Goodbye To All That (26 page)

“Get off my back, all right?” Wade snapped, more at Carlo than at Ruth. He turned to her, obviously seething with resentment. “You’re not my mother.”

Ruth had raised three children. A little backtalk didn’t faze her. “You’re practically done with it, anyway,” she said, gesturing toward the shrunken cigarette. “Put it out and come inside.”

She might not be his mother, but he obeyed anyway, lifting his foot and snubbing the cigarette out on the thick black sole of his shoe. Scowling, he accompanied her into the building. She noticed that he deposited the butt in a trash can en route to the staff room. Defiance and backtalk notwithstanding, Wade didn’t litter, at least not in front of her.

Neither of them spoke while she turned on the staff room lights, set up the coffee maker and pressed the brew button. Not until the room was filled with the rousing scent of coffee—strong enough to overtake the cigarette smell that clung to Wade’s hair—and she’d filled two cups did she confront him. “You quit six months ago? Only an idiot would start smoking again after quitting for six months.”

“So I’m an idiot,” Wade shot back before taking a swig of coffee. “Shit,” he said appreciatively. “Your coffee tastes so much better than what we used to have here.”

“That’s because I’m not an idiot,” Ruth explained—a non-sequitur, but she didn’t care. “Now tell me what’s going on with you. And don’t use the s-word.”

Wade sighed. “Nothing.”

She glared at him.

“Okay,” he relented. “My girlfriend and I had a fight last night, that’s all.”

Wade had mentioned his girlfriend once or twice before. Ruth recalled that she had an old-fashioned name—Bertha or Ernestine or something. “What did you fight about?” she asked.

“The fact that she was breaking up with me.”

“Ah.” Her stern-mother attitude melted slightly. Poor Wade, suffering from a broken heart. Not a valid excuse to resume smoking after half a year, but a little sympathy might be in order. “You’re better off without her,” she said.

Wade opened his mouth, then shut it, then gave her a dubious look. “How do you know that?”

“I know these things. I know how to make a good pot of coffee and I know smoking will kill you. I’m a smart lady.”

“If you’re so smart, what are you doing working here? You’re married to a doctor. You don’t need the money.”

“We’re not
 . . .
” It was Ruth’s turn to sigh, hesitate, then grin. “Let’s just say he and I had a fight.”

“He broke up with you?”

“I broke up with him. But that’s neither here nor there,” she said, busying herself at her locker, removing her employee ID card from her purse and letting the building’s warmth seep into her. She scanned the card into the time clock, because even though she was married to a doctor, she did need the money.

It wasn’t as if she was broke. She’d always been frugal, and she could manage on what she earned. But the thing she’d so looked forward to—supporting herself, paying her way, not depending on Richard and feeling obligated to him—required extra attention and diligence. She was a working woman now. Self-supporting. Self-sufficient.

“You broke up with your husband? No shit? Sorry,” Wade mumbled as the s-word slipped out. “Why?”

Ruth’s automatic reply was that the subject was none of his business. She didn’t say that, though. Here she was, making his smoking and his girlfriend—or ex-girlfriend, as the case might be—her business. She owed him a little reciprocity. “It’s hard to explain,” she said, then sipped some coffee. He was right, her coffee was tastier than anyone else’s. Maybe that was why she didn’t mind doing the pre-opening set-up. Whoever came in early wound up making the first pot of coffee in the staff room, and better she did that than anyone else. Especially Bernie, whose coffee put Ruth in mind of raw sewage. “Really, it was nothing in particular.”

“You left your husband over nothing in particular?”

“I left him because it was time for a change.”

“That’s what Hilda said,” Wade muttered. “It was time for a change. What kind of crap is that? Hey—” he held his hands up defensively, before she could criticize “—I said crap, not shit.”

Hilda.
That was the girlfriend’s name. “Maybe Hilda’s right,” Ruth suggested. “Maybe it
is
time for a change.”

Wade shook his head. “We change all the time. She’s tired of Mojo’s, we go to The Hut. Those are clubs where we hang out,” he clarified. “She’s tired of pizza, we eat sushi. She’s tired of beer, we drink bourbon.”

“Could it be
 . . .
” Ruth struggled for a gentle phrasing, then gave up. “She’s tired of you?”

Wade appeared more shocked than insulted. “How could she be? I love her.”

“Did you try making up with her?”

“I don’t know what I’m making up for. She wants a change. That makes as much sense as nothing in particular.” He slumped into a chair and gazed up at Ruth, his eyes pleading. “You think I should send her flowers?”

“Flowers are a cliché,” Ruth pointed out. “If she wants a change, maybe you should send her something different. Something she would really like.”

“Weed?”

“Why would you send her weeds? Oh, you mean pot?” She pursed her lips. “That’s illegal.”

Wade snorted.

Ruth sat across the table from him, ignoring the tasks that awaited her out in the store. Right now, Wade was more important than turning on the lights and straightening out the end-caps. “When a woman says she wants a change, it means she’s not happy with things the way they are. Men—and I’m not saying you specifically, but in general—it doesn’t take much for a man to be content. He likes his recliner, and as long as he can sit in his recliner he’s happy. He likes his TV, he likes his car, he likes pot roast—that’s pot
roast
, not pot—and if he has those things, he can’t see what the problem is. Whereas women—and again, I’m speaking in generalities—spend the majority of their lives making sure men have all those things that make them happy. And no one does that for women. No one makes sure
they
always get to sit in their favorite chair and eat their favorite dinner. Unless the women make that dinner themselves, of course. What’s Hilda’s favorite dinner?”

Wade frowned. “I don’t know. She was on that sushi kick for a while, but she’s over it now.”

“You don’t even know what her favorite dinner is. I bet she knows what your favorite dinner is. I bet she prepares it for you all the time.”

“It’s Big Mac’s,” he said. “She doesn’t have to prepare anything.”

“I bet she agrees to go to McDonald’s with you all the time.”

Wade considered, then smiled sheepishly and nodded. “So that’s what your husband did? Made you eat at McDonald’s all the time?”

“My husband is a cardiologist,” she reminded him. “He would never eat at McDonald’s.” Though, God knew, maybe he was eating at McDonald’s now. She couldn’t picture him coming home after a long day with his patients and colleagues and whipping up a healthy vegetarian stir-fry for himself. Or even a steak. In all the years they’d been married, his grand contribution to meals had amounted to shaking the bottle of salad dressing or filling a pitcher with milk. And carving the turkey at Thanksgiving. He claimed that as the family’s expert in anatomy, he ought to be the one wielding the carving knife.

So what was he eating now that she wasn’t there to fix him his meals? Cold cereal in the morning, she’d bet. Eggs, toasted bagels, pancakes or even oatmeal would be beyond him, but pouring Cheerios into a bowl he could manage. For dinner, sandwiches, probably. Maybe a salad. He had such talent when it came to shaking a bottle of salad dressing.

“What would he have to do for you to make up with him?” Wade asked.

“Don’t compare your situation to mine,” she said. “My husband and I have a long history. We were too close for too long, rubbing up against each other.”

“That can be fun,” Wade pointed out, then apologized again.

“I’m not talking about
that
,” Ruth clucked. Discussing sex had never embarrassed her, not with her own children and not with Wade, who could have been another child of hers. Of course, if he was, she wouldn’t have let him pierce his eyebrow. “In music, there’s this thing called suspended seconds,” she began, then sighed. Surely he didn’t want to hear an explanation of her college honors thesis.

Yet how else to describe what she was talking about?

“One note in a chord is dominant,” she continued. “The other note gets too close and the chord becomes unstable. So that other note has to move, to stabilize the chord.”

Wade gave her a blank look.

“Never mind. I know what I mean.” She smiled and sipped her coffee. “In any case, you and Hilda couldn’t possibly have been together long enough to become dissonant, the way Richard and I did.”

“Six months,” he protested. “That’s pretty long.”

“You met her and stopped smoking?”

“She made me.”

“She’s a good woman.” Ruth ruminated.

“She’s the best,” Wade said sadly, soulfully. Then he brightened. “Would you talk to her?”

“Me?”

“Woman to woman. Woman who walked away from her guy to woman who walked away from her guy.”

The very idea of talking to some young, pierced, female version of Wade unnerved Ruth. She was from another generation, another world. She hadn’t had Hilda’s options when she’d met Richard. She’d come of age on the cusp of the feminist revolution, and she’d endured a long, fruitful marriage which, for the most part, she’d enjoyed. She hadn’t had a job, but she’d done volunteer work. She’d tried to learn tennis. She’d kept busy.

But she’d never been self-sufficient. Her decision to leave Richard had been about
her
, about wanting to live on her own and be her own person.

Hilda, like Ruth’s daughters, was from a generation where those things were a given. She was born being her own person. What could Ruth possibly say to her?

“You could ask her why she broke up with me,” Wade answered her unvoiced question. “If it’s something real, maybe I can fix it. Flowers, weed, whatever. You could find out what she wants me to do—if there’s anything I
can
do. If not, if we’re just an unstable chord
 . . .
” He sighed. “Well, at least I’d know that much.”

Ruth had serious misgivings. “I’ve never even met this girl.”

“You’d love her. She’s so cool.” Wade’s eyes glowed. He actually seemed to think a meeting between Ruth and Hilda was a great idea. “We could go over after work today. She gets off work at five-thirty. We could catch her when she leaves.”

“Where does she work?”

“She’s a dental technician. Yeah,” he said, sitting taller. “That’s practically like being a doctor. Maybe she broke up with me because I didn’t finish college.”

“You started college?” Ruth asked. At his nod, she patted his hand. “Then you should finish. Finish college, quit smoking, and the world is your oyster.”

“Who wants an oyster?” Wade made a face. “If I had to eat that shit—I mean, that crap—I’d rather eat sushi.”

WADE SEEMED TO THINK Ruth was wise. But as she bounced in the passenger seat of his ancient, rusty Corolla at five-fifteen that afternoon, she questioned her wisdom. The car’s interior smelled like kitty litter, the floor at her feet was carpeted in Big Mac wrappers, a few loose CD’s and an apparently unpaid parking ticket, and the car’s shock absorbers were on strike.

Behind the wheel, Wade looked more cheerful than he had all day. His hair echoed the bouncing of the car, the stringy locks vibrating with each bump and pothole in the road, and he chatted about Hilda the entire drive. “She’s really beautiful,” he told Ruth, as if that was her most important attribute. Ruth supposed that to a single guy in his twenties, it was. “And we like exactly the same music,” he added, as if to prove that he loved Hilda for more than her looks.