Drowning Ruth (9 page)

They tried to come in, those women with their rhubarb and their kuchens and their potato salads. They wanted her too. But I wouldn't let them. She was mine, all mine.

“Did you hear Amanda Starkey's in the bin?” Ramona Mueller asked, the next time Clement Owens stopped in.

“The bin?”

“You know, St. Michael's Sanatorium. You seemed to be acquainted, so I thought you'd want to know.” She looked at him expectantly, ready for questions, but he disappointed her.

“That's too bad,” was all he said as he took his pile of envelopes from her hands.

The news troubled Clement. He wished the postmistress had kept it to herself. Although, why should he care, after all? He had nothing to do with Amanda now. He stood near his car, slitting the envelopes open with a pocketknife—an inferior one, since he'd lost the good one with the silver monogrammed case.

Had the craziness been there, underneath the neat nurse's uniform, all along? She'd seemed so transparent, with her heart on her sleeve, with her quick blush and easy laugh. She'd been amazed by the simplest things: a glass of champagne, a bunch of violets. And all the while she'd been hiding craziness. She had shown herself to him as one thing, and now she turned out to be another. He cranked the car and got in, slamming the door hard behind him. Well, she wasn't going to get him to feel sorry for her this way.

He sat for a moment, listening to the soothing rumble of the engine. After all, it must have been hard for her. All those deaths, the parents, then the sister. Anyone might crack.

I see I haven't said enough. I thought I might omit this part, let it settle silently into the muck where it belongs, but it seems that isn't possible. People want to hear everything, don't they? Spy every strap and pin and hem. It's not enough for them to run a finger along the scar or even to see the knife slice the skin, they must hear the blade purring against the whetstone. All right, then, if that's the way it has to be.

We met because Private Buckle was delirious. Poor Private Buckle—he'd not even got over there yet, had only reached Camp Grant when the Army discovered a limp and shipped him home. But a fever had stopped him before he'd gone a hundred miles. So here he was at the hospital, delirious, thrashing his arms and kicking his legs, whipping his head back and forth against the pillow and saying terrible things.

I was having an awful time with him. I'd get a compress on his forehead and he'd tear it off. I'd get his arms settled, and his legs would start up.

Obviously, I was busy, so I didn't see the man until he was
standing on the other side of Private Buckle's bed, holding the patient's feet quiet, while I struggled with his head. The man's skin had a red cast to it, almost as if he had more blood than his body could hold, and his hands around Private Buckle's ankles were very large and steady. He smiled at me reassuringly and somehow, working his way slowly up from the feet, moving his hands in little circles and talking softly, he managed to soothe Private Buckle, almost to hypnotize him.

“There we go,” he said when the private lay barely twitching beneath the sheet, the compress firmly on his forehead, his breathing calm and his heart rate steady.

“Are you a new doctor?” I asked.

“A doctor? Oh, no.” He laughed. Just then Dr. Nichols came onto the ward.

Seeing the director made me nervous. We'd never explicitly been told not to let strangers handle patients, but I was pretty sure the hospital wouldn't encourage it. Dr. Nichols was smiling, however. He clapped the man on the back.

“What brings you here today, Owens?” he asked, and they shook hands and went off together.

Later that afternoon, while I was drinking my coffee and eating an anise cookie in the cafeteria, the man appeared again.

“This,” he announced, setting a brown box on my table, “will revolutionize medicine.” He pulled a chair out and swung it around, so he could sit on it backward, resting his elbows on the cane back.

“What is it?” Clearly I was supposed to ask.

“It's a vacuum box. You put your instruments in here, your scalpels and scissors and needles and what have you.” He dropped my spoon into the box. “Then seal it up like this.” He worked a lever that looked like the latch on a pickle jar. “And then activate the vacuum for thirty seconds.” He flipped a switch and a tiny red light on the top lit up. “That's how you know it's on. And
then, when you take your instruments out again, they're perfectly sterilized.”

“Wouldn't a good scrub or some alcohol work just as well?” I took my spoon back and wiped it with my napkin.

“You have to understand the science. You see, when the air molecules are removed, the germs just can't stick to the metal. The effect lasts much longer than if they'd been wiped off with alcohol—we've proven it—and there's no danger of recontamination with a dirty cloth.” He was so certain, so enthusiastic, he seemed almost like a child.

“So are we going to start using those here?”

“Oh, you know, they have to do all sorts of tests, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.” He stroked the top of the box fondly.

“I'm afraid I didn't get your name this morning,” I said finally. “Is it Owen?”

“It's Owens, the last name is. Clement is my given name.”

I gave my own name then and held out my hand, which he shook rather too vigorously.

He offered to get me a second cup of coffee, but while he was at the counter, I realized my break had ended five minutes before. No time to make apologies, I told myself. As I hurried out the door, I saw him arranging a whole plateful of cookies, ladies' fingers and lemon icebox and more anise. It seemed that we would probably never meet again.

We met because of Private Buckle and then I killed my parents. Had I mentioned that? No, I thought I hadn't. Of course, I didn't mean to kill them, but in a case of death, how much does intent really matter?

I killed them because I felt a little fatigued and suffered from a slight, persistent cough. Thinking I was overworked and hadn't been getting enough sleep, I went home for a short visit, just a few days to relax in the country while the sweet corn and the raspberries were ripe. From the city I brought fancy ribbon, two boxes
of chocolate, and a deadly gift from Private Buckle. I gave the influenza to my mother, who gave it to my father, or maybe it was the other way around.

When I saw the fever on my mother's cheeks, I made Mathilda take Ruthie to the island, although for all I knew it was already too late.

“But it's so lonely there,” she said.

“Better lonely than dead,” I told her. It was important to be efficient, to be blunt. “Think of Ruthie.”

I was a good nurse, as I've said, and I brought all of my training to bear. I followed the doctor's orders to the letter, even though I needed no instructions; I knew the course. I forced spoonfuls of honeyed tea and chicken broth between their lips to give them strength. I dosed them with quinine at eight, at twelve, at four, at eight again, day and night. I opened the windows in their room for fresh air. I tucked the quilts tightly around them to make them sweat. I changed the linens twice a day, more often when the blood from their noses began to stain the pillow slips.

“Mathilda?” my mother said as I bathed her face with a warm cloth.

I assured her she would see Mathilda later, when she was better.

“Where's Mattie?” my father demanded, throwing the blankets to the floor.

I tried to explain about contagion, about how she was safe with Ruth, about how they would see her once they recovered. But they were delirious with fever. They refused to understand. “Mathilda,” they called. “Mattie!” Finally, when their skins had turned pale blue for lack of air, I pretended.

“Yes, Mama. Yes, Papa,” I said. “I'm here.”

My mother smiled then. My father sighed and relaxed. They were comforted.

I wonder now if, in some way, I thought I could be Mathilda after that. I wonder if I thought I could act like her at least, with her
charm and her daring. If so, I should have known better. Of course, I didn't think about any of that then. I only thought to ease their suffering, to help them heal, to be a good nurse.

I did everything right. Everything. But it meant nothing. They got away from me. Their lungs full of fluid, they drowned in their bed, first my mother, then my father. I was helpless to hold them back.

Mathilda and I buried our parents on an Indian summer day in Nagawaukee's graveyard, under the lurid, mocking sugar maples. Neighbors and friends had been with us all morning, but now, on the way home, their buggies turned off one by one onto other roads, until there was no one else, either before or behind, and we were alone. At the gate, I jumped down and fumbled with the new latch.

“Here, like this,” Mathilda said, coming up beside me. Her eyes were so red and swollen that she could barely see, but the gate opened easily under her fingers. In all those months I'd been away, the house and the farm had become hers.

I knew exactly what was in the kitchen, since I'd taken each dish at the door. There was white bread, brown bread and pumpernickel. There was hot potato salad, cold potato salad, scalloped potatoes and sweet potatoes. There was venison, corned beef, a ham, a turkey, two chickens and a duck. There was tongue, pork sausage, white sausage, blood sausage and braunschweiger. There were hard rolls and sweet rolls, cherry preserves, cauliflower in cream, leeks in cream, creamed corn, sugared carrots, sauerkraut, pickled beets, apple pie, pumpkin pie and tapioca pudding. The door of the icebox would hardly close and bowls and plates hung precariously over the edges of the kitchen table and covered the counter and the seat of every chair. A dozen pears, a rhubarb pie and a jar of tomatoes had found their way into the front room and three cheeses and a tin of molasses cookies congregated on my mother's daybed in the back.

“Can I make anyone a sandwich?” I asked.

“Oh, throw it all away!” Mathilda cried. “How can you stand to look at it?”

She ran upstairs, sobbing, and Rudy and Ruth and I stood not looking at each other.

“I bet Ruth is hungry, aren't you, honey?”

But Mathilda's behavior had upset her. She burst into tears and followed her mother.

“Eat something, Rudy,” I said. “No point in letting it go to waste.”

My father disapproved of wasting food. He sucked marrow from bones. He ate skin and tendons and gristle, and he expected us to do the same. We were not allowed to “spoil our supper” by eating between meals but once, when I was seven, I was so hungry I opened the icebox. Just looking at some food, I thought, might ease my stomach. In a back corner, behind the meat and the butter, there was a little cup of something thick, rich and white. A week or two before, my mother had made a vanilla custard that was so sweet and creamy I had licked my spoon until all I could taste was the silver. Could this portion have been forgotten? And if it had been forgotten, who would notice if I took just one little bite?

I reached deep into the cool interior, slid my finger gently along the smooth surface and carried a tiny ridge of the whiteness back to my mouth. But as soon as my tongue touched my finger I knew it wasn't custard. It was something terrible—slimy and disgusting. I wiped my tongue on my sleeve and turned to go out to the pump to wash my hands. My father was standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing in the icebox?”

It was impossible to lie to my father. “I thought it was some custard, but it's gone bad or something.”

“Your mother wouldn't keep bad food in the icebox,” he said, reaching around me to pull the cup of white stuff out.

I had nothing to say to this. It was true that she was very careful, but it was also true that custard tasted awful.

“What have I told you about eating between meals?”

“It's wrong.”

“How do you know your mother isn't planning to use this custard?” He frowned at the gully my finger had made.

“She forgot about it.”

He looked at me sharply. He hated lying. Maybe she hadn't forgotten it. How did I know?

“You thought you'd just take it. Is that right? Steal it and spoil your supper. Stick your finger in it so it's no good to anyone else.”

It was difficult to tell which of these he thought the worst offense. He was shaking the cup under my nose now. I turned my face away.

“No, I …” But what he said was true. I tried a different tack. “I was hungry.”

He sighed. “You have to learn to control yourself, Amanda. Do you see me stealing food out of the icebox, spoiling my appetite so I can't eat my good supper?”

“No, Papa.”

He slammed the cup down at my place at the table. Then he crossed to the drawer and took out a spoon and banged that down beside the cup. “You want this? You eat it. Now.”

Even had it tasted good, I wouldn't have wanted it any longer. The idea of doing so blatantly what he had forbidden repelled me. My stomach tightened. My throat constricted. I felt sick.

“I can't.”

“You should have thought of that before you stuck your grubby finger in it, shouldn't you? Now eat it.” He took hold of my shoulders and pushed me down into my chair.