by Cyndi Myers
“Feeling better?” I asked Ruth as she settled into the seat beside me. She’d washed her face and combed her hair and didn’t look as pale as she had in the truck.
She nodded. “Thank you,” she said again. “For everything.”
“My pleasure. What would you like to eat?” I took a menu from the stack behind the napkin dispenser and opened it. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.”
Actually, my stomach was in so many knots I wasn’t sure I’d be able to force anything down, but I wanted to encourage Ruth. She looked a little on the thin side.
We ordered. I was trying to decide the best way to go about finding out more about Ruth’s situation when a group of loud young men came in. Ruth shrank in the seat and ducked her head, hiding her face behind the fall of dark hair. I met Alice’s gaze across the table. Even she couldn’t deny now that the girl was afraid of something.
Ruth was so quiet and timid; I wondered how much nerve it had taken her to stand out on the side of the road with her thumb in the air.
When our food arrived, Ruth picked at her burger and fries; Alice and I did the same. Maybe I’d discovered a new diet plan: Lose Weight with Anxiety.
“If you’re Amish, where did you get your clothes?” Alice asked after a while. “I didn’t think you people wore blue jeans.”
I wanted to slap her. Would she let up on the questioning already? The brashness I’d often admired in her was annoying now. She deflected the dagger looks I sent her as if she were wearing armor.
Ruth’s eyes widened again and she looked around to see if anyone had overheard us. But no one seemed to be paying attention. Alice’s gaze remained fixed on her, demanding an answer.
“They belong to a neighbor,” Ruth said softly. “An English—non-Amish—neighbor.”
“And does this ‘neighbor’ know you took her clothes?” Alice asked.
Ruth nodded, then shook her head. “I left a note, and some money I’d saved from a lamb I sold this fall.”
“Did you think of asking your neighbor for help?” I asked.
“I couldn’t. She lives right next door.”
I nodded. Maybe everyone wouldn’t understand that reasoning, but I could. I grew up in a house where my mother would cook dinner without salt before she’d walk across the alley and ask to borrow some from a neighbor. Frannie paid a petsitter to look after her dogs when she went out of town rather than asking a neighbor to look in on them. And even at my most desperate, I wouldn’t have asked a neighbor to fix me up on a date. Without even realizing it, I guess we’d absorbed the message that you didn’t let others know about anything that was lacking in your life.
Ruth pushed her plate away. “How far is it to Sweetwater?” she asked.
“You don’t know?” Alice said.
She shook her head.
“I don’t know, either,” I said, and looked at Alice expectantly.
Alice sighed. “If we stay on I-70, we can be there tomorrow afternoon.” She looked at Ruth again. “What’s your cousin’s name?”
“Mary Sutler.” She glanced at me. “She’s five years older than me. She married a man who isn’t Amish. A mechanic from Dayton.”
“So she left the Amish?” I asked.
Ruth nodded.
Another clue, perhaps, as to why Ruth wanted to see her cousin. How much easier would it have been when Frannie and I moved to California if we’d had a relative there to show us around, introduce us to people—be the family we still needed.
Alice picked up the check and stood. “Let’s go,” she said.
On the way out of the café, Alice took the keys from me. “I’ll drive,” she said.
I didn’t argue, though I hoped she wouldn’t head straight for the nearest police station.
6
Alice didn’t drive to the police station. Instead, she headed out on I-70, west toward Kansas. We’d brought along a number of books on tape and I popped in Nora Roberts’s latest. Ruth was enthralled, and I was grateful for something to fill the awkward silence between Alice and me.
When we pulled into the motel that evening, I managed to catch Alice alone after we’d registered. “I know you think this is crazy, but thanks for going along with it,” I said. “Tomorrow we’ll take Ruth to her cousin’s and let them deal with her.”
“What we should do is take her straight back to her mother.” Alice’s eyes burned with an intensity that made me want to take a step back, but I forced myself not to back down.
“Maybe her mother is part of the problem,” I said.
She looked away. The harsh fluorescent lighting of the hotel hallway gave her skin a sallow tint, and the bones of her face stood out sharply, making her look thinner and older. For the first time since we’d reunited in Ridgeway she looked truly ill. “Are you okay?” I asked, and started to put my hand on her arm, but she pulled away.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll go along with taking Ruth to Sweetwater, but don’t expect me to be happy about it.”
I stared after her as she stalked off to our room, a heavy feeling in my stomach. It took everything in me not to run after her and tell her she was right—that we should take Ruth back to her home. Only the memory of Ruth’s fear held me back. I hated having Alice upset with me, but I would hate betraying Ruth more.
The fleeting thought occurred that if I’d listened to Frannie and stayed home, I wouldn’t be in this situation right now. I’d be living the same unexciting, uncontroversial life I’d lived for years. An easy life, but one that hadn’t been enough for a while now. I’d set out on this trip wanting more, but hadn’t counted on some of that “more” being unpleasant or difficult.
I straightened my shoulders and took a deep breath. If I wanted the good, I had to take the bad, too. Facing that truth made me feel stronger, and more hopeful that there was good up ahead to balance out the present rough patches.
In the room, Ruth stretched out on the bed she and I would share while Alice headed for the shower. I decided to call Frannie.
My sister answered on the second ring, her voice impatient. “Hello!”
“Hi, Frannie. Just thought I’d call and let you know how things are going so far.”
“Ellen, where are you?”
“We’re in Missouri. The country’s beautiful.”
“When are you coming home?”
“I should be home in a week or so.”
“Aren’t you tired of this by now? I can’t think spending all day in the cab of a moving truck would be much fun. I can wire you the money to fly home.”
“If I wanted to fly home, I have my own money,” I said, trying to hide my annoyance. “I’m having a great time, seeing a lot of the country I’ve never seen before.”
“I can’t believe you’re neglecting your flower shop for so long.”
I ground my teeth and took a deep breath, determined not to argue with her. “I’m not neglecting it. Yolanda will take care of things. What have you been doing while I’m gone?”
“Working. What you should be doing.”
“People take vacations, you know.”
“You and I take a vacation together every year. That ought to be enough.”
But what if it’s not? I wondered. What if I want more than a trip to the wine country with my sister? “You work too hard,” I said. “You should get out more. Maybe join a club. Or start dating again.”
“I told you I’m not interested in any man to look after,” she said.
“Maybe he could look after you.” Frannie had been taking care of me my whole life. She deserved to be taken care of for a change.
“I don’t need that,” she said. “What I need is for you to come home. It feels strange here without you.”
Coming from a lover or a spouse, such a declaration might have been touching. Hearing these words from my sister made me uneasy. “Frannie, you’re forty-one years old,” I said gently. “You ought to have other people in your life besides me. It’s not healthy.”
“It’s important,” I agreed. “But it shouldn’t be the only thing in your life.”
“I have plenty in my life. Now when are you coming home?”
“When I’m ready and not before. I have to go now. Goodbye.” I hung up before she could protest further. I couldn’t make Frannie happy—not when what she wanted and what I needed were so opposed.
“Who were you talking to?” Ruth asked.
“My sister.” I turned to look at her. “She’s not happy I’m taking this trip. She thinks I should have stayed home with her.”
“Where does she live?”
“California. Bakersfield. It’s where I live, too.”
“What are you doing in Missouri?”
“I’m helping Alice move from Virginia to California. She and I went to school together and met again at our twentieth class reunion. She needed someone to help her and I was free so I figured, why not?”
“Then why is your sister upset? Wouldn’t she want you to help a friend?”
“Good question.” I leaned forward, chin in hand, elbows on knees. “I think Frannie is a person who doesn’t like any kind of change. She’s used to me being there, right next door to her, so now that I’m not there, she’s unsettled.”
I glanced back at Ruth. She had raised herself up on her elbows and was watching me. “Do you have any sisters?”
“No. Four brothers.”
“Older or younger?”
She looked away. “Both.”
Alice came out of the bathroom, toweling her hair. “Ruth, do you want to call your mother, just to let her know you’re okay?” she asked. “You don’t have to tell her where you are.”
“That’s a good idea.” I gave Alice a grateful smile.
“My mother is dead.”
We both stared at her. The words hung in the air, stark and cold.
“Dead?” Alice sank onto the bed. “When did she die?”
“A long time ago. When I was very little.” Ruth sat up and hugged her knees. “My father remarried another woman. She doesn’t care what happens to me.”
Alice and I exchanged glances again. Wicked stepmothers are a staple of fairy tales, but I didn’t doubt they were a fact of real life, too, sometimes.
“What about your father, then?” Alice said. “He must be worried.”
She shook her head. “He’d only try to talk me into coming home, and I won’t do that. I have nothing to say to him.”
A shiver danced up my spine. If my own father were alive, would I feel the same?
Ruth stood and walked to the window and looked out. “I saw a Wal-Mart across the highway. I need to go over there and get a few things.”
“We’ll go with you,” I said. I felt responsible for Ruth now and was afraid if she got away from us, she might get into real trouble.
So the three of us drove to Wally World, a place as different from the simple Amish community as I could imagine.
Ruth, however, was apparently right at home here. She headed straight for the cosmetics department and plucked packets of foundation, blush, eye shadow and mascara off the racks. “Do you see a lipstick called winter rose?” she asked, scanning the pegs. “That’s my favorite.”
“I thought Amish didn’t wear makeup,” Alice said.
“They don’t. But when my friends and I would sneak away from the house, we would put it on.” She plucked a blister pack of lipstick from a peg and added it to her basket. “Let’s look at the clothes.”
Ruth carried an armload of jeans and shirts into the dressing room. Alice and I waited outside. “I hope we’re not making a mistake,” Alice said.
“She didn’t hitch a ride on the highway just so someone could take her shopping,” I said. “I believe her when she says she’s running away from something.”
Alice stuck out her lower lip. “She doesn’t act very upset right now.”
“People can fake being all right.” Being normal. I’d done it for years.
“I don’t trust her,” Alice said.
“I know.” I wasn’t sure I entirely trusted Ruth, either. She wasn’t what I’d expected from an Amish teen, but then I’d judged plenty of other people wrong before, and no doubt been judged by them. “We can’t just turn her back out on the streets,” I said. “And I won’t hand her over to the police when I don’t even know if she’s done anything wrong. Let’s get her to her cousin’s and see what happens then.”
Alice nodded, her expression grim.
Ruth emerged from the dressing room with a pair of jeans and two shirts. “I’ll take these.”
At the checkout she produced a thick wad of cash. Alice and I exchanged glances, but Alice waited until we were out the door before she said anything. “Where did you get that money?” she asked.
“I sold a lamb at auction last year,” Ruth said. “I’ve been saving it ever since.”
Back at the hotel, Ruth turned on the television and began flipping through the channels. Alice sat down on the bed near the girl.
“Ruth.” Alice leaned toward her, her voice gentle, her features aged by concern. “Sometimes parents say or do things that they later regret. Whatever reason you’re angry with your father, it’s very likely that now that he’s had time to think about it, he’s regretful, and wants your forgiveness.”
I could tell Ruth believed this about as much as I did. No matter how sorry Alice was over the mistakes in her own past, most people I knew lived without such qualms.
“You don’t understand,” Ruth said. “With the Amish, once a person turns her back on the group and leaves, she ceases to exist. So for my father, I no longer exist.”
She said these words with a kind of relief I found all the more disturbing.
“That’s impossible,” Alice said. “Parents don’t forget their children.”
Ruth shrugged. “If the leaders of our church tell the people to forget, then they do their best to forget.”
“I think that’s horrible,” Alice said.
Ruth frowned. “It seems that way to outsiders, but in our religion, the prospect of being shunned is a way to keep people from doing wrong.”
“But it didn’t stop you from running away,” I said.
“No.” She stretched her arms over her head and yawned. “I’m tired. I think I’ll get ready for bed now.”
I thought about what Ruth said later as I lay in the darkness beside her, listening to her even breathing. It was a terrible idea, that one’s very existence to another could be wiped out by sheer force of will. Convenient if one had things she wished to leave behind—as apparently Ruth did.
Convenient, too, for the person exorcizing all memory and thought of someone they no longer wished to remember, though I had my doubts such a thing was even possible. Old memories are as indelible as ink, long-lasting as iron. Even when senility sets in and people forget the faces of loved ones, the oldest memories cling fast, the joy and grief within them preserved like frozen bodies, both beautiful and terrible.
When we woke the next morning it was raining—a heavy downpour soaked us as we raced from our hotel room to the restaurant. Our moods matched the gray weather; none of us said much over breakfast. When we were on the road again, Alice once more behind the wheel, she asked Ruth for her cousin’s address in Sweetwater.
Ruth fidgeted in her seat. “I don’t know the exact address. Just Sweetwater. It’s not that big a town, is it?”
Alice’s eyebrows rose. “Do you have a phone number?”
“No.” Ruth stuck out her lower lip. “We didn’t have a phone, so there was no reason for me to have her number. Besides, since she left the Amish, she’s been shunned.”
&nb
sp; That whole ceasing-to-exist concept again. “When was the last time you talked to your cousin?” I asked.
“Two years ago.”
Alice blew out her breath. “So she might not even be living in Sweetwater.”
“That’s where she said she was going to live,” Ruth said. “Where her husband had a job.” She turned to me. “She said I was welcome to visit her anytime.”
“Do you know her husband’s name?” Alice asked.
“Rob. Rob Sutler.”
Alice sighed. “I guess we’ll start with that, then.”
Ruth stared out the windshield, not that there was much to see beyond the wipers turned on high and the heavy veil of rain that merged with the dark, wet highway. “When will we get to Sweetwater?” she asked after a while.
“This afternoon,” Alice said. “Maybe later, if this weather doesn’t let up.”
The weather showed no sign of doing so. If anything, it became more fierce. Rain poured from the sky and ran in the road, obscuring everything but the watery blur of taillights from the cars ahead of us. Wind buffeted the truck. Alice hunched forward, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel as she fought to keep the truck on the pavement. Intermittent flashes of lightning showed a world that looked more river than road.
When a vicious blast of wind sent us skidding sideways, Ruth screamed and clutched at me. I grabbed the dashboard and sucked in my breath while Alice muttered a steady stream of profanity.
I closed my eyes and my whole body went rigid as the sound of the tires squealing on the pavement filled my ears. Ruth’s fingers dug into my arm, but the pain scarcely registered. I waited for the impact of steel on steel, the thrust of my body against the seat belt, the crush of another vehicle into ours.
We came to a shuddering stop, and Ruth released her death-grip on my arm. I opened my eyes and saw we were parked on the side of the road. I looked at Alice. “We didn’t crash.”
“No.” She raked one hand through her hair and drew a shaky breath. “I brought us out of the skid, but that was close.”
“Too close.” I put my hand to my chest, which ached from holding my breath so long.
“I thought we were going to die,” Ruth said.
