In Case We're Separated (14 page)

Ms. Insight

A
t fifty-six, Ruth Hillsberg still wore her thick gray hair well below her shoulders though it caught in pocketbook straps and perhaps made her look out of control. In hot weather she brushed it back into a ponytail. That way, she believed, she appeared almost civilized. Ruth was a magazine editor, a good one. If a confused and badly written story was an unlaundered, tangled pair of tights, she could find the indispensable smelly toe, then tug and smooth until the piece took its true form, feet down/waist up. And after she straightened the tights, she liked to think, she washed them.

Ruth was not quite slim, but she was used to her body, and could buy clothes that fit without trying them on. She permitted herself to walk out of a concert partway through or to leave a museum after looking at only six paintings, and as she walked into the weather she felt grandly draped, not just in her hair but in the freedom she'd given herself.

Ruth had loved several men and been married once, with two splendid children—a son and a daughter in their twenties—to show for it. For several years she had traveled now and then from Boston, where she'd lived for most of her adult life, to a lover's bed in Brooklyn. Then she heard of a job in New York. Old associates praised her, she was interviewed again and again, she got it. “We could live together,” she told her lover, Jeremy, who was five years younger than she was. Jeremy doubted, but she was sure. His Park Slope apartment had only one bedroom but a versatile alcove. “It'll be fine,” she said confidently. “And
we'll
be fine.”

Once her furniture arrived the apartment was crowded, and sometimes she imagined living alone there. Life was not as companionable as she'd pictured it, and she and Jeremy did not cut up fresh vegetables while sipping Shiraz on autumn evenings. But Ruth had grown up in Brooklyn, and it was good to be back. Her son, David, lived on Staten Island with an indoor cat and numerous cameras. David told people he earned his living selling chocolate chip cookies at the farmers' market in Union Square, but as far as Ruth knew he made money designing Web sites and taking photographs.

Three months after they'd begun living together, Jeremy said one morning, “I've fallen in love with a woman of thirty-four.” Ruth put down her coffee cup. He continued, “She's pregnant with my baby. I love you, too, but I want to marry her.”

“If you let me keep this apartment,” said Ruth, rising abruptly, “you don't have to feel guilty.” She said, “Don't tell me her name.” She moved away from the table.

“But I feel bad. And I want to tell you her name.” Jeremy had black, shiny curls. How she would miss his curls.

“If I learn her name, I'll make you miserable.”

She picked up her two handbags—a big black purse and a black tote bag full of manuscripts—and left the apartment, dressed but with unbrushed teeth. All the way down in the elevator, she screamed. Ruth Hillsberg—Ms. Insight—had guessed nothing. On the way to work she bought a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a new hairbrush, in case she hadn't even brushed her hair that morning. Her lover had done wrong, yes, but people do wrong. She was angry because for all his easy regret, he did not know he'd done wrong.

On the other hand, she'd gained the apartment, and in exchange for nothing more than saving her screams for the elevator. It was a sunny place with square moldings outlining each much-painted wall, a style Ruth associated with parents and grandparents, with Milton Avery, Moses Soyer, and Diego Rivera prints. Ruth was all right during the two weeks it took Jeremy to remove his belongings, which he accomplished when she was at work. She would come home to find a promising bare space replacing an uncomfortable chair. She cooked a dinner for David, who'd never liked Jeremy. When nothing remained but her possessions, they looked only slightly meager.

The day after the second key had been left in her mailbox with a poorly written, sentimental letter, Ruth began to feel bad. Her mood persisted—worsened—through winter and spring. She turned fifty-seven, while Jeremy's new wife remained—in Ruth's mind at least—thirty-four. Now summer had come. Ruth didn't believe in air-conditioning, but she had a big fan, and in the evenings she'd sit on her bed in front of it, a pile of manuscripts nearby, a book nearby in the other direction. Often she looked at neither.

One night David phoned to suggest dinner the next evening. “I found another sushi place,” he said. It was a happy thing that her child enjoyed her—or maybe it was pathetic that they both lacked other company. “And I want you to meet my new girlfriend,” David added.

“Oh,” said Ruth.

“Is that bad news?”

“Of course not. But how long? Is it serious?”

“Couple of months.”

“You've been dating someone for two months?” Just the day before, she'd insisted to a friend that David had been “self-sufficiently celibate” for a year, after a painful breakup.

“I really like her,” said David.

“What's her name?”

“Her name is Binnie Levy.”

“What does she do?”

“She's a midwife.”

“How did you meet her?”

“She bought a cookie,” he said.

“David.”

“
What?
Are you going to tell me not to get hurt?”

“I wouldn't say that!” said Ruth. “I got hurt myself.”

“You suffer over me.”

“I don't!” she said. “But is that a good way to meet people?” She hesitated. “You don't really sell cookies, do you?”

“Sometimes I do. Someone I know works for a baker. Sometimes he calls me.”

“This woman could be anybody.”

“The restaurant doesn't take reservations,” said David. “If you don't see me, just get in line.”

Next day Ruth arrived at the restaurant before David. She stood watching a tall, narrow young woman with a boy's haircut, who couldn't be Binnie because she was talking exuberantly to an old woman farther up the line. Ruth didn't hear anything until the tall woman turned, saying, “But I should find her.” Then, to someone Ruth couldn't see, “Are you Ruth?” Then, “Are
you
Ruth?”

“Binnie?” Ruth said, when the tall woman reached her.

“Ruth! Of course! You look like David,” said Binnie. Ruth didn't look anything like David, who took after Charlie, his blond, thin father. She tipped her head back to look up at Binnie, who had protruding brown eyes. Then, to Ruth's discomfort, she imagined dying while gazing at this mobile, pointed face, which had dark hair carefully cut in short spikes around it. No such alarming image had come to her through the tenancy of David's previous girlfriends or her daughter Laura's boyfriends.

“I was sure that woman was you,” said Binnie. “Of course she's too old. She was interesting, though.”

Hands came down heavily on their shoulders. David had come. “I knew she'd spot you,” he said to his mother, holding the two of them apart like someone breaking up a fight. He stood on tiptoe to kiss his girlfriend's lips. Presumably Binnie didn't love David, or she wouldn't have been so offhand, meeting David's mother. Yet David, waving his arms—his light hair rising—was obviously crazy about Binnie. He left a calm space in the air right around her and agitated all the rest of the atmosphere he could reach.

The sushi, eventually, was fresh and tasty. Binnie deftly inserted sushi into her mouth with the tips of her long fingers. Exclaiming about the tuna, David continued to swing his arms in the air, colliding with passing strangers. “Did he tell you I'm a midwife?” Binnie asked. “I guess you used an obstetrician, twenty-seven years ago.”

“I had a midwife. She wasn't nice,” said Ruth. She'd been wondering how to talk with a midwife without making her own womb the subject, and apparently it couldn't be done. The table was small. Twice, Ruth's legs and Binnie's collided.

“In what way wasn't the midwife nice?” Binnie wanted to know.

Ruth had to admit the midwife was only irritating. “She called David Bunny Rabbit before he was born,” she said. “She called his father Daddy Rabbit and me Mommy Rabbit.”

Binnie said, “You should have just told her not to, Ruth.” Then she said, “Hey, David, should I call babies rabbits? They're sometimes duckies, but not till they're born. Before that, it's ‘Hey, Buddy.' ”

“I was not in a position to make demands,” said Ruth. As brightly as she could, she asked, “What's it
like
to be a midwife?”

“Nothing,”
said Binnie, putting down her chopsticks and gazing into Ruth's eyes, “prepared me for the cord. They're
people
—these babies you deliver—but they're
connected
to somebody, and connected by this strange object. Umbilical cords have a life of their own. Did you touch David's?”

“I cleaned the stump,” said Ruth.

“Doesn't count. When it's still connected, it's alive—thick and alive and so interesting!” She paused. “Then you cut it and—next stop, driver's license. Voting.”

“Babyhood first,” said Ruth.

“Well, you know what I mean.” Binnie picked up her purse from the floor and Ruth was afraid she'd pull a long fat umbilical cord out of it, but it was only a tissue she wanted.

After dinner, they walked toward the subway. “We're talking about living together,” said Binnie, pausing before a furniture store. “My furniture is shabby, and David's is disgusting.”

“I'm dumping some stuff,” David said.

“Living together?” said Ruth.

“My father will take your old stuff,” said Binnie. “He'll love it.”

“Your father loves disgusting furniture?” Ruth said.

“He runs a homeless shelter. They help guys who find apartments—he's always looking for furniture.”

Ruth said, “How long have you known each other? Two months, did you say?”

“It'll be two months next week,” said Binnie. “I love this guy. My dad loves him. My dad makes decisions even faster than I do.”

“You've already met her father?” said Ruth. “What about her mother?”

“My mother lives in Denver. He hasn't met my mother.”

“Don't worry,” David said, turning from the spare, brilliantly lit sofas in the window and patting Ruth's shoulder. “You're the first mother.” They walked her to her subway stop, then said good-bye. Ruth descended with a wave. Everything she'd said had been wrong, and nothing she ought to have said had been spoken. She'd made some terrible mistake when she brought up David, or he'd never have cared for this woman. Subway platforms are not invariably images of loneliness, but this one was.

 

I
'm moving in with Binnie on Saturday,” said David, not long after, on the phone.

“I hope you're not getting into the same shit I did,” Ruth said.

“Yeah,” he said, “you're not a great romance role model.”

“Shall I help you move?”

“Oh, no. Binnie will help, and her father is bringing a van from the shelter.”

“I want to. Get plenty of boxes.” Then, “Come to dinner by yourself,” she said, “before you move.”

“You don't like her,” said David.

“I do.”

“You don't, but I do,” he said.

“Will you come to dinner?” But David had no time.

The morning of the move was hot, so Ruth put her hair into a ponytail. She was in a bad mood, and though the harbor was healthy with purpose, and the ride on the ferry breezy, she stayed that way. She took a bus to the apartment David was leaving, on the second floor of an old frame house. He'd done no packing. Shadow, a gray cat with a thick tail, inserted himself between Ruth's legs, purring imperiously. “Is Binnie coming?” she asked.

“She has to work. We'll meet her at her place.”

“So it's just you and me?” said Ruth.

“And Bob. Binnie's father. He's bringing the van.”

“Bob,” said Ruth.

“You hate the name Bob?”

As Ruth put David's books into boxes, she asked herself what she wanted. She didn't think David and Binnie would stay together—despite the startling image of herself, dying and staring into those brown eyes—but it would do her son no permanent harm to live with her. She wasn't hurt that he'd kept Binnie a secret for two months. But she wanted to have guessed—to have looked at him, talked to him, and known.

There were many books. Nobody but Ruth ever got enough boxes. She threw away photography magazines without asking, then pulled them from the trash and asked. “No, I need that,” said David. She stared at his prints. He'd been photographing Binnie, she saw, and Shadow, and maybe his Staten Island neighbors—people who looked Irish and Italian, leaning over barbecue grills or getting out of cars.

David left in his car to find more boxes. Ruth began working in the kitchen. As she emptied a cabinet, Shadow leaped to the counter, grunting, and shoved her arm. David had a thirty-year-old chipped orange enamel colander with feet that Ruth remembered giving him, after using it herself for years; it had been a wedding present. The kitchen was hot. Ruth found ice water, then began emptying the refrigerator. She filled two garbage bags, then decided to carry the trash out. Holding the first bag, she opened the apartment door, using her foot to guide Shadow away. She pulled the door almost shut behind her, careful not to lock herself out.