I hear thunder, not the explosive clap that set off yesterday’s storm but more of a quarrel among night clouds. I get out of bed and go to the window and see lightning flash and vanish over the filigree of bare branches and darkened roofs of the Orchards. Maybe it will rain again.
Jamie said that paranoia is a way of making the world make sense. A way of believing that events are connected. We’d been talking about Zella and the contrails left by jet planes. When I asked Jamie what she meant, she explained that if you believe people are conspiring against you, you can also believe that the conspiracy is the reason for everything that happens to you. Better, she added, to think the government is trying to kill you with contrails than to think something random that you can’t control is happening all around you.
Better than what, I had wondered, to think that hostile Nez Perce were riding across the prairie toward you? Or that the Satanists were after you? Or that your mother was trying to kill you?
Booze makes it worse, Jamie said. Believe me. Was your mother a drunk?
Probably.
I go back to bed, hoping I can sleep.
Fame and fortune. Oro y plata. The Rivermen came close to catching the gold but not close enough. What was left but to self-destruct?
Bill’s eyes are a warm dark hazel. He is smiling, and I feel his smile when he kisses me on the lips and then draws back to search my face.
No? he says.
Yes.
But I feel ashamed to be saying yes.
What are you trying to do, Ruby? Fuck your way through the whole goddamned band? One minute Gall is so angry that he is jumping up and down and screaming; the next minute he’s sobbing in Brazos’s arms. I thought she was a kitten, a dolly, a sweet sweet dolly, but she’s a bitch! He tears himself away from Brazos and drives his fist through one of the wallpaper elk and runs out into the long late northern daylight. And Bill and Brazos will chase him all over Anchorage, get him to the airport and lose him again, and finally, with the help of the cops, lock him up and call his father.
I’m sitting up in bed with my hands full of wadded sheets, realizing I’ve been dreaming, so I must have been asleep.
*
I’m bent over my keyboard the next morning, staring into my computer screen, when I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. Zella, ever alert for other people’s business, leans out of her chair with her mouth open when I answer and scowls when I carry the phone out into the corridor.
Jerry Bohn sounds weary. “Ruth, she’s not ready to talk to her mother yet. But I think she’s willing to talk to you and Isaiah, and we can see how that goes. Maybe later she’ll feel she can take that next step.”
I thank him, and we make tentative arrangements for such a meeting, provided she doesn’t decide at the last minute that she can’t go through with it.
“She’s had a hard time,” Jerry Bohn says, “more than she’s been able to bear.”
Jerry Bohn hangs up, and I call Isaiah, knowing he’ll be in class but leaving him a message. Zella watches me suspiciously when I return to the office and put away my phone, but at least she doesn’t ask outright, and I sit at my computer station and pretend to absorb myself in the screen. Maybe, like Jamie’s connect-the-dots view of conspiracy theory, there’s a hidden message in the rows of names and numbers that explains Rosalie’s anger at Mrs. Pence and Isaiah and me.
I told the judge my mother was part of the coven that abused children. And he believed me. I was eight years old—well, nine years old by the time the trials got under way—and I believed Anne and Brad, and I loved Brad. Now I see a shadow on the computer screen, a reflection of my own face, my eyes, and I try to imagine the face of a young woman almost twenty years ago who had been trapped and publicly condemned and knew she was going to prison for years because her own child, the one of her children she had kept and tried to raise, had testified against her. She wouldn’t have been drawing many fine distinctions.
But why would she hate Isaiah, who had refused to testify? I ain’t going to say I saw no dead babies when I didn’t!
My old fantasy, the girl in the rain with her baby in her arms, leaving behind any thought of a career as a singer in Monterey and getting off a bus in Versailles, Montana. Isaiah is thirty now. Thirty years ago, would a biracial baby born out of wedlock have been a greater shame than such a baby would be today? Why had she named him Isaiah Pride? Why had she given him up when she knew she was pregnant with me? A thought floats up. What if Brazos had gotten me pregnant that night? What would I have done?
And what of Mrs. Pence? All I knew were the hateful words I had overheard, flung like nails being driven into a board and meant to hurt.
Isaiah and I will keep the appointment, and Rosalie will show up and talk to us or she won’t.
“I don’t know about this office,” says Zella. “Apparently I’m the only one who ever does any work.”
*
Bill is bunking with Isaiah until he finds a place of his own, and he has learned what time I’m likely to come home from the Villa and put in my hour or two at the piano. On his first visit he accepted a bottle of the Henry’s I had started keeping for Isaiah, and after that he brought a bottle of Maker’s Mark with him. Now he pours himself a little Mark and sits in the rose wingback chair and listens. At first the whole room seemed disturbed by his presence, Beethoven scowling down from his niche in disapproval and the Steinway in silent reproach under its cover, although Bill never speaks, never reacts when I play the same two or three measures over and over to get the fingering right, and gradually Beethoven and the Steinway and I have gotten used to his presence. When I finish practicing and the last tone fades, he will look up and smile and carry his glass out to the kitchen and say good night.
Tonight he lingers. Sips the last of his whiskey.
“Ruby, what if Gall came out of the coma—got his voice back, got his hearing back, got back to being Gall again. What would you do?”
“Have you heard that? That he’s coming out of it?”
“No. I’m just saying what if.”
“Well—I’d be glad.”
“What if he came to Versailles and wanted to talk to you?”
“I’d talk to him. Sure.”
“And—”
Gall. The tawny hair that brushed his collar, the line of his jaw I had followed with my fingertips, the breadth of his shoulders. The nights when he held me and kissed my hairline and called me his kitten, called me his dolly. His breakdown was only months ago, but those nights were long past.
“There was a time I believed in song lyrics. I still think in song lyrics, but the music is what I believe.”
Bill looks into his empty glass. After a moment he nods and rises to his feet. “Ruby, this house has a gutter problem,” he said. “We’d better take a look tomorrow.”
*
During the drought of the spring and summer I hadn’t given a thought to the state of Mrs. Pence’s rain gutters. Now that rain is falling nearly every night, following the thunder-crashing deluge that had overflowed creeks and runoffs and caused landslides down the eroded hillsides north of the river—in one case a whole mobile home sliding down a hill—I’m ducking through a cascade of water overflowing the gutters every time I leave the house, and my piano students arrive in the foyer shivering, with wet hair and wet backpacks and jackets.
Bill studies the gutters. “Like the Arkansas traveler,” he says, “we gotta patch the old roof till it’s good and tight,” and he climbs into his pickup and drives off.
“Arkansas? What is he talking about?” asks Jamie. She and I have been driven by Zella into a conspiracy of silence in the office, and so Jamie often drops by Mrs. Pence’s house after work to catch me up on her latest information about her upcoming custody hearing. Her chances are looking good. Dr. Brenner is coming in person to the hearing to speak about her excellent work and reliability and sobriety.
“It’s just an old song.” I hum a bit of it for her.
“You musicians
. I swear you speak a whole different language from the rest of us.”
Now that I’m looking at the gutters, I see they’re brimful of leaves and broken branches, through which rainwater pours and where a few green weeds have taken root and stick up their heads in defiance of coming frosts. At one corner of the kitchen porch, a gutter has pulled free from the roof and drains its water onto the lawn.
“Does he come here often?”
“Who, Bill? He visits sometimes. You’re as bad as Isaiah.”
“Ha.”
*
Bill returns with an extension ladder strapped to the top of his pickup. He climbs out, carrying his toolbox, and ducks through the drips from the gutter to open the toolbox on the porch.
“Do you still carry barber scissors in the tray?” I ask, and see him stop with his gloved hand on a hammer. Then he picks up the hammer and just touches the tip of my braid with it on his way back to his pickup for the ladder.
Jamie and I watch from the lawn as Bill extends the ladder, sets it against the side of the house, and climbs, step by step, with his hammer hanging from a rear pocket by its claws, until he reaches the gutter and scoops out a handful of rotten leaves and mud with a primal odor. Freed, a stream of black reeking water gushes from the spout.
“Bring a trash bag,” he calls down, and Jamie goes to fetch the roll of trash bags from the kitchen.
More rain is expected. I smell the leaves and water from the gutter and see gray sky through bare black cottonwood branches and, at the top of the ladder, Bill’s back and shoulders in his dark windbreaker and his long legs in Levi’s. I take a step closer to the ladder and see the bottom edges of his rear pockets, heavily worn, and the frayed place where the inseams of his Levi’s cross at the crotch, and I wonder if I want to know more about the woman named Teresa who died in Boise and know I’ll never ask him.
“Do you still have the barber scissors?” I call and see the ladder lurch before he steadies it by grabbing the roof.
“When I’m at the top of this ladder is maybe not the best time to be asking me that.”
And then Jamie comes back with a trash bag, and she and I hold it open while Bill drops down murky handfuls from as far along the gutters as he can reach. He moves the ladder again and again and fills that trash bag and another, and he nails back the gutter that had pulled away from the side of the roof, and by that time it’s almost dark and rain has started to fall again.
Jamie says good night and goes back to her car and drives away. I watch Bill climb down the ladder for the final time, watch the stretch of denim over his legs and the sway of the claw hammer from his rear pocket with each step, and I watch as he folds the ladder and props it against the side of the porch to return to the equipment rental place in the morning.
He strips off his filthy work gloves and drops them on the porch and turns to me and weaves his fingers through my hair at the base of my braid.
“Ruby. Ruth. I kinda like that name. You think we ought to go inside and get out of the rain?”
“Yes,” I say, as I had in my dream.
*
Isaiah and I climb the stairs to the balcony overlooking the alley behind Main Street. As before, we’re coming from work, Isaiah from Mike Mansfield High and I from the Office of Student Accounting, which I left early, to Zella’s overt disapproval. Isaiah’s acoustic guitar is slung over his shoulder, and our hands find each other and clasp as we open the door with the gold letters. JERRY BOHN, LLD, ATTORNEY AT LAW.
His secretary recognizes us and smiles, and Jerry Bohn himself opens the inner door and gestures us inside. He takes in the two of us, our clasped hands, and the guitar.
“She’s in the conference room next door. Please remember she’s fragile. I’m sorry, but I don’t think she’ll talk to you. She had agreed, but then, just now—well. You can try. I’ll sit in, and I’ll try not to interrupt you.”
Pale cream walls in the conference room, framed photographs of dignitaries on the walls, many of the dignitaries with beards, a long walnut table, and, seated at the far end of the table, a woman with a cloud of dark gray hair and downcast eyes who wears a white lace sweater.
“Please, sit down,” says Jerry Bohn behind us, and Isaiah unslings his guitar, and we sit at our end of the table.
No one speaks for a long minute. I can’t see Jerry Bohn, but I sense his tension, and just when I think he’ll intervene, Isaiah pushes back his chair, picks up his guitar, and starts tuning it.
Ping, ping, ping, rings through the conference room. Then Isaiah strikes a badly flattened note from the E string—deliberately, I think—and I see the woman flinch, and I’m pretty sure Isaiah sees it too as he retightens the peg. So she still has an ear.
I’m remembering my struggles with the CPS woman. Throwing myself on the floor, catching at the legs of chairs to keep from being taken away. Mommy! Remembering the invisible cord that drew me across the bridge over the Clearwater that night, trying to reach her before Brad caught up with me in his squad car. It wasn’t quite the truth and not quite a lie that I had told Jerry Bohn. All that has passed isn’t past. The cord that draws me to the woman at the opposite end of the table might be frayed, but it’s there.
I note her face, which once was beautiful. Then I see the shape of her hands and her slightly arched nose. She is our grandmother’s daughter, Rosalie, who once was the girl in Monterey with a voice like a bell.
Isaiah finishes tuning his guitar, and I get up and stand beside him. “Ruby and I thought we’d sing a little to you,” Isaiah says. His fingers move over the strings, playing a line of melody and then finding the chords as we lean toward each other and sing about the hickory wind that blows through the pines and the oaks, Isaiah’s big baritone in harmony with the tenor I’ve adapted from Gall. Bill was right about our vocal sound. We’re bringing a helluva sound to that conference room, enough to ring the dead ears of the bearded dignitaries in the photographs on the walls. Remember, remember, the pines and the oaks, and remember that we play music and sing not because we expect fame and fortune but because that’s the air we breathe.
The song comes to an end. The bearded dignitaries recede into their frames. Rosalie’s mouth opens, but she does not look up or speak. Jerry Bohn suddenly is at her side.
I step back. Isaiah is picking at his strings, pretending to search for notes, which I know is an act because we practiced it half the night. He finds the melody he’s looking for, plays it and reprises it. His eyes are fixed on Rosalie. He takes a step toward her and teases her by beginning the reprisal, breaking it off, and beginning again.
“Will you sing for us?”
She looks up with widening eyes, and Jerry Bohn draws a sharp breath.
Silver threads and golden needles . . .
Isaiah and I searched online through old newspaper accounts, and we’re pretty sure this was at least one of the songs she sang at the Monterey festival. Now Isaiah begins the melody one more time, and a thin voice joins him. He coaxes her with the guitar, and she gains strength and pushes back from the conference table and opens her mouth like the singer she is. After the first verse I sing a quiet harmony on alternating lines, and Isaiah joins in, and we see her face soften and cast off years, and we hear her true mezzo voice soar on the solo lines . . . I dare not drown my sorrows . . . and we come to the end.
She hides her face in her hands.
Jerry Bohn holds her, kissing her and murmuring to her. He nods us toward the door, and after a few minutes he joins us in his office.
“I’ve never heard her sing,” he says. “We’ve been married for nearly fifteen years, and I’ve never heard her sing.”
“She has a beautiful voice. Still.”
Jerry Bohn shakes his head. I see that he’s on the verge of crying himself. “Well. As I said, she’s fragile. When she heard you were back in Versailles, Ruth, she was beside herself. Frightened. Furious. Cursing. Hospitalized for several days. Well. We’ll see what happens next.”
Isaia
h and I walk down the stairs to the alley in silence. He had left his pickup in the parking lot, and now he cases his guitar and stows it behind the front seat, and we get in and sit for a moment.
“Bill’s right,” Isaiah says. “We’ve got quite a sound.”
I’m thinking about men who love damaged women. Jerry Bohn and Rosalie. Brazos and Anne. How far the men who love damaged women will go to keep them safe and what the safekeeping might do to the damaged women.
“Isaiah. Do you think I’m damaged?”
“No more than the rest of us.” He hesitates. “Are you worried about yourself with Bill?”
I nod.
He takes my hand. “Don’t be. You’re all right, Ruby.”
A spatter of rain hits the windshield like weather that can’t make up its mind. My mind is on the Polaroid of the sullen young man, still stuck to the mirror in the white bedroom. Bill, naked, stopping to study it.
Who is he? He looks like you, Ruth. Or you look like him.
Isaiah leans his head on the steering wheel, and it takes me a minute to realize he’s laughing.
“What?”
“Bill! He came back to the pad at three in the morning, and that dude was walking on a cloud!” He starts laughing all over again. “And you’re blushing!”
“I am not!”
“You are too!”
He takes my hand. “We’ll make it through this, Ruby.”
“Yes.”
We sit for a time, watching the rain on the windshield try to decide what it wants to do, and I think about Isaiah’s broken heart and Gall’s burned-out brain and Grandmother’s pleasure at my deception. Rosalie.
Bill.
“It was three in the morning? Really?”
“It was!”
He’s laughing as I have not heard him laugh since Catina’s death. “You want me to ask him his intentions?”
“Stop it!”
But what can I do but laugh with him as he turns the key in the ignition and drives down the alley from all we might never know and turns on the grade toward the Orchards and whatever is going to happen next.
Ruby Dreams of Janis Joplin Page 22
