thana Beach Boys oldie on the radio. You always did give good shut up,Jessie-remember that night in the dorm after we came back from yourfirst and last consciousness-raising session at Neuworth?
I don’t want to remember, Ruth.
I’m sure you don’t, so I’ll remember for both of us, how’s that for adeal? You kept saying it was the girl with the scars on her breasts thathad upset you, only her and nothing more, and when I tried to tell youwhat you’d said in the kitchen-about how you and your father hadbeen alone at your place on Dark Score Lake when the sun went out in1963, and how he’d done something to you-you told me to shut up.When I wouldn’t, you tried to slap me. When I still wouldn’t, yougrabbed your coat, ran out, and spent the night somewhere else-probablyin Susie Timmel’slittle fleabag cabin down by the river, the one we usedto call Susie’s Lez Hotel. By the end of the week, you’d found some girlswho bad an apartment downtown and needed another roomie. Boom, asfast as that… but then, you always moved fast when you’d made upyour mind, Jess, I’ll give you that. And like I said, you always gavegood shut up.
Shu-
There! What’d I tell you?
Leave me alone!
I’m pretty familiar with that one, too. You know what hurt me themost, Jessie? It wasn’t the trust thing-I knew even then that it wasnothing personal, that you felt you couldn’t trust anyone with the storyof what happened that day, including yourself. What hurt was knowinghow close you came to spilling it all, there in the kitchen of the NeuworthParsonage. We were sitting with our backs against the door and our armsaround each other and you started to talk. You said, “I could never tell,would have killed my Mom, and even if it didn’t, she would have lefthim and I loved him. We all loved him, we all needed him, they wouldhave blamed me, and he didn’t do anything, not really.” I asked you who didn’t do anything and it came out of you so fast it was like you’dspent the last nine years waiting for someone to pop the question. “Myfather,” you said. “We were at Dark Score Lake on the day the sun wentout.” You would have told me the rest-I know you would-hut thatwas when that dumb bitch came in and asked, “Is she all right?” As ifyou looked all right, you know what I mean? Jesus, sometimes I can’tbelieve how dumb people can be. They ought to make it a law that youhave to get a license, or at least a learner’s permit, before you’re allowedto talk. Until you pass your Talker’s Test, you should have to be a mute.It would solve a lot of problems. But that’s not the way things are, andas soon as Hart Hall’s answer to Florence Nightingale came in, you closedup like a clam. There was nothing I could do to make you open up again'.although God knows I tried.
You should have just left me alone! Jessie returned. The glass of water was starting to shake in her hand, and the makeshift purple straw was trembling between her lips. You should have stoppedmeddling! It didn’t concern you!
Sometimes friends can’t help their concern, Jessie, the voice inside said, and it was so full of kindness that Jessie was silenced. I lookedit up, you know, I figured out what you must have been talking aboutand I looked it up. I didn’t remember anything at all about an eclipseback in the early sixties, hut of course I was in Florida at the time, anda lot more interested in snorkeling and the Delray lifeguard-I had themost incredible crush on him-than I was in astronomical phenomena. Iguess I wanted to make sure the whole thing wasn’t some kind of crazyfantasy or something-maybe brought on by that girl with the horrible burns on her bazooms. It was no fantasy. There was a total solar eclipse in Maine, and your summer house on Dark Score Lake would have been right in the path of totality. July of 1963. Just a girl and her Dad,watching the eclipse. You wouldn’t tell me what good old Dad did toyou, hut I knew two things, Jessie: that he was your father, which wasbad, and that you were ten-going-on-eleven, on the childhood rim ofpuberty…and that was worse.
Ruth, please stop. You couldn’t have picked a worse time to startraking up all that old-
But Ruth would not be stopped. The Ruth who had once been Jessie’s roommate had always been determined to have her say every single word of it-and the Ruth who was now Jessie’s headmate apparently hadn’t changed a bit.
The next thing I knew, you were living off-campus with three littleSorority Susies-princesses in A -line jumpers and Ship “n” Shore blouses,each undoubtedly owning a set of those underpants with the days of theweek sewn on them. I think you made a conscious decision to go intotraining for the Olympic Dusting and Floor- Waxing Team right aroundthen. You unhappened that night at the Neuworth Parsonage, you unhappened the tears and the hurt and the anger, you unhappened me. Oh, westill saw each other once in awhile-split the occasional pizza and pitcherof Molson’s down at Pat’s-hut our friendship was really over, wasn’tit? When it came down to a choice between me and what happened to youin July of 1963, you chose the eclipse.
The glass of water was trembling harder.
“Why now, Ruth?” she asked, unaware that she was actually mouthing the words in the darkening bedroom. Why now, that’swhat I want to know-given that in this incarnation you’re really apart of me, why now? Why at the exact time when I can least affordbeing upset and distracted?
The most obvious answer to that question was also the most unappetizing: because there was an enemy inside, a sad, bad bitch who liked her just the way she was-handcuffed, aching, thirsty, scared, and miserable-just fine. Who didn’t want to see that condition alleviated in the slightest. Who would stoop to any dirty trick to see that it wasn’t.
The total solar eclipse lasted just over a minute that day, Jessie…except in your mind. In there, it’s still going on, isn’t it?
She closed her eyes and focused all her thought and will on steadying the glass in her hand. Now she spoke mentally to Ruth’s voice without self-consciousness, as if she really were speaking to another person instead of to a part of her brain that had suddenly decided this was the right time to do a little work on herself, as Nora Callighan would have put it.
Let me alone, Ruth. If you still want to discuss these things after I’ve taken a stab at getting a drink, okay. But for now, will you please just-
“-shut the fuck up,” she finished in a low whisper.
Yes, Ruth replied at once. I know there’s something or someoneinside you, trying to throw dirt in the works, and I know it sometimesuses my voice-it’s a great ventriloquist, no doubt about that-but it’snot me. I loved you then, and I love you now. That was why I kepttrying to stay in touch as long as I did…because I loved you. And,I suppose, because us high-riding bitches have to stick together.
Jessie smiled a little, or tried to, around the makeshift straw.
Now go for it, Jessie, and go hard.
Jessie waited for a moment, but there was nothing else. Ruth was gone, at least for the time being. She opened her eyes again, then slowly bent her head forward, the rolled-up card jutting out of her mouth like FDR’s cigarette holder.
Please God, I’m begging you…let this work.
Her makeshift straw slid into the water. Jessie closed her eyes and sucked. For a moment there was nothing, and clear despair rose up in her mind. Then water filled her mouth, cool and sweet and there, surprising her into a kind of ecstasy. She would have sobbed with gratitude if her mouth hadn’t been so strenuously puckered around the end of the rolled-up subscription card; as it was, she could make only a foggy hooting sound through her nose.
She swallowed the water, feeling it coating her throat like liquid satin, and then began to suck again. She did this as ardently and as mindlessly as a hungry calf working at its mother’s teat. Her straw was a long way from perfect, delivering only sips and slurps and rills instead of a steady stream, and most of what she was sucking into the tube was spilling out again from the imperfect seats and crooked folds. On some level she knew this, could hear water pattering to the coverlet like raindrops, but her grateful mind still fervently believed that her straw was one of the greatest inventions ever created by the mind of woman, and that this moment, this drink from her dead husband’s water-glass, was the apogee of her life.
Don’t drink it all, Jess-save some for later.
She didn’t know which of her phantom companions had spoken this time, and it didn’t matter. It was great advice, but so was telling an eighteen-year-old boy half- mad with six months of heavy petting that it didn’t matter if the girl was finally willing; if he didn’t have a rubber, he should wait. Sometimes, she was discovering, it was impossible to take the mind’s advice, no matter how good it was. Sometimes the body simply rose up and slapped all that good advice aside. She was discovering something else, as well-giving in to those simple physical needs could be an inexpressible relief.
Jessie went on sucking through the rolled-up card, tilting the glass to keep the surface of the water brimming over the far end of the soggy, misshapen purple thing, aware in some part of her mind that the card was leaking worse than ever and she was insane not to stop and wait for it to dry out again, but going on anyway.
What finally stopped her was the realization that she was sucking nothing but air, and had been for several seconds. There was water left in Gerald’s glass, but the tip of her makeshift straw could no longer quite touch it. The coverlet beneath the rolled-up blow-in card was dark with moisture.
I could get what’s left, though. I could, IfI could turn my hand alittle farther in that unnatural backward direction when I needed to gethold of the miserable glass inthe first place, I think I can stick my necka little farther forward and get those last few sips of water. Think I can? I know I can.
She did know it, and later on she would test the idea, but for now the white-collar guys on the top floor-the ones with all the good views- had once again wrested control away from the day-laborers and shop stewards who ran the machinery; the mutiny was over. Her thirst was a long way from being entirely slaked, but her throat had quit throbbing and she felt a lot better… mentally as well as physically. Sharper in her thoughts and marginally brighter in her outlook.
She found she was glad she’d left that last little bit in the glass. Two sips of water through the leaky straw probably wouldn’t spell the difference between remaining handcuffed to the bed and finding a way to wriggle out of this mess on her own-let alone between life and death-but getting those last couple of sips might occupy her mind when and if it tried to turn to its own morbid devices again. After all, night was coming, her husband was lying dead nearby, and it looked like she was camping out.
Not a pretty picture, especially when you added the hungry stray who was camping out with her, but Jessie found she was growing sleepy again just the same. She tried to think of reasons to fight her growing drowsiness and couldn’t come up with any good ones. Even the thought of waking up with her arms numb to the elbows didn’t seem like a particularly big deal. She would simply move them around until the blood was flowing briskly again. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but she had no doubt about her ability to do it.
Also, you might have an idea while you’re asleep, dear, Goodwife Burlingame said. That always happens in books.
