Ruby & Roland

by Faith Sullivan

  “A lot of life.”

  If our strange little conversation was diverting her from pain and humiliation, I would linger over details, like Mrs. Bullfinch and Professor Cromwell, her singing, his inventions. She smiled at Mrs. Bullfinch and the commercial travelers. “Mr. Cromwell sounds like a lovely man,” she said. “He’ll go far.” She nodded to herself.

  I didn’t want her comparing him with Roland, to Roland’s disadvantage, so I hurried on. “Aunt Bertha was another story.” I described the lace curtains, washed, starched, and stretched, spring and fall, and how I mustn’t touch them because my hands were either damp or dirty.

  “She hated deep summer because southern Illinois is humid then, and the curtains went limp. If you touched them, they felt sticky. I think the starch had sugar in it. In secret, I crunched them in my fists, even though I didn’t like the way they felt. I just had to because she didn’t want me to. If she’d been kind, I would never have touched them. Do you understand?”

  She nodded and attempted to rearrange herself on the bed. The heat in the second floor room was oppressive and, combined with the casts, would be an increasing aggravation. I recalled one July when Mrs. Bullfinch had tripped on the porch steps and fallen.

  “Can I help?”

  She shook her head.

  “What would you like for lunch?”

  “I won’t be hungry.”

  “I’ll see what’s in the icebox.”

  As I started from the room, she said, “Thank you, Ruby. You’re a kind person.”

  Oh, Dora.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Around ten a.m. that morning, Emma showed up at the back door, holding down her straw hat against the hot west wind that swept grit from the farmyard into her hair and eyes. “I’ve got a beef roast and vegetables on the stove,” she said, collapsing onto a kitchen chair and fanning herself with the hat. “When they’re ready, I’ll fetch ’em across.”

  “You’ve got enough on your hands over there,” I said. “I can find something here.”

  “And you’ve got enough on your hands here,” she said, laughing. “How is she?”

  I sat down. “I don’t know. She’s in pain, but she’s quiet, humiliated. It’s … it’s like a strange calm between storms. Eerie.”

  Emma stood and crossed to the stove to lay a hand on the cold coffeepot. She grabbed a tin mug and filled it from the bucket beside the kitchen pump. After first drinking half the water in the mug, she soaked a handkerchief in what remained and wiped her face. “That’s better.” Hanging the handkerchief over the back of a chair to dry, she asked, “Did she say anything to you about that business?” Emma stretched her long arm toward the barn.

  “No. She asked who I was, where I came from.” I reheated the coffee yet again. “Will you say hello while you’re here?”

  “Tomorrow. Today, she’s gonna be too embarrassed. She knows I never approved of the marriage. And now, this.” Emma studied her hands, the nails split and broken, the knuckles red.

  “I mean, I never said anything to her,” Emma went on, “but she knew. She was the kinda girl who never had anything in her head but whether the sash on her dress matched the ribbon in her hair. I used to tell Henry the only reason she walked downtown was to remind folks how pretty she was.

  “And a’course, when Roland came to town, he was every bit as pretty as she was. I think she set her cap for him the minute he stepped off the train.”

  I poured the reheated coffee into her mug and fetched a clean spoon and the cream pitcher.

  Emma nodded her thanks, stirred the coffee, and tasted it. “Who made this?”

  “Roland.”

  She smiled. “Just the way I like it. You could stand a brick on it.” She was silent for a minute, then: “I don’t dislike her. I just don’t like her. She was never good enough for Roland. If he loses the farm, I’ll always blame her.”

  “How did he come by the farm?” I asked, pouring myself a cup and sitting across from Emma.

  “Old Mr. Allen, his dad’s older brother, had homesteaded it. But he was never in real good health. Bad lungs. Roland was sent to help out, but then the uncle passed on and left it to him, and it came with a passel of debts. Machinery and such. Still, Roland’s half-killed himself holding on, bless his heart.”

  She sighed, leaning back and closing her eyes. “That one,” she said, tilting her head to indicate Dora, “is like some falderal piece of jewelry. Pretty, but not good for much.” She spooned more sugar into her coffee. “She tried to play house when she came out to the farm, but she doesn’t know how.”

  “Good thing Moses hangs on.”

  “Stays on out of the goodness of his heart. I think Mrs. Hartwell would like to take him in, but he worries about Roland.” She sighed again. “What’s to be done?” The persistent question.

  I thought I knew her well enough to ask, “Roland’s like your son, isn’t he?”

  She teared up, nodding fiercely and reaching for the drying handkerchief. “Damn her.” Rising, she said, “I’d best be going.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I told her.

  “Don’t worry, little girl. I’ll be fine.” Grabbing her hat, she was gone.

  After the men had eaten their midday meal, I went outside to cut more wildflowers for Dora’s tray. A merciless sun painted wet mirages on surfaces where there was neither dew nor rain. Perspiration ran down my legs and back, making them itch. My eyes burned from salt oozing out of my hairline. I wiped my legs with my petticoat, my forehead with my apron. I loved sun and heat, but people were meant to put their feet up on a chaise and drink iced tea on days like this one.

  Back in Beardsley, Serena spent the muggy southern Illinois mornings attending summer classes at the college. While she studied Beowulf or Shakespeare’s tragedies, I toted a basket of books and puzzles next door to Mrs. Bullfinch’s backyard to occupy myself.

  But when Serena returned at noon, she cobbled together lunch from thick slices of bread with salami and sliced radishes or cheese and pickles, carrying the sandwiches into the yard, along with glasses of iced tea from the big pitcher in the icebox.

  Then Serena sat back on a ratty old rattan chaise while I crossed my legs Indian-style on the quilt beside her. And when we had eaten every crumb and drunk every drop of iced tea, Serena read to me from whatever she’d been studying that morning. In the middle of the reading, we would fall asleep in the palmy, buzzing shade.

  When I carried up the tray with a cup of Emma’s beef broth and toast, Dora had thrown off the top sheet and was fanning herself with a paper fan from the Seed and Feed store.

  “I’m not hungry,” she said. Little wonder with the heat, but I was determined to see her well. If I’d been the cause of her accident, I wasn’t going to be the cause of her wasting.

  Unlike earlier, Dora was remote now, turning her head away and peering at me askance. As I helped her to drink the broth, she asked, with some petulance, “Where’d this come from?” If I were caught in a miasma of heat, pain, and humiliation, I supposed I’d be petulant too.

  “Emma brought it over. She also brought a beef roast for the men.”

  “I’ve had better broth.”

  “Have you? When was that?” I didn’t like her slurring Emma.

  Dora shrugged. Afterward, I helped her with the bedpan and was thankful for Emma’s rubber pad which kept the spillage from wetting the bottom sheet. Still, for Dora, the whole maneuver was painful, awkward, and embarrassing, especially in front of a strange girl.

  “Tomorrow you’ll be able to use the commode,” I told her.

  “Who said?”

  “Dr. White.”

  “We’ll see,” she peeved.

  Though shaded by the rock elm outside the window, the bedroom was nevertheless stifling. We swam in our own staleness. I supposed that Dora was perspiring beneath the casts. That would be torture.

  “Does your leg itch?” I asked. “Would you like me to bring up a spirea switch? You could scratch
it under the cast.”

  “Suit yourself,” she snapped. Suit yourself. All right, I won’t bring one, then, and you can stew in your own juices.

  I carried the damp rubber pad downstairs and returned for the tray, setting the jar of daisies beside the bed. “I have to do the dishes and clean up the kitchen now,” I told her, “but if you’d like company later, I’ll come up.”

  “I’ll call if I want you.” She tried to turn onto her side, away from me, but was unsuccessful. Instead, she pulled the sheet up, a sheet she didn’t need, and set her face to the wall.

  With my chores out of the way, I wandered outside again and around the scruffy, unkempt yard. At the southwest corner of the house, someone had planted vegetables. Moses? Bedraggled and dusty, they were parched, so I began hauling buckets of water from the trough.

  North of the little garden, the rock elm, shielding Dora and Roland’s bedroom with drooping, graceful branches, shivered and soughed dryly. How pleasant it would be to lie naked in that bed at night, listening to the sighing of the leaves.

  When I carried up the midday tray, Dora pretended to be asleep, so I set the tray on the chifforobe and stood at the window watching the elm dance. I swayed a little to its rhythm.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  I didn’t turn. “I’m swaying.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I brought up your tray. There’s soft-boiled egg and toast, and I cooked some new little carrots.”

  “I meant why are you here in my house?” Her tone was both dramatic and dismissive.

  I turned. “Emma said I was needed. She said Roland can’t farm and also look after you. And he can’t afford a hired woman. He’s barely hanging onto this place.”

  “Nosy Emma again. And really, Ruby, it’s no skin off your nose if he can’t hang on.”

  Heat rising in my cheeks, I stared at her for a long minute. She’s in pain. She’s mortified.

  But what she’d said set me thinking. What if Roland lost the farm and they moved away? Then Dora wouldn’t have to face Harvester. “Is that what you’re hoping?” I asked. “That Roland will lose the farm?”

  Two days ago Dora had tried to hang herself, and here I was pestering her. No wonder she was cross. My heart must be as dark and hard as a black walnut. Still, I asked again, “Is that what you’re hoping?” I thought I caught a glint of guilt in her eyes.

  “Leave me alone!”

  While I scrubbed the kitchen floor, I heard Dora pounding on the wall. Drying my hands on my apron, I headed back upstairs, carrying the clean, dry rubber pad.

  “Yes?” I asked, stepping into the bedroom and noting that she had eaten what I’d brought earlier.

  “I need the bedpan,” she said, not the least note of “please” in her voice.

  “Well, lift up your rear so I can get this pad under you,” I told her, no conciliation in mine.

  She was better at the maneuvering than before, and we managed to keep the pad dry. I left with the bedpan in one hand, the tray in the other, and no further word spoken. Florence Nightingale I wasn’t.

  Several days passed like this, me trying to make allowances for her pain and disgrace, her angry because of that pain and disgrace. I waited longer than the doctor had suggested before demanding that Dora use the commode.

  “I hate the commode,” she said.

  “And you hate the bedpan. Maybe you can just hold the pee until you’re up and about,” I joked unkindly, wheeling the commode to the bedside.

  Though I tried to help her lift the leg that was weighted with the cast, she made a great to-do of getting herself to the edge of the bed. Hobbling on her good leg, she pivoted and flopped onto the commode, yipping with pain and banging the arm cast against the chair. Everything was a grand production. Or perhaps it seemed that way because I’d taken a dislike to her—though perhaps I ought to divide my dislike by six, given that I loved her husband.

  One day, after about a week, I carried up a tray, telling her, “I killed a couple of chickens, so you and the men can have a nice meal with potatoes and gravy. And there’s some new little onions.”

  “You really are a hired girl, aren’t you?” She’d been thinking about this. She studied her nails, buffed recently.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you were cut out for this business: killing chickens, milking cows. Fetching and carrying.” Her voice wasn’t nasty, but matter-of-fact.

  I found myself bristling. At the same time, I was proud of being able to kill a chicken and milk a cow. Still, I wanted to be thought of as a hired girl who also spoke proper English and could recite a bit of poetry, if called upon.

  “Yes, I suppose I am cut out for this business,” I said. “But I’m cut out for plenty more as well.”

  Scorn, or what passed for it, was undisguised in her glance. “And what would that be?” If she’d been brought low, at least she wouldn’t be patronized by a hired girl.

  My temper pinched me hard. “Well, one thing I’m not cut out for is lying in bed, swilling quack medicine and sleeping my life away because someone spoiled me till I’m good for nothing.” I grabbed the tray off the chifforobe and thrust it on the bed. “When you need to pee, pound on the wall. Maybe I’ll come.”

  “I’m going to tell Roland how you treat me,” she yelled after me as I descended the stairs.

  “I’ll tell him myself.”

  And so I did, at supper. I didn’t care that Moses was sitting at the table, hearing every word. “She knows how to get under my skin,” I said, passing the potatoes and gravy around.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Roland said. “Pay no attention. She’s like that.” Forking up a chicken leg and glancing sidelong at me, he smiled. “Sounds like you give as good as you get.”

  For the first time in days, we all laughed.

  Roland was meant to be a farmer. Yes, he’d had other dreams, but he did love this small, debt-ridden place. You could hear it in the mealtime talk between him and Moses. You could see it in the way he gave himself without complaint to the heavy work of it.

  Probably most people had more than one path they could happily follow. If I were his wife, maybe he’d have time in the evening to read history. And if we had children—and we would—he could entertain them with stories of Socrates and Julius Caesar, the pharaohs and Alexander the Great. If I were Roland’s wife.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Most evenings, when the dinner dishes were put away, I walked across Cemetery Road alone or Emma came to meet me. This evening, Roland grabbed a broken spade handle from beside the back door, saying, “I’ll walk you home. There’s been a wild dog prowling the road the last few nights. You can hear him howling after dark.”

  “How do you know it’s a ‘him’?”

  “Well, I suppose I don’t. Could be a bitch.”

  “Where do wild dogs come from?”

  “Maybe folks pass through and dump ’em. Maybe the owner dies. Whatever it was, this one’s lost his people.”

  As we walked up his drive toward the road, he said, “I put Red in the barn. Tell Henry to watch Teddy, keep the gate closed at night. Our dogs might try to follow, especially if it’s a female.”

  Though the sky was still light at eight-thirty, he held my hand, as if to protect me. I knew I ought to unclasp myself, but I also knew that Dora couldn’t see us through the branches of the rock elm, even if she could hobble to the window.

  At the foot of the Schoonover drive, Roland pulled me close. Days of seeing him without touching him had made me crazy. His breathing was harsh and he kissed me hard, but then he pushed me away. “She’ll be waiting. And somehow, she knows something. Maybe she doesn’t know about you, but she knows something.” Resting his forehead on my shoulder, he groaned, “What’s to be done?”

  “You keep asking that. I don’t think there’s anything to be done.”

  I wanted to toss away any restraint I owned—not much, God knows—and thrust myself against him.
>
  He held my arms now, keeping me inches away. “Whatever it was she thought,” he said, “she’d take it out on you.” He kissed me lightly and stepped back. “I’ll watch till you’re at the gate. Give ’em my best.”

  Approaching the gate, I smelled tobacco. Alone in the deepening twilight, sitting on the back steps, Dennis said, “Lover boy walk you home?”

  I started. He couldn’t have seen Roland kiss me; the lilac bushes along the dooryard fence stood in the way.

  “Please don’t,” I said, my skirt brushing his arm as I passed into the house. I hated that I was trembling and sounded small and unsure.

  In the kitchen, I told Emma, “Roland walked me to our drive. He says there’s a wild dog wandering around, and that we should keep the back gate closed so Teddy can’t get out.”

  She nodded. “I heard it last night. It’ll be after the chickens too. I shut the hen house door. They oughta do the same.” She ladled a cup of water from the bucket beside the sink. “You must be tired. Go up to bed.” I was tired and I did go up.

  Although both my windows were open, no breeze from the east or south wandered the yard looking for me. I stood peering across the road. The night was breathless hot and so quiet you could hear crops growing. Out in the dark, night creatures moved about—raccoons and owls, field mice and prowling barn cats—each on his own mission. And somewhere, maybe close, there was a feral dog. Would he or she tempt another dog to come away on a wild roam? Was that what the howling was about? A plea? An invitation? I couldn’t help sympathizing with the orphaned creature. Still, I wouldn’t want to meet it in the dark.

  Before I extinguished the lamp, I heard the howl, a bone-chilling ululation. The dog was on the road somewhere between our farm and the two cemeteries.

  Now Teddy, chained by the back door, answered, his howl as ringing and plaintive as the other. Then Red, locked in the barn across the road, joined them, muffled but lamenting. The sound was nothing I wanted to hear again, a chorus of anguished yearning.