The Book of Ruth

by Jane Hamilton

  A couple of nights after I told Ruby the news, exactly how I felt about him, he came over and we went outside. I took him to the woods because I couldn’t wait to show him some of my favorite places. We were listening to the crickets in the grass. I’ve always wanted to sneak up on crickets so they keep making their racket even while I’m close. Although they quit singing we could almost feel them breathing. I could imagine myself a cricket with my antennae on alert sensing two pairs of gigantic feet coming closer, and being too terrified to squeak or run. When we moved away they started up again. They were so relieved. We were sitting on a blanket listening, when Ruby said, “Baby, you make my crazy head feel better, you know that. You’re so sweet and nice.”

  I lapped up all the words. I asked him to say that sentence over again.

  He didn’t say anything for a second. He took a deep breath and then whispered, “How about you and me get married?” I quick told him, “Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

  He took a ring out of his pocket. He said he bought it with Green Stamps once, and couldn’t figure out why he did it, but now he knew he had been saving it for me. It had been for me all along. It had five sparkling diamonds in a row. Ruby put it on my finger and said now we were engaged and I was his girl. I said that was just fine with me. There’s times I wish I could have keeled over and died right then and there.

  Ten

  IT was the end of August when Ruby proposed to me, when we were out in the woods and he slipped diamonds on my finger. He put his head on my lap and I stroked his hair. We talked about our romance, remembering the high points. Ruby told me Daisy gave him advice all the time, in particular after our first date. She told him I was pretty upset and what he should do to make friends with me again. They rehearsed speeches he could say to make me forgive him. She even gave him pointers on proposing. We laughed over Daisy and what a busybody she can be. I was engaged to be married; I couldn’t be angry at Daisy for running my life.

  When it started to rain, and we were damp and uncomfortable, I figured I better tell May what we were up to, get it over with. Ruby and I kissed leaning against his car. I half wanted to get in, forget the wedding, and drive off with him to the wilds of Indiana.

  I came into the kitchen where May was making pickles. She had on her pickle apron, the green one with yellow flowers that stretches across the hill of her middle and ties in a large crisp bow at the back. The whole place smelled like dill and vinegar, so strong I’m sure the stench in there could have cured any disease you had, guaranteed. I sat down and put my hands out on the table, with the five diamonds showing. While she stuffed pickles in the quart jar—she packed them in so there wasn’t any air space—I said, “Ma, I’m going to marry Ruby.” She didn’t even quit stuffing; she laughed as if I’d just told her the joke of the year. She said, “How was a man”—then she stopped because she had to shove a gherkin in so tight, and it took all her concentration—“who don’t have no job, going to support a wife and then a whole slew of babies?”

  “Ruby’ll find himself a job, that’s how,” I said.

  She shook her head and pursed her lips. She didn’t know why anyone would hire Ruby with what she called “his disconnected brain.” It was starting to thunder but we hardly noticed it.

  “Don’t say that, Ma,” I cried. “There ain’t a thing wrong with his brain. Whenever people ain’t exactly how you think they should be you call them retarded. It ain’t fair. Ruby’s good and kind,” I shouted. “He’s good and kind.”

  “Turn off the boiling water,” she said. “Well, my my my, you can’t eat good and kind. You ever had good and kind sandwiches? They’re real juicy, all right; they don’t stick to your ribs too good though.” She was snickering and snorting, shaking her head and slamming the lids on her pickles, screwing on the covers.

  “These better seal,” she said to me, like it was going to be my fault if they didn’t. “You listen for them to click—my ears ain’t that accurate. I’m getting so old.”

  She was always saying words of that sort. I should have told her Ruby had weak ears too. Perhaps it was something they could have talked about, in common. “Ma,” I said, “I’m going to marry Ruby. CAN YOU HEAR ME? Should I shout them words into your deaf ears?”

  That was the clincher. She turned around to me as fast as an old lady can, and said in a stream, “I suppose you think you’re going to live here. I bet you think I’ll make the money and you’ll sit around staring into space and Ruby’ll drink morning, noon, and night. I know what you’re planning.”

  She closed her eyes, and then she chuckled over how we were going to dupe her. That’s how May is sometimes. She thinks everyone is against her, and she’s left with nothing but a scrubby chicken yard.

  I didn’t say anything. I got up and walked over and stood in front of her at the sink. The rain was coming in through the window, splashing the counter, but I said to myself, So what? In those days I felt like a strong nun, skinny and tough, who had the words from God, or someone who knew the answers. It was Ruby who made me feel absolute.

  I said softly, but actually wanting to make a display like the thunder, “Ma, how can you think we’re trying to trick you?” I could tell by her small eyes that she was scared of certain events in the future. I said, “I’m going to keep working and Ruby’ll do his best to find a job. I know he will.” I had to shiver from my dripping clothes. For once May didn’t make any mention of my mess. I talked quietly still. I said, “You know we don’t have a single cent. We love each other, ain’t that enough? Don’t you remember what it was like when you were in my position? Can’t you be happy for me?”

  I had practiced my speech out in the rain before I came in to tell May the good news. I felt as if a soap opera personality had fed me the words, they came out so smooth.

  “Close the window,” she said and then she went to the table. She put her head in her hands. I followed, saying, “If it’s OK, we’ll live here for a while, while we get our bearings. We don’t have a place to go.” I said, “We’ll help you out, Ma, we’ll do the heavy work.” I said it like I was beseeching her, only I knew those exact words were what she wanted to hear.

  The rain pounded at the windows as if it wanted to get in on the discussion. May squeezed her eyes shut again and bit her lower lip. I waited. Maybe she was praying. After the longest time she took a deep breath and said she figured it might be all right to have some company before her heart gave out and she died alone.

  “You’re not going to die for a long time,” I said to her in my cheerful voice. I couldn’t imagine anyone as large as May dying. But she started to cry; she said she hoped Matt would get famous before she kicked off so she could celebrate.

  “Maybe he’ll get into People magazine,” she said. “I hope so, and they’ll have us in there too, only we won’t be in Honey Creek any more. Matt will come get us and buy us one of them condominiums, and we’ll go live in Florida, in all that hot sunshine.”

  “Sure, Ma,” I said.

  “Did one of those jars click? Didn’t I hear one of them seal?” she asked.

  And I said, “No, Ma, that’s rain out there.” She mentioned again how her ears weren’t worth a noodle.

  She had seen my ring but she didn’t make a comment until about six months later, when she told me she could tell the diamonds were phony. She murmured that Ruby probably robbed a dime store.

  I picked Daisy for my bridesmaid. Dee Dee and May and Daisy and I went all the way to Rockford to buy material for Daisy’s dress, and then Dee Dee sewed it. It was blue with white dots all over it, and it had a ruffle swooping down over her chest. She was going to look glamorous in it, I could predict that much. I figured she’d wear gallons of makeup for the ceremony, and I had to laugh thinking of her prancing down the aisle like she’s a bird we don’t even have in Illinois.

  When I asked Ruby who we should invite, he said he didn’t have too many friends to speak of, and his family lived so far away now. They weren’t crazy about him anyhow. He�
��s kind of a loner, Ruby is; that’s why we were meant for each other. So I said, “Why don’t we have a real small wedding?”

  “Baby, I don’t care,” he whispered in my ear. “I just want to marry you. We could do it in the swamp, I got some of them gators.”

  We invited May and Dee Dee’s family, and the girls and Artie from Trim ’N Tidy, and the Red Bell Bowling League, and the Rev, of course, plus a few of the ladies from the church. May began to get thrilled when she realized she had a perfect excuse to get Matt home. She wrote him a letter and said I was getting married so he’d have to be there to give me away. We never once mentioned contacting Elmer. Matt wrote back and said he could get away for two days. Isn’t that an honor? Probably all the experiments in his lab would get ruined if he was gone longer than forty-eight hours. He probably had to get a baby sitter to watch over his moldy petri dishes. May flipped when his postcard came; the five smeared lines almost had her convinced that he was coming home to stay.

  I wanted Aunt Sid to come more than anyone, and I wrote her and asked her if she would mind being present even though May still had the grudge. I thought that if I ever got terribly brave I would ask May if she could remember why she was mad at Sid. Aunt Sid wrote back and said she wouldn’t miss my wedding for all the world, and that if she wasn’t now chairman of the music department she would have visited us at least once a year. She hadn’t been to see us in quite a while but I honestly hadn’t missed her brief visits. I didn’t like the thought of her surprising me at Trim ’N Tidy. I hated the vision of her blond head looming up in the door, and then she’d come to greet me with outstretched arms and I’d have my hands full of Mrs. Portland’s red cashmere dress with turkey gravy all down the front. The pads on my fingers were always inky from the carbons in the checks. If she had come I would have had to feel shame at being one dumb finisher, and that was something I could easily do without. My wedding was a different matter altogether. It was supposed to be the greatest day in a girl’s life.

  “Ma,” I said one night at supper, “Aunt Sid is coming to my wedding.”

  May stopped chewing. She called the air names I wouldn’t repeat. I don’t know if she was talking about me or Aunt Sid.

  “Don’t wreck it for me,” I said. “You have Matt and I have Aunt Sid. Fair is fair.”

  Ruby used to come over in the early days and we’d sit at the table eating pie and making plans. Ruby loved baseball. He knew all the teams and he’d tell me facts about the players. “Someday, baby,” he said, “you and me are going to go to a Cubs game.” He taught me information about sports, sitting there at the kitchen table. He told me what all the yards were for in football. He ran around in the kitchen explaining it to me like he was one whole team himself. Matter of fact, he was both teams. Never mind that I couldn’t understand a word he said. He still bought packets of baseball cards with the pink gum inside. I saw his shoeboxes filled with the cards; I saw his face when he blew bubbles that popped and got stuck on his eyes and on every inch of his nose We laughed hard, scrubbing his cheeks with rubbing alcohol.

  We were getting married in October. May said that was pretty hasty, considering I had only met Ruby in July, but we didn’t want to wait around until next spring. I couldn’t see what was wrong with October. I felt like I was a horse galloping toward October with an urgent message. I could taste how desperately I wanted Ruby; the desire for him was a flavor that rose up my throat and made my whole body thirst. We didn’t talk about life plans too much because we were concentrating on holding out until our wedding night. I thought maybe Ruby was worried about coming to live in May’s house, but he grinned and kissed my hands when I told him how it was going to be for a while.

  I told him, “There ain’t any way we can afford our own place, Ruby.” I said, “We’ll have to do our best to get along with her. She ain’t exactly Little Miss Sunshine every minute.”

  All Ruby said was, “It’s OK, baby.”

  You should have seen the pigsty Ruby lived in before we got married. It was one small room with a toilet in the hall. Nobody had cleaned it since the Huns invaded Rome. May’s house was like a palace, compared.

  We had our picture taken for the wedding section of the newspaper. I’m sitting down smiling with my mouth closed and Ruby’s standing, his hand on my shoulder. He’s staring straight ahead as if he’s bracing himself for something. The picture took me by surprise because Ruby looks like Miss Finch. His eyes are red dots.

  May said I should register down at Marcie’s in town so we could get some new plates and glasses, and then she and I picked out towels, and dishes with rosebuds and violets and daisies around the border. I had my name up on the wedding board at the drugstore in Stillwater. It said my wedding date also. I went in there about every day to look at the bulletin board, to see my name in the white letters. Sometimes you need something like that to make sure you’re on the planet.

  We received other presents too, because the girls at Trim ’N Tidy gave me a shower at lunch hour. I got a blender and a red nightie with fringe all over it. There wasn’t any solid fabric to speak of attached to it. Artie was allowed to attend and he said he thought the garment was snazzy, plus he thought the bride was snazzy also. Actually, I wanted to wear the nightie on a gigantic Harley motorcycle, with no underpants on. I wished Ruby owned a bike. Perhaps May would have liked him instantly if he had owned something large.

  She was quiet in the weeks before the wedding. She knew there was nothing she could say to me about my decision, since I was an adult taking charge of my life. Naturally she still had the comments about how I should brush my hair, it looked like a bush; how the chickens were going to starve if I didn’t feed them this instant—the usual commands I didn’t even hear any more. To myself I said, It’s time for me to accomplish something, be part of a family. I was feeling alive, picking out invitations and flowers. I knew how all the animals in spring must feel, building nests and waiting for the male to bring in their catch. May was counting the days until Matt arrived in Honey Creek. I swear I could hear her counting. I knew she wasn’t wild about Ruby—it didn’t take an advanced degree to appreciate her opinion—but I wanted the arrangement to work out. I knew that when she saw how much we loved each other, it’d catch on, and she’d be glad in herself. I prayed up on the plateau. I prayed to the winter constellations that weren’t yet visible. I prayed for their mercy.

  Matt came home on Friday afternoon, the day before my wedding. When he walked in the door May rushed to him and nearly knocked him down. He caught himself and backed up to the wall and said, “Hi.” She was already crying about how he never wrote, how he had forgotten we were his family—she was dead right on that score. I can’t stand looking at May when she breaks down. It’s terrifying to see her lose her strength. Matt didn’t seem to want to look at her either. He stared at the floor until she came to kiss him and paw him. Then he closed his eyes.

  “Hi, Matt,” I said from the living room, and he said, “Hi.” He was wearing a gray raincoat that came past his knees, and it had pleats in the back. I didn’t say anything because I guessed I was the person of honor and for once he could ask me questions if he felt like it. I wasn’t going to bow before his large head just because he went to MIT and had his name in Time magazine for thinking one thought about comets.

  He said, “I hear you’re getting married,” and I said, “Yep, that’s right.” I wanted to ask him then and there if he had a girlfriend, but I didn’t have the nerve. He looked smaller than I remembered, but handsome, as usual. His face was thinner, his brown eyes larger, and he had a sparse blond mustache. His perfect skin was stretched tight over the small knobs of his cheekbones. I said, “How’s your science going?” and he said, “Very well, thanks.”

  “You like it out there?” I asked.

  “Yes, I do.” He nodded his head, just in case I didn’t understand the words “Yes, I do.”

  Still, I felt like we were finally grown up, and we could have a conversation.


  “That’s great, Matt,” I said. “You going to stick around for a while?” I asked, after a little. We were both shifting around on our feet while he told me he had to get back because he was running experiments in his lab. He was working on his physics. He knew everything about comets and stars. I wished I had a list of questions to ask him but my mind always dried up in front of smart people. There wasn’t one particle of intelligent matter in my head. Then he said he was exhausted from the flight, that he better rest. May led him to his room to show him the new bedspread and the new curtains she had bought. He didn’t exactly go wild over them. He mumbled something about how they were nice and she shouldn’t have gone to the trouble. That was enough for May. She hummed all afternoon, tiptoeing past his closed door.

  We went to church for the rehearsal that night. I had to come down the aisle on Matt’s arm. We weren’t supposed to say anything to each other since we were practicing being solemn. The Rev gave us the instructions, as if he thought we’d be gabbing, catching up on the last twenty years. It felt queer to touch Matt’s arm, to hold it. I wanted to halt, to say, Wait! Did you say you were actually my brother? I kept still, as usual. I didn’t make one single wave. I didn’t even introduce my brother to my future husband. They didn’t seem like they were members of the same species.

  Afterwards, we went to Johnny’s for fish fry—that is, everybody went except Matt. He drove away to see Dr. Heck, to tell him the latest news from the galaxy. Daisy stole the show in her white and black shirt that didn’t have shoulders and her sheer white pants. Her earrings were large black metal circles that looked like manhole covers. She kept calling me Pollyanna because of my pink dress with the puffed sleeves that May got at St. Vincent de Paul. Of course Daisy got loaded and told her collection of dirty jokes, her favorites about the nun floating down the river on a turd. We were all screaming our heads off even though we’d heard the jokes before. Then she said she wanted to get Matt in the woods, feel his cute little dick. She was so smashed she didn’t care what she said. Ruby and I held hands under the table and avoided looking at each other. I felt like the luckiest person, to be getting my very own husband. All my friends and Aunt Sid were coming in my honor, to watch us take the vows.