The Stopped Heart

by Julie Myerson

  Our father was very patient. He went up and down the stairs taking her things. Cups of water and pieces of bread and cheese and eggs boiled in their shells and a jug of milk. He took her dinner up, but she would not eat it. He brought the plate back down with the food still warm on it and when Frank asked if he could have it, he said he could even though Lottie had already taken the potatoes off.

  Once, I saw my father with his head in his hands. I don’t think he was crying, but there was noise coming out. Another time I saw him standing in the yard and staring and staring at the wall as if it might tell him something worth knowing. Sometimes I heard them yelling and screaming at each other.

  Don’t you tell me what to do! she was saying. Don’t you talk to me like that! Don’t you dare give me orders!

  And my father said something back but it was quieter and I couldn’t hear what it was, and then the baby started crying and it felt like the house would explode with so much noise and kerfuffle going on.

  Meanwhile there was still the problem of the old elm that was lying right in front of our house. Our front room was in darkness because of the leaves and branches squashed up against the window. They brought two cart-horses from the village to try to shift it. But even though the beasts got down on their knees, they couldn’t make the thing budge even half an inch and a third one had to be fetched. In the end, the tree was got no farther than the bottom of the orchard, where it lay on its back in the long grass just as if it grew that way.

  The day after that, I found my mother down in the kitchen. The baby was cooing and kicking on a shawl on the floor, and Honey was tied in the chair next to her while Ma kneaded the dough for the loaf, banging it and turning it as if she intended to beat the dear life out of it.

  The baby looked as if he too had risen like a loaf and doubled in size, but maybe it was just because I hadn’t seen him in a while. But most of all I was shocked by my mother’s face. It was shrunken and loose, as if someone had ripped her open and shaken all the feathers out.

  She didn’t say much but she asked me if the young man was still with us.

  What? I said. You mean James?

  I thought that Father would have told her that when James Dix had been with us about a week and showed no signs of moving on, he’d told him that if he had no particular plans and wanted to stick around, he could set him to work.

  I’d looked up at James to see what his face did at this news. Just as I expected, it sprang to life. He said that he would like that very much.

  You’ve really got nowhere else you need to be? my father said. No folk missing you or whatever?

  James shook his head and scratched at his hair. I saw that there was a big bulge in his neck when he swallowed.

  Not that I can think of, he said.

  My father frowned. Coming from a big family himself, he probably couldn’t imagine being alone in the world.

  A few weeks, he said. We’ll see how it goes. After that, I can’t promise anything. You happy with that?

  James was happy with that. He was very happy indeed.

  He walked around whistling for the rest of the afternoon, and when he saw Lottie pulling Honey along in the old dogcart, he took it out of her hands and bumped it so fast along the brick path that the chickens flew up in all directions and Honey screamed at first with laughter and then with something more like fear.

  MARY HEARS THE CAR DOOR SLAM. GRAHAM THROWS HIS jacket and briefcase on a kitchen chair and drops a white plastic bag on the table.

  “Sausages. From the farm shop.”

  “Oh,” she says. “That’s nice.”

  “That’s the good news. I’m afraid the not-so-good news is that I’m picking a certain young lady up from the station in a minute.”

  Her face falls.

  “Ruby?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What, she’s coming here?”

  “Don’t panic. I said she could stay one night and that was it.”

  She says nothing. Picks up the bag of sausages and puts it by the cooker. He walks over to the sink to wash his hands.

  “I don’t actually think she wanted to come, but her mother gave her no choice.” He picks up the tea towel to dry his hands. “I’m afraid the even worse news is she’s been suspended for a few days.”

  Mary catches her breath.

  “What, you mean from school? My God. What’s she done?”

  She hears him sigh.

  “Something to do with hanging around the town center after school or maybe it was the lunch hour. The word shoplifting was mentioned. I don’t know if it was her or another girl. She was certainly involved. Don’t worry, I’ve promised her mother I’ll have serious words with her.”

  Mary looks at him.

  “Why you?”

  “What?”

  “The serious words. Why do they always have to be done by you? Why can’t she do it for once?”

  She watches as his face changes. The sober, slightly flinching look he reserves for anything that has to do with Veronica.

  “It’s not easy for her, darling.”

  Mary looks at him, sees pain on his face.

  “What? What’s not easy?”

  “Doing all of this all on her own.”

  “All of this?”

  “Ruby’s not easy.”

  “It was her choice—”

  “That doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “What, you mean she can’t deal with her own daughter?”

  She hears Graham let out a quick breath.

  “You don’t have any sympathy for her?”

  Mary says nothing. Thinking about the day many years ago when she was finally allowed to meet this child—this little girl who seemed to be the cause of perpetual heartbreak and long telephone conversations—and her heart jumped. Not because of what she saw in Ruby, but because of what she knew she would now always see when she looked at Graham. Chaos in waiting. The dark-eyed stroppiness of an abandoned five-year-old, biding her time, waiting to make him hers again.

  Now he comes over, touches her arm, her shoulders, pulling her to him.

  “Look, I don’t want to fight about it. All I’m saying is we’ve no idea what it’s like to live full-time with a hormonal teenage girl.”

  Mary blinks. “And we never will.”

  He stares at her. For a moment neither of them can speak.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice a whisper now.

  He pulls out a chair and sits down.

  “It’s me. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “I should have asked you. I wanted to. It was Veronica. She’s in a state. I had to think fast. She put me on the spot, if you really want to know.”

  Mary tries to breathe.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Blame it on her.”

  “I’m not blaming it on anyone. I’m just saying it’s what happened. She was quite upset. I suppose I felt responsible. But I shouldn’t have sprung it on you. I should have asked you first. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s your home. You can do what you like.”

  “It’s your home too.”

  Home. Mary shivers. She feels him looking at her.

  “What? What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing,” she says. “I’m not thinking anything.”

  HER FIRST THOUGHT WHEN RUBY WALKS IN IS THAT SHE’S PUT on weight. She’s never been slender the way Graham is slender, and even as a child she wasn’t exactly skinny, but there’s an all over heftiness to her now—face, neck, jaw, bust, wrists—which you might, if you were pushed, have to call fat.

  “Hi, Rubes—what a nice surprise.”

  She holds out her arms and, after a quick, sullen moment of hesitation, Ruby comes over and lets herself be hugged. The hug smells of exhaust fumes and cigarettes and something else faintly medicinal that Mary can’t place. As usual, Ruby’s hair is dyed the blackest black. Her clothe
s are black. Her unraveling fingerless gloves are black. Her skin isn’t good and the dried-up smears of concealer do her no favors, but Mary notices that her eyeliner, two perfect inky wings of black, is gorgeously done.

  Ruby plonks herself down on the bench and, frowning, starts to unlace her shiny maroon Dr. Martens boots.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Mary says. “We’re in the country now.”

  Ruby looks up, caught out for a moment. As a little girl in London, they always made her take her shoes off at the door.

  “The floor,” Mary says. “Look at it, it’s filthy. You can keep your shoes on if you want.”

  “I don’t mind,” Ruby says, pulling the boots off anyway, revealing lacy tights with plenty of ladders and a hole in the toe.

  “But your feet will freeze.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Ruby picks up the boots and places them carefully side by side on the mat.

  “Great boots,” Mary says. “Are they new?”

  Ruby looks at her, says nothing.

  THEY EAT THE SAUSAGES. GREEN BEANS AND EARLY NEW POTATOES, which Ruby leaves. She leaves everything except the sausages, which she has second helpings of. She eats in silence, batting away all of her father’s bright, careful questions with shrugs and sullen looks. But when he asks her to clear the table, she does it without argument, scraping and stacking the plates with a solemn kind of care and carrying the big, heavy frying pan with its pure white layer of congealed fat, through to the back sink.

  After that she stands by the door to the stairs and tells them she’s going to the lavatory. Mary asks her if she needs to be shown where it is. She says she knows.

  “Don’t disappear,” Graham tells her. “There’s dessert.”

  “I don’t want dessert.”

  He makes a silly face.

  “What, not even chocolate ice cream?”

  “Not chocolate. The chocolate’s gone. It’s cherry something,” Mary says, suddenly embarrassed for him.

  Ruby blinks at her.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “All right, but anyway, don’t disappear,” says Graham. “You and me are going to have a serious talk.”

  Ruby is gone for at least ten minutes. Graham looks more and more bothered.

  “What on earth’s she doing up there?”

  “Leave her. What does it matter what she’s doing?”

  “You think she’s hanging out of the bathroom window smoking or something?”

  This hadn’t even occurred to Mary. She realizes how unfit she is to be the parent of a teenager.

  “What, weed?”

  “No, I meant cigarettes but I suppose now that you say it, yes, weed.”

  “Wouldn’t we smell it?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  They can smell nothing. Faintly, Mary thinks she can hear the creak of the boards upstairs. She catches herself hoping that Ruby isn’t in their room.

  “Maybe she’s worried about what you’re going to say,” Mary says at last. “Maybe she thinks you’re going to tell her off.”

  “I am going to tell her off.”

  “Then she’s not going to come back down in a hurry, is she?”

  Graham looks at her.

  “Well, she’s not getting out of it either.” He drains his glass and gazes at the narrow door that leads up into the shadows of the stairs. “Oh, this is getting ridiculous. Shall I go and give her a call?”

  Mary puts a hand on his.

  “Don’t hound her. You’ve got to stop treating her like a child,” she adds when Graham continues to watch the stairs.

  He looks at her.

  “What do you mean? I don’t treat her like a child. Anyway, she is a child. She behaves like a bloody child. I’m furious with her, if you really want to know.”

  Mary sighs. He pushes his chair back, throws his napkin on the table.

  “All right, all right. I get it. You’re right. She’s a big girl. I just wish she would act like one, that’s all.”

  When Ruby reappears, her face is flushed, her eyes bright. She’s tugging at the black and ragged sleeves of her sweater, pulling them down over her hands.

  “You OK, darling?” Graham asks her.

  Ruby sniffs and looks past him at the dark windowpane.

  “I don’t want to stay here.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t stay in this house. I want to go home.”

  Graham flicks a glance at Mary.

  “Rubes. For God’s sake. It’s nine thirty. You can’t possibly go home now.”

  “Why not?”

  Graham begins to laugh. “Well, there are no trains, for a start.”

  “Why not?”

  “This isn’t Camden. We’re in the countryside. The last train went at about eight.”

  “Can’t you drive me?”

  “No, honey, I can’t.”

  “I’ll call Mum.”

  “What? And ask her to do a four-hour round trip to come and collect you in the middle of the night? I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll hitch then.”

  “Don’t be so bloody ridiculous. For goodness’ sake, Ruby, what is this? What on earth’s got into you?”

  Mary looks at Ruby. Seeing something blurred and wobbly and on edge about her and wondering for a moment if she’s been crying. She hasn’t seen her cry for many, many years, not since she was a child of ten or eleven, certainly not since she’s been a teenager.

  Even when they told her what had happened, even then, she didn’t cry, but stared dry-eyed into space and then brought her fist down so hard on the table that a glass rolled onto the floor and smashed. “That girl needs anger management,” Mary’s mother had said, forgetting that she herself was existing on a diet of rage, Scotch, and diazepam.

  “What is it?” Mary says now as gently as she can. “Why don’t you want to stay?”

  Ruby pulls her attention away from Graham and squinches her eyes at Mary.

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “Well, you were perfectly happy to stay a while ago. So what’s the matter? What’s changed? Has something changed?”

  Ruby looks at the ground. Graham makes a noise of exasperation.

  “Come on, Rubes, we haven’t got all night.”

  Ruby looks at him.

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Try me.”

  Ruby draws her cuff farther over her fist and brings it to her mouth.

  “It’s this house.”

  Mary feels her heart contract.

  “What?”

  Ruby looks at her.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t like it? What don’t you like?”

  Ruby doesn’t move. Her eyes flicking over to the windowpane, then back to her father.

  “I just don’t like it, that’s all.”

  Mary looks at Graham. His face is calm.

  “You’re just not used to it,” she tells Ruby. “I know it feels very quiet after London. But that’ll change, you’ll see. You’ll be all right when you’ve stayed here a few times.”

  Ruby gives her a quick, startled look as if she’d forgotten she was there.

  “No,” she says. “It’s not that.”

  “What is it then?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “We might.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  There’s a brief silence, then Graham laughs. He picks up the bottle, pours more wine.

  “Oh, I see. I get it. I know what this is. Look, my darling, I don’t care whether you like this house or not. I don’t care how many little distractions and red herrings you decide to chuck at us. You’re not getting out of this talk.”

  Ruby says nothing. Mary thinks she sees tears in her eyes. She gets up, heart banging, her chair scraping the floor.

  “I’m going to leave you two to it,” she says.

  Ruby turns her head and looks at her.
Mary notices that her pupils are enormous. Dilated and as black as her clothes.

  “Sit,” Graham says to Ruby.

  With surprising meekness, she obeys. As Mary leaves the room she hears her sniff.

  “I don’t want some great big lecture, all right?”

  BUT LATER, MUCH LATER, GETTING READY FOR BED, HE STANDS there frowning, unbuttoning his shirt.

  “She says she saw a man out there.”

  Mary sits up in the bed.

  “What? What do you mean, a man? Out where?”

  “In the lane. Outside the house. She was very definite about it. A tall young red-haired guy, she said. Smoking a cigarette and standing looking up at the house. She says she saw him when she was in the bathroom. She says that’s why she was gone so long.”

  Mary stares at him.

  “She was sure he was looking at this house?”

  “Apparently.”

  “But—my God—who would be looking at this house? And anyway, why didn’t she come and tell us?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What? You don’t believe her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t see why she’d make up something like that.”

  Graham laughs. “She makes up almost every other bloody thing. Seriously, she lies about everything. I’m frankly disinclined to believe a single word she says. Do you know what she told her mother? That we’d moved here because we wanted to hide ourselves away from everybody, including her.”

  Mary looks at him. “She’s right about that.”

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean, it’s true?”

  “Not to get away from Ruby, obviously. But everyone else.”

  Graham’s face is perplexed, cold. She sees that she’s upset him and she realizes that in some haphazard way she meant to.

  “That’s really what you feel?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t. But you clearly do.”

  “Sometimes that is what I feel, yes.”

  He takes off the rest of his clothes and chucks them on the chair. Standing there naked and sad, looking at her.

  “I thought it was the opposite,” he says.

  “The opposite?”

  “I thought it was supposed to be the start of not having to hide. Of being able to do normal things again.”

  Mary says nothing. She looks at her hands, thinking that they look like the hands of a very old woman.