The Appetites of Girls (43 page)

It was not until after three more evenings together and two leisurely afternoons strolling the cobblestone streets of town, pointing out the
homes we liked best, that I discovered my mistake. We were on the path south of campus overlooking the choppy gray Potomac, our ears and noses chapped from wind. Joshua had tucked the icy fingers of my right hand into the crook of his elbow. Deep in the crease of his oilskin jacket, my skin began to tingle with returning warmth. Our feet found a rhythm that lulled me. But Joshua laughed suddenly when I asked if he was spending the High Holidays at home. “Did you assume? Because of my name?” An understandable conclusion. He supposed there was Jewish blood in his family somewhere, but watered down to a thin trickle, forgotten. Actually, the truth was he had been baptized and confirmed, a Methodist. Was this a problem? Did it make a difference? He stopped and turned to me, his dark earth-brown eyes large with amusement, or was it concern? I swatted the air with my free, numbed hand, as if to say this was nothing, an incidental matter—just as were the doubts he’d shared days before about going into business for the long term, because he sometimes thought he might prefer teaching history, as his father had. But I did not speak, afraid some splintering in my voice would betray my disappointment.

As the wind increased, strands of hair whipped my cheeks; my eyes watered. Then, as we turned back toward campus, I felt some inner part of me slipping, out, out, until it parted from the Ruth who continued to trudge along with Joshua. This, the same unnerving sensation I’d had just days before when Angie had stared quizzically at the gold six-pointed star on a hair-thin chain, which had dropped from my small papier-mâché jewelry box to the floor. “Oh? That? Yes, it’s mine.” Having scooped it into my hand, I had stood again quickly, knowing how my backside looked in the leggings I had not had a chance to change out of since waking. I had thought of Christine Millgrim from our program, Angie’s constant companion, whose girlhood churches and schools and clubs seemed to differ from Angie’s only in name. Christine had lived a life like hers, understood things I had only begun to glimpse. “It’s the
Star of David. You know—a Jewish star. A gift from my aunt and uncle on my fourteenth birthday.”

“Oh, yes, well, it’s lovely,” Angie had said, and seemed to mean it. But I had caught the merest widening of her eyes at having discovered this tangible evidence of what I had not bothered to disclose.

It had been over a week since Mama’s last letter, and for the first time in four and a half years, she let two holidays pass without sending a white cardboard box of goodies—caraway crackers, gourmet chocolates, dried apricots from home. This was deliberate, of course, Mama knowing I would remember, and believing what? That this would undo me? Reduce me to a torrent of tears? Well, here was proof, wasn’t it? She gave me far too little credit! I—
I
was an adult. I had concerns
far
greater than some silly care package. Things that she could never begin to guess, could not even begin to comprehend. Perhaps she’d suffered from certain missed chances, but what did she know of longing for something, for someone of which she was not already a part? So what say had she in the matters that troubled me now?
None
, I told myself late one night, as I wolfed down a plateful of lumpy cheese macaroni I’d cooked on our apartment’s small stove. One more wedge and then another. Oh, and some of the sticky marshmallow cookies from the bag stashed under my bed. Until . . . until the quaking stopped. Yes, and the calm came.

•   •   •

S
oon Joshua and I were together whenever we could find the time. Afternoons, we met in Lauinger Library at adjoining desks, beside an enormous window overlooking the river and Virginia on its opposite shore. As we worked side by side, I was aware of each sweeping of Joshua’s textbook pages, every shifting of his arms or shoulders. Every now and then, he would turn from his work and, beaming, press my fingers with his, and then I felt a rush that made my chest fill. A rush that sent
me flying, higher than my upstretched arms could reach, high as the changing streaks of cloud above the Virginia skyline. And at night, in private, we sighed and trembled in each other’s arms, with a pleasure that my encounter with Gavin or with pock-faced Leonard Berkner, or the several tentative evenings with Brian (whom I’d met through Setsu junior year), never could have prepared me for.

“You won’t believe it! I think I might be falling in love!” I laughed into the phone when I heard the familiar purr of Setsu’s voice, after checking her work number in my rainbow-striped address book. Ever since our first year as roommates, she had tried repeatedly to find me dates. “When you find the right one, you’ll know. I think there must be someone for each of us,” she had reassured, raking her memory for possible new matches.

“Do you mean it?” she asked now. “That’s so wonderful, Ruth!
Reall
y
!
You have to tell me all about him!”

This was what she had always wanted for me, but something about the way she emphasized every word sounded forced. I knew of her troubles with James, and I wondered if there was some part of her that envied me. I thought of Chester Benjamin from my Teaching of Writing workshop. He spoke with a softness like Setsu’s, and I had recently learned he was a musician. Maybe if Setsu came for a visit, she would agree to meet him. Life was so funny, the way it could turn as quickly as a tossed coin. A year or two earlier I never would have believed that
I
would now be the one plotting to help Setsu with men.

•   •   •

G
ood fortune heaped upon good fortune. For the first time in my life, my course work seemed to come with little effort. Professor Brennan suggested that my “City Masquerade” was worthy of submission to literary magazines. And in early December, I was notified that I had qualified for a position as a teaching assistant for the following fall, the
stipend from which would allow me to cover the tuition costs for my second year. What a strange thing to be, for once, the lucky one! Not long after, on a Monday evening, Joshua and I celebrated two months together at La Rive Gauche, a small French bistro downtown. Near the end of the evening, Joshua slid across the table a package wrapped in white paper and curled red ribbon I could tell he had tied himself. I teased him about the ribbon, its loops wrinkled and lopsided, one loop hanging over the edge of the package.

“Not my forte,” he laughed. “Ignore the presentation.” Inside was a fabric-bound journal—“For your writing,” he said—and a tiny silk drawstring pouch holding a pair of jade and crystal bead earrings, the very set I had admired in a storefront window the weekend before.

“Oh! I never would have expected . . . When did you even get these? And I have nothing for you.”

Joshua grinned at me as my legs turned shaky as water, my head fizzy as our dinner champagne.

Late that night, I returned to Thirty-ninth Street for a change of clothes before walking to Joshua’s apartment. Despite the hour, I could see light glowing from beneath the bedroom door as I reached the top of the stairs. Angie sat cross-legged on her bed, her face mottled and pink, her eyelids bulgy. A dented box of tissues lay against her pillow sham, the contents littering her sheets.

For some minutes, she seemed hardly to notice my entrance. Then, almost absentmindedly, in a tired, nasal voice I had never heard from her, announced, “It’s over with Evan. He said the distance makes things a torture. A
torture
. Can you believe that?
That’s
the word he used to describe our relationship.” She yanked another tissue from the box and snorted into it, her pink cotton nightgown falling forward, revealing the honey-gold of her breasts. But she didn’t believe it. Not for one second. She’d heard from a mutual friend in Evan’s law program that he’d been spotted on numerous occasions with Olivia Scully. Liv Scully! A total bore! Angie knew her from the Silver Lake Country Club. They’d skated
together as girls. And now she remembered that Evan and Olivia had co-chaired the community service committee for their church youth group. God, it made her ill! she said, dabbing at her nose.

I’d had no practice offering consolation to someone like Angela McDermott, someone whose beauty and ease, I had assumed, somehow exempted her from trouble. So I groped for words of solace. “Maybe it’s a misunderstanding. Or maybe with time—you know—after he’s had a chance to think things through . . .”

But Angie only sniffled more miserably. She made a feeble attempt at a smile, feigning comfort in my suggestions. I wondered if I should sit beside her, drape my arm around the gentle slope of her shoulder as a token of solidarity. Here we were, two women bonded by the shared understanding of the trials of love. But what she really wanted, she said, nodding weakly toward the phone, was to call her parents.

“Yes, sure. Of course.” I placed the phone beside her, knowing this would be the extent of what she would require of me.

“Oh, Mom . . .” And then she sobbed without words. And as she squeezed shut her eyes and rolled toward the wall, a loneliness I could not explain cried through me like cold air rushing through some spreading crack.

I eased open my bottom dresser drawer, noiselessly extracting a sweater, blue jeans, some balled-up panties. As I moved, my new earrings quivered, delicate as insect wings at my neck. Too fragile to fuss with, so I would keep my hands from my ears, lest with a tug or pinch I should snap the beaded strands. And I left with a silent wave Angie did not raise her head to see.

•   •   •

I
t was sleeting and a low-hanging fog had rolled in from the river the mid-December morning that Mama and Poppy arrived. No warning. There they stood on the front porch, holding their collapsible travel
umbrellas and two overstuffed canvas bags filled with groceries, Mama in her favorite wrap, a fur-trimmed cloak that had once belonged to Nana Esther. For some moments, I remained dumb in the doorway, fraying the hood strings of the track team sweatshirt Joshua had lent me, until Mama leaned in to kiss one cheek and Poppy the other.

“So? This is it?” I heard the effort Mama made to keep her voice cheery as she and Poppy followed me to the apartment on the second floor, though only the lower half of her face shifted into a smile. Her cheeks were ashy, her eyes flat, averted like Poppy’s. They had walked through campus on their way here, they told me. I wondered if they had encountered robed Mother Mary on her pedestal near the university’s entrance, her stone palms pressed together in prayer.

“Yes, home away from home!” I tried for a casual laugh, but little more than a croak emerged. As Mama’s smile faded, her expression seemed to tighten and close as it had that morning not long before Valerie had first started school. We had taken the BX7 bus on our way to the doctor; and as Mama had rooted through her purse for some missing object, an elderly woman with a fringed shawl and bobby-pinned hair, seated across the aisle, had lifted from her pocket three plastic rosaries, which she had solemnly offered to each of my sisters and me. How delighted we were with what we assumed to be colorful necklaces. But later, steps from Dr. Rice’s office, Mama spotted the foreign acquisitions. She snatched them suddenly from our necks, declaring them ritualistic nonsense belonging to a people who worshipped a condemning God. So jagged was her voice with indignation that Sarah and Valerie and I dared not argue, nor even glance back when she tossed our briefly loved jewels into a nearby trash bin.

But this time Mama only straightened her shoulders as if wishing to shrug off some distracting thought. So I knew there were other things she had traveled here to say.

“May I?” She gestured toward my bed.

“Yes, of course, Ma.”

She and Poppy glanced around as if unsure where to set their bundles, then chose a spot on the carpeting just inside the bedroom door. I could see, peeking from the bags, tissues, jars of cherry preserves from Zimmerman’s, mandelbrot, pumpernickel bread. Mama’s breathing was labored, and I wondered if they had found parking nearby or carried these bundles some distance. She glanced at Angie’s bed and then looked down at mine before lowering her bottom onto the edge of it as if she weren’t quite sure she trusted the mattress. Then she smoothed wrinkles from a section of the bedspread, inviting me, I understood, to sit beside her.

“Last week Aunt Bernice had a lump removed.” Mama ran her finger down one of the pleats in her dark tweed skirt. “I thought you would want to know. Her treatment begins Tuesday.”

Bernice was Mama’s favorite sister, but her voice held no hint of tears. Already, many times, I could see, she had told these things before repeating them now to me. “It’s easy, I suppose, to forget how quickly life can crumble into pieces. Like a fragile dough.” Mama tapped the tops of her knees, making an attempt at the beginning of a laugh.

I nodded silently, my throat sick.

For long minutes, Mama studied my room. I saw her gaze shift from the stacks of papers on my shelves—essays for my Shakespeare and Romantic Poetry courses, stories I’d written for Professor Brennan over the past months—to the letter I’d taped to my wall congratulating me on my position as teaching assistant the following autumn. And her eyes flickered. I caught some arching of her brow. Or I thought I had. No. No, merely my imagination. Of course, of course, she had other matters on her mind. She seemed not even to see the borrowed sweatshirt I wore, only swirled the fingers of her left hand over her right.

“What I came to tell you, Ruthie,” she said, reaching for my hand to pat it between hers, “is that you are still my little girl, still my sweetest sweet. Life’s too short, yes?” At this, she reached for a wadded hankie in her pocket. It smelled of Lady’s Lace, the perfume she occasionally sprayed on the insides of her wrists. “We are woven together, threads
from the same garment. When a strand is cut, the garment unravels. Nothing remains but shreds.

“Do you know what Bernice has been asking for these past days? Her family. Her dearest friends. Those who have loved her always, whose hearts, whose thoughts are one with hers. Without that . . .” Mama stopped and turned toward the room’s single window, toward all that inhabited the world just beyond the glass. And I understood the things she implied.