ring ring ring

I found this today, going through old papers. I wrote it when I was 23 & living in San Diego.  Strip away the overstatement & the whole je ne sais quois in italics thing and you'll find the same skeleton, the same heart, beneath. ------ring ring ring

Pick up the phone and answer me at last. Today I will step out of your past

- the Notwist

On a Wednesday morning that is clear and warm with southern light, Ben calls. Her ringing phone is the definition of "out-of-the blue" and Ruby almost answers. Partly out of shock that somehow slips into habit in the blink of an eye. And certainly in part because of the kamikaze curiosity that drives too many of her decisions. And then of course there is the longing to find what she has lost--to recoup some of her bad investments by snatching his rich, golden voice from the wire and spinning it into straw to stuff her deflated heart.

Mostly, though, she wants answers. Answers and information and details. Status reports and confessions. If Ruby has one failing that glares especially bright on her shining list of shortcomings it is this: she looks for sense in a nonsensical world. If I only had all the data, she tells herself in the middle of the night, I would draw the right conclusion. The dots would connect for me and then I could know.

She doesn't pick up the phone, though. Instead, she feeds the cat, listens to his garbled message and then erases his number from her phone even though she knows that it is as good carved into the back of her hand. Bea has left a key to the gated pool, so she puts on her swimming suit, the one with all the green and pink and orange circles, and goes to swim laps with the fading women who live in the complex.

She sticks her toe in the water and then stands at the edge of shallow end for a moment, still. When she finally steps off the edge, the water open ups and receives her without the fuss of a splash. Ruby's strokes are precise, quick, and concentrated. Her breathing is automated and rhythmic. When the old women stop in their lanes to catch their breath, they understand that that Ruby is swimming to forget. They know what this means and begin to plan their overtures. Poor girl.

Ruby swims every morning. She grows stronger and she shakes his message off like water out of her ears. She does not miss Ben exactly and thinks of him only in flashes. She is pleased with her progress and when her best friend hears the old lightness return to Ruby's voice she understands what it means without being told. Ruby's new friends, still in that tentative stage where judgment is whispered, begin to congratulate themselves for continuing to invite her to parties. We were right about her. She is a great girl. She just had to loosen up, feel comfortable. Men in bars begin to ask if they can buy her drinks.

Ben calls again on a Sunday night nearly a month later. This is her favorite time of the week, driving under tall trees along the 163 into the heart of the city that she has began to love. With the windows down and music and light from street lamps and the moon swirling around the car, it is easy to ignore the ring and keep singing. I have all but forgotten him, she smiles. She accelerates just in case, though.

That night when the cat howls by the open window at the possum in the bushes below, Ruby finally tells the truth to the ceiling: I have not forgotten anything. How can you forget something that is organic, that wends it's way through your bloodstream, snakes through your gray matter, and settles with marrow in your bones and the ache in your joints. This is what love does, Ruby is sure of it. And she loved him very long and well. She is not in love with him. Ruby is enough of a grammatical purist to understand what this preposition implies; to be in you must be surrounded by. To be surrounded by love supplied all by yourself--this is not possible. No one can do it alone. Still: Ruby loves Ben. She says his name out loud and feels the hard edges of this truth against her skin. Time may heal all wounds, but if it weakened all love, would there be anything left to anyone? she wonders.

Still: she doesn't call him back. At Christmas when she is back at home, sitting in the bleachers of her brother's hockey game and during the New Year's party with the medical student who kisses her and on a sad Friday night in February when she would give her right arm for a diversion, she does not answer his calls. She worries that the weight and significance of this is lost on him. For most people, returning calls requires an expenditure of effort. For Ruby, who hates loose ends and cruel, careless people, it takes monumental strength not to. Symmetry and redemption--these are things she craves. If he knew her, if he'd ever known her, he would know that her silence is the loudest statement of all.


Finally, in April she looks down at her ringing phone and wonders why not answer it? Her curiosity is still compelling but holds less potential for damage. She has come up with her own theories and found them sound and reasonable; they have become the lessons learned, the scientific laws to guide her through the chaos of love. Her life is full. His messages have become more coherent and measured as her own pain has become less pronounced. She still swims in the morning. She meets friends for lunch and the name Ben never crosses her lips. She thinks she understands all that was and then suddenly wasn't between them so what's the harm? She is resolved. Next time, she will answer, she promises herself and then tries to imagine the conversation in her head. Nothing comes. Even in the confines of her own brain she can't think of what to say. Is it possible that Ruby has forgotten how to talk to Ben, real or imaginary? She asks herself if this is it, the last dot on the page left to connect, as she touches the far wall and flips onto her back, her feet finding the cement and pushing her head through the reflection of the palms lying on the pool's surface. Is there a word that means to forget what you never knew in the first place?

February 2006