“Why bother?” Ruth asked. “You can still play squash with him— when he’s able to run around again. He’s not very good but you can get a halfway decent workout with him—he’s not bad exercise.”
“He virtually raped you! He hit you!” her father shouted.
“But nothing’s changed,” Ruth insisted. “Hannah’s still my best friend. You’re still my father.
”
“Okay, okay—I get it,” her father told her. He tried to wipe the tears off his face with the sleeve of his old flannel shirt. Ruth loved this particular shirt because her father had worn it when she was a little girl. Still, she was tempted to tell him to keep both his hands on the wheel.
Instead she reminded him of what airline she was taking, and the terminal he should be looking for. “You can see, can’t you?” she asked. “It’s Delta.”
“I can see, I can see. I know it’s Delta,” he told her. “And I get your point—I get it, I get it.”
“I don’t think you’ll ever get it,” Ruth said. “Don’t look at me—we’re not stopped yet!” she had to tell him.
“Ruthie, Ruthie. I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .”
“Do you see where it says ‘Departures’?” she asked him.
“Yes, I see it,” he said. It was the way he’d said, “Good job, Ruthie,” after she’d beaten him in his goddamn barn.
When her father finally stopped the car, Ruth said, “Good driving, Daddy.” If she’d known then that it would be their last conversation, she might have tried to patch things up with him. But she could see that, for once, she’d truly defeated him. Her father was too badly beaten to be uplifted by a simple turn in their conversation. And besides, the pain in that unfamiliar place inside her was still bothering her.
In retrospect, it would have to suffice that Ruth remembered to kiss her father good-bye.
In the Delta Crown Room, before she boarded the plane, Ruth called Allan. He sounded worried on the phone, or as if he were being less than candid with her. It gave her a pang to imagine what he might think of her if he ever knew about Scott Saunders. (Allan would never know about Scott.)
Hannah had got Allan’s message; she’d returned his call, but he’d been brief with her. He’d told Hannah that there was nothing wrong, that he’d spoken to Ruth and that Ruth was “fine.” Hannah had suggested that they meet for lunch, or for a drink—“just to talk about Ruth”—but Allan had told Hannah that he was looking forward to meeting her, with Ruth, when Ruth was back from Europe.
“I never talk about Ruth,” he’d told her.
It was the closest Ruth had come to telling Allan that she loved him, but she could still hear something worried in his voice and it troubled her; as her editor, he’d withheld nothing.
“What’s wrong, Allan?” Ruth asked.
“Well . . .” he began, sounding like her father, “nothing, really. It can wait.”
“Tell me,” Ruth said.
“There was something in your fan mail,” Allan told her. “Normally no one reads it—we just forward it to Vermont. But this was a letter addressed to me—to your editor, that is. And so I read it. It’s really a letter to you.”
“Is it hate mail?” Ruth asked. “I get my share of it. Is that all it is?”
“I suppose that’s all it is,” Allan said. “But it’s upsetting. I think you ought to see it.”
“I will see it—when I get back,” Ruth told him.
“Maybe I could fax it to your hotel,” Allan suggested.
“Is it threatening? Is it a stalker?” she asked. The word “stalker” always gave her a chill.
“No, it’s a widow—an angry widow,” Allan told her.
“Oh, that, ” Ruth said. She’d expected that . When she wrote about abortion, not having had an abortion, she got angry letters from people who had had abortions; when she wrote about childbirth, not having had a child—or when she wrote about divorce, not having been divorced ( or married) . . . well, there were always those letters. People denying that imagination was real, or insisting that imagination wasn’t as real as personal experience; it was the same old thing. “For God’s sake, Allan,” Ruth said, “you’re not worried about another reader telling me to write about what I know, are you?”
“This one is a little different,” Allan replied.
“All right—fax it to me,” she told him.