Outside they eat the pretzels on the curb. “What was up with that?”
“I erased his mind.”
It starts to snow, just a little, first snow of the year. “Really?” Ruth asks.
A large kid, big as a Sasquatch, skulks across the parking lot wearing a lined canvas coat, hardly enough clothing for this weather, a sure signal to the world that he is deranged. His shoulders are up, his head down. He shakes his chin in disagreement. They watch him get closer. Ruth would be scared of him if it weren’t Ceph.
“Ceph,” she calls. She’s not seen him since she left.
“Nuth. Rat.” He doesn’t stop.
“Where you headed?”
Ceph keeps going as if she hadn’t said a thing.
“What are you so mad about?”
But Ceph won’t stop and Ruth already knows what he’s mad about.
They walk a circuit through town. They go to the high school, to the Texaco, down to the river. “What do you think Mr. Bell’s doing tonight?”
“I don’t know. He’s your husband,” Nat says.
Kids in sedans breeze by. Kids with parents. Kids whose parents taught them how to drive. Spoiled brats. Nat dribbles saliva onto the sidewalk. It’ll be frozen by midnight. The moon rises, the moon sets. Ruth squeezes her hands into the back pockets of her blue jeans.
A few days later Ceph shows up underneath her window when Nat is out. Ceph yells, “Bring me down a cigarette!” The word “bitch” is silent but understood. Ceph scares the dogs with his yelling. They begin to howl.
Ruth doesn’t even smoke. She meets him on the sidewalk but won’t let him upstairs. He’s mad she didn’t take him with her. He is confusing her with his mother. “You’re going to be fine. You’ll find a job. Save your money and you can get an apartment. It’s not that hard when you have a job.”
“You think I could live by myself? Alone-like? I can’t do that.”
Ceph’s wearing a pair of dark sunglasses and a brown leather jacket. He’s carrying a cane.
“What’s the costume about?” she asks.
Ceph burns. He’s trying to look like a man, a tough man. He’s terrified. He had parents for too long, and now he doesn’t know how to take care of himself. “You said you were mine.”
Ruth shuts her eyes. “I was wrong about that.”
“Some meth-bitch gave me herps.”
She wants to ask, Before or after me?, but she’s scared it will make him angrier. Plus, she’s pretty sure no one else would actually have sex with Ceph. No one besides her, that is.
When she doesn’t respond, he quotes Scripture, slowly, fully. “‘The devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.’”
“I think you need some help,” Ruth says.
“That’s why I’m here.”
So she lets him upstairs.
“Which kitchen knife is sharpest?” he asks.
“What is it, Ceph? What’s wrong with you?”
His body is shaking slightly, a minor earthquake. “I’m eighteen soon.”
“That’s great. You’re going to be free.”
“Free to what?”
But Ruth has to think for so long that Ceph puts his head in her lap and falls asleep. Ruth lets him sleep. She thinks, It’s the least I can do.
When he finally wakes, the room is almost dark. Ruth’s thighs are hard with stillness. “You look like a Neanderthal when you sleep,” she tells him.
“What’s a Neanderthal?”
“One of our ancestors.”
“Like George Washington?”
“No.”
Ruth makes Ceph a mozzarella and tomato sandwich. Mr. Bell taught her how. Mr. Bell likes food from Little Italy. Capicola, sun-dried tomatoes, blood oranges. Mr. Bell showed her where to shop. Ruth offers Ceph a salad called arugula. “Can’t eat that.”
So Ceph takes her to Burger King in the Father’s truck, an absurd vehicle. Its tires are so large, it’s barely street legal. The Father has sunk a fortune into this truck. Its black paint has been detailed precisely with red and orange flames, a visor painted to read HOLY ROLLER, and JOHN 3:16 in white script over the gas tank.
“How come you have his truck?”
No answer.
“Does he know?”
“You think?”
Ceph orders from the drive-thru for both of them. “You pay,” he says, and she does. Ceph thinks Ruth should pay for everything: his mom being dead, the world’s cruelty, the stinky burgers and fries. When she cracks the window, Ceph tells her, “Roll up. Black people live here,” and she’s so glad she’s not married to Ceph.
Like a stomach flu, word of Nat and Ruth’s talents spreads. A librarian tells an aunt who tells a dentist who tells a lawyer. Nat and Ruth buy new clothes. They eat new foods. They have a stereo for playing new music. They have a hand-held beater for making cakes and muffins, a comforter filled with a down-like product. They have an electric yogurt maker and a scrub brush for cleaning the toilet when it’s dirty. Each object enters their home as a holy totem, a relic from the world they never knew. They study it, learn it, and eventually grow used to it.
A few days later Ceph leaves her a message. “I put my head in an oven.” Ruth walks through the snow to the Father’s house to see if it’s true. She doesn’t want Ceph to die. She just wants him to leave her alone.
Ruth feels like a celebrity at Love of Christ! since she managed to escape. She brings a box of bakery cookies, fancy Italian ones, even if the Father will just throw them away untasted.
The congregation is gathered in the barn. Ruth looks for Ceph in there. The Father is standing on top of his stool up front. He’s got the people on their feet. Fists are raised. A few congregants stomp, jumping as children in a tantrum. There’s sweat in the Father’s hair. He arches back with power. “God does not love everyone!” he screams. “God does not love everyone!” He gets the parish chanting, laying his own track on top, detailing a record of God’s hatred. “Leviticus! ‘And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.’ Psalms! ‘The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.’ Psalms again! ‘Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man.’ And Psalms again! ‘The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.’”
“Amen!” someone cries out. “Hatred!”
“Proverbs!” the Father keeps on, spit, furor flying. “‘The mouth of strange women is a deep pit. He that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein.’ Malachi! ‘And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.’” Must mean the Mother ran off again.
Ceph’s not in the barn. Ruth shuts the door behind her. Her bird feeder is empty. She finds Ceph inside the house watching TV.
“How come you don’t have to go to church anymore?” she asks.
Ceph just looks at her.
“You need a gas stove to kill yourself, Ceph. This one’s electric.”
“I don’t need a stove.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear—”
“’Cause I’m going to buy a gun.”
“Did you call your caseworker?” Someone, anyone, besides her.
“On vacation till the new year.”
“What’s going on, Ceph?”
“Friday the Thirteenth.” Totally contraband.
“No. What’s going on?” Ruth’s voice is steady.
“Who’s your husband, Ruth?”
“Who cares. It’s not like I love him.”
“That’s good.”
“Why?”
Ceph shuts off the tube remotely, still looking into the darkened set. He’s wearing gray sweatpants, plastic flip-flops, and an undershirt with something like chocolate ice cream dribbled down the fron
t. Pitiful. “Come on. Let’s walk,” she says, if only to prove the Father wrong. The hairs of Ceph’s chest are visible through the fabric. “Put on a coat, please. And some damn boots,” Ruth says.
Ceph points out local disasters on their walk downtown. “Bunny rabbits under the lawn mower there. I saw it.” And “Gunther Wright was decapitated there. You know Gunther?”
“No.” They pass Walgreens, Popeye’s, and the Recovery Sports Bar, neon Budweiser sign in the window. “You’re making it worse.” The sun cuts a square of light through some trees. “You’re choosing to make it worse.” They pass another pharmacy. And then another. “Let’s get coffee.” She’s freezing. Ruth takes one step into Hook’s Diner and sees Mr. Bell at the counter. Her husband. She never just runs into him. She’s tried to run into him before and never has, but now, the one time she doesn’t want to see him, there he is, talking to someone, arguing maybe. A tall guy in a wool cap. Ruth can’t see the guy’s face because they’re sitting at the counter. She tries to listen, but they are too far away because it sounds like Mr. Bell is saying, “ANFO? ANFO?” And that makes no sense. She wants to get Ceph away from Mr. Bell. She feels the panic worst in her lungs.
“Changed my mind.” She backs Ceph out the door.
“What? Let’s get coffee.”
She’s desperate. “Maybe you can stay with us until you figure out a place,” she says as she walks out the door.
“Really?” he asks once they’re outside, down the block, out of Mr. Bell’s sight.
“No. On second thought, that wouldn’t work.”
They sneak into the Hilton’s swimming pool. Tika told them about this trick. It’s in the basement of the hotel. It’s empty. Winter in Troy, New York. No one wants to swim. Ruth strips down to her underwear on the tiled deck. “Come in.” Her voice bounces off the floor, ceiling, and mirrored wall. She clears a rainbow film from the surface before lowering her body into the water. It’s warm enough to host a municipality of germs. Ruth thinks of the Hudson and Burt Lancaster. No one swims in the Hudson since GE ruined it.
“Your tits are hot.” Ceph stands on the deck. “I’ll miss your tits.” He adjusts the waistband of his sweats. Looks into the mirror.
“Where are you going?”
“Far from here.”
Ruth looks down at her simple, lumpen, soaking wet brassiere. “Good,” she says. “That’s the spirit, Ceph. Get out of here. Find a new town, a new life.” She’s relieved he’ll be gone soon. “Come on in.”
“Can’t swim.”
“I can’t either.” Swimming was not one of the skills Father Arthur thought important. Ruth falls forward in the shallow end. The water enters her ears. It’s got her surrounded. Why does she feel responsible for Ceph? Why is he making her feel responsible for him?
Ceph is saying words back in the dry air, but it all sounds like bubbles underwater. She doesn’t want to hear him talking his gorilla talk. She wants to believe that she can escape the life she’s led so far, casualty-free. Bubble, bubble, bubble. Ruth holds her breath, floats on her belly. She tries to think of Nat, liquid, pitch blue. They’re going to be OK. She imagines Nat swimming up to meet her out of the deep end. What took you so long? Nat pours them an underwater tea party, then knocks it out of the way. He slaps her hard across the face. Her neck falls back slowly, dramatically wounded like a matinee idol. Her lungs are empty. She stays underwater until her brain starts to pop, until Nat becomes Mr. Bell. You?
It doesn’t have to hurt, dear.
It does if I want to feel it.
Mr. Bell sips his underwater tea. We forgot, Till death do us part. He lifts his hand to Ruth as water enters her lungs. She surfaces, sputtering, coughing. That hadn’t been one of their vows.
“Did you hear what I said?” Ceph asks.
“No.” She spits chlorine from her mouth.
“Nothing?”
“No.”
“Good fucking friend.”
“What’d you say?”
“You didn’t hear nothing?”
“No.”
“I said I would have married you. I would have taken care of you.” He’s standing by the edge of the pool still wearing his dirty, sad clothes. He’s nothing to her, a blank or, worse, a blob. She doesn’t even like Ceph.
“You can’t take care of yourself.”
“You were mine.”
“Well.”
“You lied?”
“Why do you want me?” Her head is at his foot level.
“I can’t be alone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So where do I go?” For a moment she thinks he will start to cry. She really hopes he won’t because she knows if he cries in front of her, he’ll only hate her more.
“You have no one? An aunt? A granny?”
“No. Just you.”
“But, Ceph.”
“What?”
“I don’t even like you.”
“Don’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
“Who’d you marry, Ruth? Who is he?”
Ruth sinks under again. Hudson plus Erie. The river under the river, under the city. And the city under that. So many lonely people. Water moves around Ruth. The tides on the Hudson. What does one broken child mean to the world? Time passes, growing older, cut deeper and chilled by the current against her legs. Dirty water that circles in eddies on its way down to the next town.
Christmas comes. Ruth invites Ceph and Mr. Bell over for dinner. She warned Mr. Bell not to tell anyone he’s her husband, especially Ceph.
“Lie?” Mr. Bell asked.
“Yes.”
“No problem.”
Ruth and Nat cook all manner of foods. A ham, brownies, potatoes, wild rice with butter, Brussels sprouts with chestnuts, cornbread. Mr. Bell brings a bottle of wine and some green apples.
In the kitchen Ceph is under foot at every turn like a real baby, getting in the way. “I’m trying to put a meal out, Ceph. Could you, please?”
“What?” he asks.
“It’s like you’re following me. Even in this tiny kitchen.”
“I am following you. I’ve got nowhere else. I’m going to follow you wherever you go. Wherever.”
Ruth shuts her eyes. Merry Christmas, she says it inside, ten times fast. She opens her eyes. “Ceph, sit down.” And he finally does.
Ruth has presents for each of the three men, god’s eyes she made from a couple of sticks and some yarn, a craft learned at the home. Nat and Ceph remember, but to Mr. Bell they are new. He calls his “a thing of beauty” and hangs it from his suit coat’s button.
Ruth and Mr. Bell do dishes. Ceph continues to watch from his seat. He keeps his sunglasses on, but she’s sure he’s staring at Mr. Bell. Ceph looks awful. He barely says a word except when Mr. Bell steps into the other room to collect more dirty glasses. “I got myself a Christmas present,” he tells Ruth.
“That’s a good idea. What’d you get?”
“A thirty-two.”
“Thirty-two what?”
“Caliber.”
“A gun?”
He nods yes.
She turns back to the sink, scrubbing. “Sounds like a bad idea,” she finally says. “A really sad, bad idea. Did you really or are you just trying to frighten me? On Christmas?”
“What do you think?”
Ruth dries her hands on her thighs. “I think there must be some law that says it’s illegal to sell you a gun.”
“You’d think so, right?”
“Yes.”
“There is.”
“Good. I don’t want you to die, Ceph.”
He looks down at her kitchen floor. “You don’t want me to die, but you don’t want me around either.” She cannot argue with that.
They sing “Hark! The Herald Angels” and “Deck the Halls.” Ruth pretends Christmas, forces good feelings. They sing “O Holy Night.” Ceph doesn’t really sing, but he listens without being nasty. Ruth takes a turn sitting on his knee an
d then Nat’s and then, because the night is just so friendly, Mr. Bell’s.
A week later Mr. Bell says, “Some people called me. They want a session tonight.”
It’s New Year’s Eve. “Don’t you have plans?” she asks Mr. Bell.
“No. No plans.”
Nat sits on the windowsill in another guest bedroom where they’ve been sequestered. He wears royal blue. Mr. Bell always chooses jewel tones. “Ruth.” He presents a beet-colored gown. “For you.” She turns her back to the men and undresses, aware of the muscles in her shoulders. She asks for a zip. Mr. Bell beats Nat to her zipper. She shows them the outfit.
“I knew that would bring out your scar. Gorgeous,” Mr. Bell says. No one—excepting cruel children—ever speaks of her scar. She raises her hand to her nose.
“When I tell you something’s beautiful, don’t cover it.”
She lowers her hand.
Ruth decides she needs a glass of milk before she goes on. Mr. Bell is talking with the hostess, laughing. Mr. Bell with this woman. Mr. Bell with that woman. Why would Ruth care? They are in a private house. They’ve been invited here by wealthy people. “I need a glass of milk.” The hostess is sent for and moments later returns with the milk. Ruth sips. “Is this skim?”
“That’s all we have.”
Ruth holds the glass out for the wife to take back. Nat does not flinch. They face each other, locked as some muscled viper winds its way between their mouths. The movement sours Ruth’s stomach. “I need a glass of real milk.”
“Many apologies,” Mr. Bell offers. “I’ll dart out to the store.” He looks at Ruth like he’s proud of her.
“No,” the hostess says, sucking what she can from Ruth, absorbing an idea of power. “Don’t be silly. I can send my husband.”
The husband makes it to the store and back in twenty-five minutes. The wife pours a tall glass of whole milk and knocks on the bedroom door, her own bedroom door. Ruth drinks it down, missing the goats again.
As they enter the living room, the guests go quiet. Ruth squeezes deep into Nat’s grip. She listens. On a large brown couch with simple beige pillows, an anxious bearded man with thick glasses wears a navy collar shirt. He’s pale and chubby, plays too many video games. He’s not here for nostalgia. He’s here because someone died and didn’t tell him which bank account the money’s in. His wife sits beside him. She seems kind, has brown eyes that twinkle. Ruth thinks: Good cook, keeps secrets from her husband like that she’s looking for a message from a boy she once knew who died young. Beside her is a young woman in a wool skirt and wool tights, twenty-five maybe. She went to college and doesn’t believe any of this but misses her dead father regardless. And next to her is the Mother. “Ruth.” The Mother smiles. Her teeth are melted gray bits. The Mother is a black hole in the living room, fully empty of care or compassion or qualities a real mother might have.
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