Ruby & Roland

by Faith Sullivan

  Delia left us then to write Dennis. “He’ll want to know all about the shower and how impressed the dean was when I told him that Dennis’s father owned a newspaper. Small-town newspapers, the Dean says,” and here she mimicked his voice, “‘are the cornerstone of democracy.’ Imagine!”

  I felt no qualms about Delia’s future with Dennis. He was a young man of substance, and she would do him proud. With her “unplumbed depths,” she would handle Dennis’s father.

  Annie fetched herself and me another cup of coffee and a plate of leftover tea sandwiches. We unlaced our Sunday shoes and sat in the parlor.

  “I shouldn’t eat,” I told her. “Professor Cromwell’s coming at seven to take me to Ming Ho’s. I tried to beg off, but he said he has news.”

  “Maybe he’ll ask you to marry him.”

  “Oh, don’t say that.”

  “Don’t you think you could be happy with him?”

  “I don’t know if I could or not, but I don’t love him that way.” I nibbled the edge of a sandwich.

  “Could you learn to love him?”

  “What if I didn’t? It would be cruel to him and awful for me. He’s too good a man for that.”

  “He is a good man, Ruby, and it’s unkind not to let him know that he’s out of the running. Tell him.” She set aside her coffee cup. “But remember,” she said, “he has everything girls hope for. A reasonable-minded girl would fall in love with him. If not at once, then in time.” Choosing another ribbon sandwich from the plate, she added, “I bet he’s a good kisser.”

  “I know you’re right,” I told her, “but I’m not reasonable, and there’s the end of it.” I rose and headed for the stairs. “Anyway, I think you’d make a better partner for him.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said from behind me. “Since Michael died, I’ve learned to appreciate my independence. I talked to the dean about college this afternoon.” I heard her start up the stairs. “I’m not a reasonable-minded girl, either.”

  Knowing she’d love news of Dennis and Delia’s engagement, I wrote Emma, adding, “Dennis has decided to take over the newspaper after all. He says that what he’s seen in the war makes him realize how important papers are. He’s marrying the right girl! Delia’s smart and wise. She’ll probably end up with her own weekly column.”

  Professor Cromwell and I settled into a booth with a pot of green tea and two small cups in front of us. The steamy aroma of tea, garlic, and ginger was both exotic and genial. Ming Ho’s always made me feel like a world traveler.

  “Now then,” I said, sliding Professor Cromwell’s cup toward him. “What’s your news?”

  “I’ve been offered a position in Pittsburgh heading up a laboratory for Standard Oil. I’ve told them I couldn’t possibly accept until the end of the academic year. I’ve signed a contract to teach, and it’s too late for the school to find a replacement.”

  “And so …?”

  “They said they’d wait. I was dumbfounded.” He spoke with hurried excitement. “I’ve done laboratory work for them, so they know me, but I never expected anything like this.”

  “I thought you enjoyed your independence.”

  He winced, smiling sheepishly. “I have enjoyed it,” he said. “But I’m looking down the road.” He picked up his cup, started to say something, then set it down, looking at me.

  “If this is what you want, then for heaven’s sake, grab it,” I said.

  He paused. “It’ll mean relocating to Pennsylvania,” he said.

  “Pennsylvania’s not the back side of the moon. Would you really mind relocating?”

  Ming Ho laid menus before us, and conversation was deferred while I ordered my usual chicken and vegetables and Professor Cromwell his beef and noodles.

  Ming Ho, being the soul of discretion, did not linger to ask after our health. Instead of rushing forward with his story, the professor stared after the owner.

  Is he going to ask me to marry him?

  And was I a fool, as Annie had implied? Studying his face, so serious—the eyes dark and deep—I couldn’t help wondering a little. His hands, resting on the table, were capable and strong. His voice when he spoke was cultured. Little wonder students fell in love with him.

  At length his gaze abandoned Ming Ho and turned to me. “I’m going to ask you something, something important to both of us. I think I have a right, but I don’t know what your answer might be. In any case, I don’t want an answer now. I want you to take time to consider.” Again, he hesitated. “You’ve probably guessed that you mean a great deal to me. Strange to say, perhaps, but you’ve always meant a great deal to me, even when you were a child. I hope that doesn’t sound disgusting.”

  “No. I understand.”

  He reached for my hand. “What I’m saying—badly—is: please consider the possibility of marrying me.” He added at once, “Don’t say anything. Think about it. Will you do that?”

  His face entreated, and I nodded though I already knew the answer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  A boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen, ran into the administration office, breathing hard and holding his side. It was a Wednesday in October. I would remember.

  “Ruby Drake?” he inquired after he’d caught his breath. I crossed to the counter that separated our desks from the reception area.

  “I’m Ruby Drake. Can I help you?” He thrust an envelope at me, asked me to sign a form, then turned and left as abruptly as he’d entered.

  “That’s a telegram,” Annie said, rising from her desk, concerned.

  Something’s happened to Roland. Ripping it open, I read, “Roland dead (stop) Tractor accident (stop) Funeral Saturday Methodist church ten a.m. (stop) Love Emma.”

  Annie caught me under the arms and shoved a chair beneath me as the world spun. “Put your head between your knees,” she was saying. Then, to a student assistant, “Fetch Professor Cromwell.”

  You are the wife of my soul, he’d said.

  I didn’t see Annie retrieve the telegram from the floor, nor did I see her read it. Time passed. Someone came hurrying with smelling salts. Later—maybe minutes, maybe an hour—the professor was there, leading me out of the room and the building, handing me into his Cadillac. He’d collected Delia on the way.

  “Delia will pack for you while I go pack for myself,” he said, as much to Delia as to me.

  Together they ushered me into the house and to a chair in the parlor, where I sat insensible. Later, they guided me out and back into the professor’s automobile, Delia remaining behind. Only vaguely do I recall boarding the train. Long afterward, Professor Cromwell told me that I fell asleep immediately. I do recall waking when we reached Chicago and had to remove ourselves to another station. On the second train, I stared blindly at passing landscapes. My palms bled where my nails dug into them.

  Professor Cromwell had apparently wired ahead to reserve rooms, for when we arrived in Harvester early Thursday morning, someone from the hotel met us.

  Sleeping, I dreamt again of the wild dog and of Roland crying, “He was only hungry!” I woke weeping. “I’m so sorry. So sorry.” I was still sobbing when Emma knocked and entered.

  She sat on the side of the bed, weeping too, holding me, rocking and murmuring, “I’m so sorry, little girl.” When finally she came into focus, I saw that her eyes were swollen nearly shut. Mostly silent, we sat with our backs to the head of the bed, seeking solace in being close.

  “Do you want to come to the farm?” she asked before leaving.

  “Tomorrow.”

  She nodded.

  “I want to see all of you,” I told her. “I want to see the farm. Both farms.”

  I slumped then, too heavy to sit upright. Too sad to stay awake.

  • • •

  Sleeping was the only way to endure, and I would have slept Friday away, too, but while I slept, Professor Cromwell had been growing acquainted with Emma and Henry. Now he told me, “Emma needs you.”

  After Henry welcomed us, he we
nt with Jake and the two boys, David and Solomon, to work the long day away. Around the kitchen table, Emma, Dora, Professor Cromwell, and I drank coffee and talked of arrangements: the Methodist Reverend Norton was officiating, and Roland would be buried in the Protestant Cemetery. Pallbearers: Henry, Jake, Moses, the two boys, and Kolchak.

  Dora was wan and grave, older and more solid. She bore her limp without notice.

  “Mr. Cromwell,” Emma said, “thank you for bringing our Ruby home.”

  I sat close to Emma, my left hand on her shoulder, the connection keeping me tied to her kitchen, to Roland, to everything that made me feel real and safe and entirely myself.

  Before we left, Dora asked, “Would you like to come across the road and see Roland?”

  In my torpor it had escaped me that Roland might be at home, that people would be coming for the viewing, the wake. “Yes.”

  “Mr. Cromwell?”

  Along with Emma, we followed Dora across Cemetery Road. On the Allens’ back porch food was lined up on a table, offerings left while Dora had been at the Schoonovers’.

  In the parlor, the open casket stood before windows temporarily covered with dark fabric. An electric lamp burned on a nearby table, casting a ghostly half light over Roland. I was grateful for the unreality: the dim, waxen figure, decked out in a serge suit, was not Roland. In my mind, Roland was out in the fields with Moses. Professor Cromwell moved close, but I felt no need of support. This body did not move me. The man I’d met in the barn, his body warm and hard—that man moved me, and all remembrance of him moved me, but not this cold figure in a satin-lined box.

  I turned away, as did Dora. Together we walked through the kitchen and out into the farmyard, leaving Emma and Professor Cromwell behind in the parlor. In the strong, slanting rays of October, we halted, waiting to regain our sunlight eyes. When we were sure of our steps, Dora took my hand, leading me to the pasture.

  “It was here,” she said, heading toward a low, boggy area alongside a creek where the cattle liked to lie in the heat of summer. She pointed. “He drove too close to the creek. The wheels caught in the muck and the tractor went over. Roland was caught under it. Moses had gone to town for gasoline.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “And maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  I put an arm around her.

  “He was trying to till more land,” she said, “so he could put in another crop in the spring, make more money, pay everything off. He was desperate to get the tractor paid off.”

  We turned back toward the house. “I wish you hadn’t left,” she told me. “Your great-aunt needed you, I know, but now I need you.”

  Over a lifetime, I have found that I remember little of funerals. I suppose I have my own thoughts and pain to attend to. Maybe most people are occupied that way.

  That Saturday, as I stood next to the open grave, beneath a cold October rain that would demarcate autumn from winter, I saw a familiar but unplaceable figure among those gathered. I searched my mind, recalling after several minutes the Fourth of July picnic at the Grange Hall: John Flynn, state representative, appearing genuinely moved. The woman beside him I didn’t recognize. His wife? “My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Stillman,” Dora told me that evening.

  As we were leaving the cemetery, Emma, at my elbow, murmured, “The Lundeens came, bless their hearts.” So many small threads of connection wound around me like baling wire.

  Before the day was out, the sun returned, now a winter sun. In the descending light, we gathered at the Allen farm—Dora and Moses, the four Schoonovers and Jake, Professor Cromwell and I, plus a handful of friends, including the Kolchaks and several threshers and their wives. Dora’s parents were conspicuous in their absence; Roland’s were ill with the dread influenza.

  Food was spread on the kitchen table. Emma dished up small plates for Dora and me though she herself, I noted, did not eat. I was concerned for them both. How was Dora to run the farm without Roland?

  Dora and I took our plates to the stairs, where we sat picking at ham and scalloped potatoes. “What I said before, Ruby, I meant. I wish you were here with me and Moses. There’s the empty room.”

  “You’re going to keep the farm?”

  “What else could I do?”

  A light frost dusted the countryside under a pale, dying moon as Professor Cromwell and I drove out to the farms early the next morning. Our train wasn’t due until eleven, and Emma had invited us for breakfast.

  The colors of the landscape were solemn, fading and deepening: golds perishing into tans, tans into dun. A misty gray seeped into it all. On the cusp of winter, the land was momentarily otherworldly, a spiderweb veil thrown over it. The haystacks were mystical, as were the raggedy corn stubble and the trees baring their souls. I drank it in like liquor.

  On a day such as this I had walked down Cemetery Road toward Sioux Woman Lake and found Roland. The lake had been gunmetal, and a flotilla of loons had divided its surface, sailing south.

  Here my soul was planted—in the awesome toil, the smell of hay dust, the burr of cicadas, the hoary exhale of a horse on a winter morning.

  Taking our coats, Dora led us into the Schoonover kitchen, bright with electricity and smelling of bacon. While I was in Illinois, lines of electrical current had been strung from town, pole to pole, out to the nearest farms.

  “What do you think of the electricity?” I asked Emma.

  “I’m getting an electric flat iron. Feature that,” she said as she set a platter of bacon and eggs on the table. More than once as she rounded the table, pouring coffee, Emma glanced at the professor and me. Dora followed with a platter of toast and a bowl of apple butter to lay before the nine of us.

  Later, after the men had left for their respective barns, I left Professor Cromwell drying dishes for Emma while I crossed the road with Dora. Gazing out at a field pockmarked by platefuls of manure, I stood by the Allens’ pasture gate, conjuring Roland—Roland driving the cows around the side of the barn at the end of the day, herding them in, strong and clear.

  In Illinois, I had imagined Roland growing older, with children. I would have learned of it all from Emma and Dora. That the children weren’t mine would sadden me, but at least he would be alive and prospering. Cold comfort. And, in the end, cold comfort finds a welcome.

  This view from the pasture gate—the fields and trees, the cows, and, yes, the cowpats—seared me with longing. Dora stood on one side of me and then Emma on the other.

  Dora opened the gate to let Red out into the pasture where he usually loved to menace the cows, lest they forget who was in charge. That he moved slowly and his tail hung listless was evidence of his own mourning.

  As Dora closed the gate, Professor Cromwell, who must have been there some minutes, told me, “It’s time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sweet Serena, you were with me still in late April 1919, though Denton was fading into ghosthood. Never forgotten, yet not quite present.

  Our dream, Serena, of a gazebo and children playing tea party on a wide lawn beneath plane trees—I’d abandoned it with only a blown kiss of regret, for now I was home, leaning against the pasture gate of Roland’s farm. Out where cattle nosed at still-cold and oozing ground for any grass, old or new, the trees nudged fledgling leaves into the world. The air was astringent, light and thin and pale yellow.

  Beside me, Dora shifted. “Mountains of snow, tall as the barn eaves, covered the ground till the end of March,” she said, gesturing toward the late April ponds that splotched the farther fields. “We’ll be late planting.”

  Emma, at my other side, grunted concurrence, telling me, “We had to dig tunnels to the outhouse and henhouse and barns.”

  Pulling the old coat tight around me, I told Dora, “We’ll need another hired man. Moses is tired. But God knows, he’s been a good soldier.”

  “He says he’ll scare up another hand. One as good as him, he says, though I doubt there is such a man,” Dora said.

  Following the sale
of Aunt’s house and furnishings on the first of March, I’d once again packed books, tea set, cowherd painting, and clothes into my old trunk. But before purchasing a railway ticket, I walked over to “little” Mrs. Pedersen’s, explaining to her that I had lived in her house long ago.

  “You’re Mrs. Bullfinch’s friend,” she said. “Come in. Just wander around.”

  Mrs. Pedersen was given to quantities of tatting, crocheting, and cross-stitching, and to ladies’ magazines and ceramic knick-knacks, many of them depicting praying children. Of Serena and Denton’s presence nothing remained.

  Later that day, I visited my parents’ graves. Here again—beyond the quotes on their monuments—I found little of their presence. Now I was their vessel. At 4:12 p.m., I boarded the familiar train headed through Illinois, up into Iowa, and then home.

  I settled into the room that had been Lily Allen’s nursery. Despite the age of the house, this space retained the tangy, homely odor of raw wood. And, indeed, the pine floor would need paint and a rug. Outside the window stood the rock elm, in bud, to shade and shelter me even as it had Roland.

  I hung the painting of the flaxen-haired cowherd above a bedside bookcase hauled home from the secondhand store in Harvester, along with a small writing desk at which I could corresponded with Beardsley friends. On a later trip to town, I haggled for yet another bookcase, this one for the parlor.

  Atop the bedside shelves were the china tea set and the photograph of Serena and Denton, beginning to fade a little. Owing perhaps to her own lack of family, Dora had adopted mine as aunt and uncle. Recently she—now a devoted Methodist—concluded mealtime grace with, “Lord, look after Aunt Serena and Uncle Denton in heaven.”

  Myself, I still imagined Serena and Denton living in a big white house set back from the street, where plane trees shade the lawn. In the gazebo, come late afternoon, Serena pours tea.

  The upper bookcase shelves held Serena’s books. Hidden in The Return of the Native was the note Roland had written me, as was the one I had written him, the one Dora found and I later pilfered. His photograph I secreted in Leaves of Grass. On the bottom shelf were sent-away-for books: Cradles of Civilization and Aristotle and Alexander of Macedon.