Drowning Ruth (41 page)

Imogene was waiting for me halfway along the dirt lane that snaked up the hill to the main road. She'd gone just far enough to be out of sight of the house, before she veered into the woods and collapsed on the ground, sobbing. I sank down beside her, but I couldn't touch her. Guilt hugged me all around, pinning my arms at my sides. Her misery was my doing, mine and Aunt Mandy's. Like witches, we'd made Arthur love someone else.

“I feel like such a fool,” Imogene said finally, lifting her head and wiping her nose.

“You're not a fool.” Edging closer toward telling her the truth, I reached to touch her hair. “He loves you,” I said. I would have said anything to please her, but I believed this to be true. “He told me so himself that day I was here.”

“You saw him that day?” Imogene sniffed, raising herself until she was sitting up, leaning against a tree.

“Yes, we …” but I changed my mind and didn't go on. Remembering that afternoon made me squirm. I folded my hands in my lap, trying not to think of how I'd felt when his finger had brushed my forehead. “He said you were something,” I said loudly. “He said any man would be lucky to marry you.”

“Any man but him, I guess.” Imogene was yanking at the feathery stalks of grass around her knees now, tearing them out one by one and flinging them away. “I hate him,” she said, tugging at a whole handful of grass. “I hate everything about him.” When the grass refused to let go of the earth, she fell forward, burying her face in her knees. “I love him so much! How could he do this to me?” With one fist, she pounded at the ground. “Oh, Ruth,” she suddenly gasped, sitting up and pressing her hands against her chest. “You can't imagine how it hurts here. It actually hurts, like something cracked inside.”

Why did she suppose I couldn't imagine? I knew what that deep bruise was like. I'd felt it when she so easily rearranged the plans she'd made for us, when I knew she'd never be with me again, never the same way with me.

“Maybe it's because of his father. Do you think? I shouldn't have been so pushy. After all, this must be a horrible time for him, just horrible. He's not really himself.”

I looked away from her. The woods were so thick, my gaze could penetrate no farther than a few yards all around, although I knew that in a month or so, when the leaves had fallen, the lake would be visible clear to the other side.

“I know what.” I grabbed Imogene's arm. I wanted her to feel I meant it. “Let's go to Chicago.”

She drew back, but I didn't let her go.

“You know, how we used to talk about. You can take the job Mrs. Owens said she'd get for you. Maybe she knows one for me
too. Anyway, I can find something.” I released her then and sat back. I waited.

Imogene put her fingers to her mouth and tugged at a cuticle with her teeth. “Go to Chicago?”

“Yes. Go to Chicago. Like we said.”

“But we don't know anyone in Chicago. Where would we stay?”

“I do. I know someone.” Unable to sit still any longer, I got up and began to pace. “Aunt Mandy's friend, Miss Fox. We can stay with her until we find our apartment. She's always saying don't I want to come down for a visit, but Aunt Mandy'll never let me.”

“What makes you think she'll let you now?”

“Oh, she won't let me, but I'm going to go anyhow. She's not my boss. She's not even my mother.” I felt as though my insides, which had been twisted tight, like the elastic attached to the propeller of a balsa glider, had suddenly been released and were spinning free. Yes, I could go away. There would be places, whole cities, in which Aunt Mandy had no influence, where I wouldn't feel her hands, continually pulling and prodding, combing and smoothing, where I wouldn't need to think about whether Clement Owens would ever resurface or why my mother had drowned. I would be free of her.

“All right,” Imogene said slowly. “All right. We'll go.”

It had to be quick, I thought, quick. “Let's go right away. Tonight.” I thought of Aunt Mandy sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee, like a spider in her web, waiting to wrap her sticky threads around me.

“Tonight? Ruth, I'm going to have to convince my parents. I'm going to have to pack. And talk to Mrs. Owens. I don't know how soon she'll be able to talk to her friends. She has other problems right now, you know. And you have to talk to Miss Fox.”

“We'll say we're only going for a short visit. You'll tell your parents you have to get away”—I gestured down the hill—“you know, to forget all this. And maybe it'll just be a few days. Maybe we won't like it. But let's try. Why not try?”

She looked at me, tempted but a little scared, the same way she'd looked when I insisted on giving Bert Weiss my tooth. “All right,” she said, “if you find out it's all right with Miss Fox, I'll meet you at the train tonight.” She'd risen now, too, and smoothed her hair and her dress. Her face looked fresh, as if her tears had washed it. Her eyes were barely swollen. No one would ever guess that a minute before she'd been lying heartbroken on the ground.

At one point, as we continued up the winding lane, she stopped and looked back. “I had a feeling he was coming up behind us. That he was going to tell me it was all a mistake. A test or something.” She looked at me. “Do you think he might realize he loves me after all?”

Actually, I thought he might. I glanced back, too, half expecting to see him breaking through the trees. But I said, “No.” I said it firmly. “You don't want him anyway, Imogene. You want to come with me.” In my ear my voice sounded just like Aunt Mandy's.

I was so tired when Mattie lifted that squirming, flailing, froglike little being for me to see. Mattie wiped the baby clean and wrapped her in a blanket, then laid her on my chest where she clamped her mouth around my nipple and pulled so that it hurt, as if to remind me that she was real.

“Our baby,” Mathilda breathed, stroking her tender head. “Here, let me hold her.”

How right they looked together, just like the Madonna and Child. To this day, I can see them, standing over me. “I'm going to be your mama, darling,” she whispered. “I love you, my lamb.” And she looked at me and smiled.

I closed my eyes. I should have been grateful, indescribably
relieved. Instead, I felt bereft. Who was I, if Mathilda was her mama? No, I could not be Aunt Mandy to this one I had fed with my own blood. I could not do it. And, although I can never forgive myself, I hated Mattie then for suggesting it, hated her for being right when I was wrong, for being generous when I was selfish, and most of all for thinking that I would be pleased to see her take my baby from me.

“No,” I said, “She's mine. You can't have her.” But she couldn't hear me, because I was already asleep.

It was still the middle of the night when I awoke. The wind pushed at the windowpanes, but my baby lay sleeping snugly in the drawer we'd prepared for her. I felt drugged. My muscles and my brain longed for rest, but slowly, quietly, I dragged myself from the bed. “Shh, shh, my baby,” I whispered, although she hadn't made a sound. I collected my dress from the door, my shoes from under the bed. Pulling my stockings on was difficult, but I needed to be warm. We were running away, my baby and I.

We would go somewhere warm. California, perhaps. And I would change my name. I would say my husband had died in the war. Who would know the difference? Who would care? I didn't need the farm to support me—thanks to my father, I was a nurse.

Mathilda would forgive me. In the end, she would be happier, she and Carl and Ruth, too, without my secret to keep. And someday, maybe not even too long from now, we would come back to visit, maybe even to stay, so Ruth could love her little cousin, just as I loved Mattie. Why hadn't I thought of this from the start?

I wrapped the tiny thing tightly in more blankets, until she looked less like a baby than a bundle. She did not wake, only nestled close, her mouth opening and closing, reaching for my breast in her dreams. I put on my coat, my mittens and my hat, and I put half the money in the house into my pocket. And that was all. What else did we need? I could feed her, after all. I could keep her warm.

The wind, when I opened the door, hit me with a wallop. In the house I'd forgotten how cold it was outside, and my skin shrank from the blast. Still, it was only November, I reminded myself, not the dead of winter. I opened my coat and tucked my bundle against my chest. We would be all right. Besides, it had to be cold for the sake of the ice.

Yes, the ice. I stood at the edge of the lake thinking. All the holes had certainly closed, I had no doubts there. It was the greenness I remembered from the afternoon that worried me. But not too much. No, not very much at all, I have to admit, since I fancied myself so skilled at testing, so good at working my way slowly along, listening for every creak, never shifting my weight too suddenly. I was more worried about slipping with my precious load than about falling through.

I stepped cautiously onto the lake and slid my feet forward, inches at a time. My legs were so sore, I couldn't have gone faster even if it'd been safe, and I nearly turned back, quailing at the distance I had to go to make the train. But I was sure the ice was good. Yes, it would certainly hold us. Gradually but steadily, we moved on, farther and farther out into the lake.

“Wait!”

I could barely hear the tiny voice over the wind.

“Wait for me, Aunt Mandy!”

I turned to see Ruth climbing backward off a rock onto the ice.

“Ruth, stop!” I called.

She turned her face to look at me, but she did not stop.

Ruth didn't bother to close the door to her room while she packed. A door had never stopped Amanda from coming in whenever she
pleased to straighten the books on their shelves or the items on the top of Ruth's dresser, as she delved for whatever scraps of the day had been left unexamined. A few times, Ruth had tried to compel her aunt to sit still, by leaving nothing out of place, but on those occasions Amanda had rearranged the contents of the dresser drawers.

There was plenty to put to rights now. The room was in complete disarray—blouses slithered from the bed to the floor; hairpins crackled underfoot; books and underwear sprawled together on the chair. But Amanda stood still in the doorway.

“I don't understand. If the letter worked, why does anyone have to go anywhere? Why can't things be the way they were?”

“We're going
because
the letter worked,” Ruth said, tossing clothes into Amanda's old carpetbag. “You made me do it, and now Imogene is heartbroken. We made her miserable, you understand?” She held the slip she was packing toward Amanda and shook it for emphasis.

Amanda cringed. “Ruth, that's vulgar. Put your underthings away.”

“Miserable, just like I said she'd be.” Ruth threw the slip into the carpetbag. “She thinks Arthur doesn't love her, never loved her. She thinks she was a fool to believe he did.”

“But she'll get over it. After a little while, she'll be glad. We saved her, Ruth.” Amanda was rubbing her fingers over the base of her thumb. It made Ruth want to scream.

“Well, she doesn't know that, does she?” she sneered instead.

“But you know it, Ruth. You know it had to be done.”

Did she? Why had she written that letter? Because Amanda had insisted? Or because she'd seen a chance for herself? But Ruth was sure that if Amanda hadn't dragged her into her scheme she'd never have been so selfish. “It doesn't matter,” she said. “She wants to go away now, and I'm going with her.”

“Ruthie, I know what.” Amanda stepped into the room and began
to fold a blouse as she talked, laying it out on the rumpled bed, squaring the shoulders precisely, smoothing the fabric with her fingers. “Why don't we all three go out to the island for a few weeks? It's not very cold yet, and it'll be so pretty with the leaves turning. You don't remember living there, Ruth, but it's very relaxing. Very refreshing. And when we come back, the Owenses will be gone.” She gave the perfectly folded blouse a little pat.

Ruth stopped packing. “They won't be gone until they find Mr. Owens.”

Amanda stood silent for a moment, her hands still at her sides. “Clement was a good swimmer,” she said finally. “I don't think he could have drowned.”

“I hear my mother was a good swimmer too.”

“Ruth, what do you mean?”

Ruth had hit her mark; she could tell by Amanda's face and the fear, real fear, in her aunt's voice, and it scared her, so that she closed the carpetbag, not caring whether she had everything, only wanting to run. “Nothing, nothing. Just let me go.”

Amanda stepped into the doorway. “You can't, Ruth. I can't let you go.”

“Why not? You let my mother go, didn't you? You rescued me, but you let her go. Well, now you can let me go too. What's one more?” She snatched her arm from Amanda's grip and clattered down the stairs.

“Ruth, stop! Come back!” Amanda stood at the top of the stairs. She pushed one foot over the edge. It wouldn't be so hard to let herself go, to step for an instant on air and then crash down and down. Not so hard at all.

Amanda lifted her hand from the railing. I'll fall, Ruth. I'll fall if you don't come back, she thought. And, as the door slammed, she lost her balance.