By the time Janet arrived that morning, Ruth had her wig and her fake boobs in place. Cheyenne they called the wig, Pamela and Anderson, the boobs. The wig fell in a way her natural hair never had and the breasts were as perky as hers had been at twenty-five. She often kept her bra on during sex, for Ronny and for herself. It was just too much otherwise, the battered, stark flatland of her chest, the scars.
“You won’t believe who I saw at the gym this morning,” Janet began, pushing her sunglasses up into her newly-highlighted hair and reaching into the fridge for a can of Diet Coke. Through pilates and a raw foods diet, Janet had dropped four sizes and bought a new wardrobe in the past year. That her makeover coincided with Ruth’s puffy-faced, bald-headed, flat-chested retreat from femininity was hard to miss. Maybe it was only fair, Ruth thought sometimes. She had always been the pretty one, the lucky one. She’d also been fertile and had chosen a faithful first husband. There had been reason for Janet to envy her. You have no idea what it’s like to know that you are completely alone. Even if something were to happen with you and Ronny, you’d still have Peter, Janet had said years earlier, when they’d gotten drunk on gin and tonics the night her divorce went through.
“Ginny Murray.” Janet answered her own question. “She got gastric bypass last year. Her belly flap is about down to her knees. I was next to her in the locker room and it took no less than five minutes to tuck that thing into her panties.” Ginny had gone out with Ronny during the six months that he and Ruth had broken up during senior year of high school. Janet still delighted in any excuse to bring her up.
She and Ruth had been best friends since the age of seven. Janet had been there the day Ruth met Ronny, on their first day of junior high in 1966. Ruth had been maid-of-honor at both of Janet’s weddings. Janet and Ronny alternated chemo shifts, so that Ruth never went alone. And the one time that Ronny had truly fallen apart, when Ruth was in the ICU with an infection almost too quick for Dr. Patel to contain, it had been Janet who pulled Ronny through. She’d found him about to peel out of the hospital parking garage, whiskey on his breath, fear in his eyes. She’d talked him into her car and back to her house, where her second husband had brewed a pot of coffee and made up the guest room.
“Pack a bag at least,” Janet said when Ruth told her about Felix’s call. “We’ll go to brunch and see how you feel,” she said, reaching to pull down Ruth’s overnight bag from the top shelf in the hall closet.
When Janet had hit menopause, she had come to a tenuous peace with the fact that she would never have a child and something had changed, slowly but perceptibly. She remarried, choosing an unlikely man. Her new husband was an ex-hippie contractor who’d tripled his business during the building boom of the last decade. They bought a beach house and two Lab puppies who went to daycare when Janet had her weekly shift at a shelter for battered women. Her husband smoked pot and had coaxed Janet into joining him a few times. She had told Ruth it made their sex better, along with a dose of the big V. Ruth envied her sometimes.
“All I’m saying is keep your options open. I know he put you in a terrible position by not inviting Ronny. But you can go and that’s the beauty of it.” Janet adjusted her sunglasses in the rear view mirror and backed out of the gravel driveway. Ruth smiled as Buster charged the chain link fence and barked, slobber hanging from his gray jowls. An overnight bag, packed with her black cocktail dress, pj’s and a change of clothes was in the backseat, along with Janet’s gym bag and dry cleaning.
“What would I tell Ronny?” Ruth asked.
“He’ll be so busy with his deer carcasses, he’ll hardly know you’re gone.”
Ruth hadn’t been on a plane in a decade. They preferred to travel by car. She’d seen and done what she wanted to in life. She could say that now. Fifth row seats to see Johnny and June Cash at the Grand Ol’ Opry. Visiting the Vietnam Memorial with Ronny. Walking Foley Beach by moonlight on their 25th wedding anniversary. Staying at The Biltmore Estate, where they’d splurged on champagne and filet mignon from room service. It was a good life.
Janet ordered low-fat, low-carb everything at Atlanta Bread Company and Ruth sipped on a banana smoothie. They sat in matching faux leather armchairs. Sun streamed in through the large front windows, which allowed an unremarkable view of SouthPointe Mall’s parking lot. SUV’s and mini-vans circled the lot, screaming kids lagged behind their glaze-eyed parents, a skinny teenager in baggy jeans and a Carolina baseball cap stuck his hand in his girlfriend’s back pocket and pulled her close. Something easy to listen to poured through the speakers.
Janet was eager to talk about her sister, Becky, who was staying with them and no longer speaking to her husband. “Becky said that he said that the trainer makes him feel alive. Well, sure you feel alive when you’re having the sex of your life and you lose twenty pounds and a younger woman’s throwing herself at you. This one, she used to be a cheerleader at State and apparently she’s pretty acrobatic. I bet she’s gotten him into some kinky stuff. That’s one thing I’m trying to get through Becky’s head. She’s had a terrible time since Mom died. But you can’t stop having sex with your husband for a year and then be totally shocked when this happens.
“A whole year?” Ruth asked.
Janet nodded. “She finally told me she’s been suicidal from the depression. I had no idea. No one did, not even her doctor. Turns out she hasn’t been sleeping for months either. I told her they can get through this, but she’s not exactly in a conciliatory mood. Yesterday he showed up on the porch wanting to talk and she threw a shoe at him. It hit him in the forehead. I keep telling her, sweetie, it doesn’t have to be so black and white.”
“He took a vow,” Ruth said. “They both did.” She saw no need to dwell in the gray on this one. Even in her worst moments with Ronny this much was clear. Don’t cheat, don’t split up.
“Well, I’m taking her to the doctor tomorrow,” Janet kept talking and Ruth’s mind wandered, as it often did in conversations like this. She thought about how she and Janet used to walk from school to the Royal Ice Cream Parlor on Friday afternoons where they’d sip Cokes, smoke and wait for Ronny to finish his shift at his father’s gas station. That was back when the downtown tobacco warehouses still churned out millions of Lucky Strikes each year and a few years after the sit-ins at Royal. She’d met one of the students who’d gotten arrested, a quiet girl with horn-rimmed glasses and braids who lived a few blocks from her. They’d once shared an umbrella as they both walked home in a May thunderstorm from their respective schools. The girl had grown up to be a law professor at Carolina and Ruth sometimes saw her being interviewed on the news.
Back then, she had thought she and Janet and Ronny would go on and on like that forever. Over forty years had passed. In some ways, so little had changed. They’d had one long run together. She wasn’t going to get much more time. She knew that was true, although she didn’t have the heart to tell Ronny or Janet or Dr. Patel. Before, she had been fighting. But now she was dying.
A man walked by holding a tray and a newspaper and when he turned to sit down, Ruth realized she knew him from church. He was the one who’d given that testimonial, though she could not place his name. He was sitting alone, sipping coffee and spreading cream cheese on his bagel. She watched him and she thought of Peter. Every few seconds, she gave Janet an “umhmm.” Her friend was an endurance athlete when it came to talking. Listening to her often exhausted Ruth, but Janet’s monologues never struck her as less than a feat.
The man glanced away from his newspaper, picked up his phone and then set it down again. There was that cocked quality to his wrist and his high cheekbones cast a slightly delicate quality to his face. But there was also the gold cross on a thin chain around his neck, visible in the v neck of his fitted t-shirt, and the matching gold band on his ring finger. Watching him, she looked for signs of happiness.
His phone rang and when he picked it up, he smiled, his shoulders relaxing, his eyes bright. He laughed into the phone and shook his head. Relief spread through her chest. She imagined his wife’s bright voice on the other end of the phone, maybe telling him about her workout