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.
