When she asks me what I want to call it, I hesitate. The pause isn’t long but it’s thoughtful. My mind returns to my most joyful place, singing and dancing on the porch with my mom in the kitchen and my daddy in the garden, both just within my view.
“Ruthie Lindsey Design.”
Jack isn’t coming back, I just know it. But Ruthie Lindsey is.
She smiles and asks me to spell it out for her letter by letter. I’m sad but certain.
I order a giant stack of business cards when people start asking for them, and I have RUTHIE LINDSEY DESIGN embossed on those too. The letters are raised high as they can be into thick ivory cardstock and they’re filled with rich, leathery ink. The UPS man thunks them down on the porch, and when I gently slide the first one out and hold it in my hand, it feels more like a birth announcement. A new person is here. I run my fingertips over the words and start to cry.
“Ruthie Lindsey.”
My mom’s excited too. I’m not sure she understands exactly what I do, but she’s so proud that she shows off my website to all her friends and they all join Instagram to follow me. She’s doing better, just like I am. We both still need to cling to our lists some days, but miraculously, we both find peace and joy beyond them. Lile and Libby listen while I tell them all about trying new things like yoga and road trips and wine and they make me promise to call more often to keep them updated. Even my daddy’s excited for me. I go to Los Angeles for an online marketing workshop, and when I’m there, walking down La Brea Boulevard with a new friend and talking about my separation, Daddy sends a snow-white feather to my feet. As it slow-falls down to the sun-bleached sidewalk, I time-travel back to childhood, sitting tucked under his arm in Grace Church, listening to him tell stories about our stained-glass dove.
Whenever you see the bird, know your daddy’s thinking about you and that he loves you so much.
Jack is not excited. He’s angry and I understand. I’m shocked when I hear from him on a very hot Tuesday in June and he wants to begin seeing our therapist, Jane, again. He seems to be done with me but for some reason—Jesus, maybe, or fear, or pride—he’s unwilling to undo us completely, so we sit every week and sort through the hurts. It hurts when he sees me smiling, when I post pictures online of myself doing things with strangers that I never did with him. It hurts when he sees me rent out the upstairs of our big blue house to travelers and take care of them more lovingly than I could care for him. It hurts when I start calling myself “Ruthie Lindsey” again. I think it hurts the most when he sees me dancing. I wish he really knew that I would have given anything to be able to love him and dance with him back then, the way I can now. It’s been a very long time since I danced with a man that way.
* * *
Liam is standing next to a wall of denim at my favorite boutique when we meet. He’s wearing a T-shirt that looks very soft and his eyes are the same color that all the pants are. His beard is coarse and shiny, a mix of perplexing brown-black darkness, and I can feel him welcoming me closer to him, though he never actually says it with words. He’s in town shooting a documentary about a semi-famous local artist named Percy and they’re filming inside the store when I pop by to visit my friend John Christian, who works there. I jangle the door open. Liam crouches low to fiddle with his lens and something inside my body changes.
I’ve just come from the park, where I was picnicking with Katie and crying into the perfect, buzz-cut grass about the inevitability of divorce. My cheeks are salty and my hair is a mess and I stink like mayonnaise on hot ham sandwiches. John Christian is a new friend but a favorite one; he runs up to me in his bow tie and gingham shirt and he looks so adorable I could eat him up. His cheeks are flushed and he’s grinning like a fox, looking pleased that I arrived just in time to meet the cute boys taking pictures in the back of his store. He’s been telling me for weeks that a cute boy is exactly what I need.
“Ruthie!” he drawls. “You have to meet these cool guys.”
He squeezes my hands, winks, and introduces us. The situation seems almost too satisfying for him to withstand.
Liam says my name one time in his low purr of a voice and I almost fall over.
My body has been a lot of things, but since childhood, it’s never been a home. It’s been a meeting place for pain and fear, a landfill where medicine and sugar decay into a black mush, a laboratory for therapists and surgeons and diets, a detention hall where shame bats a yardstick at desire. In my mind, it’s been too fat, too skinny, and too broken. It’s cried out for things, rest and love and sex, but I’ve never listened; I’ve bowed to other voices instead, to a church that told me to hide it behind a glass casement, not to dress it or let it dance in a way that would make men’s bodies cry out for it, to doctors who instructed me to “manage it,” feed it pills and plaster it with patches. Jack is the only man I’ve ever slept in a bed with or even imagined sleeping beside. Besides Jack, I’d never really dated, I’ve not drunk or done drugs, besides the few times I nervously tried some skunky weed in an attempt to alleviate my pain. At twenty-three, when we met, I was still a little girl clinging to her purity, recoiling from a world that seemed too harsh and scary. I’m not a little girl anymore. When I see Liam, my body speaks to me and I’m listening, to the hot blood in my cheeks, the tangle of nerves sitting in my chest, the wanting. He asks if I want to meet up later and again, I say yes.
We go to a dive bar in a double-wide near the fairgrounds called Santa’s. There are too many people inside and all of them are smoking cigarettes. I can hardly breathe, nobody can, but somehow, most of them growl their way through karaoke. The tables look like they were stolen from a bingo hall and there are so many twinkle lights strung up and stuffed into the same power strip, I feel like I’m back on my Christmas set. I buy a shitty beer and I drink it fast because I’m nervous and I need my heart to slow down. Liam sits next to me all night. He just grins at me through his beard like a Wooly Willy toy, like he’s keeping a secret about me that even I don’t know yet. I have another drink, he has two, and we talk and talk. He reaches over to take a sip of my beer, letting his hand rest on top of mine for four thrilling seconds, and I just can’t believe that this gorgeous, wonderful man wants to be near me too.
Flirtatious glue holds us together while everyone else is in shambles, spilling on themselves, slurring their words and singing their best Jefferson Airplane. He waits almost two hours to tell me the secret he’s been keeping.
“Ruthie, my job is to meet people and document them. I’ve been doing it for years, loving it for years, and I’ll continue to do it forever. I’ve never met anybody like you before.”
Three college girls struggle along to “Somebody to Love.” They’ve only heard the chorus before, so the rest is just giggling.
“You’re an interesting mix. One part little girl, filled with joy and excitement, and one part old lady, filled with wisdom and knowledge, just rocking away on her front porch.”
He sees me.
Everything hushes and I get pins and needles in my face. I’ve never felt less looked at and more looked into.
“Yes.”
It’s the only word I can say.
We spend the following week together. We listen to music and let it carry us around my kitchen until we collapse into a pile of red wine breath and laughter and kisses. I know that he’s leaving, but I don’t care. He touches my body like it’s holy ground, with tenderness and reverence, tiptoeing across the shape of my side like he doesn’t want to disturb it, only to witness the magic of cool air on my skin. Lovingly and carefully, he cradles my face in both his hands and just looks. We go on walks and watch sunsets and fool around in the big sleigh bed like teenagers. I hear my hands and my heart and my hips as they speak, and instead of letting them be drowned out, I give them my trust. There is no shame when I see him resting on Jack’s old pillow, there’s no shame when he holds my hand on the street, there’s no shame when I feel myself wanting him. I never thought I could be attracted to another man, let another man sleep beside me in my bed, but I can, I allow myself to. I feel safe and seen.