“Wow, you sound like an expert at getting your ass kicked.” She shakes her head in disappointment. “Just put the bag on your eye and tell me what happened.”
This interaction between Ruby and I is odd. Nice, but unfamiliar.
Our relationship is casual, not close. She sometimes tells me a story or two about her little sister who lives in Vermont or her wife when we’re working a long day, but for the most part we rarely discuss our personal lives with each other and we’ve been working together for over nine months. Like I said, she’s a cool co-worker, but it would be a stretch to say we were friends.
“I was in the middle of baking a cake for my neighbor, and when Ray came home from work, I knew something was off. He smelled different.”
“Like pussy?”
Ruby’s candor startles me, although I don’t know why, I’ve heard dirtier talk from teenagers at the bus stop.
“No, like perfume.”
“Same thing as pussy,” she scoffs. “So then, what happened?”
“When he took the trash to the chute, I checked his phone,” I admit, as if I’ve committed some sort of federal crime.
“Of course you checked it. That was the only smart thing for you to do.”
She wets a dishcloth that she picks up from the edge of the kitchen sink and starts wiping down my counters, which are sprinkled with dried chocolate cake batter splatters. I smile to myself as I watch her do it. I clean houses because it’s the only thing I’m qualified to do, but I think Ruby does it because she actually enjoys it. The mess in here is probably driving her crazy.
“I didn’t feel like I was being smart,” I admit. “I felt like I was behaving like one of those jealous women from reality television shows who come to the worst conclusions and don’t trust their men.”
“How can you trust someone who hits you like this?”
“Ray may be many things, but he never cheated on me before.”
“You’re missing the point,” she sighs with annoyance. “Just continue the story.”
“I checked his phone and there were some blatantly non-platonic messages between him and some woman.”
“Did the asshole catch you looking at the phone and hit you? Is that what happened?”
“No, when he returned, I tried to continue with my baking to drown out all the negative thoughts I was having, but I couldn’t let it go, so I finally confronted him. When his only reaction was that I shouldn’t have been going through his cell phone, I guess I snapped and blurted out that I’d had enough and that I was leaving him.”
“That’s it? You told him you were leaving?”
“Yes.”
“That’s how you lose it? I mean, that’s how you snap?”
“I’m not a very confrontational person, Ruby.”
“Maybe you’re not, but apparently he is.”
“Ray is different when he drinks. He loves his gin and tonics. He promised me that he’d stop the last time something like this happened. I should have realized that he would react badly when I started actually packing my bags, but I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“You weren’t thinking?”
“I know how he gets.”
“You know that when he gets angry, he’s liable to punch you in the eye?”
“Ruby,” I say, wanting desperately to end this conversation. The judgement is pouring out of her mouth in buckets and I feel as if I’m literally drowning in it.
“I’m not criticizing you, sweetie. I just want to understand what happened.”
“Ray was trying to get my attention and was aiming for a photograph of us behind me on the wall, but I unwittingly moved my head in the same direction of his fist and received the brunt of the blow.”
