The Four Temperaments (5 page)

Ruth's family was ecstatic: Oscar had bowed to her mother; he had gone so far as to kiss the hands of both Lilli and Pip when they were introduced. “A prince!” declared Pip. Even Ruth's father, coarsened by a Depression-era childhood and years in the garment trade, succumbed to Oscar's charm. “That boy is going somewhere” was his comment. And it seemed as if Ruth was meant to go with him.

Her parents insisted on a big wedding and neither Oscar nor Ruth tried to dissuade them. It would have been useless anyway. Oscar might as well really have been a prince and she his princess for all the effort and expense lavished on the single day. There was a four-course dinner, the famed Viennese table and a wedding cake the size of a small washing machine. Several of Oscar's cronies played classical selections throughout the meal and then still others played the waltz in which he spun her, not too adroitly but with much feeling, around the polished wooden dance floor. There were scads of white roses, an expensive dress and veil that came as a favor to Ruth's father from someone in the business, and wedding gifts of more china, crystal, linen and silver than they would ever need or want. It was only later, when the babies came and they were living in that basement on East Sixth Street, that the reality of their situation became clear to her.

Still, Ruth and Oscar had a good life together, and those early, lean years had made the years of plenty seem all the sweeter. Their boys were now men, good men, and Oscar seemed contented with his lot at the ballet. She still took care of him, of course, but with the children gone, her days were pretty much her own.

Two days a week, Ruth did volunteer work. On Mondays, she traveled up the West Side to a Jewish nursing home where the floors were cleaned and buffed only in the center; the sides—the hallways, the residents' rooms, the public areas—were always cloudy with dirt and dust. She always brought things: issues of the
New Yorker
that Oscar had finished with, a bottle or two of nail polish, the latest pictures of her baby granddaughter, Isobel.

This was how her most recent morning at the home went: Ruth painted Mrs. Fishbein's nails with three coats of Revlon's Cherries in the Snow and then they watched a cooking show. Ruth brought the magazines to Mr. Blustain, who took them with hands afflicted by a permanent trembling. She visited with Tillie Dienstag, whose blue-rinsed hair and loud laugh reminded her a little of Pip. It was a good day until she reached Mrs. Goldenfarb's room and found it not only empty but also stripped of her things: the tiny framed pictures of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the papier-mâché bride and groom that had sat on her wedding cake sixty years ago, the porcelain bell she bought on a trip to Ireland with her late husband.

“She's gone,” said the orderly who was pulling sheets off the rubber-encased mattress.

“Gone?” Ruth knew what he meant but was, as her children might have said, in denial.

“Last night. She went peacefully. In her sleep. Did you know her well?”

“Not very,” Ruth said, thinking of the hands of gin rummy they would not play that day and of the baby pictures over which they would not exclaim.

On Wednesdays,
Ruth took the bus to the East Side of Manhattan, where she spent the morning playing with babies. These were not sick babies, although most were a little more frail than normal, given their difficult passage into the world. She was not sure she would have been up to dealing with the ones who had AIDS or cancer, so she didn't try. But these were babies whose mothers were sick, or addicted to crack cocaine, and needed some sort of medical supervision. Often, there were no parents—they were in jail, or in detox—to hold and snuggle them, and the nurses, God bless these hardworking, wonderful girls, didn't have the time. But Ruth did. When she arrived, she went straight to see Blossom, one of her favorites. Blossom weighed barely three pounds when she was born and three months later, she weighed only seven. After putting on the gown, cap and mask—Blossom's immune system was still compromised—Ruth scooped her up and brought her to the window, which looked out over Fifth Avenue. “See the trees?” Ruth cooed. “See how the leaves are turning colors?” Blossom's eyes seemed to follow her gaze. Although small, she was very alert, which was part of what Ruth loved about her. Also her tiny dark curls, and beautifully shaped mouth.

When Ruth ordered something for her granddaughter, Isobel, she always ordered a few extra onesies and knitted caps and brought them with her to the hospital. Ruth let the nurses distribute them the way they thought best, but she did ask that Blossom get a cap. Recently, the stories here had been good: Blossom had been gaining weight; Michel's aunt and uncle were given custody and would be taking him home; Kyra's lung infection finally cleared up.

Sometimes Ruth
thought about adding another day to her volunteering, but Oscar was against it. He thought she spent too much time with strangers as it was. “They're not strangers to me,” Ruth tried to tell him. He thought she should spend more time with her family. God knew Ruth would have loved to. But Gabriel and Penelope were far away in California, and, besides, Penelope was what Ruth's mother would have called “high-strung.” Ruth didn't really think Penelope would want her around that often, given the way she was so particular about every aspect of Isobel's life. Only breast milk and organically grown cereal and produce—which Penelope cooked and ground herself—to eat; only clothing from organically grown cotton to wear. Good thing Ruth found one of those environmentally friendly catalogs to order from, because Penelope wouldn't allow anything else to touch that child's skin. Ruth knew because she had sent a big batch of perfectly adorable things from Macy's when Isobel was born and Penelope sent them all back, with a lengthy note explaining her philosophy on the chemical toxins present in commercially made clothing and their potentially devastating effect on newborns. Ruth was disappointed, but instead of taking the things back to Macy's, she took them to the hospital, where it cheered her up to see the babies wearing them.

Ruth's second son, William, and his wife, Betsy, were closer—they lived in New Jersey—but Betsy had been trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant for more than two years and Ruth frankly thought her daughter-in-law avoided her. She was not sure why; maybe Betsy thought Ruth wanted grandchildren so badly (and, yes, that much was true) that seeing her felt like a kind of a reproach. And they were both so busy with their work—he was a cardiologist; she was in banking—that they didn't find much time to socialize. Then there was Ben, who was gone for so many months of the year. It was virtually impossible to pin him down, though his last postcard—the one with the picture of a beach in the Indian Ocean—said he would be home in November, in time for Thanksgiving.

“Isn't he a little old for all this wandering?” Oscar said when he inspected the card.

“Maybe,” Ruth said, “but he's also too old for us to ground him.”

Tuesdays and Thursdays Ruth swam in the pool at the YMCA on West Sixty-third Street, not far from Lincoln Center, where Oscar worked. Oscar was always after her to join the expensive gym on Eighty-sixth Street. “We can afford it now,” he told her. But she preferred the more relaxed and democratic atmosphere at the YMCA. No women with diamond bracelets and expensive face-lifts there. It was right in front of the Y's big double doors, on a crisp Thursday in October, that Ruth ran into the girl Oscar had brought home, Ginny Valentine.

“Mrs. Kornblatt!” Ginny called out, waving her hand eagerly in greeting. The bag she carried over her shoulder looked as if it might have contained bricks. Ruth hadn't seen her actually, as she was intent on getting to the pool before three o'clock, which was when the free swim began. She knew from experience that there was no way to do laps when that happened. But before Ruth could pull open the heavy doors, Ginny strode quickly toward her.

“How are you? It's so nice to see you. I had the most wonderful time at your house; you are the best cook, really you are.” Ruth paused, touched by the girl's effusive compliments. She found herself asking if Ginny had plans for Thanksgiving and when Ruth learned she didn't, inviting her to their apartment—Ruth had been making Thanksgiving dinner since the boys were little—the following month. “I would love to come!” Ginny said, “Can I bring something? Not home cooked, because I just don't, I mean I can't cook, but something I could buy?”

“No, no, I can take care of it,” Ruth said to her. “Just bring your appetite.”

“Don't worry about that.” Ginny laughed as she continued down the street, toward the theater. As Ruth watched her go, she wondered whether she should have asked Oscar first, but it was, of course, too late.

Ruth's swim was refreshing if uneventful. Afterward, no longer in a hurry, she strolled slowly up Broadway, which had been the main street of her life for more than twenty years. She had watched it change and grow, and though there are those who preferred its older incarnation (“Too gentrified, too many big-box stores,” people said), Ruth would always love Broadway, whatever form it took. She loved its four busy lanes of traffic, interrupted only by the small urban islands that were still home to wooden benches, pigeons and the occasional squirrel, its familiar and dense mosaic of shops and services that had sustained her over all these years. She had befriended many of the shopkeepers: Mr. Weiss, who owned the shop where she brought shoes for repair and resoling, knew Lilli's relatives in Vienna. Mr. Lee, who owned the Chinese laundry, had children Ruth watched grow up: his son was now at Fordham University and his daughter, who turned out to have a real talent for the violin, was at Juilliard; Oscar helped arrange that.

These events were the cornerstones of Ruth's weeks. In the evenings, she still sometimes cooked, although often she and Oscar went out for dinner. Friday nights, she tried to make a
Shabbas
dinner, with Lilli's brass candlesticks (though she now had someone come to clean once a week, they were polished by no other hand than hers) and a linen cloth on the table. Oscar was not a religious man, but he still enjoyed the ritual. When the ballet was in season, and he liked to eat out late after the performance (sometimes with another musician but usually with one of the dancers—yes, she knew all about it), she would get together with a friend, or with her sister, Molly, or attend the book club that had been running on and off for the last fifteen years. Every so often, she took a cooking class; not that she wasn't already an accomplished cook, but she enjoyed learning the techniques and skills required of some new cuisine. Fluted madeleines, Basque paella, ravioli hand-filled with pureed beets or pumpkin—all had been sampled and amply praised in her West End Avenue dining room. Though of late, given her concerns about health and weight—both Oscar's and her own—she had veered toward courses in lighter Asian fare. To find the ingredients required to prepare these foods, she made trips to Kalustyan on Lexington Avenue for earth-colored spices and curry powder; to Canal Street in Chinatown for slick baby eggplants and seasoned oils.

But soon
it would be Thanksgiving, and Ruth would need to alter her routine somewhat to get ready. She loved these big holidays when she could count on seeing her family, and since Ben had said he was coming this year, she was especially excited. She wondered if he would like Ginny. Although now that she understood the extent of Oscar's feelings for Ginny, this seemed less like a good idea than she had initially thought. What if Ben and Ginny became a couple, or actually got married, and the bride had been the lover—real or imaginary—of the father-in-law? As tolerant as she was, Ruth didn't think she could tolerate a situation like
that.

She therefore invited another young woman as a distraction. Molly had said something about her daughter's roommate not having anyplace to go for the day, so Ruth decided she should come along.

This was how she was before a holiday—planning, scheming, dreaming the event. She wrote out a menu in a big, spiral-bound notebook and started her shopping early, before the lines at Zabar's got too long. Once there, she bought things that would keep, like the special balsamic vinegar she used in the stuffing, and the imported crackers she served with cheese and sliced fruit as a snack hours after the meal. She ordered the turkey from a local butcher where she had shopped for years and the flowers from the florist nearby; from a company listed in the Yellow Pages, she rented folding chairs and a small card table. Just in case. The wine came from the store on Seventy-second Street, the one that had been supplying her family with spirits since Gabriel's bar mitzvah. Who said New York City wasn't a village?

Penelope called to tell Ruth when their flight was scheduled to arrive on Wednesday. They would be spending the night with her mother in Connecticut and then all of them would drive down on Thanksgiving. “How's Isobel?” Ruth asked. “Can you put her on the phone?” Not that at seven months she could speak, but Ruth delighted in the indescribable music of her babbling.

“I think it will scare her,” said Penelope. “You'll be seeing her soon.”

“The room is all ready,” Ruth said, pushing her disappointment away. Penelope was right. She'd be seeing the baby soon enough. “Will you need a crib or can she just sleep with you?”

“No crib, no crib,” said Penelope. “And, Ruth, did I mention that we have to leave a couple of days early?”

“No, you didn't,” Ruth said. Now that really was a disappointment. Usually, they stayed four or five days; two days early would make it two or three.

“. . . and he can't miss that conference . . .” Penelope was explaining. But Ruth couldn't help wondering if that was the real reason. She knew how unsafe and toxic a place Penelope considered New York City to be. Well, Ruth thought, she would just have to plan another trip out to San Francisco to see them.

William and Betsy were driving in from New Jersey for the day; they would bring Oscar's cousin Henry, his wife and their two children. Ruth's sister, Molly, her daughter Gwen and Gwen's roommate would be coming from various points in Manhattan. Who knew when Ben would arrive, but he did say he'd come, and Ben was not one to break his word. Oh, and Ginny. As it turned out, Oscar was so pleased Ruth had invited her. A little too pleased, in fact.