Drowning Ruth (3 page)

I was about to knock at the kitchen door when it flew open. Mathilda stood on tiptoe, her cheeks flushed from sitting near a warm fire.

“Amanda! You've come back!” She had to lift her arms high to throw them around me, for while I had long ago grown into a tower, she had stayed tiny and delicate, like our mother, a little sprite.

I was pleased by her embrace, but I was less demonstrative than my sister, and I stood rather awkwardly, still holding my bag, until she began to pull me inside.

“Wait, Mattie. You don't want snow all over your clean floor.” I stamped and brushed at my shoulders.

She laughed. “Bring it in! Bring it in! Bring all of you in!”

She poked me playfully in the ribs as she took my coat. “Getting a little stout, aren't you? Too much pie?” She giggled.

“I'll be skin and bones again in no time eating your cooking,” I said.

“Oh, I'm not going to cook anymore. Not now that you're here.”

We laughed at this, knowing how right she was.

“Look at those boots, those gorgeous boots!” she exclaimed, bending over to admire my city footwear, spoiled now with wading through the drifts for which they were perfectly unsuited.

That was my Mattie, thrilled at a pair of new boots, not even thinking to ask uncomfortable questions about why I'd come or what I intended to do. She was simply pleased to have me there.

“And Ruthie? Where's my baby?” I asked.

“Right here, of course.” She swooped down on a pile of rumpled quilts that lay on the rocker near the stove and plucked the little girl out. “Wake up, Ruthie. Your Aunt Mandy's here.”

“Oh, don't wake her,” I begged, but it was too late. Ruth blinked at me and yawned.

Mathilda thrust her into my arms. “Here, you hold her.”

The way things had been with me lately, I was afraid the child might scream, but when I settled into the rocker, she nestled against my shoulder and went back to sleep. It was exactly as I'd hardly dared hope it would be, the three of us warm in that familiar kitchen. I almost forgot to ask after Carl.

“He can see all right again,” she said. “But there's some infection in the leg, and he still doesn't know when he'll be coming back.” She'd told me in her letters about the gas that had blinded him and the shrapnel that had made a hole in his thigh practically big enough to stick a fist through. I'd assured her that a man was pretty certain to recover from those wounds, but she wanted to worry. “
You're
here now, though,” she said, raising her eyes to mine, and she tossed her head, almost defiantly.

So I would take care of her. That was all right then. That was something I knew how to do. For a moment or two I could almost believe that things were the way they had always been, before Carl or anyone else had come between us.

Aunt Mandy told me to be quiet, but I didn't be quiet. And then my mother went away.

“My sister's gone,” I told the sheriff.

He yawned and rubbed his face. When there wasn't any law-breaking, which was most of the time, the sheriff was just Mr. Kuhtz, a farmer. I'd gotten him out of bed. “What's that?”

“I can't find Mathilda.” I shifted Ruth, bundled in a feather quilt against the cruel November night, to my other hip. My arms were nearly limp with weariness, and she was heavy, but I couldn't let her go. I'd been home less than a year, and I had lost my sister.

“Well, how long has she been gone?”

“Hours. I don't know how many. We all went to bed and then something woke Ruth. That's when I saw that Mattie wasn't in her room. Wasn't in the house at all.”

“You still out on the island?” He frowned, and I knew Mathilda had been right. People had been wondering about us. “You come over on the ice already?”

Just then Mrs. Kuhtz appeared behind him. “Why are they standing out in the cold, Cyrus?” she scolded. “Come in. Sit down, and I'll get you something hot to drink.” She had a very good face for trouble—she looked stricken, full of concern. “Here, give me the little girl. Ain't you just frozen, sweetheart?” She held her arms out for Ruth.

“No!” I said. I pulled Ruth against me so hard that she yelped. “We have to get home. In case Mattie comes back.”

“Cy'll find her,” Mrs. Kuhtz said soothingly. The sheriff had already gone to put on his clothes. “He'll bring her back.”

I turned then, and went off across the frozen grass. When Ruth shivered, I opened my coat so she could share its warmth. Under the quilt she had nothing on.

Where were we going? I wasn't certain, despite what I'd told Mrs. Kuhtz. Not back to the island—that was unthinkable. With no plan, I staggered along the same road I'd traveled eight months before, this time with Ruth, heavy as an anchor, clutched to my chest. Although we were moving away from the water, the lake itself seemed to be beneath my skin, for I leaked and dripped with every painful step. My wet hair had frozen on my head. The front of my dress was sodden under my coat; my vision was blurred. But my feet knew the way, just as they had in March. Back I went to the dark, cold farmhouse, the place we never should have left, where we'd all have been safe, if not for me.

Ruth was asleep by the time we reached home, her head drooping
along my arm. Her nightgown was back on the island, so I wrapped her as well as I could in one of my father's old shirts and my mother's shawl. I lit the stove and rocked her in my lap, while I waited for water to heat. Then I filled the hot water bottle and tucked it beside her in bed under the eiderdown. For a moment, her deep breaths paused and I held my own breath, waiting for the worst, but she only sighed and slept on. Satisfied that she was warm and safe, I went down to the kitchen and removed my mittens.

My hand wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Most of the blood had dried and the punctures were small in circumference. Many of them were deep, however. There would be scars, a ring in the meat at the base of my thumb. Who could have imagined such a little thing would have such strength? Who would have thought she would struggle so fiercely? I found my father's whiskey and dabbed a little on my wounds. Then I drank a glass. People said it made you forget.

When Ruth awoke the next morning in a room she hadn't slept in for months, she called for her mama. I was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for the night to be over. My body had striven against me for sleep, for escape from the sores and bruises and the paining muscles, but whenever I closed my eyes what I saw behind them was unbearable. In the daylight, I'd promised myself, everything would be different. They would find Mathilda at a neighbor's house, somewhere along the lake, or maybe even in the woods around the bay. She would be wet, maybe, and freezing. She might even have caught a chill. Her dress would certainly be ruined, but that would be the worst of it.

I would heat a bath for her and make a strong soup and bundle her into her bed. We wouldn't talk about what had happened.

We'd only be glad that it was over and that we could go on as we had before. I had only to make it through the darkness, and then she would come home. I promised myself that.

Or maybe nothing
had
happened. I hid my hand in my lap and told myself it had all been a nightmare. When the sun rose Mathilda would come down to the kitchen, and we would laugh about the craziness of dreams and how real they can seem so that you wake up hardly able to breathe for the speed of your heart. She would say how silly I'd been not to slide into her bed for comfort and how I would be no good to anyone without a night's sleep. She would tease me about being afraid of my own shadow, and we would make pancakes together for Ruth.

Yes, that was how it would be when the sun came up. As long as I didn't check—that was important—as long as I didn't check to see that Mathilda was in her bed, but simply waited faithfully through the night, in the daylight things would be different.

So in the morning when Ruth called for her mother, I waited, listening for Mathilda's step across the upstairs floor. I listened, and I heard it. Yes, I was quite sure I heard it. But Ruth didn't stop calling. She was crying now, a frustrated cry. Why wasn't Mathilda comforting her?

Finally I went to Ruth. “We'll let Mathilda sleep,” I said to myself as I climbed the stairs. “She must be very tired.” But the truth pierced me with every step. In between the moments when I was convinced that Mathilda was most definitely in her bed, I knew she was gone.

Deep under my heart, I knew it, but I refused to look at it squarely. My mind slipped off the idea. I focused on the shape of the spaces between the lilies of the valley on the wallpaper; I noticed the twist of red and blue in the rag rug at the top of the stairs; I thought hard about what was in the kitchen that could be cooked for breakfast.

Ruth let me lift her from her crib, but when I set her down, she ran straight to Mattie's room.

“Where's Mama?” she asked, so bewildered, so trusting, it broke my heart.

How could I tell her what I couldn't tell myself? My head would not make the words.

“Shh, sweetheart,” I said. It wasn't the right thing to say, I know that. I know that! But it is what I said. “Shh, sweetheart. Let's make some pancakes, shall we? C'mon, let's you and me make some pancakes.”

“I want my mama,” she said, and when I tried to take her by the hand to lead her down to the kitchen, she wrapped her arms and legs around the bedpost and held on. “I want my mama!” she screamed over and over again.

“Don't,” I said. “Don't. It's all right. Really, it's all right. She'll come back soon.”

But Ruth would not be fooled. She wailed, and I stood there helplessly, letting her despair for both of us.

When Ruth's cries began to weaken, I felt suddenly tired, so tired that I thought my legs would give way beneath me. I picked her up then—she was too exhausted to protest any longer—and I pulled her onto Mathilda's bed with me. The bed was stripped—we had been away from this house, this life, so long!—so we lay right on the blue-striped ticking, our cheeks pressed against ancient stains. My hand throbbed, and I couldn't stop shivering. I pulled the wool blanket that was folded at the foot of the bed over us and fell asleep.

I dreamed that I was standing at the edge of the lake in summer. Across the dazzling water, I could see Mathilda, sitting on the rocks that rimmed the island and singing, as a mermaid would. So she was all right! Of course she was all right!

“Mattie!” I shouted, relief flooding my voice. “Mattie! Over here!” But she wouldn't look at me.

I waded in, then, toward her. I pushed forward until the water encircled my waist and then cradled my bosom. How easy it would be to disappear beneath that inscrutable surface. There would be no gaping hole to show where I had sunk, no frenzy of turbulent waves to give evidence of my struggle.

“Mathilda!” I called, my chin dipping below the water as I opened my mouth. But she looked away toward the opposite shore, as if she hadn't heard a sound.

I couldn't shout again. The water ran into my mouth, my nose, my ears, my eyes. I was afraid now, and the water was heavier, harder to push. I could barely get a purchase with my feet on the sandy bottom. I clutched at the lake with my hands, but it gave me nothing to hold. Still, I kept going. Mathilda was just ahead. I only had to keep going and I would have her again.

And then I heard her crying. Yes, there you are, I thought, struggling as well as I could toward the noise. She sounded just as she had years and years ago, when she was my baby Mattie and wanted me to comfort her. “I'm coming, Mattie,” I called, and water filled my mouth.

I was almost there. The crying was louder, but my legs wouldn't move. I leaned forward. I stretched my arms out. There was no more breath in me, but I reached; I strained; I
would
have her; she was mine. And then I woke up.

It was Ruth who was crying, Ruth who needed comfort. Drowning in grief, I clung to her for dear life. I had no one but Ruth now, and Ruth had no one but me.

Ruth's mother had drowned. That was a fact. In December they found her body, trapped in the ice of Nagawaukee Lake. The
Sentinel
reported it and Amanda clipped the articles and pasted them to the black pages of a scrapbook, so there could be no question about what had happened.