World Enough and Time Ch. 03

The following story was suggested to me by a reader, whose invaluable assistance in my rendering it to the printed page has been much appreciated. The story is dedicated to that reader. This is Part Three of a three-party story.

*

Those six weeks when Tommy was gone to summer camp flew by seemingly in the blink of an eye. During that time, my relationship with Ruth changed considerably. We settled in to a point where the rapport between us became so comfortable, such that any hesitancy that we might have felt in the beginning because of our racial differences melted away like so much spring snow.

My own sense of things is that that relationship changed largely because Ruth changed. When I first met her, she was a proper, respectable, suburban widow whose style and demeanor were consistent with her place in the world -- that of a staid and reputable Brookline housewife and mother. But America had changed so much in the previous 10 or 15 years that Ruth couldn't help but change with it, and I think that change was precipitated more by her association with me and the world that I occupied than probably any other factor.

By any measure, I neither was, nor am I now, radical or extreme in my worldview. Quite the contrary, I was evidence in the flesh that the country was moving forward from its checkered racial past. I was a successful attorney who lived in one of the most upscale neighborhoods of Boston, and I was part and parcel of a seemingly new American nation, so I was hardly interested in upsetting the apple cart too much.

Still, I was from Roxbury, and I continued to maintain ties to family and friends in the ghetto, people I knew and loved who had not captured the American Dream as I had, and so by the very act of spending time with me, Ruth had absorbed my world as if by osmosis. And when she did so, the proper, respectable suburban widow was slowly chiseled into a startlingly new form. I may not have been the sculptor, but I guess I owned the studio.

Forgive me if I digress from my story briefly by offering a tale of Ruth's initiation into my world. I think it might give you a strong sense of the changes that Ruth went through that summer.

One night in late June, right before the Fourth of July, Ruth accompanied me on a visit to Roxbury. It wasn't a festive occasion. I had an old friend who had died after being shot in a robbery. He had been working as a cashier in a convenience store on Tremont Street, and the robber came in dressed in a ski mask and wielding a revolver.

Jamal had given the thief all of the cash in the register -- something like $325 -- and it seemed that the robber was satisfied with the money and was going to leave Jamal alone, but Jamal was a man who had an annoying and somewhat unforgiveable habit of always having the last word.

A witness who was outside the store when it happened said that Jamal said something to the robber just as he was leaving, and that he turned and fired one shot into Jamal's head. Apparently, he didn't appreciate Jamal's commentary.

Jamal had a wicked sense of humor, and even in the tensest or darkest situations, he would throw in sarcastic or caustic remarks just to show others that he didn't care about the same things that worried or frightened everyone else, and, like I said, he always had to have the last word. So, my friends and I imagine that what Jamal said to the .357 wielding robber was something like, "Don't spend it all in one place!" or something equally facetious or cynical.

Ruth was standing by my side in Jamal's mother's basement at a reception after Jamal's funeral, when another of our friends Thomas related that story to us, and her reaction said a lot about what she came to learn about life in Roxbury.

"How can anyone view human life as so insignificant that he would destroy it for a tiny bit of money?" she asked Thomas and me.

"Tiny bit of money?" Thomas answered, turning to Ruth with an innocent, but quizzical look. "It was $325, lady! That's enough to pay my rent for two months and have enough left over to buy me three or four bottles!"

It was a throwaway comment, and though it wasn't very funny, I don't think Thomas meant much of anything by it, but I could tell that Ruth was taken aback by his nonchalance, and it left her a little upset and thinking long and hard about what he had said. The reason I suspect this is because she asked me about leaving shortly thereafter.

On the way back to Beacon Hill, she asked me about Thomas. She wondered if his comment meant that he didn't like her. "He liked you just fine, Ruth. What makes you think he didn't?"

"I thought he was mad; that he resented me for having more money than he has."

"Ruth, he wasn't mad, and I really don't think he resents anyone who has more than he does. It's just that he sees the world from a very different perspective than you do. The people that I grew up with in Roxbury don't like crime any more than you like it. They probably consider a lot of it just as senseless as you do, but the difference, Ruth, is that they understand it."

"They know the desperation that drives people to do the things that they do, and so, they view it with a kind of detachment and dispassion that's probably really hard for you accept. What happened to Jamal just happens, and in this case, it just happened to someone we knew really well -- someone we liked a lot. If you live in Roxbury, it's more likely to happen to you than if you live most other places, but it's not that we think it's the fault of the people that live in those other places."

I suspect that Ruth considered that night a pretty significant life lesson. She was beginning to understand people's differences in terms of perspective, and I believe that evening offered her an opportunity for growth -- for empathy, and I truly believe that because of it, she was more grateful and appreciative of what she'd been blessed with. Still, most of Ruth's changes weren't philosophical or attitudinal. They were far more superficial than that.

The most obvious way in which the transformation took place was in her sense of style and dress. Gone were the business suits and conservative couture that had defined her. In their place, Ruth's buxom body advertised her sexual appeal as featured by much more revealing clothing, at least when I was around. I still remembered that first sexual encounter that night in my office when she had worn that nearly transparent sundress, and it struck me that that was the beginning of Ruth's transformation.

I would find it hard to believe that I didn't have quite a bit to do with that -- with her capacity to see herself as someone other than a mourning widow whose future life had all but been decided for her, leaving her condemned to imminent loneliness and passionless tedium. Or, if she could be lucky enough to find love, should expect it to come from precisely the same dysfunctional mindset as Joseph's, that is to say, without reason, respect and, most importantly, sincerity.

That is what the people in Ruth's world expected of her, but instead, she had begun to understand that there were new horizons to explore, and the new discoveries began to impact virtually all aspects of her life -- style, demeanor, and interests. Still, of those interests, sex was what preoccupied her the most.

We spent nearly all of our nights together during those six weeks, most of the time at my condominium, but also two or three weekends together up in New Hampshire at my cabin on Granite Lake, as well as a handful of evenings at Ruth's home in Brookline.

We tried to avoid Brookline, because Ruth's neighbors were people she'd known for much of her life, and they had all had close relationships with her late husband. They all seemed to think that she would die a widow, and even if they didn't think that, they couldn't have conceived of her taking up with a black man who was younger than she was.

We tried to avoid weekends there. Since I didn't need to head in to work on the weekends, and thus didn't need to leave early in the morning for the commute into the city. We reasoned, however logically or illogically, that if her neighbors were likely to see me coming out of the house in the morning, they would probably do so on a Saturday or Sunday, while on Monday through Friday mornings, I was up and gone before most of them had been rousted from their slumber.

When I did stay with Ruth in Brookline, she usually picked me up at work the night before and drove me to her home, and then in the morning, she would give me a ride to the Brookline Village station so I could catch the Green Line to Park Street station downtown. From there, I only had a few more blocks to trek to get to my office. I did it so early in the morning that none of her neighbors ever noticed.

But for some reason, on the Friday night in mid-July, the night before we went to pick up Tommy from Camp Bournedale, we must have settled on a different plan, and I slept at Ruth's home in Brookline. Since I didn't need to take the subway into work on Saturday, on that particular night, I drove my Corvette and parked it right out front of Ruth's Maple Street home.

I don't remember exactly why I drove my car or why we stayed at Ruth's. I do remember a discussion about the trip to the Cape actually being a little shorter from Brookline than it was from Boston, and Ruth wanted me to be with her when she went to pick up Tommy. But I also think she thought it would be kind of a treat for Tommy to ride in the back of a convertible, so I think that's why I drove my car. Whatever the reason, it was a mistake.

We were just coming out Ruth's front door about 10:00 that Saturday morning before heading out to Plymouth when we ran into Jim and Kathy O'Riordan, Ruth's neighbors who lived on Irving Street right around the corner. Jim O'Riordan had been one of the people that had supplied Ruth with advice and assistance in running the shoe stores after her husband's death. The impromptu encounter couldn't possibly have been more awkward or troubling.

As we were walking out the porch and down the steps toward her front gate in front of which my car was parked, we spotted Jim and Kathy standing next to it, staring with rapt attention at the Corvette. It was candy apple red and couldn't have been more conspicuous on a Brookline street, unless perhaps it was adorned with a colorful hippie design, like the bus on The Partridge Family.

Ironically, what Ruth was wearing that very morning looked almost exactly like the bus on The Partridge Family. It was a long and flowing summer dress, of thin, gossamer fabric that sported a pattern of geometric shapes in blue, yellow, red, and white, each outlined in black. It also featured a deep "V" neckline that exposed a startling amount of cleavage. It was one of my favorite things that Ruth wore that summer, but she had never, to the best of my recollection, worn it when we were in Brookline. I don't know why she chose to do so on that particular day, especially considering that we were going to pick up Tommy.

"Oh, hello, Ruth," Kathy said with a confused look on her face and obvious shocked dismay at specter of Ruth's dress. I could see her looking Ruth up and down before continuing, "Did you just get a new sports car? I've never seen this before. It's a little racy for your tastes, don't you think?"

I was at Ruth's side, and thankfully we weren't holding hands or making physical contact, which, of course would have been stupid, but would, quite frankly, have been our customary practice that summer.

"Oh, hi, Kathy, Jim," Ruth said smiling cordially as we approached the handsome couple, both of whom must have been right around 50 years old. Jim wore a polo shirt and deck slacks, and Kathy sported a tennis skirt, and matching blouse. It is a bizarre and irrelevant observation on my part, but I thought that, at that very moment, they looked like they were headed to the country club. Maybe they were.

"No, no, this is Marcus' car," she explained. "Oh, I'm sorry. I should introduce you. Jim and Kathy O'Riordan meet Marcus Murray, my attorney. I don't know if you know this, but Marcus helped me with the sale of Joseph's shoe stores. He's an excellent lawyer. I don't know what I would have done without him. Marcus," she said, addressing me, "Jim and Kathy live right around the corner. We've been neighbors for years."

"Nice to meet you", I said. I reached out to try to shake hands with Jim first, though he entirely eschewed the greeting, so I turned to Kathy instead. She looked as if she were about to touch a turd, though she did allow just the very tips of her pale fingers to graze the top of my hand.

"You're an attorney?" Jim asked with unadulterated suspicion that cloaked his utter contempt.

"Yes, mostly real estate and property law."

"What are you doing way out here?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you certainly don't have a lot of cases here in Brookline. I'm just wondering why you're here. Today, I mean."

The look that crossed Ruth's face was one that I had seen before. I feared that she was about to explode just like she nearly had in the antique shop in Lenox six weeks earlier. But there was a distinction between those two incidents, and the difference was not lost on Ruth.

She knew these people -- they were "her" people, and I could tell that she felt enough concern for their opinions that she didn't want to cause a scene. Still, she also knew that she had to answer for me, since Jim's question was so beyond the pale for its sheer rudeness that there was no way that I could have responded.

"Marcus is a friend, Jim. I asked him to come with me today. We're on our way to pick up Tommy from summer camp. It's a bit of drive out to Plymouth, so I thought it might be nice to have some company. Besides, Tommy adores Marcus -- it'll be a nice surprise for him, and I thought it might also be fun for him to ride in Marcus' convertible."

"Adores him, really?" Kathy asked rhetorically.

The tension was palpable, and there was absolutely nothing that I could do or say to lessen the awkwardness. Ruth, too, was tongue-tied, at least momentarily. She was blushing uncontrollably, and besides embarrassment, I could tell that she was angry, though she recovered her dignity more quickly than I would have thought possible.

"Well, it was nice to see the two of you, but we had better get on the road. We need to pick up Tommy before noon. I hope that you both have a nice day!"

"You, too, Ruth," Kathy responded. Apparently, it was irrelevant whether or not I had a nice day. Neither Jim nor Kathy looked at me, so I turned and opened the passenger door for Ruth and then walked around to the driver's side and got in. The top was down, and as we drove off slowly, we both looked back at Jim and Kathy in the rearview and side mirrors respectively. They were both staring with tangible disapproval as we pulled away.

I was the first to speak. "Well, that was awkward."

"It was a lot worse than awkward. I can't believe those two. I've known them for nearly twenty years. They've never spoken to me so rudely, and the way they treated you was simply unforgiveable."

"I'm guessing that until today they've never seen you coming out of your house at 10:00 in the morning with a black man."

"Is that it, Marcus? Is that really it? Racism? Really?" She genuinely wanted to know; she wasn't being the least bit cynical. "I've never known either of them to be prejudiced. I've never heard either one of them say anything remotely bigoted in all the time I've known them."

"What else do you think it could have been?"

"No, you're right. That was it, all right. That had to have been it. The irony to the whole thing is that it was Jim who suggested I hire an attorney to help sell the stores, and he was the one who told me to find an Irish lawyer. I guess he thinks I picked the wrong one. How can people that you think you know well be so different from what you thought they were?"

"Most people don't show their true colors until someone who is different invades their turf. I suspect that if they would have met me downtown, instead of here in Brookline, they would have acted differently. Maybe it was the time of day that set them off."

"What are you saying, Marcus? Do you think that they know?" Ruth asked naïvely.

"How could they not, Ruth? How could they not?"

Ruth didn't say anything to that, and I could tell that she was thinking about what I had said. I suspected that for her it was a revealing insight, but the encounter hadn't surprised me in the least. I had met plenty of Jim and Kathy O'Riordans in my lifetime, and I think that I knew how their minds worked. Ruth's behavior and attitude had offended them -- in a lot of ways.

For one thing, she had ceased to be a widow -- how could a widow have worn that dress? And then there was the mourning and the proper way to observe it, though whether or not she had waited long enough to find someone to replace Joseph was not really the point. It was who she had chosen to replace him. And beyond that, consider what that replacement was about to do to poor Tommy. I suspect that really offended them. What self-respecting mother could possibly expect a young boy to endure the humiliation of knowing that his mother was fucking a black man, and everybody in the neighborhood knew it? Or at least they were about to know it.

And then, there were the other indignities -- those that I was responsible for. Look what my presence had wrought on this perfectly respectable Brookline family. What kind of pretentious Negro thought he could waltz right into this bastion of privilege and insinuate himself into its inner workings? I had facetiously referred to my first meeting with Tommy and Danny as "a brazen incursion into Brookline society", and that was precisely the way in which the O'Riordans viewed it. And the fact that I was an attorney that drove a red Corvette, only made that incursion that much more shameless and me that much more arrogant.

Ruth was quiet for nearly the first half of the ride out to the Cape. I could tell that some or all of these thoughts and more had stealthily crept into her mind. But it was a beautiful, warm day, and she was about to see her son, who she missed terribly, and so, after a half an hour or so, she stopped letting the O'Riordans ruin it for her.

She was wearing that scarf about her head and the big pair of sunglasses, and I again was reminded of Jackie O, though Jackie would almost certainly not have worn the dress that now fluttered loosely about Ruth's shapely form.

When we arrived at Camp Bournedale, a darkly-tanned Tommy was waiting in the parking lot out front of the camp's front gate for us. I doubt that Ruth noticed this -- she had come to view him from too close a perspective -- but I got the sense that Tommy had grown a bit in the intervening six weeks. His face was fuller, and I guessed that he was an inch or so taller.

His bags were packed, and it was clear that he was more than ready to be done with camp life for another year. He was also obviously surprised to see me, though that surprise was overshadowed by the astonishment generated by my Corvette. When we got out of the car, he quickly ran into his mother's waiting arms, genuinely glad to see her, and when finally, she released him from her tender grasp, he came to me to shake my hand and greet me politely.

But then I saw his reaction when he got a better look at Ruth's dress. He didn't say anything, but it was clear that he understood that something about her was very, very different, and it seemed to puzzle him that it was his mother who had changed. It should have been him.

After we loaded Tommy's gear in the trunk of my Corvette, we went inside, and signed Tommy out, speaking briefly to one of the camp counselors, who was effusive in his praise of Tommy and his stellar manners and overall cooperative demeanor. He also said Tommy was a lot fun, a kid that most everyone liked.