The Last First Day

by Carrie Brown

  I can’t stand it, he said after a minute, watching her cry. What I did to you.

  Stop, Ruth said. She rolled over and blew a breath toward the ceiling, patting her cheeks. She made herself stop crying.

  It’s enough, she said. We did it to each other.

  Later, when she woke again. Peter lay next to her on his side. His arms were around her.

  I thought I’d dreamed this, she said.

  He kissed her. No dream, he said. Promise.

  • • •

  At some point over the long night, he told her that he’d been at Yale the day before, where he was applying to the doctoral program in American history. After the interviews, walking back to the university’s guesthouse in the bitter cold, he’d stepped into one of the chapels on campus to get out of the wind.

  I just sat there, Peter said. I thought about all the letters I’d written to you and never mailed. I thought about all the times I’d seen you but been too afraid to speak to you. But I knew I had to try again. Even if you still hated me, I had to know that.

  The next morning, he said, he had taken the train back to Boston, and the friend who had picked him up at South Station—that had been Ed—had said to him, Hold on to your hat, Pete old pal. We’re going to Northampton.

  It just felt like a sign, Peter said. Like I was being given another chance.

  He pulled Ruth against him.

  And there you were, on the stairs, he said. More beautiful than ever.

  What will happen, Ruth said. What will happen when we tell your mother?

  Peter rolled onto his back, pulling her with him.

  Well, she’s not—, he started. She watched him look up at the ceiling.

  She’s not exactly … anyone we know anymore, he said.

  Ruth rested her head against his chest. She thought about Mrs. van Dusen, about how clean she had kept the house and garden, about her chapped lips and trembling mouth, about how she had dressed up on Sunday mornings to go to church. She’d worn a little hat with a veil, and white gloves.

  Does she still go to church? she asked. She remembered Peter’s accounts of his mother’s increasingly bizarre behavior, her daily visits to the Catholic church and the hours spent on her knees, her distress.

  Someone usually takes her to Mass when she’s home, Peter said. Or my father will do it, if she says she wants to go. They have friends—really, my father’s friends—who come by and pick her up. But it’s just … she’s just going through the motions. Or else it upsets her.

  They lay in silence for a while.

  Then Peter said, She’s mostly at the place now, where she gets the treatments. When she comes home, she’s …

  He stopped again, and then he drummed lightly on Ruth’s shoulder with his fingertips. He didn’t finish the sentence.

  Ruth thought about the night in the bathroom at the van Dusens’, the terrible taste of the aspirin in her mouth, the look on Mrs. van Dusen’s face.

  I’m sorry, Peter said. She wasn’t—she isn’t—a bad person.

  She hated me, Ruth said.

  She didn’t hate you, Peter said. But I know it looked like that. She was just—I don’t know. Afraid of everything.

  I know, Ruth said. I know that. I could tell, even from the beginning, I think. Only I didn’t know what it was, that she was sick.

  Someday we’ll forgive her, Peter said.

  Ruth turned her head to look at him.

  I’ll try, she said. To forgive her.

  Me, too, Peter said.

  Later, though, Ruth thought it was a blessing that they decided to wait until the end of the academic year before telling his parents, that in fact Peter’s mother died before hearing the news that Peter and Ruth had found each other again and intended to marry. An autopsy showed that her death was the result of a ventricular dysfunction, Dr. van Dusen told Peter, the defect present but undiagnosed all along. A seizure induced by the electroconvulsive therapy triggered an episode of arrhythmia from which Mrs. van Dusen’s heart failed to recover.

  When Peter finally brought Ruth home with the news that they would marry, Dr. van Dusen—who looked to Ruth sad and terribly thin—embraced her.

  I’m glad, Ruth, he said. I’m so glad.

  Peter was admitted to Yale’s graduate program, and Ruth and Peter moved to New Haven immediately after their commencements. Peter gave Ruth an engagement ring; they would marry, they decided, the next spring, in 1958.

  Don’t you just want to get married now? Peter had asked her.

  I want to do things the way normal people get to do them, Ruth had said. I want to be an engaged person for a while, with people congratulating me.

  On a windy, rainy Saturday afternoon a few weeks before the wedding, Ruth arrived at Dr. Wenning’s office for work, as usual. By then, she had been working for Dr. Wenning for several months. She had already told her the story of her life. Something about Dr. Wenning—her own tragedy, probably, Ruth thought—had made it impossible to tell her the fib about the young, beautiful, fake botanist parents killed in an automobile accident.

  Ruth hadn’t even hesitated before telling her the truth.

  That Saturday, Ruth came in to Dr. Wenning’s outer office, taking off her raincoat and stepping out of her shoes, which were soaked. She hung her raincoat on the coatrack and went to the door of Dr. Wenning’s study.

  Dr. Wenning was seated at her desk. She looked up.

  Nice weather for the ducks, she said. I thought you might not come.

  An enormous, expensive-looking box tied with a wide green silk ribbon was propped on the extra armchair chair across from the desk.

  Ruth looked at it.

  Yes, yes. It’s for you, Dr. Wenning said, following Ruth’s gaze. She took off her glasses. Who else?

  She put her glasses back on and pantomimed peering around comically, as if she might have overlooked someone standing in the shadows.

  Open it! she said.

  Ruth had wanted a wedding dress, but she had confessed that, under the circumstances, the usual sort of wedding gown—seed pearls and Alençon lace and cascades of white chiffon—seemed foolish. She would feel ridiculous in such a costume, she’d said.

  I’m not exactly … you know, she had said, a virgin in white.

  Dr. Wenning had waved a hand.

  Virgin, schmirgin, she said. Who cares? You think all those girls in white are virgins?

  The box on the chair was full of pale blue tissue paper. Ruth peeled back the layers. Inside was folded a dove gray suit and a matching pillbox hat with a dotted veil. The material was full of watery light.

  Ruth lifted out the jacket and held it against her. It was beautiful.

  Across the desk, Dr. Wenning took off her glasses again.

  Good color for a redhead, she said.

  She replaced her glasses and folded her hands over her belly.

  Who wants to be a virgin, anyway? she said. They have a terrible life, those virgins, someone always trying to sacrifice them.

  Ruth could not speak.

  Never mind, never mind … Dr. Wenning waved her away. I have no daughter, as you know, she said. So … it is my pleasure.

  They were words Dr. Wenning said a lot.

  It was always her pleasure to listen to Ruth, or to give her a book, or a record album, or to pick up the check at dinner.

  Let us go have some refreshment, she would say, hooking her arm in Ruth’s as they were leaving her office on Saturday afternoons, and she would buy them pie and coffee at the deli across the street, or a draft ale at a bar.

  After a while, Ruth realized she had begun saying it, too.

  My pleasure, she said to Peter, when he thanked her for bringing him a sandwich at the library, or ironing his shirt, or typing a paper for him.

  When he leaned his head against her shoulder in gratitude, or hugged her, or held her face and kissed her, she thought: My pleasure. My pleasure.

  Ruth and Peter were married on a Sunday morning in early May under
the Apse Memorial Windows in the Battell Chapel at Yale. Ruth carried a bouquet of yellow daffodils. The party was small.

  Dr. Wenning was in attendance, along with Dr. van Dusen and Peter’s thesis advisor from Yale, an elderly, stooped scholar from England with whom Peter had a formal but affectionate relationship. Two of Peter’s friends from Yale stood with him, and Ruth’s friend Marnie Lawrence drove down to New Haven from Northampton, where she had stayed after college to work in the Neilson Library.

  The day was misty and cool, the scent of lilacs in the air.

  The group lunched afterward at Mory’s Temple Bar, where they had the Cream of Baker Soup and lamb chops.

  Ruth drank too much champagne, for which she had a weakness.

  That afternoon, she and Peter drove in Dr. Wenning’s car, loaned to them for the occasion, to Cape Cod, where they had rented a cottage for the weekend.

  Ruth fell asleep in the car and woke only when they left the paved road to rumble along the bumpy track to the beach.

  Opening the car door when they stopped before the cottage, Ruth took in the familiar smell of the ocean. It was dark, the night sky star-strewn. She sat for a moment, breathing deeply.

  They carried their bags inside. The cottage smelled of mildew, and Ruth opened the windows and pulled back the bedspreads to air the sheets.

  Then they put on sweaters and took a blanket from one of the narrow little twin beds and went out to the beach. The wind was very strong. Ruth shivered under the blanket, and Peter shifted to sit behind her, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on her head.

  The sound of the surf was too loud for conversation. Ruth watched the whitecaps on the water in the moonlight. She felt as she usually did at the edge of the ocean, both thrilled and a little frightened. She also felt very young and very old at the same time. It had been a long road, getting to this point, she thought.

  She tilted back her head to look at Peter.

  He leaned down, as if she’d said something.

  What? he said.

  She shook her head.

  She thought, but did not say: I am afraid of loving you this much.

  He kissed her. She could still taste the curry on his breath, from the Cream of Baker Soup at lunch.

  There had been no one to give Ruth away at the chapel that morning, but she had told Peter that she didn’t mind.

  She didn’t want to be given away, anyway.

  I’m not an object, she said. I give myself to you, she told him.

  In fact, she said, I fling myself at you.

  That sounds good, he said. Please do.

  Later, in one of the little twin beds, which they had pushed together, he said, You won’t ever leave me, will you?

  No, Ruth said. I won’t.

  9

  When Peter was offered a job teaching at the Derry School, he and Ruth bought their first car for the trip, a used Ford station wagon with wood-paneled sides. Peter drove and Ruth held the map on her lap, following their route up the coast through Connecticut and Massachusetts and Rhode Island and into Maine. Wyeth, a decrepit mill settlement of gray-shingled houses and a brick factory, was one of the last towns on the map, nearly at the Canadian border. The buildings, close by the road’s shoulder, had a despairing look.

  Despite her high spirits when they’d set off before dawn from New Haven that morning, Ruth felt another of the waves of trepidation that had been assailing her ever since Peter had accepted the job.

  Who knew whether they would be happy in this place?

  Peter had been elated by the offer, which had come to him through a friend at the Divinity School in New Haven.

  Though he could have taught at the college level—he’d had two offers, in fact—Derry’s mission of educating impoverished boys in the wilderness appealed to him.

  Ruth had been less certain.

  It’s in the middle of nowhere, she’d said at one point. And what do you know about tree chopping or woodworking, anyway?

  I’ll learn, Peter said.

  And they’ll all be desperately needy, Ruth said.

  They’ll be orphans and hoodlums. Peter seemed cheerful about this fact.

  Ruth had felt stung by his reference to orphans. It wasn’t like him, to make light of the circumstances of her life. Finally she’d said, Well, just don’t come near me with any buzz saw.

  In bed that night, she had lain next to him, pretending sleep.

  I know you’re not asleep, Ruth, Peter had said finally into the darkness.

  He’d rolled over to face her. I was teasing, he said. About the orphans. I’m sorry.

  I know, she said, but she wouldn’t turn toward him.

  After a minute, Peter reached over and rested his hand on her rib cage, gave her a little squeeze.

  She was afraid, she knew, of what lay ahead. Peter would be brilliant; of that, she was sure. But she had so little confidence in herself. What would she do? Would she make any friends? It was always so complicated, carrying around this story about her past.

  Peter nuzzled close to her, pulling her hips into him.

  Don’t worry, he said, and she had to close her eyes shut against the tears suddenly there.

  They’ll love you, he said.

  I’m not worried, she said.

  But when they made love that night, she wept, as she sometimes did.

  It was true, she knew, that being abandoned—not once, but twice, if you counted both the mother who had given her up and the father who had gone to jail—was an indisputable tragedy in her life. Sometimes she thought about the woman who had given birth to her, imagined that she, like Ruth, longed to be reunited, mother and daughter. But mostly she didn’t like thinking about it, about whatever had made the woman who was her mother give away her baby. The idea of it was too close to the abortion Ruth had needed to choose for herself.

  At least I’m lucky about Peter, she’d said to Dr. Wenning.

  Dr. Wenning had agreed.

  Ruth knew that Dr. Wenning thought Peter was the universe’s way of providing compensation for Ruth’s earlier suffering. She thought Dr. Wenning had a little crush on Peter, and she accused Peter of encouraging this. He brought Dr. Wenning flowers, offered his arm in a gentlemanly fashion when the three of them went out to a concert or to dinner, as they occasionally did.

  You don’t always have to be so chivalrous, Peter, Ruth said to him once. It gets on a person’s nerves, you know.

  Fine, he said. I’ll do my best to be hateful.

  But he would never be hateful, Ruth knew. He was the most well-intentioned person she had ever met.

  From Wyeth, the road to the Derry School passed through a forest of white pine and hemlock and yellow birch, the sunlight filtering daintily through the leaves. A few miles to the east, too far away to be visible through the trees, lay the plain of the Atlantic Ocean.

  She had been glad they would be near the ocean again.

  Reading about that part of the country before they’d arrived, Ruth had discovered that the twigs of the birches along the roadside could be broken off and chewed for their distinct wintergreen flavor. That day, the windows of their car rolled down, Ruth detected the scent, so bracing she could almost taste it.

  As they approached the campus through the forest, the atmosphere around them gradually brightened. Then the peaceful, sun-struck lawns of the school appeared around a bend in the road: a jumble of roofs, the sweep of the old oaks’ branches, the diamond patterns of paths faceting the lawns.

  It had been a sight so surprising, so magical, that both she and Peter gasped.

  Peter whistled. Not so shabby, he said. Pretty nice for those orphans.

  Ruth shot him a look, but she, too, was enchanted.

  If she couldn’t be happy here, she thought, she couldn’t be happy anywhere.

  Their first apartment was above one of the stone garages, a big room with a kitchen counter and appliances along one wall under a series of transom windows, and a tiny bathroom with an old c
law-footed tub. The room was furnished with a double bed and an uncomfortable mattress, too short for both of them, and two windows with a view of the small lake. They arranged their table, a maple drop-leaf that seated the two of them, beneath one of the windows. Ruth loved looking out at the water when they ate their meals.

  In a dormered attic above the big room, Peter set up his desk and typewriter, an Underwood Noiseless.

  Ruth fell asleep many nights that first year to the dampened sound of its keys being struck as Peter worked on his lesson plans over her head.

  Their housing at Derry was provided as part of Peter’s salary. For the first time in her life, Ruth didn’t need to work. In New Haven, she’d held three jobs, one as a part-time secretary in the biology department at Yale, and another on two evenings a week at Filene’s, where she’d sat behind the perfume counter on a stool—her supervisor didn’t like her towering over the customers—garbed in a white clinician’s coat that had made her feel absurdly important. And once a week on Saturdays she had ridden her bicycle across the Green to work for Dr. Wenning, though often all they did after a while was talk.

  That first fall at Derry, while Peter taught his classes and went to meetings and ran around coaching the boys on the basketball court, Ruth began work on a novel. She sat at their little table and wrote by hand, eating toast and drinking tea, looking up between sentences and watching the reflection of the trees in the surface of the lake as the leaves changed color. She had studied American literature at Smith, had loved it all indiscriminately—Willa Cather and Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau.

  But it was difficult, she discovered. The struggle of it wore her out. Still, she tried to feel hopeful. She swept and polished their rooms, she washed and ironed Peter’s shirts and under-shorts and khaki pants and handkerchiefs, she sewed skirts and dresses for herself, and she cooked dinner every night—dishes overly ambitious and too expensive for just the two of them, duck à l’orange and lasagna with a béchamel sauce and standing rib roasts. She wrote detailed letters about her life to Dr. Wenning and to the few friends from Smith with whom she had kept in touch.

  They were all married, these friends, like Ruth.