Drowning Ruth (42 page)

The walk to the train was harder than I'd thought. The carpetbag flopped and banged awkwardly against my legs, and I'd packed so many books that I had to stop every ten steps or so to shift the load from one hand to the other. At the end of the drive and then again at the first turn in the road, I thought I heard Aunt Mandy's voice sifting through the trees, and I looked back toward the house and held my breath, so I could listen. It was nothing, though, but a voice in my head. I pushed it out with my own voice. Keep going, I told myself, just keep going. You'll miss the train.

Stumbling a little, my heavy bag pulling me forward, I struggled down the hill, past the Jungbluths' pasture, where three Guernseys raised their heads to watch as I went by. Then I trudged up the slope of Glacier Road, sweating under the winter coat I'd had to wear for lack of a better way of carrying it. At the top, I passed the icehouse, which would be nearly empty now, ready for its winter crop. I'd expected on this march to sense my bond with Aunt Mandy stretching until it snapped, but I could feel nothing but exhaustion and frantic haste as I hurried along the final mile into Nagawaukee.

I thought the Lindgrens might overtake me now in their car, Mrs. Lindgren making a nervous inventory of the contents of Imo-gene's luggage, Mr. Lindgren tooting the horn before he pulled over to pick me up. But the road was empty, the houses I passed quiet. Inside them, I knew, people were settling down to their familiar suppers.

Finally, with aching arms and sweating back, I lugged my bag up the worn wooden steps of the platform. I looked up and down to find the little human knot that would be Imogene and her parents, but the platform was empty. My jaw hurt from clenching it all those miles. I thought, I've missed the train, and I was at once desperate and relieved.

“Ruth!”

I turned from the tracks to see Imogene hurrying toward me.

“Where's your suitcase?” I asked.

“In the car.” Slightly out of breath, Imogene bent and lifted my bag.

“Your parents are letting us take the car?”

“Not my parents' car. Maynard Owens is driving us down. You know, Arthur's brother. I told you about him.” Imogene straightened, setting my bag back on the platform. “Arthur told him what happened,” she explained, “and he came over. To see if I was all right. If he could do anything for me. He says they all miss me and even if Arthur's a fool, he isn't.”

“What do you mean? Are you in love with
him
now?”

“Oh, Ruth.” Imogene clicked her tongue. “Nothing like that. I mean, he's very sweet, but I couldn't … not now, not after what happened. Not so soon, anyway. I mean, I feel awful, Ruth. He broke my heart. It's going to take a long time to heal.”

But it would heal, I saw that. In fact, it had healed already. Maybe Aunt Mandy was right about these things not meaning very much. I didn't blame Imogene. It wasn't as if Arthur had been in her heart her whole life, the way Aunt Mandy had been in mine.

Aunt Mandy, whom I'd left behind. I felt around inside myself for the gaping hole, the way I'd once poked my tongue into the space my tooth had left. But there was no space, no agonizing well of despair. All was solid.

Imogene put her hand on mine. “Stop that, Ruth.”

“Stop what?”

“You're doing what your aunt does, rubbing that ugly scar.”

I dropped my hands to my sides, but I knew why I couldn't find a rip, although I thought I'd torn free. The simple truth was, she'd wormed her way in so deep, I'd never get her out. If I changed my name and went to the ends of the earth and never came back, still she wouldn't let go. She was stuck like a burr in my hair. No, it
was deeper than that—she was inside me like a bone or an organ. She'd seeped into my blood with the air I sucked into my lungs.

“I'm so glad we're going, Ruth. You were so right. It's exactly the thing to do.” Imogene took my arm, partly to start me walking, for I seemed to be rooted where I stood, and partly so that she could lean close to confide, “I wish we'd done it months ago!”

“So do I,” I said, but still I couldn't move.

“Ruth? Maynard's waiting.” She hoisted my bag now and didn't complain of the weight. “He's got to drive both ways tonight.”

“Yes,” I said. She started down the platform ahead of me, a little nervous, eager to be off. It may have been the way she swung her arms or the impatient look she gave me when she turned and saw that I still wasn't following, I'm not sure, but I suddenly felt as if I'd been staring for years at the silhouettes of two faces and finally saw the vase in the white space between them. She'd been Aunt Mandy's baby. I couldn't believe I hadn't guessed it on my own long before. And then, as quickly as I'd caught the glimpse of Aunt Mandy in her, I lost it.

Aunt Mandy was selfish, but what she wanted for herself was me. Imogene, too, maybe, but mostly me. She'd given Imogene up, but she wouldn't let go of me. How could I leave someone who loved me that much?

“Imogene,” I said, and she turned back. “I can't go. I'm sorry.”

I thought she might be angry. After all, I'd talked her into this, but she only sighed and studied my face for a long moment. She must have decided this was different from my refusal to swim at the island or to go to the dance or to play secretary for her at the Owenses', because she didn't try to persuade me. “Are you sure?”

I nodded.

She came back and stood before me. “Do you think …” she began and stopped. “Don't be angry, but would you mind if I went without you?”

“You want to go without me?”

“No,” she said, “I don't want to go without you, but if you won't go … well, you're the one who made me see it was a good idea. It
is
a good idea.”

Numbly, I reached into my pocket and held out to her the scrap of paper on which I'd written Eliza Fox's address.

“You don't think Miss Fox would mind?”

I shook my head.

“I would wait, in case you change your mind, but the people Mrs. Owens called expect me on Monday. You said to hurry.”

“It's my fault,” I said. “You go ahead.”

“I'll look out for a place for both of us, just in case.”

“Yes, just in case.”

At the end of the platform she stopped, opened her purse, and began feeling around inside it.

“Did you forget something?” I called, and I felt a little flutter inside me that must have been hope that she, too, had decided to stay.

“Here,” she said, running back. “Keep this for me.” And she pressed into my hand the blue marble.

I went to the end of the platform and watched her get into the car. She waved until I couldn't see her anymore, and I kept waving even after that, squeezing the marble in my other hand. She's only going to Chicago, I told myself. You could be there in two hours. But I knew it didn't work that way. When people left, in my experience, they stayed gone. Except for Aunt Mandy. She'd come back to me, just as I was going back to her now.

Imogene is coming this summer. She's bringing her husband—Jack, she says his name is—and her baby daughter, Louisa. Named for her grandmother, Aunt Mandy said, and winked at me, yes, winked. Often now, I see how she must have been, before my mother's drowning made her hold herself tightly for fear of losing herself in guilt and grief.

She was lying in a faint at the bottom of the stairs, her arm and collarbone and three ribs broken, the night Imogene went to Chicago.

“I knew you'd come back,” she whispered when the doctor and I lifted her onto the davenport. “I knew someday you'd come back to me.”

“I've only been gone three hours,” I said, but she didn't seem to hear.

I nursed her. She had to tell me what to do, but she said I did it well. I have very gentle hands, she said. I read to her, and I prepared her favorite dishes. I even tried something new—chicken cacciatore—which we agreed turned out very well. “Your mother used to make something like this,” she said.

I knew she meant it as an invitation, but I was afraid to begin. “When I was running on the ice,” I ventured, and stopped.

“Yes?” she said, encouraging me.

“When I was running on the ice,” I said again, “what was I running from?”

“Running from?” She smiled, flexing her fingers the way the doctor had prescribed. “You weren't running from anything, Ruth. You were running to me.”

As soon as I could leave her alone in the house, I motored to the middle of the lake and dropped the silver box in. The next morning, a man on the double-decker excursion boat spotted Mr. Owens's body washing against the concrete base of the Stoltzes' boathouse. It was supposed to be the last tour of the season, but the sensation kept the boat running for three weeks into October.

I gave up typing. It turns out I'm a farmer after all. I've always been good with the animals, and I've discovered that I can drive a tractor a lot better than I can work office machines. With Mr. Tully's help, we broke even last year, and now that I've talked my father into quitting the
Rebecca Rae
, we can build the herd, and I'll bet we turn a good profit. It's a sad fact that the war over in Europe has been a big help to us financially.

I like the farm. It's a world unto itself, a steady universe where the animals go in, go out, eat, sleep, and eat again. I like knowing that the black fields will blush green, and then the corn leaves will saw against one another and the tomatoes swell until they split their skins, and that then the ground will sleep under its cold,
white sheets. On a farm, the earth has secrets, and the weather has passions, but people don't matter so much.

Arthur Owens has asked me twice to marry him, but although each time my heart begged me to agree, I've said no. I couldn't move away, you see, and I'm not sure that he'd like to stay, what with the bridges that'll need building all over the country—all over the world, he says—once he finishes school. Still, on Sundays he comes out from town. He helps with the work, and then we walk in the woods or go for a drive. In the winter, if there isn't too much snow, he takes me out on his iceboat. Snug against each other, we rattle along, our legs turning to stone in the wooden shell, while the stinging wind brings tears to our eyes, and chips of ice pepper our faces. “Faster,” I cry, “faster,” and he flattens the sail, until one blade hikes into the air, so that, were the ice to open beneath us, we would simply fly over the crack.

Imogene wants to stay on the island when she comes. She thinks her husband will like it. I didn't like it, the idea of Jack on our island, but Aunt Mandy said, “You'll have to get used to that,” and I knew she was right.

We waited through the early spring, while the ice, whining and sighing, gave up its bed, until the bright morning when the lake was alive and dancing again, as if it had never been still. April 13, 1941. That's a good place to finish. In our coats and gloves and galoshes, we dragged the boat to the water and headed toward the island, to see what had to be done to ready it for Imogene.

Released from their ice prison, the waves tossed themselves against the hull with ecstatic abandon, pitching up a fine spray that shimmered in the fledgling spring sunlight. I dipped my fingers in, and instantly my hand ached with cold. That must have been what it felt like, the night I drowned.

Ruth wasn't even wearing a coat, just her nightgown and slippers. Her little teeth were chattering. I could see her shivering as far away as I was.

“Get back in the house, Ruth!”

But she wouldn't listen. She slid forward, oh, so carefully, onto the ice, holding her little arms out for balance, that peppermint stick still clutched in her hand.

“I said, get back!”

That time she caught the anger in my voice. She stopped but did not go back. She stopped and began to cry. And then it was almost as if my baby had heard her, because she began to cry too.

“Don't cry,” I said to both of them. “Be quiet. You have to be quiet now. Don't cry.” I was nearly crying myself. It was so cold, and I was so tired.

Far behind Ruth, a triangle of light appeared at the front of the house as the door opened.

“Wait, Aunt Mandy, wait. Please. Wait for me,” Ruth called, and she began to run as well as she could across the slippery ice.

My heart was broken, but, knowing Mathilda would hear her now and come after us all, I turned my face toward the dark shore and went on. I moved as fast as I dared, sliding and slipping, trying to keep my feet under me, desperate not to be caught, desperate not to fall. The baby cried more insistently with every step.

“Ruth, come back!” Mathilda called. “Mandy, bring her back!” I seemed to hear her footsteps pounding on the ice. “Amanda, come back! Come back!” All around the lake, anyone with an open window could have heard her. But I turned my ears to the wind and my eyes to the night. I would not come back. This baby was mine.

Mattie snatched Ruth up into her arms.

“Take Ruth home, Mattie! Get off the ice!”

But Mathilda wouldn't listen. We were far out on the lake now, and she kept on sliding toward me, clutching Ruth to her chest.

“Go back, Mattie!” My words were desperate now. I knew, even before the ice complained, that the two of them were too heavy for it to bear.