The Book of Ruth

by Jane Hamilton

  When Daisy made that remark I stepped in a whole bed of marigolds and ground my heels into the earth. If Ruby and May and Dee Dee, and just about everyone I knew, could have comfort in their alcohol I saw no reason why I couldn’t have the fantasy of Aunt Sid. Some day I was bound to find out that she had a terrible quirk, but until then there was no harm in believing she was a good witch.

  Aunt Sid drove me all over De Kalb. She showed me the state university. We saw a tour bus full of Chinese people jabbering at each other in their language, which surely requires gymnastic classes for the tongue and voice. I giggled at how crazy they were speaking while Aunt Sid pointed out all the buildings and what kinds of learning took place in them. I kept looking around to see if there were any criminals, fresh from Chicago, waiting to rape the college coeds, but no one looked like a knifer. Summer school was in session and people were scurrying along the paths with their notebooks tucked under their arms.

  Finally Aunt Sid took me to her blue wooden house. There is an arch of oak trees over her street so the sunshine can’t blast through and make the cement boil. She has a front porch, screened in, and a yard with the wildest display of flowers and colors: crimson and indigo, vermilion and plain yellow, lush green and an entire bed of blinding white petunias. There is a special rubber door with a slit in it so her collie dog, Elizabeth, can go in and out whenever she pleases. She looks at you with moony eyes, hoping for food. I knew I should be sad to think of Ruby back in Honey Creek with his wobbly leg, lying in the heat of the house, but my body, my mind, couldn’t conjure up unhappiness for anything just then.

  We sat at lunch, on the porch, in elegant white wire lawn furniture, sipping our lemonade politely. Aunt Sid told me about her neighborhood and the children who lived on the block, and gradually she started remembering how she used to play back at the home farm, in the hay fields and pastures, in the creek. I couldn’t keep my mind on her words, because I was concentrating on eating daintily, until she started talking about May’s Willard Jenson, and the ingenious methods she had for spying on the smooching couple from the closet in the basement. I had had no idea how May felt about Willard. I had only seen pictures of him once, and May got irritated with me for asking about the people. She snatched the photos away and I never saw them again.

  After we finished eating our egg salad sandwiches, cut in wedges with green olives and lettuce, and emptying our little bowls filled with melon balls, Aunt Sid brought out her three photo albums, each one filled with old pictures. She sat on the arm of my chair and told me about every picture. I couldn’t look at them hard enough. I couldn’t stop staring at the snapshots of May when she was a girl, squinting into the sunshine with her hand over her forehead. She was young and thin, with the entire world before her, or so she thought. Aunt Sid told me about how Willard Jenson and May danced in the basement and the dirty clothes went scooting around the floor. There was a picture of the two of them, with their arms around each other, smiling into the great unknown. The photos, the stories, put May in a new light. I almost said out loud that I wished May herself had wanted me to know her as a young girl with heartaches.

  After lunch Aunt Sid took me up to my room. She said she often napped in the heat of the day. She disappeared around the corner to her room, which was filled with heavy golden sunlight, and white curtains billowing and snapping in the open windows. When she was gone I took off my skirt and my blouse and climbed under the cool perfumed sheets. I didn’t sleep of course, but I lay there, not daring to move, staring around myself. The room was white with paintings in gilded frames on the walls, paintings of haystacks and ponds, blue and yellow, shimmering. My room had a desk in it, and shelves with books, some of which I had read on the blind tapes. I knew the authors. I was half afraid I had taken some of Ruby’s drugs and when I came to I would be sitting on the sofa at home absently stirring the ice cubes in his rum and Coke and staring into the gray space. I kept my eyes open so I wouldn’t drift off and dream I was in Honey Creek.

  Later in the afternoon we went to Aunt Sid’s school and I saw the empty room where her choir rehearses. She sat at the piano playing and singing a song by Brahms. She hissed and gurgled softly in the German language. Her lips quivered with the notes while she closed her eyes to listen to herself. If you want to see a sight to make you get lumps in your throat, watch Aunt Sid singing. It will slay you each time.

  When we got home Aunt Sid cooked steaks on her small outdoor grill, and I sat on the patio drinking a gin and tonic she had made for me. In the next house someone was playing the piano and it seemed as if everything in the yard, the flowers, the green grass, the still evening itself, heard the music and became part of the melody. Children down the alley were playing kick the can, calling out and laughing. We didn’t speak as Aunt Sid prepared the food, and I wasn’t really too nervous while I sat waiting.

  After a drink we got to talking. I answered her questions about spotting and how to remove tough stains. She wanted to know every single person who worked at Trim ’N Tidy, and I told her about Artie, and how he was always giving me good advice. I mentioned his prize possession: the Trim ’N Tidy bowling trophy. After my second drink I had enough courage and I said, “Aunt Sid, do you remember when you sent me money to buy May perfume for her birthday?”

  Aunt Sid nodded yes. She had a piece of lettuce that she was trying to get into her mouth.

  “I didn’t get perfume for May. I bought myself some brassieres.”

  I went scarlet recalling it, but it was funny, I knew it was. Still, it was something that I’d always wanted to confess. Aunt Sid groaned in sympathy with me, and then she said that growing up was so difficult. I banged my hand on the table in agreement. She reached over and petted my arm. She murmured, “You poor thing.” I shrugged it off. I wasn’t in the mood for crying into a five-gallon drum, plus I didn’t want her to think I was a ninny. I said I was a dumb kid back then, I didn’t travel places by myself.

  Somehow her saying I was a poor thing cast a pall over the rest of the dinner and we quietly ate our steaks and the baked potatoes and the green beans with slivered almonds on them. For coffee she suggested moving to the screened-in porch, and when she brought out the mugs she also had a box, containing all my letters, tied up by the year in green ribbon. She had saved my letters because they were precious to her. I sat in my chair long past dark, reading my life over by candlelight while Sid moved in and out, doing her chores, washing the dishes, reading her paper. Most of the details and events I had written about were exaggerated or had never taken place. The crickets, the moon, the dark cool air moved in through the porch screens but I was unable to budge. I was meeting a strange and familiar person through her words. I couldn’t believe I had written the letters; I was actually a little bit impressed and very horrified by my imagination.

  I found a letter that described my promotion to the superior English class—I hadn’t admitted that I was in the lowest of the low, and that I was merely moving one step up into the regular class. I talked about how Mr. Davidson said I was improving miraculously, and that I had such a good grasp of the books we were reading. All lies. I never once mentioned the fact that after a month I was demoted.

  “Aunt Sid,” I said to her, while she sipped her coffee, “I told so many lies in my letters to you. Half of the things I described didn’t even happen.”

  She chuckled. She said that was what pen pals were for, to share fantasies with.

  She rubbed her eyes with her fists; she looked up, serious all of a sudden, and said, “You, all of you, should have visited me years ago—I should have demanded it. I don’t know,” she said, “I wanted to help May and be friends in some way but we have always lived such different lives. We’re practically a different generation, and I had so many more opportunities than she did. Mother and Father had more money by the time I came along, and Marion encouraged me to go to college, and the teachers in Stillwater urged me to pursue voice training. I grew up in a different era.” She stirred her coffee
and then cupped her hands around the mug, gathering its warmth. “Maybe she just couldn’t forgive me.” She looked up after a minute trying to smile cheerfully. “I shouldn’t be saying these things to you,” she said, “but I want you to know that you’re dear to me.”

  I almost tipped the chair over so I could lie still in the state of grace. I wanted her to stop talking before she said something like “If I’d seen you sooner maybe you wouldn’t be retarded.” I couldn’t stand it when she was solemn. I petted the dog and stared at its limp tongue.

  Then Aunt Sid asked me a lot of questions about my life, and wouldn’t you know it, I was feeling so lively I didn’t tell her every detail. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth, for the millionth time. I said that Ruby and Justy and May and I were in the house together still, of course, and that it worked out pretty well, because May baby-sat, and she loved Justy even better than Rock Hudson. I mentioned that May had had some rough times over the years, when we were growing up and she had to raise us single-handedly. Now that I was a parent, I said, trying to sound knowledgeable, I could imagine how miserable being alone with small children could make a person. I didn’t elaborate on how noise and dirt and whining rile you to the point of wanting to strangle everything within reach. Aunt Sid and I agreed that May didn’t have anything handed to her on a silver platter. She had had to fight for every gain, what there was of them.

  But with Justy here now, I told Aunt Sid, it was an entirely new life for all of us. I mentioned that Matt didn’t ever write or come home; he was a missing person, abducted by the world. May had to learn about Matt from Dr. Heck, the school principal. She had to pretend Matt wrote her and told her trivial things, such as what his apartment looked like, when actually she was longing to hear substance. She would ask Dr. Heck, “Did Matt say where he was working?” Dr. Heck probably had it all figured out because he told May in his gentle voice everything she wanted to know about Matt.

  “It’s the limit,” I said to Aunt Sid, not feeling a bit guilty for bad-mouthing Matt. Aunt Sid shook her head and said it was a shame.

  I explained that Ruby wasn’t the most notorious genius on earth, not like Matt, but I knew his capacities before I married him. I said he wasn’t going to solve any riddles of the universe, and he had a little trouble holding down a job but it didn’t matter a bit, he had so many good points. I told her about the times he was kind to people, buying May a toaster oven, and what a playful father he was for Justy. I bragged about his high sweet voice, wishing that she could hear him sing. Briefly I mentioned that he drank sometimes, and that it worried us, the way he could guzzle serious quantities. I quickly added that he knew how to handle it, that he didn’t trip around or bully people. I mumbled that it scared me, that I knew it wasn’t healthy, and that we weren’t rich enough to support a drunk. Or a drug addict, I said to myself. I said that Ruby’s counselor Sherry was helping him out. He was improving little by little.

  I explained my life to Aunt Sid, and how I spent my days, but I skipped over the bad parts. I told her about the qualities I admired in May and Ruby: there was only half a person pictured in my mind, when I got done describing each one. I couldn’t bring into my line of vision their heads, or their chests, where their hearts should have been.

  Aunt Sid said it was astonishing that we could all live together and get along. She said it was remarkable, that I was a wonder. She thought it must mean so much to May, to have her young people and the baby.

  When Aunt Sid said that I was a holy wonder I felt like what I did in my life was worthwhile, helping my family, seeing May into her old age, and having a husband with a singing voice, even though houses shrank in front of him sometimes, and it looked like a midget could live in them.

  But finally, as we were standing by the kitchen door, saying goodnight, I told her to her face; I said if she hadn’t written the letters to me I wouldn’t be able to hold my head up walking down the street. Naturally I didn’t have the right words to tell her that she had made me strong, that if it weren’t for her telling me time and time again that I was a good person, with novel ideas, I might have shriveled into a warty frog croaking in single syllables from the marsh. I always got the feeling, even when I wasn’t telling the whole truth to Aunt Sid, that she took my lies with a grain of salt. When I whispered that she had saved my life she gave me a big hug. I had to clamp my teeth together to keep from crying my entire head off and destroying her real silk shirt.

  Eighteen

  THE strange thing, when I got off the bus in Stillwater, was how I didn’t recognize the town. It didn’t look like where I wanted to be. My clenched hands were cold and sweaty and there was nothing left of my fingernails or cuticles. I wished the bus had gone straight through Stillwater, not stopped for a single person. Even though I had the front seat I waited to be the last one off.

  It was twilight, only the air was thick and the sky had turned yellow, as if it were burning up from the heat of the day. Maybe night had decided not to come. Perhaps we were going to have afternoon for the rest of our lives. Daisy was on the sidewalk trying to make Justy wave to me. He had a sucker in his mouth so he wasn’t about to obey. He looked at me with accusing eyes for the longest time. After a while he whispered, “Ma-ma.” When Daisy gave him to me he buried his head in my neck.

  “When are you going to have a baby?” I said, first thing.

  “Give me ten years, maybe twenty.” Daisy winked at me. She had to be joking because in twenty years her eggs would be used up. On the way home in the car she kept asking so cheerfully how I enjoyed my trip. I told her that yesterday we went to Aunt Sid’s school, and ate dinner, and today she took me downtown and we ate lunch in a cafe. I didn’t feel like going into much detail. My time with Aunt Sid was a secret I had already stashed away. If I explained to Daisy, out loud, our morning on the porch eating English muffins, my memory of it would become fixed. I wanted the whole experience to remain fluid and new. And there was the danger that Daisy might make a joke, as she later did about the tuning fork, and I’d have to stamp out marigolds and make excuses for myself believing in magic.

  I didn’t want to know, but finally I had to ask; I said, “How are Ma and Ruby?”

  She coughed, saying, “It was sort of a rough two days for them while you was gone.”

  “That don’t surprise me a whole lot,” I said, and then we rode quietly the rest of the way home.

  May had a pan of chicken frying on the stove. She looked like she didn’t have the strength to poke the pieces. Her curls were greasy and slack, and her eyelids hung low.

  “I don’t want to hear nothin’ about Sidney,” she said, right when I walked in. “I don’t want to know about the great time you had.”

  “That’s fine with me,” I said, breezing through the kitchen.

  Ruby was lying on the couch with a beer between his legs, in the position I left him. He acted like a real big baby when I touched him.

  “Ouch, you’re hurting me,” he whined.

  I hardly put any pressure on his thigh. He squinched up his face so that he looked exactly like the Chinese tourists in De Kalb, focusing their cameras.

  “You look like a Jap,” I said, and then I gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and told him that I’d thought about him while I was gone.

  He turned all blubbery and said, “Oh, baby, I missed you too.” I hadn’t meant that I’d missed him, but I didn’t correct his impression. He told me he didn’t like to live without me—he meant, without me serving him.

  Daisy went home and then May and Ruby and Justy and I sat down for chicken dinner. The minute her fanny hit the seat May said, “My, what a juicy chicken this is, Ruby, how good of you to get it for us. Don’t it smell delicious? Thank you for making it possible.” She licked her chops and smiled at Ruby, thanking him.

  He didn’t look at her, not once. He slurped his milk like a hound dog. I couldn’t figure out what was going on with those two so I paid attention to Justy, told him about the oak tree
s in De Kalb making a bridge over the street. He had an expression on his face that said, “I love how nice you’re talking to me, Mama.”

  “Justy,” I said, “I heard Aunt Sid sing. Her voice sets your whole spine shivering, and she sings a language we don’t know.”

  “He don’t know a word you’re saying,” May chimed. “My, ain’t this chicken tender?” She tore the skin off a drumstick and sank her teeth into the meat.

  “Aunt Sid’s house is filled with light and color, Justy. Someday you can see it for yourself. I know you and me will get there, to De Kalb, for another visit.”

  Ruby suctioned up his Jell-O, face down to his plate. He made one long noisy sucking sound.

  “Ruby, you was such a sweetheart to get this scrumptious meal for us. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your thoughts, especially when that leg of yours is good for nothin’.” May talked straight to Ruby even though he was looking over his shoulder at the back door.

  “Justy,” I said, “did you have fun at Aunt Daisy’s this afternoon? Were you a good boy?” He nodded his head and said, “Do.” “Do” was the only word he spoke clearly, except for “no, no, no, no, no.” He could say “no” with perfect diction.

  “You know what?” May said, taking a huge ferocious bite of bread, “I don’t think I’ve tasted better chicken in my whole life. Ruby, this one tastes as good as Grandma’s devil’s-food cake. I think they’re improved when they”—she leaned over the table and spit the words out—“hang from their necks.”

  He was looking clear out the back door. She wanted to catch his eye, tack it up for a trophy.

  “What’s going on, Ma?” I shouted, banging my hand on the table. “How come you’re talking about this chicken like it’s Jesus H. Christ?”

  She stood up with all her theatrical flair. She had been dying for me to ask. She pointed at Ruby like she was the victim finally pointing out her assailant in the line-up.