LITMIR.BIZ

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at least it used to, she thought.

      PAUL CARUSO was Ruth's next-door neighbor growing up, a fat kid two years ahead of her in school. Because he happened to be a cool guy and a talented musician, he had been spared some of the ritual humiliations visited upon the other “big boys” at Oakhurst Regional. Alone among this long-suffering cohort, Paul had avoided being saddled with a nickname like Wide Load or Truck or Blob or Blivet or Butterball or Lardass or Tiny or Two-Ton or Chubby Checker. He was just Paulie C, star trumpeter of the jazz ensemble and the marching band, an award-winning outfit renowned for its complicated routines and high-stepping military precision. People seeing a Wolverines’ halftime show for the first time would invariably find their gazes drawn to the tubby kid with the gleaming horn and the dark hair spilling out from the ridiculous toy soldier hat with the too-tight chinstrap, and feel compelled to remark on his nimble footwork, the surprising grace he displayed for someone lugging around such a heavy burden.

      In the spring of his senior year, Paul broke his ankle stepping off an escalator at the North Vista Mall. It was a freak accident; he said he put his foot down wrong and the bone just snapped like a pencil. With only a couple of months to go before graduation, he found himself hobbling around on crutches, the lower half of his right leg encased in a bulky plaster cast. He couldn't practice with the band, couldn't work the clutch on his Civic hatchback. His girlfriend, Missy Prince—a broad-shouldered softball pitcher widely considered the prettiest girl jock in the school—picked him up in the morning, but she had practice in the afternoon. Apparently, Paul's other friends were occupied as well, because he was soon reduced to taking the bus home from school, the transportation choice of very last resort for a senior.

      Paul had been riding the bus for about a week when Ruth approached him on the sidewalk; he had just completed a laborious dismount from the vehicle, hopping on one foot with his crutches tucked under his arm, backpack in one hand and a trumpet case in the other. He gratefully accepted her offer of help, and the two of them set off on the slow trek to Peony Road, making stilted small talk about Ruth's sister, Mandy, who was nearing the end of her first year at Rutgers. She helped him up the steps to his front door—he used her shoulder for support, bearing down so hard she thought she might crumple like an aluminum can—then followed him inside, through the hall and into the kitchen, which seemed instantly familiar to her, despite the fact that she hadn't been there in years, not since she, Mandy, and Paul had played together as little kids. Everything was exactly the same as she remembered: the cushiony red benches of the breakfast nook, the toaster that accepted eight slices of bread, the needlepoint sampler over the stove that said, Take All You Want, But Eat All You Take.

      “Here you go,” she said, setting the backpack and trumpet down on the table.

      “Thanks.” Paul smiled, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a pale green dish towel. He seemed to be having a little trouble catching his breath. “Didn't know … how I was gonna … carry all that shit.”

      “No problem,” said Ruth. “It was on my way.”

      He used his pinky and ring fingers to lift a few strands of hair from his forehead and tuck them behind his ear, an oddly girlish gesture that made Ruth suddenly conscious of the delicacy of his features— small nose, feathery eyelashes, the ghost of a narrower face encased in the flesh of a broader one.

      “You, uh, want a sandwich or something?” he asked.

      Ruth hesitated. The kitchen was dim and silent, and it was no longer possible to ignore the obvious fact that they were alone in the house. Mr. Caruso worked on the assembly line at the GM plant; Mrs. Caruso ran the office for Ruth's dentist. His brothers and sisters were older, living on their own.

      “I don't think so,” she said.

      “We got roast beef, ham, turkey—”

      “I'm not really hungry.”

      “You sure? How about a soda or something?”

      “I better get home.”

      He gave her what Ruth later remembered as a searching look, focusing a whole new kind of attention on her, as if he'd suddenly realized that she'd grown up, and had become something more interesting than his next-door neighbor's little sister.

      Embarrassed by his scrutiny, Ruth felt her eyes drift down over his soft belly and broad thighs before finally landing on his cast, which was almost completely covered with psychedelic graffiti. There were still a couple of empty spaces near the toe, and she wished she knew him well enough to fill them with her name and a brief, cheerful message. She gave an apologetic shrug.

      “Lotta homework,” she said.

      THAT WAS an odd, unsettled spring for her, the first time she'd ever really been alone. Ever since Mandy left for college, Ruth had been sunk in something approaching a state of mourning. Her big sister was the one indispensable person in her life—ally, best friend, consoler, explainer of the world. They'd shared a bedroom for thirteen years, trading gossip, complaining about their parents, mumbling secrets to each other until they nodded off, then waking up together to the tinny music warbling out of the clock radio on the table between their beds. With Mandy away, the house seemed perpetually out-of-whack—distressingly tidy and much too quiet, as if something more than a single person had been subtracted from the whole.

      It hadn't been so bad for the first couple of months. Mandy called most nights and came home every other weekend, full of fascinating new information and unusually strong opinions. But then, at Thanksgiving, she solemnly informed the family that she'd fallen in love—she delivered this announcement at the dinner table, with an air of self-importance that Ruth had found both thrilling and vaguely sickening— and since then, she hadn't come home at all, except for an obligatory couple of days at Christmas. Now Ruth considered herself lucky if she spoke to her sister once a week, and when she did, Mandy's mind was a thousand miles away; she couldn't even fake an interest in the details of Ruth's pathetic teen dramas. All she wanted to talk about was Desmond, the Irish grad student with the beautiful eyes and soulful voice, who had awakened her to the suffering and injustice of the world. They were planning on traveling to Nicaragua over the summer to see the Sandinista Revolution for themselves, to cut through the fog of lies and propaganda spewed out by the American government and its toadies in the media.

      Great, thought Ruth. And I'll be home with Mom and Dad, waitressing at the IHOP.

      It wasn't that Ruth had a bad relationship with her parents, at least not compared to a lot of kids she knew. They weren't especially strict or even normally vigilant; for the most part, they trusted her to make her own decisions about who she hung out with, where she went, and what time she came home. It probably helped that Ruth got good grades, didn't have a boyfriend, and rarely got invited to parties.

      She had only one real problem with her parents, but it was a big one: they were just so depressing. With Mandy around, she had barely noticed. Now, though, Ruth had no choice but to observe her mother and father during their interminable, mostly silent family dinners, and wonder how it was possible that two reasonably attractive, reasonably intelligent people could sleep in the same bed and have so little interest in what the other was thinking or feeling. They rarely spoke a kind or curious word to each other, and hardly ever laughed when they were together. They did kiss good-bye in the morning, but the act seemed utterly mechanical, no more tender or meaningful than when her father patted his back pocket on the way out the door to make sure his wallet was there. They paid so little attention to each other that a stranger might have assumed they'd been randomly assigned to live together, roommates who wanted nothing more than to keep out of each other's way.

      It hadn't always been like this, though. Ruth had the photographic evidence to prove it—wedding albums, honeymoon snapshots, happy family portraits from when she and her sister were little. In the old pictures, her mother and father smiled, they touched, they looked at each other. So what happened? Every now and then, when Ruth was alone with her mother, she tried to find out.

      “Is something wrong? Are you and Dad mad at each other?”

      “Not at all. Everything's fine.”

      “Fine?

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