About Face (9 page)

The bedroom had only a bed in the middle, a dresser on the wall to the left, and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, stuffed full and running over, on the right. The bedroom's comparative emptiness brought its shabbiness into relief. The paint was peeling badly, and the bed was supported by three legs and a pile of books. They continued into the kitchen, where the chaos that was missing from the bedroom had taken refuge. A long narrow battered oak table was in front of them, set with four unmatched places. The cooking area was to the left, and a counter filled with jars, collectible chotchkies and telephone paraphernalia, was in between. Beyond the kitchen was a neglected garden in an interior courtyard that provided a little natural light.

“Well, now you've seen it.” Vivian spoke louder than she needed to and shrugged. “Believe it or not, it's a big step up from our place in Washington Heights, but that place went co-op a couple of years ago, so we had to leave. We were lucky to find this, boy we had to look and look, and you wouldn't believe the places we saw and turned down. So here we are, all snug and at home.”

David said, “Hey, this place is fabulous. I think if we'd seen a place like this when we were looking around for—”

“So,
mi amigos
, have a seat everyone.” Carlos turned out the lights in the bedroom and led everyone to the table. He took his place at the narrow end near the door, while Vivian directed Ruth and David to his right.

“Carlos, my friend,” David said, “you seem to have gotten more Spanish than you used to be. I know your father's Puerto Rican, but is this some kind of time-release ethnicity? Or have you changed parents?”

“A lot of people at work have Spanish accents. I guess it's catching,” Carlos said to the table top.

“Anyway, I hope you still like Bloody Marys, ‘cause I still make the best ones you ever had,” Vivian said. “Really and truly, the best. You'll see, the very best.” She reached into the refrigerator and took out four glasses and a pitcher, all thick glass with bubbles trapped inside, a blue stripe along the top. She stuck a celery stalk in each filled glass before passing them around. Ruth held her glass out and said, “In the immortal words of those wise volunteers who preceded us… ”

“Don't let the bastards get you down,” came the enthusiastic chorus, followed by clinks and gulps.

Everyone sipped until Vivian insisted they bring each other up to date on their lives. “You can go first, then us. We have all day. Moderate bragging about kids is allowed, okay?”

Ruth pointed her celery stalk at David. “You do it, okay?”

“Where should I start?”

Vivian jumped right in. “Start with how you went from being friends, you know, the platonic kind of friends, which you always insisted you were even though I knew better, even back then, and wound up being married and proving that I was right all along, even though I had to wait for you guys to catch up to my superior wisdom.”

“Right,” Ruth said. “Superior wisdom. Honey, start with the trip to Woodstock and how we got turned back by the State Police and arrived at my parents' house, covered with mud.”

He took a big sip, then launched into the oft-told story of their muddied arrival at her parents' house where, because of a houseful of guests, they'd had to share a bedroom. Since they were platonic friends, no one thought much of it, but the sleeping proximity resulted in a seismic shift in their relationship. The new relationship took root quickly and grew.

He took the scenic route for the story of their lives and Ruth herded him back to the chronological thrust whenever she felt a side-trip was only marginally relevant. When he started telling about their visit to John and Janet, mutual Peace Corps friends who'd become sheep farmers in rural Vermont, Ruth burst in. She pointed out that, though it had been more than thirty minutes, he was only up to 1983. So David left John and Janet in the lurch and switched to Josh, indulging in the allowable bragging, showing the three pictures they'd brought for this purpose. He summed up their work lives by describing his work at the high school and his new plan to retire soon, then Ruth's work as the means through which she'd been able to express her creativity, plus put Josh through college.

“I made it in under an hour,” he announced. “Your turn.” He pointed his glass first at Carlos, then at Vivian, then drank.

“First, let's fill those poor empty glasses,” Carlos volunteered.

“And how about some food to absorb all that alcohol? Who's hungry?” Vivian and Ruth brought platters of bagels, cream cheese, and lox from the refrigerator to the table and passed around the chipped plates and mismatched silverware.

“Anyone want coffee yet?”

“Right after I finish this Bloody Mary,” Carlos said, taking a big gulp.

Vivian told how she and Carlos had continued seeing each other after Peace Corps, as they worked for the same anti-war groups. They got married and continued to work for “the movement” for about five more years, he as an organizer (and part-time bartender to pay the rent), she in a printing shop that produced leaflets and brochures. Carlos contributed a description of their economically marginal and sometime nomadic existence, while Vivian giggled and looked nostalgic.

Then she turned to Ida's birth and neo-natal emergency surgery to repair a hole in her heart and a malformed esophagus. Ruth occasionally stole a glance at Carlos. He fingered a silver and turquoise bracelet on his right wrist, rubbing it one stone at a time. Once, he looked up at her and they remained locked in eye contact for a long three seconds. For most of that visual game of chicken, Ruth had the feeling he wasn't looking at her so much as through her, to the past, but then he snapped out of it and saw her. He shrugged.

Ida's problem was completely corrected with her surgery. “The doctors told us she'd have one permanent side effect,” Carlos said solemnly. “She'll never be able to eat upside down. So she can never be an astronaut.” Passing pictures of Ida around, Vivian added, “I can live with that.”

Sometime after Ida's birth, around the time she started school, Vivian and Carlos got their more sedentary jobs. “And here we are,” he concluded, “regular middle-class Amuricanos. Sort of.”

Vivian reached for the full coffeepot at the far end of the table. She poured four mugs-full and passed them around. Her fingernails were bitten down to the quick, and two of them had bloody cuticles. Were her fingers that way when she started the story of their lives? Ruth wondered. Or did this story cost her a few fingernails?

Carlos crossed his legs in a lotus-position on the bench as he said, tight-lipped, “There's just one li'l bit I don't understand, Ruth. You work at a make-up company?”

Her stomach tightened. Oh no, here it comes. “Yup, I do. Yes.” She kept an even tone, concentrating on not feeling apologetic or defensive.

“You're a manager?”

“Mm-hmm, I am. Yes indeed, a manager.”

Vivian put her hand on Carlos's arm. “Carlos,” she said more slowly than Ruth had ever heard her speak. “Have some coffee. Don't do this.” She raised his mug to his mouth.

“I wanna ask one more thing, okay, just one, pretty please?”

“Go ahead Carlos,” Ruth said, forcing herself not to look away from his gaze and not to furrow her brow into a headache.

“I was just thinking that it's bad enough you're management on the backs of labor, but in an industry that, well, let's just say it's … not food, not clothing, not shelter. Just something that goes along with the Barbie Doll image women seem to be persuaded to buy into.” He looked at her and raised his scraggly eyebrows.

Vivian rushed in with “Oh Ruthie, don't mind him, really, it's okay, you know Carlos has strong feelings about everything, I'm sure you're not surprised, right? That's the way he was and that's still the way—”

“Hey guys,” David said. “You know we're just here to get reacquainted and have a nice time, have fun, not to solve the problems of the world.”

“That's just the point. Solving the problems of the world is fun for us. Always has been. And,” Carlos added, “it used to be fun for you too. So what happened to you guys?”

Ruth took as big a sip of the hot coffee as she could and forced herself to speak slowly, thinking she'd sound confident that way. “So I see, when all is said and done, you're still not the most tactful guy in the world, Carlos.”

“Si, I've been told that. But tact isn't important to me. Truth is.”

She thought back to her anxieties in the car and was at least glad that they'd been justified. “Is this Marxist shorthand? The workers should own the means of production, capitalism is evil and all that?”

“Bingo.”

“Ruthie, why don't we—” David put his arm around her.

She shook it off. “No, David, why don't we
not
? Don't do that. That's you, not me.”

Then she turned to Carlos and forced herself to make eye contact. “Just for the moment, let's ignore your smug superiority, and just talk about what you said.” Her mouth seemed to have a mind of its own, but at least it covered the sound of her heart knocking at her chest to get out. “You're pretty glib about the evils of capitalism, but communism hasn't exactly worked out so great.”

“
Si, si
, that's true in some parts of Eastern Europe. But you need to take a look at Cuba. It's different there. You know, we went down there for the Venceremos Brigade.” The twinkle in Carlos's eyes had returned, giving Ruth the clear impression that he was enjoying making her mad. And that just made her madder.

“Cuba? You're talking about Cuba?”

“There's Sweden, too, if you prefer. Socialist more than communist.”

She knew that if he weren't so arrogant, she might tell him she agreed with a lot of what he said. Well, some of it anyway. And, besides, he wasn't an innocent bystander when it came to capitalism. He bought those paper towels over there, and the coffee, the peanut butter, the newspaper, and everything else in the house, including the film for family photos, all from companies with bosses and workers. And that bit about being on the backs of labor was ridiculous. She was a great boss.

“Did you ever stop to think about—”

“Calm down, love. Maybe that's enough for now?” David asked.

David didn't have to join in the argument if he didn't want to, but at least he could stop being Mr. Reasonable, Mr. “We Can Discuss This Like Mature Adults.” He could at least be angry at Carlos, couldn't he?

“Ruthie seems to be holding her own, David,” Vivian said.

“It's just that—”

“David, you don't have to argue if you don't want to, but I
can
if I want to.”

“So when did you get so smart,
senora
Ruthie?”

“And Carlos, when did you get so condescending? Oh wait, I forgot, you were always condescending.”

If they only knew. She was like an M&M: hard shell on the outside, all gooey and melted on the inside. David knew. Was fooling people this way good? Or was it self-defeating, she wondered.

Vivian asked if the caffeine was starting to kick in. Silence was her answer. She looked from Ruth to Carlos. “You two picked up right where you left off, didn't you?”

Again, silence was the answer.

“I'll clean up,” David said.

Ruth thought she'd kill him for that. Did he think he was being a good guy? Or did he want to get away from Carlos as much as she did? Or did he want to try to force the two of them to make up? In the living room, where he didn't have to hear it? It didn't matter, she was still going to kill him.

“And I'll help David,” Vivian said. “And see if I can't draw him into the fight just a tiny little bit.”

“Lots of luck,” Ruth said.

Vivian raised her mono-brow as she looked over at Ruth, but then went to the sink, handing David a dishtowel.

In the living room, Ruth made a bee-line for the photos along the far living room wall. At least she could avoid eye contact that way. Carlos came up beside her and they stood shoulder-to-shoulder.

“We really have had some good times, Viv and I,” he offered.

“Mmm-hmm, I can imagine.”

He shrugged.

Did he think he'd just apologized? She needed for him to know that he hadn't. They moved a few paces to the left.

“Where was that one taken?” Ruth asked, staying in neutral conversational territory.

“We used to go up to our friend's farm upstate for weekends. That one was a weekend when a whole bunch of us went up to help him paint the barn. It was a party for a whole weekend, I remember. Sleeping bags, beer, paint, rock ‘n' roll. The good old days.”

She moved to the left again, in front of a series of Ida's school portraits.

The phone rang and Carlos answered while she stared at Ida's pictures and imagined how it might have been if she'd known her while she was growing up.

“Ida is the love of my life,” Carlos said, and silently returned to her side. He fingered the bracelet again. “
Mi amor
.”

“Clever of you guys to mount all the school pictures in a row like that.” She straightened a crooked photo. “This one looks like … third grade?”

“Something like that. I guess.”

“You know, Carlos, it's not just
what
you say. It's
how
you say it. Like it always was.”

“I believe what I believe. Passionately. It's my religion. Peace. Justice. Equality. Fairness. That kind of stuff. And they're more important to me than making nice with people who don't believe them. Or who aren't doing a good enough job.”

“I believe in them too, you know.”

He turned to stare at her full on. “Then why are you peddling makeup,
chiquita
?” He put his hands on her shoulders. “You were one of the good guys and—”