Chapter 29
Ron woke up and saw that there were still two and half joints left in the ashtray. Maybe he was slipping. The dream left him troubled as it always did. He made coffee and kept seeing glimpses of the floor in his head.
His phone was ringing.
“Ronald, this is your mother.”
For a moment Ron was stunned. Had they found the body? Is that why she was calling? “Hi mom,” he said almost shakily.
“Why aren’t you working?”
“They gave us the half day off.”
“I just had an interesting phone call. It was Robin. It seems that she thinks that you are living here.”
A new fear gripped Ron. “What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t tell her anything. Just that you weren’t here.”
“That’s good,” sighed Ron.
“I really don’t want to see you mixed up with that girl again, Ronald. She isn’t any good for you.”
“I know Mom.”
“And I really don’t want to be involved in your lies.”
“I know Mom.”
“Your father was a liar and I thought that I had taught you better than that.”
“You did Mom.”
“Well it doesn’t really seem that I did. Anyway, she asked that you call her.”
“OK.”
“Are you going to call her?”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“Why? she said. “So that she can break your heart again?”
“No Mom,” he said with a slight tone of exasperation creeping into his voice.
“I always thought that you were so smart. Why do you have to be so stupid about this?”
Ron didn’t say anything.
She went on. “But I suppose you are going to do whatever you want to do. You always have. You won’t care how it hurts me or anyone else to see you the way that she makes you.” Ron felt his head hang and he began pacing as he listened to her. “Well, I don’t suppose that there is any chance that you would have the time to take your mother to the cemetery today.”
“I really had plans, Mom.”
“What, to mope around your apartment and sulk about Robin?”
Then a new thought seemed to strike her. “Where’s the other girl? The little mousey one.”
“She isn’t mousey.”
“When she squints through those glasses she is mousey.”
“She’s with her parents for the holiday. If you really need me to take you to the graves…” his voice trailed off.
“Oh no, I’m not about to beg you to go and see your grandmother and my mother and Uncle Mike and the Aunt that you professed to have so much love for.” She paused and then said. “How many times have you visited your Aunt’s grave?”
“I don’t know Mom.”
“When was the last time that you were there?”
“I don’t remember”
“Such a fine memory and he can’t remember the last time he went to the cemetery. I suppose it will be the same way with me, won’t it? You’ll never visit my grave”
Ron had had enough and then he said out of nowhere, “Do you think that there’s a body buried in the basement?”
“What!” he voice was incredulous. “What kind of a thing is that to say to a person? Do I think there’s a body buried in the basement? George will you listen to this?” she called out. “Ronald wants to know if we have a body buried in the basement.”
“Go and do whatever things that you have to do Ronald. What time will you be here tomorrow?”
“Whatever time you want me there, Mom.”
“You’re not bringing Robin are you?”
“No, Mom I’m not.”
When he hung up the phone, he called Robin immediately. She answered on the second ring.
“It’s Ron, my mom said that you called.”
“Yes, she was surely happy to hear my voice.”
Ron didn’t answer for a long time. “You know how our parents are. None of them, with the exception of my father, seems to like the one of us for the other.”
“That’s not really true Ron. My mom likes you very much.”
“Anyway,” said Ron. “What’s up?”
“Are you still mad about last night?”
“I wasn’t mad,” he said. “I was hurt. Why do you always think that I’m mad when you’ve hurt me?”
“I don’t want to argue, Ron. I called to tell you that I’m going back on Saturday and I was wondering if you could take me to the air
port?”
“I don’t think I can. I have something that I promised to do with a friend.”
She was silent. She was not at all used to Ron saying no to her. Then she said, “We’re even going to lose our friendship because I won’t fuck you aren’t we?”
For the first time in Ron could not remember how long, he felt himself seething with anger at Robin. His had gripped the phone tightly. “Yeah Robin, fucking you is what I’m all about.”
“I didn’t say that. But the truth is Ron, that if I were fucking you, you wouldn’t be mad at all.”
Ron’s voice with almost a hiss when he spoke. “I asked you to marry me last night and we haven’t made love in years now. And you still think that it’s all about me sleeping with you? It doesn’t matter what I say or do for you. You still think it’s all about that.”
Robin seemed to recoil on the phone. Ron could sense the look on her face. He could see the way that her jaw line squared. He could see the way that her forehead furrowed. He could sense the way she tilted her head so that he blond hair hung down over her face. “If it’s going to be like this, we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”
Ron caught himself before he uttered the word “fine.” He kept it locked inside of his brain. “Do you want me to drive down and pick you up?”
“Not if we are going to fight.”
“We won’t fight,” he said.
“Then I would love to see you,” she answered.
Ron drove down the parkway wondering why it was that he found himself so helpless around her. Was it because that she was the first woman that he really had loved? Was it because she was the first woman that really had hurt him? In fact she had devastated him. He had needed to have people put him back together and in some ways he felt that he would never be the same. He thought about a Fitzgerald essay. Was he like “a cracked plate” that had been glued back together and which people would never really trust because it could always fall apart? Was he so damaged that he would never again feel really whole? Was it like his knees? He remembered lying in the hospital bed after that first surgery and realizing that he would never be the same again. Was this like that? Were affairs of the heart very much like what happened to damaged limbs? They could be put back together but they would never have that “full throated ease” or feel that unrestrained joy again.
He reached her mother’s apartment and stood at the door. He needed answers to these questions but he was pretty sure that the answers were not going to come from a conversation with Robin. They didn’t have those tender conversations any more. It was then that the realization hit him that he could not rely on her.
When she opened the door she put her arms around his neck and kissed him. It was a lover’s kiss. She molded her body to him and he swore that he could feel her hips moving against him. She said, “I didn’t think that you’d come.”
Ron felt like a dog who had been given a treat. He wondered if he should wag his tail in the hopes of another. Robin felt his immediate reaction when she pressed against him. Feeling his hardness, she was reassured.