Tender at the Bone (35 page)

“Did I get in?” I asked. “If I did, I’ll type it on my own time.”

“Of course you got in,” said Antoinette impatiently. “But don’t bother with the recipe. I already sent it.”

Michael and Peter groaned in unison.

I was very proud to be a full-fledged member of The Swallow. I especially liked the Saturday morning shift; after a few months we were working together like a well-oiled machine. I loved the speed and the pressure, the feeling that we were operating at peak efficiency. Every week we tried to produce more food in less time, to make an extra pie or a special rice salad. We were twice as productive as most of the other shifts, and it was exhilarating. Tiring too:
by noon, when it was time for my break, I barely had the energy to take a piece of quiche out to the garden.

One Saturday I was sitting on the ground, sipping lemonade and leaning against a big bronze sculpture. My untouched plate of quiche was next to me.

“Aren’t you going to eat that?” said a voice. An overweight middle-aged woman was standing over me, looking longingly at the white porcelain plate.

“You have it,” I said, “I’m too tired to eat.” Her hand darted out, as if she was afraid I might change my mind. She put down the newspaper-stuffed straw basket she carried and arranged herself and her many skirts next to me. She took a bite.

“You make the best quiche in The Swallow,” she said. She put her florid face a little too close to mine so I could see the lines around her bright blue eyes and the short gray hair peeking out of the printed scarf that covered it.

“Thanks,” I replied, wishing she would move back a little.

“I’m Rachel Rubenstein,” she said, edging a little closer, “I’m writing my thesis on film.”

“Umm,” I replied as noncommitally as I could. I moved back, hoping that if I didn’t say anything she would go away. I had heard about Rachel, who seemed to spend all her time in the Film Archive next door, asking impossible questions of the directors who came for special screenings. She went to the arcane movies that didn’t seem to interest anyone else, ducking out between shows for coffee and sandwiches.

“I never got to go to college,” she pressed on. “I had children too early. Don’t you make that mistake.”

I shook my head, saying nothing.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Twenty-six,” I said. “Damn!” She had caught me.

“Excuse me?” she said.

“Nothing,” I replied. And then she was telling me about the ungrateful
son who never came to see her and her cats and why she liked the movies so much.

After that she was my customer, the way the handsome boys belonged to Chrissy and Linda. It didn’t seem quite fair but I didn’t know how to make her go away.

Rachel studied the collective. She did it openly, taking the table in the corner and watching her current victim the way a cat watches a mouse. Later she would tell me what she thought.

“I know her type,” she said, pointing a broken fingernail at Helen. “People like her have no understanding of real pain. She’s been handed everything on a silver platter. Does her husband support her?”

She called Chrissy and Linda “the workers,” and respected them even though they treated her with total contempt. They served her politely enough, but when she tried to engage them in conversation they refused to respond. I wished I had known how to be so rude.

Michael was “that big brute.” She wouldn’t let him wait on her. “He calls himself a Marxist and a poet,” she said contemptuously, “but I went to listen to him read one day. Pure dreck.” She approved of Peter because he was kind and she liked his politics. She changed her mind abruptly when she saw him at the movies with a tall girl with long blonde hair. “I never would have figured him as a man who would fall for a shiksa goddess,” she said, sniffing.

She had her problems with the people who ran the Archive too, especially after she told an avant-garde Yugoslavian director that he was a “no-talent Fascist” at a post-screening discussion. She was so agitated that we could hear her ranting through the closed doors of the movie theater.

She was still shouting when Steve, the mild-mannered ticket-taker, ejected her. “You Fascist slob,” she screamed, shaking her
fist as she emerged. I held my breath, hoping she would go past the restaurant and walk away. But no, she was coming in. I ran into the pastry room, hoping she hadn’t seen me.

Even from back there I could hear her bullying voice. “I must have coffee right now!” she shouted. Then she demanded shortbread. “That’s too small,” she boomed, “give me a bigger piece.”

I didn’t hear Peter’s reply, but it was obviously not satisfactory. There was a crash and an audible gasp from the collective crowd. And then Peter was shouting, “Out, out, out,” at the top of his voice.

I couldn’t contain myself; I had to find out what was going on. I walked into the dining room and saw Rachel hurling shortbread cookies across the room. “Fascist slob, Fascist slob, Fascist slob,” she was repeating each time she threw another pale square of cookie into Peter’s face.

“Do something,” Peter shouted when he saw me. I rushed over and put my arms around Rachel. She smelled electric, as if she were a toaster that was short-circuiting. When I touched her she put her arms at her sides and started to weep. “They made me do it,” she said.

“Who?” I asked.

“Them,” she said. “The ones who put the plates in my head.”

“Shh, shh,” I soothed. I led her outside to the garden and sat her down on a bench. “Shh, shh,” I kept saying, stroking her large, flabby arm, “it’s okay.”

“You’ll know what it’s like someday,” she said, pressing her jowly cheeks against mine. “You’ll know what it’s like to have them put plates in your head and control everything you do.”

“Shh, shh,” I said as soothingly as I could.

“You’ll know it when your time comes,” she said again. I didn’t say anything, so she fixed her crazy blue eyes on me and hissed, “It will happen to you.”

As I looked at her I felt suddenly frightened. I tried to look away, but her face was pressed against mine, teeth clenched. I was grateful when Antoinette came out in her purple apron and said, as if it were a normal day, “Ruth, could you come in? The movie’s letting out.”

“I was just leaving,” said Rachel, gathering her skirts with dignity. “I couldn’t bear to see that pig of a Yugoslav again.” She stood up and looked significantly at me. “Think about what I told you,” she said, stomping off. I could feel her footsteps reverberating through the ground as I went back into the restaurant.

The next night we called an emergency meeting about Rachel Rubenstein. We took our places around the big oak table and Antoinette handed out pieces of chocolate-pumpkin cake. “Taste it,” she urged. “We should be baking this every day.”

“Antoinette!” said Linda, stamping her foot. “We’re not here to eat cake. We’re here to decide what to do about that crazy woman.”

“Please,” said Antoinette, her French accent very strong. “It will not ’urt you to taste it. We could make an extra sixty dollars every day.”

“It’s delicious,” said Judith.

“Judith!” said Linda.

Judith held up her hands. “Okay, okay, let’s talk about Rachel,” she agreed. “But we could use the money. We haven’t given ourselves a raise in almost a year.”

“She should be banned,” said Chrissy flatly. “It’s simple. She scares away customers and the only one here who likes her is Ruth.”

“I don’t like her,” I said, “I feel sorry for her. I wish I had never met her. But what are we going to do, post a sign that says
KEEP OUT RACHEL RUBENSTEIN
?”

“The Archive is not going to let her in free anymore,” said Chrissy. “So she has no reason to be here.”

Michael stood up. He was agitated. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this, man,” he said. “What is this, a police state? Are we seriously talking about banning someone?”

“I don’t see you talking to her,” I pointed out.

“Hey, I can’t stand that crazy old bag,” he said, “but I support her right to eat where she wants and say what she feels. Even if I don’t like it.”

“You sure wouldn’t like to hear what she says about your poetry,” I told him. He was not fazed.

“At least she came to a reading,” he said, “which is more than any of you have done.”

Judith stood up. “Could we please stick to the subject,” she implored.

It was a typical Swallow meeting; everybody had an opinion, nobody had a solution. We talked for four hours and we did nothing. The only decision we made was to add Antoinette’s new chocolate-pumpkin cake to our repertoire.

Rachel started coming in every day, sitting at her corner table and following me with her eyes. She wouldn’t let anyone else wait on her; she said that she was afraid of being poisoned. She would sit there all afternoon, slowly picking at a piece of quiche, eating it in infinitesimal bites to make it last. Sometimes when I was doing dishes I would sense her eyes on me until I turned around and found her, standing in the kitchen door, still staring.

Things got eerier and eerier. Rachel Rubenstein was everywhere. When I walked into the stacks in the Berkeley Public Library I would find her there, waiting for me. If I went to Monterey Market she would be there too, skulking near the peaches. I
changed my shifts at the restaurant to avoid her, but somehow no matter when I worked, she found me.

“Just wait,” she always said ominously, “the voices will come to you too.” It was frightening.

I gave up most of my shifts at the restaurant and replaced them with catering; the restaurant had a thriving business in private parties, and I specialized in wedding cakes. The hours were irregular and Rachel Rubenstein never knew when she would find me. But one night, when I was taking the last layer of a cake out of the oven, Rachel Rubenstein materialized. She was outside, knocking on the big picture window. I stayed in the kitchen, pretending not to hear, but the knocking grew more insistent.

Finally Michael went to investigate. He opened the door and I heard the murmur of voices. Then he came into the kitchen.

“Rachel says she won’t go away until you talk to her,” he said.

“Don’t let her in!” I said. “Please!”

“Well, go talk to her at least,” he said. “I’ll come with you.” The two of us went to the door and opened it a crack.