Jennie was still in bed when he got back to the apartment, only her head outside the sheet, the flesh drawn so tightly at temples and chin that her face looked hard, carved from wood. The bedroom shade was drawn to keep the morning light out.
'Jennie…' he whispered, but nothing came in reply.
The apartment was a mess. He could see the nest she must have made in front of the TV the night before. A U-shaped wall of firm cushions in front of the couch, the firmer the better to hold up her back and neck, the open space filled with blankets and pillows. Like the living room castles he used to build as a kid. A phalanx of overflowing ashtrays and snack trays had been arranged around the castle, but the food had been barely nibbled. Jennie always seemed to be consumed by this aimless hunger, and yet nothing would satisfy her. At times she could hardly eat anything at all. And yet the hunger still gnawed at her, and she kept loading up on the junk food, trying to find something she would eat.
Gene could picture her sitting here wrapped up in her blankets, her small face peering out at the TV, her nervous hands grabbing for cigarettes and snacks she would not eat. She seemed smaller with each passing day, more vulnerable, more and more like a kid. Less like a woman. He hated himself for thinking that way. As if Ruth were more than that.
Jennie wasn't the kind to sit up and wait — at least she never had been before. Their relationship had never been exclusive; that had never been part of the rules. Yet he kept thinking of her sitting up all night, and maybe, just maybe waiting up for him. And he hated himself for that as well.
Suddenly he felt starved. He went to the refrigerator and jerked the door open, the bottles and jars inside rubbing against each other musically. He reached for the quart bottle of orange juice.
When he started to open it he noticed that the lid wasn't on securely. He held the bottle up to the light from the narrow, curtainless kitchen window. As he turned it slowly he detected the faint impression of a lip print near the rim. She was just like a kid. More and more. He felt a sudden flash of anger, and poured out all the juice, discarded the bottle in the can under the sink. At first she'd been so careful, sterilizing her silverware, her cups and plates, making sure he didn't handle anything she'd had in her mouth. Like she was dirty.
They hadn't made love in some time. He couldn't even remember the last time they'd kissed.
Now he was ashamed of himself, looking at the discarded juice bottle. You can't catch it that way. He'd told all their friends that, his family who thought he should have nothing more to do with her. But he was scared. He knew better, but he was scared of Jennie.
And yet if he could love her illness away, kiss and rub it away, he would do it.
'I heard something.' The voice behind him was so weak he hardly recognized it. 'I didn't know you were home.'
He turned around. She had the comforter wrapped tightly around her. The narrow muscles in her cheeks and throat trembled. He tried to smile at her, but couldn't quite get the idea up to his lips. 'You should be in bed,' he said. 'You'll get cold.'
'I'm always cold,' she snapped.
'I know, Jennie.' He went to her and put his arms around her. 'I know.' He squeezed her. After a moment's hesitation she squeezed back, or at least what passed as a squeeze for her.
'Hold me in bed?' she whispered.
'I'll hold you in bed,' he said softly, leading her into the other room. 'I'll hold you as long as you want. Forever if you want.'
After an hour or so she was asleep again. Gene lay with her, massaging her back gently with his hands, feeling the lines of every muscle, every bone. And then the phone rang.
'Are you coming over?' He could hear Ruth's voice, and static, and wind.
'I was just there,' he said quietly, watching Jennie stir in her sleep.
'But are you coming over? I need you to come over.' Ruth's voice was steady, focused, obsessive.
'Ruth…'
'I need you.'
He'd chased Ruth all through college. Every once in a while he would stop, and think how ridiculous he looked, what a fool he was, but those pauses for self-examination had been few and far between. She'd had the voice he heard in his dreams, gestures he could mimic in his sleep, skin that had felt like no other. He'd never wanted to think about whether his feelings for her were real, or whether this was truly a balanced, healthy relationship. Those questions simply had not applied. There had been nothing real about her, and he hadn't cared if there was a balance — he'd felt deliriously unbalanced. He'd simply had to have her.
He'd met her the first day of classes. The friend of a friend of a friend, although he could no longer remember which ones. He'd been introduced as a 'math wizard.'
'Then you'll have to tutor me sometime,' she had said, with this simply amazing smile. And he had. If she'd asked him to, he'd have done all her work for her. There had never been «magic» before; now there was a magic he could not let go.
'I need you,' she'd said, but it had meant something different back then. She'd needed his help with school, and she'd needed him to tell her how beautiful she was — so that she could be convinced that someone else might find her attractive. Even when she'd made love to him, it was to convince her that someone else — and that someone else seemed to change depending on her mood — would want to make love with her.
'You make me feel good,' she'd say. 'You make me feel alive.' But she had never asked how she made him feel.
She should have asked. Because sometimes she had made him feel less than alive. He'd shied away from any other relationship, just in hope that she would be the one. He hadn't kept up his friendships. He'd convinced himself that his life would not work without her in it. He'd convinced himself that his relationship with her was a crucial turning point in his life, and that this was a relationship he dared not fail. Every woman he had met resembled her in some way. She'd become the measure for every female gesture, glance, or expression.
'Kiss me, Gene. There and there and there. Am I still beautiful?' He could hear noises in other parts of the house: Ruth's companions and their lovers.
'Yes,' he said, with his lips urging her skin toward some vague warmth. 'You've always been beautiful.' He ran his fingers through her hair, and felt them go deep, too deep, into the dark waves that surrounded her depthless eyes, her pale, night-surrounding mouth.
'Good. That's good, Gene,' Ruth whispered, holding him tighter and tighter within the scissors her body made. He wondered what she could possibly be thinking. It scared him that he could not even guess what she was thinking.
But then he'd never been able to guess what she was thinking. Even as she'd died, the thing that had haunted him the most was trying to figure out what she was thinking.
He'd been walking on the quadrangle at the center of campus. It had been a bright, sunny day, bright enough to burn away the haze that had accumulated the previous week. Both a haze of weather and the haze that had built up in his mind after several weeks of an unusually frenetic and unproductive pursuit of Ruth. In fact, the contrast had bothered him. The sunlight had felt just too bright, the campus setting too stark, too livid.
Suddenly there was a crash, screams. A large crowd had gathered near the stone wall that bordered South Drive. When he got there he saw a red Ford that had come up onto the sidewalk and knocked a third of the wall down.
He'd pushed his way through the crowd. Several people had been huddled over a woman on the sidewalk. Gene could see the long cuts on her legs, the nylons scraped away, the real skin scraped away below that, the shards of glass in her sides.
Then someone had shifted and Gene could see that it was Ruth lying on the sidewalk, that it was Ruth who had contained so much blood. Somehow he got through the crowd. He had said things, terrible and inarticulate things, but he could no longer remember what they were. And then it was
But Gene had kept talking to her, holding the ruin of her head in his hands and sweet-talking her, kissing her open eyes and kissing her lips, passionately kissing her lips with tongue and tooth and caress as if to arouse her,
