“Let’s go to the blue room. You’re staying in the blue room, right?” he said rather quietly. They’d all been sort of shouting all at the same time for some time.
After Martin refreshed their drinks from the living room bar that reminded Ruthie of an old movie she watched with her father years ago, she followed him to the blue room, where her sad little duffle bag laid on the ground, looking terribly out of place. He sat down and patted the bed next to himself. She followed obediently. He’d loosened his tie; it hung strangely down the length of his narrow torso.
They began kissing, their drinks sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. Ruthie had kissed boys in junior high, back in South Bend. In fact, in seventh grade, after smoking shitty weed in the alley behind her house with three eighth grade boys — how flattered she felt, why were they there with her? — she somehow found herself blowing all three of them. She remembered the feel of the gravel through her blue jeans, the feel of their dicks moving in and out of her mouth, the wonderful noises of pleasure the boys made. At the time, she felt powerful, as if she had this wonderful gift, as if they maybe loved her and appreciated her. Of course, this wasn’t the case at all. She was ruined after that; no one would talk to her, except to call her a slut. This was one of the reasons she begged her grandmother to send her to Lyndon. But not the only reason. She was a girl who wanted out of South Bend, who wanted to kiss the department store heir in the blue room in a penthouse in Park Avenue. But she was not going to blow him, or anybody from Lyndon. It didn’t work in South Bend and she knew it wouldn’t here, either. The two places couldn’t be more different but blow jobs meant the same thing all over the world, of this Ruthie was certain.
After a while, Martin stopped kissing her and pulled back, looking at her face. At this point they were lying on top of the bed and their bodies had mushed against each other some.
“Do you know what we have in common?” Martin asked, grinning, his eyes an incredible mixture of intense blue and bloodshot whites, hundreds of thin red lines intersecting around the blue. His mouth, grinning, was a loose, long thing.
“What?” She couldn’t think of one thing.
“We’re both outsiders.”
“Because you’re from Los Angeles?” This didn’t make much sense to Ruthie.
“No. Because I’m a Jew. I’m not a WASP like everyone else at Lyndon.”
Ruthie wasn’t exactly sure what a WASP was, but she had an inkling. She’d had no idea that Martin was Jewish. The few Jewish people in South Bend all kept to themselves and owned car dealerships. “I didn’t know you were Jewish. And I’m not Jewish. I don’t get it.”
Martin lay on his back now, right next to Ruthie who propped herself up on her elbow next to him, and his impressively large hands lay on his chest while he laughed softly, as if to hold onto his gentle laugh.
“Of course you’re not Jewish. Even though Ruth is sort of a Jewish name.” Ruthie thought about that. It was a Biblical name, she knew. Her father had named her purposefully after what he called, “the foremother of Jesus.” Martin wasn’t laughing anymore, just looking at her with those awful wonderful eyes. “You’re white trash,” he said. “And there are practically no other of your kind at Lyndon.”
Ruthie got up, straightening her new dress, the dress she was so proud of, the dress she’d been so excited to wear. She picked up her drink. “I’m going to go do more blow,” she said and walked out of the blue room, momentarily getting disoriented as to how to get back to the living room, stumbling a bit down the long, dark, endless hallway.
On the train ride home for Thanksgiving break, Ruthie sat by the window looking out at the world passing by her. It was dark, but she could make out shapes of houses, with their endless people in them, and a parade of scarily tall trees devoid of any leaves. She hadn’t slept, her mind a storm of thoughts. The conductor had been kind enough, like the waiters at the Plaza, to serve her even though she was clearly underage. She had been slowly polishing off a bottle of red wine and she felt warm and woozy. Her thoughts, drunkenly floating through her mind, were of deep significance. It was a twenty-four hour ride to South Bend, and she was more than halfway there, the Midwestern land flat and straight around her. Her once perfectly curled bangs hung limply over her eyes. White Trash. She would never have a mane of hair to toss over her shoulder. She would never have a lot of things, she would never be many things — but she wasn’t the same person she was a few months ago, no matter what anyone said.
The night before she left, she had persuaded Alicia to get high with her. Alicia had never been high. They sat on the top bunk, Ruthie’s bed, and Ruthie schooled her on how to use the bong, how to use the hit towel. Ruthie explained how sometimes, the first time you get high, you don’t feel it, that you had to try and feel it and then you’d see. Alicia said, “I don’t feel it.”
Ruthie said, “Take another hit,” and Alicia did, her face all concentration, all hard work, the same as she’d looked over her desk all fall.
Ruthie was high, but she was always high these days. It wasn’t very special. Watching Alicia get high for the first time was new, exciting even. “You’re feeling it now, I can tell.” Ruthie wrung her hands in anticipation.
Ruthie looked at Alicia. She hadn’t made one friend at Lyndon that fall. She was the saddest person Ruthie had ever met. “Wow,” Alicia said, her voice coming out in that marijuana-induced whisper. She leaned into Ruthie. “I can see your shadow.”
This startled Ruthie. She didn’t want anyone seeing her shadow. She didn’t want to have a shadow. Without realizing what she was doing, she slapped Alicia.
Alicia slapped her back, harder, and then climbed down from Ruthie’s bunk. The two girls lay there in the narrow beds, hearts pounding. Ruthie felt as though she could feel the vibration of Alicia’s lifeblood coming up through the metal frame. Eventually, they fell asleep.
cleveland circle house
MARY HAD GROWN UP IN A HOUSE WHERE HER FATHER LOVED HER BECAUSE HE THOUGHT SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL AND BRILLIANT, AND HER MOTHER DESPISED HER FOR THE SAME QUALITIES. In truth, she was neither beautiful nor brilliant. She was an awkward girl, with a long torso and short legs, prone to nervousness, whose chin dropped too far down her neck. And although she was a hard worker, she never achieved better than slightly above average grades. She’d only been accepted to one college. But her father insisted on being proud of her, regardless. She was going off to college, in Boston. This was more than he had ever done.
It was 1986. At the very beginning of her freshman year at Boston University, she declared her major in psychology. This was partly due to her attachment to Larissa, a dark-haired, zaftig girl she met in Introduction to Psychology 101. Larissa had read Freud and Jung. Larissa impressed Mary immensely. The two girls decided that summer that they would get an apartment together in Allston and get jobs. Mary called her father a week before she was to move into the apartment.
“Dad, I’m getting an apartment with a friend. We’ll get jobs this summer and then stay in it the following year, during the school year.”
“Is that allowed?”
“Of course, Dad.”
“You’re not coming home this summer? I’ll miss you so much.”
“This is the right thing to do, Dad. I’m going to try and get a job in my field, in psychology,” Mary said, not knowing at all what that meant. “It’s a good opportunity.”