Goodbye To All That (27 page)

Ruth refrained from asking what kind of music that might be. She doubted it was Corelli. Then again, Richard hadn’t been a huge Corelli fan, and she’d gone ahead and married him.

And look at them now.

All right, so maybe Ruth wasn’t wise. She understood suspended seconds, but what good had that ever done her? If she was so wise, why was she letting Wade send her on this fool’s errand? What was she going to say to Hilda, the beautiful dental technician? What if she asked Hilda why she’d broken up with Wade and Hilda said, “Nothing in particular”?

Why, when she’d finally resolved to stop worrying about taking care of everyone else, was she trying to take care of Wade?

It was all her fault for scolding him about the cigarette. She’d acted like a mother to him, and now he was expecting her to continue acting like a mother. Just as she’d knocked herself out to help Doug, Jill and Melissa through their assorted struggles when they were children, she was now on a mission to help Wade.

Once a mother, always a mother, she thought glumly. Even living by herself, taking a job, paying her own rent and eating dinner blissfully alone every night, accompanied by a book and a baroque concerto spilling out of the compact speakers of Doug’s old stereo, she couldn’t stop being a mother.

All right, so she’d talk to Hilda. Maybe she’d discover a kinship with the girl. Maybe Hilda had learned, as Ruth had, that a woman needed more than the comfort of familiarity. More than doing the same thing every day. More than the joy that came from making other people happy. More than Big Macs, or even sushi, which Ruth had never really understood at all. She’d tried to eat it once when she and Richard had spent a long weekend in New York City, visiting Melissa and taking in a Broadway show. Melissa had insisted on bringing them to her favorite sushi place, and Richard had mumbled something about whether eel was kosher—as if he’d ever given a damn about kosher when presented with a steamed lobster or a ham-and-cheese on rye. That evening with Melissa in New York, Ruth had gamely downed a few pieces of something wet and slimy, then ordered the beef teriyaki and enjoyed the rest of the meal.

If Hilda liked sushi
 . . .
well, Ruth liked Melissa and she liked sushi. Ruth shouldn’t hold this sushi thing against Wade’s ex-girlfriend.

That she’d broken Wade’s heart, that she’d driven him to start smoking again
 . . .
Those things Ruth could hold against her if necessary.

Wade steered into the parking lot of a strip mall that looked uncannily like the strip mall where their First-Rate was located. No First-Rate here, no manicure shop or athletic footwear store, but there was a bank branch, a sandwich joint, a boutique specializing in bird feeders and bags of seed, and Miles of Smiles, For All Your Dental Needs, Dr. Hiram Showalter, D.D.S.

“That’s where she works,” Wade said.

Ruth reviewed everything Wade had told her about his girlfriend: beautiful, loves the same kind of music he loves, college graduate, got him to quit smoking, sushi, wants a change. He’d also mentioned that she read romance novels, that she shared an apartment with a girlfriend who was a total head case, and that she collected elephants. “Statues, drawings, toys. Those freaky kiddie books about the elephant who wears the green suit, you know which ones I mean?”

“Babar?” Ruth guessed. Doug had adored the Babar books when he’d been a child. The girls hadn’t been such big fans, but Doug had always preferred stories about powerful characters. An elephant who was a king and wore a green suit seemed pretty powerful.

“Yeah. She collects Babar books and Babar dolls. She’s got plates with elephants painted on them, and elephant stationery. I gave her a gold elephant on a chain for her birthday this year.”

Elephants. Swell. Was she a Republican? Ruth couldn’t imagine Wade being involved with a Republican—or, more accurately, she couldn’t imagine a Republican being involved with Wade. But who wanted to collect donkeys?

“There she is,” he whispered, as if the woman emerging from Miles of Smiles could hear him.

Actually, two women emerged together, and Ruth wasn’t sure which was Hilda. They were both cute in a bland sort of way, but neither of them would Ruth consider beautiful. Not like her daughters, for instance. Or Brooke, who could stop traffic, she was so pretty.

“Which one?” she asked.

“The blonde.” He had parked his car in front of the bank, as far from Miles of Smiles as he could, and slumped down behind the wheel. “I can’t let her see me. Go—talk to her.” His voice was edged in desperation.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ruth said dubiously. “Don’t expect a miracle.”

“I know, I know. I really appreciate this.” He slid lower and leaned toward his door, as if he could hide behind the steering wheel.

Ruth got out of the car and closed the door. Walking toward Miles of Smiles, she realized she should have removed her First-Rate apron. It was mostly hidden under her coat, but still, she looked like a colleague of Wade’s, which might not be such a good thing.

Well, she
was
a colleague of Wade’s, and that fact was going to emerge within the first few seconds of her conversation with Hilda, assuming Ruth got that far. Drawing closer, she heard the two women making arrangements to go somewhere for mojitos. The dark-haired woman checked her cell phone, then shook her head and said she had to go. As she headed toward a car, Hilda turned and spotted Ruth. She must have sensed that Ruth was approaching her and not the dental clinic, because she backed up a step and smiled hesitantly.

Not beautiful by Ruth’s standards—Ruth’s standards being Jill, Melissa and Brooke, to say nothing of her breathtakingly gorgeous granddaughters—but beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and Wade’s eye obviously beheld this young woman as beautiful. She wore white slacks, white sneakers and a scuffed leather jacket that looked like a female cousin of Wade’s. No jewelry punctuated her face, but her ears—visible because her hair was pulled back in a ponytail—were adorned with multiple earrings, two gold dots and one hoop per lobe. And along the crooked part of her platinum-blond hair, dark roots showed.

“Hilda?” Ruth called to her.

The woman’s smile grew even more tentative, and she backed up another step.

“My name is Ruth Bendel,” Ruth said. She had such an unthreatening name, she hoped hearing it would reassure the girl. “I just want to talk to you for a minute, okay? I’m a friend of Wade’s.”

Hilda emitted a laugh so abrupt it sounded almost like a cough. “You’re his
friend
?”

Ruth squared her shoulders. All right, so she was almost old enough to be Wade’s grandmother. But age was in the eye of the beholder, too. “We work together. And yes, we’re friends.”

Hilda stopped laughing. “Sorry. It’s just, most of his friends are
 . . .
”

“Young,” Ruth finished, figuring they may as well get the awkward stuff over with.

“I was going to say slackers. You don’t look like a slacker.”

“Well, we work together, so I guess I’m not a slacker. He’s very sad,” Ruth added. It was chilly; her hands crawled into her pockets, seeking warmth. “He said you broke up with him because you wanted a change.”

Hilda raised one eyebrow. Ruth was always impressed when someone did that. The muscles in her own forehead seemed bonded for symmetry.

“He told you that?” Hilda seemed incredulous. “He told you why we broke up?”

“It’s the sort of thing friends tell each other. Is there someplace we can sit and talk? Someplace warmer than out here.”

Hilda eyed the Miles of Smiles door, then the door to the sandwich shop. She motioned toward the sandwich shop with her head and they both went inside. “You want a cup of coffee?” Ruth offered. “My treat.”

“Sure.” Hilda settled at one of the small round tables crowding the narrow café. “Black.”

Not even a “please.” So far, Ruth wasn’t bowled over by this girl. Wade might be better off without her.

Then again, she hadn’t been bowled over by Melissa’s latest boyfriend, either. Maybe she was too critical. And maybe Hilda was a better match for Wade than the hairdresser was for Melissa. All she needed was to say “please” and “thank you.” And to do a better job of bleaching her hair, although the dark roots were probably her answer to Wade’s eyebrow jewelry.

At the counter, Ruth ordered a black coffee for Hilda and a decaf latté for herself, then carried the thick paper cups to the table. Once Hilda had finished sweetening her coffee, stirring it with a little red-and-white striped plastic stick and taking a sip, Ruth decided it was safe to talk. “I know, you’re thinking, who is this lady? What business is it of hers if I want to break up with Wade?”

“Well, yeah,” Hilda agreed.

They agreed on something. It was a start.

“The thing is,” Ruth ventured, “I saw Wade smoking a cigarette this morning.”

“Oh, shit.” Hilda scowled.

Ruth thought it best not to complain about her language. Now wasn’t the time to lecture Hilda. “I gave him hell for it, too,” she said. “He started smoking again because he’s really upset.”

“Well, he’s got to grow up,” Hilda said. “I mean, he’s a great guy, don’t get me wrong. Maybe breaking up with him is dumb. Like maybe I won’t meet anyone better and I’ll spend the rest of my life alone and wind up an old lady with a bunch of cats.” She frowned again, as if this potential future was as horrid to her as the idea of Wade smoking. “But you know? It was just like the same old same old. I want to try new things. I’m too young to get stuck in a rut. Every day I scrape tartar off people’s teeth. I don’t want to spend every night doing the same thing, too. I need variety.”

“You want a variety of men?” It was Ruth’s turn to frown. Not that she was a prude, not that she was judging, but her idea of freedom was no men, not lots of them.

“I don’t know.” Hilda drank some coffee and sighed. “All I know is that I
don’t
want what I’ve got right now.”

“So maybe it has nothing to do with Wade. Maybe it’s just you need a change of pace. Instead of going to—” what were the names of those clubs Wade had mentioned?— “the Shack, you want to go to the Old Rockford Inn.”

“The what?” Hilda looked bewildered. “What’s the Shack?”

“Some club you went to with Wade, I thought.”

“The Hut.” Hilda nodded, her eyes narrowing on Ruth. “You and he really are friends, huh.”

“He’s a sweet boy.”

“You want him? He’s all yours.”

Ruth laughed. So, to her relief, did Hilda. “What do the movie stars say? We’re just friends. And the last thing I want is a boyfriend. Especially one with a silver
tchochke
in his eyebrow. Not that there’s anything wrong with it,” she hastened to add. “It’s just not my taste.”

“I think his eyebrow stud is sexy,” Hilda said, then pursed her lips, as if annoyed that she’d admitted to liking something about Wade.

“To each his own,” Ruth conceded
.
“So Wade asked me to talk to you. He’s willing to do things differently if that’s what you want. You’ve just got to tell him.”

“I don’t know.” Hilda raised her hands, palm up, as if she was trying to lift the air in front of her. Those hands spent hours every day inside people’s mouths, fussing with their teeth. Ruth reminded herself that Richard’s hands often wound up inside people’s chests, but for some reason removing plaque from teeth struck her as more disgusting than removing plaque from arteries. “I don’t even know what different things I want.”

“Maybe a different club,” Ruth suggested. “Instead of the Shack, or the Hut, or whatever it’s called.”

“What was that place you mentioned? The Old Something Inn?”