Note: For this and subsequent chapters, "Volare" © Dominic Modugno, 1958, I think.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Al dropped his wife at the bungalow, stopping in himself only long enough to get into his duty uniform. Part of him wanted to stay with Ruthie and try to patch things up… or maybe some small part of his mind was scared that she would try again. He had no faith in electroshock, none at tall. Practicality would not permit him to fulfill even this little desire, as reasonable as it was. He had messed up the training schedule so badly these last couple weeks that if he didn't get it back on track those kids wouldn't be licensed until Christmas. Hanukkah. Until Hanukkah.
The day afforded its fair share of opportunities for thought, and by the end of the watch Al had decided it would be best to let Ruthie decide what they talked about. She jaws the one in the emotionally precarious position, and anyhow he felt so strangely detached from the entire situation that he didn't care anymore what they talked about. Just so long as it wasn't Beth.
When he got home Ruthie was just getting supper onto the table. She had prepared a veritable feast featuring one of his new favorites and a dish she prepared better than anyone, including her mother: gefilte fish. She did it the traditional way, stuffing a whole carp with the paste of fish, onions and carrots. She had also prepared more sided dishes than they reasonably needed. It was the kind of meal neither of them had eaten in a fortnight.
They ate in relative amicability, Ruthie questioning Al about his day, Al complimenting Ruthie's absolutely sublime cooking. Nothing of any consequence was discussed. They washed the dishes together and then they played a couple of rounds of gin rummy at the dining room table. Al went off to shower after losing twice in a row, and came out fifteen minutes later to find Ruthie in front of the television, occupied with the usual NBC prime time drivel while she folded laundry. Experience had taught him to give her plenty of elbow room when she was doing this: her folding standards were higher than those of the toughest quartermaster. So he sat down in his armchair with a cigar to keep her company. Then he put his clothes away, and Ruthie did the same with hers, and they got into bed. No profound personal revelations, no attempts at intimacy, just the warm presence of two bodies on one mattress as their breathing deepened and sleep gently overtook them both. It was a perfectly ordinary end to a perfectly normal evening of complacent domesticity.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMRuthie was walking down a long corridor, a sterile white hallway that smelled of disinfectant and floor wax. She could hear voices whispering behind the doors to either side. They were talking about her, discussing her like she wasn't even there, but she couldn't hear what they were saying. She tried to open a door, but the handle wouldn't turn. She knocked on the next one. The voices inside stopped their indistinct muttering. She rattled the door. No answer.
At the end of the hall was one more door. Behind it she could hear a voice mumbling low and very quickly, like a child reciting ill-memorized multiplication facts in the desperate hope that he would remember them when the teacher asked the question. As Ruthie drew near the door she realized that the voice was reciting numbers.
"B-933-852," it spewed rapidly, almost frantically. "15-06-34."
She reached out to touch the doorknobs. It was cold and wet. As she touched it the door flew away from her.
"Leave me alone!" a hoarse voice screamed, angry and desperate and at the same time terrified. "Leave me alone! Haven't you done enough already? Don't you need to sleep?"
Ruthie realized she was awake, lying in bed in the dark. What she had taken ahold of was not a doorknob, but Al's shoulder. He was now curled into a tight ball of agony, his arms thrown over his head. He was whimpering now. "Sleep… sleep… oh, God, let me sleep…"
"A-Al?" Ruthie ventured, pushing herself into a semi-prone position. "Al?"
She reached out to touch his sweat-drenched back, hoping to startle him out of the nightmare. As her fingers brushed his skin he scrambled away with a hollow wail. He fell off the edge of the bed and landed hard on the carpet. For a moment there was silence, then soft sounds of wretched fear came from the floor. Ruthie reached over and turned on the bedside lamp, then crawled to the edge of the bed.
Al had his knees tucked tightly under his body, his head pressed to the floor and his hands shielding the back of his skull desperately. Tremors wracked his back and his limbs.
"Al?" she whispered. Then louder, still hoping to wake him; "Al?"
He flinched and the sounds stopped. Hoping he was awake Ruthie slipped out of bed and put one hand on each of his shoulders. He stiffened but did not move.
"Al, wake up," Ruthie said. "It's just a dream."
Her braid slithered over her shoulder and landed on his back. Without changing his position, Al began to scream at her, ejecting words of a language she did not understand or recognize. Although the sounds were foreign, the intention was obvious from his tone. Ruthie drew back, frightened by the fury and vitriol in the still obviously terrified voice. She retreated to the door and switched on the overhead light. On the floor, Al shuddered, then drew in a ragged and painful breath.
"Al?" Ruthie said hesitantly. "Al, are you awake?"
He uncurled slowly and stiffly, as if the nightmare had left him in physical discomfort. Planting his hands firmly on the carpet he pushed himself up into a kneeling position, panting laboriously. Ruthie wanted to run to him and ask if he was okay, to try to comfort him the way he had comforted her on Sunday night, but her heart was pounding like a timpani in her chest and she could not move.
"Al?" she said, for what felt like the ten thousandth time.
He was scrubbing at his face with his hands, muttering inaudibly to himself. Ruthie watched as his right thumb stroked first one cheek, then the other, and her throat constricted. Was he wiping away tears?
"Al, Al, are you okay?"
Grabbing the edge of the mattress for support, Al got up onto trembling legs. He stood for a moment with his back to Ruthie, one arm folded tightly across his abdomen, his shoulders rising and falling as he breathed from his throat. When at last that motion moved down into his chest and finally to his abdomen where it belonged, he turned. His face was blank and schooled, but dreadfully white. He approached the door almost as if he could not see Ruthie.
"Al?" she said again as he drew near. "Al, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he said, his voice husky and tight with control. "Just a dream."
"A nightmare," Ruthie said gently. She put a hand on his arm. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
"Okay," she whispered. She reached up and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, cupping her right hand over the sweat-soaked curls on the back of his head and rubbing her left up and down his clammy spine, her fingers rippling over his inexplicable scars. For a minute he leaned into the embrace, his tightly closed mouth pressed against the crook of her neck and his eyes hidden in her hair. Then he pulled away, using his hands to push her arms down to her sides.
"I'm fine," he repeated firmly.
"You didn't look fine a minute ago," Ruthie said, forgetting that she had just agreed he didn't have to talk about it. "What on earth were you dreaming about?"
"Nothing," Al said shortly. "Nothing, it was just a dream."
Ruthie shivered and hugged herself.
"It sounded so real," she said softly.
There was an almost desperate edge to Al's voice with his next words.
"It wasn't real," he said hastily. "It wasn't real."
"N-no," Ruthie stammered, frightened by the terror that flashed through his dark eyes. "No, it wasn't real. It was just a dream." She put out her arms, hoping he would let her take hold of him again. She needed to soothe his fright as much as he needed it to be soothed. He had scared her, and she needed to do something, to be useful to him. If they couldn't even be useful to each other there was no reason for them to stay together. She realized abruptly that if he wasn't going to let her help him cope with whatever it was that was tormenting him, then the last excuse to hold out and hope for better times was gone.
Al backed away. "I'm fine," he said again, his voice hardening. "I'm fine. I'm sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep."
He left the bedroom and the hall light came on. Ruthie followed after him, catching his arm. "Al, wait!" she said.
He spun around, defiant fire in his eyes, and for a moment she thought he was going to strike her. Instead, he wrenched his arm from her grasp.
"Please don't touch me," he said, his voice low and trembling. He rubbed his wrist violently, as if her grip had burned him. "Go back to bed."
"You're going to get a drink," Ruthie challenged. "Aren't you?"
"No," Al said, shaking his head firmly. Then his voice faltered again. "I'm going to take a shower."
"You showered before bed," she whispered.
"And I'm sweating like a pig," he countered in the voice of one accustomed to giving orders. "I'm going to take a shower."
He vanished into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. Ruthie pressed her hands against it. She could hear the running water, but nothing else. At last she turned and obeyed. It was a long time before she fell asleep, but he didn't come back.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMAl was already awake when Ruthie got up the next morning, sitting at the kitchen table alternately nursing a coffee and a cigar as he pored over the weekly base newsletter. Ruthie poured herself a coffee and sat down across from him.
"Al," she said, reciting the speech she had perfected in the long wait for slumber; "I realize I haven't quite been the wife you expected."
"Expectations lead to disappointments," Al said pleasantly, not looking up from his paper. "That's why I try not to have any."
Ruthie had not expected any interruption at this juncture, so she took a sip of coffee to give her mind the time it needed to equilibrate. "I should have told you about my… my disorder before it was too late."
"Too late?" Al asked, his tone still conversational.
"Before we got married," Ruthie clarified.
"Do you think it would have made any difference?"
Ruthie looked up at him, startled. He was still focused on the paper. "I…I don't know," she admitted.
"I've tried to understand what you're going through," Al said. "I'm sorry for the way I've been blundering through this, but it's a new situation for me. I'm learning as I go, here. I'll get better with time.
"What? No—no, you've been doing really well," Ruthie said. "I can tell you want to help me, and you have. If you hadn't…" She couldn't say it. All she could do was hope he understood. After another mouthful of coffee she segued back to her prepared speech. "You've helped me, and I want to help you, too."
"I don't need any help," Al said, puffing contentedly on his cigar. "Looks like we might be in for some rain today."
"Al, you talk in your sleep," Ruthie said, not letting him phase her this time. "Not just to this woman named Beth…last night you were telling someone to leave you alone. Then you begged them to let you sleep. Then you started speaking in tongues."
He finally looked up, dark eyes sparkling with amusement. "Speaking in tongues?" he asked.
"Yes," Ruthie said. "I've never heard anything like it."
He laughed. "You sure I wasn't speaking Italian?" he asked. "Fa la signora ebrea bella amano il suo uomo italiano precipitare…"
Ruthie shook her head. "I know what Italian sounds like. Sometimes you do talk Italian, or sing in it—"
"Sing?"
"Yeah," Ruthie said, smiling against her will. His grin was infections. " 'Volare', mostly."
"Ah!" Al sighed happily. He closed his eyes and started to sing. "E volavo, volavo felice piu in alto del sole ed ancora piu su…"
Ruthie brought him back with her firmest matriarchal voice. "But last night you weren't speaking Italian. It was something else."
"Spanish?" Al tried.
"No. It was all vowels… "oh" and "ai", especially. You were angry—it sounded like you were swearing. Al, please tell me what it is you dream about."
"Ruthie, after three months of marriage I would have thought you'd figure out that I don't want to talk about my dreams," Al said soberly, all traces of his smile gone. "Just leave it alone. Trust me, sugar, you don't want to know."
"Maybe I don't," Ruthie allowed. "Maybe it's so terrible that I really would be happier not knowing. But that isn't going to keep our marriage together, Al. If we're going to stick it out I need to know what happened. I can't live with this if I don't understand why it has to be this way."
"Ruthie…" Al drew his fingers across his forehead and sucked on the cigar. "Ruthie, you don't know what you're asking."
"I'm asking for the truth, Al," she said. "That's all. Just the truth."
"The truth about what?" Al asked coolly. She had the spooky feeling that he was testing her.
She ticked off the points on her fingers. "Who is Beth? Why do you talk to her in your sleep? And what happened to you that you dream about and that makes you want to shower in the middle of the night?"
Al regarded her inscrutably for a minute, then folded the newsletter carefully. "I see we're back to where we started two weeks ago," he said. "I'll be back home at seventeen hundred—that's five o'clock your time."
He started for the front door. Furious at his adamant refusal to even try to meet her halfway, Ruthie ran after him. "Albert Calavicci, this is your last chance to be honest with me!" she exclaimed.
He paused at the door. "My last chance, huh?"
Ruthie nodded vehemently.
"Well, all right. Here's a little truth for you." He leaned over and kissed her cheek. "You're beautiful, and when I get home we're going to have a nice, quiet evening in and forget this conversation ever happened."
Then he was gone. A second later the Corvette peeled away towards the heart of the base. Ruthie stood in the doorway, quivering with anger. Well, she had tried. She really had tried. Since the first dream, thirteen weeks ago—had it really only been thirteen weeks?—she had tried everything from ignoring them to sedating herself. Enough was enough. If he wasn't going to be honest—if he couldn't trust her even after all the trust she had given him—then the decision she had reached yesterday at Nai's was the right one after all. She locked the front door and went to the phone. She dialed her mother.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM
Al didn't understand why women always wanted to turn life into a damned opera. Melodramatic proclamations that always came to nothing… last chance? Hah. He didn't believe that. She'd be ready to make up when he got home, but what the hell was he going to do when she decided she wanted to grill him about his dreams again? Why couldn't she just leave well enough alone? Women never could. They always had to know everything. They didn't know how to mind their own damned business.
He rounded the corner onto their street. The shadows were lengthening on the lawn, and the Honda was out on the garage pad, the trunk full of boxes and luggage. Al stared at it for a minute, then hurried into the house, wondering what the hell was going on.
He found Ruthie in the bedroom, packing away the last of her clothes.
"Ruthie?" he said. "What's this?"
She turned to look at him, her face grave. "I can't do this, Al," she said. "It's wrong. The whole thing was a mistake. I'm sorry."
He stared at her. She was leaving? Damn it, she was leaving.
"No!" he said, not sure where the words were coming from. "No, we can work it out. Everything will be fine, you'll see. Just give it a couple of weeks."
She shook her head and zippered the suitcase. "I'm not the same person you fell in love with," she said. "I can't ever be that person. When I am, I'm sick and I need help. When I'm not I'm either a nagging control freak or a suicidal lump of nothing. It's not fair to ask you to deal with that."
"I don't care," Al said. "I can deal with it. I'll even go see a shrink if you want me to. We can get through this."
"No," Ruthie said. She was emptying the vanity drawers into her makeup case. "I want to go back to Jersey City. I liked having my own apartment, my own friends, my own life. I liked sleeping in a bed all by myself. That's what I want, and you want your career. This way, we can both be happy."
The electroshock had done something to her mind! Al moved to block her exit.
"Ruthie, don't. We can fix it. We don't need to do this."
She looked into his eyes and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Al, no," she said. "Now please, just let me leave."
"Where are you going?"
"Mama's," she said. "You'll be hearing from Michael. I just want a clean break, like this whole thing never happened. We've only been married for three months: we should be able to move on just fine."
His throat constricted. Another relationship collapsing like a tower of cards right before his eyes, and he didn't even really care. It was once again like the whole thing was happening to a stranger. He nodded and took the suitcase from her hand. "A clean break," he said flatly.
She followed him out to the car, and he put the case into the back, closing the trunk. Ruthie put her makeup case on the passenger seat and regarded him somberly.
"It's better this way," she said softly.
He turned and went back into the house, afraid of how he might react if he had to watch her drive off, just the way he always imagined Beth must have driven off…
The image sprung up before his eyes, but he didn't even care. What did it matter? If he was going to get cut up about a loss, it might as well be a real one.
The telephone rang before he could close the door. He picked up the receiver. "Calavicci," he said.
"Al!" It was Admiral Kelley. "I just wanted to let you know MacArthur called me. He's pretty cut up about you turning down Starbright Project: wanted to know if I could talk you 'round for him. I told him you were a man of your word, and if you said no, you meant it. I just thought you should be aware that the conversation was had, and—"
No great loss without some small gain. He had never believed that expression until now. "Kelley—sir, listen. Can you do something for me? You call Mac back and tell him… tell him I've changed my mind, the end of June will be perfect, I can hardly wait and I'm sorry for stringing him out like that."
"You want it after all?" Kelley clarified.
"Yes." God, did he want it! Now more than ever.
"But I thought that your wife—"
The little red Honda pulled out of the driveway and vanished down the street, visible for an instant in the rectangle of the screen door.
"I've got a feeling I'm going to be a single man again real soon," Al said, grimly dispassionate.
He didn't listen to Kelley's garbled condolences and promises. He cradled the receiver and went through to the kitchen. He needed a drink, and he needed a cigar.