I Loved You More (44 page)

When he finishes reading I could kick my ass for telling Ruth she talked too much. I look across the room at Ruth and her lips are puckered up like they've been glued together. She's got a fuck-you grin on.

It's tough to point out to a young man how his language is flowery and overwritten. But I used to be one of those flowery boys. The way I talk to Andy is how I wish a writing teacher would've talked to me. Kind, but still tough. Always giving
examples when I throw something new at him. Andy keeps his head down. Those black pointy shoes, his pink socks. I keep at him, keep asking him how he's doing, trying to get him to look up. It takes a while, but Andy sits up, pulls his shoulders back, starts looking around. As if he's surprised there's other people in the room. Once, then once again, Andy takes the chance. Looks at me right in my eyes. That's a good sign. But after class I go looking for Andy just to make sure.

There's a path down to the beach, and along the path a bench. Tall grass all around sticking up out of the sand. Andy's sitting on the bench. His dark curly hair doesn't move at all in the wind. The old leather briefcase is sitting next to his pointy black shoes and pink socks. He's leaning over his notebook, writing like crazy.

“May I sit down?” I ask.

Andy's eyes are dark green. Kind of startling. And his stiff curly brown hair, something rust-colored about it. When I sit down, our knees touch, just for a moment. We both pull our knees away fast.

It's nice sitting with him. The sun is still out and there's still a couple hours of daylight left. I haven't noticed before Andy's ruby red lips, and full. Marco. Tony Escobar. I'm just talking talking, checking in with this young man. I'm happy to find out he's still in one piece. At some point I say
fuck
or something inappropriate and Andy laughs and it's great when he laughs. An all over laugh like Hank's.

That's when Andy, from out of the old briefcase, pulls out both my books.

“Mr. Grunewald,” Andy says, “would you sign these books for me?”

“Ben,” I say.

“Yeah,” Andy says, “Ben.”

There they are, my two novels, in plastic covers. In Andy's square hands, his chewed fingernails, he holds my novels as if they are the most precious things. My books handed to me by
a young man who has made those books his own. Gets me in the throat, real fast. I can't really speak, so I put my hands on the books while Andy still holds on to them. When he lets go the books seem so heavy.

It's while I'm
signing All My Best, Ben Grunewald
onto the first page of my second book is when Andy tells me.

“Ever since the day I picked up your first book,” Andy says. Those full ruby red lips. “Since your first sentence, really,” he says. “I've loved you.”

I stop writing. Look up into Andy's dark dark green eyes. I want him to take his glasses off and then I think of Ruth and her glasses and that's when the second thing happens. All of a sudden it is Ruth, walking up to the bench. She's behind Andy, though, and Andy doesn't see her and he just keeps talking.

“I mean,” Andy says, “not
in
love but I love you that you can make me see and feel things, understand things I've never understood before.”

Andy's hand is on his crotch. On his hard-on.

Even though she's so close and getting closer, the way the wind is off the ocean, I doubt if Ruth can hear.

Words are coming out of Andy's ruby red lips fast but I can't hear them either. The moment, the sunlight, the breathless voice of a young man, so intimate. Ruth walks right into that moment. Then somehow the moment is hers. Something I cherished that was mine is now hers. And there it is again. That feeling that's so awful to feel.

I finish signing the book and quick lay both books onto Andy's lap.

“Hey! Ruth!” I say too loud.

THE NEXT MORNING,
when we wake up, sun again, what a miracle. Ruth and I drive to the Otis Cafe. It's 9:30 on a Sunday and there's a long line and I'm freaked because if I don't eat by ten the world goes fucked up Francis Bacon on me. I'm hanging on tight
to Ruth's hand. While we're waiting, Ruth buys me a thick white mug that says
Otis Café
on it.

We get in at 10, order by 10:10, and have our food by 10:30. Things in the world are definitely bouncing around, but soon as I start eating I'm okay.

It's in the middle of my spinach and mushroom omelet. Ruth's on her second cup of coffee and she's chattering away about how we should spend the afternoon when I get this yearning: I want to walk on the beach. Just get away for a couple hours and find some place in the shadow of a big piece of driftwood and be with the sun and the ocean and the day. Alone.

Alone. I feel like an asshole.

The night before, Ruth surprised me with reservations at the Haystack Rock Restaurant. So strange to walk into a beauty of a restaurant with duck on the menu and lamb chops and fresh salmon. Waiters in black pants and white shirts, black ties. Big white aprons. Took me back to my restaurant days in New York. When I was a person. It had been so long since I'd enjoyed food. Celebrated it. And wine. I ended up ordering lamb chops and a half-glass of an
Haut Medoc
for Chrissakes. All the while praying I wouldn't have some shit disaster or maybe the food and the sips of wine would disturb my sleep. If what I was doing lying in bed at night you could call sleep.

That night, when we got back to our hotel, Ruth took two dozen beeswax candles out of her backpack and lit them on little tin stands all around. It was a cathedral in the room, the firelight and the smell of the beeswax. Queen Lowlighta loved it. Ruth brought her boombox too and made a CD of all my favorite songs.

The massage Ruth gave me that night was different from other massages. At first I thought it was the massage oil. Lavender, not geranium. But something else was different, too. She was massaging my cock and balls and she'd never really touched them that way before. I try to tell myself it's my own trip, all just old
propinquity shit, but then she was coming. Up and down my legs, my whole body, really, sticky wet with her cum.

Breaks my heart when I think back on that night. How much Ruth wanted me. How far away I was from wanting her. But still I didn't get it. There was a piece to the puzzle that was Ruth that was missing. I mean the pieces were all there, I just hadn't put them together yet. Not yet.

That night, though, with Ruth in the cathedral room of candles and the beeswax and “
Ne Me Quitte Pas
,” really I would have done anything, anything, to touch Ruth the way she was touching me.

AFTER BREAKFAST, WHEN
we get back to the hotel it's almost noon. I've got my turkey sandwiches with gluten-free bread all ready to eat by one o'clock. Ruth's on the bed. She's got the maps out for trails we can walk on, beaches to visit.

My promise to always tell the truth.

Fucking promises, man.

My heart's beating in my throat. My face feels flushed the way Ruth's face gets.

“Ruth,” I say.

“We could hike down to Ecola Beach,” Ruth says.

“I'd like to spend the afternoon alone,” I say.

“We can swim naked if we stay to the south.”

“Just for a couple hours,” I say. “To clear my head.”

“There's a public entrance to Ecola just down from the Minot House.”

“Ruth.”

In a moment, Ruth slams her fist down onto the map. All those neat map folds all fucked up.

“Christ, Ben,” Ruth says. “We get one day away and you want to be alone?”

High-pitched, my voice. That fucking Catholic boy.

“That's right,” I say. “You want me to lie?”

Ruth, right then, the way she looks at me. All that hurt.
Red rims under her blue eyes. Something so tired about her face. Maybe that's the moment for her.

“Fine,” Ruth says.

When she walks out the door, she slams it behind her.

No matter how hard I try, that slam stays with me all day.

I PUT MY
sardines and my rice crackers and a bottle of water in my backpack. Check myself out in the mirror in the bathroom before I go out. As if to remind myself I still am who I am. At the hotel room door, there's a moment I stop, just as my hand is about to turn the knob. It takes me a while to admit I'm afraid to walk out the door. Alone. I tell myself there are toilets and I've got my protein and I've got a napkin and I have water and a plastic fork and there's a public shitter that's clean not far from the beach. Toilet paper, just in case.

Fucking fear, man.

Outside, I walk fast through the tourists. There's a Christian gathering of some kind. Heterosexual Christians and their wailing children. Strollers as wide as the sidewalk. The world that day is eating sugar. Saltwater taffy, hotdogs, candy apples, cupcakes, doughnuts, ice cream. Everybody's fat. I'm down the cement steps and on the sand I take off my shoes and socks and put them in my backpack.

Cannon Beach is hard to beat for Pacific Ocean beauty. Those big old dark rocks sticking up out of the gray blue, crystal blue. Seagulls squawking. Thank God there's sun. Everyone on the beach seems to be screaming it out loud.
Thank God for the sun
. It's too cool to swim but the beach is full of little kids in the water. Goose flesh head to toe. Old folks barefoot in parkas and beat up sun hats. Sandcastles. Blue plastic buckets and little yellow shovels. Everybody's smiling. One old woman I walk by is slumped against a tree root, her butt dug into the sand. She's covered by a bright yellow African cloth, her bare feet out in the sun. A pink long-billed ballcap. She's reading Proust.
Sodom and Gomorrah
.

I'm totally fucking jealous. Of everything. Of the life that's going on that I can't feel. My body wants to throw itself into a big baby torpor. For missing out. For being outside of. The sensuality. The beauty.

But because it's not mine to have, because it is the sunlight and not
my
sunlight, and because I can't
feel
it, the ocean is just the ocean, I figure at least I can be aware that it is beautiful. Maybe
because
it isn't mine to feel, by default, I make it mine. By not feeling, I am hyperaware. The
idea
of beauty, even though the beauty cannot touch me.

My head likes these thoughts a lot. But my heart is sore.

Far away down on the beach, I'm hunkered into some deep hole somebody's dug. Almost like a grave. In an hour the tide will be in and my hole in the ground will be gone. Across the hole, above me, a lattice work of driftwood. The sand is wet. The shadows and sun of the driftwood. How it all looks when I squint my eyes. The ocean waves. Finally, I can't hear my ringing ears. The wind. The shifting sand. Distant voices. Seagulls. My deep deep breath. Ah.

THAT'S WHEN THE
third thing happens. At first all I'm aware of is that something is blocking my sun.

“I thought maybe you forgot your sardines,” Ruth says.

She jumps inside my hole, my solitary grave, lays her body against me. Smacks my ear with her elbow. She puts the can of Bumble Bee sardines, a stack of sesame seed crackers in a Ziploc bag, a white plastic fork, and a napkin on my lap.

“It's cool in here,” she says. “Way cool. Are you sure you're warm enough?”

ON OUR DRIVE
back to Portland, the clouds roll in. Big dramatic thunderheads. Sometimes Oregon is only about the sky. Ruth's crazy old car. Feathers and pieces of paper, flower petals and shit fly around inside because our windows are open. I haven't said anything, because I'm afraid if I say anything all I'll do is curse.
The CD of my favorite songs is playing loud. It's when Bonnie Raitt starts singing “I Can't Make You Love Me” that I turn the damn thing off.

“You need to get laid,” I say. “I mean a proper lay. What you need is a good old-fashioned fuck.”

I know. I know. Telling the woman you're angry at what she needs is not a good start. You're supposed to start with
I
sentences like:
I feel angry
, or
I feel like I'm not being heard
. But hell fuck, the truth of it is I was spoiling for a fight.

Ruth puts in the clutch, shifts from fourth to fifth gear.

“What do you mean?” Ruth says. “Sex isn't just about dick. We've talked about this a thousand times.”

“No, no,” I say. “For
you
it's about dick. A good stuffing would do you wonders.”

Ruth's white skin is so pale it's blue. Some part of her wants to fight back. The way she holds her jaw. But she doesn't. Maybe it's because she's afraid she'll lose me. Maybe because bottom line I'm her teacher and you don't fuck with your teacher. Maybe I'm her perfect older brother Phillip she never stood up to. Maybe I'm just fucking Ben Grunewald, published author and popular writing teacher, the reason why she doesn't fight back. Love? Fuck if I know.

“You need to start seeing other men,” I say. “If for no other reason, I need some space of my own.”

“Ben,” Ruth says. “Why are you doing this?”