Ruby & Roland

by Faith Sullivan

  “What makes you so sure he’s straying?”

  “I’m not sure. But I see the way he looks at you, and I saw you pass him something this afternoon.”

  I don’t know how I managed not to trip over my feet. “Oh, that,” I said scornfully. “It was just a funny poem I found in one of Henry’s old farm journals.”

  “Well … just remember, Roland Allen’s spoken for.”

  In town the thunder of fireworks began. I looked at the quilt. “If you’re done insulting me, I’m going to watch the fireworks,” I said, breaking away and hurrying back to Emma and Henry.

  But I hardly noticed the fireworks as I sat with the others. My face still flamed. Was Dennis jealous of Roland? What if he shared his suspicions with Emma or Henry? Worse, what if he went to Dora? As the fireworks wound down to a final burst of pop-pop-pops and I packed up the picnic, the beautiful night had soured.

  “Roland, come with us in the automobile,” Emma said. “I know you like a ride.”

  Across the yard, the Harold Schoonover children were packing up while the parents lingered, shooting the breeze with another family. Minutes later, our party followed theirs to the gate, where Hermione turned to trill, “Next year at this time, we’ll have our new automobile—and maybe a new son too!”

  In the dark back seat of Henry’s Model T, there was no way to talk above the noise of the machine without shouting. I couldn’t warn Roland about Dennis. Reflecting on his words, I shivered. Mistaking the trembling, Roland chafed my hands to warm them.

  We kissed. He caressed my breasts through the fabric of my dress and I laid a hand between his legs. How melancholy this happiness was.

  CHAPTER TEN

  On the day following the picnic, after the noon meal, Emma and I were working in the garden tying tomato plants to stakes.

  As Emma sat back on her haunches, wiping perspiration from her temples with a flannel cloth, Teddy suddenly set up a tune and went running down the drive toward Cemetery Road. As we started for the gate, Moses came running up the long drive, panting and calling as best he could.

  Our men were in the field, preparing for a second hay crop, so Emma and I ran to meet the old man. Moses was breathing hard and holding his side.

  “Moses, what is it?” Emma asked. “Get your wind.”

  Wild-eyed, he shook his head, unable to get the words out. Finally, leaning heavily on the back gate, he wheezed, “Mrs. Allen … fell in the barn.”

  “Is she hurt bad?”

  He could only nod again and again, pointing back the way he’d come.

  “Where’s Roland?”

  “Gone for the doctor,” he breathed.

  “Ruby and I’ll go. You take your time,” she told him. We gathered up our skirts and dashed down the drive.

  The wide barn door was open, as it had been the day I’d found Roland there. Still in her nightgown, Dora lay on a bed of straw. Her right leg was twisted strangely, and she was moaning and sobbing and nursing her right arm.

  “Roland has gone for the doctor,” Emma told her. “Can we make you more comfortable?”

  Dora shook her head.

  “Ruby and I’ll stay with you till Roland gets back.” She handed Dora a clean handkerchief. “How’d this happen?”

  “Naaah,” Dora cried, drawing the word out in a long lamentation, as if not only pain but some awful regret were being wrung from her.

  Emma glanced around. I followed her gaze when it stopped. Hanging from a rafter was a length of rope with a badly constructed noose at one end. Leaning beside it was a rough ladder, probably the one used to climb to the hay mow. Emma looked at me and shook her head. Though the day was July hot, Dora had begun to twitch and shiver. “Get a blanket from the house,” Emma said.

  When I returned, Roland was just turning in at the drive. Behind his wagon came a buggy carrying Dr. White and his nurse. The pain in Roland’s face as he leapt from the wagon was wrenching. He was full of guilt, as was I. But—so cold was my heart—I still thought, I love you as much as before.

  Dr. White carried a folded stretcher, and the nurse followed with his bag. The doctor nodded to us, then told Emma, “Leave us, Mrs. Schoonover. We’ll get her into the house. No doubt you’ll be needed later.”

  As Emma and I headed toward the Allens’ back door, I looked over my shoulder to see the doctor holding a cloth to Dora’s face. Her crying died away.

  Inside the house, I followed Emma up the stairs to prepare the bedroom. A scene of domestic warfare met us: a wedding photo, wrested from the wall, had been thrown to the floor, its glass broken; brush, comb, and other articles of toilette were swept from the top of a bureau; clothing, Roland’s and Dora’s, was scattered like bits of tornado refuse; even the bedclothes were flung into a muddle.

  “Run across the road and bring back clean sheets and pillowcases,” Emma said. “Take these with you to be washed.” She gathered up the linens from the bed, shoving them into my arms.

  When I returned with the bedding, Emma had put the room in order and swept up the glass. The wedding photo had disappeared. We made up the bed quickly when we heard the doctor and Roland carrying Dora into the house and up the stairs. Then Emma and I moved into the hall, giving the men room to maneuver. The doctor came first, Roland holding his end of the stretcher high to keep Dora level. The nurse followed.

  When Dora lay in bed, straight as a corpse, the doctor told Roland, Emma, and me, “Leave us be for a few minutes. I’m going to set the bones.”

  Heading back downstairs to wait, we sat at the kitchen table, silent, Roland pale, shaking his head, trying, I knew, to sort out what was happening; Emma preoccupied, kneading her hands as if applying balm.

  Twenty minutes later, Dr. White and the nurse joined us. “I’ll be back tomorrow early to put a cast on the leg and arm. In the meantime, she should sleep. With any luck, through the night. Don’t let her toss. She probably won’t. She’s knocked out for now.” Turning to Roland, he said, “If she wakes and the pain is bad, give her two teaspoons of this.” The nurse handed him his bag and he reached into it for a brown bottle, handing it to Roland.

  When they had left, Emma told Roland, “I’ll drive the wagon over with our commode. Dora won’t be able to take the stairs or use the chamber pot for a while.” Leave it to dear Emma to think of such practicalities. Roland nodded though I wasn’t sure he heard or understood.

  Rising, she laid a hand on his shoulder and, in a strange, tender voice, said, “We’ll get through this, buckaroo.” She patted him, and we left, but not before she added, “Ruby and I’ll bring supper over. We’ll all eat here tonight, our men too.”

  The afternoon was ebbing as we hurried back across the road.

  “Do you think she left a note?” I asked Emma.

  “I didn’t see one.”

  “What about the doctor? Do you think the doctor noticed the rope?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will he tell? Will there be scandal?”

  “He won’t tell.”

  “And the nurse?”

  “Sarah Gilmore won’t tell.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “He’s a good man.” Emma paused for breath and to wipe her face on her sleeve. “And years ago Sarah’s daughter walked into the lake late one night after her beau threw her over. It was a scandal, all right. The daughter was buried outside the cemetery fence, mind you. The boy hanged himself a few months later.” We set out again. “There’s more of this goes on than you might think.”

  After the supper dishes were washed and the Allen kitchen tidied, Emma and I prepared to head home. The men, who were sitting on the back steps smoking, rose to let us pass. Henry told Emma, “You go ahead. I’ll be along.”

  Emma turned to Roland. “In the morning, Ruby’ll come over and stay with Dora. You can’t afford to take a day off.”

  Later, in my room, I finally had time to think, though it curdled the dinner inside me. Pacing the length of my room, I wondered if Dora had tried to hang
herself because of Roland and me. If so, how had she found out? Dennis hadn’t had time to do mischief. And anyway, I wasn’t sure he was the sort. He might be jealous or protective, but he wasn’t a villain.

  And if Dora had by some means found out, what would happen tomorrow when I began caring for her? Even lying broken and in pain, she was bound to be murderously angry. I would be.

  And would Dora tell Emma? And would I be sent packing? I didn’t really fear that. I could make my way somehow. It was losing Emma and Roland that I feared. What must Roland be enduring? I hoped that Dora slept through the night. Even so, how could Roland sleep, maybe ever again, with questions like these chewing his insides?

  You may notice that I have made no mention of what Dora was feeling, beyond anger—her sorrow, her humiliation. No, all my worries centered on Roland and myself, the damage she could inflict on us.

  I held the photograph of Serena and Denton to my heart. What would Serena say about all of this? Would she call me a monster? Was I a monster?

  Serena and Denton had never talked about “sin.” On the other hand, Aunt Bertha had talked a good deal about it. To hear her tell it, sin was at the heart of nearly everything—certainly everything that was enjoyable.

  If I understood the meaning of sin, Roland and I were surely up to our necks in it. Perhaps I was a monster.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “You best get over there before the doctor leaves. Likely he’ll have instructions. Take a sandwich,” Emma said, thrusting one at me. Though we’d been late rising this morning, the sun wasn’t fully above the horizon.

  “I haven’t set the table for breakfast,” I said.

  “Go. I saw the doctor’s buggy. And take some rags for cleaning.”

  And so I went, dragging my heels, wondering how yesterday’s domestic war at the Allens’ had begun. If I was the cause, was Roland sorry he’d ever laid eyes on me? No matter, I would still love him. I might be seventeen, but there are things you know, granite-hard know, even at seventeen.

  The day was hot with thick, heavy air that pressed on scalp and shoulders. My head weighed fifty pounds, and I lugged my body across the road like a gunny sack of potatoes. Except for a hawk sailing slowly back and forth across the sky searching for breakfast, even the birds were quiet, conserving energy. The dust of the road, given to flushing upward at the smallest disturbance, barely troubled itself on this dense morning.

  The farmyard was silent. Lying in the shade of the rock elm, panting, Red noted my arrival with a lazy wave of his feathery tail, but didn’t rise. I filled his battered tin bowl with water and slouched into the house.

  The night before, Emma had said, “I want you to spend your days with Dora. Roland’s barely hanging on to that place. He can’t afford to bring in a hired woman. You’ll be a great help to him.”

  “But what’ll you do?”

  “I know a woman from town I can get temporary.”

  Now I sat down at Roland’s table, pecking without interest at my sandwich. I supposed that Roland was upstairs with the doctor and nurse. When he came down, what would his face tell me?

  Had he eaten breakfast? I set aside my sandwich and found one of Emma’s loaves in the bread box. When had she delivered that? Only now was I glimpsing how much Roland meant to her, the pain and concern she must be feeling. And if she learned that I was at the bottom of his troubles, dear God. My fears chased each other.

  At length, I grabbed a basket from beside the back door and went to gather eggs. Moses had milked the cows and was letting them out to pasture. Had he heard yesterday’s battle? If so, what did he make of it? Emma had said that Moses was as devoted to Roland as he was to the Roman church.

  An orphan from “back east,” Moses had decades ago worked his way across the country, ending up as a farmhand. “He’s taken to the work body and soul,” Emma told me. “He certainly took to Roland like a son.”

  “And he never had a … lady friend?” I asked.

  “I can’t speak to that,” Emma said, “though I did hear that Mrs. Hartwell, the priest’s housekeeper, has been a good friend over the years.”

  Followed by Roland, nurse Gilmore and Dr. White finally descended the stairs, the nurse folding a rubber sheet, the doctor telling Roland, “Keep her quiet and immobile today. Tomorrow she can use the commode, but she’ll need help. Meanwhile, the bedpan.”

  He turned to me. “You’ll be here?”

  “Yes.”

  “You heard what I told Mr. Allen. She can have food and liquids, no dietary restrictions. Keep her entertained and quiet as best you can. She’s riled.” He shook hands with Roland, and was gone, the nurse with him.

  Now that we were alone, I didn’t know what to say. But at length, “Have you had breakfast?”

  “A cup of coffee.” Shoulders hunched, he looked at me from beneath his brows, as if he feared I might hurl something at him.

  “I’ll make eggs and toast.” What a pitiful pair we were. Desperate to know what the other was thinking, yet dreading to know, each of us feeling small when measured against the enormity of what had occurred.

  “I shouldn’t take time to sit.”

  “Don’t be silly. Anyway, I’ve got questions.” My hands trembled as I reached for eggs from the basket.

  We were silent for the ten minutes required to prepare a plate of eggs and toast, and reheat coffee. Drawing out a chair opposite him, I asked, “What happened yesterday morning?” My voice seemed to come from another room. It sounded older, like some other woman’s.

  “Well, we had a row.”

  “What about?”

  “She said I didn’t love her. That I was sneaking around with somebody. She’d felt it for a long time, she said, but now she had proof.

  “I asked her what she meant by that, but she started screaming and beating on me. I let her. I figured I owed her that. ‘Don’t pretend,’ she said. Then she began to throw things and get crazy. After a while she went limp and got … quiet.” He looked at his coffee cup, but didn’t pick it up. “She never said she was going to kill herself.”

  I sat frozen, waiting.

  “The thing was, I couldn’t make myself deny any of it or … or tell her I loved her. I don’t think I could’ve done that, even if she’d said she was going to do what she did.” His voice drained of energy, he asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “When I look at you, I get dizzy-crazy.” He smiled, a little miracle. “But, to tell the truth, I don’t see a happy ending,” I said. He started to say something, but I interrupted, “Right at this minute, I’m feeling grown-up. While it lasts, I’m going to make a rule: as long as I’m in Dora’s house, we will not touch each other.”

  “Why? That day in the barn, we were touching each other.”

  “That was different.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but it was. This rule is something I feel, not something I understand.”

  He grunted, shaking his head. “If I can’t abide by it?”

  “You’ll have to, if you want me to help out here.” The effort to say these words exhausted me. He finished breakfast in silence and headed to work. I slumped at the table, the starch in my spine oozing away.

  From above came Dora’s voice, “Who’s down there?”

  With trepidation, I climbed the stairs. How would I keep Dora calm, as the doctor had ordered, if she knew about Roland and me?

  “I’m here,” I said, clearing my throat and stepping into the bedroom, tiptoeing, the way you do entering a sick room. My hands were dug into my apron pockets to quiet them. “Would you like some breakfast?”

  Beneath a loose gown, Dora’s right arm and leg were in casts. Her long blonde hair fell in soft waves around a wan face dominated by enormous pale blue eyes. In a small voice, she said, “… just toast and coffee, if there is any.”

  “Cream and sugar?”

  “Cream.”

  She was sending out waves of different emotions, chief among them embarrassment
. Two vivid splotches appeared on her cheeks. Suicide was a scandal, especially in a small rural community and especially if you didn’t succeed. If you succeeded, well, what did you care?

  Added to this was the certain knowledge that some people would know why she’d done it, and the rest would guess that her husband was catting around. And she the town beauty. Her fists were balled tightly on the bed beside her.

  I would truly have liked to spare her this, but I was obliged to be with her, wait on her, and who knew for how long? The least I could do was pretend I knew nothing. It might save her a crumb of self-respect.

  “No egg?”

  “No egg.”

  Headed back down the stairs, I realized she didn’t know about me. So what had been her “proof”?

  After I prepared a fresh pot of coffee and set it on the stove, I flew out to the yard, up the drive, and along the fence, looking for a flower or two. I was ecstatic that she didn’t suspect me. More generously, I wanted to give her a spot of beauty on the worst day of her life. I found a scraggly stand of wild daisies. They wouldn’t last—wildflowers never did—but they were something bright. Back in the kitchen, I arranged them in a mason jar and set them on a makeshift tray, a big cake pan lined with a napkin.

  Slathering Emma’s apple butter on the toast, I poured plenty of cream into the coffee, and headed back up the stairs, my tread lighter than earlier.

  When I had helped Dora with her toast and coffee, she looked at me almost shyly and asked, “Who are you?”

  I was wary. Was this a trick question? “I’m Emma and Henry’s hired girl, Ruby.” I moved the tray to the chifforobe.

  “I mean, where do you come from?”

  “Illinois.”

  “And how did you get to this godforsaken part of the world?”

  Given her pain and our general circumstances, this seemed an odd conversation, though maybe any small distraction was better than a knowing silence. I explained about Serena and Denton.

  “What happened then, after they died?”

  Then had come the Osters in Iowa and, after that, the Schoonovers and Harvester.