“Did you ever ask her what she wanted to be?”
Gina smiled. “Oh yeah. Know what she said? She said, ‘I never wanted what you do—marriage and kids and all that. I just wanted to be special.’ ”
She emptied her glass, ran her finger around the rim.
“Guess she’s got that now, huh? Everyone in Queens knows who she is.”
Time passed. They talked about the kids, and then Pete asked, “Why did Ruth and Frank split up?”
Gina shrugged. Lit another cigarette.
“For Ruth, Frank was looking back. He was the best she thought she could do when they were in school. And I guess getting married so young meant she could get away from home. Away from her mother. Her father died when she was sixteen—did you know that? She loved him. The way she talks about him, she was a real daddy’s girl. But after that . . . well, she and her mother never got along. She wanted out and Frank was her ticket. But she was past that by the time I met her.
“The thing is, Pete, Ruth’s different. She’s pretty, sure, but she’s got something else. Men want her. Some men will do anything for her. She could’ve had any guy she wanted, and she didn’t know it till it was too late, till she was married to a mechanic with two kids and a shitty job in a shitty bar.”
She rubbed her eyes. “I’m not sure Frank understood any of that. Or maybe he did. He was always jealous of other guys.”
Then: “I asked her one night, ‘You ever think of just letting him have the kids? Just dropping the whole custody thing?’”
Pete put his glass down carefully. “What did she say?”
“She was all over me like gravy on mashed potatoes. How could I even ask that. Furious. I said, ‘Hey, I’m just asking. I’m not saying you should. I’m asking if you ever thought about it.’ She calmed down a little then, and she just said, ‘They’re my kids. I’m their mother.’ And that was it. Subject closed.
“I think she couldn’t bear the idea of letting Frank win. She’d fought every little battle so hard, she felt sorta . . . she’d be damned if she’d let him win the war. She used to say he was a deadbeat father anyway. Could barely take care of himself. She said a few times that if he had the kids for a few weeks, he’d feed ’em pizza for three days straight when he got his paycheck, then watery creamed corn until the next one came in.
“And there’s something else. She never said so, not directly, but I think she worried about what people would say if she let Frank have the kids. If she just walked away. She knew that every woman in Queens would judge her for it. Would hate her for it. Under it all she really cares what people think of her. I used to tell her she cared too much.”
Pete waited. He thought there had to be a reason she was telling him this.
“Just the same, I know she thought about it. The kids were all that was standing between her and the life she wanted. She’d never have given up the kids, but she sure as hell thought about it. She would get talking to a guy at work, a customer who’d pay her some attention—or she’d come back from those weekends away with Lou, and she’d talk about what it would be like to have a rich husband. Someone with gold lighters and cuff links, a big shiny car, someone who could fly you to California when he felt like it. She told me once—Cindy was sick with the stomach flu, Frank hadn’t sent a check that month, she was on a real downer—and she said her dream was just to wake up to a closet filled with new clothes and to sit down every night to a dinner served by someone else. She’d never have gotten back with Frank, not once she’d had a taste of what was out there.
“I think she wanted those things real bad. I hope she gets them one day. I hope she does.”
How strong was the pull of that other life, Pete wondered. How tempting?
She would have gotten a glimpse of it when the kids were asleep and Gina came over with a bottle. Or when she’d made enough in tips that week to leave them with a sitter and go to an afternoon movie, sit back in the dark and watch women just like her make men fall in love with them.
But then she’d have had to go home, park the kids in front of the TV, find something for dinner.
He thought about the photographs of the apartment that Devlin had given him. The dirty plates in the kitchen, the crayon marks on the walls. The kids’ clothes on the sofa, their toys on the floor, the attempt to keep the living room neat by piling things in corners: the kids’ drawings, their books, odd socks.
And then he thought of the photographs he’d seen of her own bedroom. The open closet where her clothes hung in an ironed, pastel-colored line. The drawers where her underwear and nightgowns were carefully folded. The gleaming surfaces, the vacuumed carpet. Everything tucked neatly away.
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