social studies teacher, what's-her-name?”

“Gloria. No, not that. Not quite so juicy. But it was pretty … pretty intriguing.”

“Well? What? Tell me.”

Ruth slid in on her side of the car, her movements deliberate so she wouldn't snag her pantyhose or dress. David hesitated for a second before he folded his body into his seat, buckled up, and started the engine. He turned to face Ruth and told her the meeting had been about saving money, especially on salaries, because of the recent defeat of the school budget.

He faced forward and eased the car into traffic.

“You weren't laid off, were you? Even they wouldn't lay you off to hire a younger teacher for less money. Would they? I mean, you're their best math teacher. And besides, you've got more tenure than God.” Ruth's alarm was not so much about job security as concern for David's emotional well-being.

David adjusted the heating controls, then the position of the side view mirrors, then the radio. “No, nothing like that.”

“Well?”

He explained the one-time only, take-it-or-leave-it early-retirement deal proposed by the district with buy-in from the state: teachers between fifty-two and fifty-six could choose to retire at the end of this school year or next. They didn't have to wait until they were fifty-eight and they didn't have to have the requisite thirty years on the job. In terms of their pension, they'd not only get credit for the years they'd worked, they'd also get a bit of a boost.

“It's really a….” His voice trailed off.

“It sounds to me like it's really a scheme to replace the older teachers with ones they can get cheap. Honestly, don't they care about the quality of the education they're paying for?”

Traffic was heavy, but moving. David looked in his rear-view mirror and adjusted its position. He looked over his shoulder at his blind spot as he slipped into the left lane for an upcoming turn.

Ruth tried to console David for what she thought was troubling him, that some of his friends would retire. She was sure he'd still enjoy being there, being the best geometry teacher they ever saw.

At a red light, David stopped, more suddenly than necessary, and turned his whole body to face Ruth again.

It was starting to rain, and Ruth worried about getting from the car to the concert hall without getting wet. Or did they still keep that umbrella in the car?

“Ruthie, you're not hearing what I'm saying.”

She looked over at him. The streetlight shone behind him, so his face was largely in shadow, but he looked funny. His mouth dropped off a little bit on the left. And his brows were furrowed. That wasn't like him at all. He was turning his wedding ring around. Uh oh, a bad sign.

She folded her hands like a school-girl. “So spell it out.”

The light turned green. He faced forward and drove more smoothly as he told her about the details of the one-time offer. He needed to let them know in the next thirty days or else he'd wind up working until he was fifty-eight.

“And I want to take it. And—”

“You want to retire? You can't be serious. Retire?”

“Retiring at fifty-four is not outlandish. Besides, you knew I'd be retiring in four years anyway.”

“What would you do? Another job? What kind?”

“No new jobs. Actually, I thought maybe … maybe we could both retire. Especially with your new boss being such a pain. And then we could play all day. It'd be fun. Don't you think?”

“You want
me
to retire?” Ruth looked out the side window, the front window, over at David, then back out the side window again, her eyes bouncing like pinballs. It was really raining now. Little puddles accumulated on the roadway, though not on the streets. She noticed the reflections in the puddles, of the street lamps, the tops of the buildings and even their car. But it went by in a blur, too fast to catch a good glimpse. She didn't like that blurriness and would have liked David to slow the car down so she could see her own reflection in her own car in one of the puddles.

“Why didn't you tell me this before instead of springing it on me now?”

David didn't answer for two blocks.

“I didn't spring it on you. We were busy talking about other things. Anyway, I did try. But…. And then you asked. It was….” He shook his head.

“David, we're not old enough to retire. It's too soon. Isn't it? Retire? Oh God, I didn't know you were thinking of retiring.”

“I have thirty days to tell them if I'm taking the offer. But that's what I want to do. And it would be more fun if you did it too.”

For the next twenty minutes, David pretended to be concentrating on his driving and Ruth pretended to be calm. He's crazy, she thought. We're not really old enough to retire. Isn't that for old people? Older than us, for sure. Let's see, when my mother was fifty-four, where was I? In the Peace Corps with Vivian. We certainly did think our parents were old back then, older than we'd ever be.