The Same Woman (5 page)

Her first week back in the city, Ruby developed a perverse routine. She got out of bed hours after her alarm rang; she talked on the phone to Tariq, who was back in his office and unfairly had his job to distract him; she used Octavia's computer to fiddle with her resume and disinterestedly click through want ads and apartment listings; and then she walked to the coffee shop and sat in the window with a piece of banana bread and some cold coffee. She pretended to have conversations with Octavia, to be attentive to the moment, but her mind was never in the room. It was waiting for Frankie at the top of the street.

That morning Ruby shook her foot uncontrollably in anticipation and every time she lifted her banana bread to her mouth, the knots in her stomach twisted excruciatingly. She could not eat even though her insides were grumbling with hunger. But Ruby wouldn't leave the coffee shop until she was sure that she was leaving because she was ready to leave, and not because she wanted to slip out before Frankie arrived — not because she was afraid of Frankie.

Frankie turned the corner at the top of the street and Ruby identified her immediately in the periphery of her vision. She no longer had to agonise to confirm that it was Frankie. In the space of a few days Frankie's shape had become familiar, unmistakable. Why were they sharing the same wretched space? It was like a joke, a gruesome, ridiculous joke. In a city of a thousand coffee shops, both Ruby and Frankie had stakes at the same one.

Ruby didn't even like the coffee shop. It was like a high school. Everyone knew everyone else's full life history. It was worse than high school, because no class bells ever rang to disperse the crowds and end the meanness and petty conversation. The back-biting could rage, unfettered for hours. Gossip muscles had been honed by years of practice, and the speakers had advanced skills unknown in pencilscented hallways and toilet stalls. They didn't just gossip; they made scandals to gossip about.

Did the hordes spew seventh-hand versions of Frankie and Ruby's story? The thought made searing waves of panic emanate from Ruby's stomach.

Ruby saw Isi coming up the pathway. She was horrified to feel her eyes filling with heavy moisture, but she was so relieved to see Isi's
face. Isi was safe, like an island in the coffee shop's hostile waters. Octavia couldn't provide this security. Though she was as comforting to Ruby as Isi was, she was a part of the coffee shop, like the mock-antique espresso cups and the light fixtures made of old kitchen sinks.

Isi bounced in as a man in a baseball cap with CARS STINK! stencilled across it appeared to look at her car keys with contempt. “Hi honeybee,” she said to Octavia.

“This place is always full of hippies,” Isi looked around and then corrected herself.

“Hippie-yuppies,” She frowned, not yet satisfied with this formulation. “Hip-yups!” Isi laughed for a while at her own joke, and then whispered loudly and theatrically to Octavia; “I don't know how you can stand them.”

Octavia shrugged cheerfully. “They're good tippers. It's the only way I can afford to keep you.”

“Pshaw,” Isi said. “Should I order something?” she asked Ruby, “Are we staying here?” She turned to look at her friend. Ruby's face was tense, a smile tight across it. Isi had hoped that when Ruby came back to the city she would be peacefully herself again. Instead she almost seemed worse. Now she was not even able to admit her pain. She smiled meaninglessly.

Her eyes drifted over Isi's shoulder.

“What is it?” Isi demanded.

“Wha'?”

“What do you keep looking at?” Isi turned around quickly.

“No don't look!” Ruby's appeal jumped out of her body faster than she could stop it, or temper the desperate sound of her voice.

“What is it?” Isi was exasperated. Ruby's forehead furrowed and she didn't say anything.

“Frankie,” Octavia hissed to Isi over the counter.

Isi made a gasping sound that was almost comical. “Here? Frankie?” she squeaked.

It was physically difficult for Ruby to say Frankie's name, to form her tongue and teeth to make the sound. It was even hard to hear it. She knew that Tariq and her friends didn't realise how deep her pain went because they spoke the name recklessly. Ruby knew they couldn't understand — you could not understand it until you lived it.

Isi scanned the patio casually and then turned back to Ruby, fuming.

“Un-fucking-believable!”

“She's been coming in here for months,” Octavia recounted sadly.

“Fuck! Fucking bitch! What is she doing here?”

“She lives around the corner,” Ruby said morosely.

“What the fuck!”

“Stop saying ‘fuck.'”

“Well, it's fucked up! Does she know that Octavia is your friend?” For a second, neither Octavia nor Ruby said anything, fearful of the avalanche of expletives that would come when Isi heard the answer to this question.

“Yeah. She knew that Octavia worked here even before she came here.”

“WHAT?” A small explosion.“How did she know that?”

“Because once, when she and Tariq were...” Ruby hesitated over the hard words, “together, she wanted to come here and he told her that they couldn't, because Octavia worked here.” For a while Isi didn't say anything. She drummed her fingers on the table and looked out the window, playing blasé, but her eyes were fixed like crosshairs on Frankie, apparently oblivious, chatting with her friends.

“How come you didn't tell me about this Octavia? Has Ruby been coming here for the past week, sitting in the window and sobbing into her coffee? Why didn't you tell me that Frankie was coming here everyday?”

“Oh Isi, don't be dramatic.” Octavia said. “I wanted to let Ruby tell you.”

“Does Tariq know about this?” Isi demanded.

“No. Why would I tell him?”

“Because! This is his mess! He sautés your heart, leaves you, then drags you back to the city and makes you sit and watch his lover all day long!

“He's not making me — ” Isi would not permit interruptions.

“But you won't get angry at him, or demand he takes responsibility! Instead you're protecting him from his own bad deeds!”

“Bad deeds? It's not like he put out a hit on someone.”

Isi's face began to turn a dangerous shade of red.

“I don't even like coming here anyways. We should just go,” Ruby said, trying to appease Isi's rage.

“Whatever. We're not leaving. She should leave. She knew Octavia worked here, she knew what was coming before she decided to make it her
Cheers
. She should've been ready for your return, for payback. What a stupid slut.”

Octavia's ears picked up that last word. It's a word that's intended to be heard — shaped like a weapon in its construction, with a pointed end. Octavia braced herself for the sound of higher voices. She waited for Ruby to say, “Don't even use that word, you know it reinforces hatred toward women, including us...” and for Isi to counter that she didn't believe in censorship. But seconds passed and there was nothing. Octavia glanced over the top of the espresso machine. Ruby was shaking her foot and not saying anything

.“Does she know who you are?” Isi asked.

“I think so. I don't know.” Ruby said, but Octavia was quite sure that Frankie knew who Ruby was. From her vantage point behind the counter she could see everything. It was high season between 7:30 a.m. and 10 a.m.. The dishwasher sloshed unevenly; the bean grinder made a high pitched whine; the freezer, on its last legs issued a constant deathly rattle; the front door hinges squeaked over and over as it opened and closed.

But none of the noise could drown out the marked silence between Ruby and Frankie. It seemed absurd that no one else detected it. Their lack of acknowledgement was not an absence of sound or recognition, the way it is between two strangers. It was a presence, an actual physical thing. With white fingertips, necks and eyeballs aching from the strain of looking away from each other, they waged an invisible battle. What they fought for was a mystery. They were imprisoned in the corner of each other's eyes.

“Why would she come here if she knew I was here?” Ruby asked.

“I don't know. Why does she come here at all? She should've guessed you'd turn up sooner or later.”

“Why does she come here?” Ruby twisted the hem of her t-shirt around her fingers. “I hate it.”

Isi made a scoffing noise. “Why should it bother you to see her? You won.”

“Won what?” Ruby asked. Isi smiled and rolled her eyes as if to mock Ruby's cluelessness.

“The man.”

“Oh,” Ruby said and made a face. “It's not like we held a dance-off or a wet t-shirt competition for his love.”

“Still, you shouldn't be jolted by the sight of her.”

“You forgive things that happened, but you don't forget them. You can't,” Ruby said, her words stagy but true.

“Whatever. She's a dirty skank. You don't have to be afraid of her.”

“I'm not afraid of her.” The two of them watched Frankie stand up and stretch, like a satisfied cat. She sat down again in a different chair to talk to another friend.

“Then why do you want to leave?” Ruby looked out at the patio, and for the first time looked straight at Frankie. Her silhouette was burned into Ruby's mind but she hardly knew her face. Queasy-stomached, she looked away. Frankie was not just a reminder of what had happened. Seeing Frankie was like falling through time. Ruby was not simply reminded of last December, and a heart full of tears and nausea — it was last December all over again. Every time she saw the flick of Frankie's hair or the shape of her back Ruby was pulled back and nothing could protect her. Nothing that had happened between then and now mattered — not Tariq's million reasons why he had returned to Ruby, not the weeks of sobbing phone calls, not Ruby's certainty that Tariq wouldn't leave her again.

“When I see her I feel sick,” Ruby said. “I don't want to be anywhere near her.” Her voice was taut and strange, and Isi had never heard it like that before. “I see her and I feel so angry.” Her voice got softer. “And I know, it's so tacky and obvious to blame ‘the other woman', but you can't control what you feel and I feel disgust...” Her voice garbled and trailed off.

Isi was not sure if she said “disgusted” or “disgusting”, but didn't really want to ask Ruby to repeat herself. Ruby was sitting slumped over, her fist crushed up against her face, making her cheek crumple into her eyes. And then she suddenly sat up straight and said blithely, “Why don't you go get a drink? Go!”

As Isi and Octavia talked in low, worried voices at the counter,
Ruby watched the social scene unfolding on the patio. Frankie was sitting in the centre of a circle of her new coffee shop friends, her knees up against her chest, laughing prettily — always laughing. One of the men she was sitting with suddenly stood up in the circle, a cigarette like a stage prop dangling from the side of his mouth. He was demonstrating a dance. He stuck his right arm out in front of him and jumped forward in tiny hops, thrusting his pelvis energetically in Frankie's direction. Her group of friends fell about in squawking laughter as the dancing man ended up in Frankie's lap. He collapsed, as if by chance, on the bench next to Frankie and then casually put his arm around the back of her seat. The group's attention re-focused on the next person to perform a hilarious story. Ruby saw Frankie's shoulders relax subtly, so that she was leaning in towards him. It was an almost invisible change, but Ruby recognised it immediately.
I know what you're doing
.

The social interaction on the patio was all part of an elaborate game, where people performed to win acceptance and approval. It was obvious that it was a game, but the most important rule was to pretend that the competition was not blatant. Each player had to act as if everyone else's actions were natural and spontaneous, rather than scripted or carefully thought out, as they clearly were.

Ruby had played this game so often that she could recognise it instantly. Seething on her side of the glass, Ruby wondered why people play these games, instead of standing up and loudly proclaiming what they needed — love. They played, instead of admitting that they were incomplete without others; instead of asking for what they wanted and needed; instead of hating the constant faking of indifference; instead of being disgusted that we reduce something so important to a game.

Frankie's strategy was one Ruby knew by heart. Ruby had carried it out again and again, in kitchens at house parties, in booths at bars, in libraries, parks, offices, movie theatres, subways, elevators and gymnasiums. Frankie feigned naïveté and laughed at things that were not funny. Frankie sold herself. Frankie made herself small because women are small. The men on the patio spread their legs wide and guffawed, and talked loudly over everyone else even when they just wanted to stay quiet, because men are big. They all leaned in appreciatively,
because women and men like each other.

Ruby hated Frankie, the other women and herself for selling themselves; she hated the men for being oafish and simpering; and she wished that they all loved her, because having a critical mind does not give you an immune heart.

The next morning, the heat suddenly broke. Ruby sat up in Octavia's bed, woken by an unfamiliar sound: the rustling of the trees as the wind affectionately bent their arms this way and that. The heat, which had sat on the sweaty city — trees, people, cars, animals, bicycles, houses — and immobilised it for weeks, was gone.

Ruby sat for a moment and stared out the window. The normal sounds of neighbourhood life, like the buzzing of a power saw, a single bird chirping determinedly and the chorus of wind chimes came through the window next to the bed and she felt comforted by how ordinary it all seemed.

Ruby's phone rang. It was Tariq.