Drowning Ruth (17 page)

When I woke the next morning, I knew where I wanted to run to, a place where no one need ever know, no one except Mattie.

I was still dressed from the night before, still wearing my shoes, in fact, and I clomped downstairs and built a fire in the stove. I began to make French toast, turning my face away when it came time to crack the sickening egg. Mattie loved French toast.

“Better?” she yawned, sinking into her chair at the table. Mattie was always slow to wake.

“Much.” I flipped the toast. I did feel better and for a moment I allowed myself to hope that I might have been wrong in my thinking the night before. But then I saw the remains of the perch in the cat's bowl and gagged.

“Listen, Mattie,” I said, sitting beside her and pushing the sugar bowl away, so that I could lean close. “I was thinking we might want to move to the island for the summer, you and me and Ruthie. The fields are rented anyway. Rudy can take care of the animals. Why should we stay?” When she didn't answer, I pressed on. “It'll be fun. Like taking a trip. Just you and me and Ruthie.”

“Oh, no, Amanda. It's too cold.” She cut the corner off of her toast.

“No, it's not. Or at least it'll only be cold for a few more weeks. It's already April. And think how easy it'll be to move things over on the ice.”

“On the ice! Amanda, what are you thinking? The ice must be rotten now. We'll go through.”

“No, we won't. The spring's been so cold. I'm sure it's good. I'd check it first, of course. I'd make sure.” And if I went through, well, so much the better, I thought bitterly.

“Mandy, you have no idea how bleak and cold that island is this time of year. It's all right for an hour in the afternoon, when you want a place to skate to, but not to live on day after day, night after
night. You forget, I've done it. I know what it's like. I thought I'd go crazy some of those days.”

“That's right, you have done it, haven't you? You've had a chance. Where's my chance, I'd like to know? Who was it that found that island, after all? You and Carl would never have had such a cozy little spot if it hadn't been for me.”

I worked every angle, while Mattie chewed nervously on the ends of her hair. It was difficult to change her mind, but I knew I could do it if I tried hard enough. I was the elder, after all. I knew better.

Rudy didn't like it either.

“You two girls out there alone,” he clucked, shaking his head. “No good.”

“But there'll be three of us,” I teased. I knew how to handle Rudy. “We'll have Ruthie.” I chose not to remind him that I, for one, could hardly be called a girl anymore.

This time, though, he frowned. “You know what I mean, Manda. You could freeze—it's not all that warm yet. You could burn the house down.”

“We could do those things here too, Rudy,” Mathilda said. Although I'd barely convinced her to go along with my plan, this new attitude didn't surprise me. Mathilda was always more inclined to do something when you argued for the opposite.

I reminded him that one of us would check in every few days, and if he was worried, all he needed to do was come out for a visit. I was pretty sure he'd never do this. Rudy was the wait-and-see type. Flames would have to be shooting from the island before he'd decide he'd better have a look. Oh, I knew everyone so well. Everyone except myself and now this other one I carried in me.

“We'll wave every day at noon,” Mathilda said.

It took us only two days to organize ourselves, to pack and arrange with the grocer and the butcher to deliver food to the
locker on our tiny beach as soon as the ice was out. We'd go to the farm, at least Mattie would, for butter and eggs and milk. And soon we'd plant our own vegetables.

Rudy kept bringing more things in from the barn and adding them to the pile—lanterns and wrenches and oil. “This'll come in handy. You'll see.”

And Mathilda kept piling on the books. “Just three more,” she pleaded when I claimed the sled was getting too heavy.

We were forgetting essential items, but we were only going a mile—it would always be easy to come back. At least it would be easy for Mathilda.

And so it was easy for her to go. It was a game to her, hardly different from when we were young and went to the island for relief from our real lives at home. But for me it was serious. I would be different when I came back. If I ever did come back.

We set off in the morning, so as to take as much advantage of the light as we could. The sky was gray, the snow old and frozen hard. It was the kind of day that makes you fear that God, distracted by finer things, has forgotten you. But Ruth had no such worry. She went before the sled, carrying an icicle like a torch, pushing her feet purposefully into the crunching snow, and announcing herself to the world in high-pitched, dissonant notes.

“Wait a minute,” I said when we got to the edge of the lake. “I have to test the ice.” I put my hand on Mathilda's sleeve to hold her back.

It had been a cold March, but still it was late in the season, and there had been days of thaw—Mattie had been right to worry about the state of the ice. I scanned the center of the lake for the telltale dark streaks of open water. All was flat and white. I climbed over the heave at the shoreline and shuffled forward slowly, barely lifting my feet. The surface was ugly, grainy, made of snow that had melted to slush and then refrozen in the recent snap.

I raised one foot high and stamped. The lake didn't protest. No
groans or squeaks, no terrifying crack. I made my way forward over deeper water, walking heavily now, bouncing to bring the full force of my weight down on the ice. I imagined falling through, me and the other one, sinking through that cold water to the bottom.

“Wait, Aunt Mandy! Wait for us!” Ruth's voice piped from the shore.

I turned and waved to them. Mathilda stood small and still, wrapped in a hooded maroon cloak that had belonged to our mother. It made me shiver to think how loyal she was, ready to do what I asked, trusting it would be all right as long as I said so. Ruth, brilliant in her bright red coat, was pulling hard on her mother's mittened hand, letting her head and shoulders hang precariously over the ground. She knew her mother would never let her go.

I didn't think, then, that my baby could be like that someday. I didn't think, really, about my baby at all. I concentrated solely on getting us to the island. It seemed the only thing that I could do.

We set Ruth on the sled, and Mathilda balanced her and the load while I pulled. The closer we got to the island, the smoother the ice became, until finally the sled began to overtake me. I stopped pulling and grabbed onto the side opposite Mattie, and we let it drag us both forward almost more quickly than we could find our footing. I nearly fell, and then Mattie almost went down and then I again, while we whizzed along, slipping and laughing, all three just children out for an afternoon's slide.

The island was ringed with a jagged collar the ice had pushed up in its aggressive expansion, as if it were trying to climb onto the land. We had to circle twice before finding a spot low and gently pitched enough for Mattie to scramble over and help Ruth and me after her. We left our sled of supplies on the ice and went to see how the house had fared closed up for so long.

The house, painted a soft gray with green trim, looked in the
summer as if it had grown there, but in winter it stood out among the bare black trees. We opened the door to musty wood and chilly motionless air. Maybe Rudy was right, I thought. Maybe we couldn't live here, two women all alone.

“We'll have to get this going first thing,” Mattie said, opening the door of the wood stove.

Mattie and Carl had lived just fine on the island in the cold, I reminded myself. Mattie knew what she was doing. We would get through this last little bit of wintry weather, and then it would be spring.

“I'll get some wood,” I said.

Crossing my arms over my tender breasts, I stood for a moment on the porch steps, surveying the vast, flat whiteness that was the lake and the crosshatched black that marked the shoreline. Through the trees, I could see the roof of the Tullys' barn. In an hour or two people would be lighting their lamps and their windows would shine among the trees like eyes, staring at us, exposed here on the ice. Maybe there was no hiding here. Maybe this place was a mistake.

But by summer, I assured myself, piling wood into the curve of my arm, it would be different. By summer the island would be shrouded in leaves, and I could keep my business to myself with no one the wiser.

Aunt Mandy had a mouth at the bottom of her thumb.

“What's this?” I asked her. My finger petted the white circle on her tan skin.

We were sitting in the big green chair, me squeezed between the arm and her, because that is how we liked to sit.

“This is from your mama,” Aunt Mandy said. “She gave this to me, so I would remember to listen to her.”

“What does she say?” ‘Never leave Ruthie.' That's what she says. ‘Never leave Ruth.'

Aunt Mandy didn't mind my mama. She did leave me. But then she came back.

One morning in May, when Amanda had been home from St. Michael's for about a month, and the sun was dewing the grass outside in a way that promised summer, Carl and Ruth sat at the kitchen table waiting for their breakfasts.

“One of these nice days, Ruth,” Carl said, “I'll take you out to the island, where you and I lived with your mama. How would you like that?”

“No,” Amanda said. She slapped the pan of eggs she'd been about to bring to the table back on the stove. “This darn hotpad. Burned right through it.”

Carl looked at her, surprised. “What?” “She wouldn't like it. Ruth doesn't like the water.” “Yes, she does. You like the water, don't you, Ruth?” Ruth looked from her father to her aunt and wasn't sure what would be right to say, so she said nothing.

“I want you to close that place,” Amanda said, her hands on her hips. “Board it up. Nail it shut and forget about it. I can't believe you'd want to take Ruth there, after … well, after everything. What's the matter with you?”

Carl looked at his empty plate. Maybe there was something the matter with him, for he wanted Ruth to see the place where
she'd begun. It bothered him that Amanda had managed to wipe Mathilda from Ruth's life. As far as he knew, she told the child nothing about what had happened before his return, nor would she let him speak of the time before he'd left.

“It'll only make her sad,” she'd told him. “She's lucky she was too young to remember.”

He agreed with Amanda in principle. What good would it do Ruth to know that her mother could swim like a sunfish and liked her bacon crisp? What difference would it make to her to hear about the day Mattie had braided her a crown of black-eyed Susans and chicory? But still, he wanted her to know, for Mattie's sake. Maybe Amanda could let Mathilda disappear, as if she'd never been, but he couldn't.

He waited for a Tuesday, Amanda's day to go to town, and he told himself he was only doing what she'd asked. He was boarding the place up, wasn't he? And he couldn't leave Ruth at home all by herself.

He found her under the lilacs, the cat's tail slipping through her hands, and he scooped her up from behind and hoisted her into the air.

“You're coming with me today, young lady.” He kissed her neck, smelling her young skin smell. She, suddenly tall enough to be among the flowers, lifted her face to the fragrant purple.

“Where?”

“You'll see.”

He set her down, picked up his toolbox and led her along the lilac hedge to the back of the yard, where he held the leafy branches open and motioned for her to step first onto the path into the woods.

“For a walk?” she asked, used to traveling this path with Amanda.

“You'll see.”

The trail was narrow, and she scampered ahead like a rabbit,
squatting before a lavender hepatica on the right, scaring a scarlet tanager from its perch on the left, drifting back to the right to peel off a white curl of birch bark. Carl limped, tried to stretch and flex his bad leg. He passed her, as she knelt before a patch of moss and stroked its spores with her palms. He rounded a bend, and she ran to overtake him. At the giant oak where she and Amanda always turned back, she stopped and waited. He took her hand, and they proceeded, she more circumspect, somewhat awed, although there was little difference between the part of the woods they now walked in and the part through which they'd just passed.