The Book of Ruth

by Jane Hamilton

  The first night Ruby made frozen pizza. I bought him his favorite—pepperoni—on the way home from work. When he set it on the table he said, “Ladies, you’re getting my special tonight.” May didn’t crack a smile.

  The next night we had hot dogs. We had some in the freezer and Ruby boiled them for so long they blew up to the size of sewer pipes. May spat her bites out in her napkin. Ruby loved using the tongs we had to serve the wieners. He got a charge out of handling everything in the kitchen, hot and cold, with them. The whole time we ate he was doing a dance with the tongs and a bag of potato chips. I was dying of laughter but I kept a straight face while May ate her parboiled peas. After supper she marched into the living room, making it clear she wanted to watch her programs alone. Ruby and I spent all night doing the dishes and dancing and grabbing each other with the tongs. We ended up under the table with our pants off. After May went to bed, Ruby insisted I use the tongs to guide him inside.

  The third night we had scrambled eggs and dry toast, because I forgot to buy margarine on the way home. When May put her fork into her mouth, she all of a sudden looked like she was tasting the most bitter substance in existence. Her frown stretched down into her neck. She got up and spat her food into the sink so vigorously I thought she might bring up a shrunken heart.

  She turned around when she uttered, “That is the most revolting food I ever ate in my life.” She probably wasn’t counting the time I made scalloped onions out of tulip bulbs. May’s gigantic head became enlarged when she was disgusted or angry, and the veins in her neck stood out and throbbed.

  Ruby didn’t say anything. He ate his eggs. He whispered, “Looks like Ma didn’t like my extra-special creation. I put the hen’s mash in our eggs just for her.” He took another bite. “Cluck cluck, they ain’t too bad.”

  I was too tired and hungry and frightened to laugh. I dropped my fork thinking about what May would do if she ever realized that Ruby was feeding her mash. She might sue for divorce, or put a gun to Ruby’s head and make him vacuum forever.

  After we ate our gritty eggs Ruby and I went outside to walk in the woods. It was raw and we shivered, but we made no attempt to touch each other and get warm. We sat up in the haymow, only there isn’t a single bale of hay, and Ruby tried to make me laugh by doing a concert. I didn’t feel like laughing. His fingers were white with the cold, playing his pretend guitar.

  The next night no one said anything. Ruby didn’t cook and May didn’t cook. There we were after a long day at work without one speck to eat. Ruby and May sat in the living room watching TV with all their might. They sat upright. They weren’t either one of them going to budge. It looked funny, if you were in a giggling mood, to see their good posture. I stared out into the night, seeing my own reflection, and it seemed to me it was shriveling with every second I stood waiting. I knew I was going to scream. I was opening my mouth when Ruby jumped up. He stood shifting around on his feet, scratching his chin and glancing quickly at the sofa.

  May didn’t pay attention so he left for the kitchen. I was about to go after him when I heard him say to the refrigerator, “You are one great big field of fart.”

  “What’d did he say?” May asked, alert all of a sudden.

  I didn’t know what to tell her. I said, “Nothin’.”

  “WHAT’D HE SAY?”

  “That you remind him of some of them natural processes,” I said. Ruby was already out of the house. We could hear the car starting up.

  I didn’t stay to hear May return his compliment. I was so mad at those two for wrecking our lives over a few eggs. I stalked off without looking to see if she was still glued to the TV. Perhaps she was going to settle down to eat her private stash of sweet rolls.

  It was December. The wind was in no way attentive to my sorrows as I went along the road. It slashed right through my body. I had to wish for a planet where the breeze takes you in its arms and rocks you to sleep. I held my hat to my head and walked along the dark highway. Every time car lights blinded me I felt like an animal exposed and in the limelight right before it becomes a road kill. I saw myself lying in a heap, bruised and dead, waiting to be discovered in the morning by the county highway crew.

  “Running away already?” Daisy said to me at the door of the Footes’ house, and I said, “Nope.”

  I walked straight past her into their kitchen. Then I sat down and put my head on the table and cried, just like Dee Dee used to for May. I was ashamed of the scorn I used to feel for Dee Dee and all her problems. I was just as needy, and probably always had been. Even though Daisy was a slut, if you’re speaking plain English, she’s got this big heart. She put her hands on my shoulders and said, “You tell me about it.”

  Wouldn’t you know it, before I could get a word out the phone rang. Dee Dee kept saying into the receiver, “Well! . . . Well! . . . Oh? Dear!”

  I raised my head long enough to say to Daisy, “I bet you a dollar it’s my ma.”

  Sure enough, Dee Dee hung up the phone, made a beeline for the freezer, took some food out, turned to Daisy, and said, “Poor May.” She drove off to our house instantly, just as good friends should. We all needed people to tell us that we were the ones who had been deeply wronged.

  I sat sobbing, telling Daisy that May and Ruby couldn’t stand each other, and that sometimes Ruby was scared of her because she let her rattling false teeth swim around in her mouth. I tried to describe May for the first time in my life. I said, “Daisy, the only pleasure she gets is from holding people under her thumb. She’s happy when she’s let you know how miserable her life is. If you catch her smiling she quick frowns.” I stopped because I wanted to get it right. It was all coming out in little pieces and that’s not how I intended it. I looked into Daisy’s face and said, “I let her down every day.”

  I don’t think Daisy heard me because she said, “If only we could find her a man. She probably just needs a good screw. I bet all her problems would improve after a one-night stand.”

  I hated advice like that. I said, “How are we going to do anything different, Daisy?”

  I explained that May was the banker and we barely made ends meet. She made Ruby fork over cash for his food and the hot baths he loved to take, but we weren’t extra rich, especially with deep winter coming and the oil it took to heat the house. I admitted that in October we had three dollars at the end of the month. There were two days when we didn’t have groceries and May dug up a chicken in the freezer from 1964. Of course we still had the wedding bills to pay off. May kept complaining about the expensive ceremony, but she was the one who demanded that we have the bakery cake and the flowers.

  “Things look bad,” Daisy said. “You and me are going to get crocked.”

  Daisy and I went downtown. She was working at the grocery store so she treated. We drank too much of a certain mixed drink that contained everything in the liquor cabinet. When I was under the influence I told Daisy I’d love to see her on a motorcycle with nothing on, and she cracked up. She picked out all the old men in the room and discussed how they’d suit May as a boyfriend. Mr. Stevens, the one with the wooden leg who’s always the Indian in parades, was her favorite choice. “Don’t he look sexy in his headdress on the Fourth of July?” she asked me. “Come to think of it, I bet your brother would like him. I bet you a million dollars he’s a homo.”

  We looked at each other and burst out laughing. We had to get up and squat against the wall, and take walks holding our stomachs, and just when we’d get control we’d look at each other and break up all over again.

  When I knew it was coming I went out in the cold and got sick on the curb. I cried all the way home while Daisy drove like a maniac. I was half hoping we’d crash into a tree and lose our lights.

  After Daisy let me off I stood on the back porch spying in the kitchen window. There’s no storms on the windows so I could hear every word. May was standing at the counter cutting up a chicken and Dee Dee worked at the table chopping onions. It looked like they were cooking enough
for the next two months. Dee Dee set her knife down, raised her glass high, and said, “Here’s another one to you and me.” She chugged it and then wiped her mouth on the hem of one of May’s gingham aprons that she was wearing. She said, “Nobody knows what we suffer. They drive off and get broken and expect us to lick their wounds when they come back. At least you have Matt. Count your blessings. Did he call you this week?”

  I heard May say, “Every Sunday.”

  “Is he coming for Christmas?” Tears caused by onions were dripping from Dee Dee’s eyes. May always gave her the lowest jobs.

  May gnawed on her toothpick before she spoke. “He just can’t get away from his work for more than two seconds. Them professors have him working night and day. Course he’s the top student. There ain’t no free lunch though—that’s what you have to do when you’re on full scholarship.”

  “Did he send you a picture of his girlfriend yet?” Dee Dee asked.

  “Now where did I put it?” May rustled up a bunch of Penny-savers that were on the sideboard. “Yeah, he sent one, but just like a boy, you can’t hardly see nothin’ of her face. If it would have been a good photo I wouldn’t have lost it. She’s a cheerleader for the football team. Real cute. He said maybe for Easter vacation he’d bring her home.”

  “Now, May,” Dee Dee said, coming over to look through the piles of clipped coupons, “you have such a good son. Count your blessings. I got three lousy kids, not one born with any sense. Randall’s a good boy, and I couldn’t live without him, but you know as well as I do that he ain’t going to amount to anything big like your Matt.”

  May went to the pot on the stove and stirred. “I have a feeling them two sex fiends ain’t ever coming back.”

  “Still, you count your blessings. You hatched one first-class star and that’s more than some get. You have a handsome smart son and pretty soon you’ll probably have a real cute daughter-in-law.”

  May stuck her face into the steam. She was probably wondering how she was going to get Matt to marry the cheerleader of her dreams.

  I had had enough by now. I opened the door and stamped my feet. I didn’t say one word to either one of them. My nose was runny and my head felt perfectly round. I just stood there staring. Dee Dee thought I was looking at the empty chicken pot pie tins on the counter and she said, “I know she’s used to better but it’s all I had in my freezer, what with you two running off without making supper. For shame!”

  I didn’t stay for the rest of the conversation. My sixth sense told me I should have laughed at Dee Dee, the greatest sucker for May’s lies, scolding me, but I couldn’t quite get into the mood for humor. I lay down in bed with my jacket on and went to sleep. When Ruby got home at two in the morning he smelled like booze and pot. He fell off the bed twice before he made it in. He tried touching me, but I wouldn’t let him. I cried out, “Why can’t you and Ma be friends?” I asked him the question, although I knew the answer.

  “She don’t like me,” he said. “Let’s forget her, baby.” He was trying to stroke my neck and arms.

  “Don’t touch me, Ruby,” I said, flicking him away. He was so loaded he fell right asleep. I guess you’d have to say that that was our very first lovers’ spat.

  Twelve

  IT isn’t fair that Ruby can’t tell everybody what happened in his life and here I am talking about the kind of person he is, talking about his wide blue eyes and his gutter balls at Town Lanes. Even though it isn’t fair there doesn’t seem to be a way around it. I can’t leave him out. I can’t pretend he doesn’t exist. After being stymied for months I realized I would just have to do my best to explain what happened to us. I would have to look at him as if I were a judge with jowls and squinty eyes, the type who can see around all sides of a person. If I were a judge I’d try to congratulate people for their good points and then I’d tell them gently how to improve. Except you have to have crystal clear vision to judge—and that’s a quality I don’t have perfected yet.

  Afterwards, they brought Ruby’s counselor, Sherry, to see me. I think the idea was to try to make me understand absolutely everything so I could kiss it goodbye and not have it come nagging back at me. Sherry always smiled and said, “Hi there,” when she came for her visits, as if we’d been best friends for years. We weren’t best friends. I always had to look twice to see that her short blond hair wasn’t a snug-fitting cap. She came in her professional clothes and I imagined her putting on her sleek white pants without a thought of Ruby or me or Ma or Justy. She told me quite a bit about Ruby, while I sat hating her unless I got especially interested. She knew so many details about his life because she got him to talk to her through tricks and games. She had a glass bowl full of black licorice twists on her desk, which is probably the only reason he even showed up for his appointments.

  Ruby and I didn’t talk about his life history all that much because we were creatures of the moment. I like to think of us rolling in the grass and chasing through the woods like we had no more notion of the world than savages. Sherry sat in the recliner chair by the window in its upright position and she said she wondered where she should start; she laughed, ruffling up her hair, saying that I should probably be telling her about Ruby. Then, as if she’d had a novel idea, she said maybe we could help each other understand him, fill in each other’s blanks. I knew she probably got her act straight out of a textbook that said, First, make a suggestion hinting at what you want; next, act surprised and laugh at your own thoughts; third, do whatever you need to do to trick the person into giving away all the secrets. I was on to her. She so wanted, she said, to start at the beginning of Ruby’s life, and naturally we followed her wishes. I didn’t add one speck to her wealth of knowledge, though; I kept the facts I knew of to myself.

  I owe Sherry a lot for Ruby’s story, but many of the details are mine. I already knew that Ruby and his two sisters grew up in a rambling old house down by the river in Stillwater. The parents rented it from absentee landlords who came to check up on it at a moment’s notice. The whole house was available to Ruby’s family, except for two rooms upstairs where the landlords stored their heirlooms. The special doors were secured with padlocks. Ruby and his sisters couldn’t help feeling curious about the valuables inside. He drove me by the house once when we were first married to see how it was getting along. Sometimes he prowled around there, I know he did, because he liked to remember fragments from the old days.

  Sherry had been in touch with Nancy and Sally Jane, Ruby’s older sisters, but they hardly knew Ruby. Sherry explained that a professional has to go way back to the family, to the start, to get the answers. I laughed at the thought of her asking me in her innocent soft way, “Do you feel like talking about your mother?” I’d be so clever that she would never figure out that everything I’ve ever said in my life is in some way a reflection of May. I’d make her believe I was raised by Dinah Shore. At any rate, I’ve seen Ruby’s sisters’ senior pictures in Ruby’s wallet. They were quite a bit older than their baby brother. Ruby was a mistake—that’s what his father called him when he was riled. I never met either one of the girls even though they went to Stillwater High. Sally Jane was in all the plays and Nancy twirled batons in parades without dropping them. They both grew up, got married, moved away, and had children. Bingo, that’s their lives in front of me. Sally Jane almost came to our wedding, but she was expecting and they said she couldn’t fly on an airplane.

  The sisters were half grown by the time Ruby was forced into the world with a pair of tongs at his head. He was awfully sick at first, according to Sherry. His organs couldn’t handle food. He spit up constantly, and not simply a dribble here and there. Ruby launched that old vomit so far it wrapped itself around Saturn, which is why weathermen keep finding new rings. Naturally, the parents couldn’t take him home right away. I can imagine all the adorable babies in the nursery, and then Ruby, screaming and puking on the soft white hospital blankets. Nobody said he looked precious. His mother cried the minute he was born probably, aft
er she caught a glimpse of him. It didn’t take her long to shorten the Reuben to Ruby. She wanted him to know that she could convince herself of his beauty, even if he did look like a mongrel.

  Ruby finally had a stomach operation after three weeks of his constant howling. There was a disconnected tube inside him, but they were able to patch it up, good as new. He didn’t have screaming fits now that he was put back together. The parents were only to keep observing their baby boy, see if he had strange behavior.

  Then, as if the first weeks weren’t strain enough, Ruby’s mother, one warm summer evening, had a highball in the bathtub, holding her three-month-old baby in her arms. Next thing she knew her husband was slapping her awake and holding the baby upside down to drain water out of his lungs. In a voice as steady and quiet as a car’s idle he told her she was not fit to be a mother. When she was asleep Ruby had slipped into the water, maybe thinking it was time to go back where he came from. After a while the rescue squad screeched up to the house and the paramedics jumped out and saved Ruby’s life. The incident didn’t help the parents’ marriage too much. From the moment Mrs. Dahl stepped out of the bathtub, she decided, if her boy survived, that she would devote every inch of her life to him.

  Sherry often hesitated before she spoke, as if she was sorting out the information she wanted to give me. She had said at first that she never betrayed confidences, but she had given this case a lot of hard thought and decided that it was important for me to know as much as possible about Ruby. To which I silently replied, “Remind me never to tell you anything.” Still, it was her soft voice and the way she tilted her head, looking at me with her expression of understanding and sympathy, which might have eventually won me over. She told me that Ruby’s first memory was of his father, in the living room, showing him how to put the toys away. Cleaning up was the last thing Ruby wanted to do. He sat picking his nose and then his father spanked him until his skin was raw and flaking. His father’s methods didn’t help Ruby learn to follow instructions or be tidy. As far as I can tell, when his parents explained a chore, Ruby’s brain danced a jig into the next county. If he didn’t respond, his father made him hang from the shower rod or he put him in the closet. Ruby sat still under the coats. He wasn’t so afraid of the dark. It wrapped around him warm and close. He could think to himself, be his own best friend. If his mother was watching Ruby she said, “It’s OK, sweetie, I’ll put the blocks away. It’s too hard for you.” Ruby had her number down pat—he knew she loved doing any task for him.