Drowning Ruth Part 8

"I can be a help to you, then," Carl said softly. "The b.u.t.tons aren't right," he began, reaching a hesitant finger toward her, first at a place toward the middle of her stomach where the fabric was skewed, and then, thinking better of that, touching the stray corner of cloth that jutted too high around her neck.

"They've hidden my slippers again, as you can see," she said, holding her stocking feet out to prove it.

Seeing her long, thin feet and skinny ankles stuck out like that seemed almost worse, more embarra.s.singly intimate, than seeing the sliver of camisole through her misb.u.t.toned blouse. While Carl cast his eyes down and searched under the chairs for her slippers, Amanda discreetly redid her b.u.t.tons.

"That's better," he said, settling her cardigan over her shoulders. He wished he could smooth her hair a little while he stood there behind her, but he wasn't brave enough to touch it. And anyway, what would he do? He had no idea how women did what they did to their hair.

"Well, I don't want to keep you now," she said when he'd finished.

"Oh, you're not keeping me at all." He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs comfortably. It was nice to be there, away from Ruth not talking and Hilda talking so much. He could see why she wanted to stay.

"I know you've got to be getting home," she said, more firmly this time.

So he sighed and rose from his chair. He told her that he would be back the next day, unless he had to wait for the farrier, in which case he would come the next. When he was gone, she tipped her head back against the chair, so that the tears that filled her eyes would not spill over.

Amanda I told you to go back, Mattie. I told you that. I told you. Why won't you ever mind me?

You were trouble from the day you were born. You don't remember it, but I do. All that crying and crying in the night, so much crying that Mama and Papa couldn't stand ita"they put your cradle in with me. You don't remember, but I sang to you. I rubbed your back. I lifted you up and bounced you on my lap. I brought you into my bed and tucked your head under my chin, but still you couldn't rest. I fell asleep to your wailing, and it raged like a storm through my dreams. You wouldn't remember that.

And then that first summer you got quiet, so quiet, like a doll lying there in your crib, and fierce red spots bloomed all over your body. Papa made up the daybed for me in the back room downstairs. He forbade me to go upstairs where you and Mama were for fear of contagion, I know now, although I didn't then.

I tried to keep to a regular schedule, tried to wash my face and my teeth when I got up in the morning and before I went to bed at night. I wandered around the yard and the barn all day or laid my paper dolls out on the floor. Sometimes the hired girl remembered to make me a sandwich. Otherwise, at dinnertime I stood on a stool to reach the crackers down from the cupboard. I dipped the broken ones, the ones n.o.body would miss, in a jar of blackberry jam. Morning, noon, and night, I could hear Mama crooning beside your cradle.

One afternoon I must have fallen asleep because the hot sun slanting across my face woke me. My hair stuck in the jam smeared across my cheek. I felt exhausted, hot and hungry. And something was wrong. I could hear nothing, no sound at all from the room overhead.

I made my way up the stairs, one silent step at a time, ready to run down the moment I heard Mama's shoes on the landing or Papa's hand at the door. At the top of the stairs, I could see into the bedroom where you lay, all alone and still. I went in. I laid my hand on your tiny brow. It was as hot as a loaf right out of the oven.

And then Mama came at me. "Don't touch her! Don't you touch her! Get out of here this instant!"

I hardly recognized her, her hair flying every way, her shirtwaist stained, not the neat, pretty Mama I knew. I s.n.a.t.c.hed my hand away and ran out of the room, down the stairs, out the back door. I ran across the yard and into the woods. The brambles clawed my skin, but I clamped my teeth together and did not cry. The slim branches slapped against my cheeks, but I ran on. I ran until I came to the edge of the lake. The water was flat and green. It lay like a smooth path from where I stood to a burst of trees and rocks at its middle, the island. Out there, the sun fell full on lush leaves, so that the place glowed.

I wandered along the sh.o.r.e, catching my breath, keeping my eye on the island. Had I known how, I would have thrown myself into the water and swum to it. And then I came upon a boat, a small wooden rowboat, its robin's-egg blue paint nearly rubbed away. Its bow rested in the mud. Its stern floated free, so that even I, with my puny strength, could pry it loose from the sh.o.r.e.

I climbed in, picked up one of the oars, and used it as a pole to push myself into the deep water. And then I paddled away, away, to my island.

That was the first time I escaped to that place. I believed everything would be all right there, you see. I thought so then. I thought so later. But later I was wrong.

"Well, Carl, how was she?" Hilda asked, pa.s.sing him a bowl of pickled beets.

Carl shook his head. "Not so good, I think."

Hilda nodded. She took a large bite from her b.u.t.tered bread and then, with exaggerated daintiness, dabbed the crumbs from her lips with a corner of her napkin and smoothed some stray hairs behind her ear. Carl noticed for the first time a coquettish tilt to her head, and he cleared his throat nervously.

"Ruthie's behaving better, I noticed," he said.

"Oh, Ruth and I get along good nowadays, don't we, Ruth?" Hilda reached to pat Ruth's head with a stiff hand, but Ruth ducked her touch. "She's a good little helper," Hilda went on, pretending she'd only meant to retrieve a few peas that had rolled from the girl's plate onto the oilcloth. "I wouldn't be surprised if she's beginning to think I'm her mama."

She gave Carl a sort of dreamy smile that made him push his chair from the table and gulp the remainder of his coffee standing up. "Gotta take a ride into town. Running out of a" but he was out the door before he'd finished the sentence.

Ruth had stopped breaking things after the night she dropped a pocket watch over the railing at the top of the stairs.

"This was my papa's," her father had said to her, stroking the shattered face with his thumb, and then he covered his own face with his hands until Ruth was frightened and climbed onto his knee to pull those hands away.

She watched Hilda often now, quietly shadowing her at a distance of about five feet and copying her walk, the angle of her head, the weary gesture she used to push the hair off her forehead with the back of her hand. That afternoon she sat on the rug in Hilda's room, observing Hilda at her simple toilet.

"A little attention to appearance can make a big difference," Hilda said, eying Ruth's reflection in her mirror, while she patted cream on her flat cheeks with her fingertips. "Here," she said, taking from a drawer the corset she wore only on Sundays under her church clothes, "are your hands clean? Feel this."

Ruth ran one careful finger along the edge.

"Real Belgian lace," Hilda said. "See how fine it is? That's the highest quality you can buy.

"And this here is to make your face nice," she explained, taking a tiny pot of rouge and a red lipstick from the back of a drawer.

Once she'd shown the effect to Ruth and examined it herself in the mirror, she carefully wiped all traces of paint away before leaving the room.

"I invited some ladies," Carl said that evening as he stomped his feet on the back porch.

Hilda, standing guard to be sure he shed his muddy boots, narrowed her eyes and tried to peer behind him, as if she expected half a dozen women to be cl.u.s.tered on the lawn. "What are you talking about?"

"I thought you might be lonely way out here, so I invited some ladies over to the house next week," he said, as casually as he could manage. Avoiding her look, he turned to hang his jacket neatly on its hook. "Kind of a party, I guess."

"Carl, you didn't!" She blocked his way into the kitchen, her hands on her hips.

"What? Did I do something wrong? Wouldn't you like to have a little company?"

"I run all over kingdom come after that child. I break my back over the housework every day. And now you want me to have a party!"

"I just thought you'd like, you know, to see some people. Your mother had the ladies over every Thursday, I remember."

"Wednesday. And what do you expect me to do with these people I hardly know?"

"I don't know what ladies do." Carl shrugged. "Play cards, I guess. Drink coffee. Eat cake."

"Cake! You want me to bake? And there ain't hardly three matching cups in this house."

"Well," Carl said, slipping past her, "all right. I'll tell them tomorrow never mind coming."

"And then they'll think I can't manage company. No, the damage is done." She sighed heavily and returned to the stove where she vigorously stirred with a wooden spoon a substance that had begun to explode in angry bubbles.

Throughout that week she sent Carl on at least one trip to town a day to buy special items like fresh playing cards and cute little pads of paper and quarter length pencils from Baecke's, and nuts and dried fruit and sugar in cubes from Mr. Pucci. She hired Thekla Manigold, one of Mary Louise's younger sisters, to help out for the afternoon and directed Rudy to burrow through the attic for card tables. For three evenings in a row, supper conversation consisted primarily of Hilda's debate with herself over buying a fancy layer cake with pink and yellow roses from Klein's or baking her own much-admired-in-Tomahawk stollen. She even sewed one of her best handkerchiefs to a ribbon to make Ruth a tiny ap.r.o.n and made her practice walking extra carefully around the room, stopping before each chair to offer the cream pitcher and sugar bowl on a silver tray.

"If this is a nice party," she told Ruth, "I wouldn't be surprised if we wanted to start a club. My mother and I belonged to three card clubs in Tomahawk, you know.

"Carl," Hilda said, the evening before the event, "you'll come in, won't you?" She kept her eyes on the applesauce she was spooning onto her plate. "Just for a half hour or so, twenty minutes. I know everyone'd want to see you. And Ruth's been working so hard on the serving," she added.

Carl looked at his daughter. She hadn't caused any trouble for weeks, months even, but still she wouldn't speak. He wished she would cause troublea"there was at least some noise, some expression in thata"but what could he do? You couldn't make a child talk. You couldn't even make her break things.

He made a show of chewing his meat, stalling for time. He knew Hilda wanted him for her own sake, not for Ruth's, but what was half an hour? Surely he could be gallant for that little time to please her. She was taking care of his daughter, after all, as well as she knew how. And if that wasn't very well, he realized it wasn't altogether her fault. He'd known his cousin as a child in Tomahawk, and he reminded himself that she could hardly have helped growing into the hard and unpleasant woman she'd becomea"she'd almost been born that way. "All right, I'll come in," he said to Hilda. "What time?"

"Oh, let's say four o'clock." Hilda beamed. "Give people time to settle down."

The next morning Hilda hurried everyone through breakfast. By dinnertime the stollen was frosted, the cushions plumped, the clean antimaca.s.sars smoothed, and the teaspoons polished and examined for fingerprints. To save time and to keep the kitchen clean, she'd made only cold sandwiches for the noon meal.

"I know you have better things to do than sit around here waiting for a bunch of hens," she said when Carl and Rudy seemed inclined to linger over their coffee. They drained their cups dutifully and pushed their chairs back.

"You're not forgetting?" Hilda said to Carl at the door. "And you'll put on a clean shirt?"

"I'm not forgetting," he a.s.sured her, while he swung Ruth into the air once or twice. He gave the girl a little push between the shoulders to send her on her way. "You be good, now."

Hilda went into the bathroom in her slip, and Ruth watched her sponge soap and water under her arms and around her neck. She watched Hilda's hair, charged with one hundred strokes, rise into the air as it reached for the brush and then, under Hilda's artful fingers, coil like a sweet roll behind the woman's head. Wedged between the wardrobe and the wall, Ruth watched Hilda take her corset from the wardrobe, slide her arms through the straps, pucker her lips and blow, until she'd squeezed all the air from her lungs. Her fingers strained to pull the sides together over her waist and ribs. One, two, three hooks done. She took a small, shallow breath and pushed even that air out again. Four. And then they heard a ripping sound. Hilda stopped breathing. The sound ceased. She breathed again, and there it was. One of the seams was giving way.

Quickly, Hilda loosened the hooks to ease the strain. "No, no, no, don't let this happen," she whispered.

But it had happened. The damage was done. Up one side was a long tear and there was no time to repair it. She sank to the bed and sat for a moment or two, her head bowed. Then she straightened her shoulders, slipped the corset off her arms and dropped it on the bed.

"It's a lucky thing," she said to Ruth, "I listened to my mama and spent my money on quality when I bought this dress. It fits fine even without a foundation, don't you think?" She turned sideways in front of the mirror, sucked her stomach in and smoothed the fabric over it. "It'll have to do," she said. "No one's wearing those bulky things anyway nowadays. I heard Mrs. Lindgren saying so just the other week."

Hilda leaned close to the mirror and examined her face. "Just the teeniest dot of color," she declared, pressing her finger into the rouge pot and then ma.s.saging the paint in a little circle into each pasty cheek.

"Well?" she said, turning toward Ruth, her cheeks a dramatic scarlet from the rough rubbing. "How do I look?"

Ruth pressed her palms to her own rosy face.

Hilda frowned. "I bet you think you're something," she said. "What's that on your dress? Mustard? Well, you can't wear that now. Hurry up. I don't have all day."

But there was still plenty of time, and when Thekla arrived, half an hour before the guests were due, Hilda and Ruth were ready and waiting, sitting at the kitchen table, so as not to muss the cushions in the front room.

At three-twenty Clara Gutenkunst and Ida Brummer knocked at the door, and soon after that the rest of the ladies appeared, so that by three-thirty, the appointed hour, the entire party was a.s.sembled. Thekla, carrying coats, ran lightly up and down the stairs, and Hilda ushered the ladies in and sat them down around the room. There was to be some general conversation before they got down to the cards, and then, after the first hand, refreshments.

It was a little awkward at the very first, as such things are, with the women uncertain about whether they ought to be addressing every comment to the room at large or only to the one or two seated nearby. Still, this quickly sorted itself out, and as they were all well acquainted, they didn't lack for conversation, especially since one particular topic held great interest for nearly all of them.

Although some asked quite forward questions and craned their necks to take in as much of the house as possible, and others only waited, smiling politely, to hear Hilda's answers, there was hardly a one who was not morbidly curious to see what had become of the place "after all the tragedy this house has seen," and to hear about Amanda. Of course, one had to be delicate. This was, after all, her own house. And then there was Mary Louise to considera"since "they were such friends." Nevertheless pockets of gossip buzzed here and there, all around the room: "I understand she cut off all her hair." "They needed five men to drag her out of the house." "Tried to drown the little girl, that's what I heard." "Oh, that poor motherless child!"

Abruptly and rather loudly Hilda said, "Shall we play cards?" She was already snapping the legs of one of the folding tables into place.

"Oh, yes. Let's play," Mary Louise seconded.

"How would you like us to sit?" asked Leota Prunerstorfen, and those who had been about to pull chairs to the tables any old way hesitated.

"Oh," said Hilda, and looked blankly around the expectant group. "I hadn't really thought."

"I think Hattie might head up the first table, don't you, Hilda?" Mary Louise said, and Hattie Jensen, one of the eldest women there and wife of the pastor, nodded and graciously stepped to her accustomed place. "And then Dolly, the second. And Albertina over here, I think." And she went on, as she knew Amanda would have liked, ably sorting the women into two congenial groups, as if she were arranging flowers.

Hilda withheld the stiff packs of new cards until everyone was seated and then ceremoniously handed one to Hattie Jensen and brought the other to her own table. They were well into their first hand when, above the noise, the kitchen door opened and closed.

"Just a moment," Hilda said, her cheeks suddenly flushed, and she left her place at the table and hurried into the kitchen.

Rudy had come in with Carl and stood awkwardly in the doorway, holding his hat. Softly, shyly, when Hilda was close, he said, "You look very pretty."

Hilda looked at him severely and then turned away to take Carl's arm and draw him with her into the front room. "You all know Carl, of course," she sang out with unnatural gaiety that made the other women glance at one another over their cards. A murmur of "how d'ye dos" rose from the two tables. With his diffident manner, Carl was charming, they all agreed, and they knew he'd been bravely wounded in the war, although Clara and Ida remembered that he'd only been a meatpacker when poor Mathilda married him.

"You'll stay for refreshments, won't you, Carl? Why don't we have them now?" Hilda suggested, which made Hattie Jensen raise her eyebrows, for they were in the middle of a hand, and she seemed likely to win.

Hilda went to the kitchen door. "Thekla, we're ready for our coffee."

"Sure," the girl said, "I'll bring it right in." She closed her magazine and went to the icebox for the cream.

"Where's Ruth?" Hilda looked around the kitchen and leaned down to peer under the sink. "I thought she was in here with you."

"Now that you say it," Thekla said, turning in an ineffectual circle to scan the room, "I haven't seen her for quite a while."

"Well, you oughta been watching her. Find her when you've got the coffee out and make sure her ap.r.o.n's on straight. She's probably filthy dirty by now."

When Hilda rejoined her guests, she was smiling, but she darted anxious glances toward the door until Thekla had safely deposited all the coffee cups and the two coffeepots on the side table.

"Stollen in just a minute," Hilda announced and began pouring out. "Cream and sugar, Mrs. Jensen?"

Leota Prunerstorfen, who didn't care for coffee and was hoping a pot of tea might also appear from the kitchen, saw Ruth first. "Ruth Neumann, what the d.i.c.kens have you got on?"

Then everyone had to look at the little girl standing in the doorway, proudly holding the tray of sugar and cream before her. Pins stuck in all directions out of her hair; her cheeks were smeared a brilliant red, and her little arms were stuck through the straps of some large, lace-trimmed pink garment that hung down to her ankles.

"Why, she's wearing a corset!" Leota exclaimed, and then clapped her hand over her mouth, shocked at her own words.

Best, Carl thought, to act as if this were a joke, and he began to smile, looking at Ruth. Now that she did not quite look like the little girl he knew, he suddenly recognized Mathilda's playfulness in her, and the idea made him sad, but also comforted, in fact, almost happy. It was the first time since her death that he'd thought of his wife and felt happy.

Carefully, Hilda set the cup she was holding down on the tray. And then, looking neither right nor left, not stopping for a coat, she walked through the room and out the front door into the chilly April afternoon.

Mary Louise had lifted Ruth under the arms. "Let's get you cleaned up," she said, and carried her upstairs.

"We ought to be going," Hattie Jensen said, pushing her chair away from the table decisively, and that galvanized the group. They got up and someone thought to send Thekla for the coats, and to everyone's relief there was much noise and confusion in sorting out whose was whose.

"She'll get over it," Ida Brummer said to Carl.

"Yes," Dolly Brennan said, giving him a motherly pat on the shoulder, "by suppertime she'll be right as rain again, you'll see."

But they didn't know Hilda. At dawn the next morning she was waiting in the kitchen with her bags packed. "My train leaves at five past seven."

"But who'll take care of Ruth?" Carl asked helplessly.

Hilda looked at him scornfully. "She's the Devil's child," she said. "Let him take care of her."

The sun was warm by the time Carl returned from the station, though the air still whispered of winter. While he collected the eggs and slopped the pigs, Ruth drew patterns with a stick in the mud outside the pigpen. When the animals were fed, Carl lifted Ruth out of the dirt, intending to carry her in. She shrieked and clutched the fencepost, straining away from him with all of her strength. Her boots left muddy streaks on his trousers and she'd soiled herself; he could smell it. Five years old and no better than an animal! He kicked the fence in frustration.

"Then stay there!" He let her slither down his leg and drop back in the muck. He stalked off, walking as fast as his bad leg would allow, and didn't look back until he was inside the house. Then, from the kitchen window, he watched her as he made his coffee. She had thrown away her stick and was using the heel of her hand now to push ditches in the dirt and then the flat of her palm to wipe them smooth again.

The sun beat through the gla.s.s, and the yellow kitchen clock ticked thickly over his head. He opened the window, and Ruth glanced up for a moment, startled. She seemed surprised to see the house, to see the window with him in it. She frowned and lowered her eyes again quickly as if she hadn't meant to look.

What the h.e.l.l was he supposed to do with her? The cat jumped up on the counter and rubbed its back against his elbow. He lifted his coffee cup and swallowed the dregs, rinsed it and left it on the drainboard. He moved toward the door but turned back again. He wiped the cup with one of his shirttails and placed it gently upside down in the cupboard.