The Book of Ruth (41 page)

I assume they wrote about the murder all over Illinois. They did for weeks after in the Stillwater paper. The old men down at the P.O. in Honey Creek are still hashing out the details while Laverna tries to sort the mail. Journalists are no doubt writing about it across the U.S., but the only thing they say in the papers is our names, that May was my mother, and Ruby killed her. They don’t say the real reasons, or any of the pity in it. To make it sound normal they probably say Ruby shot her in the head with a pistol. Once, while I was still in the hospital, I was feeling ready. I had been thinking about the question for a while, and finally I spoke out. I said, “Aunt Sid, tell me what happened to Ma. Don’t spare me.”

She sat down and took a breath, as if she had been waiting for me to ask and had her speech prepared. She told me that May was dead in the basement when the police found her. I could have told her that, because we heard the rattle. What I wanted to know was whether they burned her, or buried her, and if she sat up and complained when they were embalming her. Aunt Sid said Mrs. Peterson had called her up and she drove to Honey Creek at breakneck speed. She described the funeral service for May. They had purple irises up front in our church and somber organ music droning throughout. The place was packed with people who wanted to pray for dead souls and watch the end of a drama. Matt flew in. That sure was considerate of him. Too bad May couldn’t know that he came especially to pay his first and final respects. The Rev talked about her good works and the valley of death, the usual speech. He said she was smiling at the Lord, she was at his feet. That doesn’t sound to me like a particular vacation spot. Then they wheeled the gray metal casket with peach satin inside down the aisle. They buried her next to Willard Jenson’s stone. Because the ground wasn’t frozen yet they tucked her in without any complications. I found it hard to believe May didn’t beg the angels to freeze the world, at least give the gravediggers some trouble, and the family extra expense.

I didn’t go to May’s funeral but I know what they did to her face. Undertakers are masterful with dead people; they’re able to unpinch a face for the ceremony in her honor. Under the lid of the closed casket she probably did look halfway joyful, like she wanted to send a postcard to her family saying, “Having a great time, too bad you can’t be here with me.”

I nodded at all of Aunt Sid’s descriptions. Even if you want to you can’t go on forever talking about someone who’s dead, who has no earthly future. There just is not that much to say. I told her I was ready to change the subject so she left me by myself. I tried to think of May under the ground. Perhaps it’s all the bodies in the cemetery that make the maples along the road turn brilliant colors in the fall. I can see May making some old tree turn bright red. That’s a perfect job for her dead body.

In the night I wake up, my heart’s racing, and I’m convinced I’m May getting shattered. After I calm myself, take deep breaths, wipe my face off, bite my hand, I have to wonder what her thoughts are, in those minutes when her life is giving out. She knows it’s the end; there isn’t a doubt in her mind. What are her thoughts in the last moment? Is she thinking she’s going to meet up with Willard Jenson, that they’ll have a night of dancing through piles of laundry? Are her numerous days flashing by, like half-dead people say happens? Is she watching for the Lord’s bare feet to peep from under his robe? I feel her flesh and blood beaten to the quick and I know then that there are no thoughts. She is crushed and finished, nothing left but terror.

One day, when I was bored to the point of near-death, I went into Aunt Sid’s office. I didn’t mean any harm. I was rummaging around, looking for my letters to her. Instead, in a drawer, I found an envelope with handwriting I’d only ever seen on discarded paper covered with formulas, and the occasional postcard. The letter lay in my hand, jeering at me. “Matthew Grey,” it said on the return address. I couldn’t believe Aunt Sid and Matt were correspondents. I socked the desk with my hand and nearly reopened my wounds.

There wasn’t anything to do but open the letter. It was dated right after my wedding, October 1974.

Dear Aunt Sidney,

Thank you for your letter. I also enjoyed talking with you at Ruth’s wedding. You ask me questions about the family which I’m afraid I can’t answer. I don’t know much about them and their situation. It is always strange, going home, facing people and a place with which I have nothing in common. I won’t bore you with the difficulties of my childhood, but to be honest my main preoccupation was trying to figure out who was worse, my mother or my sister. Which one to avoid more strenuously. I must have realized early on that my inquiring mind differentiated me from them, and would lead me away from their household. Ruth tormented me continually in the form of physical abuse and my mother seemed to adore me in a sickening, clutching fashion. I don’t think of them much now; I’m thankful I’ve been able to make family out here.

I agree with you about Ruth’s marriage. To me it seems catastrophic. Maybe that’s too strong a word, but it seems to me that it can lead to nothing but unhappiness, at the very least. I also can’t imagine how it will be with them, living with my mother. Slow death, for all of them, I would think. You ask me what we can do to make life easier, better for Ruth. I honestly can think of nothing, from my distance. That she missed out on a way of life which I was lucky enough to come by is unfortunate, but I don’t know how to make amends now. I don’t think she was forced to marry the man; she seems to feel something for him. Although I didn’t speak with him much, he certainly didn’t inspire confidence. I don’t know Ruth either, so maybe I’m wrong and they’ll be perfectly happy. Don’t worry about my thinking you’re meddling—you are probably concerned about them with good reason. Still, I know of nothing we can do, short of kidnapping Ruth and finding a Henry Higgins to educate her.

My work goes well. I’m temporarily sidetracked for the moment, helping some people work on simulating a comet. My close friend, Will, is planning a trip to Chicago in January and I hope to come with him. I’d enjoy talking with you again very much, and will at least give you a call.

All best,

Matthew

I went into the living room and bashed the typewriter off the table for starters. It fell with a dull thud but I couldn’t see if it was broken because of the tears stinging my eyes. I couldn’t believe that Matt and Aunt Sid were in cahoots. I had been betrayed and shamed, exposed and humiliated. To celebrate I picked up an indigo glass vase, a prize possession I hoped, and threw it at Aunt Sid’s baby grand. The flowers and shattered glass stayed on top and the water dripped down on the keyboard. Then I paced back and forth, making my plans. First I would pack my bags, march to Sid’s school, waltz into her choir room and in front of everyone shout, “Shove hair up your ass!” I shouted the words louder and louder, practicing, and then I opened the front door and yelled to the street. For a moment the plan gave me a great deal of satisfaction.

Everyone who knew me realized my life was going to end in catastrophe—they called it the very name—and they didn’t do anything to warn me. They stood by watching me choose the wrong way. They watched me parade naked, humiliated, without so much as rapping my shoulder. I rehearsed the choir room scene countless times, bringing up all of May’s favorite one-line insults. I knew the student singers would rise to their feet and cheer me on, and then they would scramble down from the risers and help me claw at their conductor. And then suddenly the vision rose before me of my giving birth right in the gutter, with Justy sitting several yards away, staring into the traffic.

After I cried on the sofa and beat on stiff pillows I told myself to get control. I tried to think of places to go. I racked my brain but all I could come up with was the Footes’ small house where I’d have to share a room with Randall. I ruled out Artie and the Rev. I tried to imagine sitting down to supper with Mr. and Mrs. Rev, and living through a half-hour sermon while the steaming food got cold. I tried to reasonably tell myself that it is a free country and Sid can like any idiot she wants to. Of course I didn’t have the sense to remember my faith in good people, like Aunt Sid, helping the desperate, or in my resolve to calmly solve the riddles.

I spent all day alternately crying and cursing—and I spent a fair amount of time cleaning up the mess on the piano—until I finally fell asleep on the carpet. I dreamed of myself ducking out from the mushroom cloud over Illinois and running a long way in search of clean air.

When Aunt Sid got home from school I didn’t act too aloof. She went into her office to write her lesson plan when I didn’t answer her greeting. I could hear her humming a song her students were to sing. Before my nerve failed I shouted, “Hey, Aunt Sid, could you come in here for a minute?” I could feel the beads of sweat trickling down my chest and I had to close my eyes because everything looked scarlet. I found myself panting like Sid’s collie.

“First of all,” I said as businesslike as I could, when she stuck her head into the room, “who is Henry Higgins?”

Aunt Sid cocked her head and furrowed her brow. She looked at me like she knew my dander was up about a million feet. She explained how he took Eliza Doolittle and made her into a princess.

“Fine,” I whispered, taking a deep breath. “I’m ready to hear about Ruby now,” I said, looking straight into her eyes.

For such a long time I didn’t want to know. I imagined him in certain places, such as California, where there are palm trees, olive trees, the ocean waves bringing in glittering rocks. I imagined him cruising along the coast in a new blue hot rod. I knew he would have such a great time. But I couldn’t carry on with the delusions forever. It was time to hear the real story.

Aunt Sid stroked my wet cheek with her hand and then she said, “He’s in prison, waiting for his trial. It’s coming up this week.”

“So what’s he up to?” I asked. “You seen him lately?”

She looked into my eyes with such kindness. I didn’t want to watch her gazing at me like that. She talked about how he had punched someone in the nose and taken swats at the guards. In prison, managers aren’t terribly tolerant of roughhousing.

I shoved my knitting project aside so she could sit on the bed. She showed me some of the articles about him. I demanded to see the newspapers. The reporters wrote that Ruby had confessed right away. He said to the police right out, “I killed her.” They said that Ruby believed the demon was in May and that she was trying to put it in Justy. Ruby told the police he was set on beating that old devil out of May, so it wouldn’t spread. He talked about the devil obsessively in jail, how it can get into people and make them wicked. He strummed his imaginary guitar and sang songs to ward off unwelcome powers.

All the psychiatrists were having a field day with Ruby. He wasn’t schizo like the madmen in the movies who think they’re three hundred different people rolled into one. The paper said he had “paranoid personality tendencies,” that he perhaps had a “disassociate reaction at the time of the slaying.” I crumpled up the paper when I read that part—so many words without saying a thing. I don’t think there was anything seriously wrong with Ruby’s brain. I have my opinion; I only lived with him for four years. Naturally he behaved in a haywire fashion at times. He got ideas into his head and was damned before he got rid of them. He took drugs which made him see all kinds of exaggerations. But I know reporters mainly want to find a juicy story. They don’t care about Ruby’s strong points. They don’t know the details that could drive a person to grab a hatchet, shoot a pistol.

Aunt Sid said that at the trial the lawyer would try to get Ruby off without too much punishment. She reiterated that he was a very sick person. The lawyer was going to convince the jury that he was out of his mind when he got going with the poker. She said that even if the lawyer won, Ruby would have to go to a hospital for mental cases. She said, “Whatever happens, he won’t be free to walk down the street. He won’t go free.”

She thought she was giving me comfort. For once in her life she didn’t have me completely figured out. I could see the rest of Ruby’s life before me. They’d stuff him in a hospital where he’d have to do jigsaw puzzles all day long, and walk on burned-out lawns with high fences caging him in. I kept hearing Aunt Sid’s words: “He won’t be free. They won’t let him free.”

I told her I needed rest. She kissed my forehead and said, “Call if you want me.”

I nodded with closed eyes until I heard the door shut.

I had to say his name over and over. The jewel. Ruby. My Ruby. I saw us playing jungle kitten and jungle tom; I saw him flipping a pancake so exuberantly, and then I saw his whole body turning black, limb by limb, in the dank prison cell. Only his eyes were blue, staring at me. I hid under the covers from the image. I cowered and shivered.

I hear his songs in the night, coming through the window. I wake up suddenly to the tune “You’re Sixteen, You’re Beautiful, and You’re Mine,” and I have to look to see if he’s out on the lawn, calling for me to come join him. It’s where I belong. I never see anyone on the street, but the singing keeps on.

After Aunt Sid broke the news to me I lay still. I moaned softly for a few hours. I wept for days, in private, stopping only to shiver now and again, and cover my head with the blanket. There wasn’t one thing I could see or hear that cheered me. Everywhere I looked I saw Ruby huddling against an unpainted wall. Sometimes he didn’t have anything in his hands and he was whimpering pitifully without wiping his face; other times he skulked in the corner polishing a knife, watching it catch in the bare light bulb. Sometimes I think I made all the tears there are to make and I don’t cry any more for what he had to do, but then a whole new batch comes in. There are mornings when I sit in bed, alone in the house, and I sink under the covers in peace. There is no end to the stream. I want only to escape from the living room and the suffocating heat and the green carpet I swear is growing and is some morning going to be over my head, each blade brutally sharp. I want to find him, stick my head through the bars and say, “I’ll trade places with you, Ruby. You go free.”