by Melanie Tem
Ruth stared at her, tried to focus, and said nothing for fear of saying something foolish. Now it was Marguerite who waited for Ruth to say something, but Ruth didn’t know what to say.
“Think about it. We’d have them both in one place. Your mother’s hurt. Mine would be distracted by the city. I myself have never felt stronger or clearer. Ruthie, this is our chance.”
Ruth said nothing. She didn’t know what to say.
Marguerite came close and took Ruth’s face in her hands. The hands were rough and clawed, and they hurt. Ruth tried not to meet the gaze of the single yellow eye, but her cousin held her firmly and filled her field of vision, and there was really nowhere else to look. “Ruthie. Are you with me?”
Ruth shut her eyes. Marguerite shook her, shook them open. Ruth stammered, “I—I don’t—”
Marguerite regarded her for a while longer. Then she pushed her away so hard that Ruth stumbled back against the wall of the piano store, almost fell. “It’s too late for you, isn’t it, Ruthie?” Marguerite whispered. “You’re too old. You’re senile, aren’t you, Ruthie? I’ll have to do it without you, won’t I?”
Ruth recognized the excitement, the triumph in her cousin’s eyes. She didn’t say anything. She knew she’d failed some test, lost something, but comprehension faded in and out, wasn’t steady enough for her to respond.
They entered the home courtyard from the Harvey Street side, through the gate by Lydia’s house. Ruth noted how shamefully her daughter was letting things go. The gardens were weedy. Trash—newspapers, a child’s school paper, the plastic tray from 7-Eleven nachos—had drifted in from the streets or been deliberately tossed here, and Lydia had not picked them up. Ruth frowned and felt herself blushing. She hoped Marguerite wouldn’t notice, but knew from her cousin’s quick disapproving glance, from the clicking of her teeth and the shaking of her head, that she would gossip about it to her sisters, daughters, granddaughters, nieces, mother. Ruth’s anger with Lydia was so familiar that it was only slightly invigorating.
They entered the house through the back door on the near north side. Unlocking it and then locking it behind them, Ruth’s arthritic fingers and wrists, especially on her left hand, had some difficulty with the complex system of deadbolt, chain, and knob.
The ceremonial room across the east side of the house wasn’t ready. Some of the candles were so mired in their own wax that they were unusable. The jars of unguent weren’t arranged on the side tables. The wolfskins hadn’t been stacked in the middle of the room, and no new fire was laid among the layers of ash in the fireplace. Though there was no particular ritual planned for tonight, someone was sure to want to transform. Ruth sighed. Lydia never could keep straight which preparations were required for which family gatherings.
Marguerite stopped in front of the sweet-smelling fireplace and closed her eyes, took a deep breath. “I like this room. I’ve always liked this room, ever since I was a little girl.”
Absurdly gratified, Ruth stood away from her cousin and didn’t say anything.
“This room is like a canyon,” Marguerite murmured.
A little insulted, Ruth countered, “I’ve always thought your canyons were like rooms.”
Marguerite opened her eyes. The cousins stared at each other. Then, together, they laughed.
As they went toward the kitchen door, Ruth said suddenly, “Remember the time they caught us in here with those boys?” She chuckled, shuddered.
“Mine escaped,” Marguerite said. “John.” “No, he didn’t.”
Marguerite yipped with surprise. When they entered the kitchen the two old women were giggling like the girls they’d once been.
“I’m going to check on Ma,” Ruth said, and left her cousin alone in the front room. She was checking on her daughter, too; she didn’t see or hear or smell her anywhere in the house, but the thought that Lydia might not be here, might have left Mary unattended on a night when company was expected, was too outrageous even to be entertained. Anxiously, Ruth mounted the stairs.
On her way across the attic to her mother’s room under the western eaves, Ruth lost her way. She forgot where she was going and whom she was searching for, and was left once again with only the amorphous uneasiness of searching for someone she would never find. She dropped to all fours among the clutter, pawed through boxes and bags of things she could only fleetingly identify, came upon a small trunk with a broken hasp, opened it.
Here was the handkerchief with the R on the corner. Smelling of clean cotton and of her father, whom she did, she did remember.
Here was the postcard: “Dear Ralph.” Her father’s name was Ralph Amoratti. He’d never been alive at the same time she was alive, never seen her or held her, never felt her kisses or her teeth.
Mary had done all that instead of her. Mary had known him. Mary had had him. Mary had loved him, displayed herself for him, murdered him, and claimed his heart.
Seventy-three years old, Ruth missed her father.
She peered into the trunk, took things out, and set them on the splintery floor around her. The heavy cross with the star sapphire on the heavy silver chain wasn’t here. It had been in this house somewhere, at some time. She remembered vividly how it had felt in her hands, which in her memory were small, a child’s hands. She remembered how the star in the sapphire had appeared and disappeared when someone—her father—had turned it in the light. She had been sitting in his lap.
She remembered her father.
She missed her father.
Here was a book. Square rather than rectangular, hard to hold. Stories of Northwest Denver, with a sepia-colored dust jacket. Elegant velvet ribbons marked several places. She opened it in her lap.
Here were photographs of the elderly sisters’ four houses, an example, the caption said, of mini-developments popular among urban architects in the decades spanning the turn of the century. The four narrow double-peaked houses on the south side of 26th Avenue between Grove Street and Federal Boulevard were mentioned, too. So was the string of three modified Denver Squares in the 2200 block of Umatilla.
Here were chapters about “Farmer Sloan’s Folly” and “When the Circus Came to Town.” Ruth wondered dimly why someone had marked those.
Here was a paragraph about Ralph Amoratti. For just a second she didn’t know who that was. Then, heart racing, she read:
“Little Ralph” Amoratti was one of North Denver’s more colorful small-time hoods, a figure of some local renown in the running of whiskey across the Wyoming border and the operation of profitable moonshine stills around Leadville. On January 17, 1933, he failed to return from a business trip to the mountains, and he was never heard from again. Although no body was found, his disappearance was almost surely a gangland slaying, and local authorities were not much disposed to investigate.
The local newspapers were already vocally indignant about the “moral decay oozing out of the historic northwest quadrant of our city.” In more than one editorial, Frederick Bonfils implied that this was where all evil in the city originated, which so outraged residents that even today some old-timers refuse to subscribe to the Denver Post. The paper stated openly that Ralph Amoratti’s elimination was “a step toward the resurrection of Denver’s decency.”
On January 17, 1933, Ruth had been sixteen years old. Until that day, her father had still been alive.
Dizzy, Ruth sank back on her haunches and slowly shut the book. From various parts of the old house, she heard: Mary’s wordless summons. Lydia’s whining. Other women’s voices, congregating. For a few endless moments, Ruth didn’t know where she was.
Then she put the book back in the trunk, closed the lid, pushed the hole in the tongue of the broken hasp ineffectively over the metal loop, and pushed the trunk under a pile of drapes that were sticky with dust. Then, carefully, she made her way downstairs, thinking, although she didn’t want to, about her father, Little Ralph Amoratti, who might as well have been killed before she was born, but who had not been, and whose body nev
er had been found.
Chapter 11
The small brown dog was too fat to curl up on Lydia’s lap, so he draped himself across it. His front legs stuck straight out. His crooked back legs hung a few inches off the side of her thigh. His tail flapped happily, encouragingly, and he kept his soulful golden-brown gaze on her face. Lydia couldn’t bring herself to pet him, although, surprisingly, she was grateful for the warmth and weight of his little body against hers.
He’d also been too short and too fat to jump up onto her lap himself. He’d stood at her feet whimpering and making tiny jumping motions that didn’t get him more than a couple of inches off the floor. His intent was clear. Finally, Pam had laughed and come over and picked him up, deposited him affectionately in Lydia’s lap. “He likes you,” she’d said.
Lydia hadn’t protested, but she was tense and doubtless quite unwelcoming. Friedrich hadn’t seemed to notice; he’d made himself welcome. Pam had noticed. She’d patted Lydia’s shoulder, making Lydia even more tense.
They were at Pam’s apartment over their lunch break, Lydia’s first day back at work. Pam was ladling homemade minestrone soup out of a Crock-Pot, and homemade corn muffins were reheating in the oven in their foil wrapper. Comfort food, and prepared ahead of time so that their allotted hour would be enough for lunch. Pam had planned this, thought about it. Thought about her. Lydia didn’t know what to make of that.
“Who takes care of your grandmother when you’re at work?” Pam wanted to know. She set a blue-flowered crockery mug of soup on the blue placemat on the butcher-block table in front of Lydia. Friedrich raised his head and eyed the soup, then, not much interested, settled back onto Lydia’s lap with a sigh.
“My mother.”
“Are you comfortable with that, or do you just worry all day?”
“She can handle an emergency.” Lydia laughed mirthlessly. “She’d call me.”
“How is your grandmother doing? From what you said, she had a pretty bad fall.”
“She’s tough. She’ll be okay.”
“Hard on you, though.”
Pam set another steaming mug of soup on the placemat across from Lydia and bent to open the oven door. The oven light shone on her round face, round cheeks, curly light hair. She unwrapped the muffins onto a plate that wasn’t the same pattern as the mugs—burgundy geometric designs on brown instead of blue flowers on darker blue—but went nicely with them anyway. The aroma of the corn muffins was faintly sweet.
It had been a long time since Lydia had eaten someone else’s cooking, and she didn’t like her own. Now she was actually hungry. That seemed dangerous, and she tried to put herself on guard.
Carrying the plate of muffins and a white tub of margarine, Pam sat down at the table. She looked at Lydia and said gently, “You look so tired. You’re not getting sick, too, are you?”
Taken aback, Lydia didn’t try to answer until she’d eaten a spoonful of soup and a buttered bite of cornbread. Even then she didn’t know how to respond, so she just said, “I always look like this,” and then tried to laugh as if she’d been joking.
Pam put down her glass of milk and leaned across the table just slightly, but alarmingly. “Really, Lydia. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m used to it.”
“You’ve been under a lot of stress lately. First Deborah and now this. Have you heard anything from Deborah?”
Lydia shook her head.
“God, Lydia, you must be so worried. Is there anything I can do to help?”
There were too many questions. After a pause during which she tried, again, to think of something to say, Lydia shook her head again.
“I could stay with your grandmother some evening if you’d like to get out.”
The offer was so kind, and so ludicrous, that Lydia stammered in her haste to reply. “Oh, no, I —she wouldn’t stay with anybody else.”
“But you have your own life, too. It’s not fair for you to give up your own life for them.” Pam was indignant.
“This is my life.”
“Have you ever thought,” Pam asked carefully, “about a nursing home?”
Lydia indulged herself in a few seconds of fantasizing her grandmother the werewolf in a nursing home, then gave that short bitter laugh again and trusted herself to say only, “That’s not possible.” Pam looked at her for a long moment but didn’t press.
They ate in silence for a while then. The food was very good. Lydia thought of saying so, but it seemed too risky somehow, too intimate, so she didn’t. Friedrich stirred on her lap, squirmed, slid down to lie instead at her feet. Her thighs felt cold without him and that was irritating since it was really quite warm in Pam’s kitchen. Too warm. She was feeling a little faint from the heat, in fact, from the closeness.
Pam sighed and sank back in her chair. “Busy today,” she observed. “I’m tired already. But I must admit, it’s gratifying to see that there’s still such a market for books, no matter what the doomsayers say about movies and TV and videos. People are still reading. I read a lot. Busman’s holiday, you might say, but I wanted to work in a bookstore because I love books, and that hasn’t changed.”
She stopped, and after a while Lydia realized that she was being invited to say something. She couldn’t think what. She could say that she her-self never read anymore, that she didn’t have time. She could say that she had wanted to work in a bookstore because she’d loved books, too, but that she didn’t trust books anymore. She didn’t believe anymore that glimpses into other people’s lives would tell her anything about her own. But she doubted that Pam would be interested in any of that, and she was afraid to say anything else.
Being afraid made her a little angry. She tried to push Friedrich away, but he was leaning against her ankle, and without actually kicking him she couldn’t budge his soft, snoring body.
“An old lady came in right after we opened today and bought thirty-seven volumes of poetry!” Pam laughed, obviously delighted. “She was like a kid in a candy store, really. Could hardly contain herself. Everything from Keats to Cummings to Sylvia Plath. She staked out a wingback chair on the south end of the second floor and piled the books on the table and the floor and started reading. Every once in a while I could hear her whispering a line. When we left for lunch she was still there.” She paused. When Lydia didn’t respond, she added, “I think that’s wonderful, don’t you? That’s why I love working in a bookstore. People like that.”
“Why’d she buy them if she was just going to sit in the store and read them? Probably doesn’t have money to waste like that. Probably lives on a fixed income.” Irritably, she finished the soup and pushed the mug away. Still hungry, she would have liked more, but she would wait for Pam to ask.
“Would you like more soup?” Pam was eager, already half out of her chair. “There’s lots more. I always make a big pot of something—soup, stew, chili—and then eat it for a week. Cooking for yourself isn’t much fun.”
Lydia didn’t know what to say. If she refused, Pam might take it to mean she didn’t like the soup and be offended. If she accepted, it would leave less for Pam for the week, and maybe Pam really didn’t want her to do that, was just being polite. Trying to figure out what was wanted of her made her angry. Finally, she just said, “We should get back. By the time we get there our lunch hour will be up.”
Pam glanced at the campy clock in the shape of a yellow daisy above the stove. “We’ve still got time,” she said. “Nobody will care if we’re a few minutes late.” She hesitated, then added gently, “We’ve all been worried about you.”
Lydia stiffened. “All? I take it I’ve been the subject of gossip?”
Pam cocked her head. “I wouldn’t call it gossip.”
“People should mind their own business.” Lydia was trembling.
“It’s really kind of a close-knit group,” Pam said carefully. “Remember when Pete went through his divorce last year? He got a lot of support at work.” Lydia only vaguely remembered that, only
vaguely knew who Pete was. “And last year, when Stephanie sold her novel, remember the party?”
Lydia hadn’t gone to the party. Stephanie worked at the first-floor reserve desk and Lydia normally encountered her several times a day. She should have said something. She hadn’t known what to say. She’d adjusted her schedule so she didn’t run into Stephanie so much anymore. The longer she’d avoided Stephanie and the harder she’d tried to think of something to say, the angrier she’d become, until, by the time Stephanie’s novel had actually appeared in the mystery section, she’d been so resentful that she could hardly bring herself to put it out on the shelves, and by now she actively disliked Stephanie, who still smiled and spoke to her whenever their paths crossed.
“We do care about each other,” Pam ventured.
“And you got elected to be the social worker for the charity case.”
Pam said, without rancor, “I ‘got elected’ because I like you. I’ve liked you for a long time. I’ve wanted to get to know you better for a long time.”
Lydia pushed back her chair and got to her feet. Friedrich looked up, wagged his tail. “I need to get back,” Lydia managed to say. “I’ve got a lot to do this afternoon. A lot of orders and—”
She was moving hastily toward the door. She didn’t have to wait for Pam; the store was less than two blocks away. Pam, however, actually reached across the table, actually grabbed Lydia’s hand. Astonished, Lydia didn’t immediately pull away. “Lydia,” Pam said earnestly. “You don’t have to do all this alone.”
“I’ve got to get back,” Lydia mumbled, and left. As she hurried out of the apartment she heard the dog whining behind her, heard Pam crooning to him, and, fleetingly, wanted desperately to go back in there and stay. Wanted to be with this kind woman. Wanted not to do it alone. A dangerous impulse, and she kept on going, through the bright afternoon where sunshine reflected off everything, reflected off the sidewalks and buildings and cars and the bright blue sky itself, hurt her eyes everywhere she looked.
