But now she was thirty-six; if Ruth wanted a child, there was not a lot of time left. And when she’d merely mentioned Allan Albright to her father, Ted Cole had said: “What is he? Twelve, fifteen years older than you are, isn’t he?” (Because her father knew everything about everyone in publishing. Ted may have stopped writing, but he kept up with the business of writing.)
“Allan is eighteen years older than I am, Daddy,” Ruth had acknowledged. “But he’s like you. He’s very healthy.”
“I don’t care how healthy he is,” Ted had said. “If he’s eighteen years older than you are, he’s going to die on you, Ruthie. And what if he leaves you with a young child to raise? All by yourself . . .”
The specter of raising a young child by herself had haunted her. She knew how lucky both she and her father had been; Conchita Gomez had virtually raised Ruth. But Eduardo and Conchita were her father’s age, the difference being that they looked it. If Ruth didn’t have a baby sometime soon, Conchita would be too old to help her raise it. And how could Conchita help Ruth raise a baby, anyway? The Gomezes still worked for her father.
As usual, when it came to the subject of marriage and children, Ruth had put the cart before the horse; she was jumping ahead to the question of having a child before she’d answered the question of whom, or whether, to marry. And Ruth had no one she could talk to about this, except Allan. Her best friend didn’t want a child—Hannah was Hannah—and her father was . . . well, her father. Now, even more than when she’d been a child, Ruth wanted to talk to her mother.
Damn her, anyway! Ruth thought. Ruth had long ago resolved that she would not go looking for her mother. Marion was the one who’d left. Either Marion would come back or she wouldn’t.
And what sort of man had no male friends? Ruth reflected. She’d once put the accusation to her father directly.
“I have male friends!” her father had protested.
“Name two, name just one !” Ruth had challenged him.
To her surprise, he’d named four. They were unfamiliar names to her. He’d boldly listed his current squash opponents; their names changed every few years because Ted’s opponents invariably grew too old to keep up with him. His present opponents were Eddie’s age or younger. Ruth had met the youngest of them.
Her father had the swimming pool he’d always wanted, and the outdoor shower—much as he’d described his image of them to Eduardo and Eddie in the summer of ’58, on the morning after Marion had left. There were two showers in a single wooden stall, side by side—“locker room–style,” Ted called it.
Ruth had grown up watching naked men, and her naked father, running out of the outdoor shower and jumping into the pool. As sexually inexperienced as she was, Ruth had seen a lot of penises. It was perhaps this image, of unknown men showering and swimming naked with her father, that had caused Ruth to question Hannah’s assumption that bigger was necessarily better .
It had been a year ago last summer when she’d “met” her father’s youngest squash opponent of the moment, a lawyer in his late thirties—Scott Somebody. She’d come out on the deck of the swimming pool to dry her beach towel and her swimming suit on the line, and there were her father and his young opponent in their aprés-squash or aprés-shower nakedness.
“Ruthie, this is Scott. My daughter, Ruth . . .” Ted had started to say, but Scott saw her and dove into the pool. “He’s a lawyer,” her father had added, while Scott was still underwater. Then Scott Somebody had surfaced in the deep end, where he began to tread water. He was a strawberry blond and built like her father. He had a medium-size schlong, she thought.
“Nice to meet you, Ruth,” the young lawyer had said. He had short, curly hair and freckles.
“Nice to meet you, Scott,” Ruth had replied, going back inside the house.
Her father, still standing naked on the deck, had remarked to Scott: “I can’t decide whether to go in or not. Is it cold? It was quite cold yesterday.”
“It’s pretty cold,” Ruth had heard Scott say. “But it’s okay, once you’re in.”
And these ever-changing squash opponents were what passed for Ted’s only male friends! Nor were her father’s opponents very good squash players; her father didn’t like to lose. His most frequent opponents were good athletes who were relatively new to the game. In the winter months, Ted found a lot of tennis players who wanted the exercise; they had a feeling for racquet sports, but squash strokes are not tennis strokes—squash is a game you play with your wrist. In the summer, when the tennis players would return to their tennis, they would discover that their game had deteriorated—you can’t play tennis with your wrist. Then Ted might have a convert to squash on his hands.
Her father chose his squash opponents as selfishly, and with as great a degree of calculation, as he chose his lovers. Maybe they were his only friends. Was her father invited to their homes for dinner? Did he hit on their wives? Did her father have any rules? Ruth wanted to know.
She was standing on the south side of Forty-first Street, between Lexington and Third, waiting for the jitney that would take her to the Hamptons. Once she arrived in Bridgehampton, she would call her father to pick her up.
Ruth had already tried to call him, but her father was out, or not answering the phone, and he’d left his answering machine off. Ruth had a lot of luggage—all the clothes she would need in Europe. She was thinking that she should have called Eduardo or Conchita Gomez. If they weren’t doing something for her father, or actually working at her father’s house, the Gomezes were always home. Thus her mind was beset with the trivia of last-minute travel when her father’s youngest squash opponent approached her on the sidewalk of Fortyfirst Street.
“Going home?” Scott Somebody asked her. “You’re Ruth Cole, aren’t you?”
Ruth was used to being recognized. At first she mistook him for one of her readers. Then she noted his boyish freckles and his short, curly hair; she’d not known many strawberry blonds. Besides, he was carrying nothing but a slim briefcase and a gym bag; two squash racquets protruded from the half-open zipper of the bag.
“Oh, it’s the swimmer, ” Ruth said. It was strangely satisfying to see him blush.
It was a warm, sunny Indian Summer day. Scott Somebody had removed his suit jacket and looped it through the shoulder strap of his gym bag; his tie was loosened, and the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up above his elbows. Ruth was aware of the greater size and muscularity of his left forearm, even as he held his right hand out to her.
“It’s Scott, Scott Saunders,” he reminded her, shaking her hand.
“You’re left-handed, aren’t you?” Ruth asked him. Her father was a lefty. Ruth didn’t like to play left-handers. Her best serve was to the left-hand court; a lefty could return that serve with his forehand.
“Got your racquet with you?” Scott Saunders asked her, after admitting he was left-handed. He’d noticed all her luggage.
“I’ve got three racquets with me,” Ruth replied. “They’re packed.?