Hush Puppy

by Laurien Berenson

  “So she came over to make sure that the house wasn’t being burglarized—”

  “By four kids, two mothers, and a team of racquet-wielding doubles players?”

  “Something like that. Anyway, Sam gave her a beer and invited her to join the party and she’s been here ever since. I hope you don’t mind, we’ve ordered pizza.”

  Mind? By now, I was frazzled enough to think that was a delightful idea.

  “So everyone’s okay?” I asked.

  “Just dandy.” Alice grinned. “Come on in and join the party.”

  Faith trotted into the house and went in search of Davey. Before I’d even had time to hang up my coat, Sam reappeared with a second, icy bottle of Bud. Unlike Aunt Peg, he immediately noticed the bandage on my arm.

  “I was going to call you last night,” I said. “But I fell asleep instead.” I took a minute to bring him up-to-date on what had been happening at Howard Academy.

  Sam looked appalled when I got to the part about Faith’s and my close call. I decided to distract him by mentioning where I’d been all afternoon.

  “You and Sheila and Peg, all together in one place.” He gulped, considering the implications. “Did everything go all right?”

  “No furniture got broken. No breakables were thrown.”

  “What about unbreakables?” Sam muttered under his breath, looking far from reassured.

  “Sheila’s an interesting woman,” I said. “I can see why you might have married her.”

  “You can?”

  “Sure. She’s smart, she’s attractive, she’s sexy.” I trailed my fingers lightly down his arm and let them brush across the front of his jeans. Then I turned and walked away. “And you were obviously young and deluded.”

  Sometimes, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as having the last word.

  Twenty-two

  It was after nine o’clock before Sam and I got the house all to ourselves. When beer and pizza both ran out, my impromptu guests finally began to drift away. Davey fell into bed, exhausted, shortly after the last one left.

  I’d wanted to think that my son had missed me as much as I’d missed him during the day we’d been apart, but the welcome-back hug I tried to deliver shortly after my arrival had been firmly rebuffed.

  “Mom!” he’d wailed, his voice floating through two octaves. “You made Mario fall off the cliff !”

  Beside him on the couch, Joey chortled happily. I guessed that meant it was his turn at the controls now.

  Alice tried to reassure me by saying that my son’s reaction meant he was well-adjusted. That sounded like a large dose of psychobabble to me, and I made sure I got my hug later that night when Davey went to bed.

  My son was drowsy and warm, and his hair smelled like popcorn. He was wearing his favorite superhero pajamas, the ones that came with a cape. He’d been too busy to notice the bandage on my arm, and I’d declined to bring it up.

  Reticence about things like that comes naturally to single parents. You want your little superhero to feel secure, so you try to make him think you’re invincible. Some days, the charade is harder to pull off than others.

  Usually Faith sleeps on Davey’s bed. Tonight, however, she left his bedroom as soon as I did. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. In all the commotion, I had yet to make her dinner.

  Being a dog lover himself, Sam didn’t take it personally that he wasn’t next on my list. Standing behind me while I mixed Faith’s food, however, his hands roaming, his lips nuzzling my neck, he did his best to ensure that his needs were moving rapidly up the agenda.

  “I’ve got something to show you,” I said, when Faith had eaten and been let outside.

  Sam’s eyebrows waggled. “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.”

  “Not that kind of something.” I laughed.

  His hands moved up my sides, fingers caressing my breasts. A familiar warmth began to spread through me. I placed my palms on top of his. Talking could wait.

  Bodies, mouths, pressed together, we edged toward the stairs, shedding clothing as we went. We only made it as far as the living room. Luckily, Sam had the presence of mind to draw the curtains.

  Afterward, I had a crick in my neck and a rug burn on my hip. It was worth it.

  “We’re getting too old to behave like teenagers,” I said with a sigh.

  “Speak for yourself.” Sam chortled.

  “Easy for you to say, you’re on top.”

  He rolled onto his side, pulling me with him. I rested my head on his shoulder and settled my body along the hollow of his hip. I was floating contentedly between sleep and wakefulness when he said, “It was never like this with Sheila.”

  My eyes snapped open. My body stiffened. Sam was blissfully oblivious.

  “What?” I asked, just to see if he’d be dumb enough to say it again.

  He was.

  “It was never this good with Sheila,” Sam reaffirmed. He seemed to think I’d be happy to hear that.

  I sat up and gathered my clothes.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Sheila.”

  “What about her?”

  “My point exactly.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I guess that makes us even then, because you don’t seem to have any sense. Did you actually think this was a good time to compare me to your ex-wife?”

  Sam screwed up his face and thought about that. Belatedly, he realized that anything he said might have the potential to blow up in his face. “It was a favorable comparison,” he managed finally.

  “We just made love.”

  “I know,” Sam said slowly. “I was there.”

  “And you were thinking about Sheila.”

  Finally it hit him. I hoped it felt like a ton of bricks.

  Sam began to scramble furiously. “No, I wasn’t. Honest. At least not during . . .”

  His cheeks turned a dull shade of red. He was probably hoping I’d step in and rescue him. Not a chance.

  “It was after. Briefly. And I wasn’t even thinking about her, I was just—”

  “Making comparisons.” I turned away.

  “No.” Sam reached for my shoulders and pulled me back. “I was thinking about how lucky I was. About how much my life has changed since we met. You and Davey are the best things that ever happened to me. That’s all I was trying to say.”

  My lower lip trembled, half-ready to smile, half-ready to cry. “Apology accepted.”

  “Is that what I was doing?”

  “It’s what you should have been doing.”

  Always a fast learner, Sam nodded. He looked relieved, like a man who’d peered over the edge of a precipice and been pulled back at the last minute. Having regained his balance, he was quick to change the subject.

  “Didn’t you say there was something you wanted to show me?”

  Sam’s always been good at thinking on his feet. I like that in a man. “Right. It’s something I’ve been working on for school. I just have to find it.”

  He went to let Faith inside and turned on the coffeemaker while I searched through the clutter in the living room for Ruth’s diary. Ten minutes later, we met at the kitchen table. Sam had already poured the coffee into two big mugs and added milk to mine. He picked up the leather-bound book I laid on the table between us and looked at it curiously.

  “This looks old.”

  “It is. More than half a century. It belonged to one of the teenage daughters of Joshua Howard, the school’s founder. I’m on the committee for the spring pageant, and we’ve been looking for ways to celebrate the school’s beginnings. That’s why I was down in the basement. I was going through the archives.”

  “That’s where this came from?”

  I nodded. “I found it a couple days ago and brought it home to read. It’s lucky I did because just about everything else in the storeroom was destroyed yesterday.”

  Sam sipped his coffee, flipping carefully through the pages as he waited for me t
o continue.

  “This afternoon, Jane told me she’d seen Eugene Krebbs snooping around in the basement before he died. She said he was searching for something.”

  “Like this diary, perhaps?”

  “Maybe. Although according to what Russell Hanover told me, those records have been sitting untouched for decades. So why the sudden interest now?”

  “Maybe he had some new information,” said Sam. “Have you read this?”

  “Part of it. I thought we could look at the rest tonight. I have to take it back on Monday. When I mentioned to Russell Hanover that I had the book, he insisted I return it to the school as soon as possible.”

  “Interesting.”

  “I thought so, too,” I said, opening the diary to the page I’d marked.

  At the point where I’d stopped reading before, Ruth had begun a relationship with a neighborhood workman, Jay Silverman. Earlier pages in the book had offered tidbits of information about other facets of her life; but the last third was devoted solely to her feelings for Jay, feelings which only intensified after Honoria discovered the relationship and forbade Ruth to continue seeing the young man.

  Aunt Honoria says he’s a totally unsuitable prospect for a girl of my upbringing, Ruth had written. The pages were brittle, and blotted, and several of the words were smeared. I suspected Ruth’s tears had caused the damage. She doesn’t understand that I don’t care about such things as wealth and position. Jay and I are in love. That’s all that matters!!

  “She sounds so young,” said Sam.

  “She was.” I glanced at the date. “Sixteen and a half when she wrote this. I feel sorry for Ruth, but at the same time, I can see Honoria’s point. Ruth had clearly formed an attachment to Jay, but I’m not sure she had either the experience or the maturity to recognize what true love was.”

  “She’s a fighter, though,” Sam said admiringly, as we read on together. Ruth had defied her aunt’s edicts and continued to see Jay behind Honoria’s back. “I wonder what ever became of her.”

  “So do I. I asked Russell about it, but he didn’t know. There were six siblings. Apparently none had an interest in continuing an association with the school. I thought I might go over to the Greenwich Library tomorrow and see if I could dig up any information there.”

  Eagerly, we returned to the story. Though Ruth came alive through her own words, Jay continued to be an enigma, seen only in black and white, depending on whether Ruth was describing her aunt’s response to him, or her own. As the days grew shorter and winter set in, tension in the household grew. Ruth became increasingly distressed about the deception she was perpetrating. And about something else, as well. Jay was pressuring her to give herself to him physically, and Ruth wasn’t sure she was ready.

  “Poor thing,” I said. “She was only a kid. She needed someone to talk to, someone she could confide in.”

  “What about the brothers and sisters?” asked Sam. “There seemed to be enough of them.”

  “Yes, but Ruth was the baby of the family. By this time, the other siblings were out of the house. Her two brothers were in college. Even if they came home for vacations, she would hardly have talked to them about something like this. Her sisters were all married and running households of their own.”

  “Keep reading,” said Sam, as caught up in the drama as I was. “Let’s see what she decided to do.”

  Tonight is the night I became a woman, Ruth wrote proudly several pages later. Jay seemed so happy it made my heart swell with joy. Now he truly knows how much I love him and that I will always be his.

  “Notice anything?” asked Sam. He was frowning.

  I nodded. “She talks about how happy Jay was, but she doesn’t say a thing about her own happiness.”

  “Somehow I suspect this isn’t going to end well,” Sam mused. “Do you suppose an innocent like that knew anything about such things as birth control?”

  “I doubt she even knew it existed.”

  A handful of pages later, our fears were confirmed. Ruth’s confident script deteriorated to a shaky scrawl as her troubles poured out onto the lined page. I am pregnant with Jay’s child, and I do not know what will become of me. Jay says we will run away and marry. He is making plans, but he worries we will not have the resources to manage on our own.

  I have reassured him on that account, though I fear he does not believe me. Mother revealed the secret of her treasure to me before she died, and I have kept it safe, just as I promised I would. I will take it with me when the time comes, and everything will be all right.

  “Treasure?” Sam stopped reading.

  “It was a game,” I said thoughtfully. “At least I thought it was. Ruth mentioned it earlier in the diary. She talked about her mother hiding things for the children to find. I thought she meant trinkets.”

  “Even during the Depression, it would have taken more than trinkets to finance what Ruth had in mind.”

  Our mugs of coffee sat, cold and untouched, on the table. Sam and I bent over the small book and continued to read avidly. Only a few pages of writing remained.

  We are discovered and my life is over. I have never seen Father so angry. Aunt Honoria says I must be sent away. She has offered Jay a sum of money never to see me again or contact me in any way. I know he will not accept. We’re going to be married, he’s told me so. I must believe in him. I must. But why does he not contact me?

  Night after night, Poupee and I wait for Jay to come. The little Poodle is my only solace in these terrible times. And yet, Aunt Honoria would deny me even his small comfort. She screams when she finds him in my room and makes me put him outside. Why does Jay not come? I need him now, more than ever.

  “Bastard,” Sam muttered. “Do you think he ran out on her?”

  “It looks that way.” I turned to the last page. Like several before it, it was blotted with tears.

  Jay finally came to me tonight. I knew he would not desert me! I held him to me and could scarcely keep from crying, so great was my relief at seeing him again. Right away, I knew something was wrong. He wouldn’t put his arms around me. He would not return my kiss.

  “I knew you’d come,” I told him. My voice was shaking. “I’ve been waiting and hoping that every night would be the one. I’ve packed a small bag—”

  But Jay was shaking his head. He would not look at me. “I’ve come to say good-bye,” he said.

  The next few lines were indecipherable. When Ruth’s script grew legible again, the spirit that had enlivened the diary’s pages seemed to have deserted her.

  Jay said it was for the best, she wrote. But he was wrong. This is not the best solution, but the worst of all possibilities. Without him, my life is meaningless. I do not care if I live or die.”

  “Oh no.” I exhaled. “Are we reading a suicide note?”

  “No, thank God.” Sam was skimming faster than I was. He’d already finished the last half page.

  My aunt says I’m to be sent away until the baby is born and placed for adoption. I am to take nothing with me from home, not clothing, not pictures, nor dear little Poupee, who has been my most faithful friend. I must even leave my diary behind. I can only pray that someday I shall return. And that life will seem brighter than the terrible gloom that surrounds me now.

  I closed the book gently, more moved than I cared to admit by a story that had taken place over fifty years earlier. “I wonder if she ever came back.”

  “I wonder what happened to the child,” said Sam. “And to Jay. Do you think he and Ruth ever saw one another again?”

  “I doubt it. Honoria saw to that. She treated her niece abominably.”

  “Times were different then,” Sam said. He was more of a realist than I. “A child born out of wedlock was a huge disgrace, a situation that needed to be dealt with quickly and quietly. It was the way things were done.”

  “And what about the treasure? Ruth didn’t take it with her, after all. What do you suppose happened to it?”

  “Good question.” Sam ca
rried our two mugs over to the sink and emptied them. “It certainly makes you wonder. Is that the reason Krebbs was killed? Because someone was hot on the trail of Mabel Howard’s long-lost treasure?”

  “But Krebbs didn’t have it,” I pointed out. “He’d have hardly kept working at the school if he did.”

  “Maybe there never really was a treasure. It’s quite possible something that could have seemed priceless to a sheltered sixteen-year-old might have turned out to have very little value in the real world.”

  “And maybe the murder had nothing to do with the treasure at all.” I stared at the small, leather-bound book, hoping for inspiration. It didn’t come. “This whole thing is giving me a headache.”

  “Then stop thinking about it.” Sam walked over and wound his arms around me. “I have a much better idea. Let’s go to bed.”

  “All the way to bed, this time?”

  He grinned. “I’ll race you.”

  He won, but just barely.

  Twenty-three

  Sunday morning, I awoke to the sound of my son’s shrieks.

  Any mother of a six-year-old boy can tell you, that’s not necessarily a bad sign. I got one eye open in time to see that the screams in question were supposed to be war whoops, and that Sam and I were in imminent danger of attack by a pair of wild Indians, namely Davey and his cohort in crime, Faith.

  The superhero pajamas had been exchanged for a buckskin vest and pants; remnants, I seemed to recall, from an old Halloween costume. Faith sported a long red feather sticking out of her topknot. I was quite certain Aunt Peg would not have approved.

  The two of them landed on the bed with enough of a thump to shake the floor beneath us. Luckily, the bed frame held.

  “Time to wake up!” cried Davey.

  I glanced over at the bedside clock. It was barely seven. On Sunday morning, no less.

  Sam rolled over, grabbed Davey, and seated him on his chest. They were both grinning at the arrangement. If I didn’t love Sam, I think I’d have to marry him anyway, just because he looks so damn good first thing in the morning.

  It takes me longer to become coherent, and that first cup of coffee never hurts. “Has Faith been out?” I managed.