About Face by Carole Howard Page B

can go first, then us. We have all day. Moderate bragging about kids is allowed, okay?”
    Ruth pointed her celery stalk at David. “You do it, okay?”
    â€œWhere should I start?”
    Vivian jumped right in. “Start with how you went from being friends, you know, the platonic kind of friends, which you always insisted you were even though I knew better, even back then, and wound up being married and proving that I was right all along, even though I had to wait for you guys to catch up to my superior wisdom.”
    â€œRight,” Ruth said. “Superior wisdom. Honey, start with the trip to Woodstock and how we got turned back by the State Police and arrived at my parents’ house, covered with mud.”
    He took a big sip, then launched into the oft-told story of their muddied arrival at her parents’ house where, because of a houseful of guests, they’d had to share a bedroom. Since they were platonic friends, no one thought much of it, but the sleeping proximity resulted in a seismic shift in their relationship. The new relationship took root quickly and grew.
    He took the scenic route for the story of their lives and Ruth herded him back to the chronological thrust whenever she felt a side-trip was only marginally relevant. When he started telling about their visit to John and Janet, mutual Peace Corps friends who’d become sheep farmers in rural Vermont, Ruth burst in. She pointed out that, though it had been more than thirty minutes, he was only up to 1983. So David left John and Janet in the lurch and switched to Josh, indulging in the allowable bragging, showing the three pictures they’d brought for this purpose. He summed up their work lives by describing his work at the high school and his new plan to retire soon, then Ruth’s work as the means through which she’d been able to express her creativity, plus put Josh through college.
    â€œI made it in under an hour,” he announced. “Your turn.” He pointed his glass first at Carlos, then at Vivian, then drank.
    â€œFirst, let’s fill those poor empty glasses,” Carlos volunteered.
    â€œAnd how about some food to absorb all that alcohol? Who’s hungry?” Vivian and Ruth brought platters of bagels, cream cheese, and lox from the refrigerator to the table and passed around the chipped plates and mismatched silverware.
    â€œAnyone want coffee yet?”
    â€œRight after I finish this Bloody Mary,” Carlos said, taking a big gulp.
    Vivian told how she and Carlos had continued seeing each other after Peace Corps, as they worked for the same anti-war groups. They got married and continued to work for “the movement” for about five more years, he as an organizer (and part-time bartender to pay the rent), she in a printing shop that produced leaflets and brochures. Carlos contributed a description of their economically marginal and sometime nomadic existence, while Vivian giggled and looked nostalgic.
    Then she turned to Ida’s birth and neo-natal emergency surgery to repair a hole in her heart and a malformed esophagus. Ruth occasionally stole a glance at Carlos. He fingered a silver and turquoise bracelet on his right wrist, rubbing it one stone at a time. Once, he looked up at her and they remained locked in eye contact for a long three seconds. For most of that visual game of chicken, Ruth had the feeling he wasn’t looking at her so much as through her, to the past, but then he snapped out of it and saw her. He shrugged.
    Ida’s problem was completely corrected with her surgery. “The doctors told us she’d have one permanent side effect,” Carlos said solemnly. “She’ll never be able to eat upside down. So she can never be an astronaut.” Passing pictures of Ida around, Vivian added, “I can live with that.”
    Sometime after Ida’s birth, around the time she started school, Vivian and Carlos got their more sedentary