Saying Grace (16 page)

Back in her office, she studied the day’s agenda that Emily clipped to her door each morning. Then she went out to the front office.

“Didn’t I have a meeting with Kenny Lowen’s parents at two o’clock?”

“Mr. Lowen couldn’t make it. They’re coming in Monday.”

“Oh. Well, what about the TGIF?” Every so often the faculty had a potluck Thank God It’s Friday party, to which Helen Yeats brought sweet-and-sour meatballs, Catherine Trainer brought Jell-O mold with marshmallows, Blair brought beer and wine, and others brought brownies and cakes and spicy chicken wings and fruit plates and cheese. Sometimes there was a special occasion, sometimes it was just to gather together and howl. Today, Rue had rather thought it might be at least a little bit in honor of her birthday.

“Oh, we’re going to do it in two weeks,” said Emily, who was rooting around in her drawer with a look of annoyance. “Somebody took my staple remover!”

“Ah,” said Rue.

Emily began searching another drawer while explaining, “Pat Moredock has a root canal at four, Cynda is gone for the weekend, 114 / Beth Gutcheon

and Rosemary Fitch has to take her dogs to the vet.”

“I see,” said Rue. She went back to her office and sat down. She almost never had an afternoon with a clear calendar, and today of all days, she didn’t really want one.

The back door of her office opened, and Henry stepped in.

“Hello, dearie,” she said, feeling silly, because she was suddenly struck by how handsome he was. “Who let you out of your cage?”

“I’ve cured everybody. There are no more sick people in California.

I came to see if you were free for lunch.”

“I was just going to go down to the kitchen. Do you want to come?

I think there are tacos.”

“Sure. Or, no…why don’t you come with me? We could try something new.”

“Something that will only take forty minutes?”

“Sure. Maybe we’ll eat hot persimmons off the sidewalk.”

Rue located her purse and left a note on her door saying she’d be back at quarter of one.

Henry took her to a new restaurant at the top of the tallest building in Seven Springs, which meant six stories up. It was called the Cafe on the Square. They had a great view of the vistas of malls and parking lots and houses and lawns that stretched out across what had so recently been cattle country. There they ate risotto and drank red wine. Rue kept worrying about the time, but Henry (who was a stickler about punctuality) seemed unconcerned, and Rue had to admit there was nothing specific she had to be back for. One of the art teachers, Pat Moredock, had lately shown signs of hysteria, claiming that Marilyn Schramm had stolen all her rulers and that no one respected her subject, the proof being that even Rue had yanked Lyndie Sale, Jennifer Lowen, and Malone Dahl out of class without asking and never apologized. Rue had planned to meet with her, but it could wait.

After lunch she settled happily into the front seat of Henry’s car and felt so content that it took her a minute or two to realize that he was not driving toward school; they were headed north out of town, toward the freeway.

“Henry…I’m already late!”

“No, you’re fine.”

Saying Grace / 115

“Henry!”

Looking pleased with himself, he drove faster, heading north. Rue watched his profile as he studiously avoided looking back.

“Am I in the grip of a wicked conspiracy?” she said at last.

Henry smiled more broadly, though he was trying not to.

“You and Emily have been plotting!”

“You’ve been driving her crazy…every time she got your calendar cleared for the afternoon, you’d schedule something else.”

“And I was feeling so sorry for myself that they postponed the TGIF! Where are we going?”

“Oh, we’re just going to drive until we fall off the edge of the world.”

It took about four hours for them to get to Big Sur.

“Oh, Henry!” Rue said.

The road was densely lined with huge, crooked Monterey Pines.

It curved in S-hooks along cliffs above bays cut deeply into the shoreline. The water far below was pale and roaring. Often the beaches were filled with surfers in wet suits, although the air was already quite cool, and the water must have been frigid.

“We’re going to Esalen,” said Henry. “We’re going to sit in a big hot tub with strangers and talk about our sex life. And eat brown rice and gruel and get rolfed, and learn the Primal Scream.”

“We are not.”

“I’ve packed my bell-bottoms. And sandals. I’d have grown back my Fu Manchu mustache, but I thought you might suspect something.”

“You’re lying. We passed Esalen five minutes ago.”

“Did we? Damn.”

Henry had made reservations at a resort his doctor friends had told him about, high in the redwoods overlooking the sea on one side and deep fog-filled ravines on the other. It had a four-star restaurant and miles of paths curving through rock gardens and Japanese tea gardens and drought gardens of cactus and euphorbia, and exotic shrubs and flowering trees. Their bedroom had a fireplace and the biggest bed they had ever slept in together. Henry had packed a suitcase for Rue and had done quite a creditable job. He’d remembered socks and underwear, and she was especially touched that, given a choice of what he most liked to see her wear, he had 116 / Beth Gutcheon

chosen an old, soft, gray cashmere dress that she’d had as long as she’d known him.

“Is this your favorite?” she asked as she unpacked her suitcase, madly curious to see what he had thought of and what not.

“It is, actually. At first I couldn’t find it.”

She had been worrying lately about the Yummy Mummies in the parking lot in their tiny tennis dresses, their big shirts over leggings, that Oh-I-forgot-to-put-on-my-pants-look, and wondered if Henry wished she were more in vogue.

Over dinner, they didn’t say a lot. Henry had never looked more handsome, Rue thought, carrying twenty more pounds than when they had met, and his blond hair at last beginning to go gray. She was thinking of the year they met, when she was a senior and he was starting med school. He was famous for wild behavior, but with her, he’d been serious and trusting. He talked about joining the Peace Corps. Rue had been with him when he learned that his father had died and had gone with him to the funeral. She had been unprepared for the depth of his grief. They had stood side by side at the graveside on the shores of the Chesapeake…. Rue had been wearing this same gray dress.

Henry’s mother, whom Rue met for the first time that weekend, was very proper, very ineffectual. She had no reserves of strength to share with her children and had retired, with apologies, halfway through the reception that followed the burial, although the house was full of neighbors and relatives.

Henry’s only sister, Sybil, a freshman at Bennington that year, had come home for the funeral but managed to stay hors de combat in the matter of social responsibility. Henry’s father had been sick for some time, with complications from heavy smoking, and had serious pains from angina, arthritis, and possibly gout. Sybil had borne a lot of the burden of catering to him during her last years of high school. She delighted Henry by coming to the funeral in a black miniskirt and boots with her hair down to her butt and her eyes lined with kohl. During the reception she cleaned out her father’s medicine chest and, over the course of the weekend, took all the pills.

Rue realized she was smiling.

“What are you thinking about?” Henry asked.

Saying Grace / 117

“Sybil. Floating around the house the weekend your father died, and your mother sighing over how well Sybil was taking it, and how she’d always had inner resources.”

“I was pissed she even took all the codeine.”

“And now you can write your own prescriptions. Sybil always thought that’s why you went to med school.”

“You were wearing that dress.”

Rue noticed. “We were so young.”

“I always felt my life started when I met you,” said Henry. Rue, surprised by a rush of feeling, reached for his hand.

“And now we’re starting over again,” she said.

“I’m expecting it to be easier this time. I don’t have to get over being such an asshole.”

“It won’t require a whole new wardrobe.”

“Unless we decide to retire and move to the Seychelles.”

They sat quietly, content to be together, and to let their thoughts wander.

“I don’t suppose Georgia remembered my birthday,” Rue said at last.

“It seems not. I should have reminded her.”

“No, you shouldn’t.”

After dinner, they planned to walk up the ridge, but a light drizzle had begun to fall.

“Let’s go to the Japanese Baths then,” said Rue.

Henry was shocked. “We don’t have bathing suits!”

“The little card they put in our room said Bathing Suits Optional.

Which means Bathing Suits de Trop.”

“I thought you said this wouldn’t require a new wardrobe.”

“Come on,” said Rue. “Let’s just look.”

The bath house was deserted. Steam rose from the water and you could see the stars through intermittent clouds through the open lattice of the roof.

“Come on,” said Rue.

“What if other people come and want to have group sex? Or laugh at my penis?”

“That will be bad,” said Rue. She had put her clothes in a locker and was slipping naked into the water. Henry eventually joined her, 118 / Beth Gutcheon

and no one else arrived, and they floated under the stars, whispering and kissing and giggling, until Henry said he was too wrinkled and had to go home.

They spent the next day hiking on the headlands. The weather was cool and bright and wild. The hotel packed them a lunch and lent Henry a backpack.

In the morning, they talked about the Peace Corps. They had never gone because they couldn’t afford it. Henry had to pay off student loans.

“If we had gone, how would our lives be different?”

“You wouldn’t have finished your Ph.D.”

“That’s probably true.”

“Would it matter?”

“I don’t think so. Not very much. That last year in Cambridge was fun though.”

“It was. Remember the house in Somerville?”

“Whatever happened to that strange guy who always wore bicycle clips and kept all those canaries in his room? And made margaritas in the blender when his girlfriend came, and they never seemed to eat any food?”

“Was he in physics?”

“Economics.”

“And that couple from the law school with the little MG that wouldn’t start when it rained?”

“She’s a judge now. In Arizona.”

“Are they still married?”

“Oh, no. He had a pants problem.”

“Did he? When did he find the time?”

“You might well ask.”

“And remember the girl from your boarding school who went back and told everyone you were living in a commune?”

“Oh, I loved that! Quelle scandale.”

They stopped to admire the view. Henry said, “Why don’t we go to the Peace Corps now?”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. We could go to Africa.”

“Or Indonesia. Where they ate Michael Rockefeller.”

Saying Grace / 119

“Why don’t we?”

“Are you tired of cutting open heads?”

They began to walk again.

“I’d love to try something else,” he said. “You know. Save lives.

Save the world. Something modest.”

“You could work with children. Come over to school, we’re about to have a chicken pox epidemic.”

They let the subject drop for a while and soon stopped for lunch.

They ate leaning against a rock, looking west across the ocean. There were gulls and occasional pelicans. Rue thought of Catherine Trainer, and how she would love the birds here.

When they started to walk again after lunch, Henry brought up the subject of starting over again, but in a different way. “We’ve never talked about how long you want to stay at Country,” he said.

“No, but of course I think about it.”

“What do you think?”

“The world is changing. The school is changing. Remember when Georgia was born, how people talked about the whole child, and started schools where they believed in granola and banning television and not letting children play with guns? Now, no one gives a shit about any of that. Now they just want to get their kids into the best high school, so they can all go to Stanford or Yale, and if they don’t know anything about peace or the downtrodden or being a good person, who cares?”

“Well, some of them care, or they wouldn’t send their kids to you.

They’d all be over at Poly.”

“I hope that’s true.”

“Are you ever going to write a book?” Henry asked her.

“Me?”

“You used to talk about it, when you were in graduate school.”

“I used to talk about retiring at fifty and doing a bachelor of science.”

“I thought that was a great idea. Aren’t you tempted?”

“Are you having a midlife crisis?”

“Maybe.”

They stopped on a bluff and looked out over the Pacific.

“I want to go somewhere,” Henry said, unconscious that he was flexing his arms and shoulders as if preparing to brachiate. “I 120 / Beth Gutcheon

want to see something different. Remember how it felt, when we all thought we could stop the war and change the world and raise little boys who wouldn’t grow up to be sexist assholes? And little girls who
would
be sexist assholes and want to run Morgan Stanley?”

Rue looked at him. He looked as if he felt caged. She
did
remember what it felt like to be so young and to believe your generation was different. She smiled and touched him. She said, “Remember, we thought that if we
lived
to fifty, we would stop war and landfills and no one would eat meat?”

“No one would use Saran Wrap or plastic cartons; we’d all keep glass bottles and those reusable bowl and bottle covers that looked like shower caps?”

“And wash everything over and over,” she said. “That was before we knew about the drought.”

“What we thought,” said Henry, “was that you could change the world by behaving as if what one person does makes a difference.”

“That’s it,” said Rue, taking his hand. “That was it.” She was remembering what it was like when she first fell in love with him. She felt she had made a difference in
his
life, just by being herself. And she felt as if he had made her life make sense.