Stern Men

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  “Do you want all the praying and Scriptures and stuff?” Pastor Beekman asked the couple.

  “No, thanks,” Stan said. “Just the wedding part.”

  “Maybe a little praying . . .” Mary suggested hesitantly.

  Pastor Mort Beekman sighed and scraped together a marriage ceremony with a little praying, for the sake of the lady. He couldn’t help noticing that she looked like hell, what with all the paleness and all the trembling. The whole ceremony was over in about four minutes. Stan Thomas slipped the pastor a ten-dollar bill on his way out the door.

  “Much appreciated,” Stan said. “Thanks for coming by.”

  “Sure enough,” said the pastor, and headed down to the boat so that he could get off the island before dark; there was never any decent lodging for him on Fort Niles, and he wasn’t about to stay overnight on that inhospitable rock.

  It was the least ostentatious wedding in the history of the Ellis family. If, that is, Mary Smith-Ellis could be considered a member of the Ellis family, a matter now seriously in question.

  “As your aunt,” Miss Vera had told Mary, “I must tell you that I think marriage would be a mistake for you. I think it a big mistake for you to handcuff yourself to this fisherman and to this island.”

  “But you love this island,” Mary had said.

  “Not in February, darling.”

  “But I could visit you in February.”

  “Darling, you’ll have a husband to look after, and there will be no time for visiting. I had a husband once myself, and I know. It was most restrictive,” she declared, although it had not in the least been restrictive.

  To the surprise of many, Miss Vera did not put up further argument against Mary’s wedding plans. For those who had witnessed Vera’s violent outrage over Mary’s mother’s pregnancy thirty years earlier, and her tantrums at Mary’s mother’s death twenty-nine years earlier (not to mention her daily bouts of temper over sundry insignificant matters), this calm in the face of Mary’s news was a mystery. How could Vera stand for this? How could she lose another helpmate? How could she tolerate this disloyalty, this abandonment?

  Perhaps nobody was more surprised by this reaction than Mary herself, who had lost ten pounds over the course of that summer from anxiety about Stan Thomas. What to do about Stan Thomas? He was not pressing her to see him, he was not taking her away from her responsibilities, but he persistently insisted that they would marry by the end of the summer. He’d been saying so since June. There did not seem to be room for negotiation.

  “You think it’s a good idea, too,” he reminded her, and she did think so. She did like the idea of marrying. It wasn’t something she had thought about much before, but now it seemed exactly right. And he was so handsome. And he was so confident.

  “We’re not getting any younger,” he reminded her, and indeed they were not.

  Still, Mary vomited twice on the day she had to tell Miss Vera she was to marry Stan Thomas. She couldn’t put it off any longer and finally broke the news in the middle of July. But the conversation, surprisingly, was not difficult at all. Vera did not become enraged, although she had frequently become enraged over much smaller issues. Vera made her “this is a big mistake” statement as a concerned aunt, and then resigned herself to the idea entirely, leaving Mary to ask all the panicky questions.

  “What will you do without me?” she asked.

  “Mary, you sweet, sweet girl. Don’t let it cross your mind.” This was accompanied by a warm smile, a pat on the hand.

  “But what will I do? I’ve never been away from you!”

  “You are a lovely, capable young woman. You’ll be fine without me.”

  “But you don’t think I should do this, do you?”

  “Oh, Mary. What does it matter what I think?”

  “You think he’ll be a bad husband.”

  “I have never spoken a word against him.”

  “But you don’t like him.”

  “You’re the one who has to like him, Mary.”

  “You think I’ll end up poor and alone.”

  “Oh, you never will, Mary. You’ll always have a roof over your head. You’ll never end up selling matches in the city or something dreadful like that.”

  “You think I won’t make friends here on the island. You think I’ll be lonely, and you think I’ll go crazy in the winter.”

  “Who wouldn’t make friends with you?”

  “You think I’m loose, running around with a fisherman. You think I’m turning out to be like my mother.”

  “The things I think!” Miss Vera said, and laughed.

  “I will be happy with Stan,” Mary said. “I will.”

  “Then I couldn’t be happier for you. A happy bride is a radiant bride.”

  “But where should we get married?”

  “At a church of God, I dearly hope.”

  Mary fell silent, as did Miss Vera. It was a tradition for Ellis brides to marry in the gardens of Ellis House, attended by the Episcopal Bishop of Concord, boated in for the occasion. Ellis brides had lavish weddings, witnessed by every available member of the Ellis family and by all the family’s dearest friends. Ellis brides had elegant receptions at Ellis House. So when Miss Vera Ellis suggested a marriage at an unnamed “church of God,” Mary had reason to be silent.

  “But I want to get married here, at Ellis House.”

  “Oh, Mary. You don’t want that headache. You should have a simple ceremony and get it over with.”

  “But will you be there?” Mary asked, after a long while.

  “Oh, darling.”

  “Will you?”

  “I would only cry and cry, darling, and spoil your special day.”

  Later that afternoon, Mr. Lanford Ellis—Vera’s older brother and the reigning patriarch of the family—called Mary Smith-Ellis to his room to congratulate her on her forthcoming marriage. He expressed his hope that Stan Thomas was an honorable young man. He said, “You should buy yourself a pretty wedding gown,” and he passed her an envelope. She picked at the flap, and he said, “Don’t open it here.” He gave her a kiss. He gave her a squeeze on the hand and said, “We have always had the fondest feelings for you.” And he did not say more.

  Mary didn’t open the envelope until she was alone in her room that evening. She counted out a thousand dollars in cash. Ten hundred-dollar bills, which she slipped under her pillow. That was a great deal of money for a wedding gown in 1956, but, in the end, Mary was married in a flowered cotton dress that she had sewn for herself two summers earlier. She didn’t want to spend the money. Instead, she decided to hand the envelope and its contents to Stan Thomas.

  That money was what she brought to the marriage, along with her clothing and the sheets from her bed. These were all her possessions, after decades of service to the Ellis family.

  In the Ellis mansion in Concord, Ruth Thomas’s mother showed her to her room. They had not seen each other for some time. Ruth didn’t like to visit Concord and rarely did. There had been some Christmases, in fact, when Ruth had elected to stay in her room at boarding school. She liked that more than being in Concord and the Ellis mansion. Last Christmas, for instance.

  “You look wonderful, Ruth,” her mother said.

  “Thank you. You look good, too.”

  “Don’t you have any bags?”

  “No. Not this time.”

  “We put up new wallpaper for you.”

  “It looks nice.”

  “And here’s a picture of you when you were a little girl.”

  “Look at that,” Ruth said, and leaned toward the framed photograph hanging on the wall next to the dresser. “That’s me?”

  “That’s you.”

  “What do I have in my hands?”

  “Pebbles. Pebbles from the Ellises’ driveway.”

  “Boy, look at those fists!”

  “And there I am,” Ruth’s mother said.

  “There you are.”

  “I’m trying to get you to hand me the pebb
les.”

  “It doesn’t look as if you’re going to get them.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I’ll bet I didn’t get them.”

  “How old was I?”

  “About two. So adorable.”

  “And how old were you?”

  “Oh. Thirty-three or so.”

  “I never saw that picture before.”

  “No, I don’t think you have.”

  “I wonder who took it.”

  “Miss Vera took it.”

  Ruth Thomas sat down on the bed, a handsome brass heirloom covered with a lace spread. Her mother sat beside her and asked, “Does it smell a bit musty in here?”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  They sat quietly for a time. Ruth’s mother stood and raised the window shades. “We may as well let in some light,” she said, and sat down again.

  “Thank you,” Ruth said.

  “When I bought that wallpaper, I thought it was cherry blossoms, but now that I look at it, I think it’s apple blossoms. Isn’t that funny? I don’t know why I didn’t see that at first.”

  “Apple blossoms are nice.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference, I suppose.”

  “Either way is nice. You did a good job with the wallpapering.”

  “We paid a man to do it.”

  “It looks really pretty.”

  After another long silence, Mary Smith-Ellis Thomas took her daughter’s hand and asked, “Should we go see Ricky now?”

  Ricky was in a baby’s crib, although he was nine years old. He was the size of a small child, a three-year-old, perhaps, and his fingers and toes were curled like talons. His hair was black and short, matted in the back because of the way he swiveled his head back and forth, back and forth. He was forever grinding his head against the mattress, forever flipping his face from side to side, as though searching desperately for something. And his eyes, too, rolled to the left and to the right, always seeking. He made screeching sounds and high-pitched whines and howls, but when Mary approached, he settled into a steady muttering.

  “Here’s Mama,” she said. “Here’s Mama.”

  She lifted him out of the crib and placed him, on his back, on a sheepskin mat on the floor. He could not sit up or hold up his head. He could not feed himself. He could not speak. On the sheepskin mat, his small, crooked legs flopped to one side and his arms to the other. Back and forth he swung his head, back and forth, and his fingers waved and tensed, fluttering in the air the way sea plants flutter in the water.

  “Is he getting any better?” Ruth asked.

  “Well,” her mother said, “I think so, Ruth. I always think he’s getting a little better, but nobody else ever sees it.”

  “Where’s his nurse?”

  “Oh, she’s around. She may be down in the kitchen, taking a break. She’s a new woman, and she seems very nice. She likes to sing to Ricky. Doesn’t she, Ricky? Doesn’t Sandra sing to you? Because she knows you like it. Doesn’t she?”

  Mary spoke to him the way mothers speak to newborns, or the way Senator Simon Addams spoke to his dog Cookie, in a loving voice with no expectation of reply.

  “Do you see your sister?” she asked. “Do you see your big sister? She came to visit you, little boy. She came to say hello to Ricky.”

  “Hello there, Ricky,” said Ruth, trying to follow the cadence of her mother’s voice. “Hello there, little brother.”

  Ruth felt sick. She bent over and patted Ricky’s head, which he whipped away from under her palm, and she felt his matted hair slip away in a flash—gone. She pulled back her hand, and he let his head rest for a moment. Then he flipped it with a suddenness that made Ruth start.

  Ricky was born when Ruth was nine years old. He was born in a hospital in Rockland. Ruth never saw him when he was a baby, because her mother didn’t return to the island after Ricky was born. Her father went to Rockland with his wife when the baby was due, and Ruth stayed with Mrs. Pommeroy next door. Her mother was supposed to come back with a baby, but she never did. She didn’t come back, because something was wrong with the baby. Nobody had expected that.

  According to what Ruth had heard, her father, from the moment he saw the severely retarded infant, started laying out the blame, fast and mean. He was disgusted and he was angry. Who had done this to his son? He immediately decided that the baby had inherited the sad condition from Mary’s ancestors. After all, what did anyone know of the Bath Naval Hospital orphan or of the Italian immigrant? Who knew what monsters had lurked in that dark past? Stan Thomas’s ancestors, on the other hand, were accounted for back to ten generations, and nothing of this sort had ever appeared. There had never been any freaks in Stan’s family. Obviously, Stan said, this is what you get for marrying someone whose background isn’t known. Yes, this is what you get.

  Mary, still exhausted in her hospital bed, came back with her own demented defense. She was not normally a fighter, but she fought this time. She fought back dirty. Oh, yes, she said, all Stan’s ancestors could be accounted for, precisely because they were all related to one another. They were all siblings and first cousins, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that, after enough generations of inbreeding and incest, this is what you get. This child, this Ricky-boy with the flippy head and the clawed hands.

  “This is your son, Stan!” she said.

  It was an ugly, wretched fight, and it upset the nurses in the maternity ward, who heard every cruel word. Some of the younger nurses cried. They had never heard anything like it. The head nurse came on duty at midnight and led Stan Thomas away from his wife’s room. The head nurse was a big woman, not easily intimidated, even by a tough-mouthed lobsterman. She hustled him away while Mary was still screaming at him.

  “For the love of God,” the nurse snapped at Stan, “the woman needs her rest.”

  A few afternoons later, a visitor came to see Mary and Stan and the new baby in the hospital; it was Mr. Lanford Ellis. Somehow, he had heard the news. He had sailed over to Rockland on the Stonecutter to pay his respects and to offer Mary and Stan the Ellis family’s condolences on their tragic situation. Stan and Mary were coolly reconciled by this time. At least they could be in the same room.

  Lanford Ellis told Mary of a conversation he’d had with his sister Vera, and of their consensus. He and his sister had discussed the immediate problem and had agreed that Mary should not take the baby to Fort Niles Island. Mary would have no medical support there, no professional help for Ricky. The doctors had already announced that he would need round-the-clock care for the rest of his life. Did Mary and Stan have a plan?

  Mary and Stan admitted that they did not. Lanford Ellis was sympathetic. He understood that this was a difficult time for the couple, and he had a suggestion. Because of the Ellis family’s attachment to Mary, they were prepared to help. Lanford Ellis would pay for Ricky’s care at an appropriate institution. For life. No matter the cost. He had heard of an excellent private facility in New Jersey.

  “New Jersey?” Mary Thomas said, incredulous.

  New Jersey did seem far away, Lanford Ellis conceded. But the home was said to be the best in the country. He had spoken with the administrator that morning. If Stan and Mary weren’t comfortable with the arrangement, there was one other possibility . . .

  Or . . .

  Or what?

  Or, if Mary and her family moved to Concord, where Mary could resume her position as companion to Miss Vera, the Ellis family would provide Ricky with private care right there, at the Ellis mansion. Lanford Ellis would have part of the servants’ wing converted into a comfortable area for young Ricky. He would pay for good private nurses and for the finest medical care. For life. He would also find Stan Thomas a good job and would send Ruth to a good school.

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” Stan Thomas said, in a dangerously low voice. “Don’t you fucking dare try to take my wife back.”

  “It is merely a suggestion,” said Lanford Ellis. “The decision is yours.” And he left.

  �
��Did you people fucking poison her?” Stan Thomas shouted after Lanford as the old man walked away, down the hospital hall. Stan followed him. “Did you poison my wife? Did you people make this happen? Answer me! Did you goddamn people set this whole fucking thing up just to get her back?”

  But Lanford Ellis had no more to say, and the big nurse stepped in once more.

  Naturally, Ruth Thomas never knew the details of the argument her parents had following Mr. Ellis’s offer. But she did know that a few points were made immediately clear, right there in the hospital room. There was no way on earth that Mary Smith-Ellis Thomas, child of an orphan, was going to put her son, no matter how disabled, into an institution. And there was no way on earth that Stan Thomas, tenth-generation islander, was going to move to Concord, New Hampshire. Nor would he allow his daughter to move there, where she might be turned into a slave of Miss Vera Ellis, like her mother and her grandmother before her.

  These points having been established, there was little room for negotiation. And whatever the severity of the argument, the decision was quick and final. Mary went to Concord with her son. She returned to the Ellis mansion and to her position with Vera Ellis. Stan Thomas went back to the island to join his daughter, alone. Not immediately, however. He went missing for a few months.

  “Where did you go?” Ruth asked him when she was seventeen years old. “Where did you run off to for all that time?”

  “I was angry,” he replied. “And it’s none of your business.”

  “Where’s my mother?” Ruth asked her father, back when she was nine years old and he finally came back to Fort Niles, alone. His explanation was a disaster—something about what didn’t matter and what wasn’t worth asking about and what should be forgotten. Ruth puzzled over this, and then Mr. Pommeroy drowned, and she thought—it made perfect sense—that her mother may have drowned, too. Of course. That was the answer. A few weeks after reaching this conclusion, Ruth began receiving letters from her mother, which was confusing. She thought for a time that the letters came from heaven. As she grew older, she more or less pieced the story together. Eventually, Ruth felt she understood the event completely.