Bright Young Women(72)
Tina smiled at me in the mirror. “I’ll have you know this is a very satisfying moment for me. I live to prove people wrong.”
I raised my eyebrows agreeably. “I know exactly what you mean.” We shared a laugh. I started for the door as I dragged my brush through my wet hair. “I don’t want to keep you any longer.”
“You’re sure?”
“The girls are supposed to arrive around five. I’ll survive the next fifteen minutes on my own.”
Tina nodded. All right then. I walked her down the stairs and to the front door.
“Call me if you need anything,” Tina said.
“I’ll let you know when I hear from Carl,” I told her.
Tina and I nodded at each other in this professional way that didn’t suit the new bounds of our relationship. Which was what, exactly? Not friendship. What we had was sturdier than that, able to sustain a sort of acrimony that friendship could not.
It was more like sisterhood, I realized, than anything I’d experienced under this roof. Because I hadn’t chosen Tina, hadn’t vetted her like I had members of this chapter, and yet we were fated to go through life together connected by spilled blood. I stepped forward and hugged her. Tina’s hands dangled lifelessly at her sides at first. Later she would tell me she often left places in a rush, trying to spare other women that awkward beat when they wondered if they could hug her without the gesture being misinterpreted. Eventually, I felt her arms hook around me, loosely, as though giving me the option to break free at any time.
* * *
After Tina left, I went into the kitchen to cut the cake and go through the mail. I didn’t even want to think about how many thank-you cards I had to write to all the people who had reached out and offered their thoughts and prayers.
There was a kind note from an alumna in Adrian, Michigan, who told me about the successful pecan sale she had hosted, netting several thousand dollars that she’d donated to her local battered women’s shelter under our chapter’s name. There was a letter from a man in New Hampshire who had read about what happened to us and, citing a statistical increase in violent crimes against women, suggested we speak to our local precinct about hosting a handgun training session for women. If they didn’t have the manpower, he was happy to provide his services. He had an army friend in Pensacola he’d been meaning to visit. Even to that derangement I would eventually reply, thanking him for the generous offer.
I came to the next piece of mail, showing a return address in Fort Lauderdale, directed to the care of Mrs. Pamela Armstrong. How odd, I thought. Armstrong was Brian’s last name. It was like a window into the impending future, and in a flash I saw the next ten years of my life with Brian, in a Florida kitchen, preparing an after-school snack for the kids who were coming through the door and calling out to me at that very moment.
“Hello?” came a tentative voice from the back of the house. My sisters had arrived.
“In the kitchen!” I hollered, slipping a butter knife under the gold-embossed seal and removing the typed letter on official government letterhead. “Dear Mrs. Armstrong,” it read. “We regret to inform you—”
“Smells good in here!”
“It’s freezing. Let’s get the heat on!”
“Look at this!” Whoever said that had discovered the snuggery of sleeping bags in the rec room.
The heat kicked on with a clang, and a Pavlovian sweat beaded my upper lip. I was still flushed from my hot shower, and the document in my hands had taken on the degree of tinder. The victims’ assistance committee had reviewed our claim and found us “ineligible for financial restitution due to a sexual relationship exclusion in the eligibility requirements, foreclosing recovery for claimants found to contribute to their own injuries.” They sent along their deepest sympathies for our terrible ordeal, but it was their elected duty to protect the program. The rules were the rules.
RUTH
Issaquah
Winter 1974
It’s unbelievable,” Tina was still saying once we’d landed back in Seattle and gotten into her Cadillac. “How could she just disappear into thin air like that?” I had filled her in on my conversation with Gail in the elevator.
“It’s what happened to the University of Washington student earlier this year,” I recalled. “The one who read the ski reports. She went into her room, and in the morning she wasn’t in her bed, and no one has seen her since.”
Tina and I drove along in mournful contemplation, thinking about the impossibility and the possibility of something like that happening to us.
“You know,” Tina said bashfully as she exited the highway and braked for the stop sign at the bottom of the off-ramp, “you’re always welcome to come stay with me for a while. I would be grateful to you, really. Being in that big house all alone? I’m feeling spooked.” She saw my mouth tighten and insisted, “You’d be doing me a huge favor, Ruth. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I just figured I’d put it out there.”
She was doing that rich-person thing again, begging me to take pity on her by accepting all her charities. The clothes, the trip, a six-bedroom mansion in which to crash. Yet there I was, wearing her clothes, having returned from her trip. It was a very effective ploy.
“Thank you,” I told her, and I did mean it, “but my mom really needs my help right now.”