Drowning Ruth (37 page)

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you.” He took two steps into the room. He could think of nothing else to say.

“Genie should be back tomorrow, Wednesday at the latest.”

“Is she ill?”

Ruth, struggling to put her loose hair back together, had stuck two pins in her mouth. “They won't let her walk on her ankle,” she said as well as she could through closed teeth.

“Her ankle. Of course. Is it better?”

“Not really. That's why they won't let her walk on it.”

He was making her nervous. The way he looked at her could almost be described as expectant, as if he thought she might suddenly say or do something amusing. As far as she knew, she'd never done anything to give him that impression.

“That's right, she shouldn't walk on it.” He picked up the stamp-box frog and set it down again. “It's very nice of you to fill in.”

She shrugged. “Otherwise I'd have to go to Brown's, and I can't stand Brown's.”

“Why do you go then?” There it was again, that little smile of anticipation.

“Because Imogene thought I should typewrite, and they promised to teach me. Not that I've learned,” she added honestly, “but I don't think that's their fault.”

He laughed. “Typewriting's not important.”

“Not to you maybe. But to me it is, or at least it should be. Maybe you haven't noticed, but there are precious few jobs out there.”

“And this is what you want to be? A typewriter?”

“No,” she admitted. “Not really. But what you want doesn't always matter, does it?”

“I guess not.” He crossed the room to look out the window toward the lake. “Next week I start work for my brother,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table. Then he turned back to her. “Say, we shouldn't be inside today.”

“We shouldn't?”

“Summer's almost over, isn't it? We have to take advantage.”

Ruth looked doubtfully at the paper in the machine. “You go ahead. I have to finish these letters.”

“But I thought you said you couldn't typewrite.”

“I told your mother I'd do them.”

He picked up the little stack of handwritten letters and counted the pages. “If I do these for you, will you go with me?”

“You can't type!”

“Of course I can.” He nudged her out of the chair. Then he rolled up his sleeves and adjusted the chair's position, as if preparing for great labor. “Ah, Mrs. Schmidt,” he said, rubbing his hands together as he examined the letter she'd begun. “What shall we say to Mrs. Schmidt?”

He began to type with two fingers in swift, decisive strokes,
every half minute or so returning the carriage with a hearty swipe. Ruth, watching the lines emerge from the machine, belatedly remembered to spread her fingers over the scorch in her skirt.

“My father made me learn a few years ago,” he said as he started on the next letter. “He said I had to keep up with improvements. I have to say, I'm not sorry now.” He looked up at her, quickly, shyly, as the carriage bell dinged.

She watched, fascinated by the certainty of his fingers and lulled by the clack of the keys, until he pulled the last page out. He joggled the finished letters together and tapped their edges on the desk. “Okay, so now can we go?”

In that car with him, without Imogene pressed between them, Ruth leaned tentatively against the back of the seat, aware that there was nothing but space between her thigh and his. She kept her eyes on the sky, a washed-clean, hard blue, and the rough stubble of the recently cut fields. After a while, though, she began to relax. She opened the window as far as it would go and played idly with one hand in the streaming air. The wind teased her hair down again, and she let it snarl, only holding it back with one hand to keep the whipping tendrils from her face.

“Too fast?” he asked, with the same, shy sideways glance he'd given her at the typewriter.

“No. I like it.”

They passed fields and farmhouses and barns and little stores with the words
GROCERIES BEER BAIT
and
BEER FOOD DRY GOODS
and
CHEESE CHICKENS BEER
painted on their walls.

“Where're we going?” Ruth asked finally.

“I don't know.” He shrugged. “How about a picnic? You hungry?”

“Starved.”

He pulled over next to one of the all-purpose stores, a place
made of whitewashed stone, with two tiny windows. Inside, Arthur started toward an icebox in back, and Ruth followed slowly behind. She liked this store; it was like a cave, pleasantly damp and cool after the dry wind of the road. As she moved along the row of shelves, examining the packages—blackberry, strawberry, raspberry jam, corn flakes, soap flakes, matches—she smelled first mothballs, then vinegar, then cloves, and then cigarettes and rancid sweat.

“Whatcha doin' with him?”

Ruth jumped at the raspy whisper behind her back, knocking a can of tuna to the floor. An old man whose head came only to her shoulder scowled up at her. “Nothing,” she said, diving to retrieve the can. She pushed it onto the shelf and backed toward the door. “I'll be outside, Arthur. Okay? I'll wait outside.”

What gave that crazy old man the right to talk to her like that? She leaned against the warm whitewashed wall. They were friends on a drive, she should have said. They were taking advantage of the last summer weather. Honestly, she wished Imogene were with them.

Safely back in the car, they pointed out pretty views and charming houses and were pleased to discover that their tastes were just the same. They talked about the people they knew, which reminded them of stories about people they'd known. Arthur told Ruth he'd been thinking he might want to learn to build bridges, and Ruth told Arthur about how Amanda had taught her to throw fits and bark like a dog to keep her out of school. “Let's see,” he said, and she demonstrated, and he laughed so hard he swerved the car.

He turned onto a smaller road.

“Do you know where you're going?” she said as the small road became a dirt track.

“My father and I used to stop somewhere around here.” He leaned over her to look out the window.

He led her finally to a little river, where he made a nest of rocks for the beer to cool. Then they sat on the grass, and he hacked at the salami with his pocketknife, while she tore the bread.

“Imogene should be back tomorrow,” she said, piling haphazard sandwiches on brown paper between them.

“Oh? That's good.”

“Yes, her ankle really isn't so bad. I mean, it was bad, but it's better now. Her mother just wanted her to be careful.”

“She
should
be careful.”

He fetched the beer and watched her throat ripple as she swallowed. The condensation dripped off the bottle onto her skirt.

“I hate to leave the lake next week,” he said.

“But you wouldn't like it in the winter. It's bleak and empty as the moon.”

“I don't mind that. You can do things outside here, not just scurry from building to building like we do in the city.”

“Mostly, we scurry from building to building too,” Ruth laughed, “if we're lucky.”

“Well, I hope I have a reason to come back for the weekends anyway.” He blushed and pulled a few bunches of grass from the ground. They made the light, tearing sound a sheep would make cropping.

He means Imogene, she thought. He loves Imogene. Did this grieve her because he would have Imogene or because Imogene would have him? Both, she supposed. Both left her alone. But she was Imogene's friend, that was the important thing. And she would be Imogene's friend, with or without her. “Imogene would make a very good wife,” she said.

“Yes, I'm sure she would,” he said seriously. “A man would be lucky to have her.”

Suddenly he tossed the grass he'd collected into the air, so that it fell like confetti onto their heads. “Let's take a walk.”

One blade dangled just above her eye. He reached forward to
slide it from her hair, and she felt a tiny pang as his finger touched her forehead. Stop that, she thought. You mustn't feel that way again.

Briskly, she stood up and brushed the grass from her dress. “No,” she said, “it's getting late. My aunt will worry. You'd better take me home.”

I had to admit it was lovely there on the water with the fresh breeze shirring the waves and the sun's warmth soaking under my blouse. The morning had lured three sailboats from their docks, and they zigged and zagged on the dark blue water, their canvas brilliant white triangles against the light blue sky. Clement swam so close that the spray thrown up by his kicking wet my cheeks. Wasn't this enough, more than enough? Our happiness, after all, had once been real, even if he'd lied to spur it on. Why had I, in insisting that I be the most prized, the only beloved, hidden myself away from such delights?

After his second lap, he hung onto the boat, breathing laboriously. Now that his hair was wet and plastered to his skull, I could see how much it had thinned. I wanted to reach over and take his hand. Shhh, I wanted to say, shhh, it's all right. Rest now. Come
back in the boat and rest. It made me sad to see him diminished, a man who'd been so vital, but his weakness also made me fond.

Of course, I'd been mistaken about what I'd thought I'd seen a few mornings before. Clement wasn't what he had been. He'd no designs on Imogene. My own suspicious nature had created my fears.

I wanted to tell him about her. I wanted him to know that, in the end, he and I had produced such a one.

“I want to tell you about Imogene,” I said. “Imogene Lindgren.”

Squinting up at me, he sighed. Yes, I think he sighed. “She's lovely, isn't she?” he said. “In fact … if I weren't so old …” He looked away from me then, far off toward the other side of the lake, and then he looked back. He may even have winked, although maybe he was only blinking water from his eyes. “But who knows what the young girls like nowadays?” he said. “I might have a chance yet.” As he spoke, he turned and pushed off the boat with his feet, so his last words were nearly washed away by the swoosh of the water, but I know I heard them. Otherwise, why would I have felt such a cold horror prickling my skin?

And then I felt the sun burning and raging in my veins. I wanted to ram him with the boat, to drive the propeller over his smug, white back, so that it shredded into ribbons like a worn sheet. I wanted to leap in and hold his head under with my own hands. But I didn't. Of course I didn't. I could never do any of those things.

Instead, I stood up in the boat and shouted for the whole lake to hear: “She's your daughter! Your daughter!”

But he didn't stop. I tugged viciously at the cord, and the motor growled. He must have raised his head at last when the whine reached his ears. Bewildered, he must have watched me go. But I did not look back.

The motor was slow, so damnably slow, it seemed to take hours to crawl away from him across the water, days to reach the shore.

Halfway home, I hurled the terry-cloth robe from the boat. It flung its arms into the air, settled on the surface of the lake, and then slowly, as it became waterlogged, began to sink.

As I dragged the boat after me onto the muddy shore, I imagined Clement climbing out of the water, calling for a sandwich. He would be ravenous after such a long swim, and my fury would have done no damage to his other appetites either. At least he'd have had to push through those weeds. He was a monster! A monster! His smell lingered on my skin, and I waded into the waves to scrub my hands and to cool my face, which still burned with outrage.

Nagawaukee is not a large lake; anyone can swim its width. How was I to guess he couldn't do what a ten-year-old child can do? I'd forgotten about his weak heart.

Is that true? To be honest, I don't know.

I wasn't ready when the baby was. I wanted to stay forever in limbo, not going forward, not going back, just still. But the baby couldn't be still. We were going on whether I liked it or not.

The pains began at noon on a bright, achingly cold day. Recklessly, I stood at the edge of the island for a last taste of air, daring the world to see. I exulted in the force of the wind, beating and gusting along the new green ice, cold enough to bring tears to my eyes. And then my insides squeezed again.