Chapter 8
Over the following weeks, Ruth struggled to get CeeCee's words out of her mind. It haunted her, echoing in her ears long after her roommate fell asleep. It took ages for Ruth to figure out what, specifically, about it bothered her so much. It was that she knew she would never meet Quentin’s family, not the way CeeCee had, and this fact was beginning to break her heart.
After all, she was deeply, deeply in love with him at this point.
Of course, she never mentioned this fear to Quentin.
On Halloween night, Ruth and Quentin were out on the streets, holding hands and watching other Yale revelers, many of them dressed in costumes and already blurry with alcohol.
Ruth was still sober, saving herself for a party she and Quentin planned to attend later.
But Quentin was boisterous and laughing, urging Ruth to go into a little bar at the end of the block for a warm-up drink.
Although Ruth was tough, she didn’t like to say no to a little bit of fun with Quentin.
They slipped into the little dive and sat at the bar, gazing into each other’s eyes.
Quentin ordered them two beers, and the bartender didn’t card them.
Maybe he knew who Quentin’s family was, or maybe he didn’t care.
“What are you going to dress up as later?” Quentin asked her.
Ruth laughed. “I haven’t thought about it. I’ve never dressed up for Halloween.”
Quentin was taken aback. “You’re kidding me. Not even when you were younger?”
Ruth didn’t always love conversations about her past. She didn’t like how they seemed to draw a thicker and thicker divide between Ruth’s existence and Quentin’s. But she said, “There was too much to do. Too many little kids underfoot. Halloween felt like just another day.”
Quentin crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “You know, I want to meet them. Your family. All your siblings.” He wet his lips. “Do they know about me?”
Ruth nearly gasped with laughter, then sucked it in at the last minute. How could she explain the existence of Quentin to her family, a family who clearly didn’t care about her enough to write to her, call her, or visit her? Not that she blamed them. There was no money.
“They’re so busy. They’re so far away,” Ruth said tentatively, touching Quentin’s shoulder. She didn’t want him to know that he didn’t matter to them. Quentin wasn’t accustomed to not mattering.
“But what are you doing for Christmas?” Quentin asked. “You must be going home.”
Ruth hadn’t really considered Christmas.
During December, the dorms would be closed, and everyone would be forced to vacate, but she hadn’t considered where she might go.
Maybe, she contemplated, she could go back to Nantucket and visit Missy and her restaurateur boyfriend.
Maybe she could celebrate with a long, gray walk along the sand.
“I’ll work something out.” Ruth shrugged.
Quentin leaned back, his face marred with surprise, as though the idea of not going home for Christmas was sacrilegious. And then, he said something that Ruth knew he would regret. “Why don’t you come home with me?”
Ruth gave him a look. “Come on, Quentin. You don’t mean that.”
“Why not? I mean everything I say,” Quentin told her, throwing a hand to the side. “Haven’t I always kept my word? I told you that my family would get you into Yale and look at you. You’re like the best student Yale’s ever had.”
“I don’t know about that.” Ruth’s heart swelled.
Quentin took her hand and covered it with kisses. “I want you to meet my family. I want you to sit in my parents’ house and eat all our incredible Christmas foods. I want to hear you argue with my mother about the Bronte sisters and Moby-Dick. Please. It would mean the world to me.”
And at that moment, Ruth knew she needed to say no. She knew she needed to tell him that he was delusional, that their worlds couldn’t come together, and they would regret it. But Quentin’s eyes were enormous, expectant, and filled with love. How could she refuse?
Over the next six weeks, from November 1st to their December 16th departure to his parents’ place, Ruth bubbled with fear.
Dina, Reese, and Kelly were overjoyed for her, frequently taking her shopping and trying to help her decide what to wear for every iteration of the Caldweck family parties—from small affairs to bigger celebrations.
By now in the semester, her friends had caught wind of how little money Ruth came from, and to Ruth’s surprise, they didn’t care at all.
Because Dina’s family was very, very wealthy—if not as wealthy as the Caldwecks—she often purchased outfits for Ruth, or pretended that she’d purchased them for herself and then given them to Ruth, saying they didn’t fit her.
Ruth couldn’t believe she had such wonderful friends. She couldn’t believe she’d gotten so lucky. Sometimes she felt like Cinderella, after she’d met the prince and moved into the castle.
During Thanksgiving, Ruth stayed on campus, while Quentin returned to Bluebell Cove, Maine, to dine with his family and tell them she was coming home with him for Christmas.
Ruth teamed up with a few other stragglers on campus, eating in a Chinese restaurant not far from the dorms and laughing together over crab rangoon.
All the while, she was anxious about how Quentin’s time in Bluebell Cove was going.
What if his parents flat-out refused to let her visit?
Quentin returned to Yale Sunday evening, his belly swollen from so many treats. He picked her up and kissed her and said, “My family can’t wait to meet you.” But there was a glint in his eye that told Ruth something was amiss. She couldn’t say what.
On December 16th, Quentin and Ruth packed up Quentin’s now fully closed convertible and headed up to Maine.
Throughout the drive, soft snow fell and melted on the windshield, and Ruth felt as though they were moving through an enormous snow globe, bubbling with love.
They couldn’t shut up, not about what had happened last semester, not about Ruth’s recently written paper about W.G.
Sebald, not about anything. Quentin couldn’t stop kissing her hand.
Bluebell Cove was a quaint little oceanside village, with enormous cliffs that gave it a romantic, dangerous feel. Quentin parked near the cliffs, not far from a ramshackle inn called the Bluebell Cove Inn, and they stood at the edge, gazing at the thunderous water below.
“I can’t believe you grew up here,” Ruth said, shaking her head. It was the polar opposite of her swampy Virginian home.
After that, Quentin drove them the rest of the way to his parents’ iconic mansion: a gothic structure with thick pillars, trailing vines, and high fences surrounding the property.
As she stepped up the stairs to the front door, Ruth’s legs shook.
Quentin looked pale with nerves, too. But as soon as the door opened, they were rushed into a world of warmth and wealth and books and intellectualism and beautiful firelight.
Ruth couldn’t believe it. What had she been so worried about?
Quentin’s parents, Henrietta and George Caldweck, were in their mid-forties and incredibly good-looking, with clothing that spoke of having shopped only for the finest fabrics in Europe.
Henrietta took both of Ruth’s hands in hers and said, “I hear that you’ve been Yale’s most wonderful new addition. Congratulations, darling.”
“I wouldn’t be there without you both,” Ruth said. “Thank you again.”
“Oh, it was only a phone call or two,” George said, turning around from the drink cart and handing over two exquisite cocktails.
Ruth sipped hers, surprised at the intensity and complexity of flavors. It was nothing like the alcoholic juice she often drank at frat parties.
That first night, George and Henrietta showed endless curiosity about Ruth’s educational career, the professors she’d worked with, and her dreams of the future.
Ruth played along, showing off her intellectual curiosity.
Often, she looked over at Quentin, expecting him to be smiling.
After all, wasn’t this going well? But Quentin seemed to drop deeper into himself.
He rarely smiled, and he hardly ever joined in on the conversation.
Ruth chalked it up to him being tired from the drive.
Over the next few days, Ruth fell into a rhythm at the iconic Caldweck house. She met everyone from famous writers to diplomats, to professors at other universities, to colleagues at George’s firm. Ruth was always ready for a conversation. She was always ready to turn her brain on.
Quentin’s brother and sister, Ren and Sissy, were maybe the cagiest around her.
They didn’t speak to her often, and when they did, they asked her questions about Virginia that she tried to skirt around.
After five days at the Caldweck house, as they got ready for bed, Ruth finally mustered the nerve to ask Quentin about them.
He shrugged and said they were just curious.
“I can’t help but think they’re trying to point out how different we are,” Ruth said, pulling a brush through her hair.
“Well, we are different,” Quentin said.
Ruth felt it like a slap, then told herself it was fine. Quentin was only speaking the truth.
In fact, it wasn’t till the night before Ruth and Quentin were set to drive back to Yale that Ruth realized just how blind she’d been to what was going on during her two weeks at the Caldweck house.
For days, she’d eaten well, laughed often, spoken about everything, and tried to fit herself into their beautiful and overwhelming family.
For days, she’d thought she’d succeeded.
But not long after their final dinner, she walked past George’s study and overheard his conversation with Quentin’s brother, Ren.
“It’s, of course, outrageous what he’s doing to her,” Ren was saying. “Parading her through here like she’s some kind of proof that he’s better than the rest of us.”
“She’s a charity case. Nothing more,” George said, laughing with his eldest son. “Please, don’t think ill of your brother. He’s doing his best. You remember how desperate he was last year. Depressed. Out of his mind. Who was it he was dating?”
“CeeCee Randall,” Ren said.
“That’s right. She was a fine girl,” George said.
“Didn’t you make a fool of her at her own birthday party?” Ren asked.
George laughed uproariously. “Is that all I did? I remember it a bit differently.”
Thinking she might burst into tears, Ruth scampered away from the study and went into the bedroom she shared with Quentin.
Her heartbeat was so fast she thought she might collapse.
For a long time, she sat at the edge of the bed, wondering why she’d thought she could fit into this family.
Had she actually thought that her love for Quentin was enough?
Oh, but she was enraged, too. Quentin had invited her here. For some reason, he’d made it up in his mind that she would be okay, that they’d like her. And maybe they did like her in a sense. But they also saw her the way George had said it: a charity case.
During the drive back to Yale, Ruth was quiet. Quentin tried to drum up conversation, but they were both so exhausted from their two weeks away that it went nowhere.
When Quentin cut the engine outside of Ruth’s dorm, it was seven degrees Fahrenheit, and Ruth was blurry-eyed with sorrow. She told herself to thank Quentin for Christmas. She told herself to let everything return to how it had been during their blissful semester together. But she couldn’t.
She turned and looked at him. “Quentin,” she breathed. “Do you really see a future with me? Do you really think I’ll be your mother’s daughter-in-law? Your sister’s sister-in-law?”
Quentin closed his eyes for a long time, which felt like all the answer Ruth needed.
Without missing a beat, Ruth opened the door, grabbed her things, and went into her dorm.
She half expected Quentin to chase her, to tell her that he didn’t care about his family and his love for her was much more powerful than all that, but she reasoned that one of his parents had probably already talked to him and told him he had to end it sooner rather than later.
Good for him, she thought. Ruth had gone ahead and done it for him. She’d let him off the hook.