Chapter 62
That night Ron got home after his run and made a dish of spinach pasta. Sitting at his writing table, he looked over the end of the play as he ate. He wondered exactly how far he could take them, how much he could push them so that they would realize their potential. He wanted them to stretch without breaking, and he knew that they would try to stretch until they broke in order to please him. The weight of the responsibility caused his shoulders to slump. Soon it would be time for them to start applying to colleges, and he wanted them to shoot for the stars.
A nagging voice belittled his desire. How would he know what they needed for a good school? Hadn’t he worked himself to illness at the one really good school that he attended? Didn’t he have to drop out of Drew University and take a year off before he finished up at William Paterson? For some of them, William Paterson would be like shooting for the stars, but he wanted better for them. They were going to be better prepared than he had been. Lashly had come from good colleges and Lashly had trained him. Maybe that was enough. They could go further than he had gone because they would start with a better foundation than he had. He needed to push the doubts from his mind. Suppose some of them did fail to make it and some of them did make it? Wouldn’t that be good enough? Sure, for the girls that succeeded it would be enough for them, and he could tell himself that the others would do ok at state schools or at junior colleges. Hadn’t he done ok at a junior college?
He saw their faces in his mind. Elena was a star. She was going further than he could imagine. So was Donna. He had nothing to worry about there. Veronica had a great work ethic and was bright. No need to worry about her. Elizabeth Holland was another story. She needed to make it, or she would break like a porcelain doll that was dropped from a shelf. She might be able to be pasted back together but the tell-tale signs of the breakage would always be there. Should he push her or go easy? Didn’t he owe it to her to push her if she wanted to be pushed? Wasn’t it really her choice? Wasn’t it any of their choices?
There was the voice again. This time it was saying that it was easy for him to say that because it relieved him of any of the responsibility of his influence on them. Samantha Satorini was pretty enough and smart enough so that she had a great chance to be a success, but was it his place to factor her looks into it?
Ron realized that he had stopped eating. The pasta was cold. He stared out his front windows into the September evening. One by one he saw their faces again and the evaluation continued. What did they want? Sure they wanted him to be proud of them, but that wasn’t what they wanted from their lives.
At first he didn’t hear the knock on his door. When it came again, it was louder, less timid. Ron got up and walked through the railroad rooms expecting to find a plate of leftovers at his feet, but opened the door to see Zoe standing there and smiling for him.
Ron stepped back to let her in. “Zoe, I’m surprised to see you. I thought that you’d be at school.”
“Hi Ron,” she said quietly. ‘No, I don’t leave for another ten days.”
He moved to kiss her and at first she stiffened and then she kissed him as gently as he kissed her. They could both feel the stir of passion in back of the kiss.
“Ron, I want to take some of my things back.”
“What things?”
“The writing desk, the bookcase and Nightscape,” she said biting her lip.
Ron felt his face harden. “Zoe, you gave me those things. You said that you had no money and knew that I was paying for everything and that I could have those things instead.”
She sat down on the bed. “I know, but now I want them back.”
Ron said, “I had Nightscape framed. It’s the only piece that I have of yours. You wouldn’t let me keep anything else, even though I was the model for a lot of it.”
“I didn’t want you to have anything else.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s my art, not yours.”
“I know that it’s yours.”
“Then give it to me.”
“It’s a lithograph. I had it framed. You have other copies.”
“I don’t want anyone to have my things.”
Ron felt himself getting angry. For the time that they had lived together he had basically supported her. Her father, who had a lot more than Ron, hadn’t helped at all. But if she wanted it, and it made a difference to her, then maybe he should just give it to her. “I really love the piece, Zoe. Can’t I just have it?”
“Can I stay here with you?”
“Why do you want to do that?”
“I miss sleeping with you. Do you have a girlfriend?
“No.”
“Are you seeing Robin?”
“No.”
“Do you want to sleep with me?”
“Yes. You know that I do.”
“Will you agree to give me what I want?”
Ron stared hard at her. Was she really saying what he thought that she was saying? She started to meet his gaze and then turned away.
“You can do anything that you want to do to me for a week, if you give me my things.”
“Zoe, why are you doing this? I really cared for you.”
“You didn’t love me. You always loved Robin, or the memory of Robin.”
“That’s not true. When I was with you, I was with you, not her.”
“Was it where you wanted to be, Ron? Was I ever the one that you wanted to be with?”
“Yes.”
She looked at him with the flare of her own anger now. “You’re not telling the truth. If I was the one that you wanted, you would have never let me go. You would have come up there after me, the way that you went to Minnesota after her.”
Ron didn’t say anything. He felt dumbstruck. All this time, he had told himself that it was her craziness that drove them apart. Now she was saying something very different.
“When I called you and didn’t say anything,” she continued, “all I wanted to hear was you saying that you loved me. You never said it once.”
“You think that I never loved you?” said Ron.
“No, I know that you never loved me. I even slept with Quimpy to make you jealous. Quimpy of all people! Did you think that I wanted him?”
“I didn’t know what to think.”
“You were angrier at his betrayal than you were at mine, because it was him that you loved.”
Ron was silent. Zoe’s chin quivered slightly. They sat on the bed staring at each other. Time passed.
Ron said, “Do you want something to drink?”
“What have you got?”
“There’s soda and some old bottles of beer that someone left when they came here.”
“I’ll take a beer,’ she said.
Ron started to get up and go to get it. She stopped him. “No, let me.” She slipped out of her white cut offs and walked into the kitchen in her panties and her top. She came back carrying two of them and handed one to Ron. He took it and set it down without drinking.
“You’re comfortable here. I can feel it. How’s the teaching going?”
“It’s great,” said Ron.
“You’re still at the same school?”
“Yes.”
“And all the girls still think you’re great?”
Ron blushed. “We get along well.”
She took a long swallow on the beer and wiped her mouth with her arm. “If I got up and left, you wouldn’t try to stop me, would you?”
Ron literally hung his head. “Probably not.”
Then she put her shorts back on and left as silently and as magically as she had arrived, and he knew that he would never see her again.