Goodbye, Vitamin

On April Fool’s Day, Howard paints the bar of soap with clear nail polish so that it will not lather. Ruth asks him how he and her mother met. Howard recalls how she showed up on the first day of class and he was drawn to her. They went to a student art gallery opening together, stole a bottle of wine, and drank it in a park together. Ruth realizes that this is not the story of how he met Ruth’s mother, but of how he met Joan. Ruth recalls the real story of how her parents met: They had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and her mother brought a jar of homemade salsa to the restaurant.

Uncle John calls Ruth panicked because he locked his keys in the car and thinks that this must be a sign that he too has dementia. Ruth tempers her instinct to ask him about her parents’ divorce and instead asks about her maternal grandparents, whom she never met. John tells her that her mother was too young when she lost her adoptive parents, but that “She doesn’t take any shit. It was all about you, after that” (98).

Ruth notices that her father left the door to his study open, which she takes as an invitation to enter.