I Loved You More (48 page)

Buster Bangs, standing there, trying to stand there. A grin so big on his face, there's no doubt about it, you
definitely
want to do whatever he's been doing.

Buster tries to take a step but backs up two. The wall and the bad art on the wall is what's holding him up. The roar and the laughter has stopped and everybody gets quiet. Ruth quick grabs the sleeve of my shirt then lets go.

When Buster sees where I'm sitting, he makes his way over. Funny, when he seems to know where he's going he can go just fine. When he gets to me, he leans his face down. Just like that, Buster kisses me full on the mouth. I start to pull away, then don't. Ruth grabs a hold of my hand, then as the kiss goes on, her hand disappears. Buster's heavy marijuana smell, his garlic vegetarian breath. As we kiss, my chin goes up and up and Buster's lips press hard.

In all the world all there is, is Buster's scratchy mustache and beard, his soft lips, marijuana, garlic, his tongue, and his broken tooth, The kiss goes on forever. For me it does, anyway. Really, I don't want the kiss to stop because of what will happen after.

When Buster pulls his lips away, gold glitter falls from is hair and beard. My lap, my arms, my hands, my shirt are covered in gold glitter. Buster kneels down on one knee. His blue eyes, I
mean the right one, is looking deep into my eyes. His other eye looks like he's looking at Ruth. When he speaks, his voice is low, raspy from too much pot, and fucking sexy.

“Hey, Gruney,” Buster says, “you should come with me.”

I start to say something. Some shit I don't know. But Buster stops me.

“It's really best for everybody,” Buster says.

I look down at my glittery gold thumb. Big Ben moves my thumb to the glittery gold no-fear place. For some reason, I'm thinking about my kitchen. The refrigerator that's full of food that Ruth has cooked. A roast chicken, sprouted wheat bread she's baked, a big pot of kale because kale is good for you. Protein drinks without sugar. On the refrigerator, the magnetized words that Ruth bought that Ruth has constructed into strange sentences.
He touched her implacably in the moist middle. My heart is a can of sweet grass honey. Cornucopia of green earth, your insidious armpits. Fluid, she makes of the day the milky way
. The kitchen table that's set with the turquoise cloth napkins that match the turquoise elephant in the pattern of the tablecloth that Ruth bought on sale at Pier 1 Imports.

In fact, there is nothing in my house that doesn't have something of Ruth about it. The butcher knife and knife sharpener she bought because mine was shit. The salt and pepper shakers that looks like chickens. The hot pads that look like watermelons. The little dish that says
non parlare, baciami
on it on the stove top so you can lay down your dripping spoon. The big colorful Mexican plates. In the living room, the velvet faux-leopardskin throw on the couch. The camelskin lamp she bought because I'm Queen Lowlighta. The glass prism sculpture that reflects the light. Her Danskin leotard and her running shoes by the bedroom door. In the bathroom, the Lady Speed Stick and the toothbrush and the plate with her silver jewelry in it. The CDs from her car, and the feathers and the rocks and the sticks of wood on top of the refrigerator, on top of the coffee table, on the bedstand by the bed. Her computer on the dining room table.

And that night, there in the restaurant, my name
Ben Grunewald
on the name card, right next to
Ruth Dearden
.

A sudden rage. Big Ben rage. Ruth and I are suddenly married and Ruth is my wife the way Evie was my wife, that fucking weird heterosexual sick pairing of opposite sexes that means I can't breathe or be myself, not a person anymore who can do as he feels, go where he wants, have autonomy.
Married fucking married
. Seven years married, spiritually dead is right there again, right in my face, ready to devour me again. No longer a line around me that says this is me, this is my space, and you have to acknowledge this space because it's sacred and that line has to be there because it took my whole life to set up that line and without it I cannot exist.

And there I am sitting next to Ruth in her favorite restaurant with a grilled piece of stringy chicken breast covered
au beurre noir
. The mint green freshness of the summer shift against her skin. And I'm every man that I've ever hated that fucks over his woman. That I'm even in the position to fuck over
my woman
pisses me off. Since my wife Evie, since my sister, since my mother, I've been fucking diligent to keep my ass out of this crack.

And what a laugh to feel that my fucking sacred autonomy has been compromised. When you're fucking sick to death and so alone, Christ, you'll sell your soul for comfort.

Truth. I thought if I could keep telling the truth I'd be okay. You go along, talk about your feelings, trying to say the hard stuff, and you think it's okay. But really you don't have a clue. The real truth comes only years and years later, after therapy, after writing, and finally one day your body feels safe enough to feel it.

Either that or truth descends like the hand of an angry god and rips your heart out. Bam, there it is, truth, from out of nowhere, there you are one day getting a massage and then you've got his balls in your mouth and in a flash you're hard and you're coming and it is suddenly. Surprisingly. Brutally true.

Fucking truth, man.

There's a price you pay when you help someone the way
Ruth helped me. That deep life and death kind of help. Both of you have to pay. What the heroine expects from the man whose life she's saved. Ruth thinks she's loved you pure and simple and true, no strings attached until that moment that May night 1999 in her favorite restaurant in front of everybody when you get up from your chair and Buster Bangs leads you out of the restaurant. Finally, she finally realizes you won't love her back the way she wants you to and no matter how honest and giving a person she is, no matter that she's promised to love you no matter what, her indignation is righteous and overwhelming.

And Ruth has seen you weak, half-dead, trembling, afraid to come out from under the bed. You end up hating her because you've needed her so much.

Fucking resentment, man.

Ruth's glorious red hair piled high. Her ultra-blue eyes looking into mine. How sad they are. How much she loves me. How long she's suffered for her love. That lock of red hair hanging behind her ear. How did she get so beautiful. So skinny. Such a presence.

This movie ain't
My Fair Lady
. This movie
is All About Eve
. This movie is Stephen King's
Misery
.

Ruth.

Who I see is my mother. Who named me after the priest with soft hands. Me, her boyfriend she dressed in girl's clothes and had tea with in the afternoon. I was her redemption, the one who would save her.

Who I see is my sister Margaret. The sister who used tell me
jump
and I'd say
how high
. The sister, like my mother, who I danced with, cheered up, made myself into the one someone in the world she could love so the world could be a place that she could live in. The photo of Margaret and me on the cement steps. She's holding me and saying,
he's mine
. I'm holding her and saying,
I'm all she has
. The ugly sister. Not Marilyn Monroe but the clown.

Fuck. The Cockless Man at the Bottom of Hell I thought I
was rid of is back again. The Most Miserable Clown of All. A new version of my own fucking self-hatred for the twenty-first century. He's looking back at me through the eyes of Ruth. Ruth herself, I couldn't see.

It's weird. With Hank, with Tony Escobar, the more I loved them, the more I was myself. I guess I thought I could do that with Ruth as well. But Ruth wasn't a guy. Ruth was a girl and that meant Ruth was my mother, my sister.

My mother, my sister. My mother, my sister.

Fuck me, Dr. Freud.

And with all her loving soulful touch, Ruth could not open the door to my ecstasy.

But a garlic-soaked, rusty-haired hippy could.

Because he was a man.

It's fucked. I know. Totally fucked. But that's just the way it is.

      
18.

Hope

RUTH WASN'T THE ONLY ONE WHO NEEDED TO GET
fucked. It had been so long I thought it wasn't possible anymore. But Praise the Lord, Buster Bangs fucked me good.

As soon as he comes, though, Buster passes out. For a while it feels as if maybe I'm going to return to the world. I lie on his futon, my lungs full of fresh breath, my hand around Buster's foot. But it doesn't take long and things are back to being fucked up. Dizzy. Plus Buster's snoring away.

There's no way I'm going to spend the night in a strange house with a bull moose who eats garlic for breakfast on a lumpy hard hippy futon.

I'm out of there. Thirty blocks maybe to my house. It's cool out, so I borrow Buster Bangs's red wool sweater. My ass is sore, but it feels good to walk.

The moment I unlock my back door I can tell things are different. I turn on the overhead light in the kitchen. It takes my eyes a while to see what it is. All of Ruth's things are gone. I mean everything, the rocks and sticks and feathers, the tablecloth and the matching napkins, the salt and pepper shakers, the hot pads, the magnetic words on the refrigerator, the big colorful Mexican plates.

In the bathroom, I turn the overhead light on. Her Lady Speed Stick is gone and her soaps and the dish with her silver jewelry. Her shampoo and soft brush in the shower. Her running shoes and leotard by the bedroom door. In the bedroom, I turn
the overhead light on. On the nightstand, her sticks and rocks and feathers are gone. Her fancy Indian bedspread, her foam rubber pillow, the green and blue sheets with the high thread count. Gone. In the dining room, I turn the overhead light on. Her computer gone from the dining room table. In the living room, I turn the overhead light on. The faux-leopardskin throw, the camelskin lamp, gone. In the whole house. Everything. Right down to the roast chicken and the bowl of kale in the refrigerator, gone.

Damn, in that moment there's so much to feel I don't think I can feel it all. Such a strange sensation. In that space between the crack my arms make with my chest and just above my nipples, where I might have wings, the spirit in me starts to rise up and out, and when I lift my arms that spirit soars up high to the heavens. For a moment, there's a heaven above. It's so clear there's a heaven above, because what's coming out from under my armpits is connected to it.

My tired old body jumps up and I kick my heels and I yell out a loud
Whoop!
Find my Paul Simon CD.

Get out of the pen, Ben.

Just get loony, Gruney.

And get yourself free.

I dance and I twirl and kick up and shake my ass, a full-on dance marathon through the bright rooms. Dance and dance and don't stop dancing. I fall down more than sit onto the kitchen chair. Turn off the boombox. I'm breathing hard and I lean my elbows on the bare wood of the table.

It's in that silence I begin to feel something else. In the dish rack by the sink, one blue plate, one fork, the glass with the yellow balloons, the thick white cup with Otis Café on it. My house looks like somebody's house who doesn't really live in it.

I turn off all the overhead lights and turn on my lava lamp, my illuminated world globe, my faux Tiffany lamp. Make a fire in the fireplace. Grab a blanket that's still left on the bed. Something smells of garlic. Buster's red sweater. I pull the sweater
over my head and throw it in the corner. On the couch, I curl up under the warm blanket. The pitch in the firewood makes the fire pop and spit.

In the middle of the night, I wake up. The fire is out and I make it into bed. Feels good, alone in bed and I stretch out. But there's something along the edge of the bed. Something old. I know what it is but I won't admit it. Three hours of sleep.

The next day, Sunday. Rainy, cold, and dark, early June, Portland. About three in the afternoon I call Buster. I get is his voicemail. I don't leave a message.

My long clawfoot bathtub is the only place. Hot bath and boombox the only place left to go. My only CD I'm not sick of listening to is the CD of my favorite songs Ruth made. I don't know if the CD's a good idea, but I put it on.

In the tub, surrounded by hot water and bubbles, Jane Siberry's “The Gospel According to Darkness.” I wonder if I've ever cried so hard.

Monday morning, Hank calls again. His voice is what I need to hear. His news ain't good, though. He can't make it in August. The doctor has told him he shouldn't travel so soon. Airplane air.
Maybe I can make it for Christmas
, Hank says.

A couple hours later that same day, another phone call. As soon as the phone rings, I know it's death.

It's my ex-wife, Evie. I'm not sure at all what to say. How to make my voice sound. Finally, it's the Catholic boy with the big apology. I mean me trying to cover that voice up:

“Hi, Evie,” I say. “What's up?”

The silence before Evie speaks. All the years, all that we never talked about.

“I just wondered if you'd heard,” Evie says.

“Heard what?”