Ruth didn’t know how she was going to financially support herself and her daughters. She had double-majored in English and art instead of pursuing the dependable teaching degree her parents wanted. She had thrived in both departments and knew—even while discussing neoclassical literature and expressionism with her peers over a questionable cafeteria lunch—that those years were some of the best of her life. And yet what did she have to show for them? She neither painted nor wrote. Carving out time for herself felt impossible, even negligent, when she considered her daughters’ incessant needs. The girls were possibly even needier because Ruth was often forced to fill the roles of both parents.
She continued running, past the dark channels that were built up next to the numerous cranberry fields. The stars faded as the horizon lightened. Still running, she skimmed the fleece off over her head and tied it around her waist. When she came to the lake, she paused, standing before it, and saw a glow in the distance, next to what looked like a small house.
Ruth checked her Fitbit. She had half an hour before the girls were likely to wake up. She walked toward the glow and saw one of Elam’s Clydesdales tied to the lower branch of a tree. Ruth stopped, not wanting to relinquish her solitude, but she feared Elam had seen her and would wonder why she’d turned around.
She found him inside the pump house, leaning over a rusted piece of equipment. “Good morning,” she said.
Elam jumped so visibly, Ruth had to smile. “Oh, good morning,” he said. “Didn’t hear you come up.” He didn’t quite look at her but continued concentrating on his task. Ruth wondered if this was because of her apparel or because of his shyness. Chandler had never prepped her on the many nuances of Mennonite culture, because he’d never seen the need to return to his Old Order relatives living in Wisconsin, where the differences would be felt the most. But now that Ruth was here, she feared she was always doing something to offend.
“I was just out for a run and saw your light. Everything okay?”
“It will be,” he said. “I’m just trying to get the pump fixed before we begin harvesting.”
“What do you use it for? To flood the bog?”
He nodded. “I’m not much of a mechanic, but I’m not about to hire someone just to tighten a few bolts.” He set his wrench down and walked over to her. “You’re a runner?”
Ruth pulled on her fleece. She was beginning to feel a chill now her sweat had cooled. “I’m probably as much of a runner as you are a mechanic. Chandler used to run with me, in Colombia, when we were dating. It drove him crazy that I would run the streets on my own.”
Elam cocked his head. “I didn’t know Chandler was athletic.”
“He’s not.” Ruth laughed, remembering when Chandler first came downstairs in Bethel House wearing mesh shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes, all of which appeared curiously new. Her heart warmed with the memory, but she knew if she recalled it too long—if she understood she thought and spoke of her husband in the present tense—it would have the opposite effect. “I’m not sure I would call him athletic either. I think it was a bit of a ploy to get close to me.”
“Ah,” Elam said. “Makes sense.”
Elam and Ruth smiled at each other. She turned to go. “Hey,” he said. She looked back. “There’re some potatoes and eggs in the oven, if you want them.”
Nodding, she waved her thanks and headed home, the rising sun lighting her journey.
JULY 15, 2012
Dear Chandler,
It’s strange to me that we spent nearly two years at Bethel House as fellow staff members, who’d sometimes pass each other on the stairs or share whatever hodgepodge was in the fridge, but then, once I left—well, let’s just say I would love if you could come visit me on your break. However, I must warn you (I wanted to warn you last night, but the best reception’s in the kitchen, and my mother seemed quite preoccupied with organizing her silverware drawer while I was talking with you): after you arrive, for the first three days or so, my mother will act like you are a horrible inconvenience. She will grumble about having to set the table for another person; about how much electricity you are using (even if you don’t flip a switch the entire time you are here); the extra loads of laundry she’s having to wash and fold (even if you wear the same clothes for a week); that you forgot to open the window in the bathroom and now the entire upstairs is going to be crawling with black mold. Please, do not take this personally.
My mother treated me the same when I moved back home, which—suffice to say—caused me to immediately look for a rental property in town. But as you know, volunteer work cannot pay the bills, and I have student loans to repay. Therefore, I have surrendered to the fact that I am going to live here, at home, until I can find a better means of employment than a waitress at Father Tom’s. The upside is that I get to be near my father, who ensured that my childhood was a happy one. He is retired now (as is my mother) and can often be found puttering in the garden, or sitting down on one of the concrete benches near the shore, smoking his pipe and watching the sea with his Great Pyr, Zeus, by his side. He is the antithesis of my mother, and yet they get along. I like to believe that life has merely whittled away at the pieces that once made them compatible, now rendering them an imperfect fit.
They still love each other, though. I saw it last night, before I talked to you. My mother (Cathleen) yelled out the window that he (Kiffin) needed to stop wasting time playing fetch with the dog, and make a salad to go with supper. He did. He came in with a basket brimming with butterhead lettuce, carrots the size of my pinky fingers, and radishes. He’d washed everything off at the spigot outside, so he set the basket down on the table. She was just about to complain about the tablecloth getting wet when he pulled his other hand from behind his back and presented my mother with a bouquet of purple asters he’d gathered from near the gate.
“For you, m’lady,” he said in his thick brogue.
My mother wears neither makeup nor jewelry, keeps her curly hair cropped short, and sticks to a uniform of khakis and collared shirts. So his calling her a “lady” would’ve seemed incongruous to most. And yet, I could see her cheeks redden and eyes sparkle as she took the flowers, planted a brisk kiss on his cheek, and said, “Get out of here, you ol’ coot.”
So, if forewarned is forearmed, I hope you’ll put this knowledge in your arsenal. But I promise to make my mother’s harping up to you by taking you hiking along the road to Bray, where we can see the heather bending in the wind, the wild horses grazing on the pinnacle of the trail, and the seals bobbing in the Irish Sea as the frothing water appears like a spool of lace unfurled around their dark heads. And then, when we arrive at Bray (roughly ten miles later), we can replenish the calories we burned by getting some mint chocolate chip gelato from the little shop down along the boardwalk and take our time eating it while the town’s multicolored flags snap in the salted wind. So, come, Chandler; I would love to have you here.
Yours,
Ruth
Ruth did not mind being alone in her grief; actually, she preferred it. Especially if the company was someone she did not know well. But Elam’s sister, Laurie, was a good-hearted force to be reckoned with. In the brief time she had known her, Ruth realized Laurie took it upon herself to see that no one in her orbit should ever feel lonely. This must be why she now bounded up the steps—Tim Junior perched on her pregnant belly—and burst through the door. “Guten Morgen!” she sang, seeing Mabel and Ruth at the table. “Can’t stay long—the kids are probably tearing the house apart—but I wanted to tell you that some of the ladies and I are making apple pies. We’re starting at ten and then having lunch.”
Mabel looked at Ruth. “You should go,” she said. “I’ll keep the girls.”
The last thing in the world Ruth wanted was to interact with a group of curious strangers. For the past two months, she’d noticed—or at least felt—that people were always watching her, as if trying to judge her emotional state. Since Cathleen Galway raised Ruth, Ruth tended to conceal h
er emotions the same as her stoic mother had always done. Sometimes, Ruth tended to conceal these emotions even from herself, so that the only way she could understand her own thoughts was to take the time to write them down. No, the last thing in the world Ruth wanted was to be a case study for a gaggle of women who had husbands to keep their beds warm at night. But Laurie’s wide-eyed, hopeful expression prevented Ruth from saying what she felt.
“Can I bring anything?” she asked.
“Of course not.” Laurie’s smile widened. “I’m just glad you’re going to come.”
One hour later, Ruth’s rental car took a left at the intersection where another gravel road bisected the long farm lane that wound past the barns and the lake. Laurie and Tim’s house looked like a miniature version of the farmhouse Elam owned. Ruth parked along the side of the road so she could make an easy exit—and a hasty one, too, if needed. The yard appeared filled with as many horses and buggies as had been at the funeral. Ruth wondered if the house could contain all the women who were surely inside, since the church had been overflowing that day. Strange, how her mind chose to remember such irrelevant details but couldn’t recall the faces of the people who’d come up to her after the service to share a boyhood memory of Chandler—playing kick the can with his Mennonite peers; standing in cow pies to keep his bare feet warm one winter; building elaborate tunnels in the hayloft with Elam; telling one farmer there was a wild animal in his barn when a cow had just gotten her head stuck in the slats of a trough. All these memories, which Ruth had never heard, made her feel further removed from her husband, for it seemed he’d lived an entire lifetime before they wed.
Ruth stood in the middle of Laurie’s yard and considered leaving, but what would she tell Mabel? Beside her, the water pumping rod moved up and down above the cement base as, overhead, the windmill’s rusted fans creaked. Chickens pecked and scratched at the overlapping gullies the wagon wheels had made. An old farm dog—a beagle of some kind—sprawled in the sunshine in front of the barn. The panorama was so iconic that Ruth momentarily forgot her insecurity and could picture the setting in black-and-white.
When no one answered her knock, Ruth entered the breezeway. The floor was littered with a hastily corralled menagerie of children’s shoes and coats. There were also women’s shoes, all black and close to uniform, causing Ruth’s calf-high brown leather boots to stand out. She hoped this was not a sign of how she would also stand out from the women who wore them.
Ruth entered Laurie’s kitchen and breathed the autumnal scent of cooking apples, cinnamon, and smoke. A long table took up most of the space. The floor was refinished pine, with a runner of scuffs marking the area that received the most traffic. Along the back wall, between two windows, steam curled as lids danced atop massive kettles sitting on the woodstove. An assembly line of Plain women chattered while washing Golden Delicious and Red Delicious apples at the sink, slicing and coring the apples, and if necessary, cutting away rotten or wormy parts. More women dumped these apples into pots and stirred them with metal spoons. Laurie—the only one Ruth recognized, though the others had attended the funeral—stood at the table, rolling out crust.
Laurie looked up as Ruth approached, and her freckled face opened in a grin. Wiping her floured hands on her apron, she crossed the room and embraced Ruth, as if she hadn’t just seen her. Still touching Ruth’s arm, Laurie asked, “So, where would you like to help?”
But the din had quietened. Ruth glanced around at the women, who quickly resumed their chatter and work like a culinary battalion with apron strings crisscrossing their backs.
Laurie murmured, “Why don’t you just stay here with me, then?” She took an apron off the hook beside the sink and passed it to Ruth. Over the past few months, Ruth had lost so much weight, she could wrap the ties twice around her waist and knot them in front.
Ruth washed her hands in the closet-sized bathroom and then came back to stare at the contents of the bowl. Laurie hadn’t given Ruth instructions and so clearly assumed Ruth knew how to make pie crust. She didn’t. Scones were the most complicated item Cathleen had taught her to bake. So Ruth watched Laurie cut the cold butter into the flour mixture and begin working the dough into balls with her fingers. Ruth replicated this and found the domestic action soothing. She wondered how long it’d been since she’d done much of anything in the kitchen besides breakfast. When you lost someone, it seemed everyone wanted to make sure you stayed fed.
Laurie asked, breaking into Ruth’s thoughts, “Has Elam said two words to you yet?”
Ruth glanced over at Laurie, who had sprinkled flour across the table and begun flattening the dough, so Ruth sprinkled flour across the table and began flattening hers. “We talked a little the other morning. Why?” She stared back down at the bowl. “Doesn’t he usually?”
“Usually?” Laurie laughed. “No. My big brother’s about the shyest guy you’ll ever meet. But—” Laurie paused to straighten the rolling pin—“I don’t think I’m just being partial when I say he’s also one of the kindest. Almost the entire community’s employed by the Driftless Valley Farm, to the point the community’s now named after it. Nobody thinks to call us River Bend Mennonites anymore. But I rarely see the responsibility stress him. Then again, Elam’s not the easiest to read.”
Ruth didn’t know Elam or Laurie well enough to reply to this admission, so she focused on using her own rolling pin to evenly flatten the dough.
“What are your plans after . . .” But Laurie didn’t finish. Ruth looked and saw Laurie’s face had flared bright red. “Forgive me,” she whispered. “Sometimes I forget why you are here.”
Ruth said, “It’s okay.” And though the question was, the situation wasn’t.
In truth, Ruth had no idea what she was going to do now that she wasn’t living for free in Bethel House or receiving $2,000 a month from Children’s Haven or Physicians International, depending which nonprofit organization currently employed her husband. Chandler’s public service had qualified for student loan forgiveness, saving them half a million dollars in medical school debt. But regardless of how conservatively they lived, $24,000 a year had left little room for savings. Whatever they had saved was long gone.
“I’m sure you can stay for as long as you like,” Laurie said, quietly, perhaps conscious of the other women whose work had again stilled so they might overhear.
“I couldn’t impose on Elam’s hospitality.”
Laurie made a dismissive sound. “Nonsense. You’d be doing him a favor. He’s always shorthanded when harvest season rolls around; I’m sure he could hire you for a few weeks.”
“I—I don’t think I’m staying that long.” But Ruth’s voice wasn’t filled with conviction like when she’d told Mabel this after the funeral. She blinked back tears. Now was no time to cry. She quickly looked down at the crust, buttered one of the pie pans in the stack, and draped the dough over it, trimming off the excess with a knife the way Laurie had done. Where was Ruth’s place in the world? Who were her people? For so long, she’d felt like a single mother, and yet she’d had no idea the vulnerability of walking this journey alone.
The insurance agent on the phone had the audacity to sound bored. “I understand your husband gave his life for our country, Mrs. Neufeld, but this policy does not include acts of war.”
“He was going to Afghanistan,” Ruth said, pressing a heel of one hand against her eye until, even with it closed, her vision swam in stars. “He wouldn’t have taken that risk.”
After a while, the insurance agent asked, “Should I fax the contract to you?”
Ruth cleared her throat. She focused on the creak of the windmill and on the distant, rhythmic clop of a horse leaving Laurie’s house, rather than on the fact that her husband’s life insurance policy was now null and void. “There are no fax machines where I am,” she said.
“Then could I email it to you?”
Ruth held out her phone to see how much battery it had left. She was tired of having to charge it in the
rental car each night, but what other choice did she have?
“No internet here either.” She turned her head from the receiver and took a deep breath. Weeks spent untangling red tape, and Ruth had never spoken to the same agent twice. But she still didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of picturing a heartbroken widow on the other side.
The insurance agent paused. Ruth knew that pause; knew he was trying to think of something appropriate to say. “I—I am sorry for—” he began.
She cut him off. “I’ve got to go.”
Which wasn’t a lie. Ruth did need to go. She just didn’t know where.
AUGUST 20, 2012
Dear Ruth,
My last letter began with an apology, and it seems this letter’s following suit. I am sorry that I proposed. Or, if I am not entirely sorry, I am at least sorry that it shocked you. If it makes you feel any better, it also shocked me. You were just standing there, with the sun on your hair, and I was standing next to you, fully aware that we were soon going to be continents apart. You asked me, afterward, how I could love you when I barely know you, but sometimes you can love someone without even knowing who they are.
It happened, for me, even before you almost got kidnapped at Guatavita; it happened the first week you came to Bethel House.
I came back from the clinic around midnight. I unlocked the door and saw the basket lamp above the kitchen table was on, throwing a crisscross pattern on the walls. I didn’t see you until I came closer. Your back was to me, your hair twisted into a messy bun stabbed with a ballpoint pen. The table was covered with papers and a yellow sleeve of candy, but you were just sitting there, your profile turned toward the window.
How the Light Gets In Page 3