Drowning Ruth (40 page)

I pulled at the sheet, trying to take it from her. “I know I shouldn't have ruined so much, but she has a lot. I really don't think she'll miss it.”

“No, I mean Imogene. Imogene'll know it, won't she?” She ran her fingers lightly, caressingly over the page. “This is what she uses there every day. My Imogene would remember such high-quality paper.”

After I'd gone to bed, she drew a light pencil line to be sure she'd cut perfectly straight and sliced the spoiled ends off with the kitchen shears. The next morning she'd arranged the five sheets in a row beside my plate. “Which one looks best to you, Ruth? Which one is straightest?”

I didn't want to look at them. “I don't know,” I said, as sullenly as I dared.

She looked hurt. “I thought you understood, Ruth, that this is for the best. For Imogene. You want to help Imogene, don't you? These little love affairs, they don't mean very much. Believe me.” She tried to put her hand on my head, but I ducked. She wasn't thinking about Imogene. She was only thinking of herself. “How about this one?” she asked, pointing to a sheet.

Though I gave her no answer, she pretended I'd agreed. “We'll try this one first then.”

“He probably has his own stationery,” I said.

She seemed to consider this, then shook her head. “I don't see how you could get any of that without actually stealing it. Even if you could get into his room, you don't know where he keeps it.”

“I'm not sneaking into his room!”

“Of course not. I wouldn't ask you to do anything like that.” She patted my shoulder. It had been the same, I remembered, when she was keeping me home from school. She was always touching me, reassuring herself that I was with her, that we were in this together. I'd liked it then.

When I got home that afternoon, she pushed a piece of brown paper and a pen at me. “Ruth, you have to help me with this.” She led me to the kitchen table and tried to maneuver me into a chair. “I can't get it to sound right, like he'd say it. You know him, Ruth. You know what he'd say.”

“I'm going to hang up my coat.”

“Ruth, please,” she said, following me, holding out her pitiful sheet of paper in both hands. “Please, Ruth. I can't do this by myself.”

She wouldn't leave me alone. She would never leave me alone. I snatched the paper and threw myself into the chair. I made the chair legs scrape hard against the floor, scratching the wood. But, as I sat with the blank page in front of me, Aunt Mandy hovering near my shoulder, nervously rubbing the scar on her thumb, I
knew something had shifted between us. Not that she wanted my help—she was always wanting my help, my advice, my opinion. But before this she'd ask me what I thought only to confirm what she'd already decided. When she asked if I liked the striped yellow curtains or the ones with the tiny red wheelbarrows printed on them, she knew which she liked, or which, as she would say, were best. I usually guessed right, and she was pleased. But this was different. This time she really needed my help; this time she really thought I did know best. She really couldn't do this thing without me.

“Sit down,” I said, picking up the pen. “I can't think with you hanging over me like that.” And then I began to write.

After all, we had to do it.

No, those are her words. We didn't have to do that—there were other courses. But secretly, so secretly I hardly admitted it to myself, I wanted to do this as much as Aunt Mandy did. I even wished our story were true.

Aunt Mandy was pleased with the sixth draft. “This is perfect, Ruth. Perfect. I never would have thought to say it like this.”

Dear Ruth,

I come to you in my darkest hour to ask your advice, since I know you love Imogene and would, above all others, know how best to make her happy. Something has happened to me that I can't explain or even understand myself, something I would've given all my future happiness to have avoided. There is no pretty way to put it, so I'll say it out in all its hideousness—I've fallen in love with another. Yes, there it is. Imogene will always be dear to me, but dear as a sister, not as a wife. That is my terrible secret.

I'll keep it secret, Ruth, if you so advise. I know Imogene and I could have a fine life together. I know I could make her comfortable
and happy. But wouldn't I be wrong to marry her now, knowing how I feel about someone else? Were I to let her go, wouldn't she soon find someone better who would love her as she deserves? I believe it's true, and yet I can't bear to hurt her. I want to do as she would wish, and I write to you as one who knows her wishes better than anyone. What shall I do?

I thought it was a little formal. Words like “darkest hour” and “hideousness” and “future happiness” sounded unnatural, as if I'd copied them from a book, but Aunt Mandy claimed the letter was exactly the way a man would write, if he were trying to show he was taking a matter seriously.

We had a model for his signature from a book he'd lent me, but we couldn't copy his hand well enough to write the whole thing out. Anyway, Aunt Mandy reasoned, Imogene probably wouldn't think it odd that Arthur would type such a letter. Who knew what form a message like that should take?

I was supposed to type it during the noon break, but when I pulled it out of my satchel the next day, I could hardly stand to look at it. I would have thrown it in the trash, if I hadn't worried that someone like Myrtle or Lillian would pull it out.

“There were too many people around,” I lied when I got home. “I don't see how I'm going to be able to do it.”

Aunt Mandy went upstairs and closed her door.

In the morning, though, she was cheerful again. “I just know you'll get a chance to type it today, Ruth,” she said. “We have to do this as soon as possible. You never know what might happen.”

That day at noon, when Lillian, who'd gone out to the corridor to get her sandwich, came running back in, squealing, “A lady's got kittens out there,” I knew who the lady was. One of our barn cats was just weaning her late litter.

I would never have thought that a box of kittens would distract
a roomful of business students, but it did. Or at least it kept the girls I usually ate with from wondering why I was pecking away at my machine. Even Myrtle, who came back in when I was in the middle of the second paragraph, had a gray tabby clinging to her shoulder.

“You never said your aunt was so nice, Ruth. She thinks this little sweetie is just perfect for me.” She kissed its head, and the kitten, scared to be so high off the ground, cried plaintively. “Baby, what's the trouble?” she cooed, cradling it at her breast. “I'll finish that for you, if you want to go out and say hello. Brown'll never know the difference.”

“I'm almost done,” I said, as lightly as I could, and waved her away.

I'd typed slowly and made only three mistakes. These I corrected by covering the words with x's. The errors didn't bother me. A letter like that shouldn't be perfect.

That evening I remembered my grandfather's pen with its thick stock, made for a masculine hand, and without prodding I dipped it in black ink and practiced writing Arthur's name over and over until the signature looked identical to the one in my book, until I could sign “Arthur Owens” to that letter as if writing my own name. Aunt Mandy's eyes, across the table, shone in the lamplight. We had done it.

That night we couldn't bear to part, even for sleep. She followed me into my room and watched me undress, and when she'd pulled the covers over my shoulder, she lay on top of them beside me, as she had when I was a child, so that I fell asleep, pinned tight under the quilt, her head behind mine on the pillow.

When I awoke, I could hear her already in the kitchen, grinding the coffee. In the fresh dawn, the letter on my nightstand looked blatantly false. But I would try it, I told myself, for Aunt Mandy's sake. If it didn't work, there was always the truth.

“Yes?” Ellen said, answering the door. “Oh, it's you.” She frowned. “I don't think Mrs. Owens is doing any work today. Anyway, Miss Lindgren is here.”

“It's Genie, Miss Lindgren, I want to see.”

“Miss Lindgren shouldn't be inviting her friends here, time like this.”

“She didn't invite me. I mean, I won't stay long. I just need to talk to her about something. It's very important.”

“Something about Mr. Owens? You know something?”

Ruth shook her head, surprised. “No, nothing like that.”

Ellen shut the door without another word, and Ruth waited uncertainly. She was about to knock again when Imogene opened the door.

“Ruth!” Imogene threw her arms around her friend. “How'd you know I wanted you to come? Let's go for a walk,” she said, pulling the door closed behind her. “I have to get out of this house.

“I'm worried,” she said as they wandered down the slope to the edge of the lake. “I don't know if they'd rather he ran away or was dead.”

Drawn by the scudding waves, winking with white-gold sunbursts, they kept walking to the end of the pier. A keen edge to the wind, a hint of the meanness to come, routed the vestiges of summer. If not for the disappearance of Clement Owens, the pier on which they stood would have been dismantled days before, the house in which all of the Owenses now gathered would have emptied.

Ruth was giddy with nervousness. “I've got to show you something,” she said finally, drawing the letter from her pocket with shaking fingers. Her heart beat so hard as she passed the paper into Imogene's hand that she thought it might suddenly cause her to leap into the water like a frog.

The wind tugged at the page, but Imogene held it firmly, reading it once and then again. “I don't understand. He sent this to you?”

Ruth nodded.

“When?”

“A day or two ago maybe. I'm not sure. It came in the mail yesterday.”

Imogene read the letter again. “I don't understand,” she repeated. “How can he love someone else? Who else is there?” She looked at Ruth with eyes so stricken that Ruth's fingers quivered to snatch back the page and expose her lie. She didn't want it to be true anymore. No, she wanted to cry, he loves you, only you.

“It's impossible. He hasn't even seen anyone else. I don't believe it.” She held the letter up to read it again.

The paper shivering in Imogene's hand started an answering tremble in Ruth's limbs and jaw. She clenched her teeth and trained her eyes on the white triangle of a sail skimming the waves far out on the water. Under her feet, the boards rose and fell sickeningly. Imogene's hand gripped her arm, and she turned, following her friend's gaze toward the shore. Arthur was coming down the pier toward them.

At first Ruth panicked at the idea of being caught in her lie. Their lie. Aunt Mandy's and hers. She had to hold herself still to keep from yanking her arm from Imogene's grasp and bolting off the pier. Shh, she told herself, shh. She closed her eyes. If they found out, all right. All right. Wasn't that what she'd wanted from the beginning? She'd tried, for Aunt Mandy's sake, but it hadn't worked. Arthur would swear he hadn't written the letter, and Imo-gene would believe him. They would look at her, mystified. What did she know?

She'd tell them the truth. It would be hard, especially now with Clement Owens missing, to say such things about his father,
their father, and Aunt Mandy would be angry. Aunt Mandy, betrayed, would be … Ruth couldn't even imagine … crazy? Murderous?

Already, Imogene was holding the letter out to him. “Arthur, is this true?”

“Is what true? Is it something about my father? What does it say?”

“Don't pretend with me. You know what it says. Just tell me if it's true.”

He tried to take the letter, but she jerked it from his fingers. “Just tell me,” she demanded, snapping the words and thrusting her face at him, defiantly. “Do you love someone else?” Her final words dissolved into a sob, and as she pronounced them, she lost her grip on the page, and the wind, seizing its chance, whipped the letter away.

No, Genie, Ruth thought desperately, of course he doesn't. She could almost hear him saying those words, could almost see him pulling Imogene close against his warm body to reassure her.

But he stepped back. “Why are you asking me this now?” His face twisted in anger. “My father may be dead. I can't talk about this now!”

“I don't want to talk about it.” Imogene's voice was calm, but she reached behind her, trying to find Ruth's hand. “I only want a simple answer. Yes or no.”

Arthur looked down. He looked, Ruth thought, like a shamed little boy. The water, rolling pebbles along the shore, was deafening. Answer, she thought, say no. But the lifeline she was trying silently to throw him fell short.

“I don't know,” he whispered.

Imogene gasped and swayed, and Ruth lifted her arms to catch her, but the weakness lasted only an instant. Surging forward, she shoved at Arthur's chest with both hands. She wasn't very strong—if he'd stood firm, he probably could have kept his balance, but,
perhaps from surprise or out of politeness or because he saw a means of escape, he staggered back and fell off the pier with a splash. Imogene ran then, limping on her sore ankle, across the steep lawn and up the drive behind the house, her sleeves and skirt billowing like sails.