We stared at the pavement, both of us oddly shy about what was happening. We knew lots of couples who split up and got back together, rinse and repeat, but that had never been us. We did not know how the other would act, would be, in this scenario. I was standing at the curb with a perfect stranger.
A man walking by spit something green and gelatinous onto the pavement. In the street, a horn blasted, then another, like wolves howling to their pack members, communicating the location of a predator.
“This is where you want to spend the next three years of your life?” Brian gestured incredulously.
It felt like all of Third Avenue was impatiently cheering me on. What had taken me so long to get here? And now that I had, could I hurry the fuck up?
I could not tell him yes fast enough.
RUTH
Issaquah
Summer 1974
I prepared for the dinner party the way I had my driver’s exam, studying the July issue of Good Housekeeping like it was the Washington DMV handbook, and then I got behind the wheel and practiced with about eighteen whole chickens until I nailed the temperature and roasting time. I’d serve the protein alongside buttered purple carrots and small potatoes, a fresh green salad sprinkled with California walnuts. If you couldn’t find them from California, the magazine said, imported would do fine. But I wasn’t one to cut corners.
Nature’s Mart was a clay-red structure, about half the size of the grocery store in Clyde Hill, that carried all manner of mysterious “health food” ingredients. They hadn’t yet removed the Easter Bunny from the roof or the clever sale sign for eggs. Before my nephew, Allen, became so cruel, we used to dye eggs in the bathtub and hide them around the house for the younger kids in the neighborhood. I wondered if he was disappointed that I wasn’t around for Easter this year, or if he even remembered that he used to like me. I grabbed a basket from the stand and asked the cashier which aisle for the nuts. He had a long gray beard and a turban around his head. “Aisle three, dear,” he said, and I don’t know why, but something about the way he called me “dear” made me want to cry.
Who knew there were so many nuts! Of course I knew about cashews and peanuts, but not Brazil and pumpkin. I found three varieties of walnuts on the bottom shelf, and I crouched down to read the labels. I was trying to determine which walnuts were from California and which were imported when someone spoke my name. I looked up and saw my sister-in-law. She was bouncing the new baby girl on her hip, the one for whom she made her own baby food, and pushing a cart filled with organic vegetables and fruits. For all the healthy eating she’d been doing, she didn’t look too well. Rebecca had dark rings under her eyes and frizzy, grown-out roots. When I stood, she took me in from head to toe, my leather shoes that matched my leather purse, the freshwater pearls in my ears, and she shifted the baby to the other hip, positioning her in such a way that she covered a stain on her shapeless old shirt.
“Ruth,” she said with a thin smile. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
* * *
Tina put the herbs in the refrigerator and said ominously, “So now we’re thirteen.”
I took the herbs out of the refrigerator and arranged them in a cup of cold water like the cashier recommended I do as soon as I got home. “You should have seen her face when I mentioned the party. It was like…” I saw that strand of hair, the one that was always stuck to her lips. “Unadulterated longing.”
Tina went around me to the bin where she stored her mail. She shuffled through a few things, then extended an envelope my way. “This came for you,” she said.
I saw my mother’s name and address in the upper-left-hand corner. I ripped it open and inhaled sharply. It was the invitation to my father’s garden-naming ceremony. At the bottom, there was a handwritten note: Your dad would want you there.
Tina hoisted herself onto the countertop and bit into an apple, waiting for me to explain why I was struggling to breathe.
“It’s the thing I told you about,” I said, showing her. “The garden ceremony for my dad.”
“Don’t go,” Tina said simply. She set the invitation on the countertop without even reading it.
Something flared in me at her dismissiveness. “You didn’t even look at it.”
“Why did you look at it? It’s just going to make you want to go.”
“I do want to go.”
“Why?”
“Because someone should be there who really loved him.”
“There are other ways to honor your father,” Tina said.