What a mistake. Within half an hour everyone else was exploring parts of the room with awe and wonder, exclaiming about the beauty of it all, while Ruthie sat there rigid, seeing skeletons and blood instead of her friends, never mind her own legs, and the dark demons floating by and through everything visible. As the misery of her trip began to subside, the timid light of dawn shone through the tapestry covering the window. The girls snuck back, forgetting to worry about the guard and getting away with it. Ruthie spent Sunday in bed, only making it to dinner, and even that was a blur.
The following week moved slowly. In English class, Ruthie became confused about Richard III. He was such a bad man, but wasn’t that because he was ugly and miserable? And how quickly things turned on him. One minute, he’s the king and then he’s all alone, without a single friend. This frightened Ruthie. The trip had made her sensitive, but not in a good way. She stared out the window, feeling a bit trembly.
“Ruthie? Ruthie, I asked you a question.” Mr. Lin was standing in front of her.
“Oh, sorry, I spaced out,” she said.
“Clearly. I’ll repeat, what do you think about Richard’s personal responsibility in regard to all the terrible things he did?”
Ruthie looked straight into Mr. Lin’s eyes. “I actually was thinking about that.”
Mr. Lin smiled. He didn’t believe her.
“I just sort of got lost in thought about that. I was thinking how hard it is to be ugly, how hard it is to be an outsider, how it turns people cruel and bitter and mean. Richard is sort of super ugly, but even if you’re just not what everyone else is, it makes you act in ways that you wouldn’t if you were like everyone else. Not that pretty people can’t be mean, too. But that’s not the point of this play. Anyway, he doesn’t get away with his behavior, right? Maybe that was God’s hand, as the end of play says. Maybe God had to take care of things because Richard had demons inside of him. There are demons, I do believe that. I’ve seen them.” Ruthie raised her arms. “Not everyone can see them, not all of the time. I’m sure they change shapes, I’m sure they are shape-shifting demons. But I saw these brown ones, floating around and entering and exiting people without their knowledge. They were ugly and sought to hurt. I didn’t see God. But who else could fight them?”
Everyone looked at her strangely and for a moment she was back to normal, noticing other people, noticing them noticing her. Was it because she said God? Probably saying she had seen demons sounded strange. She hid her religious background from everyone — her father was a deacon at the First Presbyterian in South Bend and she was forced to attend Sunday school her whole life — because she discovered no one else she was friends with was religious. It had been freeing, forgetting about God. But since she’d eaten those poisonous mushrooms, He was coming back to her.
Later that night, she sat in Melissa and Nancy’s room, wearing her polyester blue nightgown that made her skin itch, expertly sucking down bong hits. The weed was making her feel much, much better.
“I think Martin likes you,” Melissa said.
“Really,” Ruthie said.
Nancy removed the hit towel from her face. “You should come to New York with us this weekend. You need to have your parents give permission to the dean, but you can totally stay with me — Melissa is. It’ll be fun. Martin and Bob are going, too. They’re staying with Jesse.”
When Ruthie returned to the room, she told Alicia.
Alicia was sitting at her desk, studying algebra to no avail. “I wish I wasn’t the only black person at this place. I miss my people.”
The weekend was mind blowing. Ruthie had never been to New York. She had some vague idea what it meant to live in a penthouse on Park Avenue but to actually stay in one was a whole different thing. Nancy’s parents were at their house in Barbados, another thing that was vaguely imaginable but also not, and they had the apartment to themselves, except when the extremely petite Chinese housekeeper in a blue starched uniform was there. It was one thing when she was sleeping in the “blue room” but another altogether when she had to sit patiently while the housekeeper poured her Cheerios. After she left the room, she asked Nancy, “Why does she pour the Cheerios? I can pour my own Cheerios.”
Nancy said, without any real emotion, even with some patience, “Because that’s her job.”
That night, they were meeting the boys for drinks at the Plaza Hotel and then heading back to Nancy’s presumably, since her parents were out of town. The girls had taken Ruthie shopping at Bloomingdale’s, and Ruthie was wearing her brand new electric blue ribbed sweater dress. The only thing she liked about herself, her legs, were encased in black stockings that gleamed. She was so excited and overwhelmed she had to pee every five minutes for a while.
Being at the Plaza Hotel, getting served gin and tonics without having to produce a fake ID, was exhilarating. That’s how the Plaza was, and everyone knew that except for Ruthie, of course. How could she know? She tried to control her excitement, tried to be blasé, which was not easy. The boys were in jackets and ties, and despite their usual boyishness that Ruthie found unmanly in comparison to the Midwestern boys she knew, they seemed quite sophisticated to her tonight. Ruthie had borrowed Nancy’s red lipstick and sprayed Anais Anais perfume on herself, and even though she was in desperate need of a haircut, she felt okay about herself. Especially after the fourth gin and tonic.
All the little things that her posse took for granted made her wide-eyed and fragrant with excitement. Watching the boys act like men, hailing cabs for the lot of them. Watching them then open the doors, while the girls in their dresses, wrapping their coats gently around themselves against the fall wind, stepped primly inside. She had never in her life taken a taxicab. Nancy, eyes wet with liquor, telling the driver her Park Avenue address, arriving at this enormous beautiful building, the doorman in his gray uniform and cap deferentially opening the door for them. And then an elevator! Imagine taking an elevator that went right into your apartment! The only elevator she rode in South Bend was … well, she couldn’t think right then. She was sure she had ridden an elevator before.
They all nestled into the deep cushions of couches and chairs in the living room, drinks in hand, passing around a lovely glass pipe bursting with killer weed. Jesse pulled out a small white package that at first appeared to be some uninteresting origami to Ruthie, and then it was clear that it was cocaine. Bob whooped. Nancy fetched a mirror and Jesse expertly cut lines with a razor blade that Ruthie was unsure from where it came. She looked up from the pile of white powder, and Martin was smiling at her. His eyes seemed particularly blue. She felt they matched her dress.
“Ever do blow, Ruthie?” Martin asked, his elbows on his knees, leaning very close to her.
“No,” she said.
“I think you’ll love it,” he said.
He was right. Never had conversation been so urgent! Never had she felt so confident! She belonged in this huge apartment, with these foreigners who were her friends or something close to that. Even Bob was interesting and engaging. He usually receded into the background, but tonight his completely average brown hair and eyes and height and personality seemed suddenly quite vivid. And although she always found Jesse a bit sinister, he didn’t scare her as much because, well, she was powerful, too.
She leaned over to do another line — it was her turn! — and when she sat up sniffing and rubbing the tiny excess on her gums (she was a fast learner), Martin’s face was so close to her she couldn’t really see it all.