From: bewalton17@aol.com (BEWalton17)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.quantum-leap.creative
Subject: QL: The Enemy (Chapter 9)
Date: 2 Dec 1998 04:48:23 GMT
Message-ID: <19981201234823.27332.00000932@ng-fc2.aol.com>









                          CHAPTER NINE
     Ruthie was eleven years old the first time Albert kissed her.
     It had been her birthday, and he had thought she was turning
thirteen; she'd developed early, and he had made an erroneous guess
about her age at their first meeting which she wouldn't correct for
another year and a half.  They had been friends for eight months.
     (Seven months and fifteen days, a voice in her head spoke up,
with an adolescent insistence on detail that Ruthie found
frustrating, embarrassing, and completely uncontrollable.)  
     Both of them had sensed the change coming for weeks, but
neither had been willing to risk their fragile friendship by taking
the initiative.  Things had gotten tense.  Albert had taken to
sending her home for no apparent reason (well, none that she'd
consciously understood); Ruthie had been having dreams that made
her want to giggle every time she looked at him.  
     It had finally exploded when she had seen him kissing some
other girl 
     (Myra Boychik, her mind supplied cheerfully.  She lived at St.
Margaret's Home, on the next block.  She was wearing a tight blue
sweater and a poodle skirt that day, and you were still dressing
like a Hasid, and you looked like a small pile of dog dirt beside
her) 
     in a hideaway spot -- an abandoned house with a spooky
reputation, where he'd stashed a space heater, some dry food, and
a few clothes -- that she'd thought he'd only shared with her, and
had taken to thinking of as their home.  She often spent her long
afternoons there, tidying, dusting, arranging.  She would have
called it "playing house" if she'd known the phrase at the time,
but it had been more than a game to her.  When she'd awakened from
a noon nap to find the other girl 
     (Myra) 
     there with Albert, closer to him than she herself had ever
been, it had left her speechless.
     She'd first been angry, then embarrassed... then just
maddeningly curious, wanting to know what the other girl was
feeling as his fingers slid through hair and his hands travelled
tightly across her back.  She'd seen one of her sets of foster
parents kiss once, when they thought she had gone to sleep, but it
hadn't been so... well, so *long*.  She'd touched her finger to her
own lips, wondering, and slipped further into the shadows.
     After a long while, Albert stopped kissing the girl, then
there was some muted talk in Italian, then the girl finally left.
     Albert had watched her go from the window, then pulled his T-
shirt back on.  He turned as he did this, and it was when the last
of the shirt's cloth passed over his eyes that he saw Ruthie
standing behind him.  He looked at her like she might be contagious
and said, "What are you doing here?"
     Ruthie felt her mouth drop open, then close again and drop
open again.  She didn't know what to say.  The house was halfway
between the orphanage where he lived and the foster home she'd been
in at the time, so it was as much hers as his 
     (Actually, her traitor memory pointed out, it was six paces
*more* yours than his -- you counted.  Nothing quite like puppy
love, eh, old friend?)  
     or at least it seemed like it should have been.
     "Who was that?" she demanded.
     Albert blushed.  It was the only time that Ruthie could
remember having seen him blush, before or since.  "Uh, she's Myra. 
She's just a girl."
     "I'm just a girl."
     "No, no," Albert insisted, taking her hand.  "You're Ruthie."
     "I'm still a girl."
     Albert conceded this without looking at her directly.  "Myra,
though, she's just, you know..."  He'd shrugged.  "She's a *girl*
girl, you know."
     "If I wore a sweater that tight, would I be a *girl* girl,
too?"
     Albert turned away and muttered something in Italian that she
didn't catch; she didn't think he'd ever taught her those words.
     "What?"
     He turned back to her.  There was an expression in his eyes
that she had seen before, usually a few minutes before he told her
that he thought she should go home for the day.  She was sure such
a request was coming, and a terrified part of her wanted it to, but
instead, there had been a long moment of just staring into Albert's
burning eyes, then he had said, "Oh, hell," buried his hands in her
hair, and kissed her hard.
     It seemed to go on for a very long time, and when it finally
broke, they both gasped for breath.  Ruthie found something in the
sound of that breath unutterably funny, and fought to keep from
giggling (she was afraid that Albert would be insulted).  Unable
to, she covered her mouth and tried to laugh demurely into her
hand, which, for some reason, had also seemed incredibly funny to
her.  She looked at Albert, and he *did* look a bit insulted, then
the corners of his mouth started to twitch, and then they were both
laughing.  He kissed her again while they were smiling, and their
teeth clicked together, and that got them laughing all over again;
things had gotten back to normal between them (except that they'd
added kissing to their relational repertoire) and stayed that way
for months.
     In the twenty-nine years -- almost thirty -- since that day,
their relationship, as far as Ruthie could tell, had not changed
appreciably.  Granted, it took a little more than a kiss to release
the tension these days, and the release lasted quite a bit less
time, but the principle was the same.  This morning, things had
looked as bad as they possibly could; the air between them had been
charged with a dangerous, moody energy; the problems facing them
had seemed insurmountable, even unapproachable.  Now, only a few
hours later, Albert was re-setting the chess board, and Ruthie was
honestly evaluating their relationship and their son's custodial
wishes.  It was still a problem, but somehow, it seemed almost
solvable now.
     Ruthie laughed softly to herself.  I'm like a junkie after a
fix, she thought.  I could give a whole new meaning to Al-Anon.
     Albert set the black queen back down and looked at her.  "This
about right?"
     Ruthie glanced at the board.  It had been sitting in her
studio for months, untouched, and she had long ago memorized the
set up.  "Yeah," she said.  "Except that you captured my queen just
before... " 
     Albert smiled.  "Well, yeah, but see, while I was setting up
again, I saw what you were doing there.  You'd have won in two
moves." Ruthie sighed as if to say You caught me, although she
hadn't a clue what two moves he was talking about.  She played
chess intuitively, not by any set strategy, despite Albert's long-
held belief that she was a strategic genius in camouflage.  "Gutsy
gambit," he said, "but I'm not that easy."
     "Yeah, right."
     Albert laughed and came over to her, sliding his arms around
her from behind.  He kissed her cheek.  "Are you sure you won't
reconsider coming back?"
     She turned in his arms and held him easily.  "It was so good
to be with you again that I'd probably reconsider going back to
hell as Satan's consort."  She brushed her lips across the tip of
his nose.  "Luckily, I remember that being married to you is
somewhat more unpleasant."  Ruthie actually didn't remember
anything of the kind.  She couldn't really remember why she'd
divorced him (she could almost hear her mental voice clearing its
throat; she cut it off soundly), and she was just as glad.  All she
knew for sure was that she'd cried a lot during her marriage, and
she didn't want a refresher course on the reasons for it.  Right
now, Albert could be her friend (Yeah, sure, the voice put in dryly
before she could stop it) without too many bad thoughts crowding
in.
     "If that was hell," he said, "I don't mind going."
     Ruthie let him kiss her again, then smiled and walked away. 
She was warm and comfortable with Albert, but she knew that if she
let this go much further, they'd be back upstairs in a few minutes,
and Sid and Nate were due home soon.
     "I'm serious, Ruthie," Al said behind her.  "Will you at least
think about it?"
     Ruthie thought about it.  It could be good, it could be...
God, it could be *everything.*
     She felt suddenly disgusted with herself.  It wasn't just the
physical faithlessness, it was everything that went along with it. 
She was doing to Sid exactly what Albert had done to her during
their marriage -- holding on to an old love at any cost, even her
own happiness -- and she hated herself for it, but she couldn't
seem to stop.  Albert knew that he had forced Sid and Ruthie to
have only a civil marriage by refusing to grant her a Jewish
divorce, or _get_, when she asked for it; he didn't know that she
never would have asked if she hadn't known he would refuse.  Sid
knew the _get_ had been withheld, but he didn't know that the rabbi
Ruthie had gone to had told her he was willing to conduct a
religious ceremony anyway, to simply annul her former _ketubbah_,
her marriage contract with Albert, on the grounds that a marriage
to a Gentile wasn't Jewishly valid, anyway, and therefore not
subject to religious divorce laws, but Ruthie had refused to go
forward anyway.  Neither of them knew that she kept her _ketubbah_
in the lower right hand drawer of the desk in her studio, and that
she sometimes drank too much during the day, took it out of its
hiding place, and read it, over and over.  Neither of them knew
these things, but Ruthie did, and she felt small because of it.  
     Part of the smallness was shame over what she was doing to
Sid; he was a good man, and she never wanted to do anything to hurt
him.  Most of it, though, was humiliation.  Albert had been
everything to her -- her friend, her lover, her husband, her
brother, her father, her son -- and all she was to him was a second
choice, whose main distinguishing feature was a child that should
have been his.
     "Tell you what, Albert," she said.  "If you can look into my
eyes and tell me you love me and mean it, I'll divorce Sid and
leave with you tonight."
     He came to her, touched her cheek, looked into her eyes... and
turned away.
     Ruthie shook her head.  "Somehow, I didn't think I'd need to
start packing."
     "That's not fair, Ruthie.  You knew how things were from the
start.  You knew -- "
     "That you'd always love Beth," she finished for him.  Wanted
or not, the refresher course had come.  Everything that was wrong
with their marriage could be summed up in one word, and that word
was Beth.  Before Albert had met her, things had been okay between
them.  It might not have worked out in the end, but Ruthie had
never felt the kind of insecurity in her relationship with Albert
that she had felt since Beth entered their lives, and Albert's
roving eye (and various other roving body parts) had been a curable
nuisance rather than the defense mechanism it had been since Beth
left him.  Beth was more of a constant presence in his life now
than she had been during the marriage.
     It wasn't Beth the person, of course; Albert never even looked
for her, as far as Ruthie knew (and she was right).  It was Beth
the ghost, who Ruthie thought bore very little resemblance to the
real thing.  Ruthie had never been terribly fond of the real Beth,
but she hated the ghost, and would gladly tear its throat out with
her bare hands if it had one.
     Know about Beth?  She bit her lip.  "Yes.  I knew."
     "But you don't understand."
     "Like hell I don't.  I've loved you since I was ten years old,
Albert.  I was there before Beth, and I was there after her.  I
kept believing after she gave up, not that it ever mattered -- "
     "It mattered."
     " -- so don't tell me what I don't understand."
     "Then come home."
     "I *am* home.  I'm going to make my marriage work, I mean it. 
Sid loves me.  I have a life here, Al."
     "And what about Nate?"
     "Nate has a life here, too.  He has some little friends, he
goes to school, he's taking swimming lessons.  He has a home that
no one can take away from him.  He has everything you and I used to
dream about when we were kids."
     "Except a father."
     "He's got Sid."
     "Sid's not his father."
     "Well, neither are you."  She wanted to call the words back as
soon as she said them, but it was too late.  Where had that come
from?  Why, of all the things she could have said, had she pulled
the most hurtful thing she could think of from her mind?
     (Sort of like you did in '67, right?  Like when you decided it
was your business to tell Beth everything about what happened
before you left in '62, just because you were upset with her?  And
what if you hadn't told her?  Is is just possible that Al would
have found her waiting for him?)
     Ruthie had no answer for this.  It was a "what if" that she
didn't dare consider; it led to too many other "what if"s that it
was pointless to ponder.
     Albert stepped back, a little off balance.  "I never figured
it would come down to that with us, Ru."
     "I'm sorry, Albert.  I didn't mean it -- "
     "You meant it."
     "No, I didn't, I swear I didn't."  She touched his shoulder. 
"Albert, Nate's your son.  He couldn't be anyone else's, not ever."
     "But God forbid he should ever live with me."
     "No, no it's not that.  I just... "
     Albert came back to her, put his arms around her.  "I know,
Ru.  You don't want to lose him, either."
     "Oh, God, Albert.  How did we get here?"
     He just held her tighter.
     Ruthie closed her eyes.
     *Was* she thinking of Nate when she fought Albert on the
issue?  Or had he become, like her _ketubbah_, a spoil of war, a
victory to be secretly gloated over?  Was it another case of six
paces more hers than his (or in this case, nine months more)?
     Ever since she had learned she was pregnant, she had felt
fiercely protective (Don't you mean possessive?) of Nate; she had
been certain that somebody or something was trying to take him away
from her.  When he had spoken his first word -- Papa -- she had not
been thrilled at his accomplishment, but insanely jealous of its
content, like a child whose favorite pet took to another master.
     Dear God, she thought.  Don't let it be like that.
     The sound of Sid's car pulling into the driveway broke the
silence.  Ruthie went to the door to greet her husband and her son.
                               ***
     Nate had talked most of the way home, recapping (and
embellishing, Sam noted with amusement) the stories of the day. 
After the class had stopped fingerpainting, Molly had taken Nate
and several of the others -- mainly the suspicious ones -- outside
to the playground to look at leaves, and Sam thought he was going
to hear a description of each and every one that had been found. 
He didn't mind.  Nate was apparently like Al in one distinct way:
he loved the sound of his own voice.
     They pulled up to the house at around three o'clock, and Sam
stopped to wonder if he should procrastinate in the driveway to
give Ruthie time to cover up for whatever she was doing, but
decided against it.  It had been three hours, and she would know
what time her husband was expected.  Whatever should be covered
undoubtedly would be by now.  He got out of the car, helped Nate
with his seat belt, and went to the front door.
     He was glad that Sid Weiss was spared the experience of
arriving home that day.
     Ruthie came to the door with guilt written clearly on her
face.  Her cheeks were still flushed, and Sam noticed immediately
that she avoided meeting his eyes.  He doubted that Sid would have
needed anyone to tell him what she'd done.
     Nate ran in, carrying his fingerpainting in one hand, and
Ruthie swooped down to help him with his coat.
     "Did you have a good day in school?" she asked.
     Nate nodded unenthusiastically as she undid the buttons at his
throat.
     "What did you do?"
     "Stuff."
     She unzipped the coat the rest of the way down, and freed him
of it.  He ran to Al, holding the picture out excitedly.  "Here,
Pop.  I painted this of you."
     Al knelt to face him and took the painting.  "Hey, you know,
you're pretty good at this.  Like your Mama."
     Sam saw a faint smile cross Ruthie's face.  Al looked up at
her, and something passed between them that Sam thought Sid would
have had to have been deaf, blind, and dumb to miss.
     Nate kept talking.  "Everybody was being really stupid today. 
They were saying Sid wasn't Sid, and Lori Fox said there was a
ghost in the hall, and then she started crying... "
     Al smiled.  "Sounds like you had a busy day, Sid."
     Sam nodded.  "That's life with five-year-olds."
     Not to be sidetracked, Nate tugged on his father's sleeve to
regain his attention.  "Lori Fox is really dumb, though.  She cries
about everything.  I didn't see any ghost.  There are no such
things as ghosts."
     "Who says?" Al asked.
     "Mama says."
     "Oh."
     Al had decided not to contradict Ruthie, but Nate had detected
the disagreement in his voice.  "Do you believe in ghosts, Pop?"
     "You know, I never really thought about it."  He scratched his
head.  "I think there might be a ghost or two.  Maybe down on
Roosevelt Road, right, Ru?"
     She laughed.  "*I* never saw anything on Roosevelt Road
scarier than Myra Boychik with her makeup rubbed off."
     "Now, that's not very nice."  Al turned back to Nate.  "Your
mom's being mean."
     "Who's Myra Boychik?"
     "Another of your father's breakfast guests," Ruthie said.
     "Oh.  Was she a good cook?"
     "Gourmet," Al said.
     Sam laughed.  It was good to see Al this way, happy and whole. 
Whatever else could be said about the afternoon's events, it had
certainly calmed Ruthie down, and Al was clearly responding to it. 
Sam let himself enjoy it; he didn't have his own family, but being
in Al's was almost as good.  Somewhere behind him, he heard Ruthie
say, "Albert?"
     Al didn't hear her.  
     Then, more firmly:  "Albert."
     Al turned.  "What is it, Ruthie?"
     She took a deep breath, and Sam suddenly knew what was coming;
before he could think of any way to stop it, she said, "Why don't
we try it for six months?  See how it works."
     "Try what?" Nate asked.
     Ruthie shrugged. "You want to live with your Pop.  I think
that's your decision to make.  How about you go back with him on
Wednesday morning?  And then, in six months, we'll see what
everyone wants."
     Nate's face lit up, and he ran to his mother and threw his
arms around her neck.  She lifted him easily, and kissed his
forehead.
     Al stood and took a few steps toward her, seemed to remember
that her husband was present, stopped, then bent forward and kissed
her cheek.  "Thank you, Ruthie," he said.
     Sam cursed himself.  He had done exactly what Al had told him
he would do: sacrificed Nate in is absorption with Al and Ruthie. 
He tried to salvage.  "Ruthie -- "
     She turned to him, mildly surprised to hear him speak.  "What
is it, Sid?"
     "But... " Inspiration struck.  "You don't want to just pull
him out of school in the middle of the year, do you?"
     "Sid, no offense, but it's just kindergarten."  Ruthie put a
hand on his arm.  "And last I knew, Nate was a little ahead of the
class."
     "I just -- "
     She shook her head.  "Look, Sid, I appreciate the concern, but
it's my decision, and Nate's, and Al's."  She passed Nate over to
Al.  "Do you guys think you can handle dinner?  I have to get ready
for my class."
     "Sure, Mama," Nate said.
     "Ruthie -- " Sam stopped her on the stairs.  She turned to
him, exasperated.  He could think of nothing else to re-open the
subject.  He was too late.  "What class?" he asked weakly.
     "The class I teach.  At Northwestern.  Every Monday and
Wednesday, three semesters running, sweetheart."
     "Oh.  Yeah.  That class."
     She disappeared up the stairs.  Al didn't spare "Sid Weiss"
another glance before carrying his son into the kitchen, leaving
Sam Beckett alone in the entrance hall.
                               ***
     Al made a quiet phone call while Ruthie was changing and Nate
was playing in the living room.
     "Is this a clean line?" Leopold asked.
     "No," Al said.  "Did you get my telegram?"
     "Yes."
     "And?"
     "And we checked on it.  Carefully."
     "What did you find?"
     "I found a jealous ex-husband making a lot out of a co-
incidence."
     "It was pretty big co-incidence."
     There was a pause on Leopold's end; Al wondered if he was
revising the story, but rejected it.  "It was unusual," Leopold
admitted.  "One in a million chance.  But it happened."
     "You're sure?"
     "We don't make that kind of mistake, Calavicci."
     Al rubbed his temple.  "Well, I figured better safe than
sorry, right?"
     "Always a good policy."
     Al hung up, still troubled.  
     A jealous ex-husband making a lot out of a co-incidence.
     Well, it wasn't totally unfounded, he supposed.  But he still
had a feeling that there was more to Sid's 
     (Star Bright Project... )
     knowledge than a simple lucky guess.  He felt it deep in his
bones.
     "Who was that?" Ruthie asked from the door.  She had changed
into a red blouse and a grey skirt, and swept her hair up into some
kind of twist.  She looked every inch the sophisticated professor
of fine arts; the skinny little girl in oversized clothes that Al
had known long ago had disappeared.
     "Wrong number," he said.
     She smiled, and suddenly the little girl was back, perhaps
playing dress-up, but certainly here.  "Another famous Calavicci
wrong number," she said.  "I seem to recall quite a few of those. 
And the funniest thing about them -- the phone never rings first."
     "Okay," Al said.  "I was calling my CO.  No big deal."
     "M, this is double-oh-seven, checking in," she intoned,
muffling her voice with a hand over her mouth.
     "You really think I'm a spy, don't you?"
     "Well, as inconspicuous as you are, how could they miss?"  She
planted her tongue deep in her cheek, then laughed.
     "I'm sorry about earlier," Al said.
     "Which part of it?"
     "All of it.  It was wrong."
     She smiled.  "You weren't the only one involved.  I could've
said no, you know.  You're not *that* irresistible, Albert."
     "I'm not?"
     She rolled her eyes, and walked over to the oven and peeked
inside.  "What have we got here?"
     "Lasagna.  I know you never cook Italian when I'm not around."
     "Who says I don't?  You think a Polish Jew can't make a
marinara sauce?"
     "Nate says you don't.  And judging from experience... "  He
shrugged theatrically.  "I thought of a few other things, but Nate
says Sid's trying to keep kosher?"
     She nodded.  "We both are, at home anyway."
     "Everything I could think of that wasn't pasta had meat and
milk in it."
     "We can live with lasagna."  She poked her finger at the top
of the dish, and pulled it away quickly.  "I think it's done."
     "Because you burned your finger?"
     "Because it's pulling away from the sides of the pan."  She
put her finger in her mouth.  "I just wanted to try the sauce.  It
needs more garlic."
     "Too late."
     Al set the lasagna on the table and got a serving spoon from
the rack above the stove while Ruthie rounded up Nate and Sid.  A
few minutes later, they were gathered at the table, and Ruthie said
a short blessing over the wine (Sid didn't join her, which struck
Al as odd, but he didn't comment) then poured each of the adults a
glass, and gave Nate a dollop in a glass of cold water.  Nate
sampled it and held it out for more.
     "I don't think so," Ruthie said.
     "It tastes like the refrigerator," Nate said.
     "Then you can have milk."
     "Please, Mama."
     "I said no," Ruthie told him sternly.  "You don't talk back to
grownups.  What do you say?"
     "Sorry, Mama," Nate mumbled, and resigned himself to the weak
cocktail.
     "Excuse me," Sid said, standing up.  "I have to -- "  He
looked at the stairs.
     "Are you okay?"
     Sid shook his head and went upstairs.
     "What's wrong with Sid?" Nate asked.
     "I don't know.  Was he sick in school today?"
     "No."
     Ruthie bit her lip.  "I'm going to go up and check on him." 
She followed him.
     Al looked at the empty places at the table.
     A jealous ex-husband.
     Oh, yeah.  That much was true.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Barbara