Ruby & Roland

by Faith Sullivan

  When I entered the parlor, Professor Cromwell was seated, visiting with Mrs. Lander. Her melting blue eyes again noted with pity my green cotton dress with the rosebuds. Mrs. Lander, I would come to understand, was a woman whose tender heart often misdirected its pity. It was hard to fault her for that.

  Seeing us to the door, she said, “Here, Ruby, if you’re going in the automobile with the top down, wear this riding hat.” She reached for one from a hall stand. “It ties under your chin. I keep it for my young ladies.” She considered. “If you were going into the countryside, I would suggest a duster as well.” Still, several fingers rested on her chin in a gesture of speculation. Duster or no?

  As Professor Cromwell and I climbed into the roadster, he said, “I thought you might enjoy a drive around town. Also, I have a key to the administration building at the college, so I can show you where you’ll be working.”

  The halls of the imposing brick administration building were dim and echoing and smelled faintly of floor wax. There was a comforting familiarity about it. When I mentioned this to Professor Cromwell, he said, “You probably came here as a child with Denton. Maybe many times.”

  Of course! I remembered one such occasion. I’d sat on Denton’s shoulders as he delivered papers to the office now ahead of us, the one with the bubbly glass on the upper door and gold letters that spelled something grown-up. A lady had taken the papers from Denton and told me what a big girl I was getting to be. It wouldn’t be long before I would be attending classes at this college, she’d said. I’d laughed. “I’m only four years old!” I told her, and she laughed.

  I turned to Professor Cromwell. “Thank you again for finding me work here. It’s perfect.” A tenderness filled me for the man who had connected me with my darling father.

  In the drive around Beardsley, he pointed out landmarks, like the courthouse where a Civil War cannon and a statue of General Grant stood, then the hospital, and two or three churches. He pulled up in front of one of them. “The funeral for Denton and Serena was here. I’ve never forgotten how brave you were.”

  “You told me it was all right if I wanted to cry.”

  For a moment, he laid a hand over mine, then we drove on. We passed an elementary school I had attended, though that experience seemed a thousand years ago. Eventually, we drove around the park that formed the town square. Gales of fallen leaves scudded across the still green grass, mounding against the trellis skirt of a band shell. Several restaurants surrounded the square, a dress shop, a department store, and a stationer’s.

  Later, we had supper at a Chinese restaurant where murals depicted dragons and villages and mountains and oxen bearing goods and peasants. I was enchanted. Since I’d never eaten Chinese food, I asked Barrett—which he kept insisting I call him—to order for me. The chicken, vegetables, and noodles were delicious, unlike anything I’d had before: a little sweet and a little salty. The whole occasion was like a party, with the owner, Ming Ho, bringing us one thing and then another.

  “I’m delighted that you like it,” Professor Cromwell told me. “I thought you might.”

  On our return to the rooming house, we passed a high school, and Professor Cromwell stopped again, saying, “This is where Serena taught. Those windows, there at the end, on the second floor, are her room.”

  Some slight, unintended note in his voice revealed the answer to the small question in my mind. Tonight I would ask Serena about this.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Sitting on the balcony, I smoked a cigarette and composed an imaginary letter to Roland. As I stared through the wrought iron balusters into the backyard, Roland seemed to invite me down where the grass was neither dry nor dusty. He spread a blanket against the dew and waved, beckoning me.

  But from a seemingly great distance came the sound of someone knocking. Wiping my eyes on the hem of my nightgown, I hurried in. “Who is it?”

  “June from down the hall.” The young woman began whistling “Shine On, Harvest Moon.”

  I was inclined to like a whistling young woman. I had never subscribed to the idea that it was uncouth for a woman to whistle. The one who stood in front of me when I opened the doorway looked older than me but was probably not above twenty-two or three. Her blondish-brown hair was wound into a frowzy bun on top of her head and she wore a flannel nightdress, immediately explaining, “Aunt Helen made it. ‘People die of pneumonia in Illinois,’ she said, as if people don’t die of pneumonia in Missouri. I’m June Rezmerski, by the way. Nurse at the hospital. May I come in?”

  For a moment I was confused. Did she imagine that I was ill? But no. She was simply—what was the word?—explicating.

  I opened the door wider. “Of course,” I said, pointing to the reading chair by the window. She handed me three cookies, keeping another for herself, and said, “My mother bakes them by the gross.” She sprawled across the upholstered chair, legs flung over one arm. “Welcome to Lander’s Matrimonial Agency. If you don’t have a beau, never mind, Mrs. Lander will scour the territory.” She bit into her cookie and went on, “You’ve been crying. Are you homesick?”

  I winced. June Rezmerski was plainspoken. “In a manner of speaking,” I told her.

  She let it go at that. “Where’s home?”

  “Originally Beardsley but, lately, a farm in Minnesota. My parents died when I was twelve. I’ve been a hired girl since then. But I’ve come back here, and I start work in the college administration office the first of the month.”

  “Quite a history for someone who’s—what are you—seventeen?” she asked, biting into her cookie and brushing the fallen crumbs from her lap.

  I had to stop and think. “Eighteen? Seventeen or eighteen. I’ve lost track.”

  “Mrs. Lander said she guessed about seventeen. She said a ‘nice, respectable gentleman’ brought you here. She also said he was good-looking and a professor and twenty-eight.” She glanced at me. “That right?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is. He was a close friend of my parents.”

  She nodded. “Well, Mrs. Lander has pretty much staked him out for you. And if you don’t want him, one of us young ladies should set our caps, because he’s quality.” June raised her brows at each quote.

  That made me uncomfortable, and June took note. “Don’t mind Flora. She’s a pretty good old girl, just wants her young ladies to marry well and be happy.”

  “Where do you come from?” I asked.

  “St. Louis, but I have relatives over this way. Aunt Helen found me the nursing job. She dreams of my snagging a doctor.” June studied the remaining portion of her cookie. “Older women. Too much time on their hands. They wanta pair everybody off. Especially with doctors.”

  “My friend Mrs. Bullfinch, who lives up the street, has a fiancé from St. Louis, a gentleman traveling for a shoe company. I don’t suppose you know him. St. Louis is a big city.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Giorgio. Giorgio Lambini.”

  June shook her head. “No. But my uncle Bert might know of him. He works for a shoe company. I think half of St. Louis works for the shoe companies. Giorgio Lam … bini. I’ll remember when I write.”

  June came from a family of seven children, four girls and three boys. “But two of my sisters are married, and one of my brothers is a bargeman.”

  “On the Mississippi?”

  She nodded. “So there’s just one girl and two boys at home.”

  “It must be wonderful having so many brothers and sisters.”

  “Except when you need the bathroom. This place is heaven.” She laughed, rising. “Well, I’d better hit the hay. Work in the morning. Nice to meet you, Ruby. I’ll ask about your friend’s beau. Giorgio Lambini.” She finished the cookie; rose, fussing a bit with her frowzy bun; and left, whistling “Shine On, Harvest Moon.”

  Before starting work on the first of October, I purchased three dark skirts—black, brown, and navy—and four white shirtwaists. I’d get by with the hand-me-down winter coat from Emma until
I had put aside more money.

  From the dry goods store I bought an inexpensive brooch and several short lengths of ribbon to wear with it. I didn’t want to shame Professor Cromwell by looking like his country cousin. Also, I planned to visit Aunt, and I wanted to look like someone she’d be sorry not to know.

  My first day in the administration office, I found the work much as described, but I didn’t mind the sameness. Mine was the job that the woman years ago had held, the one who told me I would soon be going to college! If Denton were still alive, I might be taking test papers from him and registering the grades in one of the big black ledgers.

  I worked alongside a young woman who was, I learned, twenty-five, an advanced age for an unmarried, attractive redhead with nice ways. Her name was Annie Farrell. Eventually she would tell me that her “darling boy” had died of diphtheria in Chicago a few months before they were to be married. And so I began fantasizing a romance between her and Professor Cromwell.

  In her first letter, Emma wrote, “The Allens were upset because you left and didn’t tell them. I explained about the great-aunt who was sick, but Roland saw through that. He came across the road to talk private. He mourned like you’d died. He was so broken up, I hope you don’t mind I gave him that extra photograph of you.

  “Dora asked for your address, says she wants to thank you for all you did. I gave it. I hope you don’t mind that either.”

  Two days later, there was a letter from Dora lying on the hall table.

  “I was so sad when Emma said you had left. All I could think of was the mean things I said when you came to help after my fall. You turned out to be my true friend.

  “You were so clever. You knew if I learned how to work, it would make all the difference. It has, Ruby, it has. And Emma says anything you didn’t have time to teach me, she’ll take care of.”

  As I had known Emma would.

  “Your great-aunt wants to see you,” the professor said. We were sitting on a bench in the square, beside the band stand. The November wind raced, scudding clouds across the sky.

  “Good. I was hoping for an invitation.”

  He looked surprised. “I’d have thought you’d dread a meeting.”

  “Ever since I left Beardsley, Aunt’s dislike has bothered me. It makes no sense. If most people like you,” I said, “and there’s one who doesn’t, that one is a burr under your saddle. You can’t rest until you know the why of it. At least I can’t. Did she ever tell you?”

  “Your name hasn’t come up unless I mention you.” He said nothing for a minute. “If you call on her, you should know that age and bad health have drawn her claws. She’s bedridden, dying.”

  “You said as much in your letters.”

  I remembered the snow, the thick loveliness of it, the great mounds of it. “Serena would never have left me with Aunt that night if Mrs. Bullfinch had been at home. But Imelda was visiting her sister.”

  Withdrawing a cigar from the inside pocket of his jacket, Professor Cromwell lit it slowly, protecting the flame from the wind and taking time to consider. “You remember that?”

  “I remember everything about that night. Aunt huffed and stewed when Serena asked if I could stay for a couple of hours. When they weren’t back in that time, she told me how thoughtless and inconsiderate they were, how they reminded her of her despicable brother, Hiram—Serena’s father. I slept on the sofa, and when a man came the next morning to tell us they’d been found dead, I swear Aunt looked relieved. They wouldn’t bother her again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was twelve, so Serena and Denton could have left me at home. I suppose they were overprotective. Somehow I feel partly responsible for their deaths, though that makes no sense—they’d have frozen no matter where I was.” The afternoon was graying into premature evening.

  We sat silent, the professor smoking. At length, smudging out the cigar beneath his heel, he said, “My experience with her has been very different from yours. Maybe she’s changed.”

  I waited a week, then knocked on Aunt’s door on a Saturday afternoon. Beatrice—she who starched and stretched the lace curtains—answered. I introduced myself and told her, “Aunt said she wanted me to call.”

  The shadowy sickroom was fetid and close. The wallpaper was sepia, and its leafless branches clawed upward toward out-of-the reach sunlight. Aunt sat upright in bed, old-fashioned mobcap on her head, crocheted shawl around her shoulders. Six years had passed since our last encounter and, even in the semidarkness, I could see that those years had done her no kindness. She was gaunt and ashen. Beneath her many brown liver blotches, the blue veins on her hands and temples stood out like rivers on an eerie topographical map. On the bedside table was a small framed picture of someone I assumed, from his halo, must be a twentysomething Jesus.

  “So you’ve come,” she said, her voice stronger than I’d expected. “Sit there where I can see you.” She pointed a skeletal finger at a straight-backed chair in the room’s one sunlit spot, the bow of a bay window next to the street. With the light falling full on me, I felt like the accused in the box.

  “Professor Cromwell said you wanted to see me.”

  “I wanted to see what you’ve made of yourself.” She reached for a glass of water on the table and sipped, wiping her lips on a lace-edged handkerchief. “You’ve been working as a hired girl, the professor tells me. On a farm.” She sucked in air. “You liked it there.” Returning the glass to the table, she asked, “Why’d you come back?”

  “I wanted to be near Serena and Denton,” I lied.

  “They’re long dead.”

  “The people we love are never entirely dead to us, are they?”

  “You sound like your mother,” she told me. “My own people, back in Ohio, are entirely dead.”

  “That’s too bad. The dead can be a comfort.”

  She allowed herself a single cackle, then coughed, and sought to clear her throat, though something still rumbled in her chest like distant thunder. At length she said, “The dead can be a comfort, you say. And can they be a discomfort?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps you’ll find out.” Her blue lips twisted in a near smile, though the words were not intended as pleasantry.

  For several minutes neither of us spoke. Finally I leaned toward her. “Why did you dislike Serena?” I asked. I did not add, “And why do you dislike me?”

  She considered for a moment. “Serena had been spoiled. Both parents doting. Like so many who’re spoiled, she assumed that everyone would love her. Well, I wasn’t about to. Such people lack character.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We’re supposed to struggle,” she said with a kind of impatient patience, wondering where my brains were. “To be forged in the fire.” Her hands clenched in twiggy fists on the matelassé spread.

  “And were you forged in the fire?”

  “I was.”

  “And … those who are forged in the fire … are they kinder for it?”

  “You’re too bold. That’s your mother. Her father—my brother, Hiram—was the same. Lacked good sense. Took his own life when the going was rough.”

  “I expect I’m like my mother and Grandpa Hiram in many ways—probably in ways you most despise.”

  “Have you got any religion?”

  “Only a little.” I’d show her I had enough character or brass to speak my mind. “Mostly I believe that everything is holy. People and birds and trees and dirt and manure, sun and moon. That probably comes from working on a farm.”

  “Pantheism.”

  I was amazed she knew the word. “Yes, I suppose.”

  “Pagan.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And what isn’t holy in your pagan view?”

  I had to think. “Cruelty.”

  “You have a simple mind.”

  “You may be right.”

  “The true God is a jealous god. He doesn’t brook holy suns or moons or … manure.” She cackled ag
ain, then fluttered the handkerchief, an impatient gesture to shoo the cough away.

  “I don’t want to know that God. It’s on account of manure,” I explained, “that you have good things to eat and flowers in your garden.”

  She was tiring, I could see. I was exhausting her with my “boldness.” But I wanted to know something. “What is your illness?”

  “I’m rotting from the inside.” Her grin was macabre.

  “Rotting?”

  “My organs are eating themselves up. He’s forging me in the fire again.”

  “God?”

  “Who else?”

  “But why? Why is he punishing you?”

  “It’s not punishment, you silly thing! It’s a privilege.”

  I shuddered. “That’s grotesque.”

  “Not at all. My suffering is a sign.”

  “Of what?” The conversation was increasingly bizarre yet somehow compelling.

  “I’ve been chosen.”

  “What does that mean? Chosen for what?”

  “To sit beside Him when my young face and body are returned to me. When I am as I was at eighteen.” The hand clasping the handkerchief rose and fell again and again, in a slow rhythm, as if she spoke in iambs. Then she stopped beating time and put her hand to her cheek. “I was a high-strung beauty. ‘Like a thoroughbred race horse,’ Papa once said. I’ll be that girl again when I go to Him.” Her mood was drifting from confrontational to dreamy, and I wondered if she were on laudanum or some other opiate.

  “And what will you do when you’re sitting beside Him?”

  She roused. “I’ll serve Him.”

  “Serve Him what? I imagine He has everything He needs.”

  “I’ll serve Him love,” she said, her voice coy. “I’ll be His bride.”

  Perturbed, I rose. “I think I should go.”

  “Yes … that would be good.” Veined lids closed over unfocussed eyes swimming in their sockets.

  I had already reached the bedroom door when she rallied. “You’ll come again.” Not an idle invitation or mere suggestion.