Ruth, please stop. You couldn’t have picked a worse time to startraking up all that old-
But Ruth would not be stopped. The Ruth who had once been Jessie’s roommate had always been determined to have her say every single word of it-and the Ruth who was now Jessie’s headmate apparently hadn’t changed a bit.
The next thing I knew, you were living off-campus with three littleSorority Susies-princesses in A -line jumpers and Ship “n” Shore blouses,each undoubtedly owning a set of those underpants with the days of theweek sewn on them. I think you made a conscious decision to go intotraining for the Olympic Dusting and Floor- Waxing Team right aroundthen. You unhappened that night at the Neuworth Parsonage, you unhappened the tears and the hurt and the anger, you unhappened me. Oh, westill saw each other once in awhile-split the occasional pizza and pitcherof Molson’s down at Pat’s-hut our friendship was really over, wasn’tit? When it came down to a choice between me and what happened to youin July of 1963, you chose the eclipse.
The glass of water was trembling harder.
“Why now, Ruth?” she asked, unaware that she was actually mouthing the words in the darkening bedroom. Why now, that’swhat I want to know-given that in this incarnation you’re really apart of me, why now? Why at the exact time when I can least affordbeing upset and distracted?
The most obvious answer to that question was also the most unappetizing: because there was an enemy inside, a sad, bad bitch who liked her just the way she was-handcuffed, aching, thirsty, scared, and miserable-just fine. Who didn’t want to see that condition alleviated in the slightest. Who would stoop to any dirty trick to see that it wasn’t.
The total solar eclipse lasted just over a minute that day, Jessie…except in your mind. In there, it’s still going on, isn’t it?
She closed her eyes and focused all her thought and will on steadying the glass in her hand. Now she spoke mentally to Ruth’s voice without self-consciousness, as if she really were speaking to another person instead of to a part of her brain that had suddenly decided this was the right time to do a little work on herself, as Nora Callighan would have put it.
Let me alone, Ruth. If you still want to discuss these things after I’ve taken a stab at getting a drink, okay. But for now, will you please just-
“-shut the fuck up,” she finished in a low whisper.
Yes, Ruth replied at once. I know there’s something or someoneinside you, trying to throw dirt in the works, and I know it sometimesuses my voice-it’s a great ventriloquist, no doubt about that-but it’snot me. I loved you then, and I love you now. That was why I kepttrying to stay in touch as long as I did…because I loved you. And,I suppose, because us high-riding bitches have to stick together.
Jessie smiled a little, or tried to, around the makeshift straw.
Now go for it, Jessie, and go hard.
Jessie waited for a moment, but there was nothing else. Ruth was gone, at least for the time being. She opened her eyes again, then slowly bent her head forward, the rolled-up card jutting out of her mouth like FDR’s cigarette holder.
Please God, I’m begging you…let this work.
Her makeshift straw slid into the water. Jessie closed her eyes and sucked. For a moment there was nothing, and clear despair rose up in her mind. Then water filled her mouth, cool and sweet and there, surprising her into a kind of ecstasy. She would have sobbed with gratitude if her mouth hadn’t been so strenuously puckered around the end of the rolled-up subscription card; as it was, she could make only a foggy hooting sound through her nose.
She swallowed the water, feeling it coating her throat like liquid satin, and then began to suck again. She did this as ardently and as mindlessly as a hungry calf working at its mother’s teat. Her straw was a long way from perfect, delivering only sips and slurps and rills instead of a steady stream, and most of what she was sucking into the tube was spilling out again from the imperfect seats and crooked folds. On some level she knew this, could hear water pattering to the coverlet like raindrops, but her grateful mind still fervently believed that her straw was one of the greatest inventions ever created by the mind of woman, and that this moment, this drink from her dead husband’s water-glass, was the apogee of her life.
Don’t drink it all, Jess-save some for later.
She didn’t know which of her phantom companions had spoken this time, and it didn’t matter. It was great advice, but so was telling an eighteen-year-old boy half-mad with six months of heavy petting that it didn’t matter if the girl was finally willing; if he didn’t have a rubber, he should wait. Sometimes, she was discovering, it was impossible to take the mind’s advice, no matter how good it was. Sometimes the body simply rose up and slapped all that good advice aside. She was discovering something else, as well-giving in to those simple physical needs could be an inexpressible relief.
Jessie went on sucking through the rolled-up card, tilting the glass to keep the surface of the water brimming over the far end of the soggy, misshapen purple thing, aware in some part of her mind that the card was leaking worse than ever and she was insane not to stop and wait for it to dry out again, but going on anyway.
What finally stopped her was the realization that she was sucking nothing but air, and had been for several seconds. There was water left in Gerald’s glass, but the tip of her makeshift straw could no longer quite touch it. The coverlet beneath the rolled-up blow-in card was dark with moisture.
I could get what’s left, though. I could, IfI could turn my hand alittle farther in that unnatural backward direction when I needed to gethold of the miserable glass inthe first place, I think I can stick my necka little farther forward and get those last few sips of water. Think I can? I know I can.