The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018

by The O Henry Prize Stories 2018 (retail) (epub)

Ruth said awful things and then felt horrible about them, but then she would say more awful things. It was an addiction she could not kick, as if discarding her grief and forcing him to bear it instead. You can’t play ukulele and fix this, you know. You always wanted a boy anyway. She’ll never need one of your desks now.

  If Ruth said awful things, Gus said nothing at all. He retreated to the farm, to the workshop, where he could easily make her feel like an interloper. He spent whole days there, while Ruth sat at home, waiting for him to return to her, though he never truly did. She began to spend weekends in Boston. For months they lingered on this way, trapped in a stalemate.

  Ruth appeared at the workshop one afternoon. Gus had been mindlessly sanding the tapered legs of a desk for several hours, his arm ached from it, and as he stood to look at his work, he realized he had sanded so much that the third leg was now noticeably thinner than its counterparts.

  Ruth sighed. “I need a break.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “From you. From all of this. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  Gus dropped the sanding block, and it rattled on the concrete floor.

  “Do you have to act like this?”

  “How am I acting?”

  “Like the spoiled little rich girl.”

  He’d never once spoken to her that way. Halfway through saying it he already felt horrible. He didn’t love her any less now, but everything around them had changed, as if they were standing still while a storm swept through around them.

  Ruth sat down on the cold concrete and suddenly looked very young and very fragile. For a moment Gus had some hope, the smallest breach. But her face was drawn, had grown tighter, menacing.

  “We can use a lawyer we know,” she said. “Charlie’s brother, I guess. Keep it all simple.”

  “Simple,” he said.

  It was stunning how quickly their country could crumble. Civil war. A dozen years to construct but only a few months to collapse.

  * * *

  —

  Gus started moving his things out of the house the next week. At first Ruth was still there, but by the time he was nearly finished, she managed to be absent. The last hours he moved slowly, one small box at a time, adding in extra, unnecessary trips. What did he hope for? A change of heart at the last minute? A dramatic reconciliation where they fell to the wet ground and kissed?

  He found a note on the kitchen counter, just a small Post-it, as if Ruth did not even care if Gus found it: It’s different for mothers.

  He stared at the note. It demanded that he develop a fresh emotional response, one that hadn’t yet been charted and classified by scientists: profoundly sad and confused and resentful and sad again around the edges. Such hardness in her. Jesus, he thought, halfway wishing he were capable of such hardness also. How easily grief could mutate into something else entirely. She was right, of course: there were things that only mothers were capable of, like lifting cars off their children during tornadoes. Like this.

  He left the note where it was. He needed her to wonder for the rest of her life if he even saw it. Initially, he had planned on leaving her the Pomeranian, but the note stopped him. He made room in the front seat, where it curled into a ball and fell asleep as they drove away.

  * * *

  —

  Gus moved back to the farm. He leased the land: soy, wheat, corn, hay. Days he worked jobs in Cleveland—elaborate built-ins, mantels, newel posts and hickory spindles on wide staircases—and evenings he built desks, the glow of the old workshop spilling into the barnyard late into the night. He ate microwave dinners in his underwear and left the telephone off the hook. He became a ghost, the sort of man that people in a small town recognize, though no one can recall ever speaking to.

  Ruth sold the house to the first offer. She couldn’t be in Ohio any longer. She moved back to Boston, where her mother still lived, and soon she was attending fund-raisers and charity auctions in the ballrooms of the most elegant old hotels. She found herself surrounded by people so wealthy they had no need to locate Ohio on a map. The city offered as many distractions as she needed, faces new to her and those whom she had known many years earlier when they were thinner and more eager.

  * * *

  —

  Ruth eventually settled in with a man named Harold Gutman. He had worked as an intern under her father and kept a trimmed beard, mostly gray now, and had a single bumper sticker on his BMW, which read, very simply, “DOCTOR.” Ruth found this a strange and gaudy touch for a man who, otherwise, largely passed through the world undetected. When he started speaking of marriage, she would turn away and tell him that she wasn’t so sure, not yet. She still had so many things to sort out, tangled linkages in her brain. It was always in the evenings when Harold Gutman would invariably make such hints, always after a few drinks. He never proposed outright, only took her temperature, which was icy for many years, though he was convinced a thaw would eventually come.

  “I’m just not sure,” Ruth would always say if he pressed her. Of course, she was perfectly sure, perfectly sure she did not want to marry Harold Gutman, did not want to marry again, ever.

  It was this incessant talk of marriage that pushed her back into her dissertation. She needed something to occupy her evenings in order to avoid Harold Gutman’s affections, and so she holed herself up in the wood-paneled study, finally finishing eight years after Annabelle’s death. She declined to walk at the commencement ceremony because she did not want to travel back to Cleveland. Instead, she strolled the Back Bay streets alone, and when she returned to their apartment, she found on her desk a sticker of the letter “S,” which Harold Gutman had left for her. Together they would be “DOCTORS” for all the world to see.

  * * *

  —

  When the Pomeranian died, Gus buried it behind the barn. He stood in front of the old rotary wall phone, ready to dial Ruth and deliver the news. It was all he could think to do. Should he or not? They hadn’t spoken in years. He wouldn’t even know how to say hello. Old lovers were far worse than strangers. Should he use her name or not?

  Hello, Ruth.

  Ruth, hello, it’s Gus.

  Hi there, it’s me.

  Ruthie, dear, I’m sorry to deliver such bad news.

  When he finally dialed, a man’s voice answered, and he hung up immediately.

  * * *

  —

  Ruth took an adjunct position at a local community college, teaching a course or two each semester. It felt like a concession, but she ended up liking her students, most of whom were bright and engaged. Some days she would stay on campus for eight or ten hours, teaching and meeting with students. She loved most how they would stomp into her office, breathless and full of absurd excuses. She would come home and tell Harold Gutman about them. “Even when they say ridiculous things, they’re so enthusiastic about it,” she said.

  “What about children then?” Harold Gutman asked her one evening after a benefit at the Park Plaza. He’d allowed himself an extra glass of wine and was feeling warm and confident.

  She squinted, though it was dark in their bedroom. “We’re too old for that, Harold.” She was only forty-six but felt much older.

  “We could adopt.”

  “It’s nice of you to say that, but no, we couldn’t.”

  Harold Gutman didn’t pursue it after that. No marriage, no family of their own. Instead her students would become her children, in a way that was common but not terribly healthy.

  * * *

  —

  When a full-time teaching post opened up, Ruth took it. “If your father were still alive,” was all her mother would say to the news, which was the harshest sort of admonishment she could muster at the thought of a community college. Harold Gutman, too, seemed perplexed. “Isn’t it terribly repetitive?” he asked, and she told him that of course it was
. “I don’t like surprises or changes the way I used to.”

  At a conference in Phoenix, she slept with a young assistant professor of statistics. He was barely thirty and played video games on his cell phone. He was aggressive in bed like an upperclassman in a fraternity. In the morning, when she woke and saw him there splayed atop the covers, naked and hairy, she immediately thought of what a horrible thing she had just done to Gus. How would she admit this to him? Would he ever forgive her? It was only at breakfast, when they sat in relative silence, that she realized she meant Harold Gutman. It was Harold Gutman whom she had betrayed.

  * * *

  —

  Several years later Ruth took a stroll down Newbury Street, not so much interested in buying anything as in walking the promenade the way people do after a harsh winter. She was just about to turn back for home, when she saw in the front window of a store a three-legged desk. That unmistakable aesthetic: austere, unassuming, clean.

  “It’s a gorgeous piece, isn’t it?” the salesman said. He wore a tailored vest, no tie, buttons undone through the hollow of his chest.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “A relatively new artist, just breaking onto the scene in the last few years. He lives in Iowa, I believe—Iowa or Ohio—and crafts everything individually, which is unheard of anymore.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said again.

  “This desk is made from bur oak and features through-mortises and a tripod—all of his desks do.” He eased out the lap drawer. “The artist does all the dovetails by hand, no jig. You can see the Shaker and Pennsylvania Dutch influences, of course, but he has carved out new territory. Remarkable work, lines as distinct as I’ve seen since Tom Moser.”

  Ruth traced her fingers across the edges of the desktop. She could smell the workshop, the arousal taking shape in her. Sparks that had hidden themselves away, dormant for many years.

  “We’re thrilled to have some of his pieces here,” the salesman said. He was young and very fashionable and seemed afraid of Ruth’s silence. “Ordinarily our New York and London stores get first crack, but they’ve done remarkably well here. All the young students, perhaps. People want smaller, cleaner desks now. Computers are smaller than ever. No more of those shelved, multilevel monstrosities of the eighties and nineties. That’s the trend, anyway.” He slid the lap drawer back in. “Quite the visionary.”

  * * *

  —

  The pain from this encounter was real, and yet so was the excitement. Ruth was alternately sad and angry, though she couldn’t deny she felt more alive than she had in many years. She became convinced Gus’s aim was to torture her. He could have sold desks anywhere. Why Boston? Why so close to her parents’ old brownstone? Clearly, he wanted to force a confrontation between them where he would reveal to her…what? His children, his beautiful new wife? How he had survived and moved on? He would not say a word, but he would parade them in front of her. That was very like him, the quietest possible revenge.

  But then other days she thought that perhaps Gus simply wanted to see her and did not know how. He would kiss her on the cheek, tell her how he had missed her, how differently his life had ended up without her. And then he would look down and say: “Could we just talk about her now?” And she would cry, and he would cry, and they would talk about her all night.

  She found herself distracted during her lectures, and more than once she had to excuse herself into the hallway. For months this happened at regular—and then increasing—intervals. Harold Gutman noticed the change in her, but she told him it was just the stress of teaching.

  Gus had burrowed his way back into that small nook of her brain where the trauma still lingered, quiet for many years but never truly dormant. His appearance had disturbed a system at rest, jolting it back into a slow but accelerating orbit that would slowly consume her. But Ruth surrendered to this freely, as if leaning into a strong wind, considering for the first time in many years that perhaps memory can exist without despair.

  * * *

  —

  Harold Gutman didn’t understand why he needed a new desk. His old one worked perfectly well, and besides, he was used to it.

  “This one is just better,” Ruth said.

  “I liked all the drawers and nooks in my old one. Where will I put everything now?”

  “You’ll get rid of things. That’s the point.”

  He frowned, unconvinced. She sauntered over to the desk, leaned against its edge, and slid off her heels. She unbuttoned her blouse and leaned back, trying to appear seductive but feeling ridiculous.

  “What are you doing?” Harold Gutman asked.

  “I’m showing you how much better this desk is.”

  “But we have a bed, a big comfortable bed. And I don’t think it can support us both. It seems to be missing one leg.”

  * * *

  —

  She bought more desks, at first just to furnish guest bedrooms, then two more for the house Harold Gutman kept on the Cape, then more that she put directly into a storage bay. Eventually, the young furniture salesman asked what she’d been hoping he’d ask. “I’d be happy to arrange an introduction,” he said. “For such a generous fan of his work. He’s in town occasionally.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Ruth said, suddenly feeling diffident as a teenager.

  “I haven’t met him myself, but he’s supposed to be a very modest, quiet sort of man. With all his success, he supposedly still lives in an old farmhouse in the middle of Iowa.”

  She told him it wasn’t at all necessary, there was no need to go to such trouble. She just adored his desks was all. The salesman shrugged, unconcerned. Later that night, though, she dialed the number on his business card and told him that she had changed her mind. She would like to meet the artist the next time he came to Boston.

  * * *

  —

  It was a Saturday in October when she arrived at the store to see him. She told Harold Gutman she had an appointment with a student, and he nodded, suspecting a lie was hidden somewhere. He had noticed her fussing in the mirror far longer than usual. They both knew they were clinging to the threads of whatever they had, like the last day of a vacation that is spent mostly on travel.

  Wet leaves painted the sidewalks on Newbury Street. When she entered the store, Gus’s back was to her, but he was the same as ever. Hadn’t gained a single pound, though he’d gone fully gray. He wore carpenter’s jeans and a flannel shirt. As she drew nearer she realized that the pants weren’t just of a style; they were the exact pair he often wore years earlier. She recognized a stain above the left pocket.

  How long had it been? She’d become horrible with dates. Twenty years? That sounded about right.

  “Jesus,” he said when he turned around. It took him several moments before he could compose himself. Ruth felt absurd. She had hoped that he knew, that he had actively targeted Boston, but Gus seemed truly shocked.

  They strolled down Newbury Street. Gus clasped his hands behind his back and took long, loping strides. He glanced over at her and smiled that calm smile she remembered. Strangers often took this for arrogance, but she knew it was just his quiet nature. Silence is something that should be protected, his father used to say.

  “How’s the farm?” she asked.

  “The same.” He stopped walking and looked up at the roofs of the buildings, tarnished copper and clay tile. He frowned. “That’s not true. I don’t know why I just said that. Queen Elizabeth died,” he said. “Came down in a bad storm a few years ago.”

  “No!” she said.

  He nodded. “More than a few years ago now, I guess. I built a kiln next to the barn and cured all the lumber I could, some thousands of board feet.”

  “And the desks?”

  He nodded. “Bur oak is just about all I’ve worked with ever since.”

  “I could tell you st
ill use the handsaw for the dovetails. You always did hate those jigs.”

  “You do something one certain way for long enough and you become incapable of doing it any other way.” It was just like him to say something like that. But it made her feel more like a client than the mother of his dead daughter.

  He stepped off the curb to allow a mother with a stroller to pass. Ruth watched the woman and child move away from them, then disappear around the corner.

  “I suppose Queen Elizabeth is still in our bodies, isn’t she? Or her atoms anyway.”

  Gus looked at her quizzically for a moment, and then he remembered. He nodded but said nothing.

  They walked on in silence for several minutes, and then Ruth said, “I hated that doctor. But her story stuck with me. I guess that’s obvious, isn’t it? When I went back to my research after all those years, I tried to calculate it. How many atoms from the dead might migrate to the living. It became this strange obsession, not at all related to my dissertation. It took a long time, but I eventually worked out a reasonable prediction and asked a scientist on campus about it, and he pointed out that my math was generally good, but I’d overlooked one basic error of physics.”

  “That it takes far too long,” Gus said. “Centuries for them to dissipate.”

  “You, too?” Ruth asked, and Gus touched her arm, telling her yes. She froze, his hand warm on her skin, afraid that the smallest movement might dislodge them.

  After a few moments, they noticed they were blocking the sidewalk and had to move on. “So, Queen Elizabeth isn’t actually in us,” Ruth said, and paused. “Never will be.”

  “No,” Gus said, “but she’ll end up in someone eventually.”

  They started walking again. He dug his hands into his pockets and gazed around. She felt a sadness in him that had never been there. A hollow look in his eyes. Whether it was all the talk of death or long-term loneliness or just the general cruelties of life, she couldn’t know. The truth was they had been apart far longer than they’d been together. Could she even claim to know him anymore?