Shout Her Lovely Name (7 page)

At the mile buoy, she turned in a slow circle, treading water. The beach, empty of umbrellas and beachcombers, was a sandy smudge. To the right, a jetty thrust out, one solid line of rock until it disappeared in water dark as the sky. The horizon had vanished. How easily her problems would evaporate if she just stayed out here with everything so impossibly far away. Gone. Empty and gone. Everything stretched away from her; the sound of wind and water filled her ears, stopped her thoughts, covered the sound of her gasps as she struggled to avoid swallowing water, and then her mouth was full of it, salt stung the back of the throat and she panicked, turned her face straight upward. The buoy swayed heavily nearby, its bell clanging, loud and forsaken, with each swell.

Water the color of bourbon gushed from the tub spout. She ran it hot as she could bear, hoping to raise her core temperature, to make her body inhospitable. To that end, she poured herself a glass of vodka as well. Her legs and ass itched terribly from the heat as she hunched in the tub, forcing herself to take it. She ate maraschino cherries out of the jar she’d pilfered from work, dropping the stems into the bath, one after another. With a rusty Brillo pad she’d found under the sink, she scrubbed at her legs and arms, her abdomen, thinking heat would seep in easily through wide-open pores. Once, Marco had scrubbed her back in the shower. She’d pressed her hands flat against the tiles as he soaped her all over. They’d made love there, her hands pushing her against Marco’s chest, the water pouring down into her open mouth. She ran her palms over her chest, cupped her breasts the way Marco had, only now they were tender; had they been this sore yesterday or was it knowledge that made them ache? Cherry stems and soapsuds floated around her in the bath. Her hands explored her belly. It had always been soft, a layer of baby fat just below her bellybutton. Soon the skin would be stretched taut, itching, leaving marks. Down her hips her hands stroked, and then between her legs, inside her. She felt her cervix with the tip of her finger, rubbery and tight as a fist. Never had she been so accommodating, so passive as she was with Marco. It hadn’t always been so; at first she was self-assured, happy to have him fetch her a drink, light her cigarette, sneak into her dorm, beg her roommate to leave for half an hour. When Marco had become aloof, his time taken up with vague obligations, he unhinged her.

She finally stood, her legs wobbly, whether from the vodka, the heat, or the swim, it didn’t matter. She gripped the towel rack to steady herself. Wisps of steam rose from her red and chapped body. If there had been a snowbank outside, she would have dived in. Instead, she turned the shower on cold and shivered beneath it for as long as she could stand, and then she made herself count slowly to ten.

She smoothed her sheets and blankets, jammed dirty clothes into a pillowcase, hung the towels and her swimsuit, lined up her shoes along the bottom of the closet. By six thirty, the time she had to leave for work, she was exhausted.

Her black bolero uniform fit—one good thing. Before she left she slipped a tampon into her purse, just in case.

Uncle Iggy’s tubby back was the first thing she saw every night when she arrived at work. That and his cocktail-onion head parked at the bar near the waitress station, where all night long he popped olives and offered advice. Tonight was no different except for his baby blue party hat with festive cursive claiming
IT’S A BOY!

“Kitty cat . . . She’s here.” Ira sported a pink
IT’S A GIRL!
hat at a jaunty angle on his forehead. He grinned behind the bar and held up a bottle of cold duck.

The door closed behind her but she made no move to enter. Uncle Iggy, his plump white hand clutching a Gibson, his hat crooked on his slippery head, was smiling shyly. “You’re okay?” He swallowed a mouthful of salted peanuts. “I worry, you know.” It was the first time since she’d found out that anyone had looked her straight in the eye and asked how she was. She swallowed hard, blinked.

A balloon bouquet hung at the corner of the bar with
IT’S A BOY!
and
IT’S A GIRL!
balloons all in a crazy mix. “I didn’t know what to do when I watched you schlep off in the rain. I thought you could use a new point of view, so . . . voilà!” Ira leaned over the bar, held out a handful of dimes. “Go put on the Lady Diana or something. Make us move while I pop the cork.” He continued in a stage whisper. “I had to tell him.” He twitched his head toward Uncle Iggy, who as far as she knew was nobody’s uncle.

“You realize how completely fucked up this is?” Her voice shrill, she waved her freckled arm in a grand gesture, taking in the entire Pond. The kidney-shaped bar with glasses hanging in easy reach, the plastic flamingos perched around the edge of the scuffed black-and-white dance floor, the sticky pink vinyl booths, and now the glossy balloons. Uncle Iggy slid the hat from his head and crushed it in his hands. “I’ve known for exactly seven hours.”

“Any excuse for a party?” Ira said, his voice tipping up at the end. “Look, I’m sorry, I just didn’t want you moping around all night.”

She grabbed the dimes, went to the jukebox, selected the Supremes and then Mel Tormé for Uncle Iggy. Ira flipped the switch for the mirror ball, and bits of light sputtered along the walls. The Pond was empty except for the three of them and a couple of bored, sunburned tourists who had stumbled in to get out of the rain. “Come on, kitten, take this.” Ira held out a champagne flute.

“I deserve to mope.”

“And you’re so good with that lower-lip thing.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and squeezed as if all she’d suffered was a pulled tendon. The full implications, what this meant to her real life—things like parents, and school, and Marco, things that kept crowding in on her—all that stuff obviously escaped him. But here at the Pond, Ira was her only friend; he and Uncle Iggy were the only people she knew.

She tilted her head back and swallowed the entire glass. “You know, my mother had two miscarriages.”

He refilled her glass too fast. “A toast then.” Bubbles, vigorous and delicate, foamed up and over the sides onto her fingers. “To miscarriage.”

She gulped this glass down just as quickly as the first. Ira caught her, swiveled, shimmied, and snapped his fingers. He was long and lithe, made for dancing; she was limp and dizzy and bloated and tired and pregnant—expecting, with child, knocked up, a bun in the oven, preggers—there was a parade of words that could describe her state. Through two songs they passed the champagne bottle back and forth between them like a third partner. The tingling started in her feet and spread up her legs to her pelvis, across her belly and breasts, to her armpits. Her scalp prickled.

“There’s a bloom in her cheeks,” Uncle Iggy called out. Mel Tormé singing about April in Paris brought him to his feet, and he swept her into his arms. With his soft hand at her back and his amazingly nimble feet, he guided her around the floor.

“Why, Uncle Iggy.” She smiled at his agility, rested her head on his shoulder. All summer he’d been looking out for her. Making sure she ate, walking her home when she’d had too much to drink.

“Promise me you won’t try anything risky?”

“I can’t,” she said.

“What do you mean? Of course you can. It would be dangerous and wrong.” He gripped her hand. His stomach pressing into hers made her wonder what it would be like to dance with him in a few months when they both had bellies.

“I mean I can’t try anything. I’m too far along.”

Uncle Iggy lived alone. As far as she knew, he did the same things every day. Read, walked, gardened, and came to the Pond to nurse three Gibsons.

“I want you to remember, I go home to a television.”

“How’s that supposed to make me feel better?” His was just the first in a long line of opinions that would come at her. Everyone would have one. When she finally told, and she would have to tell, her life wouldn’t be her own. Ira was right. She needed this party.

Ira clanged the bell at the bar. “We’ve got customers.”

A birthday celebration blew in and she clustered tables together along the edge of the dance floor. They were loud and sloppy-drunk, swaying in their seats, dancing in a clump to Chuck Berry. Any other night, she would have insinuated herself into the group, swayed her hips while balancing a tray full of cocktails, charming them with her customer service. But tonight, she felt graceless, both heavy and hollow, like a pumpkin, solid in your arms but light enough to float.

It was the second to last Friday of the summer. The Pond kept busy with heavily drinking holidayers desperate to connect before the season ended. Men sent drinks across the bar, lit cigarettes off the butts of the last, and rubbed up against each other on the dance floor. Ruby and her reproductive system were completely irrelevant to the scene. She kept imagining cramps, hoping for damp, rusty spots in her underpants. In the bathroom, she slid the tampon in just to see, and for most of the evening, she thought about it, felt it, invested it with all her hope. She nursed a Manhattan until Uncle Iggy filled the glass with orange juice. The birthday party kept drinking. He ordered her French fries. In between serving cocktails and complaining about her headache, she gobbled the fries down. He ordered her a second, greasy plate. When she took two aspirin from his palm, she thought of her mother’s kitchen and the bottle of Bayer aspirin Sally kept above the percolator. Her mother might still be up if she decided to call.

She never acknowledged Uncle Iggy looking out for her. She just took the juice, fries, and aspirin. When she remembered to thank him, after the party left, chattering like a flock of birds, and only a couple of boys in Marlon Brando T-shirts leaned toward each other at the opposite end of the bar, Uncle Iggy had already gone home. Ira was folding the boys’ tab into an origami crane to flutter down before them. Nobody wanted to go home alone.

“I,” she said. “Give me a smoke?”

He flicked the package of Salem cigarettes toward her, never shifting his gaze from the boys.

She held on to the dime, standing in front of the pay phone for the length of the entire cigarette before placing her call. She imagined the abrupt jangle of the telephone in her mother’s kitchen. Her mom curled up beneath the blankets with her back to the window, her father’s old pipe propping it open. His side of the bed would be empty. He slept in a chair; better for his back, he claimed.

“Hello.” It was her father’s gruff voice. The operator spoke in an official voice. Ruby closed her eyes. The last time she’d talked to her father, she’d told him she wasn’t coming home for the summer. “What?” He coughed one dry, deep cough, like a door slamming. “What’d you say?”

“Will you accept a collect call from Ruby?”

He cleared his throat and she felt hers constrict. The last time, he’d hissed about all he’d given up for her, who he’d given up for her.

“Sir, will you accept the charges?”

The last time, he’d said that because of her he was stuck in a shithole of a life and she couldn’t even come home to her own goddamned mother. Ruby spoke over the operator’s request. “Daddy, it’s me.” She pressed her free arm across her stomach. “Daddy, please.” He didn’t respond. “Get Mom.”

“Sir?”

“Get Mom,” she said, squeezing the phone in her hand.

“I’m sorry, miss. I’m going to have to disconnect you.”

“Don’t disconnect this phone.” She found she was sobbing. “Get Mom! Daddy, please.”

“Sir, will you accept the charges?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“Sir?” Simultaneous with the words, his line clicked off.

Her forehead pressed against the wall, Ruby held on to the quiet phone. After a moment, the operator asked, “Miss? Is there anyone else I can connect you with?” Her voice had gone soft, conciliatory. Now someone else knew.

Ruby could hear Ira and the two boys laughing and charming the pants off one another at the bar. When she finally returned the receiver to its cradle, her dime clattered into the coin box.

Ruby slid a rag down the bar top, stopped beside Ira. He was singing and performing a little merengue step in front of the cash register, making change for the cigarette machine.

“Those two are delicious.” He drew her attention to the two boys with big white smiles, the seams of their forearms, the flesh pressed against flesh.

“Which one do you like?” she whispered.

Ira gestured with his chin toward the blond. “I think I’m in love.”

“I’ll see what I can do for your cause.” Before she stepped their way, she kissed Ira on the cheek. “Thanks for the party.” The phone call was something she couldn’t talk about just yet.

Ruby plucked a bottle of vodka from the well, poured shots for the boys and for herself. “Drinks?” She removed her bolero jacket and stood before them in her white blouse. “You have no idea about my day.” She exaggerated the task of unclasping her bra through the cheap silky fabric, then slipped a hand inside the neckline, over her collarbone, easily sliding the strap over her elbow and wrist. She repeated the gesture with the other strap and slowly extricated her pink lace bra from her sleeve. “Much better.” She sighed.

The dark-eyed boy held his lighter and an unlit cigarette. “Are you a magician’s assistant?”

“What shall we drink to?” she asked, taking the cigarette and holding it in the flame. She blew the smoke out the side of her mouth, away from the longest eyelashes she had ever seen wasted on a man.

He paused, held up his glass, and said, “There are no little things.”

“At least, not among present company,” Ira said, coming over. On the cusp of blitzed, he clinked heartily with the blond’s shot glass and swallowed his vodka down.

“Nothing counts, right?” Ruby closed her eyes, brought her glass to her lips, and flung her head back dramatically. She didn’t care about anything. With Mr. Eyelashes watching, she held her head back longer than necessary and then stroked the empty shot glass down her neck and chest. When she finally lowered her head and opened her eyes, he would be staring at her.

His blond friend had been denied the forearm contact but Ira was leaning in, eagerly filling the vacuum.