Talk Before Sleep (15 page)

“Well, I just want to know what this means,” I say. “I thought … you know … I thought she was dying.”

“She is dying,” Sarah says. “Everybody always forgets that you die the way you live. She will keep on being herself until the end.”

“What?” L.D. asks, her forehead wrinkled.

“You know, you stay the same person until the end.”

“You think you know so much, Sarah,” L.D. says, “just because of what you went through with your father. But that was one fucking death experience. You don’t know everything. In addition to which maybe Ruth’s not dying anymore. There are cases where people
who are told they’re terminal survive. They do a complete turnaround. They live. You might want to keep that in mind.”

“I know that happens,” Sarah says, not unkindly. “I also know that some things have got to be taken care of, in case it doesn’t happen. Ruth asked me to help her do that. And I intend to.”

Helen and I look uneasily at each other. Then Helen pushes her chair back slightly, says, “I think I know what’s happening here. We’re starting to take out on each other the fact that we’ve been dumped for a man.”

L.D. takes her toothpick out of her mouth, stares at her. “We haven’t been dumped. He’s a visitor. He’s not us.”

“
I
know,” Helen says, though I wonder if she did know, before now.

“We’ve been here long enough,” L.D. says, and signals the waitress for the check.

I don’t want to leave yet. I want to talk some more about the possibility of Ruth not dying. But it’s not the kind of thing to push too hard.

H
ow is she?” Joe wants to know at supper that night.

“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s weird. She seems like she’s getting better.”

“Who?” Meggie asks. “Ruth?”

“Yes.”

“She’s better now?”

“I don’t know,” I say, with some irritation. “Eat your dinner.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Meggie says.

“I didn’t say you did.”

“You’re crabby,” Meggie says, and I say I’m sorry.

O
n Saturday, I pick Helen up at the bookstore. We are going to Ruth’s together. I arrive early, browse a little while I wait for Helen to get off. I like this bookstore. Scattered here and there are voluptuous overstuffed armchairs to sit in, with little area rugs beneath them. The smell of bread is always in the air from the bakery down the street. There are no business books as a matter of policy. A black cat named William wanders in and out of the room, makes silent assessments of various customers before choosing one. He stands beside them until they reach down to pet him and then walks away, looks for another admirer. Helen says she wants to change his name to Everyman.

When she finally steps from behind the cash register and pulls on her coat, I ask Helen, “Should we bring Ruth a book?”

“I don’t know. I’ve brought her a whole bunch, but I don’t think she’s been reading like she used to. She keeps falling asleep when she reads now.”

“Maybe a really tacky romance novel,” I say.

“Maybe she’s
living
that.”

“Is he going to be there again today?”

“I suppose. It seems like he’s with her all the time. I talked to him the other night when I was over. Michael had stopped by, so Joel and I went in the kitchen. He said he called her again because he’d never stopped being crazy about her, and he wanted to see if the old stuff was still there, and if it was … Well, he said it
is
still there, and that he wants to be with her now, no matter what. It’s kind of suspicious, if you ask me.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“I mean, maybe he just likes the drama.”

“Right.”

“But,” Helen sighs. “I like him. I mean, I can’t help it.”

“I know,” I say, and I do. Joel Fratto is the male equivalent to Ruth: bright, irreverent, handsome, irresistible. And best of all, not scared by cancer. Ruth said when she told him, he went through about five minutes of shock and then he asked, “What can I do? What do you want most?” and Ruth said it had been a long time since a man put his arms around her and just held her. “So he did that,” she told me. “He kissed me and then he just held me. Like a bird’s egg or something, really gently. And I fell asleep. And he just stayed still for a good half-hour. When I woke up, he told me to take the wig off—it was sliding off anyway. And then he raised up my shirt and took my falsies off.”

“And?” I asked.

“And it was okay,” she said. And then she stopped talking.

H
elen climbs the steps to Ruth’s apartment ahead of me, and when she opens the door, I hear her gasp. I follow quickly, alarmed, and see Joel standing in the living room, his head completely shaved. He looks like a mannequin not quite dressed.

“What did you do?” Helen asks.

He grins. “Do you like it?”

“Did you do this to be like her or something?” Helen asks.

“Yeah!”

Helen stands still for a moment, staring, then takes off her coat. “How is she today?” she asks, and I note with satisfaction that there is some coolness in her tone.

“She’s fine. She wants me to take her to her studio.”

“Are you going to?” I ask. “Can I come?”

“Sure. L.D.’s here; she’s coming, too.”

I go into the bedroom and see L.D. sitting on the foot of Ruth’s bed eating out of a party-sized bag of ripple chips. She, too, has shaved her head. There are faint red nicks on her too-white head, and tender wrinkles, like a baby’s, revealed at the top of her neck. I swallow, start to say something, but cannot.

“Well, shut your mouth, girl, or the flies will get in,” she says.

“I don’t believe this!” I say.

“It’s not that much of a difference,” she says, and holds the chip bag out to me. “Want some?”

I shake my head no. I can’t keep from staring. Whereas Joel’s head is perfectly round, I see that L.D.’s has some interesting lumps.

“I
had
a fucking
crew
cut, you know. It’s not that different!”

“Okay!”

I look at Ruth for the first time, leaning back against her pillows, holding a magazine across her chest and smiling.

“Well, do you
like
this, Ruth?” I ask. “I mean, does this make you feel better or something?”

“Yeah!” She is wearing a lavender T-shirt and blue jeans and her baseball hat, and her sneakers are on and laced tightly. It is a pleasure to see her ready to go somewhere.

“Well, fine, I’ll do it, then,” I say.

Behind me, I hear Helen say, “Me, too.”

I turn to look at her, regretting a little her hasty support, which I realize now makes my decision a little more definite than I had meant it to be. But together we go into the bathroom.

“You go first,” I tell Helen. “I’ll help you do the back, and then you can help me do mine.”

Helen hesitates briefly, then takes a pair of scissors from the medicine chest. She opens and closes them nervously. Then she loosens a thick strand of her hair, holds the scissors up to it. “We probably need to get nearly all of it off before we use the razor.” She takes in a deep breath, then stands perfectly still, staring at herself
in the mirror. Then she puts the scissors down and sits beside me on the edge of the tub. “Shit. You go ahead. I don’t think I can do it.”

I exhale deeply. “Good.”

“But I want to!”

“Well, me, too!” I say.

Helen puts the scissors back in the medicine chest and I follow her into Ruth’s bedroom. “We can’t do it,” she says regretfully.

“That’s okay,” Ruth says, laughing.

“We want to but we can’t,” I add.

“I know,” she says.

L.D. frowns, blows up the potato-chip bag and pops it. “Wimps.”

“Let’s shave Sarah next time we see her as a symbol for both of us,” I say.

“Oh, I’ll be the fucking symbol for all of you,” L.D. says. “Relax.”

The phone rings, and Joel answers it, then calls Ruth. She starts to get out of bed, then sits back down on the edge quickly.

“What?” I say, moving toward her.

“I’m just dizzy for a second when I get up,” she says. “It’s nothing.”

The rest of us look at each other and then Ruth says again, “It’s
nothing
. Your blood pressure gets real low when you he around all the time. You know that, Ann. I just need to get moving.”

She goes to the phone and Joel comes into the bedroom. “How is she, really?” I ask quietly.

“I was going to ask you that.” He sits on her bed, leans back on his hands, and I note with some unkindness
the familiarity with which he does this. Has he earned it? “From what I understand, it sure doesn’t sound very good, but she
looks
all right.”

“She looks great,” L.D. says.

“Well, I don’t see how long this can go on,” I say. “I mean, she was told ‘weeks to months.’ It’s been weeks already.”

Ruth comes into the room and I stop talking. She looks at me, and I see that she has heard me. “I’m not going to die,” she says. “I changed my mind.” And then, to Joel, “You’re ready, right?”

W
e are once again in Ruth’s studio, this time having the party she said she wanted. When we first envisioned it, I thought Ruth would be at home lying in bed, receiving visitors one by one. Knots of women would take turns consoling each other in the kitchen. All the sounds of conversation would be low and sad.

Instead she is seated before her easel, laughing loudly, drinking wine and surrounded by other people who are also laughing. It reminds me of the first time I met her, except that this time the people are all women except for Joel. He is sitting by me at a table covered with newspaper and smears of dried paint. “She’s incredible,” Joel says, watching her.

“I know.”

“I’ve never met a stronger woman.”

“I know.”

“She used to be game for anything. Anything. And she’d never complain.”

“She still doesn’t. I went with her to the doctor a few weeks ago and heard her tell him she’s been staying up a lot at night because of pain in her back. She said, ‘It’s kind of bad. I sort of lie there and writhe around.’ And I thought,
What?
You never told me. You never said a word about it.”

Joel nodded, looked down into his paper cup of wine, then up at me. “So, what do you think, Ann? Do you think she really has a chance?”