Ruby & Roland

by Faith Sullivan

I fell asleep listening.

  “Get out!”

  In the doorway, I jumped, startled by Dora pitching the jar of wilted daisies across the room. “You think I don’t know that you’re judging me every time you come through that door? I can feel it.” Her chin jutted. “And who are you to judge? What do you know? How to be a farmhand? How far will that take you?”

  Things had been testy between us, but throwing things was childish, even for Dora. Still, I had to consider what might have happened between Roland and Dora overnight, what might have hurt and upset her.

  I knelt beside the door, picking up the daisies and the unbroken jar. “I’ll get a cloth to wipe this up,” I said and left.

  Yesterday, she’d pitched a fit at being asked to use the commode instead of the bedpan. I told her she ought to go on the stage; she’d give Sarah Bernhardt a run for her money. She was now perfectly able to heave herself out of bed and onto the commode, but seemed to derive a peculiar pleasure from making me help her with the bedpan, though, really, the bedpan couldn’t have been a picnic.

  The truth was, with help, she was strong enough to maneuver herself down the stairs, where she could sit on the sofa and read a book. Or I’d have read to her, if she’d let me. She was growing too accustomed to the role of invalid.

  Add to this, she’d developed a deep dislike for me. Female instinct, perhaps. Everything I did annoyed her, especially the things I did for her. Still, she wouldn’t do them for herself.

  Back in her room, on my hands and knees, wiping up the water, I asked, “What do you want for lunch?” She didn’t reply. In the few minutes that I was downstairs fetching a rag, she’d wound herself into a tighter coil of anger. Rising, I wiped the perspiration from my face with the hem of my apron. “Cold chicken and iced tea? Maybe some braised onions and a slice of bread and butter?”

  She glared at me. “Do you have any idea how much I dislike you?”

  Try to keep her calm, I told myself. “I expect I do, but why is it that you dislike me?”

  “You’re smug and uppity without reason. My husband thinks you’re feebleminded.”

  Lying about Roland, she’d pinched the wrong nerve. Tossing the rag aside, I crossed to the foot of her bed. In a subdued voice, I asked, “Do you suppose that saying ‘my husband’ makes you a wife? You’re no wife, Dora. You’re a … a slug, like the ones that eat the cabbages in the garden.

  “Maybe you married Roland because you thought you’d make a handsome couple? But last time I heard, the saying was still ‘pretty is as pretty does.’ At that rate, another year and you’ll be as ugly as a warthog, because you do nothing.” I headed for the door. “I’ll be watering the garden. If you have to pee, you can get yourself to the commode.” Turning back, I asked, “What did you imagine farm life was?”

  Taking me by surprise, she began to weep. “Maybe it’s true that I don’t do anything,” she whimpered, “but nothing was like I imagined. I never even visited a farm before Roland married me. I sure never imagined it’d be like this. Manure and dust and flies and awful smells. And work and work and work! Roland’s never had time to teach me anything.”

  She threw herself back against the pillows. “Mrs. Know-it-all across the road tried, but she took a dislike to me.”

  “Dora, Emma does know it all. For someone so ignorant, you’re awfully arrogant.”

  “And you’re a monster,” she mewled. “Did you come here to make me crazy, so Roland could put me in that place with the other crazy people?” She kicked at the sheet. “You’ve never been married. No, and you’ve never had a baby. I had one, and she died.” God knew that was true.

  She wept, the uncontrolled weeping of a child. And, like a child’s weeping, it fed upon itself till she was flinging herself around. “You’re like that one across the road. Why are you so mean?”

  “I’m not mean, and neither is Emma. But you were the ‘beautiful princess’ for too many years. Out here in the country, people will treat you the way you deserve, not the way you look. Anyway, you don’t look beautiful right now. Your face is all red and screwed up like a monkey’s.”

  What I’d said frightened her. “I was the prettiest girl in Harvester. Ask anybody.”

  “And how far will that take you?” I asked, throwing her earlier words back at her.

  How sad. If all you loved about yourself was your beauty, and you couldn’t count on that forever … It didn’t make me like Dora, but maybe I was beginning to understand her a little. And how could I—how could anyone—not be moved by these tears? Troubled, I turned to leave, my emotions in a muddle, my thoughts tangled. I needed to kneel and work in the garden.

  When I returned later, Dora kept her face averted and her mouth sealed. I set the tray beside her on the bed and removed the pot from the commode.

  Still later, bringing up a basin of water and a rag so she could tidy herself, I set a brush beside the basin. On those occasions when I’d seen her hair hanging loose, I’d noted how it fell in thick cascades. She and Roland were a beautiful pair. How had I dared to insert myself here?

  Days went by without a word passing between Dora and me. The wind from the west continued dry and hot. The leaves on the rock elm were crisping. Emma told me that the lake had receded and Henry feared for the corn, which was burning up.

  I prayed to all my gods and goddesses to make this summer disappear, like the thin dew in the hot morning. The grass in the yard was yellow, and I carried water to the garden twice a day, hoping Roland’s well was deep.

  I was certain that the quietly yet intensely Christian Moses knew about Roland and me, saw the looks that passed between us. Yet here, on the Allen farm, Roland and I were as chaste as little children. We could have found rare opportunities to meet behind the barn—where young boys, it is said, smoke their first corn silk. Beneath a scraggly Russian olive tree, beside a broken and rusted harrow, we could have torn at each other’s clothing. I thought of it often, and sometimes pounded the kitchen table till my fists ached.

  Each day, I crossed Cemetery Road at least once, seeking Emma’s advice about biscuits or dumplings, aphids or wasps’ nests. And she might cross over to me with a hambone for bean soup or a cup of sweet-vinegar dressing for coleslaw.

  Threshing season was ahead. “We’ll have Roland’s threshers at our house for meals,” Emma said. “You can’t handle all of it.”

  “Maybe Dora will take hold by then,” I said.

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  For days, neither Dora nor I uttered an extra syllable. Then one day I asked, “Do you love your husband?” The question had been plaguing me.

  Dora was caught off guard. “What business is that of yours?” Though the room was airless and hot, she tucked the sheet tight around her, a defense against any assault I might be launching.

  “In other words, you don’t.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “If you loved him, you’d answer ‘yes’ without hesitating.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said without rancor.

  I waited. “Some days I love him too much,” she began, feeling her way. “And some days I hate him too much.”

  “Why do you hate him?”

  She hesitated. Finally: “He has a … what you’d call a ‘mistress.’” For Dora, “mistress” was high-flown. She spoke the word as though it were from the French.

  “A mistress?” I asked in an unbelieving voice, smiling as if she’d said something quite unlikely. Cold sweat collected beneath my arms.

  “I have proof,” she said with satisfaction, and pulled herself to the side of the bed. I waited, rigid with apprehension.

  From beneath a linen scarf on the bedside table, she extracted a piece of paper, much the worse for its many foldings and refoldings. The note I had slipped to Roland on the Fourth of July.

  My God. If I’d been able to move, I’d have sprinted down the stairs and across the fields.

  Dora’s mouth pulled up in a sly half smile. I forced the words.
“What’s that?”

  “It’s for me to know and you to guess.” What game was this? But she continued, “Her name starts with a B.”

  What?

  “You see?” She held the note out to me. I didn’t take it; my unsteady hand would have betrayed me. But I could see that the R for Ruby had bled, perhaps from Roland’s perspiration that hot day. Now the letter did resemble a B. The rest was blurry but could be read. Darling Roland, I love you with all my heart. I long to touch you. Yours,

  “Barbara?” Dora asked. “Bernice? Betty? Some town girl.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know anyone in town, except store people,” I told her.

  Dora dug beneath her pillow for a handkerchief. “So I know Roland’s got a mistress.” She mopped her tears.

  What held me there? Pity? Paralyzing relief? At length, I sat down on the bed and took one of Dora’s hands, patting it. “How did you come by this note?”

  “It fell out of Roland’s overalls when he took them off. After that picnic on Fourth of July. Somehow it got swept under the bed. I saw him looking for it and trying not to let me see, so I knew it must be important.

  “I was suspicious already, so when he left the room, I found it. It nearly killed me.”

  Indeed. But for Moses.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I had never dreamed that Dora might love Roland. I still wasn’t certain that she did.

  A couple of days later, I asked her, “If you could change your life, how would you change it?” Why did I ask? I didn’t really want to know.

  “If I could change my life,” Dora said, “there wouldn’t be any Barbara or Bernice, or whoever she is.”

  “But there is a Barbara or Bernice or somebody,” I said.

  She anguished, “Do you have to say that? It hurts … like a knife. You don’t know how bad it hurts.” Her face twisted with pain, pain that I could understand. Pain that I would feel if Roland loved someone else.

  I cast about for a metaphor. “When the doctor set your bones, it must have hurt. But he had to do it so they could heal.”

  With annoying literalness, she pointed out, “But he gave me something. Ether or chloroform, so I didn’t feel it.”

  “Well, just imagine how bad it would have hurt if he hadn’t given you that, and setting the bones was still necessary in order for them to heal. Can you imagine that?”

  She nodded, though she was obviously uncertain about this metaphor.

  “It’s the same with imagining Barbara. First you have to accept that she exists. You have to feel the pain of knowing that before you can do anything.”

  “Do anything, like what?”

  She had no idea what our conversation was costing me. And I had no idea why I was exploring this with her. I must be demented.

  “For heaven’s sake, Dora, I don’t know what! What would make Roland happy?” I knew some things that would make him happy, but I wasn’t going to point them out. I wasn’t that demented. “Do you want him back?” She nodded. Each word I uttered wizened some happy place in me.

  “You think about it, Dora. Think about what Roland would like.” I picked up the breakfast tray and started for the door. “I have to get to work now.”

  “What will you be doing?”

  “Washing dishes, gathering eggs, feeding the chickens, watering the garden, starting the next meal, baking a cake. The same things I generally do.”

  “In this heat?”

  “In this heat.”

  I headed downstairs, wondering if I was helping Dora to win Roland back. If so, I might just as well throw my own noose over a barn beam. I did the things that I’d told Dora I would do. I did them blindly and without thought, all the time imagining losing Roland. Then I sat crumpled at the table.

  After long minutes, I rose and went through the motions of getting the midday meal on the table. As the two men ate, I was silent. Roland looked questions at me. I picked at the chicken and potatoes on my plate.

  The afternoon of the following day, Dora said, “I’ve been thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Whether I want to get Roland back.”

  “Why wouldn’t you want to?”

  “I’m angry, and I hate him most of the time. Think about it, Ruby. Think about what he’s done, how he’s made me look to the town, to my family.”

  Unlike jealousy or sorrow or hatred, which had the possibility of being hidden from sight, humiliation was public. It paraded your failures on Main Street. And it led to hatred, even of the one you loved most, especially of the one you loved most.

  I understood that. But I didn’t understand myself or what was going on between Dora and me. I tried to view myself as if from a great distance, but when you are young, perspective is next to impossible. So Dora and I would have to muddle along as we were, each of us groping our way, each of us praying for a different outcome.

  “The first thing you have to decide,” I told Dora, “is: Do you want to be married to Roland?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  I thought about that. Divorce was a terrible scandal in Harvester, worse by far than trying to kill yourself. Was Dora the sort of person who could endure that? If not, and she moved, how on earth would she support herself? She had no skills.

  “Well?” she pressed. “Do I have a choice?”

  How to tell her that she was hopeless? “What can you do?” She was perplexed. “Can you bake a cake or milk a cow or plant a garden? What can you do?” I repeated.

  Her face grew serious. She was scratching the hard earth of her ignorance, hoping to find some seed of promise.

  Between us, we found that she could cook “a little” and do some laundry, though she hated it, especially in winter. “My hands get so red and cracked,” she said.

  “My God,” I sighed, “you’ve only got one talent, and that’s a pretty face, and that’s no talent at all.”

  Her features clouded over. She was going to bawl again.

  “Think!” I said before her lip started quivering.

  “I am thinking!”

  “If something happened to Roland, what could you do to earn your keep?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to him.” She sniffled, reaching for her handkerchief.

  “Have you ever noticed how hard he works? And only Moses to help him? Roland’s killing himself, you …” I left her to mull this over. She was not a quick study, and my head was reeling. Well, not exactly reeling—more like grinding round and round, an eddy of gravel and muck. Nothing was clear.

  The evening was going lavender when I crossed Cemetery Road. Despite the dry weather, frogs croaked in the ditch, and in the trees cicadas whined.

  Since we hadn’t heard the wild dog the past two nights, I told Roland not to accompany me. Dora would soon be getting around and keeping an eye on him. We had to be discreet.

  Dennis was sitting on the back steps again, smoking, with Teddy at his feet. The smell of cigarette smoke was heavy and pleasant in the still-hot evening air. I liked the scent and thought that I wouldn’t mind learning to smoke. Maybe I should ask Dennis to teach me before he left for college. A woman who smoked in public was considered “loose,” but I saw no harm in smoking if it was in private. And in any case, why was it immoral only for a woman and not a man?

  “I like the smell of your cigarettes,” I said as I turned in at the gate. “Would you teach me how to smoke?”

  “You don’t want to do that. You’re a nice girl. You are a nice girl, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” I sat down beside him. Was I a nice girl?

  “Well, then, you don’t want to smoke.”

  “That makes no sense. If I like the smell, I don’t see why I shouldn’t smoke. I won’t do it on Main Street—just out here on the steps in the evening. You’ll be leaving for college pretty soon, and then whose cigarettes will I smell?”

  “Jake and Henry smoke pipes.”

  “That’s not the same. Please teach me. I won’t tell anyone. It’ll
be our secret.” I could see that he liked the idea of us having a secret.

  Before passing me his cigarette, he said, “The important thing when you’re learning is not to choke on the smoke. You’ll have a coughing fit if you do. Just suck the smoke into your mouth quick and blow it out again, until you get the hang of it.”

  I drew in smoke the way he suggested, blowing it out again immediately. It seemed awfully simple, innocent, and frankly silly. There must be more to it than this.

  “Eventually you’ll learn to inhale,” he said. He took the cigarette back again, illustrating the technique. Inhaling was not so simple. I tried it and, as he’d warned, choked and coughed. Still, I was thrilled to have tried, and I knew I’d acquire the knack.

  “If I give you money, will you buy me some tobacco and papers Saturday, when you’re in town?”

  With Christian reluctance but wanting to please me, he agreed and we shook hands on it. “Thank you,” I said, “you are a good friend.”

  I gave his shoulder a sisterly squeeze and opened the screen door.

  • • •

  “You’ve lost weight.” Emma studied me as I dipped water from the bucket. “That job across the road is too much. I should never have sent you over there.”

  “No, I’m making progress,” I told her. Seeing Roland every day was worth any price. “Dora and I are talking. I think I can teach her things she needs to know, about being a farmwife.”

  Emma shook her head. “And what are you getting out of this teaching and all the hard work that goes with it?” She poured me a cup of reheated coffee and lay several cookies beside it on the table.

  She was concerned for me, but I knew she was also concerned for Roland. This was not an easy summer for Emma. Ignoring her question, I asked after Henry.

  “Gone to bed with the birds.” Thoughtful, she sat down at the table, folding her hands in front of her. “In the beginning, with Roland being hard up, I thought it’d be the right thing, your goin’ across the road. It’d save him money and you’d be good company for both of ’em. But I don’t like you losing weight this way. When I get you back here again, I’ll fatten you up,” she said. “Now, off to bed with you.”