The Loves of Ruby Dee

by Curtiss Ann Matlock

  He spit tobacco into his spit cup and then glared—a look that was enough to melt the flowers right off Ruby Dee’s dress. Sally slunk backward. Ruby Dee got hurt and stubborn.

  Hand on her hip, she approached him. “How about we get you bathed, Mr. Starr. I think you’d feel a lot better.”

  That suggestion went over as well as the one about giving him a shave.

  “You or no woman is gonna be bathin’ me,” he said.

  “I’m a nurse, Mr. Starr. I’ve bathed lots of men.”

  “Then you ought to be content with that,” he told her smartly. “Go away and leave me be. I might be dead by nightfall, anyway.”

  Ruby Dee didn’t want to hear him talking about dying. It so upset her that she said very foolishly, “If you plan on dyin’, you’d certainly better get bathed and be prepared for laying out.”

  They went at this sparring for a full five minutes, but in the end, he agreed to Ruby Dee’s putting the two-step kitchen stool in the bathtub, with soap and towels at hand, which would enable him to bathe himself. When she went to help him get the bandages off his knee and ankle, he slapped her hands away. Then he hobbled into the bathroom on his crutches and slammed the door shut in her face.

  She hadn’t really been going to go into the bathroom with him. She had just wanted him to think so, in order to keep him stirred up. It was better for him to be stirred up than languishing in thoughts of death.

  She busied herself with changing his bed linens and dusting and straightening his room, getting rid of the spit cup and bringing a fresh one. She didn’t know who had invented chewing tobacco, but in her estimation that person had not made it into heaven. In the Bible one read about all kinds of people drinking, but one did not read about the filthy habit of tobacco.

  Beneath the bed, she found a bunch of candy wrappers and empty Skoal cans. These she threw away. The whiskey bottle beneath his pillow was empty, but she put it back. He would know she’d found it, but he would also know she didn’t pilfer things that didn’t belong to her. Every now and again, she would tiptoe to the bathroom door and listen for the sound of water splashing, which told her he was still alive and functioning.

  After nearly forty-five minutes, Hardy Starr came hobbling out of the bathroom. He was still all bristle-faced, but he had combed his hair and he had on a clean shirt and overalls. Ruby Dee viewed him with satisfaction.

  “You’d be real handsome, Mr. Starr, if you’d let me give you a shave.” She cast him a tempting look.

  “Leave me be,” he told her. He wouldn’t even let her massage and wrap his ankle and knee back up. And he didn’t want anything to eat or drink, either. “Are you deaf?” he yelled. “What I want is for you to go away!”

  Well. The bath had not made the transformation she had hoped for Mr. Starr.

  She left him, as he wished. There were times when being alone was the best medicine. Right at that minute she would just as soon have been alone, too.

  Gazing out the kitchen window, she saw the wind snatch fine sand from the rock bluffs that rose to the east, past the fenced pastures. The red dust puffed up, then disappeared to parts unknown. These men and their contention could wear her away like the wind did that sandstone, she thought. Right then she felt it wouldn’t take much for that to happen. She sensed herself as not much more than a crumbling lump of clay.

  Turning her attention to the house, which couldn’t grouch at her, she went at it in the fashion of a preacher with a mission to win souls at a revival—relentlessly, with purpose and gusto. Ruby Dee considered cleaning nursing business. If the world was cleaner, there would be a lot less sickness. And cleaning the house was something worthwhile to throw herself into, so she wouldn't have to think about herself so much.

  She cleaned the dishes and kitchen counters until they shone, and then she went at the bathrooms in the same way. She dusted and mopped the rest of the house, which didn’t take a whole lot of time, since she didn’t do the living room or the men’s bedrooms. There was no helping the dingy walls or the pitiful furnishings, but what she did do made a definite improvement. She left the doors to the living room slid back. The room really was ugly, but the light that came through its windows was bright and cheery, and improved the feel of the entire downstairs.

  A couple of times, recalling the charm of Miss Edna’s home, Ruby Dee suddenly started crying, but she didn’t stop cleaning. Cleaning and crying seemed to Ruby Dee to go right together.

  Several times she stopped and checked on Hardy Starr. He was either dozing or just sitting there, staring. After checking on him the third time, she got a knife and went outside to cut some flowers. The only ones were the brown-eyed Susans that grew along the fence rows. She cut their tough stems, brought them in and put them in water in an old quart Mason jar and carried them into Hardy Starr’s room.

  He spoke to her then. “They won’t last but an hour.”

  “Then you’d better enjoy them fast,” she said.

  She fixed sandwiches, canned pineapple and iced tea for lunch. She had half of a Vidalia onion, which she was saving to flavor the supper meal. After arguing with herself, she cut off a thick slice and put it on Hardy Starr’s plate. Onions were good for purifying the blood, and heaven knew Hardy Starr could use that. Besides, older men just seemed to love raw onions.

  She carried Hardy Starr’s lunch in to him, received not a word for her effort, and ate hers with Sally out on the back step. It was quiet, the cicadas having stopped by this time, the birds taking shade. The roof overhang provided Ruby Dee with shade, but the heat swirled around her. She thought it delicious to sip ice tea in the heat.

  Ruby Dee’s thoughts went to the farm she had wanted just about ever since she could remember. Not really a working farm—she could earn her living as a healer—but a small farmhouse and some land on which to live. A place like Big Grandma’s farm.

  Big Grandma had been stern and impatient and as unlike a child like Ruby Dee as a big old woman could be. She was one of those who believed in using the rod, in this case a tree switch on Ruby Dee’s legs. Still, they had found something in common, which was that they both loved the farm. Oh, Ruby Dee had loved the animals and the barn and the grass that tickled her nose. She loved the peace of the farm. She had been happier there than anywhere, except with Miss Edna, of course.

  Ruby Dee looked out across the backyard at the barns and the fenced pastures. She thought about how she wanted a nice barn and pasture, great places for children to play. And how she wanted a couple of boys or a boy and a girl. She would dress them in Oshkosh overalls. She would play with them and never use tree switches on their legs. There would be haystacks to jump in, and a swing made of rope hung from a barn rafter.

  These dreams were what her paper of cut-out pictures was about. The things she wanted. It had been Miss Edna’s idea a month before she passed on; she’d called it Ruby Dee’s dream paper.

  “I worry about what you’ll do after I’m gone, Ruby Dee,” she’d said, not fretfully but in that fact-of-the-matter way she had. “You don’t half have a plan. You don’t know what you want half the time.”

  “I know what I don’t want. It’s about the same.” But Miss Edna shook her head. “You have to be specific about what you want to get it. You have to see it clearly.”

  So to please Miss Edna, Ruby Dee had found pictures of the things she thought she wanted and pasted them on the paper. She had actually gone and toured the house advertised by the real estate company and had looked into buying it, but she didn’t have the down payment the bank insisted upon. She had always paid cash for anything she bought, which left her without a credit history. Banks were big on credit history and very small on self-employed practical nurses.

  Getting into the spirit of the thing, she had cut out the drawing of a boot from Western Style magazine. She wanted a pair of Blutcher handmade boots—a lot of the country-western singers had those.

  And she’d put the picture of the man on the paper to please Miss Edna. Rub
y Dee wasn’t certain she wanted a man, but she knew having one would be the best way to get children.

  When it came to romantic relationships, Ruby Dee did not have a good track record at all. Men generally liked her, but usually they didn’t want to marry her. The couple of men who had wanted to marry her, Ruby Dee hadn’t wanted.

  Ruby Dee had been very sensible about men all of her life. Because of her helter-skelter existence, often placed in foster homes that were less than they were supposed to be, she’d grown up fast in the sexual department. Very early on she had learned what a prize her sexuality was—so many boys, and men, too, were after it that she knew it was valuable. She made up her mind to keep it untouched until just the right man came along with whom to share it.

  She was twenty-seven before she lost her virginity to Beauford Vandiver. He was the first, the only, man she had ever loved. They were to be married.

  “Beauford Vandiver was a nefarious scoundrel. You should have known that from his name,” Miss Edna said, still aggravated from the other side.

  “How can I follow you when you use big words like that?” Ruby Dee asked. “And with that reasoning, who would trust Santa Claus?”

  Beauford had been one of the prettiest men Ruby Dee had ever seen, and just as sweet as he could be. He liked to be waited on and spoiled, and he sure liked sex, but in those ways Ruby Dee found him no different from most any man she had ever known. And she liked to wait on Beauford, she liked to spoil him and she liked to have sex with him.

  But they did not get married. “Your guardian angel saved you,” Miss Edna said.

  A day before their first wedding date, Beauford broke out with the measles. On their second wedding date, it snowed and Beauford got trapped at his office. A month later Beauford told her he needed more time to think about marriage and that he was taking a job his architectural firm had offered him, building a hotel down in Acapulco. Ruby Dee saw his picture in the society pages, his arm around the daughter of the president of the firm.

  Ruby Dee didn’t know if she could ever love another man. She still liked men. She just couldn’t seem to stop liking them. But she was no longer certain she wanted to risk getting involved with one. That just hurt too much.

  Perhaps she could simply contract with one to give her a child. It seemed a viable alternative. That or artificial insemination. She wondered if Will Starr would be willing to give her a child. She knew she and Will Starr would have no problem having sex...not at all. But some men were touchy about being used that way.

  She was rubbing the sweating glass over her neck where her dress scooped low and mulling over the possibility of adopting a foreign child, when a red Suburban drove up. A woman got out. Ruby Dee rose. She felt a foolish annoyance. She had enjoyed sitting in the quiet and dreaming her dreams, and this stranger had come butting in, forcing the return of reality. There were few things Ruby Dee hated more than reality.

  Sally started across the yard, wagging a tail in greeting, but Ruby Dee called her back.

  The woman stared over the hood of the Suburban. “Is Will around?”

  Her voice was forceful as she came around the car. She had blond hair—frosted, for sure—styled poofy, was older than Ruby Dee by some years—maybe in her late thirties—and was very pretty. She wore a starched turquoise shirt, with a fancy silver brooch at the neck, creased Rockies jeans and shiny boots. She stopped and put a hand to her hip—her left hand, which had a ring on it with a diamond the size of Mt. Everest.

  “He’s gone out to sort cattle,” Ruby Dee said.

  “Oh.” The woman stared at Ruby Dee. Ruby Dee stared back. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Ruby Dee D’Angelo. Who are you?”

  The woman regarded her a moment. “Georgia Reeves. Are you the housekeeper Will sent for?” she asked. She had a perfectly made-up face, her lipstick a cinnamon shade. Ruby Dee wished she had freshened her own lipstick; it was all gone now after eating her lunch.

  “I’m the nurse, come to take care of his daddy. Would you like to speak to Mr. Starr?” she said, just thinking of it. “He’s inside in bed. He hurt his ankle yesterday.”

  The woman grinned wryly and shook her head. “Nooo... I don’t need to be seein’ Hardy Starr.” Pivoting on the ball of her boot, she strode back around the car. The big diamond on her hand caught the light. “Tell Will I came by,” she said, not bothering with a “please.” She jerked open the car door and slammed it shut behind her. With quick turns, she headed the Suburban away in a cloud of dust.

  Ruby Dee wondered who the woman had been. A married woman, but she had been jealous of Ruby Dee. She had acted a little possessive, to Ruby Dee’s mind. A little uppity. Of course, Miss Edna had always said Ruby Dee had an overactive imagination.

  “I don’t think I would like her much,” Ruby Dee told Miss Edna.

  “Mind your manners, Ruby Dee,” Miss Edna scolded, giving instruction, as always.

  Ruby Dee went back inside and put fresh sheets on Lonnie’s and Will’s beds. Will’s bed looked so comfortable when she finished that she lay right down on it and fell asleep for nearly an hour. When she awoke, she smoothed it over perfectly, so he wouldn’t be able to tell she had slept there. It embarrassed her to think she had done that. Sometimes she was pretty silly.

  Back down in the kitchen, she made lemonade. While she was doing it, Will Starr called to make certain everything was okay. She told him about Georgia Reeves stopping by, so she wouldn’t forget later. She didn’t want him thinking she couldn’t be trusted with a message, and she didn’t want that Georgia Reeves thinking she deliberately hadn’t told him. She realized that many people would consider her silly for thinking that about Georgia Reeves, but most people didn’t have as good an understanding of women as Ruby Dee did.

  She took two glasses of the lemonade and a plate of crackers spread with peanut butter into Hardy Starr’s bedroom. He was reclining on his pillows, staring out the window.

  “I made lemonade, Mr. Starr...from real lemons.”

  He looked at her, then back out the window.

  Ruby Dee set his glass and the plate of peanut butter crackers on his bedside table; then she pulled the ladderback chair from against the wall and sat beside his bed. She sipped her lemonade, and then ate one of the crackers. She considered what to do about Hardy Starr. He was really beginning to worry her.

  Seeing the remote control for the television, she picked it up and aimed it at the TV. “Does this work?” The television came on with a crackle—the Donahue Show. “Isn’t television a miracle? We can see other people arguing all the way from New York City. If you want my opinion, one of the things wrong with the world today is TV talk shows. Glorifies people at their worst.”

  Hardy Starr didn’t say anything. It was really annoying, the way he sat there, annoying and worrisome.

  She had seen many people like this, giving up on living. Her job was to snatch them back from the clutches of futility, but she felt herself failing with him. That scared the daylights out of her. She sure didn’t want another old person dying on her.

  “Mr. Starr, I know you don’t want me here, but somebody has to be, and frankly, I’m a lot better at this than either of your sons. They can ranch, and I can take care of people. You play your cards right, and you’ll be glad to have me here.” She gave him a saucy, sexy look and winked.

  His pale eyes regarded her for three long seconds. “I ain’t wanted anythin’ from a woman in twenty-five years, and I sure don’t now that I’m an old man, so you can just take yer wiles right on out that door.” He gazed at her as if she were disgusting.

  Tears welled in Ruby Dee’s eyes. She rose and carefully put the chair back against the wall. Then she stepped beside the bed and leaned over, braced her arm on the mattress edge and jutted her face toward Hardy Starr.

  “You may be old, Mr. Starr, but you are still alive. You still have your mind and your mobility, such as it is. There are millions of people in this world who can’t say the same. And yes, y
ou are old, but that doesn’t mean you’re no-account. All those years made you tough—that’s why you’re still alive. It takes tough people to handle being old. And what’s more, at eighty-five or a hundred and eighty-five, you’re still a man. I think you’ve forgotten that, and I’ve just been tryin’ to remind you!”

  Shaking with emotion, she left him. In the kitchen, she hugged Sally and railed at God for giving her a job she just wasn’t up to. She had lost her talent, she thought. She had lost her gift, and she didn’t much care, either. Here she was thirty years old, and what did she have to show for it? Broken romances, a lot of dead old people, and a barren womb.

  She wanted to sit there and cry, but she felt herself sinking into such a pit of despair that it scared her. What would happen if Will Starr came in and found her on the floor, crying?

  She got up and made supper, because she couldn’t think of another thing to do, and if she didn’t do something, she was likely to go crazy.

  When she searched the refrigerator, she was disappointed to find that she had been wrong about another plain yellow onion’s being in there. All she had was two slices of the Vidalia left, and half of the slice she had given Hardy Starr, because he hadn’t eaten all of it. Someone leaving half of a sweet Vidalia was so sad.

  * * * *

  Hardy picked up the television remote, clicked off the television and threw the remote on the floor. He thought the gal might hear it and come running back in, but she didn’t. Went to show just how much attention she paid a patient, he thought.

  He listened carefully, and he thought he heard her crying. Women...they worked at a man with their tears! Then he heard her moving around, heard the kitchen radio come on. The gal was annoying with that radio. Made him think of Lila and her running around. Lila had been crazy for honky-tonk music.

  All the previous night and all that day, Hardy had been trying his best to think himself dead, and that he had not succeeded made him mad. He most generally had always done what he set out to do. The few things he had failed at were lulus, though—saving Jooney, satisfying Lila.