Crash Diet (6 page)

Jim looked as handsome at that moment as he had ever looked, and it made her sick that she even thought it. He kept opening his mouth as if he had something to say (It’s not what you think. I have no idea how this happened.) but realized that there was nothing he
could
say, absolutely
nothing, at least at that moment, and before he had time to think of something, she turned and ran, leaving the door to number fifteen standing open.

Her mother would have known with one glance that something had happened, and she was not up to facing her. She searched her pockets for the car keys but they were on top of her dresser, dropped as they were every night into the pink silk box that she had received when Frieda was born. At a loss, she went into the office and turned her stool towards the wall where hung the last of the auto calendars, a turquoise Chevette front and center. Below it in bold letters,
MAY DAY
.

Jim came in and stood behind her for a long time without saying a word. She could see in the reflection of the plastic-coated bulletin board that he kept reaching a hand out and then drawing it back. The reflection of his hand kept reaching right into a notice about AKC poodles, and then into one about a Jane Fonda aerobics course that took place each weeknight in the Petrie Junior High School Cafeteria. Jim said it had never happened before, a first, and though she didn’t believe that, though she sensed
habit
and
pattern
in the whole fiasco, she said so what if it was the first, did that make it right?

When it was finally late enough that she knew her mother was asleep in the guest room, she went up to the house, Jim right behind her. She kept looking around for
Barbara
, kept wanting to ask how and when he met
Barbara
, but the night was silent. He brushed his teeth and got in their bed as if they would sleep on it, talk it over in the morning over a strong pot of coffee and frozen waffles. She stayed up the entire night, checking on Rodney and Frieda every thirty minutes, needing to put her hand out and feel their warm breath. She could not shake the picture of the two bodies, there in her bathtub, in her number fifteen. It wasn’t necessary to have a face for Barbara. Barbara had any and every face that he had ever stopped and noticed. Barbara had a perfect young lineless body, and she was brilliant and funny and talented in every way. Barbara told him that of course he should be in school, no woman in her right mind would deprive such a man. Ruthie finally slept on Frieda’s bed, her face pressed into the hard plastic face of a baby doll, a hideous baldheaded baby whose name oddly enough was Barbara Jean.

Jim left the very next day. Ruthie woke with a stiff neck to see Frieda still asleep, mouth open and drooling onto Barbara Jean’s nightgown. She woke with the slamming of a car door and looked out in time to see him leaving, Rodney standing in the middle of the parking lot, waving. “What is going on?” her mother asked and stepped into the room, a sealed envelope in her hand, Ruthie’s name printed in his handwriting, a script as unruly as his and Rodney’s hair. “Jim barely even spoke to me this morning. Didn’t even eat his waffles and I thought he loved them.”

He had met Barbara
at
, of all places, the community college, where she was an assistant instructor in some kind of real estate or insurance. She was right out of college and so he felt she was a good person to talk to about courses and credits. He never meant for anything to happen. It all started with one little cup of coffee. But didn’t Ruthie
know
that something had been wrong? Couldn’t she
tell
that things weren’t working? It wasn’t just the tension of the highway going to pot, it was more.
Don’t you see, Ruthie, that it was more?
No, no she couldn’t; she had always thought things were getting
better
.

Ruthie hasn’t gone after all the facts even though she is certain her mother could supply them. What she has come up with on her own is enough. Barbara is like 1-95. She is fast and lively and young, and Ruthie is 301, miles of tread stains and no longer the place to go. She imagines Barbara sidling up to Jim at school, her teeth clenched, jaw set in that tense way that suggests sexual frustration, bitterness, determination, or any combination of the three. She’s seen the look before, on dance floors, across the pool, window to window on the highway, but she’s never imagined Jim on one side of it. She’s never imagined that people would be whispering
does his wife know?
and the wife would be her. Now she can only suspect that there are people feeling sorry for her; there are people who see her as a loser and,
thus, an easy catch. And this Barbara probably hates her with a passion, probably bristles with the sound of her name or the thought of her home even though they’ve never even been introduced.

“Bump bottoms!” Frieda sprays a mouthful of water, her hair sticking up all around her head in hundreds of cowlicks. Rodney is tossing a clay clod high into the air and counting the seconds before it drops. The sun is disappearing now, this very second, and before it does, Ruthie goes and switches on the pool lights, round circles of white light bringing cheers from the girls. When she squats to tell them that they can only swim ten more minutes, she breathes in the heavy chlorine, enjoying the odor as if it is bleaching every tiny hair in her nose, purifying her system.

“Good night now,” Mrs. Andler calls and waves a rolled-up magazine. She holds on to the door facing as she slowly pulls herself into the room, the gray of her TV buzzing on to light the room before she closes the door.

The sun disappears behind the cracked billboard of the Budget Motel, leaving the empty pool out front dark like a crater. Watching the deserted building makes Ruthie’s skin tingle, makes her shiver, even though it is still eighty-odd degrees. And then, after what seems like an eternity of silence, there are headlights coming down 301, familiar in shape and speed. Rodney has counted very fast to get to fifteen before his clay hits the concrete around the pool and shatters.

“Bump bottoms!” Frieda screams while the car turns in slowly, past the faded sign and into a space at the end of the lot. Ruthie concentrates on the pool, the water an odd shade of aqua green with the white lights shimmering beneath. It’s the shade of green that makes her think of the 1940s, her own parents moving to the music of Glenn Miller. It makes her think of black-and-white tile floors and the sound of a saxophone. Frieda is standing in the shallow end wiping the water from her red eyes. Rodney has stopped throwing and is staring. She knows he’s behind her now, and she watches Frieda’s friend hold her nose and squat to the bottom. She focuses on the lights, round white lights like moons, like what she’d imagine on another planet, an empty barren planet. Maybe he’s come home. Maybe this is it.

“Hey, kids,” he says, and she jumps with his voice, not fully believing that he is really there. She turns and looks at him then, hands in the pockets of his jeans, hair neatly combed, face shaven, new knit shirt. Rodney has sidled up to him like a puppy and now is giving a play-by-play of every Little League game since his dad left home. Jim’s hand is on his back. Frieda runs a circle around him,
Daddy, Daddy, Daddy
, and then jumps back in the pool. “Hi,” he says, and Ruthie mouths the word back to him.

“Can we have another ten minutes?” Rodney asks, looking first at his dad. “Just ten?”

“Just ten.” Ruthie stands. She stares in the pool as Frieda and her friend try to sit crosslegged on the bottom. Then
she takes a step towards him, watching her feet so as to bypass the wet puddles and clumps of clay.
Have you come home?
She imagines herself saying the words and is just about to when she glances over at his car and sees a silhouette, a headful of curly curls. The sight makes her own hand fly up to her head, the flat bangs, the back yanked up with a silver barrette. There is no white gauzy dress but a loose cotton shift, paint splattered and smelling of chlorine.

“I thought you’d be up in the house,” he says and steps closer, seeing that she has seen, maybe knowing what it was she was about to say. “Ruthie?” The sound of him questioning her name makes her breathe quickly and when she looks up he has stepped even closer, close enough to touch. “Are you okay?” With every word out of his mouth, she feels herself drawn closer. This is that old feeling, that lean-against-the-locker-and-whisper-secrets-about-the-rest-of-your-lives feeling, that surge of friendliness and excitement that comes with the uncertain future, the uncrossed threshold. She has an urge to hit him, to hug him, and she knows her jaw is set in that same tight way that she has seen and despised in other women. She knows when she looks him in the eye that he is seeing all of this in her and, whether he likes it or not, he is feeling something similar. He may not be thinking about hanging the
NO VACANCY
sign or a night
they
spent in the honeymoon suite. Maybe he never thinks about lying in that small camper
or about after the Labor Day picnic the beginning of their senior year when they snuck into the dark woods along the road and lay on a blanket, the large drive-in screen in the distance, Doris Day rushing around in silence. But he’s got to be thinking and feeling something. He couldn’t just
stop
thinking.

“So, did you give Mrs. Andler a contract?” He asks and stares into the pool where Frieda’s friend is splashing her arms and legs in an attempt to turn a back flip.

“Yes.” She feels brave and looks at him but his eyes are still on the pool. “I told her no loud music, no pets, and no men after midnight.”

“Kind of strict.”

“Based on a recent incident.” She walks to the edge of the pool and is about to call the kids out, her heart pounding, head light and still ringing with the words she had not
planned
to say.

“I came to get some things,” he says now, and again steps closer. “I had really thought you’d be up at the house at this time.” Had he
hoped
that he’d find her in the house? To have her alone, out of Barbara’s vision? To talk to her? To be with her? “You know, Frieda usually is getting ready for bed about now.”

“Guess you can’t always be too sure about what’s
usually
going on.” She glances over at the empty front seat of his car (had she imagined the woman?) and then turns back to him, eye to eye, and steps closer. She feels powerful all
of a sudden, like she did years ago at that prom when she danced with him while long-nailed Linda was in the bathroom. This is how Barbara must have felt when she sauntered into number fifteen and stepped out of her clothes. Ruthie is close enough to put her hand on his, to wrap both hands around his throat and squeeze, to pull him close, but all thoughts are interrupted (haven’t they always been interrupted?) by the splash of a cannonball, Rodney firing himself into the deep end, a wave of water cresting over the side.

She waits until the pool settles, feels his arm brush against hers as they stare over at the Budget Motel and the large
NO TRESPASSING
sign. “I need to go up to the house for a while,” he whispers, and she feels the hair on her neck standing. “Go with me.”

“Don’t you have a date tonight?” she asks, her voice much weaker than she had intended. That’s what she had asked him while they were on the dance floor, poor Walter keeping a vigil by the Kool-Aid-like punch, Linda in the doorway scanning the crowd.

He sighs and for a split second it looks as if he’s going to reach for her hand, but he catches himself. No response. Rodney is counting now, a clod of dirt sailing upwards and then returning with a splat on the wet concrete. “You really should work on your style,” she continues, gaining strength from every piece of dirt that flies. “A bird in the hand doesn’t necessarily apply to people. Chances are you may find an empty nest.”

“So maybe I will,” he is saying, the back of his hand brushing hers. “Work on my style, I mean.” It seems like an eternity that they stand there, his arm finding its way around her waist. She is thinking that it’s too easy, that she needs to make things harder. It’s always been so easy, as easy as forgetting about Walter, as easy as holding his hand and letting him pull her up and away from the lot of the drive-in where they spread a blanket over the damp pine straw. But hadn’t she also pulled him, hadn’t they pulled each other into a life that took shape so fast they hardly had time to think about it? Couldn’t it just as easily have been her to fall into something? And if it hadn’t been for her crazy rooms and their decorator colors, she probably would have noticed that something wasn’t right. Her mind free of paint fumes and drapery patterns, and she might have fallen into something herself; she would have at least considered it, some smooth-talking white collar man to buy her something extravagant every April. They were young people leading an old life, complete with commode bars she had recently ordered for Mrs. Andler’s room. But it’s not over. She turns quickly and wraps her arms around him, as if on the dance floor or stretched out on the ground. She stares at the car, now certain that there never was anyone there. She thinks of Linda in her awful purple dress as she stood in the doorway of the gym, light from the hall illuminating her like some kind of out-of-date paper doll.

“God, what was I thinking?” he asks but she remains silent, lets her jaw relax. There will come a day when it
will seem like it never happened, just as it sometimes surprises her to recall how the motel first looked, those bare dirty rooms. Somewhere along the way their vows to the justice of the peace, who was dressed in Bermuda shorts and a baseball jersey, have taken on the formal glow of a big church wedding, and their nights in the cramped camper have become hours of late-night talks and lovemaking and side-splitting laughter. And in a few years when they’ve sold the property and moved to Columbia, when Jim has graduated and Rodney writes to tell Malcolm that none of his predictions came true and Frieda is begging to wear makeup and stay out late, they will talk about the Goodnight Inn and how wonderful it was to live there, the traffic a steady flow of honeymooners and college kids and families in wood-paneled station wagons bound for the coast. They will almost forget these three lousy weeks. She listens to Rodney counting higher than he has all day, his pieces of dirt soaring into the sky, and she watches Frieda swim up to one of the round hazy lights, her small hand reaching for the moon.