Broken Ground (20 page)

“I wanted to, and for good reason.” Helen takes the box from my hand and the necklace from the pillow and holds it out so I can see its full length. “You've shed a few pounds since you've been here, you know—too much work and not enough food. You're going to lose Charlie's ring. It keeps slipping off—you know it does. You'll be wearing it on your thumb soon, Ruth, and that would look plain silly. So I got you this. It will look lovely on you, and your ring will be safe. You'll be able to keep it close to your heart. What do you say?”

For a moment I hesitate, but then, unable to say anything, I nod.

Smiling, satisfied, Helen watches as I thread the necklace through my wedding band. She latches the necklace at the back of my neck and spins me around to take a look.

“Lovely,” she pronounces. “And loyal as ever.”

STUFFED TO THE
gills with glazed ham, scalloped potatoes, asparagus, and lemon chiffon pie, we students profusely thank the faculty and staff, and then, after helping clear and wash the dishes in the dining hall kitchen, we head out into a gloriously sunny afternoon. For once, it's not me solo, or me completing the duo that is Helen and me. It's me, part of a happy group. Helen has suggested a game of capture the flag, which will occur on the football field in twenty minutes, after we've all changed out of our church clothes and into, as Helen says, “our play clothes.” I can't think what she means by play clothes. All I have are skirts or dresses. But she has several pairs of the latest in women's trousers—high-waisted, easy and comfortable to wear—stored away for times like this. “I'll dress you right,” she promises.

We are leaving the meeting room, Helen's arm linked through mine, about to step out on the porch flanked with early-blooming lilac bushes when Professor Tobias calls my name from across the room.

Helen's grip on my arm tightens. “No. Not today.”

“A moment of your time, please. That's all I ask.” Professor Tobias's tone is cheery but firm. In spite of Helen's resistance, I turn to him. He stands beside the crystal punch bowl, which I washed clean in the kitchen only a few minutes ago. On the table, clustered around the punch bowl, are a host of matching cups, and on the floor, two good-sized boxes filled with crumpled balls of paper. Professor Tobias smiles at me. “We'll just pack all this up and carry it back to my office, Ruth, and then you're free to capture any flag you want.”

“He's positively
mellifluous
, and he knows it,” Helen often says. “He uses that voice of his to get his way.” If I look at her, I know she'll make a similar scornful remark now. I don't look at her.

“I'll be right there,” I tell Professor Tobias.

“I'll help, too. We'll finish the job all the faster,” Helen says.

Professor Tobias tugs his light blue suit jacket into place. Next moment, he's crossed the room to stand before us.

“I pay Ruth to help me with things like this. I don't pay you, Miss St. Pierre.” He speaks quietly, but the look he gives Helen is a forceful one.

Helen juts out her chin, defiant. “But it's Sunday. It's Easter, for heaven's sake.”

Professor Tobias frowns. Audacious Helen has no real sense of what it means to need a job as I do; if I'm not careful, she could cost me it. I dearly love her, but there are times—times like this—when the division of class seems to widen between us, and we stand on opposite sides.

I withdraw my arm from her grip. “Lay out what you think I should wear for Capture the Flag, Helen. I'll be changed and at the field before you know it.”

Professor Tobias thanks me, turns on his heel, and strides back to what needs to be done.

“
Hurry,
” Helen hisses.

“
I will,
” I hiss back.

As Professor Tobias and I swaddle china cups in packing paper and settle them carefully into their boxes, our conversation turns from the success of the luncheon to the academic progress of the other students in attendance. This is what I most appreciate about my assistantship, I realize: No matter what Helen thinks, Professor Tobias makes me feel more like a colleague than a worker bee—which is Helen's opinion of me.

“The punch bowl isn't terribly heavy, empty,” he says now. “If you carry it and I carry the glasses, we'll be able to make it to my office in one trip.”

As we cross the empty quad to the academic building, Professor Tobias tells me that the punch bowl and glasses originally belonged to his mother. “She died when I was very young, which left my father to care for five boys. To say he failed at the task is an understatement. So you see, Ruth . . .” He sets the boxes carefully on the ground by the building's entrance, pulls a ring of keys from his trouser pocket, and unlocks the large wooden door. “I've known hard times, too. I've come to believe that's what draws me to people, and people to me—that kind of understanding, based on personal experience. People like Miss St. Pierre . . . they may be decent people, but they don't really understand. Maybe one day. But not until they've passed through the dark wood.”

“Dark wood?”

“From Dante's
Inferno
. You know.”

I don't know. I'll have to find out.

We make our way down the dim hallway to the wide, curving staircase that leads to Professor Tobias's office on the third floor. In the thick silence, our footsteps sound loudly against the creaky steps. There appears to be no one else in the building, which is not surprising. Any given Sunday, let alone Easter Sunday, is supposed to be a day of rest. No one is supposed to be in the academic building at all.

Professor Tobias leads the way down the third-floor hall. “In terms of the dark wood, we're more alike than not, don't you think? I cherish this about you, Ruth. You're not like any of the other students here, male or female, and you're certainly not like any of the assistants I've worked with before. Your loss makes you special. Not that pain is something for which you or any person should strive, but there should be some reward for surviving it and carrying on. And in your case, the reward is distinction.”

This compliment doesn't settle well. But still I mumble my thanks. I'd prefer not to extend the discussion. The punch bowl is weighing heavily; its cut-glass edges bite into my fingers and palms. But finally, here we are at the door to the Education Department. Again Professor Tobias sets down the boxes, pulls out his ring of keys. He unlocks the door, we step inside, and he closes the door behind us. The main office is windowless, so it's instantly dark. Professor Tobias grunts, bumping into something. “Stay put, Ruth. Not the easiest going here. Don't want you to hurt yourself.”

Again the thunk on the floor; again the jangle of keys and an opened door. Then soft light flares from Professor Tobias's office—the familiar glow of the little lamp on his desk.

“Come on in,” he calls. And when I do: “Put the bowl down—carefully, take your time—just over there.” He nods at the chair in front of his desk, the one in which students sit during his office hours, the one in which I've sat innumerable times, early in the morning, during my lunch hour, late into the night. I carefully lower the punch bowl onto the seat of the chair.

I feel him then, his muscled arms around my waist, pulling me up and against him. Tie clip, belt buckle, the length of his body, pressing against the length of me.

“Ruth.” He breathes my name into the bare skin at the back of my neck, and the downy hairs there prickle and rise. My jaw locks, my throat closes. I can't make a sound. Not a scream, or a word, or a growl of resistance.

“Ruth.”

He's strong. He twists me around, and again the whole length of him presses against the whole length of me—the other side, the front of me, which, like the back of me, has only ever been touched by Charlie, my husband, my dead husband, whose ring I now wear on a thin gold necklace around my throat, whose ring nestles in the hollow between my collarbones, whose ring Professor Tobias regards, gazing down at the neckline of my dress and below that, where, breathless as I am, my chest rises and falls. And now he presses his lips against the hollow between my collarbones, and his tongue touches my skin ringed by Charlie's gold.

I maneuver my right knee between his legs, and he moans. He likes this—my leg between his. Let him like it. For one moment, let him like it, let him like it just long enough to let down his guard, so I can ready myself, steady myself, steel myself. There. Now. I lift my thigh, and my knee slides where I want, between his legs, near his groin. And then with one sharp, fast movement, my knee jabs him there.

But not hard enough.

“What the—” Professor Tobias's face twists. He throws me down on the desktop. Papers crackle beneath me, and tests, a metal roll of tape, a stapler, pencils, and pens. From the corner of my eye, I glimpse the brass trophy he earned some years ago:
Teacher of the Year
. It's shaped like an apple, and there is his name, engraved on the white marble base. And he's on top of me now, straddling me like a horse he wants to ride. Except for our ragged breathing, it is quiet—the silence of a nightmare. There should be sound. I should scream. But I can't. There's a weight on my chest, his hand pressing down, pinky ring and cuff link flashing silver in the lamp's glow. Pressing down. “The easy way or the hard way. Which way do you want?” He says this. The blood rushes in my ears, loud as a passing train.
The easy way or the hard way?
The hard way. But unable to catch my breath, his weight on me like this, I can't fight like I want to fight—like Daddy's two roosters fought the one time he was foolish enough to have two roosters, Private and Corporal, who pecked and clawed each other to a bloody pulp.

Suddenly, he freezes. The high color drains from his face, and still astride me, he looks toward the door. And then like that, he drags me upright and pulls me to him again, yanking my arms around his shoulders.

“What's going on here?”

Quavering voice, crest of white hair. Hunched and frail in a pink suit and a feathered Easter hat, Florence Windberry, professor emeritus, stands in the office doorway. And Professor Tobias cowers—
cowers
—in my arms, then shoves me back and away. I trip over my own feet and fall. My head strikes the base of the wooden stand that supports a world globe. The stand teeters, tips—sharp, penetrating pain, specks of white light flashing—and the globe cracks as it strikes the floor. The world is in pieces. I see this through specks of light, and then my dress, hiked up near the top of my thighs, my legs spread in an ungainly fashion, and Professor Tobias towering over me, eyes smoldering. “You want to know what's going on, Florence? Ask her.”

I close my legs, yank down my dress. I try to sit up. Head spinning, I make it only halfway.

“Not again.” Florence Windberry is clenching the door frame for support.

“It happens, Florence. It's like they can't control themselves. One minute they're demure girls. Next minute they're sluts.” He shakes his head, weary and wronged.

“The last one made an attempt on Suicide Bridge after she got expelled. A police officer stopped her just in time.” Florence Windberry's voice no longer quavers. It is strong and hard as steel.

I lurch forward, woozy and nauseated. I have to lean against the desk to stay upright. I know Suicide Bridge. Like the train trestle that brought me to this place, it spans the deep canyon that is the Arroyo Seco.

“I'll contest your accusation once again. You know that, don't you, Tobias?” Florence Windberry says. “I'll go to the department, the administration, the university president, the students if I have to. I'll tell them the truth.”

“You do that, Florence. Your female hysteria has worked so well for you in the past.” Professor Tobias manages to sound both relaxed and disdainful. “Now it's time for both of you to leave. Go on. Get out of here.”

He nudges my thigh with the toe of his shoe. When I fail to move, he grabs my arm and pulls me to my feet. I nearly fall into Florence Windberry as he pushes me toward the door. Somehow I make my way out into the hallway. Hand pressed against the wall, I keep myself upright, if not steady.

“I'll do what I can, Mrs. Warren.” Florence Windberry's voice follows me down the hall; even in my distress, I'm comforted that she knows my name. “But prepare yourself for the worst. If a miracle happens, then all will be well, and we will be glad. But expect otherwise.”

I've had my one and only miracle, the one and only of my life. It's come and gone. I would tell her that, but it takes all my concentration to continue walking.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
happens fast, in a blur of distorted sensation. I am in my room again. I fall, limbs aching and askew, on my bed. It is dark. I am cold. Now it is bright and someone shakes me. Tobias? I flail my limbs and someone shouts in pain. The someone is a girl, a woman. A young woman. The someone is Helen. I see her through half-open eyes. I see her blond hair. “Wake,” she says. “Up,” she says. “Ruth,” she says. My eyes close against the bright light, and Helen's voice, too loud. She shakes me again. Make her stop. The smallest movement and my head splits open like a world globe. Her movements are anything but small.

The shaking finally stops. Darkness again, and cold.

When I next open my eyes, Helen sits cross-legged at the end of my bed. Now there are two of her, her many fingernails to her two mouths, her many teeth tearing at her cuticles. Now there are three of her. Now she is one whole person, not duplicated or broken to pieces. She and everything around her—dresser, chocolate Easter bunny in pink basket, desk, desk lamp—go in and out of focus, multiply and divide. The entire room turns kaleidoscopic, with no predictable pattern.

“What happened to you?” Helen spits out a shred of cuticle. “You've been out for twelve hours. You were here when I got back yesterday evening—I couldn't wake you—and you've been dead to the world ever since. It's Monday morning now, after nine o'clock, Ruth. This isn't like you at all.”