It Will Come to Me (9 page)

Was it possible they knew her work? Charles Johns was of an age to have read it. Maybe he'd put Ricia onto it. Maybe they'd discussed it. That was unlikely, she knew, but even if they'd never heard of
Getting Good
, couldn't she, Ruth, seize the initiative tonight (for a change) and bring the talk around to it? Wouldn't it be natural, talking to a pair of writers at a Philosophy Department party, to let them know that she was a writer who had written about philosophers? Of course that was a risky proposition. On one or two of the handful of occasions when she'd tried the kind of self-promoting moves that seemed to come naturally to other writers, she'd lost her sense of timing and disgraced herself.

Ricia Spottiswoode: now there was a writer with no compunctions about putting herself forward. She could give lessons! (In fact she had: chapter eight of
The Divining Rod
Vas explicitly presented as a primer in self-marketing.) Of course if Ruth brought up her own work—or even if she didn't—simple politeness would require that she equip herself with something to say about Ricia's. She hadn't been able to bring herself to buy
The Divining Rod
, but paging through it at Barnes and Noble she recognized it as one of those pseudo-books generated more by the publisher than the author, a wide-margined exercise in packaging written in chirpy journalese. She did buy a copy of
I'm Nobody
and spent an hour looking around in it. (And right now, before she forgot, she should take it off the shelf and put it out on the coffee table. To neglect to display it would be unforgivably rude.)

The incest sections were conveniently italicized, so she'd found it easy to avoid them. She was too sick with envy to sink very deeply into the narrative, but even so she found herself pulled in by an occasional passage. Ricia's writing was not without charm, she had to admit, especially when she dropped the dark portentous tone and used her own naturally light voice. Ruth had liked a passage describing a cheap olive-green enamel watch one of Ricia's aunts had given her and a subsequent brief meditation on how that color had opened up a territory of far-flung longings and associations. She remembered that phenomenon from her own childhood.

Back in her active writing days she'd learned the trick of letting the part substitute for the whole. All you had to do to satisfy even the most praise-hungry writer was to find a piece of text, even a very short one, about which you could express real enthusiasm. That was the ticket: she could see herself late this evening, standing with Ricia and Charles in the corner where Ben's collection of black-and-white photographs were hung, a glass of wine in her hand, carrying on rapturously, and more or less genuinely, about the olive-green enamel watch.

A
t ten after six, Ruth and Ben stationed themselves at the dining-room window facing the street. “Look,” she said, standing clear of the window and pointing out to the street. “See what they're doing? They're waiting until somebody else gets here.” For the second time, a hearse-like black Buick was circling the block. She could make out the pudgy silhouette of the driver, Todd Philby, a second-year philosophy graduate student. His wife, Melinda, was just out of ed school. They were a shy, precociously
stuffy young couple, so consistently early to arrive at parties that Ben and Ruth had given up the practice of placing bets. “What kind of car is that for young people?” asked Ruth.

“A parent's car,” said Ben. The phone rang. Ben took it in the kitchen. “Just a moment,” she heard him say. “I'll put his mother on.” Pressing the receiver into his chest he mouthed “Martinez.” Isaac's therapist: for two weeks, Ruth had been trying to return his call. She carried her wineglass up the stairs, sat down at Ben's desk, and picked up the extension. This was the room where she liked to take potentially difficult phone calls; it was tidy and monastic and she could brace her elbows on the desk.

“Mrs. Blau, please.” A starchy British accent she'd never heard before. The usual secretary had a bonelessly soothing drawl. Perhaps this was the night secretary. (Was there such a thing as a night secretary?)

“This is she.”

“Will you hold for Dr. Martinez?”

“Certainly.” Already she'd begun to imitate the secretary's accent. A pause ensued, perhaps forty-five seconds long. At one point she looked down and was surprised to find her wineglass empty.

“Hel
lo
, Mrs. Blau. We finally make connection. Forgive me, please. I've been out of town.” Eusebio Martinez divided his time between Spangler and Mexico City. “All is well with you? And Professor Blau?”

“We're fine,” said Ruth. Dr. Martinez's cultivated manner and breathy, intimate voice made her feel awkwardly forthright, an American rube. “Does Isaac need … something?” More money, she meant. That was the usual upshot of these calls.

“No,” said Dr. Martinez. “But I have news of him.” He delivered
this announcement with characteristic drama, lowering his voice to a near-whisper, elongating the word “news” and pronouncing it with special relish—neeeyooooz. Ruth gripped the edge of the desk with her free hand. “He's OK,” she said. This was a declaration, a demand.

“I should say rather that I have
news from
him. He has asked me to arrange a meeting with you and his father.” Here he paused, allowing Ruth a moment to take in the information. Her first reaction was a choking rush of tears to the sinuses—she held the phone at arm's length so Martinez would not hear the wet noises she was making. She reminded herself that this was exactly the way she'd responded the last time Martinez had promised to produce Isaac, and failed.

Her second reaction—and this was new—was a wave of queasy anxiety. Isaac was a filthy street person now, a malevolent stranger who had captured and engulfed her child. She was afraid of his smell. This was a recently developed obsession. As she lay awake at night she'd imagined it. Somehow it seemed essential to get it right, to summon it so vividly that it became a true olfactory hallucination. She knew the smell template from her years in New York, when she picked her way around the bums who warmed themselves on the subway grates. It was a rich, blunt, yeasty odor at first, and then the frank reek of fresh urine poked through. For two years—longer than that, really, because even when he still lived at home he'd refused to wash—she'd been longing to run warm water in the tub and settle Isaac into it, just as she'd done when he was small, to sit on the rim and sing to him while he soaked, to welcome him into a dry towel when he was clean.

Just a month or so ago they'd seen him from the car. When
she begged Ben to pull over and stop, he refused. They'd agreed, he reminded her. They'd promised to stay away. They could set things back. Who was Martinez to keep them from their own son, Ruth demanded. They'd been over this ground again and again, sometimes switching sides, Ben taking the anti-Martinez position and Ruth defending him. These sessions usually ended with both of them wondering if it was possible that Martinez was skimming money from the monthly cash allowances they sent through him to Isaac.

What Ruth hadn't told Ben was that she'd seen Isaac herself, several times, and hadn't stopped the car. Actually, one time she did. She parked and got out and followed him at a distance, keeping a block between them, weeping all the while, unable to summon up a voice with which to call his name. Eventually Isaac ducked into a building. His destination was an office of some kind on the second floor; she saw an acronym and an arrow.

“This happened once before,” said Ruth. “And it fell through.” In her own ears she sounded abrupt and rude, a suspicious spoilsport.

“Yes,” said Martinez. “For this I must chide myself. Isaac was not yet ready. It was too early. This time is different. He has something he wishes to tell you.”

“What is it?” Ruth's heart was flopping irregularly.

“Mrs. Blau,” said Dr. Martinez, “I appreciate that you are anxious. This is to be expected.” (Real normal, thought Ruth.) “You have been disappointed, and you wish not to be disappointed again. It is Isaac's wish that he should be the one to tell. We need to respect these wishes. Shall we make an appointment?”

T
he young Philbys had been admitted. As she came down the stairs she saw that they were seated side by side on the sofa in the otherwise empty second living room. A contingent of three new graduate students had also arrived while she was on the phone. They were gathered in the kitchen in a cluster around Ben. Ruth poured herself a glass of wine, much fuller than she'd intended, and resolved to make it last until eight. She hovered for a few moments on the periphery of the group. The students were oblivious to her—social skills were not a strength in this discipline—and Ben could only shoot her anxious glances. He was constitutionally incapable of extracting himself from conversations.

The Philbys had left their contribution of meatballs in a Crock-Pot on the kitchen island. Turning the burner on low under her own pot of chicken chili, she caught sight of her reflection in the glass door of a cabinet. Her eye makeup had run and her hair had come loose; two graying sheaves of it lay flopped on her shoulders. She ducked into the half bath at the end of the hall leading away from the kitchen. Leaning into the mirror, she scrubbed at her eyes with a wad of dampened toilet paper. It wasn't easy to get the stuff off; mostly she was redistributing it, further darkening the bags under her eyes. What had she been thinking of, painting herself so heavily? Why hadn't Ben said something? It seemed she'd reached the age when nobody will tell a woman the truth about the way she looks. She thought of a local harridan who showed up for lectures and panel discussions in false eyelashes and a Cleopatra wig. Now there was a cautionary tale.

And why had she thought it appropriate to put on her most outre jewelry, the earlobe-stretching silver disks and the great clanking bedouin breastplate? The students would take her for
a madwoman—some of them already did. Ricia and Charles would take her for what she was, a frustrated faculty wife desperate to impress. She unhooked the necklace and stashed it in a drawer. Better. She scrubbed her face some more, took down her hair from its armature of tortoiseshell combs and brushed it smooth. She looked at her face in the mirror. There it was, flushed and raw from rubbing but as always plain, long, “pleasant.” Also younger.

Leaving the bathroom she noted that Ben was still cornered and that the Philbys continued to languish alone. She knew her duty. “Welcome,” she called out, striding across the room. They shrank together a little at her approach. “How've you two been?” she demanded. Todd replied that they'd been fine. Melinda directed her gaze at Ruth's feet. She joined them on the couch, a foot away from Todd, bracing herself with one hand and pivoting on her hip so as to face them brightly.

“Ready for another academic year?” she asked.

“Guess so,” said Todd.

“What are you signed up for this fall?”

“I'm taking Dr. Wendell's Ancient Philosophy and Dr. Johns's Ecstasy seminar.”

“Ecstasy. Well, that'll be a change.”

Todd surprised her. “Huh-yeh,” he snorted. “Rea
l
ly.” Ruth recognized an allusion to Beavis and Butt-Head—when Isaac lived at home she sometimes tried to join him in front of the television. She was grateful to Todd for this spark of irony, this flash of fellow feeling. It seemed to open up conversational possibilities. But she was distracted by Melinda, who continued to sit frozen in profile on Todd's far side, like a fugitive evading a searchlight beam. Was that really necessary? Was Ruth such an object of horror
that this young female rabbit couldn't bring herself to make eye contact? She was visited with an urge to get on her hands and knees and scramble over Todd and push her face into Melinda's. That'd give her something to be afraid of

“What are you reading for the Ecstasy seminar?” she asked Todd.

“Uh, Blake, Whitman, some others. I forget.”

“Sounds like an English course.”

“It's cross-listed with English. Religion, too.”

“And Kinesiology,” said Ruth. That elicited another faint chortle from Todd.

She saw that Ben had broken free of the graduate students and was easing across the room in her direction, stopping to greet new arrivals. She stood and lifted a finger. “Excuse me,” she said. “I'll be back. Can I get you something to drink? Wine, beer, soft drink, fizzy water?”

Todd turned to Melinda, who mumbled something in his ear. “Do you have Diet Sprite?” he asked.

“Indeed we do,” said Ruth in her best hearty-hostess voice. She'd reluctantly bought two big plastic bottles of it that afternoon.

Heading toward the kitchen, she encountered Ben, deep in conversation with Josh Margolis from political science. Unacknowledged, she waited for a break in their shoptalk. Just as she was about to give up and return to her Diet Sprite mission, Beth Mapes tapped her on the shoulder. Beth was a favorite graduate student of Ben's from many years back, a likable lesbian in her late thirties with an erect carriage and a neatly maintained buzz cut. Ruth always pictured her wearing epaulets and metal-rimmed
spectacles, like the young Kropotkin. “Beth,” she said, after they'd exchanged cheek kisses, “I'm so glad to see you. Tell me something: do I scare you? I seem to be scaring people tonight.” Ben had taken notice now; something in the quality of Ruth's voice had made him abandon his conversation with Josh to monitor Ruth's with Beth. He was smiling—she hadn't yet gone too far—but his fingers were tightly interlaced and his thumbs were moving in agitated circles.