He slid the ring over to Ruth so she could see the details. She picked it up. It was heavier than she had thought. She held it to her eye and looked through its center at Art. He was so gentle. He was not judgmental. She felt a squeezing in her heart that both hurt her and made her want to giggle and shout. How could she not love him?

As she gathered up Art's clothes at the dry cleaner's, Ruth flexed her big toe and remembered she was supposed to call Wendy. Mrs. Scott and a boy toy, what a shock. She decided to wait until she was in the parking lot by the grocery store, rather than risk a head-on collision during a juicy cell-phone conversation.

She and Wendy were the same age. They had known each other since the sixth grade, but had gone through periods when they did not see each other for years. Their friendship had grown via accidental reunions and persistence on Wendy's part. While Wendy was not the person Ruth would have chosen for her closest friend, Ruth was glad it had turned out to be so. She needed Wendy's boisterousness as balance to her own caution, Wendy's bluntness as antidote to her reserve. "Stop being such a worrywort," Wendy often ordered. Or "You don't always have to act so fucking polite," she might say. "You're making me look like shit."

Wendy answered on the first ring. "Can you believe it?" she said, as though she had not stopped repeating this since their last conversation. "And I thought she was over the top when she had the facelift. Last night she told me that she and Patrick were getting it on twice a night. She's telling me this-me, the daughter she once sent to confession for asking how babies were made."

Ruth imagined Mrs. Scott taking off her Chanel suit, her trifocals, her diamond-encrusted designer crucifix, then embracing her beach boy.

"She's getting more sex than I am," Wendy exclaimed. "I can't remember the last time I even wanted to do anything in bed with Joe except sleep."

Wendy had often joked about her dwindling sex drive. But Ruth didn't think she meant it was absent. Would this happen to her as well? She and Art were not exactly the red-hot lovers they'd been in earlier years. They prepared less for romance and accepted more readily excuses of fatigue. She wiggled a toe: Get estrogen levels checked. That might be the reason she felt a sense of unease, fluctuating hormones. She had no other reason to feel anxious. Not that her life was perfect, but whatever problems she had, they were small. And she should keep them that way. She vowed to be more affectionate with Art.

"I can see why you're upset," Ruth consoled her.

"Actually, I'm more worried than upset," Wendy said. "It's just weird. It's like the older she gets, the younger she acts. And part of me says, Good for her, you go, girl. And the other part is like, Whoa. Is she crazy or what? Do I have to watch over her now, act like her mother and make sure she doesn't get herself in trouble? You know what I mean?"

"I've been that way with my mother all my life," Ruth said. Suddenly she remembered what had been eluding her. Her mother was supposed to see the doctor at four this afternoon. Over the past year, Ruth had been vaguely worried about her mother's health. Nothing was terribly wrong; it was just that LuLing seemed slightly off, hazy. For a while, Ruth had reasoned that her mother was tired, that her hearing might be going, or that her English was getting worse. As a precaution, Ruth had also gnawed over the worst possibilities-brain tumor, Alzheimer's, stroke- believing this would ensure that it was not these things. History had always proven that she worried for nothing. But a few weeks before, when her mother mentioned she had an appointment for a checkup, Ruth said she would drive her.

After she and Wendy finished their conversation, Ruth stepped out of the car and walked toward the grocery store, still thinking. Nine, Mom's doctor. And she started to count on her ringers the questions she should ask the doctor. Thank God she could speak once again.

In the vegetable aisle, Ruth headed toward a bin of beautifully shaped turnips. They were each the size of apples, symmetrical and scrubbed, with striations of purple. Most people did not appreciate the aesthetics of turnips, Ruth thought as she chose five good ones, whereas she loved them, their crunchiness, the way they absorbed the flavor of whatever they were immersed in, gravy or pickling juice. She loved cooperative vegetables. And she loved turnips best when they were sliced into wedges and preserved in vinegar and chilies, sugar and salt.

Every year, before their family reunion dinner in September, her mother started two new fermenting jars of spicy turnips, one of which she gave to Ruth. When Ruth was a little girl, she called them la-la, hot-hot. She would suck and munch on them until her tongue and lips felt inflamed and swollen. She still gorged on them from time to time. Was it a craving for salt, or for pain? When the supply grew low, Ruth would toss in more chopped-up turnips and a pinch of salt, and let them pickle for a few days. Art thought the taste was okay in small doses. But the girls said they smelled like "something farted in the fridge." At times Ruth secretly ate the spicy turnips in the morning, her way of seizing the day. Even her mother considered that strange.

Her mother-and Ruth tapped her ring finger to remind herself again of the doctor's appointment. Four o'clock. She had to squeeze a lot of work into the shortened day. She hurried, grabbing Fuji apples for Fia, Granny Smiths for Dory, Braeburns for Art.

At the meat counter, she evaluated the options. Dory would not eat anything with eyes, and ever since seeing that pig movie Babe, Fia had been trying to be a vegetarian. Both girls made an exception for fish, because seafood was "not cute." When they announced that, Ruth said to them, "Just because something isn't cute, is its life worth less? If a girl wins a beauty contest, is she better than a girl who doesn't?" And Fia scrunched up her face and replied: "What are you talking about? Fish don't enter beauty contests."

Ruth now pushed her cart toward the fish counter. She longed for prawns in the shell, always her first choice. Art wouldn't eat them, however. He claimed that the predominant taste of any crustacean or mollusk was that of its alimentary tract. She settled on Chilean sea bass. "That one," she told the man at the counter. Then she reconsidered: "Actually, give me the bigger one." She might as well ask her mother to dinner, since they were already going to the doctor's together. LuLing was always complaining she didn't like to cook for just herself.

At the checkout counter, Ruth saw a woman in front of her scoop up bunches of ivory- and peach-colored tulips, at least fifty dollars' worth. Ruth was amazed at how some people casually bought flowers as household staples, as if they were as necessary as toilet paper. And tulips, of all choices! They wilted and dropped their petals after a few days. Was the woman having an important dinner party on a weeknight? When Ruth bought flowers, she had to assess their value in several ways to justify what she bought. Daisies were cheerful and cheap, but they had an unpleasant smell. Baby's breath was even cheaper, but as Gideon pointed out, it was the lowest of floral low taste, what old queens used, along with lace doilies they inherited from their grandmothers. Tuberoses smelled wonderful and gave an architectural touch, but they were expensive at this store, nearly four dollars a stalk. At the flower mart, they were only a dollar. She liked hydrangeas in a pot. They were making a comeback, and while they cost a lot, they lasted a month or two, if you remembered to water them. The trick was to cut them before they died, then let them dry in a pottery pitcher, so you could keep them as a permanent floral arrangement, that is, until someone like Art threw them out, citing that they were already dead.