She intentionally hadn’t packed her squash clothes, not even her shoes. She’d purposely left her racquets in the barn. It was a good time to give up squash. Her German and Dutch publishers had arranged matches for her; they would have to cancel them. She had an obvious (even a visible) excuse. She could tell them her cheekbone was broken, and that she’d been advised by a doctor to let it heal. (Scott Saunders might very well have broken her cheekbone.)
Her black eye didn’t look like a squash injury; if she’d been hit that hard by her opponent’s
racquet,
she would have had a cut—and stitches— in addition to the bruise. The story should be that she was struck by her opponent’s
elbow
. In order for that to happen, Ruth would have had to have been standing too close to her opponent—crowding him from behind. In such a circumstance, Ruth’s imaginary opponent would have to have been a left-hander—in order to hit her in her right eye. (To tell a believable story, the novelist knew, you just have to get the details right.)
She could imagine it being funny in the interviews that lay ahead of her: “Traditionally, I’ve had a hard time with left-handers.” Or: “There’s always something with lefties that you don’t see coming.” (For example, they fuck you from behind, after you tell them you don’t like it that way, and they slug you when you tell them it’s time to leave—or they fuck your best friend.)
Ruth felt familiar enough with left-handed behavior to make up a pretty good story.
They were in heavy traffic on the Southern State Parkway, not far from the turnoff to the airport, when Ruth decided that she’d not defeated her father to her satisfaction. For fifteen years or more, whenever they drove anywhere together, Ruth usually drove. But not today. Back in Sagaponack, as he was putting her three bags in the trunk, her father had said to her: “Better let me drive, Ruthie. I can see out of both eyes.”
Ruth hadn’t argued. If her father drove, she could say
anything
to him, and he wouldn’t be permitted to look at her—not while he was driving.
Ruth had begun by telling him how much she’d liked Eddie O’Hare. She’d gone on to say that her mother had already thought of leaving
before
the boys were killed; it had not been Eddie who’d given Marion the idea. And Ruth told her father that she knew he had
planned
her mother’s affair with Eddie; he had set them up, realizing how vulnerable Marion might be to a boy who reminded her of Thomas and Timothy. And of course it had been an even easier assumption, on her father’s part, that Eddie would fall hopelessly in love with Marion.
“Ruthie, Ruthie . . .” her father started to say.
“Keep your eyes on the road,
and
in the rearview mirror,” she told him. “If you even
think
about looking at me, you better pull over and let me drive.”
“Your mother was terminally depressed, and she knew it,” her father told her. “She knew she would have a terrible effect on you. It’s an awful thing for a child to have a parent who’s always depressed.”
Talking to Eddie had meant so much to Ruth, but everything Eddie had told her meant nothing to her father. Ted had a fixed idea of who Marion was, and why she’d left him. Indeed, Ruth’s meeting with Eddie had failed to make
any
impression on her father. That was probably the reason that the desire to devastate her father had never been as strong in Ruth as it was when she began to tell him about Scott Saunders.
Clever novelist that she was, Ruth first led her father into the story by
mis
leading him. She began with meeting Scott on the jitney, and their subsequent squash match.
“So
that’s
who gave you the black eye!” her father said. “I’m not surprised. He charges all over the court, and he takes too big a backswing—he’s a typical tennis player.”
Ruth just told the story, step by step. When she got to the part about showing Scott the Polaroids in her father’s bottommost drawer, Ruth began to speak of herself in the third person. Her father hadn’t known that Ruth knew about those photographs—not to mention his night-table drawer full of condoms and the lubricating jelly.
When Ruth got to the part about her
first
sexual experience with Scott—and how she’d hoped, when Scott had been licking her, that her father would come home and see them through the open door of the master bedroom—her father took his eyes off the road, if only for a half-second, and looked at her.
“You better pull over and let me drive, Daddy,” Ruth told him. “One eye on the road is better than no eyes.”
He watched the road, and the rearview mirror, while she went ahead with her story. The shrimp hadn’t tasted much like shrimp, and she hadn’t wanted to have sex a second time. Her first big mistake was to straddle Scott for so long. “Ruth fucked his brains out” was how she put it.
When she got to the part about the phone ringing, and Scott Saunders entering her from behind—even though she’d told him that she didn’t like it that way—her father took his eyes off the road again. Ruth got angry with him. “Look, Daddy, if you can’t concentrate on the driving, you’re not fit to drive. Get off the road. I’ll take over.”
“Ruthie, Ruthie . . .” was all he could say. He was crying.
“If you’re upset and you can’t see the road, that’s another reason to pull over, Daddy.”
She described her head banging against the headboard of the bed, how she’d had no other choice but to push her hips back against him. And, later, how he’d hit her—
not
with a squash racquet. (“Ruth thought it was a straight left—she never saw it coming.”)
She’d just curled up and hoped that he wouldn’t keep hitting her. Then, when her head had cleared, she’d gone downstairs and found Scott’s squash racquet. Her first shot took out his right knee. “It was a low backhand,” she explained. “Naturally with the racquet face sideways.”
“You took his knee out first?” her father interrupted her.
“Knee, face, both elbows, both collarbones—in that order,” Ruth told him.
“He couldn’t
walk
?” her father asked.
“He couldn’t
crawl,
” Ruth said. “He
could
walk, with a limp.”
“Jesus, Ruthie . . .”
“Did you see the sign for Kennedy?” she asked him.
“Yes, I saw it,” he said.
“You didn’t look like you saw it,” Ruth told him.
Then she told him how it still hurt her to pee, and that there was a pain in an unfamiliar place—inside her. “I’m sure it will go away,” she added, dropping the third person. “I’ve just got to remember to stay out of that position.”
“I’ll kill the bastard!” her father told her.
“Why bother?” Ruth asked. “You can still play squash with him— when he’s able to run around again. He’s not very good but you can get a halfway decent workout with him—he’s not bad exercise.”
“He virtually
raped
you! He
hit
you!” her father shouted.
“But nothing’s changed,” Ruth insisted. “Hannah’s still my best friend. You’re still my father.”
“Okay, okay—I get it,” her father told her. He tried to wipe the tears off his face with the sleeve of his old flannel shirt. Ruth loved this particular shirt because her father had worn it when she was a little girl. Still, she was tempted to tell him to keep both his hands on the wheel.
Instead she reminded him of what airline she was taking, and the terminal he should be looking for. “You can see, can’t you?” she asked. “It’s Delta.”
“I can see, I can see. I
know
it’s Delta,” he told her. “And I get your point—I get it, I get it.”
“I don’t think you’ll ever get it,” Ruth said. “Don’t look at me—we’re not stopped yet!” she had to tell him.
“Ruthie, Ruthie. I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .”
“Do you see where it says ‘Departures’?” she asked him.
“Yes, I see it,” he said. It was the way he’d said, “Good job, Ruthie,” after she’d beaten him in his goddamn barn.
When her father finally stopped the car, Ruth said, “Good driving, Daddy.” If she’d known then that it would be their last conversation, she might have tried to patch things up with him. But she could see that, for once, she’d truly defeated him. Her father was too badly beaten to be uplifted by a simple turn in their conversation. And besides, the pain in that unfamiliar place inside her was still bothering her.
In retrospect, it would have to suffice that Ruth remembered to kiss her father good-bye.
In the Delta Crown Room, before she boarded the plane, Ruth called Allan. He sounded worried on the phone, or as if he were being less than candid with her. It gave her a pang to imagine what he might think of her if he ever knew about Scott Saunders. (Allan would never know about Scott.)
Hannah had got Allan’s message; she’d returned his call, but he’d been brief with her. He’d told Hannah that there was nothing wrong, that he’d spoken to Ruth and that Ruth was “fine.” Hannah had suggested that they meet for lunch, or for a drink—“just to talk about Ruth”—but Allan had told Hannah that he was looking forward to meeting her, with Ruth, when Ruth was back from Europe.
“I never talk
about
Ruth,” he’d told her.
It was the closest Ruth had come to telling Allan that she loved him, but she could still hear something worried in his voice and it troubled her; as her editor, he’d withheld nothing.
“What’s wrong, Allan?” Ruth asked.
“Well . . .” he began, sounding like her father, “nothing, really. It can wait.”
“Tell me,” Ruth said.
“There was something in your fan mail,” Allan told her. “Normally no one reads it—we just forward it to Vermont. But this was a letter addressed to me—to your editor, that is. And so I read it. It’s really a letter to you.”
“Is it
hate
mail?” Ruth asked. “I get my share of it. Is that all it is?”
“I suppose that’s all it is,” Allan said. “But it’s upsetting. I think you ought to see it.”
“I
will
see it—when I get back,” Ruth told him.
“Maybe I could fax it to your hotel,” Allan suggested.
“Is it threatening? Is it a stalker?” she asked. The word “stalker” always gave her a chill.
“No, it’s a widow—an angry widow,” Allan told her.
“Oh,
that,
” Ruth said. She’d expected
that
. When she wrote about abortion, not having had an abortion, she got angry letters from people who
had
had abortions; when she wrote about childbirth, not having had a child—or when she wrote about divorce, not having been divorced (
or
married) . . . well, there were always
those
letters. People denying that imagination was real, or insisting that imagination wasn’t
as
real as personal experience; it was the same old thing. “For God’s sake, Allan,” Ruth said, “you’re not worried about another reader telling me to write about what I
know,
are you?”
“This one is a little different,” Allan replied.
“All right—fax it to me,” she told him.
“I don’t want to worry you,” he said.
“Then
don’t
fax it to me!” Ruth said. Then she added, because the thought suddenly occurred to her: “Is this a
stalking
widow or just an angry one?”
“Look, I’ll fax it to you,” he told her.
“Is this something you should show to the FBI—is it like
that
?” Ruth asked him.
“No, no—not really. I don’t think so,” he said.
“Just fax it,” she told him.
“It’ll be there when you arrive,” Allan promised her. “Bon voyage!”
Why was it that women were absolutely the
worst
readers when it came to something that touched upon their personal lives? Ruth thought. What made a woman presume that
her
rape (her miscarriage, her marriage, her divorce, her loss of a child or a husband) was the
only
universal experience that there was? Or was it merely the case that most of Ruth’s readers were women—and that women who wrote to novelists, and told them their personal disaster stories, were the most fucked-up women of all?
Ruth sat in the Delta Crown Room, holding a glass of ice water against her black eye. It must have been her faraway expression, in addition to her obvious injury, that prompted a fellow traveler—a drunken woman—to speak to her. The woman, who was about Ruth’s age, had a hardened expression on her pale, drawn face. She was too thin—a chain-smoker with a raspy voice and a southern accent, thickened by booze.
“Whoever he was, sweetie, you’re better off without him,” the woman told Ruth.
“It was a squash injury,” Ruth replied.
“He hit you with a
squash
?” the woman slurred. “Shit, it must have been a hard one!”
“It was pretty hard,” Ruth admitted, smiling.
On the plane, Ruth quickly drank two beers. When she had to pee, she was relieved that it hurt a little less. There were only three other passengers in first class, and no one in the seat beside her. She told the flight attendant not to serve her any dinner, but she asked to be awakened for breakfast.
Ruth reclined in her seat; she covered herself with the thin blanket and tried to make her head comfortable on the small pillow. She would have to sleep on her back, or on her left side; the right side of her face was too sore to sleep on. Her last thought, before she fell asleep, was that Hannah had been right again: I
am
too hard on my father. (After all, as the song goes, he’s just a man.)
Then Ruth was asleep. She would sleep all the way to Germany, trying in vain not to dream.
A Widow for the Rest of Her Life
It was Allan’s fault. Ruth would never have dreamt all night about her
other
hate mail, or her occasional stalkers, if Allan hadn’t told her about the angry widow.
There’d been a time when she’d answered all her fan mail. There was so much of it—after her first novel, especially—but she’d made the effort. Oh, she’d never bothered with the bitchy letters; if the tone of any letter was even partially pissy, Ruth threw it away without answering it. (“For the most part—your incomplete sentences notwithstanding—I was mildly enjoying your book, but the repeated inconsistencies with serial commas and your misuse of the word ‘hopefully’ eventually wore down my tolerance. I stopped on page 385, where the most egregious example of your grocery-list style stopped me and sent me looking for better prose than yours.”) Who would bother to answer a letter like that?