Drowning Ruth Part 3

"The trip's worn him out," he said to Amanda. "Give him a couple of days. He'll be better."

"Up and about in no time," Amanda said.

Amanda It was obvious right from the start that he wasn't going to be able to take care of Ruth. She didn't take to him, for one thing. I could see that right off. And he made no effort, no effort at all. He was just as I'd expected.

Mathilda and Carl married in December, only six months after they'd met, a strange time for a wedding, people said with knowing smiles, and they were right, although they knew nothing. It never would have happened so fast if our father had been himself, if our mother had not been ill. Rumors sprang up like prairie fires, but I beat them down. People ought to have known by then that Mattie was a good girl, only impatient.

Carl was nothing special, though, as far as I could see. He took Mathilda to all the dances, and I have to admit he was a stylish dancer, but he couldn't say two words unless the subject was horses, and he didn't have a penny saved. "You don't get married for a dance partner," I told Mattie, but my sister was rash and stubborn. She wouldn't take advice from me. What did I know about why people got married?

My mother was too ill to manage the ceremony, so I helped her into her pink bed jacket, and she waited, propped against the pillows, for the newly married couple to come to her.

"Look at these flowers Carl gave me Mama," Mathilda said, pushing the sheaf of forced lilies so close under our mother's nose that she drew her head back in alarm. "Isn't he something to get flowers like these in December?" She held the lilies before her, her elbow crooked gracefully to support their heads, posing as the bride. "Amanda," she said to me, "run down and get a vase."

Mama tried to say something. She clenched and unclenched the fingers of her good hand and worked her mouth around some incoherent syllables. Finally she stretched her hand toward us. I took it.

"What is it, Mama? What do you want?"

But she shook her head and pulled her hand away. She reached for Carl. She meant for him to take her hand.

"Run down and get a vase, Amanda," Mathilda said again. "I want to leave the flowers in here for Mama."

On my way out of the room, I paused at the door to look back. What a pretty picture they made. Mathilda had pa.s.sed the lilies to Carl, and he stood holding them for her, while he told my father how Frenchie had favored her right foreleg on the trip from town. Beside him, Mathilda, with the ringlets I'd spent hours curling with hot irons that morning falling around her face, bent to arrange her own silk scarf around our mother's throat. Apparently I hadn't dressed her warmly enough.

I can't explain what happened next. I'm usually so careful, you see, especially with Mama's crystal. She was enormously proud of those piecesa"the eleven goblets, the water pitcher, and the vase with its fluted edge. She very seldom used them. And how I wish I hadn't thought to use the vase that day, but it seemed so perfect for this special occasion.

I planted the feet of the stool firmly, so that all four were steady, and up I climbed, until I stood on the top, and even then I had to stretch, go up on my toes a little, reach with my fingers. I had the vase securely in my hands. I know I did. But then, somehow, it was gone. I was holding nothing and with a crash that makes me sick even to think of it now, the vase hit the floor.

They came running then, Mathilda and Carl and our father down the stairs, Rudy from the kitchen, and I stood above them on the stool and stared at my faithless fingers. I hoped, I think, that there would be blood, that I would have some hurt to excuse what I'd done, but there was none, only the points of gla.s.s spread across the floor.

Carl began to pick up the pieces, asking if we had any glue, and Mathilda bent to help him. But I went to get the broom and pushed them aside. It was ruined. And the sooner we all realized that, the better.

From his bed, Carl watched through the kitchen doorway as Ruth ate her bacon and turnips. He spoke once, asking her in a false, jovial voice if she liked turnips. He'd never liked them himself, he explained, going on too long, listening to his own voice as if to a stranger's. Ruth didn't answer. Instead, she turned onto her stomach and slithered down from her chair, crossed the room and shut the door between them.

"This house is so noisy," she said.

Amanda scolded Ruth and hurried to open the door again, but it was funny, hearing her own words in the little girl's mouth like that. She had to smile.

"Say good night to your daddy, Ruth," Amanda said when the table was cleared. And when the child did not, as they both knew she wouldn't, Carl saw Amanda smile again with satisfaction, although she lowered her head to hide it.

He listened to Ruth's steady little footfalls, two to a stair, and then to the creaks of the floorboards, the shrieks of the bureau drawers, and then he heard sobbing, a sound surprisingly different from the thin, penetrating cry he remembered rising from Ruth when she was an infant. Poor thing, with no mother to comfort her, afraid of the dark, he thought at first, but the irritating sound went on, and he pulled the pillow tight around his ears. Why didn't Amanda do something to stop it? And then he realized that Ruth was not crying at all, but laughing.

"Again," she shouted. "Again!"

Amanda was upstairs a long while. He had almost fallen asleep by the time she came down and began to wash the dishes.

"I shouldn't have let her get so wound up," she said. "She's just like Mathilda that way, never wanting to go to sleep."

Carl didn't remember that about Mathilda. He remembered watching her dream in the early mornings, the way she burrowed into the blankets, so that only the top of her head stuck out, the way she flung her arm around him and held him tight without knowing she did so. But Amanda was probably right. She'd lived with her sister for almost twenty years, whereas he'd only been her husband for three, and for more than one of those they'd not even been in the same country.

Amanda moved expertly about her kitchen, washing her dishes, putting things away, and Carl was reminded that he didn't know where things belonged.

"Maybe Ruth and I should move back out to the island," he suggested.

"That's hardly practical."

"I guess you're right."

Amanda shook out her dishcloth with a snap. "We'll have you on your feet in no time."

"Sure," he said, making an effort to sound hearty, to behave as if everything would be just fine very soon. "I'll be ready to work by planting."

Amanda blew out the lamp and the kitchen went black.

"We'll see," she said from the darkness.

He listened to her steps, heavy on the stairs, and the floor creaking in her room, and finally even the mattress taking her in. And then he could hear only the wind worrying the shingles and the windowpanes.

Amanda After Mathilda and Carl were married, I had to sleep in the small room off the kitchen. All winter I could hear their whispering and laughing in the night. I could hear their bed moving.

Then they needed a house all to themselves, a house on my island, that's what Mathilda proposed. All spring and summer they worked on it, but every day they rowed back to the farm, Carl to help my father and Mathilda to visit our mother, who was much recovered by then, and to help do the ch.o.r.es around the house. There was no longer any need for me at all. The university had accepted my application to nursing school, and I began to pack my trunk.

I was certainly something the day I waited on the platform in my new hat, the whole family there to see me off. They gave me presentsa"a silver pen from my parents, a red moroccan leather notebook from Mathilda and a bluebird house from Carl, which surprised me, because I did like birds, but you wouldn't think a boy would notice something like that. I thanked him, of course. I admired the fine workmanship and the cunning shingles set in the roof, the little shutters around the entrance, that made it look like a real house. But how did he think I'd be able to carry such a thing all the way to Madison? Where did he expect me to put it when I got there? I wouldn't have any split-rail fence to hang it on. I'd be lucky if I had a window to call my own.

"I'll keep it for you," Mathilda said.

They stood on the platform as the train pulled away, all of them waving but my sister, whose hands were full.

I'm not blaming them, a married couple needs a place to live, after all. Still, if they'd not built their house on my island, Mathilda would not have drowned. If you look at it one way, it's as simple as that.

Carl didn't dream of Mathilda often, although he tried. He thought about her when he lay in bed, trying to make her appear in his sleep. Sometimes he thought about the day they'd met, how he'd taken her on the roller coaster and how she'd loved it. She wanted to ride again and again, and he'd thanked G.o.d that he had enough money to treat her over and over. He'd discovered after the first ride that he disliked the roller coaster himselfa"the sudden drops made him feel sick to his stomacha"but it was worth it to have her clinging to his arm, to listen to her happy screams, to feel her smooth hair against his face. He would have ridden with her all afternoon had her sister, waiting grimly at the bottom, their picnic basket over her arm, not finally grown impatient.

"Enough's enough. You always have to go too far," Amanda had said and, wrapping her fingers tightly around Mathilda's wrist, she dragged her off, almost before he was able to say goodbye. When Mathilda turned to wave at him with her free hand before the crowd closed behind them, he congratulated himself for having the foresight an hour earlier to have asked her where she lived.

That was what he thought about before he fell asleep, but his dreams, as usual, wouldn't be steered. They took him far from Mathilda, back to France where the gray smoke mingled with the gray fog, into the foxhole where he had been resting with Sims and McKinley, two fellows from his squad, before a blast tossed him, limbs twisted in every direction, onto the half-frozen mud like a sack of potatoes. He remembered leaving the ground but not returning to it.

He'd opened his eyes at the sound of groaning. It was Pete McKinley, about twenty feet away, struggling to pick himself up. Between them, Henny Sims lay in a heap, unmoving. Carl was about to call to McKinley when he saw the man stiffen, an odd, horrified look on his face. He followed McKinley's gaze to the rim of the foxhole. Three Huns were staring down at them, bayonets affixed.

His body started involuntarily, but the Germans didn't even glance his way. They must have a.s.sumed he was dead, or at least still unconscious. Already they were clambering into the foxhole, moving toward McKinley, who'd managed to get to his knees. One of them stopped where Sims was heaped and used his bayonet to roll him onto his back. There was something wrong with Sims, Carl could see. Something funny about his head. " Tot," the Heinie said, and Carl realized that half of Henny's head was missing.

"My gun," Carl thought, and he believed he was reaching for it, believed even that he was standing, ready to fire it into their backs, but it was only an illusion. His body stayed frozen, stuck to the earth.

And then red. That was how this dream that wasn't a dream always ended, with red that washed everything else away.

It was still dark when the door slammed, and Amanda came in, cheeks pink, feet stamping, the milking done.

"Ready for breakfast?" she asked, sticking her head around his door. Cold clouded around her, and she blew on her fingertips.

Ruthie was already at the table by the time he'd made his way into the kitchen and collapsed on a chair. Like a dog guarding its food, she kept her eyes on Carl as she scooped cornflakes into her mouth, her fist clutched awkwardly around her spoon. Amanda cracked eggs smartly against the edge of a blue enamel bowl.

"If you want to visit her grave first thing, Rudy'll take you," she said. "Ruth is all set to go along, aren't you, Ruthie?" She wiped the girl's face with a dishrag and lifted her down from her chair.

The thought startled him. He realized he'd been half imagining Mathilda away somewhere, visiting a cousin, or perhaps living in the island house. He was almost expecting her to return.

"I really don't think I'm up to it."

"Oh, but, Carl," she reproached him, "you really should. What will people think? And here," she added, stepping out to the porch and coming back with a handful of branches studded with red berries. "I thought you might want to take these. I know they aren't really flowers, but you can't be choosy this time of year."

Ruth stood on her tiptoes and reached her arms high. "Pretty," she said, "pretty."

"No, no, honey. These aren't for you. See, they've got thorns." She p.r.i.c.ked her finger and a red bead of blood appeared. She held it up for Ruth to see as if it were a prize.

Ruth "Ho," he said, and Frenchie stopped. I saw over the wall where all the stones were.

"Hup," Rudy said, and I was in the air, and then I was on the snow.

The snow was hard, like crackers. There were no footprints on it. I was careful. I slid my feet. I tried not to let the snow break. The man that was my daddy let me. He didn't make me hurry. He punched the snow with his canes. Punch, step. Punch, step. I wished I had a cane.

We went past the mean gray stones and the stone that was sleeping and the one with the boat. I knew the way. Aunt Mandy and I had been here lots of times. We went up the hill, then down the other side. We went to the stone that said my mama's name. It had shiny ice all over it.

He said, "Mathilda," and I knew he meant my mama.

I looked behind the stone like I always did. Aunt Mandy said she was there, too, but I never saw her.

"Where is she?" Aunt Mandy would never tell me, but maybe he would.

"In heaven," he said, that same old answer that wasn't any good to me. And he was crying.

I cried then, too, because he was crying. "Then why don't we go there and get her?"

Heaven was the place where we lived with Aunt Mandy, before my mama never came back.

"Someday you will," he said, "but not for a very long time."

I put my hand on the slippery ice stone. I slid my mitten over it, back and forth. I waited for him to say better get home. But he just stayed kneeling in the snow.

"Why did she go to heaven?"

"She drowned, Ruth. She went under the water and she couldn't get back up."

So then I knew that I was right. Heaven was the place where we had lived, because that was where the water was.

"She drowned me too," I said. "The baby was crying and crying."

"What baby?"

"The ice baby. When Aunt Mandy didn't wait for us."

"What are you talking about? When didn't Amanda wait for you?"

"When I drowned."

He was crying and he was smiling. "Don't worry, Ruth." He wiped the crying off his face and put his hand on my head. "You didn't drown. You're right here with me."

I was here, but he wasn't there. So how did he know?

When Carl returned with Ruth from the churchyard, he got back into bed and stayed there. Amanda opened the curtains each morning, registering her disapproval with every yank on the fabric.

"Ready?" she asked, but she didn't mean it as a question.

Surprisingly, after the first few times, he was ready. Twice a day, morning and evening, she unceremoniously threw back the blankets, exposing him to the chilly air, and scrubbed his wounded leg with brisk efficiency. Then she bent the leg, twisted it, pushed and prodded it with her long, thin fingers, until he yelped in pain.

"Oh, for pity's sake," she said, "bite on a pillow if you must make that noise. We can't have you scaring Ruth." And as she wrapped honey-covered cloths around the hole, she warned him, "I'll have to keep this up until you start doing for yourself."

He nodded and promised to try, but he had no interest in making himself better. It was all he could do to sit in a chair and eat the coddled eggs and soup she brought him, while she pounded his pillows into fluffiness and changed his sheets, snapping the clean linen once or twice in the air, before she allowed it to settle around the mattress.

She scared him. He knew she disapproved of him, that she hadn't thought him good enough for her sister. He'd tried to woo her with the birdhouse, but it hadn't worked, and Mattie had cried the day she'd had to carry it back home from the train. He knew she didn't want to talk about how Mathilda had died, but the pain in his leg made him angry and bold.

"Amanda," he said one night when she came in with his medicine, "why were you living on the island?"

She looked straight at him with her hard, blue eyes. "Why, Carl, that was your home. Of course, that was where Mattie wanted to be. Did you take your medicine?"

"Yes. But why did she leave it, then? Where did she go?" Carl pushed himself up, so he was sitting tall against the pillows. "You know what I don't understand," he continued, without pausing to let Amanda answer, "why she would've left Ruth. Why would she have left Ruth in the house at night alone?"

"Ruth wasn't alone, Carl. She was with me." Amanda went to the window and stood with her back to him, her form reflected in the dark gla.s.s. "Besides, you know how reckless she was, Carl. Mattie was always taking chances, always doing things she shouldn't have done, things I told her not to do. She probably thought it was a fine night for skating and didn't think to test the ice. That would be just like her." She pulled the curtains closed and turned to face him.

"Was she wearing her skates, then? When they found her?"

An exasperated sound escaped Amanda's lips and she swept her hand through the air. "She's dead, Carl. What does it matter?"

"But a I loved her," was all he could think to say. "Why can't I know?" He knew he sounded like a little boy, but he couldn't help himself.

"If you loved her, you should understand. Love makes you do things and afterward you wish a" Her face was so hard and bitter, it scared Carl and made him clench the blanket to his chest. "But then it's too late. You can only be sorry." Her mood changed, and she patted his feet, briskly, while he forced himself to hold them steady under her hand. "I've got something I'll bet you'd like to see."

She went out of the room, but before he could relax, she was back. "Here," she said, opening a sc.r.a.pbook on his lap, where it pressed against his sore leg. "Look. It was in the newspaper. This should tell you what you want to know."

She stopped at the door on her way out. "Carl," she said, "I know you're sorry you left her." And then she left him alone.

The clippings seemed to Carl to have nothing to do with his Mathilda. They told him nothing that mattered, nothing that explained. Mathilda disappearing in the nighta"it didn't make sense to him. And what did Amanda mean about his being sorry and people doing things for love? Had Mathilda done something desperate because he'd gone? She'd begged him to stay, but wasn't that what every wife would do, and they didn't all drown. Near what he now knew was the end of her life, he hadn't gotten the letters from her he'd expected, but that was the Army's fault, wasn't it? No, he couldn't imagine Mathilda drowning herself for love of him. He'd have to ask Amanda more questions, someday when she was in a better mood and when he felt stronger. Perhaps, he mused sleepily, it had been some other woman they'd found frozen. And maybe tomorrow or the next day or the day after that Mathilda would come back.

She would stand right there in the doorway, looking a how would she look? He'd been away from her so long, already his memory had lost the range of her expressions. He could summon her only in a few guisesa"glimpses of her face that for no particular reason had stuck in his mind. He flipped backward through the alb.u.ma"Mathilda bent over baby Ruth with an adoring smile; Mathilda both proud and amused, posing with her ankles neatly crossed for their wedding portrait; Mattie, her lank hair escaping her braids, third from the left in a grade school photograph; baby Mattie on her father's lap. He looked through a clutch of pictures no one had bothered to mount that had been pinched between the pages and the back cover. In one, Mattie and Amanda sat on the edge of the porch. Mattie was looking away from the camera, her eyes narrowed like a cat's, as if she were trying to make out some form in the distance. Carl pretended she was gazing beyond the border of the photograph at him.

He wouldn't have called her reckless. Impulsive, maybe. Willful, certainly. And decisive. He remembered her haste to marry, once she'd accepted his proposal. But she was never crazy. He couldn't imagine her wandering onto thin ice in the middle of the night. But as he closed the book, Carl reminded himself that in the last couple years he'd seen people do many things he could never have imagined. Sometimes there was no knowing what people would do. She was gone anyway. He wouldn't see her again. Burying his head in his pillow, Carl waited for his dream.

Carl's wound interested Amanda. It was the kind she hadn't seen often at the hospital, the kind that would get better despite the infections that had slowed its healing. She hadn't expected that he wouldn't want to improve, but it didn't matter much. His body went on about its business all the same, oozing its cleansing pus and growing its scars. He didn't have any say in the matter.

During the day Ruth nosed around the door of Carl's room, curious as a cat. Often, when he opened his eyes, he would see her face pressed to the crack between the door and the doorframe, staring at him. When she was sure he'd seen her, she scurried away.

She began to bring him bits from outside. She set them on the end of the bed when she thought he was sleeping: an oak gall, three pine cones, a railroad spike, a cardinal's feather. She lured him out.