by Jack Ketchum
I shook my head. That wasn’t the Ruth I knew. You could see Willie and Woofer and Donny acting strange around her—she was a girl, after all. But Ruth had always been good to us. Unlike the rest of the mothers on the block she always had plenty of time for us. Her door was always open. She handed us Cokes, sandwiches, cookies, the occasional beer. It didn’t make sense and I told her so.
“Come on. Ruth wouldn’t do that. Try it. Make her one. Make her a watercolor. I bet she’d love it. Maybe she’s just not used to having girls around, you know? Maybe it just takes time. Do it. Try one for her.”
She thought about it.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “Honest.”
For a moment we just stood there. She was shaking. I knew that whatever this was all about, she wasn’t kidding.
I had an idea.
“How about me, then? You could make one for me.”
Without the idea in mind, without the plan, I’d never have had the nerve to ask her. But this was different.
She brightened a little.
“Would you really want one?”
“Sure I would. I’d like it a lot.”
She looked at me steadily until I had to turn away. Then she smiled. “Okay. I will, David.”
She seemed almost her usual self again. God! I liked it when she smiled. Then I heard the back door open.
“Meg?”
It was Ruth.
“I’d better go,” she said.
She took my hand and squeezed it. I could feel the stones in her mother’s wedding band. My face reddened.
“I’ll do it,” she said, and fled around the corner.
Chapter Twelve
She must have got right on it too because the next day it rained all day into the evening and I sat in my room reading The Search for Bridey Murphy and listening to the radio until I thought I’d probably kill somebody if I heard that fucking Domenico Modugno sing “Volare” one more time. And then after dinner my mother and I were sitting in the living room watching television when Meg knocked at the back door.
My mother got up. I followed her and got myself a Pepsi out of the refrigerator.
Meg was smiling, wearing a yellow slicker, her hair dripping wet.
“I can’t come in,” she said.
“Nonsense,” said my mother.
“No, really,” she said. “I just came over to give you this from Mrs. Chandler.”
She handed my mother a wet brown bag with a container of milk inside. Ruth and my mother didn’t exactly socialize but they were still next door neighbors and neighbors borrowed.
My mother accepted the bag and nodded. “Tell Mrs. Chandler thank you for me,” she said.
“I will.”
Then she dug down underneath the slicker and looked at me, and now she was really smiling.
“And this is for you,” she said.
And handed me my painting.
It was wrapped with sheets of heavy opaque tracing paper taped together on both sides. You could see some of the lines and colors through it but not the shapes of things.
Before I could even say thanks or anything she said, “Bye,” and waved and stepped back out into the rain and closed the door behind her.
“Well,” said my mother, and she was smiling too now. “What have we here?”
“I think it’s a picture,” I said.
I stood there, Pepsi in one hand and Meg’s painting in the other. I knew what my mother was thinking.
What my mother was thinking had the word cute in it.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Yeah, sure. Okay”
I put down the Pepsi and turned my back to her and began working on the tape. Then I lifted off the tracing paper.
I could feel my mother looking over my shoulder but I really didn’t care all of a sudden.
“That’s really good,” my mother said, surprised. “That’s really very good. She’s really quite something, isn’t she.”
And it was good. I was no art critic but you didn’t have to be. She’d done the drawing in ink, and some of the lines were wide and bold and some were very delicate. The colors were pale washes-only the subtle suggestions of colors but very true and lifelike with a lot of the paper showing so it gave you the impression of a bright, sunny day.
It was a picture of a boy by a flowing brook, lying on his belly across a big flat rock and looking down into the water, with trees and sky all around.
Chapter Thirteen
I took it up to The Dog House to have it framed. The Dog House was a pet shop turned hobby shop. They had beagle pups in the front window and bows and arrows, Wham-O hula hoops, model kits and a frame shop in the back, with the fish, turtles, snakes and canaries in between. The guy took a look and said, “Not bad.”
“Can I have it tomorrow?”
“You see us going crazy here?” he said. The place was empty. The 2-Guys From Harrison chain store up on Route 10 was killing him. “You can have it tonight. Come back ’round four-thirty”
I was there by a quarter after four, fifteen minutes early, but it was ready, a nice pine frame stained mahogany. He wrapped it in brown paper.
It fit perfectly into one of the two rear baskets on my bike.
By the time I got home it was almost dinnertime so I had to wait through the pot roast and green beans and mashed potatoes with gravy. Then I had to take the garbage out.
Then I went over.
The television was blaring the theme from Father Knows Best, my least favorite TV show, and down the stairs for the billionth time came Kathy and Bud and Betty, beaming. I could smell the franks and beans and sauerkraut. Ruth was in her chair with her feet up on the hassock. Donny and Willie sprawled together on the couch. Woofer lay on his belly so close to the TV set you had to wonder about his hearing. Susan sat watching from a straight-back chair in the dining room and Meg was out doing the dishes.
Susan smiled at me. Donny just waved and turned back to watch TV
“Jeez,” I said. “Don’t anybody get up or nothing.”
“Watcha got there, sport?” said Donny.
I held up the painting wrapped in brown paper.
“Those Mario Lanza records you wanted.”
He laughed. “Creep.”
And now Ruth was looking at me.
I decided to jump right in.
I heard the water shut off in the kitchen. I turned and Meg was watching me, wiping her hands on her apron. I gave her a smile and my guess is she knew right away what I was doing.
“Ruth?”
“Yeah? Ralphie, turn the TV down. That’s it. What’s up, Davy?”
I walked over to her. I glanced over my shoulder at Meg. She was coming toward me through the dining room. She was shaking her head. Her mouth was forming a silent “no.”
That was okay. It was just shyness. Ruth would see the painting and she’d get over it.
“Ruth,” I said. “This is from Meg.”
I held it out to her.
She smiled first at me and then at Meg and took it from me. Woofer had Father Knows Best turned low now so you could hear the crinkling of the stiff brown paper as she unwrapped it. The paper fell away. She looked at the painting.
“Meg!” she said. “Where’d you get the money to buy this?”
You could tell she admired it. I laughed.
“It costs just the framing,” I said. “She painted it for you.”
“She did? Meg did?”
I nodded.
Donny, Woofer and Willie all crowded around to see.
Susan slipped off her chair. “It’s beautiful!” she said.
I glanced at Meg again still standing anxious and hopeful looking in the dining room.
Ruth stared at the painting. It seemed like she stared a long time.
Then she said, “No, she didn’t. Not for me. Don’t kid me. She painted it for you, Davy.”
She smiled. The smile was a little funny somehow. And now I was getting anxious too.
“Look here. A boy on a rock. Of course it’s for you.”
She handed it back to me.
“I don’t want it,” she said.
I felt confused. That Ruth might refuse it had never even occurred to me. For a moment I didn’t know what to do. I stood there holding it, looking down at it. It was a beautiful painting.
I tried to explain.
“But it’s really meant for you, Ruth. Honest. See, we talked about it. And Meg wanted to do one for you but she was so …”
“David. ”
It was Meg, stopping me. And now I was even more confused, because her voice was stem with warning.
It made me almost angry. Here I was in the middle of this damn thing and Meg wouldn’t let me get myself out of it.
Ruth just smiled again. Then looked at Willie and Woofer and Donny.
“Take a lesson, boys. Remember this. It’s important. All you got to do any time is be nice to a woman—and she’ll do all kinds of good things for you. Now Davy was nice to Meg and got himself a painting. Nice painting. That is what you got, isn’t it, Davy? I mean that’s all you got? I know you’re a little young but you never know.”
I laughed, blushing. “Come on, Ruth.”
“Well, I’m telling you you do never know. Girls are plain easy. That’s their problem. Promise ‘em a little something and you can have whatever you want half the time. I know what I’m saying. Look at your father. Look at Willie Sr. He was gonna own his own company when we married. Fleet of milk trucks. Start with one and work his way on up. I was gonna help him with the books just like I did back on Howard Avenue during the war. Ran that plant during the war. We were gonna be richer than my folks were when I was a kid in Morristown, and that was pretty rich, I’ll tell you. But you know what I got? Nothing. Not a damned thing. Just you three poppin’ out one, two, three, and that lovely Irish bastard’s off to God knows where. So I get three hungry mouths to feed, and now I’ve got two more.
“I tell you, girls are dumb. Girls are easy. Suckers straight on down the line.”
She walked past me to Meg. She put her arm around her shoulders and then she turned to the rest of us.
“You take this painting now,” she said. “I know you made it for David here and don’t you try to tell me any different. But what I want to know is, what are you gonna get out of it? What do you think this boy’s going to give you? Now Davy’s a nice boy. Better than most I’d say. Definitely better. But darlin’—he’s not gonna give you nothing! If you think he will you got another thing coming.
“So I’m just saying I hope that painting’s all you been giving him and all you will give him, and this is for your own good I’m telling you. Because you already got what men want right down here and it ain’t your goddamn artwork.”
I could see Meg’s face begin to tremble, and I knew she was trying not to cry. But unexpected as all this was I was trying not to laugh. Donny too. The whole thing was weird and maybe it was partly the tension, but what Ruth had said about the artwork was funny.
Her arm tightened around Meg’s shoulders.
“And if you give them what they want, then you’re nothing but a slut, honey. You know what a slut is? Do you, Susan? Of course you don’t. You’re too young. Well, a slut’s somebody who’ll spread her legs for a man, it’s that simple. So they can weasel their way inside. Woofer, you quit your goddamn grinning.
“Anybody who’s a slut deserves a thrashing. Anybody in this town would agree with me. So I just warn you, honey, any slutting around this house will mean your ass is grass and Ruth’s the lawn mower.”
She released Meg and walked into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door.
“Now,” she said. “Who wants a beer?”
She gestured toward the painting.
“Kind of pale-looking thing, anyway,” she said, “doncha think?” and reached for the six-pack.
Chapter Fourteen
Two beers was all it took me in those days and I went home lazy and high, with the usual promise not to breathe a word to my parents, which wasn’t necessary. I’d sooner have chopped off a finger.
Once Ruth finished her lecture, the rest of the evening had been pretty uneventful. Meg went into the bathroom for a while and when she came out again it was as though nothing had happened. Her eyes were dry. Her face an unreadable blank. We watched Danny Thomas and drank our beers and then at one point during a commercial I made plans , to go bowling Saturday with Willie and Donny. I tried to catch Meg’s eye but she wouldn’t look at me. When the beers were done I went home.
I hung the painting next to the mirror in my room.
But there was a feeling of strangeness that wouldn’t leave me. I’d never heard anyone use the word slut before but I knew what it meant. I’d known since cribbing Peyton Place from my mother. I wondered if Eddie’s sister Denise was still too young to qualify. I remembered her naked, bound to a tree, her thick smooth tender nipples. Crying, laughing—sometimes both together. I remembered the folded flesh between her legs.
I thought about Meg.
I lay in bed and thought how easy it was to hurt a person. It didn’t have to be physical. All you had to do was take a good hard kick at something they cared about.
I could too if I wanted.
People were vulnerable.
I thought about my parents and what they were doing and how they kept kicking at each other. So regularly now that, being in the middle as I was, I had contrived not to care about either of them.
Little things, mostly, but they added up.
I couldn’t sleep. My parents were in the next room, my father snoring. I got up and went into the kitchen for a Coke. Then I went into the living room and sat on the couch. I didn’t turn the lights on.
It was well after midnight.
The night was warm. There was no breeze. As usual my parents had left the windows open.
Through the screen I could see directly into the Chandlers’ living room. Their lights were still burning. Their windows were open too and I heard voices. I couldn’t make out much of what was being said but I knew who was speaking. Willie. Ruth. Then Meg. Then Donny. Even Woofer was still up—you could hear his voice high and shrill as a girl’s, laughing.
The others were all yelling about something.
“… for a boy!” I heard Ruth say. Then she faded out again into a mixed jumble of sounds and voices all together.
I saw Meg move back into the frame of the living-room window. She was pointing, yelling, her whole body rigid and shaking with anger.
“You will not!” I heard her say.
Then Ruth said something low and out of my hearing range but it came out like a growl, you could get that much, and you could see Meg sort of collapse all of a sudden, you could watch her fold. And then she was crying.
And a hand shot out and slapped her.
It slapped her so hard she fell back out of frame and I couldn’t see her anymore.
Willie moved forward.
He started to follow her. Slowly.
Like he was stalking her.
“That’s it!” I heard Ruth say. Meaning, I think, that Willie should let her alone.
There was a moment where I guess nobody moved.
Then bodies came and went for a while, drifting by the window, everybody looking sullen and angry, Willie and Woofer and Donny and Ruth and Meg picking up things from the floor or rearranging the chairs or whatever and slowly moving away. I heard no more voices, no talking. The only one I didn’t see was Susan.
I sat watching.
The lights went off. You could see a dim glow from the bedrooms and that was all. Then even that was gone and the house was black as ours was.
Chapter Fifteen
That Saturday at the alleys Kenny Robertson missed his seven pin for an easy spare in the tenth frame, finishing with a 107. Kenny was skinny and had a tendency to throw every pound he had into the ball and throw it wild. He came back mopping his brow with his father’s lucky handkerchie
f, which hadn’t been too lucky for him at all that day.
He sat between me and Willie behind the score-card. We watched Donny line up on his usual spot to the left of the second arrow.
“You think any more about it?” he asked Willie. “About getting Meg into The Game?”
Willie smiled. I guess he was feeling good. He was probably going to break 150 and that didn’t happen often. He shook his head.
“We got our own Game now,” he said.
Chapter Sixteen
Those nights I’d sleep at the Chandlers’, once we got tired of fooling around and Woofer was asleep, we’d talk.
It was mostly Donny and I. Willie never had much to say and what he did say was never too smart. But Donny was bright enough and, as I said, the closest I had to a best friend, so we’d talk—about school and girls, the kids on American Band-stand, the endless mysteries of sex, what the rock ‘n’ roll tunes we heard on the radio really meant and so on, until long into the night.
We talked about wishes, hopes, even nightmares sometimes.
It was always Donny who initiated these talks and always I who finished them. At some point long past exhaustion I’d lean over the top of my bunk and say something like, see what I mean? and he’d be asleep, leaving me alone at the mercy of my thoughts, uncomfortable and unspent, sometimes till dawn. It took time for me to cut deep enough into whatever it was I felt and then once I did I couldn’t bear to give up the taste of it.
I’m still that way.
The dialogue is solo now. I don’t talk. No matter who’s in bed with me I never do. My thoughts slip off into nightmares sometimes but I don’t share them. I have become now what I only began to be then—completely self-protective.
It started, I suppose, with my mother coming into my room when I was seven. I was asleep. “I’m leaving your dad,” she said, waking me. “But I don’t want you to worry. I’ll take you with me. I won’t leave you. Not ever.” And I know that from seven to fourteen I waited, prepared myself, became myself who was separate from each of them.