The Saving Graces (9 page)

"Hi, it's me. I was hoping you'd be home. Guess you're at work. It's nothing. . . nothing important." I had to whisper, "Bye," because all of a sudden I was crying.
Rudy, Rudy. Rudelle. How I hate that name. It's German for "famous one." I was born in Germany. My parents liked Europe better than America. I called myself Rudi when I was a child. I was Rudi O'Neill until my mother married August. 1 had to take his name, Lacretelle. Rudeile Lacretelle. In college I took my mother's name, Surratt, and changed Rudi to Rudy. Rudy Surratt. I liked it. I felt comfortable. But when I married Curtis, he asked me to take his name, so now I'm Rudy Lloyd. Emma loves to say my name. She calls me "Roodie," high and soft like a song, for no reason at all-if we're driving somewhere, for instance. She just starts singing my name.
I got off the bed and dialed again, memory-one. Eric's machine answered, but he picked up in the mid-die of the message and said hello.
"Can you see me today?" "Rudy? Has something happened?" "No, not really. Eric, can I see you? Something- yes-happened, but I don't know what." "Is four o'clock okay?" "Thank you. Thanks. Thanks."
The first two years after my father died were the worst. We were living in Austria for some reason, a ski resort in the mountains. Have I told you this? My brother was living with us because he'd flunked out of his prep school in Rhode Island. Claire and I went to a convent school in the village. August stayed with us most of the time, but he hadn't married my mother yet. We lived in a hotel. - I've told you this, haven't I?" "It doesn't matter." "You know this part. My mother. That day I found her." "Tell me again." "I am, I have-I want to~ It was the summer when I was twelve and Claire was fourteen. Allen, my brother, he'd go away every day, we didn't know where. Walking, he said. My mother couldn't make him stay home. But she couldn't do anything. Well, no-she could drink and sleep, and when she took the right pills she could be loving and so very, very sweet. I loved her so much, Eric. I have never felt so much pain. For anyone. Not since that summer. I think . . -. I've been sort of numb since then." I stopped talking and closed my eyes. Eric stayed still and quiet, waiting for me. Behind my eyelids, the scene came on like an old movie, black and white except for the blood. "My sister and I found her together. Dead, we thought. Naked on the white tiles, the bathtub full of bloody water. Get help, get a doctor-I kept screaming at Claire. But I should've known from her face, half smiling, blank, as if she were falling asleep. She just walked out. Some people found her and brought her back the next day. Riding her bike, they said." "Rudy," Eric said.
"I'm all right. I didn't tell you this before, did I? That I stayed with my mother, just me, for hours? She was almost as white as the tiles. And cold, she felt like rubber. I thought if I let her go, she'd die. A bruise on her face from where she fell, but-the blood, like red coins on the floor-the blood-it was menstrual blood. -Because she'd used pills, not a razor. Pills and vodka. Didn't she know? Oh, how could she not know who would find her! Her little girls, her babies. Oh, Mother. I held her and held her, thinking we'd changed places, mother and child, my child was dying and I couldn't stop it, could not keep her." I was choking, blood pounding in my head-Eric's hands took my hands and squeezed tight, tight, and I stopped sobbing. "I'm all right. I am. l'mfine." When I was calm, I told him about my mother's phone call this morning. "So-that's why all this came back. It's funny. Years pass and you think it's gone, but it isn't. Does it ever go away?" "I don't think so." "No. I knew it," I said.
"It doesn't have to be so painful, though." "What makes it stop hurting? Not time. It's been thirty years. Thirty years. Eric?" "Yes?" I smiled at him so he would think I was teasing. "Am I ever going to get well?" I didn't expect him to answer, that's the kind of question he usually ignores. But I had frightened him today. His face, when he'd held my hands, hadn't been calm, for once. "I think you are;" he said, nodding solemnly. "I wouldn't see you if I didn't believe that." "You wouldn't see me?" I rubbed my chilled arms.
"I wouldn't keep seeing you. If I didn't think you'll get better." But I'm worse now than when we started. Couples therapy, that's what he wants to try next. I've told him that's impossible, but it makes no impression on him, he doesn't understand. Curtis won't come here, If I were dying and it would save my life, Curtis wouldn't come here.
"I'd better go," I said, although we still had ten minutes. "Curtis thought he might come home early tonight, and he likes me to be there." Eric said nothing. He pressed his lips together and
This isn't worth it for women." I actually said that, out loud and with force. Sure, I had cause: deveining shrimp brings out the worst in anybody, and twenty-five minutes of it hunched over the sink with nothing but All Things Considered for company could drive Patricia Ireland, or whoever it is these days, around the p.c. bend. Nevertheless. I'm supposed to be a feminist. It's part of my identity, my persona, it goes with Irish, agnostic, lapsed Democrat. Old maid. I'm supposed to be above thinking that excessive shrimp-cleaning, apple-peeling, and snow pea string-pulling are only worth it if men are coming for dinner.
Ach, but I do love my gerruls. I was thinking in a Scottish brogue, because I'd just heard this guy interviewed on NPR, Lonnie McSomething. He wrote a profane Glaswegian coming-of-age novel, big deal, and now they're treating him like the Second Coming. No jealousy here, though, no siree. I flicked off the radio with the side of my wrist and started on another pile of shrimp.
Anyway, I go to at least as much trouble when it's my turn for the women's group as I do for dinner parties with couples. And a hell of a lot more trouble than I go to for individual guys, who are lucky to get a cup of coffee in the morning before I push them out the door. Politely-I'm always polite. And I enjoy cooking for my gerruls. Three of us are in an unspoken competition for second best chef (Isabel has a lock on first), and tonight's curried shrimp with snow peas and apples is a tough contender. Plus I have made a cake. Not from scratch- what am 1, June Cleaver?-but I did add red- food coloring to the white frosting and write in big letters, over an extremely artistic rendering of an hourglass, "Two Years & Counting-You Go Girl!" That's how long it's been, two years this month, since Isabel found the lump in her breast. They say you can't really start to relax until five years have passed, but this is still an anniversary, and by God, we're celebrating.
Seven-fifteen. Rudy was late. I told her to come at seven so we could talk. Should've known; should've said six-thirty.
I finished the shrimp and squeezed dishwashing soap on my palms, wondering how many other people can't clean the smell of fish from their hands anymore without thinking of Susan Sarandon. Hey-would that make a good piece for something? American film iconography, how it intrudes on our everyday lives. Some pseudosmart mag might go for it if I threw in enough sarcasm. My specialty. But I'd rather write it straight. Sweet. There have to be a hundred examples- indelible psychic connections between, say, whistling and Lauren Bacall. Tricycles and extraterrestrials. Question: Why do you feel sexy when you see an Amish guy in a field? Answer: Harrison Ford, Witness. Okay, trite example, but still, there have to be hundreds.
"Stinks," I decided. Too obvious, nothing behind it; once you said it, you'd said it. Which is the trouble with about 90 percent of my story ideas. Still, I scribbled "Sarandon/lemons/cult. assn." on the scratch pad stuck to the refrigerator. Because you never know.
The doorbell rang. I flicked on the porch light to see Rudy through the beveled sidelight, looking tall and glamorous in her long black cloak-the same cloak she wrapped Grace in eight years ago on MacArthur Boulevard. The cloak I still want. Her face looked morose, distracted, before she saw me through the glass; then it brightened in a wide, sparkling, squinty-eyed smile. I pulled open the door, and Rudy swept in on a blast of cold air, cashmere, perfume, and-gasoline?
"I ran out of gas. Can you believe it? In the middle of Sixteenth Street, and nobody stopped, nobody-helped me, I had to schlepp all the way to Euclid and back for one lousy gallon." "Wow, that's terrible." But what an excellent excuse, and so unexpected. Rudy's chronically late and never thinks a thing of it, never even apologizes. I was thrown off my stride. "I never get that," I said peevishly, "how anybody can run out of gas. Don't you look at the gauge when you- start your car?" She just laughed. "Hey, you look great! You got your hair cut." I'm not too good at hugging, or so the group is always telling me. I braced for Rudy's strong, one-armed embrace, wondering what we were crushing between us in the grocery bag she had in her other arm. "Yeah," I said, "I had to do something with it. It's not too short, is-it? I told him medium. Look at my new coat rack-a Christmas present from me. So, come on in the kitchen, let's get a drink." I found glasses, opened wine, poured peanuts in a bowl, while Rudy prowled around, looking for new things since she'd been here last. "Oh, you hung it," she exclaimed, pointing to the "kitchen collage" she had made me for Christmas. "That's a good place for it, over the door." "I absolutely love it." It's truly a masterpiece: an assemblage of l950s-style aluminum kitchen implements that somehow suggest a face. It's got two measuring spoons for eyes, a cheese grater for the nose and eyebrows, a bent orange jar cap for lips-oh hell, I can't describe it, you'd have to see it to appreciate it. But trust me, you can't look at this piece without laughing. Rudy could make a living doing this stuff. - "I can't get over how much I love home ownership," I told her, handing over a glass of meriot, her favorite. "It fills me with a lot of revolting middle-class satisfaction." I've lived in classier places-Georgetown, Foggy Bottom, Woodley Park-but I didn't own those apartments, so they didn't count. My eighty-year-old Mt.
Pleasant town house doesn't look like much, especially from the outside, and the neighborhood is what they call transitional, meaning you're smart not to go out at night without your own personal pit bull. But it's all mine.

"To the Sloans," I said.
"The Sloans." We drank to the previous owners, who rehabbed my house within an inch of its life, then did a white flight when the wife got pregnant and decided they'd rather bring Junior up in the suburbs. "Their paranoia is my gain. I'm even starting to like the bars on the windows." "Why not?" Rudy said. "White wrought iron is beautiful. It's just a matter of separating form from function." "And not getting hysterical." "Hey. You choose to live in our lovely and historic nation's capital-" "You takes your chances." We toasted again.
"So," I said, settling down on the bench at the kitchen table, making room for Rudy. "How did it go with Greenburg?" Sometimes you can tell if she's been talking to her shrink because her eyes look puffy and bloodshot. Not tonight, though. "Wasn't this a Green-burg day?" "Yes." She shook two Winstons out of a pack and offered me one. "It was good. We talked about my father. Which is always pretty intense. Eric says it's all right to think he might not have killed himself." "Might not have killed himself? Wait-he did, didn't he? That's what you've always said. You mean he didn't?" "Well, I'm just saying, it's possible he might not have. No one knows. It's a myth in my family that he did it on purpose, but it could just as easily have been that he got drunk and fell out of the boat." It wasn't only a family myth, it was a women's group myth, too. I heard the story years ago, and now I have an image of it in my mind that's as vivid as a home movie. It happened on Lake Como about thirty years ago, when Rudy was eleven. I can see the blue sky and the white sailboat, the soft yellow Italian light. It's dusk. Rudy's dad, Allen Aubrey O'Neill, has on baggy white trousers and a white sweater. He's barefooted; he smokes Camels;' he looks like Joseph Cotton. He tosses back the last of the vodka in his leather-covered hip flask. He reaches for the stanchion, hauls himself up. Seagulls dip and soar, and he listens to- their hungry, heartless cries for a second, takes a last sniff of the sweet, sunny breeze. Then he steps out, into the air and the smooth, cool blue of the lake.
That's the end of the movie-no unseemly splashing or gasping, and I never follow him down or try to imagine his panic or his sick second thoughts. Rudy's handsome, aristocratic father has simply taken himself off.
"Well, I guess," I said slowly. "He drank a lot, didn't he?" "Oh, God." "Yeah. So I started to nod. "Why not? You're right, he could just as easily have fallen overboard. In which case, my God, everything changes. Oh, Rudy-" I leaned forward, beginning to -get an idea of what that would mean to her. "So he didn't commit suicide. Maybe. This is great, because if he was just a drunk, not-" "He was still manic-depressive. It doesn't mean he wasn't crazy, Emma." "No, I know, but still-" "It's just something to think about, that's all." "Yeah." "It's not that big a deal." "Right." I backed off with a joke. "I bet Greenburg gets more APA journal articles out of your family than he does from the whole rest of his shrink practice." She smiled, craned her long neck to blow smoke at the ceiling. "Well," she said, and then she laughed self-consciously. "I thought I was ready to hope for this, but it looks like I'm not. Not out loud, anyway. Not in public." "Well, I'm not public." Rudy has fine gray eyes, as they used to say in books about English governesses. I watched them soften and mellow, turn tender. "No, you're not." She set her glass down. "Okay. I hope he got shit-faced and fell in the damn lake and drowned, because then I'll only have to worry about my genetic predisposition to alcohol, depression, drug addiction, and paranoid schizophrenia. But not suicide." Neither of us mentioned her mother, and we laughed the loud, too-long, healing laugh that's part of -our therapeutic repertoire and as vital to us, to our relationship, as kind words or sympathy-no, more so. And after that there was nothing left to say, at least not now, on the subject of Rudy's father's death. We'd covered it all.
We poured more wine, lit up again. I was thinking I ought to get up and start chopping onions or something; Lee and Isabel and the new woman, Sharon, would be here any minute. But this was too nice. Sitting in the kitchen with Rudy, smoking and drinking and talking about life-like the bee-r commercial said, it doesn't get any better than this.
"Well, I had a rotten day," I said cheerfully, and told her about the piece for the Washingtonian I was bogged down in, couldn't seem to finish even though it was due Monday. Rudy sympathized and told me about a landscaping course she really wanted to take. It started in the spring, and it was a two-year program, you got a certificate in residential landscape design, and then you could probably apprentice with a landscaping company or a master gardener and be on your way. She was excited about it, but she backed off at the end, saying it was just a thought, she probably wouldn't do it, it cost a lot, it would take too long.
"Oh, but it sounds terrific, like something you'd really love. And you'd be great at it. Landscaping? You love to garden and you love to design. Oh, Rudy, it's perfect for you." - "1 don't know, I don't know. Anyway, I don't think I have -time. This would be full-time, very intensive, so I don't know, I just don't think She crossed her ankles and slid down on her backbone, sleek as a seal. What Rudy could've been is a model. "I probably won't do it. We haven't even talked about it." "We" meaning Curtis. I've gotten used to biting my tongue in situations like this, it's not even that hard anymore. "How is Curtis?" I said in my best neutral voice. But I was kissing our pleasant conversation good-bye.
"He's fine." She kept her eyes on the glowing tip of her cigarette. "Said to give you his love." Sure he did. Curtis is brimming over with love for me. "Give him mine," I lied back, and got up to chop the onions. - Along time ago I learned that, on the subject of her husband, the price of Rudy's friendship is smiles, lies, and teeth-gritting silence. I hate this deal, I despise the hypocrisy and the unfairness, but I stick to it like a sacred vow. What choice do I have? It's Rudy. But there's nobody else in the world I'd do it for. - - I heard her stand up. "So, Em. Tell me. What's new on the Mick Draco front these days?" I couldn't believe it-my heart actually missed a beat. Good thing my paring knife is dull or I might've sliced off a digit. I had to duck my head so Rudy wouldn't see me flushing. Christ, it's worse than I thought. The other thing I hadn't realized was how badly I wanted to talk about him.
But I was cool. "Oh, not that much. We had coffee again on Friday. Thursday or Friday. Friday. In that dive across from his studio again. We just, you know, talked." "Talked." "Yeah, about stuff. His kid, my work. His painting." "His wife." - "Ha. No." It's been three months since I met him. -Three months. Of torture. I'm used to men torturing me, but not like this. We'll call each other up and say something like, "Guess what, I happen to be in your neighborhood right now, want to have coffee?" if it's me calling him, or "I just learned how to do lithographs, want to see them?" if it's him calling - me. Since neither of us likes coffee that much and I don't even know for sure what a lithograph is, it's safe to say these are subterfuges. Innocent ones, though. Excruciatingly innocent. I'm dying here.
Rudy leaned in, elbows on the counter, her Acqua di Gió adding class to the odor of the onions. "Well? What's going on? Come on, give me the lowdown." "Nothing. Nothing's changed, we just, you know, we see each other every once in a while and we talk. We're friends. That's it." I put down the-knife and met her eyes. "Oh, Rudy. I'm going insane." She smiled, and her eyes crinkled with sympathy. "Poor Emma." "I can't stand it. We've never even touched hands.
But I'm falling, I'm really-and it's the same for him, I think, although he would never say. And nothing can change, nothing can ever happen." "Look at you," Rudy said wonderingly. When she put her arm around my waist, I had the stupidest urge to burst into tears. So I shuffled away, muttering, "Oh, I'm okay," laughing to cover it. I was torn between wanting to blurt out everything-even though there honestly is nothing to tell-and wanting to keep it all to myself. But what I wanted most was to get over him and tell Rudy about it in retrospect-"You wouldn't believe how gone J was on that Mick guy-remember him?" "If it's making you this miserable," she said, "maybe you ought to stop seeing him."
"I'm not miserable. Not all the time." Misery alternates with euphoria. "But I know I have to stop seeing him. And then Lee has a party and invites Mick and the lovely Sally-she's done it twice now-" "You have to tell Lee who he is." "I can't, it's too late, I waited too long. So even if I by not to see him, I do see him, and I'm just-I'm losing my mind! And he's-" The doorbell rang.
"Shit," we said in unison.
"But it's okay, I'm fine, I really am. I'll tell you the rest later. Listen," I blurted, backing toward the ball, "don't say anything, his name or anything, you knOw-" Rudy's expression, Don't insult me, made me laugh nervously and blush again. "I know-I'm just crazy. Oh, God, Rudy!" Chaos rules for the first twenty minutes or so of every women's group meeting while everybody hugs and kisses, pours wine, tries to find a cutting board, a knife, jockeys for a place at the sink, catches up on everybody else's news-all at the same time, and all, except for Lee's, in kitchens the size of really big bathrooms.
"Are you through with that colander?" "Em, your hair looks darling." "This cheese is good-is it Saga?" "Can I take a shower? I just came from ballet class." "Isabel, make your rice in the microwave, okay? I need this whole stove. And nobody talk to me while I'm doing this shrimp, I need five minutes of peace and quiet." "Oh, heck, I'm not taking a shower." "She is so bossy when she cooks." I love this. Making a nice meal for my best friends, listening to them joke and laugh and tell how they've -been, throwing in a zinger of my own now and then -this is the best time. Wine, cheese, gossip, and pals. If you could get sex in there somehow, you'd have it all.
The telephone rang. "Can somebody get that?" I was at the Dijon-and-cream-sauce stage, very tricky. Lee picked up the phone and said, "DeWitt residence. Oh, hi, Sharon. No, this is Lee. Oh, no, really? Oh, I'm sorry." "I knew it," Rudy said in a stage whisper.
"I didn't like her that much anyway," I said. Lee made a face at me and took the phone into the dining room. "I didn't. She plucks her eyebrows and then pencils them back on. What is that?" "This is a record, though. Usually they last longer than two meetings." Lee came back in, grim-faced. "Another one bites the dust." She slumped down on a stool. "Is it something we're doing?" She looked so dejected, Rudy and I burst out laughing. "No, I mean it." She turned to Isabel. "This is the third in-what?" "About two years." "Well, I knew she wouldn't last." "Me, too," Rudy agreed with me.
"Did she say why she was quitting?" Isabel asked.
"She doesn't have time." "Right." "Oh, right," said Rudy. "What else did she say?" "Nothing. Well, she did say she thought we'd discuss issues more. Topics." "Topics? Please." I snorted. "Women in the workplace. Postfeminism in a preliberation era. Authenticating your life. Juggling work and family in a-" "Didn't you tell her," Isabel interrupted mildly, "that we quit having topics quite a few years ago?" "Yes, but-" "Topics," Rudy said, "are what people talk about when they don't know each other well." "Topics," I said, "are what men talk about." Lee shook her head at us, disappointed.
"I think it must be hard for someone new to break into this group," Isabel said. Sharon was another one of Lee's finds-Isabel didn't want her to- feel bad. "We're established now, a unit, Any newcomer's bound to feel like an outsider, no matter how welcoming we try to be." "Well, I don't see why." Of course Isabel was right, but I wanted to keep it going. "Aren't we a fun buncha gals?" I turned to Rudy. "Remember the bald one? Sort of a middle-age punk deal going on. What was her name-" "Moira, and she was nice," Rudy said defensively- she'd proposed her.
"I didn't say she wasn't nice, I said she was bald. Bald as an egg, bald as a cue ball. Bald-" "How long have we been a group?" Isabel said to divert me.
Somebody asks that question every fourth or fifth meeting. She always knows the answer, and everybody always acts surprised and disbelieving. "It'll be ten years in June," Lee said.
"Ten years." "My God." "Who'd've thought." Rudy lifted her glass high. "To us." "To us." Everybody clinked, and we drank. I was thinking two things: God, we're so lucky, and I want this to last forever.