Drowning Ruth

by Christina Schwarz

  “One of these nice days, Ruth,” Carl said, “I'll take you out to the island, where you and I lived with your mama. How would you like that?”

  “No,” Amanda said. She slapped the pan of eggs she'd been about to bring to the table back on the stove. “This darn hotpad. Burned right through it.”

  Carl looked at her, surprised. “What?” “She wouldn't like it. Ruth doesn't like the water.” “Yes, she does. You like the water, don't you, Ruth?” Ruth looked from her father to her aunt and wasn't sure what would be right to say, so she said nothing.

  “I want you to close that place,” Amanda said, her hands on her hips. “Board it up. Nail it shut and forget about it. I can't believe you'd want to take Ruth there, after … well, after everything. What's the matter with you?”

  Carl looked at his empty plate. Maybe there was something the matter with him, for he wanted Ruth to see the place where she'd begun. It bothered him that Amanda had managed to wipe Mathilda from Ruth's life. As far as he knew, she told the child nothing about what had happened before his return, nor would she let him speak of the time before he'd left.

  “It'll only make her sad,” she'd told him. “She's lucky she was too young to remember.”

  He agreed with Amanda in principle. What good would it do Ruth to know that her mother could swim like a sunfish and liked her bacon crisp? What difference would it make to her to hear about the day Mattie had braided her a crown of black-eyed Susans and chicory? But still, he wanted her to know, for Mattie's sake. Maybe Amanda could let Mathilda disappear, as if she'd never been, but he couldn't.

  He waited for a Tuesday, Amanda's day to go to town, and he told himself he was only doing what she'd asked. He was boarding the place up, wasn't he? And he couldn't leave Ruth at home all by herself.

  He found her under the lilacs, the cat's tail slipping through her hands, and he scooped her up from behind and hoisted her into the air.

  “You're coming with me today, young lady.” He kissed her neck, smelling her young skin smell. She, suddenly tall enough to be among the flowers, lifted her face to the fragrant purple.

  “Where?”

  “You'll see.”

  He set her down, picked up his toolbox and led her along the lilac hedge to the back of the yard, where he held the leafy branches open and motioned for her to step first onto the path into the woods.

  “For a walk?” she asked, used to traveling this path with Amanda.

  “You'll see.”

  The trail was narrow, and she scampered ahead like a rabbit, squatting before a lavender hepatica on the right, scaring a scarlet tanager from its perch on the left, drifting back to the right to peel off a white curl of birch bark. Carl limped, tried to stretch and flex his bad leg. He passed her, as she knelt before a patch of moss and stroked its spores with her palms. He rounded a bend, and she ran to overtake him. At the giant oak where she and Amanda always turned back, she stopped and waited. He took her hand, and they proceeded, she more circumspect, somewhat awed, although there was little difference between the part of the woods they now walked in and the part through which they'd just passed.

  He sensed her holding back, her strides shortening and slowing until, finally, her shoulder was skewed, and he was nearly dragging her forward.

  “What's the matter, Ruthie?” They stopped, still several yards from the shore, and he squatted to look into her face. “It's all right. It's just water. Like a bath. A giant bathtub.” He looked across the calm surface, swollen with mild waves, and was pleased with the comparison. “Just like a bathtub.”

  But she squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away, as if he were trying to force her to swallow medicine.

  Helplessly, Carl looked east along the shoreline. “ We need to wait for Mr. Tully, anyway.” When he released her hand, she stood firm and even looked up, studying the water, a good sign. Encouraged, he sat on the ground, pulled off his boots and rolled up his pants legs.

  “Well, I'm going in.” He picked his way gingerly forward, the sharp stones and the cool water shocking his soft white feet. When the water reached to his rolled cuff, he turned carefully, grappling for footing on the bruising rocks. He looked back at her across that narrow span of water. She stood small and scared, the weeds nearly up to her waist. Looking at her that way, he saw for the first time, in her wide mouth, in the hint of the plane that would be her finished cheek, in the angle of her ears, not Mathilda's face, as before, but his own. It was a shock, that recognition. How could he not have seen it earlier? He felt a surge of connection with Ruth that could have been nothing other than love, and he wanted to pick her up and lock her fiercely against his chest. But at the same time, seeing how small she was, and how scared, how utterly helpless and alone, he also felt something else, something that made him dip his hand into the water—the water that was after all not like a bath, but cold and vast, uncontainable—dip his hand deep, nearly up to the elbow, and then raise his arm and flick the water from his fingertips toward her. Toughen up, he thought. The spray was gentle, so light really and at such a distance that it couldn't possibly have hit her, not a single drop, and he smiled quickly, as if it had all been a joke.

  Still she began to cry. He hurried toward her, wincing at the stones and the noise both. “It's all right.” He knelt beside her, wrapping his arms around her. “I'm sorry. It's all right.”

  Joe Tully's boat scraped against the rocks, and he climbed out, plopping his heavy shoes into the water, but then hung back, awkwardly. “Did she fall? Did she hurt herself?”

  “No, no, she's fine. She's just a little scared.”

  “Maybe you'd better take her home?”

  “No, she'll be all right. You'll be fine, won't you, Ruthie? Sure you will.”

  Ruth had stopped crying, and though she seemed to be looking at Tully, she was, in fact, looking beyond him, at his boat. Carl got to his feet, and the men shook hands.

  “Thanks for coming out, Joe.”

  Joe nodded. He never knew how to respond to the thanks people were always pressing on him. He winked at Ruth.

  “She's growing like a weed,” he said, knowing that was what he was supposed to say about little children. “And Amanda?” he added, looking back at Carl. “She's all right now, is she? I've heard …” He glanced down at his feet for a moment, started afresh, “Well, she's doing fine, is she?”

  “She's doing fine, Joe. Come by for dinner this noon and see for yourself.”

  “I might do that. If you think it's all right. I mean, if you think she wouldn't mind.”

  “I'm sure she'd be happy to see you, Joe,” Carl said absently, brushing the mud from his knees.

  Ruth sat in the very center of the boat and kept her face toward the land.

  “I saved Amanda's hat right about here once,” Joe said as he pulled on the oars. “A straw one with a blue ribbon. Does she still have that, I wonder?” But he looked over his shoulder then at the island, not wanting Carl to answer, embarrassed that he even remembered such a thing. Carl, staring out across the water, thinking private thoughts, said nothing.

  Long before there was a house on the island, Mathilda had brought Carl there.

  “This is it,” she'd announced. He held one oar clumsily out of the water and puzzled over how he was supposed to get both unwieldy things into the boat. He had insisted on being the one to row, though she was an expert and he could hardly keep the boat from spinning. He glanced at her, not sure whether he hoped she would offer advice or pay no attention. She was perched on the gunwale, a precarious place. He was just about to say, “Look out, be careful,” when she threw her head back, and before he could shout, almost before he could open his mouth, she lost her balance, fell backward into the water, and was gone.

  He scrambled forward to the spot where she'd gone in. The water showed no sign of her. That was what made him hesitate, not knowing where she might be, not having any clue at all, not a ripple, not a bubble. Otherwise, he would have leaped in after her, although
he couldn't swim. Later, he told himself that over and over. If he'd known where to jump, he'd have gone right in.

  And then he heard her voice. “Carl!”

  He heard her voice, but she wasn't there. “Carl! Over here!”

  It was coming from behind him. Somehow she'd got all the way to the other side of the boat without his knowing. Her head, with her hair pushed down around it, was sleek as a muskrat's. The water rippled around her shoulders, but she was clearly standing on the bottom. She laughed at him, laughed at the fear on his face.

  “Here I am, Carl. Did you think I'd drowned?”

  All Carl could think, once he knew she was safe, once it was clear that it had been just a joke, was that he hadn't gone in after her. He told himself later that he'd known she was all right, but it wasn't true. He told himself that he would have jumped once he was sure, in another second, maybe two. Who knew what he would have done, given just a little more time? But secretly, he knew he'd been tested and had failed.

  To make up for it, he swung his legs over the side and slipped in, gasping as the cold water reached the sensitive skin of his stomach. She laughed and started away from him toward the shore. He pushed after her.

  “I'll get you! I'll get you!”

  It was an awkward chase. Their feet slipped on the rocks. The water held them back. Still, he was stronger, faster. He did catch her, first a bit of her sleeve, then her whole arm. She spun around to face him and for one confused instant he had no idea what to do with her now that he had her. But she knew. She tilted her face invitingly, and he kissed her.

  She'd led him on a merry chase, Carl thought fondly. She'd gone out for an evening with him and then danced too often with other fellows; she'd broken dates at the last minute with no excuse; she'd provoked arguments, and cried, and declared she never wanted to see him again. But he'd caught her at last. One fall night when the air was cold and sharp, the words just slipped out of him, as if they'd been summoned by something beyond his will: “Marry me.”

  And what had she said? He couldn't remember, but it must have been yes or sure or all right, because soon enough they were married.

  Joe feathered the oars when they reached the island so that the boat bumped very gently against the rocks, and then Ruth was lifted again, swung through the air, and set on her feet on the dry land, a different land entirely. At a little distance, among the thick trees and weeds, stood a gray and green house.

  “There should be some lumber back behind the outhouse,” Carl said, taking Ruth's hand and leading the way up the overgrown path. He stopped, though, a few feet back from the front steps. “Should we take a quick look inside?” He seemed to be asking the house itself.

  Joe yawned. What Carl ought to do was sell that place and concentrate on what he had that was good. But everyone was a fool about something. “Sure, whatever you want.”

  Carl flexed his knees and stomped once or twice on each of the steps up to the porch. The house's solidness pleased him, since he'd built most of it himself. But then, he thought, why shouldn't the place be in good shape? It was only five years old.

  He'd thought he and Mathilda would go to Chicago, or maybe even Toronto, and as long as his plans were vague, she'd been enthusiastic. When he realized that, in fact, she couldn't stand the idea of moving away, they were already married, and he accepted her father's offer to pay for the materials for a cabin on the island. He was surprised now at how small the place seemed, almost as if it were a scaled-down model of the house he'd known so intimately.

  In the kitchen Carl peered into the cupboards at the familiar china—white with green ships painted on the rims, another gift from her parents. They'd moved in as soon as one room was habitable and there'd been so much happy momentum at first. He'd worked for her father on the farm, rowing over every morning at dawn. For a while Mathilda went with him to help her mother, but then she began to stay on the island to work on the house alone, accomplishing much more than he expected, even during the month or so when she always seemed to be sick. She cleared brush, drew plans for more rooms, painted the porch ceiling pale blue. In the evenings he brought George or Wally and Rudy or a couple of the other hired men, and they floated the lumber along behind them on a raft and added the bedrooms and a real kitchen. Just as it was growing too dark to see, they would hear a shout from the pier and would drop their tools and hurry down to help Amanda with her baskets of cold chicken and potato salad and pickles and rhubarb pie. Often, Mary Louise, George's wife, would come along and it was like a party, every night a party with Carl and Mathilda and their house and their island right in the middle of it all.

  But in September the life of the place drifted away. Amanda went off to Madison to go to nursing school. The fishermen and boaters dwindled, too, when the temperature dropped and the lake lay quiet under the brittle autumn air. The leaves fell, and in every direction the water and the land beyond seemed more vast, and Carl and Mathilda, left to themselves in the center of it, more tiny and alone.

  The warped drawer Joe had been pulling on came open with a crack.

  “Hey, pencils,” he said. “ We could use a couple of these if we need to cut down some of that wood.”

  “Sure, take 'em.”

  Joe left the drawer open and Carl glanced into it. Among the pencil stubs and paper scraps and the odd springs and screws and spools, he saw a slim silver penknife. Where had Mathilda gotten that? He plucked it out, slipped it into his pocket, and followed Joe outside.

  Carl hadn't built shutters, so he and Joe had to improvise with the lumber stacked behind the outhouse. It was simple work really. They measured a window, cut pieces to fit against the sill and the top of the windowframe, then more pieces to span the height of the window, and nailed them together.

  “Must have been cozy living here,” Joe said, holding a finished cover over one of the row of windows that ran the length of the enclosed porch, so that Carl could nail it in place.

  “Cozy? Sure, I guess.” Carl swung his hammer steadily. Thinking back, he supposed it had been cozy. On the island, he and Mathilda had had a sort of honeymoon that went on and on for months. That was what Carl remembered—how happily they'd clung to one another, before the war. That was the story he told himself now on the nights when he couldn't sleep.

  At the time, though, he'd felt a little afraid when he and Mathilda were there all alone. He loved her, of course, he never doubted that, but nevertheless he felt almost as if—well, this was strange—but almost as if he'd been taken prisoner. He knew it didn't make sense, especially since he actually left the island every day. It was Mathilda who was trapped if anyone was, but she didn't seem to mind. The canoe was always there for her, but she seldom used it.

  Most evenings she was waiting for him on the little pier when he rowed home and wrapped herself around him almost before he was completely out of the boat. More than once she nearly pulled both of them into the water with her exuberant embrace. She told him in exhaustive detail about every moment of her day, every shrub she'd cleared, every rooster she'd stenciled on the kitchen wall, every stray thought that had occurred to her throughout the day. She sang and danced. One day she decided yellow would be best for the baby's room, the next day she decided blue, the next week it was yellow again, definitely yellow. She told him that the lake wasn't as cold as one might think and wasn't it funny how she'd hated school as a child and why shouldn't a woman vote if she wanted to, but she would never bother personally, and hadn't the sunset been gorgeous, just gorgeous? And she would laugh at herself and at his confusion and at her own complete happiness, and he would laugh too, uneasily, glad that she was happy, but not at all sure of it, not at all certain that they were on firm ground.

  Because at other times the house was dark and still, the curtains drawn, when he docked the rowboat. He found her sitting on the porch in the darkness, sucking on a strand of hair, or curled in the bed, her eyes swollen with crying. Sometimes she was terrified about the baby. What if it died? What if it came ou
t wrong? What if it was a monster? Or she was convinced the water was rising, the wind would carry her away, the lightning would strike him down in the fields. Or she had merely burned the supper. She was no good as a wife. She would be no good as a mother. He never should have married her. These were the things she said.

  “My pretty bird,” he said, sitting beside her on the bed. “Don't worry. Everything will be all right.”

  “You don't know that,” she said scornfully.

  And, of course, she was right. But in Carl's experience, it was what people said when they didn't know what else to do.

  But while he was frying potatoes and eggs she would appear at the kitchen table, her bathrobe fastened with a bow around her thickening waist, and gradually her euphoria would return, until once again she was regaling him with stories of the spelling bees she'd won and the boys who'd kissed her behind the school and the afternoons she and Amanda had stolen away from their chores to this very island together. She laid his hand against her swelling stomach, so he could feel how tight her skin was growing, how well the baby was developing. She talked on and on about her plans, about all the children they would have, how the farm would prosper with his help, how they would buy more land and more cows, how they would build a second story onto their island house.

  Increasingly, though, he found it difficult to listen to her describe the myriad ways in which she was nailing them to this spot, to this course of life. He had become convinced that he didn't like farming much, and he wasn't good at it. At least that was what his father-in-law made clear every time he turned away in disgust or stepped in with a sigh to take over a job that he thought Carl was performing awkwardly or not quickly enough.

  One night Carl told Mathilda how her father had shoved him so hard when he was filing one of Frenchie's hoofs that he'd sprawled on the barn floor under the horse.

  “You've got to be gentle with her,” Mr. Starkey had grunted, easing his hand along the horse's foreleg until she lifted her foot again. He gripped the hoof between his knees. “She's not a slab of beef, you know.”