The Book of Ruth (18 page)

The rain pounded at the windows as if it wanted to get in on the discussion. May squeezed her eyes shut again and bit her lower lip. I waited. Maybe she was praying. After the longest time she took a deep breath and said she figured it might be all right to have some company before her heart gave out and she died alone.

“You’re not going to die for a long time,” I said to her in my cheerful voice. I couldn’t imagine anyone as large as May dying. But she started to cry; she said she hoped Matt would get famous before she kicked off so she could celebrate.

“Maybe he’ll get into
People
magazine,” she said. “I hope so, and they’ll have us in there too, only we won’t be in Honey Creek any more. Matt will come get us and buy us one of them condominiums, and we’ll go live in Florida, in all that hot sunshine.”

“Sure, Ma,” I said.

“Did one of those jars click? Didn’t I hear one of them seal?” she asked.

And I said, “No, Ma, that’s rain out there.” She mentioned again how her ears weren’t worth a noodle.

She had seen my ring but she didn’t make a comment until about six months later, when she told me she could tell the diamonds were phony. She murmured that Ruby probably robbed a dime store.

I picked Daisy for my bridesmaid. Dee Dee and May and Daisy and I went all the way to Rockford to buy material for Daisy’s dress, and then Dee Dee sewed it. It was blue with white dots all over it, and it had a ruffle swooping down over her chest. She was going to look glamorous in it, I could predict that much. I figured she’d wear gallons of makeup for the ceremony, and I had to laugh thinking of her prancing down the aisle like she’s a bird we don’t even have in Illinois.

When I asked Ruby who we should invite, he said he didn’t have too many friends to speak of, and his family lived so far away now. They weren’t crazy about him anyhow. He’s kind of a loner, Ruby is; that’s why we were meant for each other. So I said, “Why don’t we have a real small wedding?”

“Baby, I don’t care,” he whispered in my ear. “I just want to marry you. We could do it in the swamp, I got some of them gators.”

We invited May and Dee Dee’s family, and the girls and Artie from Trim ’N Tidy, and the Red Bell Bowling League, and the Rev, of course, plus a few of the ladies from the church. May began to get thrilled when she realized she had a perfect excuse to get Matt home. She wrote him a letter and said I was getting married so he’d have to be there to give me away. We never once mentioned contacting Elmer. Matt wrote back and said he could get away for two days. Isn’t that an honor? Probably all the experiments in his lab would get ruined if he was gone longer than forty-eight hours. He probably had to get a baby sitter to watch over his moldy petri dishes. May flipped when his postcard came; the five smeared lines almost had her convinced that he was coming home to stay.

I wanted Aunt Sid to come more than anyone, and I wrote her and asked her if she would mind being present even though May still had the grudge. I thought that if I ever got terribly brave I would ask May if she could remember why she was mad at Sid. Aunt Sid wrote back and said she wouldn’t miss my wedding for all the world, and that if she wasn’t now chairman of the music department she would have visited us at least once a year. She hadn’t been to see us in quite a while but I honestly hadn’t missed her brief visits. I didn’t like the thought of her surprising me at Trim ’N Tidy. I hated the vision of her blond head looming up in the door, and then she’d come to greet me with outstretched arms and I’d have my hands full of Mrs. Portland’s red cashmere dress with turkey gravy all down the front. The pads on my fingers were always inky from the carbons in the checks. If she had come I would have had to feel shame at being one dumb finisher, and that was something I could easily do without. My wedding was a different matter altogether. It was supposed to be the greatest day in a girl’s life.

“Ma,” I said one night at supper, “Aunt Sid is coming to my wedding.”

May stopped chewing. She called the air names I wouldn’t repeat. I don’t know if she was talking about me or Aunt Sid.

“Don’t wreck it for me,” I said. “You have Matt and I have Aunt Sid. Fair is fair.”

Ruby used to come over in the early days and we’d sit at the table eating pie and making plans. Ruby loved baseball. He knew all the teams and he’d tell me facts about the players. “Someday, baby,” he said, “you and me are going to go to a Cubs game.” He taught me information about sports, sitting there at the kitchen table. He told me what all the yards were for in football. He ran around in the kitchen explaining it to me like he was one whole team himself. Matter of fact, he was both teams. Never mind that I couldn’t understand a word he said. He still bought packets of baseball cards with the pink gum inside. I saw his shoeboxes filled with the cards; I saw his face when he blew bubbles that popped and got stuck on his eyes and on every inch of his nose We laughed hard, scrubbing his cheeks with rubbing alcohol.

We were getting married in October. May said that was pretty hasty, considering I had only met Ruby in July, but we didn’t want to wait around until next spring. I couldn’t see what was wrong with October. I felt like I was a horse galloping toward October with an urgent message. I could taste how desperately I wanted Ruby; the desire for him was a flavor that rose up my throat and made my whole body thirst. We didn’t talk about life plans too much because we were concentrating on holding out until our wedding night. I thought maybe Ruby was worried about coming to live in May’s house, but he grinned and kissed my hands when I told him how it was going to be for a while.

I told him, “There ain’t any way we can afford our own place, Ruby.” I said, “We’ll have to do our best to get along with her. She ain’t exactly Little Miss Sunshine every minute.”

All Ruby said was, “It’s OK, baby.”

You should have seen the pigsty Ruby lived in before we got married. It was one small room with a toilet in the hall. Nobody had cleaned it since the Huns invaded Rome. May’s house was like a palace, compared.

We had our picture taken for the wedding section of the newspaper. I’m sitting down smiling with my mouth closed and Ruby’s standing, his hand on my shoulder. He’s staring straight ahead as if he’s bracing himself for something. The picture took me by surprise because Ruby looks like Miss Finch. His eyes are red dots.

May said I should register down at Marcie’s in town so we could get some new plates and glasses, and then she and I picked out towels, and dishes with rosebuds and violets and daisies around the border. I had my name up on the wedding board at the drugstore in Stillwater. It said my wedding date also. I went in there about every day to look at the bulletin board, to see my name in the white letters. Sometimes you need something like that to make sure you’re on the planet.

We received other presents too, because the girls at Trim ’N Tidy gave me a shower at lunch hour. I got a blender and a red nightie with fringe all over it. There wasn’t any solid fabric to speak of attached to it. Artie was allowed to attend and he said he thought the garment was snazzy, plus he thought the bride was snazzy also. Actually, I wanted to wear the nightie on a gigantic Harley motorcycle, with no underpants on. I wished Ruby owned a bike. Perhaps May would have liked him instantly if he had owned something large.

She was quiet in the weeks before the wedding. She knew there was nothing she could say to me about my decision, since I was an adult taking charge of my life. Naturally she still had the comments about how I should brush my hair, it looked like a bush; how the chickens were going to starve if I didn’t feed them this instant—the usual commands I didn’t even hear any more. To myself I said, It’s time for me to accomplish something, be part of a family. I was feeling alive, picking out invitations and flowers. I knew how all the animals in spring must feel, building nests and waiting for the male to bring in their catch. May was counting the days until Matt arrived in Honey Creek. I swear I could hear her counting. I knew she wasn’t wild about Ruby—it didn’t take an advanced degree to appreciate her opinion—but I wanted the arrangement to work out. I knew that when she saw how much we loved each other, it’d catch on, and she’d be glad in herself. I prayed up on the plateau. I prayed to the winter constellations that weren’t yet visible. I prayed for their mercy.

Matt came home on Friday afternoon, the day before my wedding. When he walked in the door May rushed to him and nearly knocked him down. He caught himself and backed up to the wall and said, “Hi.” She was already crying about how he never wrote, how he had forgotten we were his family—she was dead right on that score. I can’t stand looking at May when she breaks down. It’s terrifying to see her lose her strength. Matt didn’t seem to want to look at her either. He stared at the floor until she came to kiss him and paw him. Then he closed his eyes.

“Hi, Matt,” I said from the living room, and he said, “Hi.” He was wearing a gray raincoat that came past his knees, and it had pleats in the back. I didn’t say anything because I guessed I was the person of honor and for once he could ask me questions if he felt like it. I wasn’t going to bow before his large head just because he went to MIT and had his name in
Time
magazine for thinking one thought about comets.

He said, “I hear you’re getting married,” and I said, “Yep, that’s right.” I wanted to ask him then and there if he had a girlfriend, but I didn’t have the nerve. He looked smaller than I remembered, but handsome, as usual. His face was thinner, his brown eyes larger, and he had a sparse blond mustache. His perfect skin was stretched tight over the small knobs of his cheekbones. I said, “How’s your science going?” and he said, “Very well, thanks.”

“You like it out there?” I asked.

“Yes, I do.” He nodded his head, just in case I didn’t understand the words “Yes, I do.”

Still, I felt like we were finally grown up, and we could have a conversation.

“That’s great, Matt,” I said. “You going to stick around for a while?” I asked, after a little. We were both shifting around on our feet while he told me he had to get back because he was running experiments in his lab. He was working on his physics. He knew everything about comets and stars. I wished I had a list of questions to ask him but my mind always dried up in front of smart people. There wasn’t one particle of intelligent matter in my head. Then he said he was exhausted from the flight, that he better rest. May led him to his room to show him the new bedspread and the new curtains she had bought. He didn’t exactly go wild over them. He mumbled something about how they were nice and she shouldn’t have gone to the trouble. That was enough for May. She hummed all afternoon, tiptoeing past his closed door.

We went to church for the rehearsal that night. I had to come down the aisle on Matt’s arm. We weren’t supposed to say anything to each other since we were practicing being solemn. The Rev gave us the instructions, as if he thought we’d be gabbing, catching up on the last twenty years. It felt queer to touch Matt’s arm, to hold it. I wanted to halt, to say,
Wait!
Did you say you were actually my brother? I kept still, as usual. I didn’t make one single wave. I didn’t even introduce my brother to my future husband. They didn’t seem like they were members of the same species.

Afterwards, we went to Johnny’s for fish fry—that is, everybody went except Matt. He drove away to see Dr. Heck, to tell him the latest news from the galaxy. Daisy stole the show in her white and black shirt that didn’t have shoulders and her sheer white pants. Her earrings were large black metal circles that looked like manhole covers. She kept calling me Pollyanna because of my pink dress with the puffed sleeves that May got at St. Vincent de Paul. Of course Daisy got loaded and told her collection of dirty jokes, her favorites about the nun floating down the river on a turd. We were all screaming our heads off even though we’d heard the jokes before. Then she said she wanted to get Matt in the woods, feel his cute little dick. She was so smashed she didn’t care what she said. Ruby and I held hands under the table and avoided looking at each other. I felt like the luckiest person, to be getting my very own husband. All my friends and Aunt Sid were coming in my honor, to watch us take the vows.

When Ruby and I were saying good night outside of Johnny’s we kissed quickly, shyly, and Daisy cheered at us. She could whistle with her two fingers in her mouth. Dee Dee tried to get us to kiss a long one, but we were too embarrassed. Everyone had it on their minds that tomorrow night we would be in a bed together, touching each other, and quivering, waiting for Ruby to explode with my gift to him.

I’m getting married, I kept saying to myself. I couldn’t sleep all night long. It was the last time in my life I was going to be one person to think of, besides May. In the future it would be We, Ruby and I. We were to be a pair. I stared at the ceiling fondly—it was the last night I was ever going to dream in my bedroom. Tomorrow we would switch with May; we’d move to the front room, to the bigger bed. I felt slowly over my body, my chest, my hair, and my thighs. I was seeing how they were going to feel to Ruby’s hands.

We were married at ten o’clock in the morning. I had May’s wedding dress on, the one she wore for Willard Jenson. I caught her unpacking the dress and smoothing the satin, and then staring out the church basement window. I wasn’t used to seeing her stand absolutely still. Before the ceremony, in the dressing room, I had half an urge to give her a hug, but instead I fooled with the clothes hangers and the cosmetics. She helped me get dressed and then she stood back studying me up and down, examining my hair, the flowers, my white heels.

“Well, you ain’t too bad looking,” she said faintly.

If I squinted at her she looked like a plastic bag filled with blood, in her crimson-and-orange-checkered dress that was some kind of treated shiny polyester. “Thanks, Ma,” I said. “Everybody says I look like you.”

She couldn’t figure out whether she should laugh or tell me I’m sassy, or break down and howl. Her wedding dress is awfully pretty. It’s up in the attic in Honey Creek still. It has a plain white satin skirt and a lacy bodice that fit me quite decently, after Dee Dee altered it. Aunt Sid sent me pearls to wear and to keep. They belonged to my grandmother. I swore I wasn’t ever going to lose them. In the bride’s room, down in the church basement, I wanted to remember all of my life, with May there, helping me to dress. I wanted to remember with her the time I lost the pin at the spelling bee and she practically turned me in to the police. I still feel sorry about the loss. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was but my hand was stiff and inert. I couldn’t stretch it out to May. Possibly somewhere my mind was ticking off the times she smacked me for nothing. I couldn’t find my voice to say, Where’s the garter? so how was I supposed to talk about our long life together? I was making jerky movements, knocking over the hair spray, trying to remember I was actually the bride. I had a crown of fake flowers on my head. Daisy put lipstick on my mouth, made my upper lip look like it was two red mountain peaks, and rouge on my cheeks. She rubbed it in gently, just as she would have done for a celebrity in the television industry.