They didn’t know what to do with that either. They looked at each other again, and then Maria gave her this big fake smile and said, “Well, anyway, welcome! This is a lovely neighborhood. Very quiet. Very safe. I’m sure you and your family will be very happy here.”
And Ruth smiled right back and said, “I’m sure we will. And now I better get inside and see what kind of mess Frank’s made.” And to Carla, “Thanks for the smoke.”
As she got up, I left my apartment and she found me at the front door. I nodded at her and she nodded back. Slid past me and inside.
And that was my first impression of her: that she knew how to handle herself. That she didn’t care what people thought of her. I was wrong on both counts.
A few days later, she was outside again, sitting on the stoop when I came home. Frank was on the late shift that night, so they’d eaten early. He was inside reading the kids a bedtime story.
I sat down next to her and took out my smokes. She gave me a light and I said thanks, but we didn’t really speak for a while. Just listened to their voices—Frank’s rising and falling as he told the story, the kids laughing at the funny parts. I could smell something cooking: garlic, spices, and the sound of someone’s radio. I could hear Nina Lombardo on the telephone. It was still warm, although the light was starting to fade a little.
It’s strange, remembering this now, but I thought about my dad that day. Hadn’t thought of him in years. I remembered him telling me once that it would be an Indian summer, remembered asking him why Indians get two summers.
After a while, I asked her, “Just moved in?” Breaking the ice. You know. And she said, “Yeah. On the first floor.”
I asked if they’d moved here because her husband worked nearby, and she said no, he worked at the airport, but she waitressed at Callaghan’s, over on Union and 164th. I think she said that their old landlord was selling, so they had to get out. It was just small talk. Just getting to know her a little.
I told her my name and she told me hers, and she asked if I lived alone, if I had kids. Normally I get antsy when people ask me too many personal questions, but with her . . . somehow I didn’t mind. She was the kind of person who made you feel like she was asking because she was interested, not because she was prying or making conversation.
Then she asked if I’d lived here long, and I said almost five years. Told her that some of the neighbors could be—I think I said they gossiped. She nodded—I guess she knew I meant Maria and Carla. When I got to know her better, I realized she hated people poking their noses into her life as well. Hated those “friendly” questions about how she brought her kids up, how much money her husband earned.
She wasn’t . . . she isn’t a typical woman. She used to make fun of the women around here. She wasn’t interested in the things that made them different: who was having an affair with who, whose kid was in trouble at school. She used to talk about the stuff that made them alike. How they mostly wore their hair in identical styles, how they wore their clothes like a uniform. She called them the Barbie Dolls. She made fun of the big events in their lives—you know, the trips to the beauty parlor on Friday afternoons, the Saturday nights in the same restaurant, week after week, with their husbands and their in-laws. She didn’t understand how they could be . . . satisfied with that, I guess. She hates routine. Hates cheapness, smallness.
One time she told me that Carla had redecorated and that she said she’d have to choose between buying new drapes and reupholstering the couch. I remember Ruth’s face as she said, “She could have both, if she knew how.” And she laughed. I guess she meant men. Guys used to give her money—ten bucks to get a couple of drinks and a cab home, or five for the powder room—and she’d keep the rest.
She said once, “Most people are afraid to take risks.” I can see her now, lying back on her couch, stretching her arms above her head, laughing as she said, “They’re afraid to take a bite out of life and see how it tastes.”
She had two lives, really: the daytime one—the kids and laundry and tuna sandwiches and comic books and all that—and her own nighttime world. Bars. Cocktails. The men who paid for them.
There were a lot of men, always. But I guess since she separated from Frank, it was mainly Lou—Lou Gallagher. And Johnny Salcito.