“Was she a jealous person?”
“No. Not really. She just had a problem with Frank’s mother. I mean, Johnny’s married. And Lou. She didn’t care about that, long as they made her feel good. But she didn’t have a lot of girlfriends. No one she was really close to. I think she found men more straightforward.”
“But she liked you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, she did. We had some good times. She used to say that when she was with me, she felt like she hadn’t felt in years. Before the kids. Before Frank.”
She fell silent and Pete drank his cooling coffee. He imagined Ruth as a teenager: coming home in the early hours, climbing through her bedroom window. He saw her leaning out into the blue night air, her heart still beating to a distant music. Waiting for her life to start.
And then he thought of himself at fifteen, sixteen, sitting at his desk by the window, homework discarded, gazing out at endless summer evenings and neat sun-bleached lawns, wondering about other small towns, cities, places he’d never go, people he’d never meet. He remembered the overwhelming need to escape. And the fear that he wouldn’t make it, that he’d wake up at forty and find himself with a job at the mill and a wife he couldn’t talk to.
He’d kindled that fear until it burst into a flame that led him through extra-credit classes, through dozens of rejection letters, through a scene with his parents: his mother’s tears, his father’s disappointment, anger concealing his pain. Finally it led him onto a Greyhound out of Iowa.
Maybe he and Ruth weren’t so different.
A voice on the radio announced the one o’clock news. Gina got up, turned it off, and put a record on. Something soft with guitars. Turned it down low. Came and sat back down and lit a cigarette. Poured another drink. Nodded her head in time to the music.
Then she said, “One day, when we’d known each other a while, Ruth asked me, ‘What did you want to be when you grew up?’ ”
She smiled.
“It had been a long time since anyone had asked me that. Since anyone thought I had a choice. Anyway, I told her, ‘I just wanted to get married and have babies. Like everyone else. Like you.’ She looked at me, and I could tell what she was thinking. Me, with my cheap clothes and my cheap dye job, and my fat ass. It’s what everyone sees.”
Pete opened his mouth and she waved him away.
“Don’t worry. You don’t got to be polite, Pete. I know who I am. I pretend I don’t give a damn, and most of the time it’s true. But I used to want what all little girls want. Prince Charming, the fairy-tale wedding, the happy ending.”
She drained her glass, set it down, and poured another.
“I know better now. Men don’t want to marry me or have kids with me. Sure, they want to drink with me. Have a little fun with me. But I’m not the kind of woman that men marry. They have their fun, then they go back to their wives. Or they leave me for someone a little younger, a little skinnier.
“Anyone ever asks me, I say that love is for fools. That I don’t believe in happy endings. But I got a box under my bed full of romance stories. I’m telling you this because you’re here and I’m halfway to being more drunk than I’ve been in years.
“Once a month or so, I go and see a movie at the Dominion—one of those Bette Davis numbers where the ugly duckling turns into a swan and gets the guy and they live happily ever after. Deep down I always wanted that.”
She blinked. “Didn’t exactly get what I hoped for, did I?”
Her honesty made him reckless. “You mind?”
She shrugged.
“Truth be told . . . yeah. Sometimes. Sometimes I mind. At night, when I’m alone. When I know Mick’s with his wife, when Paulie isn’t returning my calls.
“I’m going to tell you something, something I never told no one. Even Ruth. I walked by her window one day last spring. Frank was still living there. It was about six. Ruth was dishing up supper and I was on my way to meet some guy at a bar. I was broke that week. Remember hoping he’d at least give me the cab fare to get home. I stopped to light a cigarette and I heard her talking about something normal—Frankie’s new shoes or the linen sale at Gertz—just normal, you know? Frank was watching her—and there was something about the way he looked at her. Like he couldn’t get enough of her.
“Then she gave the kids their plates and she kissed Cindy’s head and I saw her press her nose into her hair. Just for a moment. And breathe her in.”
Her eyes were wet, and this time she didn’t blink the tears away.
“Ruth never knew how lucky she was. To her, that was just a regular Tuesday. To me, it was everything she got that I don’t: a guy who worshipped her, two beautiful kids. A family.”
Gina blew her cheeks out and picked up the bottle again.
“Jeez. Sure you don’t want a drink?”
This time he shrugged, picked up the other glass, waited for her to pour, and then clinked it against hers.
“Did you ever ask Ruth the same question?”
“Huh?”