The Book of Ruth

by Jane Hamilton

  When Ruby and I were saying good night outside of Johnny’s we kissed quickly, shyly, and Daisy cheered at us. She could whistle with her two fingers in her mouth. Dee Dee tried to get us to kiss a long one, but we were too embarrassed. Everyone had it on their minds that tomorrow night we would be in a bed together, touching each other, and quivering, waiting for Ruby to explode with my gift to him.

  I’m getting married, I kept saying to myself. I couldn’t sleep all night long. It was the last time in my life I was going to be one person to think of, besides May. In the future it would be We, Ruby and I. We were to be a pair. I stared at the ceiling fondly—it was the last night I was ever going to dream in my bedroom. Tomorrow we would switch with May; we’d move to the front room, to the bigger bed. I felt slowly over my body, my chest, my hair, and my thighs. I was seeing how they were going to feel to Ruby’s hands.

  We were married at ten o’clock in the morning. I had May’s wedding dress on, the one she wore for Willard Jenson. I caught her unpacking the dress and smoothing the satin, and then staring out the church basement window. I wasn’t used to seeing her stand absolutely still. Before the ceremony, in the dressing room, I had half an urge to give her a hug, but instead I fooled with the clothes hangers and the cosmetics. She helped me get dressed and then she stood back studying me up and down, examining my hair, the flowers, my white heels.

  “Well, you ain’t too bad looking,” she said faintly.

  If I squinted at her she looked like a plastic bag filled with blood, in her crimson-and-orange-checkered dress that was some kind of treated shiny polyester. “Thanks, Ma,” I said. “Everybody says I look like you.”

  She couldn’t figure out whether she should laugh or tell me I’m sassy, or break down and howl. Her wedding dress is awfully pretty. It’s up in the attic in Honey Creek still. It has a plain white satin skirt and a lacy bodice that fit me quite decently, after Dee Dee altered it. Aunt Sid sent me pearls to wear and to keep. They belonged to my grandmother. I swore I wasn’t ever going to lose them. In the bride’s room, down in the church basement, I wanted to remember all of my life, with May there, helping me to dress. I wanted to remember with her the time I lost the pin at the spelling bee and she practically turned me in to the police. I still feel sorry about the loss. I wanted to tell her how sorry I was but my hand was stiff and inert. I couldn’t stretch it out to May. Possibly somewhere my mind was ticking off the times she smacked me for nothing. I couldn’t find my voice to say, Where’s the garter? so how was I supposed to talk about our long life together? I was making jerky movements, knocking over the hair spray, trying to remember I was actually the bride. I had a crown of fake flowers on my head. Daisy put lipstick on my mouth, made my upper lip look like it was two red mountain peaks, and rouge on my cheeks. She rubbed it in gently, just as she would have done for a celebrity in the television industry.

  Right when it was time to go upstairs I grabbed May’s hand at the door. I was going to say, I know I haven’t been an ideal daughter, but she turned to me in alarm and said, “It’s too late to back out of it now—everyone is up there waiting.” I mumbled, “I know, Ma,” and let go of her hand.

  Matt was out of place. He wore a dark suit with nearly invisible white stripes and a matching vest, and he had a gold chain coming out of his pocket. He was clean and pressed and washed and brushed, and he didn’t fit our group. Daisy kept trying to catch his eye but he wouldn’t face her. Maybe he was promised to a girl in Boston who was helping him figure out why comets zip through the universe. Daisy flirted with him, but it didn’t do a bit of good. He turned his back and walked away. I had to feel sorry for her all of a sudden, making such a fool out of herself.

  The Rev had twisted his brother’s arm to play the trumpet, since Ruby and I wanted music but knew nothing about serious works for church. Ruby wished the Supremes could come and sing something, but those Negro singers aren’t appropriate. The trumpet player blasted out a marching song that filled me up and made me feel so holy I thought I was turning into an angel when I came down the aisle. The Rev told me afterwards it was music written by a man named Purcell, and that it was the only wedding music his brother cared to play. Purcell died hundreds of years ago, and I couldn’t help thinking it was a handy arrangement—to have people loving your music when you aren’t anything but a cloud of dust. The sun streamed through the stained glass, morning light, white and pure, making patches here and there on the green carpet, as if someone had spilled it. Everyone I knew watched me come down the aisle with my hand through Matt’s arm. He stared straight ahead, taking his job with utter seriousness. I could see Aunt Sid standing alone, at the end of a pew. I stopped when we came to her, only Matt dragged me along. He didn’t have instructions for stopping. She was wearing a perfectly plain silver dress. It was raw silk, without a doubt. Suddenly the rest of the congregation looked like dandelions gone to seed, compared to the rare silver orchid. Aunt Sid has a heap of hair on her head in this thing Daisy said is called a French twist, and it’s blond hair. She’s tall and beefy, like May, but she carries herself like a prize cow. And she has a beautiful smile. There isn’t any meanness or jeering in it. There were tears in her eyes. I turned my head to stare back down the aisle. I wished I was marrying her.

  Ruby was waiting for me up at the altar, of course, looking like a big old tomcat, about to get chow. When Matt left me off Ruby whispered to me, “Whoopie, I got me a bridie.” I shot him a stately glance.

  My wedding was the first one I had ever been to, not counting TV shows, plus commericals for deodorant. I didn’t understand about weddings at first but now I finally have them figured out. Weddings don’t have one thing to do with real life. The Rev told us about the joy we were going to find and how God made man and woman with different molds so they could share each other’s bodies. He also kept talking about our spirits and our souls. He threw in Jesus Christ every other sentence, although as far as I could see he didn’t have much to do with our situation. Ruby likes him for curing all the people, and for the halo he sometimes wears in his picture.

  I had trouble paying strict attention at my wedding. I was thinking about how I used to hide in the rhubarb when I was small, when May called me in for supper. Now that I’m slightly smarter, I know that the Rev was telling us how marriage is in an ideal world, where the humans don’t have flaws, where they don’t have anything but love in their hearts. It’s a condition to shoot for. People go to weddings to get purified, as if they’re going through a strainer. That’s what happened at our wedding: Ruby and I were put through the strainer, and what was left in the wire mesh were the little pieces of gold, our perfect souls. We left them at the altar.

  We promised through sickness and health, until death, but the Rev said nothing about other possibilities, such as limbo. The Rev is a large clean man, probably even behind his ears, and we’re friends, but I always keep in mind that he does not know everything, despite the fact that he’s second in command to the Lord. What he said that I love, after Ruby and I kissed—we made a smacking sound and everyone laughed—was, “The Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you for all of your days.”

  I sneak comfort on occasion, imagining someone, I don’t care who, blessing and keeping me.

  Then the trumpet blasted away and we flew down the aisle, beaming at Daisy’s new boyfriend who was taking pictures. The sunshine splattered the carpet and most everyone except May smiled. She looked straight ahead, pretending she was a pillar holding up the church.

  At the reception, down the basement, Aunt Sid hugged me and kissed both of my cheeks. I blushed at her beauty. I couldn’t say one sentence. It’s so different in letters, when you have a piece of paper and you’re writing all your thoughts. It’s like talking easily with Miss Finch when she doesn’t have the eyes to see. Aunt Sid said how lovely I looked and that she hoped we’d be happy. She said she had missed seeing me and that it was silly to have to have a wedding to get together. I wanted
to make her sign in blood that she’d keep writing me, even though this day suggested I was launched. I couldn’t find the words to tell her that she’d saved my life roughly one million times. The figure is not an exaggeration, either. I wanted to say that there wasn’t one single day when she didn’t save me in some way. I stood there shaking my head, my lips trembling because I was going to burst into tears. After only a few minutes she said she better let me go for now that there were other people to see me and then she said again that I was a lovely bride.

  There was something about Aunt Sid, when she saw how Ruby slurped the cake off of the serving knife and danced the twist and the bump with Daisy in the church kitchen, that made her look as if she thought I was lost forever. It was as if she didn’t want to see me getting married, that deep down she didn’t find it a happy occasion. She stood in the back speaking with the Rev while Artie made a speech about my fantastic bowling career, past and future. He made jokes about how I was going to teach Ruby my secrets and then the Red Bell team was going to be in even deeper trouble. All the check-out girls had the courtesy to laugh. After Artie’s speech Aunt Sid tried to corner May but May was not to be had. She was cutting more cake and pouring drinks for Dee Dee and licking the feet of the church ladies.

  Aunt Sid gave up on May and stopped Matt just as he was escaping out the rear exit. He began telling her about some research with meteors and how every few billion years a bunch of them smash into earth and wreck all the life. I didn’t like those two talking together. She was nodding and shaping questions with her hands and telling him it was all fascinating. I walked her to her car when she was finished with him. She was the first person to leave. She clasped my hands, looking directly into my eyes, and wished me luck. She didn’t say anything about coming to visit her or when we would meet again. I stood on the curb all by myself, waving at her as the car moved down the street, and I knew, standing there, although I was just married, that I was the loneliest girl in the U.S. Aunt Sid was the only person who knew me, and I had the feeling just by looking at the back of her head, and the rear end of her car pulling away, that she didn’t want my acquaintance any more.

  Eleven

  RUBY and I didn’t go on a honeymoon because I didn’t have vacation time coming, but Artie gave me Monday off, paid. May had to get up and go to work. She was crashing pots and pans around, putting the dishes away, while we stayed in bed, whispering. We now occupied May and Elmer’s old room, the master bedroom. It has tall windows, three of them, where all the cold seeps through in winter. She moved back to my room, reminding us, all the while, that it’s the worst place in the whole house. It’s over the kitchen so you can smell the fumes of cooking onions and hamburger, chicken fat and bacon grease. Our room has a four-poster bed from the home farm. The story is that some old cousin with a harelip made it for the girl he dreamed of marrying. He lived two hundred years ago so the facts probably aren’t accurate any more. He probably only had a scratch under his nose. Don’t ask me what the future generations are going to say about us—it will take them hours to explain and lie to the little children. The bed has delicate wooden posters and a few rickety boards tacked at either end. Sometimes it seemed too fragile for the two of us—when we were roughhousing. We slept on a cornhusk mattress, just like pioneers who had a whole new land in front of them. There wasn’t any other furniture except a beat-up dresser May had used forever, and a braid rug worn thin on the floor. Ruby didn’t have too many belongings. He brought a duffel bag with him, containing his underwear and shirts, a few pair of pants, three old snapshots, socks that needed darning like you wouldn’t believe. He didn’t own much else.

  When we heard May leave for work on Monday we got up and I made pancakes and sausages, and we ate them in the living room. We sat watching Hollywood Squares. We sat two feet from each other and smiled at the TV. After it was over Ruby took my hand and we walked upstairs, staring straight in front of ourselves, concentrating on each step.

  We didn’t even shake hands on our wedding night because Ruby was plowed and I was dead tired and sad on account of Aunt Sid. We pulled ourselves up onto the bed, clutched our separate pillows, and fell asleep. Then the next day, Sunday, May was banging around downstairs. She was shampooing the rugs for the second time in two weeks. Sometimes she gets obsessed with her carpet and her dusting. When I dared to roll over and look at my husband I didn’t recognize the heap. The pillow was over most of his head. He had parts of his wedding suit on, and a piece of cake stuffed in his breast pocket. His mouth was wide open. I turned back to the wall and tried to think about the sunshine filling the church, and the trumpet proclaiming heaven on earth.

  We didn’t do anything on Sunday except eat Sunday dinner. May cooked the roast, as usual. We always had our best meal at noon and then at night we got sandwiches for ourselves. Sunday dinner was a custom May couldn’t shake, from the days at the home place when there were hired men and her big family. After dinner Ruby disappeared outside and didn’t come back until dark.

  Finally, on Monday we climbed into bed after our breakfast. Ruby’s stomach was puffed out like a device that could save you in the water. He showed me how fat it was; he pressed it and made it honk. We got in our bed with all our clothes on under the covers and he whispered right down into my ear, “Baby, you’re gonna like me better this time, I know you will.”

  I kept saying, “OK, OK.” I closed my eyes; I kept them shut while he took my pants off. I knew I was learning a secret from Ruby. I was drowning in the place where he touched me.

  It wasn’t as bad, the second time. Ruby bit me hard. He was so worked up he couldn’t help it. He kept kissing the wound afterwards and saying, “Baby, you make a man wild, you know that?”

  I couldn’t do a thing but grin, even though I was wondering if I’d have to get rabies shots. When I turned to the wall he leaned over me and kissed me, in many of the areas Daisy told about. He said, “Hey, baby, wake up,” but I pretended I was fast asleep.

  When we came downstairs it was two in the afternoon. Ruby said, “Time flies, don’t it?” I wanted to go to him and hug him with all my might but instead I went into the kitchen to get the food ready. We had wieners and pretzels and Cokes—it was a holiday. Afterwards we walked in the woods, smelled the air full of burning leaves. Ruby raced to trees and tried to climb up them. He clung to their trunks and then slipped down. He tried with just about every tree he saw. I was sniffing the future right there in the air. You can smell winter coming on, and if you close your eyes you can see the snow falling, covering up the forlorn gray fields. Ruby and I held hands while Ruby talked about how he could eat a lion. He said I wore him out.

  I had my diamond engagement ring and a slender silver wedding band also, which Daisy had helped me pick out. The small rings were cheap; of course, they aren’t actually pure silver. Ruby got a larger ring, because he’s the man. He didn’t want to wear it on his finger so he strung it through a chain and put it around his neck. He said, “It ain’t sissy, baby. I seen hundreds of men with necklaces.”

  I paid for the rings with the money I stored in the pig. Every time I looked at mine I’d say to myself, I’m married, and I’d whisper a sentence that had the word husband in it.

  After our walk I said, “How about we cook supper for Ma?” and Ruby said, “Sure.” We were planning to make stew. I showed Ruby how to cut up the vegetables and he had a great time—in between slicing he explained how to pitch. He had a tennis ball from Matt’s closet. He was throwing curve balls against the kitchen wall like a professional. I had to shriek because he could really wind up and throw the balls hard and fast.

  “Look it!” Ruby shouted. “Reggie hit it to first base, baby. I’m running to tag him out.” Ruby jumped over the stools, tagged the ironing board in the corner; he slid into it crying, “He’s out, we got him!”

  I chopped carrots and he said, “You and them vegetables are the whole stadium. Come on, you’re supposed to cheer.”

  When May walked in I
was hollering with the potatoes because Ruby threw a fast ball at the wall and the player hit it and it went flying past second base and into the outfield. I was laughing hysterically with my face in my hands. Ruby was running all over the house; I could hear him in the living room, shouting, “Baby, your number-one team player caught it on the fly! The crowds have lost control!”

  May stood in the doorway staring at the place on the wall where the tennis ball hit. She didn’t think the game was so humorous. She marched straight into the living room and she said, as if Ruby were eight years old, “When you want to play ball, you do it outside, understand?”

  Our smiles stuck on our grim faces for a minute and then they vanished. If there’s anything Ruby hates it’s getting yelled at. He likes people to say he does a good job. We ate supper, the stew we made for May, without talking about much of anything. May didn’t ask us what we did all morning or if by chance I had a bite on my shoulder. When we were finished eating I washed the dishes and Ruby and May watched shows. They flipped through the channels until it was time to go to sleep. Sitting there close to Ruby, holding his hand in front of May, I thought about how I was married now. I planned what I was going to say when people asked, “How is married life?” I figured I’d say, “Real good.”