It was not the first time that Ruth had overheard Hannah making love, but it was somehow different, knowing that the young man with Hannah couldn’t speak Eng
lish—and because, the entire time that Hannah was grunting away, Ruth and Per were washing the dishes.
Per kept saying, “I’m awfully glad your friend is having such a grand time.”
And Ruth kept saying, “Hannah always has a grand time.”
Ruth wished there were more dishes to wash, but she knew she had stalled long enough. Finally she said: “I’m a virgin.”
“Do you still want to be?” Per asked her.
“No, but I’m very nervous,” she warned him.
She also thrust a condom at him before he had even begun to take off his clothes. Hannah’s three pregnancies had taught Ruth a thing or two; albeit belatedly, they had even taught a thing or two to Hannah.
But when Ruth thrust a condom at Per, the young Swede looked surprised. “Are you sure you’re a virgin?” he asked her. “I’ve never been with a virgin.”
Per was nearly as nervous as Ruth was, which Ruth appreciated. He’d also had too much beer, which he remarked on, mid-coitus. “÷l,” he said in her ear, which Ruth mistook as an announcement that he was coming. On the contrary, he was apologizing for why it was taking him so long to come. ( ÷l is Swedish for beer .)
But Ruth had no experience to compare this to; their lovemaking was neither too long nor too short for her. Her principal motivation was to have the experience behind her, to simply (at last) have done it. She felt nothing.
So, thinking it proper sex etiquette in Sweden, Ruth said “÷l,” too, although she wasn’t coming.
When Per withdrew from her, he seemed disappointed that there was not more blood. He’d expected a virgin to bleed a lot . Ruth assumed this meant that the whole experience had been less than he’d expected.
It was definitely less than she’d expected. Less fun, less passion, even less pain. It had all been less. It made it hard to imagine what Hannah Grant had been so fiercely grunting about for all these years.
But what Ruth Cole learned from her very first experience in Sweden was that the consequences of sex are often more memorable than the act itself. For Hannah, there were no consequences that she considered worth remembering; not even her three abortions had deterred her from repeating and repeating the act, which she apparently found to be of far greater importance than whatever its consequences were.
But on the morning when Per’s parents returned home, greatly ahead of schedule, Ruth was alone and naked in Per’s parents’ bed. Per was taking a shower when his mother walked into her bedroom and began speaking Swedish to Ruth.
In addition to not understanding the woman, Ruth could not find her clothes—nor could Per hear his mother’s sharply rising voice over the sound of his shower.
Then Per’s father walked into the bedroom. While Per may have been disappointed in how little Ruth had bled, Ruth saw that she had bled on the towel she’d spread on the bed. (She had conscientiously taken pains, in advance, not to stain Per’s parents’ sheets.) Now, as she hastily tried to cover herself with the bloodstained towel, she was aware that Per’s mother and father had seen all of her and her blood.
Per’s father, a dour-looking man, was speechless; yet his staring at Ruth was as unremitting as his wife’s mounting hysteria.
It was Hannah who helped Ruth find her clothes. Hannah also had the presence of mind to open the bathroom door and yell at Per to get out of the shower. “Tell your mother to stop shouting at my friend!” Hannah had yelled at him. Then she’d yelled at Per’s mother, too. “Shout at your son, not at her —you dumb cunt!”
But Per’s mother could not stop herself from shouting at Ruth, and Per was too cowardly—or too easily convinced that he and Ruth were in the wrong—to oppose his mother.
As for Ruth, she was as incapable of decisive movement as she was of coherent speech. She mutely let Hannah dress her, like a child.
“Poor baby,” Hannah said to her. “What lousy luck for your first time. It usually ends up better than this.”
“The sex was okay,” Ruth mumbled.
“Just ‘okay’?” Hannah asked her. “Did you hear that, you limp dick?” Hannah shouted at Per. “She says you were just ‘okay.’ ”
Then Hannah noticed that Per’s father was still staring at Ruth, and she shouted at him. “Hey, you—fuckface!” she called him. “Do you get off on gawking, or what?”
“Shall I call you and your companion a cab?” Per’s father asked Hannah, in English even better than his son’s.
“If you can understand me,” Hannah said to him, “tell your abusive bitch of a wife to stop shouting at my friend—tell her to shout at your jerk-off son instead!”
“Young lady,” Per’s father said, “my words have had no discernible effect on my wife for years.”
Ruth would remember the elder Swede’s stately sadness better than she would ever remember the craven Per. And when Per’s father had stared at her nakedness, it was not lust that Ruth saw in his eyes—only his crippling envy of his lucky son.