Patterns of Swallows

by Connie Cook

  Graham was still on salary. He'd need to learn more about the managing of the business before he was made an official partner, his father thought. But his salary was more than adequate since he'd been living at home and spending all his spare time with Ruth who had no expensive tastes. Ruth had her savings, as well. They were better off than most newlyweds, really, Graham was quick to point out.

  "Will you want to keep working?" Mrs. MacKellum asked Ruth.

  "I think so," Ruth said at the same time as Graham said, "Wha'd'ya think? My wife won't need to work!" They looked at each other, slightly dismayed. They hadn't discussed it before.

  "Well, I don't know. I guess we hadn't ..." Ruth hedged, and Graham said nothing further on the subject.

  But Ruth felt her first doubt. She hadn't realized it, but she wanted to keep working. She couldn't imagine life without seeing Jim and Glo and Phoebe and Eva and Sally and all the regulars on a nearly-daily basis. What would she do at home all day long while Graham went to the office? The days of married life as a housewife began to wear a blank, empty look in her imagination.

  Still, she could see Graham's point. If she kept working, it would look to the rest of the town as though she needed to. And that wouldn't sit well with Graham's ego. Besides, he'd probably want meals on the table at a certain time and shirts ironed and all the rest. Was she ready for this? She'd hardly had time to think; it had all happened so fast. This was a whole different ballgame from just seeing Graham every day and going places with him.

  But she'd adjust. Of course she could find plenty to do in running a home. She'd learn to do things the way Graham liked them done. Her days would fill up. And she'd make sure she still saw plenty of Jim and Glo and the Morning Glory. Maybe Graham would let her continue part-time.

  Jim and Glo were next on the visiting list.

  There were no tears on Glo's part, just a breath-stealing squeeze for Ruth and a breath-stealing pounding on the back for Graham. Jim's congratulations were quieter but just as sincere.

  "You couldn'a found a better gal to marry if you'd looked for a thousand years," Glo told Graham in characteristic hyperbolic fashion. (She always believed her own hyperboles, though.)

  Ruth didn't let it go to her head. It was the kind of thing people always said to new husbands.

  "You've got yourself a real treasure there," Jim told Graham in a moment of unusual expressiveness. "You have to handle her gently. She's just a fragile, little thing, like a little bird."

  Ruth had never dreamed that Jim possessed a poetic streak. She wouldn't have been more surprised to discover him cracking jokes and bursting into song while flipping his pancakes and frying his ham and eggs.

  "I am not fragile, Jim!" she said, pleased. No one had ever called her fragile before. She knew it was far from the truth, of course, but it touched her that Jim saw her that way.

  One part of her mind worried that Graham would feel that Jim and Glo thought he'd got the better end of the bargain, even though she knew it was just the fashion to congratulate the groom in such a way as to let him know that he'd got the better end of the bargain.

  But what did it matter? She knew full well that Graham's parents thought she'd got the better end of the bargain. Would it matter to Graham what Jim and Glo thought?

  "I aim to handle her gently," Graham said, putting an arm around her and pulling her to him, all the while looking at her like a prize he'd fought hard for.

  "Does this mean we'll be losin' you, Ruthie Darlin'?" Glo asked.

  Ruth looked up at Graham.

  "We haven't really discussed it. Everything happened so fast. I'll certainly give you at least two weeks' notice before you lose me, though, when you do. If you do."

  "Doesn' matter how much notice you give us. We're not going to be able to replace you. I mean, we'll have to hire someone else, but that doesn' mean you'll be replaced. You're like one a' our own, y'know, and I hope you'll always see us as your family. I hope that for you, too, Graham. You bring that little girl 'round to see us from time to time, now, y'hear?" Glo said.

  "Will you have a honeymoon anywhere?" Jim asked.

  Ruth nodded. "A short one. That is, when you can give me the time off. Graham's dad said he could have a week whenever I can get the time off."

  "And where will you be going? Or shouldn't I ask?" Glo asked (whether or not she should). As she was quick to inform people, she always said the things other people would have if they only had the courage.

  "I don't think it's a secret. You two won't tell anyone, anyway. It's just a week, and we're trying to save money, and I can't think of any prettier spot in the world than Kissanka Lake, so that's our plan. Graham knows a couple who own a few cottages on the lake for rent by the week."

  "Well, if that won't be just gorgeous this time of year! The colours'll be just startin' to turn. You better go soon, though, before it gets too cold."

  "Well, we'll go whenever you say we can," Ruth said, laughing, and before they left the cafe, the dates were set for her taking a week starting the Monday after next.

  Also before they left, Jim slipped an envelope into Ruth's hand and said to her, "Just a little weddin' present for y'all. We didn't know anythin' about it beforehand or we woulda bought you somethin' real nice. Put this toward the honeymoon if you like. Hope it'll be real special. And hope you two'll be real happy. You deserve all the happiness in the world."

  Chapter 7

  My primary interest in any story is not so much in what happens to a person as it is in what a person thinks about what happens to her. That's what holds the interest for me.

  Unavoidably, as I tell you this story, I tell it to you through my eyes. Some of the things I tell you are facts – things that anyone will tell you happened. Some are also facts though only a certain few know the way they really happened. And some are things the way it seems to me they must have happened. Those things are not facts though they are about facts.

  As I've told you, I'm more interested in what a person thinks about events than I am in the bare events themselves. In order to tell you about the things that interest me most, I must tell you things that I don't know of my own knowledge (though there are many different ways of knowing and some don't involve our five senses).

  There are those who would tell me I can't possibly know the truth about the things which interest me – that I've blurred the line between imagination and reality. I know what's real and what I've imagined. As I write, the lines that are clear in my own mind will blur in the telling. But all I can do is tell things to you the way I see them.

  * * *

  Their first fight happened on the honeymoon. The first real fight, that is. The first serious fight.

  On the third night of the honeymoon, Ruth lay awake next to Graham. She could see the full moon through the top of the little four-paned window next to the bed in their little cabin bedroom.

  She could imagine the lake in the moonlight. It was all she could do to resist going down to the lake to scent the pines and watch the moonpath shimmering on the water, leading where she didn't know, but beckoning to her, luring her to some unexplored country. She had the impulse to go down to the lake and plunge into the cold water to swim along the path the moon made in the water just to see where it would lead.

  Graham was sleeping beside her. He snored slightly. The things a person didn't know about another person until she married that person.

  His snoring was never enough to keep her awake, though. No, thinking did that, mostly. Tonight it was the moon that was helping the thoughts keep her awake. Or maybe the moon had started it, but now that she was awake, she might as well think thoughts. And her thoughts carried her, willy-nilly, to places she hadn't been in a long time.

  Maybe she really would get up and go down to the lake. The call of the moon was almost irresistible. She wouldn't swim, though. That was just silly. She didn't want to end her honeymoon with pneumonia. But she could at least see the moonpath if not follow it.

  She stirred
cautiously, and Graham's snoring stopped. His hand reached out to her and found her half-sitting.

  "Mmmm," he grumbled. "Aren't you asleep yet?"

  "I can't sleep."

  "Sure you can, it's easy," he said.

  "Easy for you," she said.

  He woke up a little more and leaned on one elbow to look at her in the moonlight.

  "Why can't you sleep?" he asked.

  "I don't know. Thinking, I guess."

  "Thinking! About what?"

  She didn't tell him she'd been thinking about going down to the lake and swimming in the path of the moon, following it to an unimagined world they couldn't share.

  Or maybe they could share it? Maybe she'd tell him, and they'd go down and watch the moon together, and swim in its silver light together wherever it took them.

  She shook the idea off as quickly as it occurred to her. She didn't even tell him she'd been thinking about going down to the lake to watch the moon. It was a crazy idea, anyway.

  "People, I guess. Our old classmates."

  "What put that into your head? Can't you save the thinking for daytime and the sleeping for nighttime?" He reached one arm over her and tickled her.

  Ruth couldn't help squirming. She was violently ticklish. Her mind couldn't switch gears from her thoughts to fun and games quite that quickly, however.

  "I was thinking about people we knew once."

  "Like who?" Graham asked, curiously. He stopped tickling her.

  "Oh, like I say, old classmates. People like Joshua Bella."

  Graham lay back with a snort.

  "Joshua Bella! Man! Now there was one ugly kid! Of all people to lie awake thinking about!"

  "Joshua Bella was the most beautiful person I've ever known."

  If it hadn't been dark in the room, Graham would surely have recognized the danger signals in her eyes. But the darkness, instead of making them more visible, hid the shooting sparks. Or maybe he wasn't looking at her. Maybe he wasn't really paying attention. Maybe he was half asleep. Maybe his mind was elsewhere.

  "Oh yeah! Beautiful! That's one way to describe him. Not the word I'd choose, though. More like just, plain mutt-ugly. Too bad you couldn't have married Joshua Bella, I guess, if you think he was the most beautiful person you've ever known. That's a fine thing to tell your husband!"

  "Graham, if you ever say another bad word to me, even in fun, about Joshua, I'll leave you. I swear I will! And you know I don't say things I don't mean." When Ruth's voice got quiet like that, Graham knew what that meant.

  "Okay, now, just simmer down, all right? I'm sorry, if it'll make you feel any better. I didn't mean anything by it. It's just that no man likes to hear his wife comparing him to someone else, even Joshua Bella, on his honeymoon. I forgot about ... I mean, I forgot that you were there when ... Lookit! I am sorry, all right? Let's say no more about it."

  And no more was said about it.

  If Ruth had been on the point of telling Graham the whole story, she never did after that. As insignificant and quickly forgotten as the incident on the honeymoon may have seemed, Joshua Bella was the first wedge.

  * * *

  Funny what a gossamer strand is trust when you think about the enormous weight it supports. Love and trust, though closely joined, are certainly made of two very unlike substances. When the brittle thread of trust snaps, one would expect its burden to fall and be smashed. Yet love survives many such a fall and carries on unbroken.

  To my knowledge, she never did tell Graham the whole story. Only three or four people in the world know it. For some reason, she chose that I should be one of them.

  * * *

  When Ruth was a little girl, every morning after breakfast her mother read a portion from the Bible to her dutifully. They didn't go to church (too many hypocrites), but she didn't want her daughter growing up heathen.

  One passage in particular haunted Ruth for years. It was from the Sermon on the Mount, a favourite of Beatrice Chavinski's, and so a passage Ruth heard regularly.

  Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

  There was another similar verse that she always associated with that one.

  Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.

  Sometimes, these verses would keep Ruth awake at night for hours. Had she ever said, "Thou fool"? And what did it mean to say, "Raca"? Had she ever done it?

  Then she'd be tormented by the words, "Raca," or, "Thou fool," repeating themselves over and over inside her brain, try to stop them as she might, until she wanted to scream. Could a person go to hell just for thinking the words?

  One particular night, lying awake, thinking those same old thoughts she had no more strength to fight, she gave in to the fatal fascination. She repeated the words aloud, whispering them into the darkness. "Raca," she spat out. If she was going to say it, she might as well say it with some feeling. No sense being hung for a lamb. "Thou fool," she hissed. Then she waited, but felt nothing. Was this what it felt like to be one of the damned? It felt like nothing. She didn't even feel fear.

  What was hell like? She tried to visualize it, burning forever. Maybe the flames weren't like real flames, the kind that caused her to pull her hand back quickly when putting wood into the cook stove. Maybe hell's flames didn't hurt like that. She hoped not. Guess she'd find out now.

  Then a ray of hope broke through the darkness. She'd said the words, but she hadn't said them to anyone, after all. Wasn't the damning deed in saying the words to someone? That was an easier one to avoid. That was manageable. If she never said, "Thou fool," or "Raca" to anyone, and she was fairly certain she hadn't, maybe she could still be all right.

  * * *

  Joshua Bella confessed his love to Ruth the summer they were eleven. From that time on, he became repellent to her.

  The Starkes and the Bellas were the Chavinski's nearest neighbours who had children. It was only natural that the children who were the same age should play together. Ruth and Wynnie saw each other nearly every day that summer.

  That summer they were obsessed with treasure maps. They played pirate treasure endlessly, taking turns depositing some little trinket (usually a cheap necklace of painted, wooden beads belonging to Wynnie) in a metal box and hiding the box in some out-of-the-way spot. Sometimes it involved digging holes and burying the treasure; sometimes just finding the most unlikely place one could find – which gave the seeker more of a challenge with no freshly-turned earth as a clue. Then the hider would draw a treasure map for the seeker and delight in making the map as deceptive as possible while still accurate within reason. If the treasure remained undiscovered by the seeker, the seeker always laid blame on the map and sought recourse to the decision of a third party as to the accuracy of the map.

  The third party was always Joshua Bella. Wynnie never would let him play treasure maps with her and Ruth. Ruth thought they should let him play with them (before the confession, that is), but Wynnie was adamant. Still, Joshua was always just ... there ... hanging around the two girls in spite of everything Wynnie did to get rid of him. He had a sort of sixth sense that allowed him to find them at any given moment of the day (though, of course, the girls were predictable. After chores were done for the day, they were almost always either at the Starke place or the Chavinski farm.)

  Ruth tolerated his constant presence reasonably well, but she had to admit to herself that it annoyed her. The way he was always just there! Always just on the outskirts of their play, watching hopefully, trying to include himself in it when they'd let him, taking the proverbial mile if Wynnie gave him an inch. Always with the same hopeful, sad, brown eyes and the same hopeful, goo
fy smile on his hopeful, sad, goofy face! It was enough to drive a person to distraction just to have an uninvited third party always there! Especially one that always looked so sadly, goofily, hopeful!

  But he was useful when it came to the matter of settling disputes though his impartiality was questionable. Even Ruth had to admit that her case usually won. (It didn't matter, of course. Whatever Joshua's decision, both sides continued to argue their suits out of court until the matter was eventually forgotten; a new hiding place found and a new map drawn.)

  The confession came about in this way:

  "You always take her side," Wynnie accused after one particularly blatant instance of biased judgment. "Is that because you love her?" she demanded in a whiny sing-song.

  Joshua said nothing and looked down but not quickly enough to hide the blush that reddened his unprepossessing face, making it homelier than ever.

  "You do!" Wynnie said, exulting in her discovery. "You love Ruth! You do, don't you?"

  Joshua said nothing. His honesty was too much a part of his character to disown the truth about anything, however painful.

  "You lo-ove Ruth, you lo-ove Ruth," Wynnie chanted. "You do, don't you? Answer me, or I'll keep asking you until you do."

  "Yes," Joshua said with his head down and his face fiery.

  Ruth had been unable to help witnessing the drama and unable to stop its outcome. There was nothing she could have said or done that wouldn't have made it worse.

  It would have been all right if it had ended there. She could have lived with knowing the truth if the truth hadn't intruded itself upon her by requiring decision on her part.

  But that day, when Wynnie was called in for supper, Joshua asked to walk Ruth home. With the truth already opened wide by Wynnie and nothing further to lose, Joshua laid his heart at Ruth's feet and asked if she felt the same way.