He followed, what else could he do? She was squinting at a maple, one of its limbs reached within a foot of an upstairs window, open on the crack. “I practically lived in trees as a kid,” she said. “I could make this one, easy.”
He’d like to offer, but he had this bad ankle. And there was his acrophobia. Heights made him want to throw up, dash himself into whatever lay below.
Anyway, she was already heaving herself up in the tree. She looked like a nymph, a bunch of new leaves in her tangled hair, her blue-jeaned legs kicking toward a higher limb. Even watching her made him woozy, so he focused on the window. Something was happening up there, he wasn’t sure what. He watched, ready to warn her. It was like the window was misting with rain, turning darker, clouding up. Was Bertha coming out? Ready to knock Ruth down with a chair?
Then he saw what it was. “For chrissake, Ruth, I see smoke!”
“What?”
“Her window. It’s smoke coming out of there. Look.”
“Oh,” she said, and swung up on the next limb.
“Come down, Ruth, you dumbbell!” he shouted. “You want to kill yourself?”
He went back in the house to call the fire shed, he was taking no chances. Twisted his one good ankle on a root but, oh hell. When he hung up he looked through the kitchen window for Ruth. She wasn’t in the tree. He stumbled back around the house, Bertha’s window was wide open, Ruth was inside. Jeez!
There was no way out now but to climb up himself. That damned Ruth! What had got into her, anyway? She used to have sense. He heaved himself up, he was so lightheaded he forgot to be sick. He crawled out on the branch by the window. He was dragging a dead limb with him, or was it the bum ankle?
And froze. “Ruth,” he called. “They’re coming. I can hear the sirens. Get out of there, Ruth. Ruth, I can’t—”
He’d lost his footing: hung, helpless, his hands ripped. He imagined what it was like, the Chinese tortures, hanging by one’s hands. Chinese, hell, he thought, the IRA did it, he’d heard of that, his own people. He measured the ground with his eyes—two stories down. The branch could crack and he’d be in the hospital for a month, a year. He could be paralyzed for life.
“Ruth!” he cried.
The beeper went off in his ear. “Answer me, Ruth!”
* * * *
She’d set the curtain on fire with a cigarette, she was still waving it in her hand. “Idiot,” Ruth shouted. She wrenched down the curtains while Bertha babbled on about the Day of Judgment.
“You’d better get to yours,” Ruth warned, raced into the bathroom, flung the smoldering curtain in the tub, turned on the shower. She stuck her arm under, she’d singed one wrist, it stung like a hundred bees.
“Bertha, you madwoman,” she yelled and ran back in the bedroom with a glass of water.
Bertha was heaving pillows at the window, then a nightgown, a pair of pink slippers. The woman was bonkers, obsessed with her heaving, her eyes were red moons. Ruth tried to pull her out, toward the stairs, wrestled with her. Bertha flung herself at the window, then stopped, like she’d seen a stranger trying to get in. Smoke was coming out her ears.
Ruth grabbed a quilt, threw it over Bertha, dragged her to the shower, shoved her under and turned it on full blast. Her sister-in-law stood there, docile now, she wasn’t about to burn up—her hair singed, stinking; stoic, her lips in a half grin. She held up a burned sleeve, watched, seemingly fascinated, as the flames sizzled out from the rush of water.
“It’s not enough to put Vic’s life in danger, you’re trying to burn the house down. Us in it.”
Bertha just stood there, looking like Frankenstein’s mate.
Ruth ran back to the bedroom, threw the charred pillows out on the grass, heard Colm yell—what was he doing upside down on that branch? She heard sirens shrieking into the driveway, dashed back to the bathroom.
And realized what a fool she’d been, leaving the woman in there, alone.
Bertha had locked the door.
* * * *
Hours—well, maybe minutes—later, Colm saw Ruth standing under him, with Ed Swider and a ladder. “You were a big help,” she complained, and he groaned.
“Where’s Bertha?” he said. The men had the hose aimed at the upstairs window. “Hey, wait for me, Ruthie. Ruth?” But Ruth was running around the house after Ed. They had more urgent business than Colm Hanna, stuck, like a scared kitten, in a tree.
It was her fault, though, that he’d hurt the ankle, he was going to tell her so. If he could catch up with her. He followed, limping, up the stairs. The leg was killing him—both legs, to tell the truth: he thought he’d sprained the other one. Upstairs the men were busting through the bathroom door.
And there was Bertha, wrapped in a bathrobe full of holes. Holy Robe, Colm thought, and swallowed the pun. Her hair was in a glittery hairnet, her cheeks rouged, her mouth a bow of red lipstick. There were burns on her neck and ankles, but she stepped out through the men, chin up, like they were her suitors, come to take her to a dance.
“I did nothing wrong,” she told the ceiling. “I’ll tell them that tomorrow, at the hearing. I don’t need any lawyer. I have a higher judge.”
And she moved past and down the stairs, went into the living room, lit a cigarette.
“I’m sorry the house is such a mess,” she announced, waving the cigarette. “I’ve had things on my mind.”
* * * *
They were in Ruth’s kitchen that afternoon, she was making popovers, they outsmelled a dozen vases of jonquils. Outside the mud was drying up with the wind, the apple trees were in rosy bud, a dozen more going in where Carol was planting, with Wilder and Joey’s help. Tim was supervising, his feed cap on backward (Colm admired it, a red rooster on green cloth—maybe Tim would swap for one of his). Joey did a somersault, kicked over the water pail, and Carol smiled, the first time he’d seen her smile maybe, she was still knocked out by her boys’ involvement. The old man couldn’t buy Kurt’s way out of that one, though he’d probably appeal. Wilder had withheld evidence; so had Garth.
Carol Unsworth was taking over more than just a meadow: she’d share a life now with a Vermont farmwoman. Or vice versa, Colm thought: the Vermont farmer would share it with the city woman. Whether Ruth realized it or not, they needed each other.
Ruth hadn’t mentioned his helping out in the pasture. And just as well, maybe. He could break both legs, sliding around on those cow patties. As for any inside help, well, he’d just have to wait and see.
“She’s sticking with him, though,” Ruth said, following his eyes. “That macho husband of hers. Because of the boys, they need family, she says. I only hope it works.”
“Sticking together for the ‘united front’ doesn’t always work.” He was thinking of Pete, due at the house tomorrow for breakfast. Who was Ruth making the popovers for, anyway?
But she didn’t really want to, she’d hinted, stick with Pete. Still, he worried. The girlfriend was back in New York. What if—?
He decided to intervene, a man had to show his colors, didn’t he? Ruth was slow at taking hints. She was bent over the stove, he put a hand on her back, let it slide, slowly, down. Took a long breath, felt his bones give; waited for her to kick, like one of her bovines.
But she turned around. She was smiling, her nose was shiny with steam, she smelled a little of barn, she was beautiful.
Her lips tasted buttery, like popovers.
And just as they were drawing apart the door banged open, people pounding into the kitchen for something to drink: Wilder and Emily—that smug look when he jumped back, like the girl had caught her mother going through her drawers. Tim joking with Joey: “You’re gonna learn how to swim, man, I mean it—you want to go and drown on me, do ya?”
And Joey yelling, “I can, I can so swim, I swimmed in the beaver pond yestidday, down back the meadow.”
And Tim had news: he’d just heard it at the local diner. “They searched that woman developer’s car, found a caseload of Ohio Blu
e Tip matches in the trunk, at least eight boxes missing. What’d they call ‘em? ‘Strike—’?”
“Strike Anywhere,” Colm said, looking at Ruth. “The mice love them. Leave the box open in the barn, and the mice’ll carry them around, ripe for combustion.”
“It was still arson,” said Ruth. “You have to admit that. She obviously scattered them around. Maybe left a kerosene rag nearby. Leave it to ‘chance’ and keep her hands ‘clean.’ More than chance! Esther Dolley, that murderer!” she cried, thinking of the cows the Ashers, in particular, hadn’t been able to get out of the barn. And Charlotte….
“She’ll be sorry. They’ll give her the works,” said Vic, coming into the house with a baby rabbit—while his mother protested, pink-cheeked, confused, talking too loud, too fast, too many things happening at once:
“Well at least get a box for the damn thing, Vic, before it drops all over the floor!”
“You can help me set up my telescope if you want,” Vic told Wilder, worlds older now, ignoring his mother, carrying the rabbit upstairs in his arms. “Saturn’s out tonight, in the southeast, under the moon. You can see the rings. You want to take a look?”
Everyone was talking at once, then, Sharon thumped down with the baby.
“Mother, you can’t let Vic have that rabbit upstairs!”
Ruth was running around like a madwoman (delete that word, Colm thought), stirring up a pitcher of lemonade, yanking out popovers. “They’ll cool in a minute,” she said (they weren’t for Pete’s breakfast after all). It was nice to see the way her hands worked: quick, deft, like they were independent of her thoughts. Like if they didn’t keep moving, she might fall down.
But the hands kept moving. She smiled across the room at him— was she upset that he’d kissed her, with Pete coming tomorrow? She didn’t look it. Sharon came over and dropped the baby in his lap. Whoa.
“Hold him, Colm, would you? While I get something to drink?”
He squinted down at a bare bottom, a tiny plump penis. Ruth, laughing: “Get him a diaper, Sharon!”
But it was too late. The yellowy liquid was spreading across his lap, seeping into his new blue corduroys.
“It’s all right, love, it’s all right, little fellow,” Ruth murmured to the child, like Colm was the one who made him pee.
She scooped him up out of Colm’s lap and looked closely into the child’s chubby face, as though for the first time she was seeing what he really looked like.
For my extended family—Vermonters all and for Dennie Hannan
Copyright © 1996 by Nancy Means Wright
Originally published by St. Martin's Press [0312148194]
Electronically published in 2009 by Belgrave House
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228
http://www.RegencyReads.com
Electronic sales: [email protected]
This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.
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