The Last First Day

by Carrie Brown

  Two had had a baby already, and another was pregnant. Ruth tried not to mind about that.

  So far she had not been able to get pregnant.

  Pregnant again, she sometimes reminded herself, and then sat alone in the bathroom, the water running, so Peter would not hear her cry.

  A novel! her friends said by reply. How exciting.

  Yes, and I’m trying a play, too! Ruth said in her letters back. And I’m also painting! And I have time to play the piano! I’m definitely improving.

  But she could not avoid the worrying sense that she was casting about wildly for something to do that felt meaningful, that her protestations to her friends and to Dr. Wenning were an unconvincing disguise for the loneliness she felt.

  • • •

  A few weeks after classes began at Derry that first fall, Ruth and Peter were invited to a cocktail party at the headmaster’s house. Ruth agonized over what to wear. Finally she chose a long, gold-colored quilted skirt she’d found at the Junior League Thrift Shop in New Haven and had thought very grand. That evening, glancing into the headmaster’s living room from the front hall—the house that would become her own ten years later, when Peter himself was offered and accepted the position—she saw instantly that the skirt was wrong.

  The other women in the room, though there were only a handful of them, wives of teachers, were dressed for the party in trim, short dresses and pantsuits.

  A smile plastered to her face, her long red hair pinned up fussily, Ruth shivered as Peter lifted her coat from her shoulders and made introductions. Her bibbed white blouse, too, was wrong, wrong, wrong, she thought. She looked like Miles Standish.

  Ruth’s working on a novel, Peter announced proudly as they all stood around with their drinks in hand. It’s going to be terrific.

  She wanted to die.

  By the first Christmas at Derry she had begun to dread the parties.

  The handful of wives who lived on campus often left these affairs early, if they came at all, to go home and fix dinner for their children. There weren’t many women at the school who were her age to begin with, and the few who were seemed to Ruth bewilderingly angry, full of complaints—when Ruth ran into them at the post office or the grocery store in Wyeth—about the school or their children or their husbands or the boys.

  It was true that many of the boys were trouble. It was part of the school’s mission, after all, to educate those who’d had no opportunity to prepare for it. Ruth understood from Peter that there were teachers who felt the place was beneath them. She knew, too, that Peter’s enthusiasm for the challenge—his credentials were strong enough to have won him a job almost anywhere—was a mystery to some.

  For Peter, she understood, teaching was a source of happiness. He was energized by the boys and by their rough ways. He tended to see the best in people, and he came home full of stories about their triumphs in the classroom, delighted by the ways in which he saw their lives being shaped for good. He rarely doubted that a boy would succeed, and somehow, Ruth thought, his certainty communicated itself to them. At dinner he regaled her with stories about them, their misdeeds and their achievements.

  Don’t you ever dislike any of them? Ruth asked once, feeling peevish.

  I don’t like what they do, sometimes, Peter said. But I try not to dislike them.

  Well, Ruth said, I dislike some of them.

  I know you do, he said. But they think you’re fetching.

  Try harder to make friends, Dr. Wenning told her, when she went back to New Haven to visit and confessed that she was lonely.

  Why don’t you have a tea party or something?

  I can’t have a tea party, Ruth said. There’s no one to invite. For a party you need more than one guest.

  Okay. Have someone for dinner, Dr. Wenning said. Just one person. Make one of those fancy dinners you’ve been working so hard on.

  Ruth went back to Derry and tried to strike up a friendship with an English teacher at the school, a spinster named Ann Kressman with a gentle voice and a sweet face, whom Ruth imagined was in her early forties. Ruth approached her in the library one day and began a conversation about Edith Wharton, and eventually Miss Kressman herself invited Ruth for tea at her house on campus. Ruth tried to tell herself that she’d enjoyed the occasion—though in truth it had all seemed stiff and formal to her; she’d felt silly sipping from her teacup like an old lady—but she issued a reciprocal invitation, which Miss Kressman accepted.

  Ruth went to great lengths for the occasion. She made a chiffon pineapple daisy cake ringed with a fussy barricade of sponge ladyfingers that kept falling over.

  On the agreed-upon Saturday afternoon, Miss Kressman failed to appear.

  When Ruth finally reached her on the telephone on Monday, Miss Kressman behaved oddly. She apologized. Oh, dear, she’d had the date wrong, she said. Yet her tone—injured, faintly hostile—somehow implied that it was Ruth herself who had made the error, then compounded the mistake by forcing Miss Kressman into politely accepting blame.

  Eventually Ruth came to understand that Miss Kressman wanted to be kind—she was capable of entertaining Ruth at her own home, a beautifully decorated little cottage, where they could peruse her admirable library and talk about books—but somehow she just couldn’t bring herself to visit Ruth.

  The evening of the failed tea party, Ruth, depressed, served Peter cake for dinner. He ate three pieces of it. Ruth pushed a lady finger around on her plate. The cake had been a visual failure—one side had toppled over completely—but it tasted all right.

  Is it me? Ruth said. Is it something I do?

  Of course it’s not you, Peter said.

  Ruth toyed with her fork. Well, obviously I did something wrong, she said. Why don’t I have any friends here?

  There aren’t a lot of options, I know, Peter said. Don’t worry. Keep trying.

  That night, they went to bed early. They left the dishes and the cake on the table. In the morning, Ruth threw the rest of it in the garbage can.

  Determined to be supportive of Peter, to be a credit to him, Ruth continued to make an effort at Derry that first fall and winter. She retired the quilted skirt she had once thought so handsome. On another trip to New Haven to see Dr. Wenning, she went shopping at Filene’s and bought a black pantsuit with a tunic top and bell sleeves; she tried it on for Dr. Wenning, who assured her that it was elegant. But each time Ruth faced one of the social events at Derry, her heart pounded with anxiety as she dressed. She grew light-headed. It felt as if mice scurried over the skin of her belly.

  One night shortly before the first Christmas at Derry, Peter received an invitation to a formal dinner at the headmaster’s house.

  Am I supposed to come, too? Ruth asked.

  I’m sure you are, Peter said. I think it’s sort of a holiday party.

  In attendance would be a bishop from Maine’s Episcopal diocese, Peter had been told, and the executive committee of the school’s trustees, three who were also ministers. Peter’s energy and charisma, the success that first semester of the boys he taught, had attracted notice, and Ruth understood that the invitation to join the older men that evening was an important occasion for him.

  A half hour before they were due to arrive, Ruth lay down on the bed in her slip. After a minute, she got under the covers.

  I’m sick, she called to Peter, who was shaving in their tiny bathroom.

  Peter came into the room and sat down on the bed beside her, toweling dry his hair.

  No one talks to me at these things, anyway, Ruth said. That one man who teaches Latin, the one who wears that furry vest? What’s it made of, anyway? A cowhide? He spoke Italian to me all night last time, even though I told him I didn’t know any Italian. And he has dandruff in his eyelashes.

  Peter rubbed his head with the towel.

  I’m too shy a person for these things, she said. She closed her eyes.

  Just leave me here, she said. Really, I’ll be fine.

  On the bed beside her,
she watched surreptitiously as Peter draped the towel around his neck and tugged on either end, like a boxer. He gazed at the floor, frowning.

  She felt a flare of resentment. He didn’t understand. He had a job here. He was an important part of things. She was nobody.

  Ask them questions about their lives, Peter said. People like to talk about themselves.

  She knew he was tired. He’d been working hard, staying up late at night, preparing for classes, and there was an endless procession of extracurricular obligations: meetings for the school’s newspaper staff, or the student government association, or sports council hearings, duties for which Peter always seemed to have been volunteered by his older colleagues. But she felt rebuked, misunderstood, as if he’d said her shyness was only a veneer—a lion pretending not to be hungry around a gazelle—like it was something she could put on and take off at will.

  She turned on her side away from him.

  Don’t condescend to me, Peter van Dusen, she said. I know how to talk to people, if I have to.

  The room was cold. Despite herself, she began to shiver. This always happened when she was upset. She turned her face into the pillow.

  Peter put his hand on her back.

  Why was there no one to whom she could turn? she thought. Dr. Wenning was hours away. Ruth had no friends nearby, and no parents, no mother, as Peter well knew. Peter’s father was the closest thing she had to a parent, but she couldn’t talk with him about any of this, about how useless she felt sometimes. All kinds of things were happening out there in the world—President Eisenhower had signed the Civil Rights Act a couple of years before, and there were sit-ins all over the South, the wonderful young John Kennedy had won the Democratic nomination, and Ruth and Peter hoped he would become President—but meanwhile she felt as if she had been banished to a desert island. Many of the women she knew from Smith were married, or trying to be, but she knew others who were writing for magazines, who were lobbying for women’s rights, including better pay and birth control. Gloria Steinem, who had been a couple years ahead of Ruth, had already published her extraordinary account of working as a Playboy bunny with its famous last line, the sad girl who waved good-bye to Gloria as she gathered her clothes for the last time. See you in the funnies.

  What was Ruth doing? Nothing.

  She stared at the face of the clock beside their bed.

  It’s not a cowhide. It’s actually a deer hide, Peter said after a minute. The vest that that guy always wears.

  His hand was warm against her skin.

  Ruth rolled back over to look up at him.

  And he shot the deer himself. Peter made a face. Don’t ask him for the story, he said. You’ll regret it.

  She put her hands over her mouth.

  Then she reached up and put her arms around him. I wouldn’t think of it, she said. But I still don’t want to go.

  Peter let the towel around his waist fall away and joined her between the sheets.

  I’m sorry, he said into her neck. I know it’s lonely here for you, Ruth. I appreciate everything you’re doing to help me. I wish you had a friend here. You will. I know you will.

  You’ll find your place.

  They were late to the party that evening, holding hands and running across the silent campus. Many boys had already left for the holidays; in another day or so, they would all be gone, those with no families to the homes of parishioners for Christmas.

  They arrived at the headmaster’s house red-cheeked and breathless. Ruth saw instantly that she was the only woman present. The headmaster, whose wife had passed away some years before Peter and Ruth moved to Derry, seemed surprised to see her, which made her think that maybe he had intended for Peter to come alone, after all.

  She felt mortified. When the headmaster took their coats, she shot Peter a furious glance.

  He looked back with a helpless expression. Sorry, he mouthed.

  When they were seated at dinner, the bishop, a lean man with extraordinarily tufted eyebrows, offered a prayer.

  Thank you, God, he said, for the state of Maine. Thank you for the care of these boys into whose lives we have been privileged to extend the powerful rays of your generosity.

  Ruth felt her stomach rumble loudly with hunger.

  The bishop’s eyes were closed, his fingers laced beneath his chin.

  Down the table, all heads were bowed. The bishop opened his eyes, gazing down the table as if he might have heard Ruth’s stomach, and then closed them again.

  In the name of Jesus Christ our lord, amen, he said.

  During the meal, Ruth could see Peter trying to catch her eye across the table, but she wouldn’t look at him. Neither man seated beside her spoke to her beyond extending the usual sorts of politeness.

  And how old are you? the man to her left asked, as he sawed away at his beef.

  Ruth repressed the urge to ask him the same question. What kind of question was that, anyway? she thought.

  To her right, a bald gentleman with veins in his nose inclined his head when she told him her name, and then called her Beth and later Bess and finally—clearly with no idea of her name but apparently unconcerned about this—Susan.

  Ruth did not bother to correct him.

  She said hardly anything during the meal. She felt beaten down by the occasion, by the fact that the headmaster had not expected her, though he had greeted her kindly, calling her my dear and steering her toward the fireplace, putting a glass of sherry—which she drank down almost immediately—in her hands.

  All the joyfulness of her earlier lovemaking with Peter, the comfort of his love for her and hers for him, their happy race across the snow-covered campus, felt extinguished.

  She gazed across the dinner table at the waving lights of the candles. An image of her father in his suit pants and white shirt stepped before her, as it sometimes did when she felt most low. She put down her fork. She put butter on a roll and stuffed it into her mouth so she wouldn’t cry.

  After dinner Ruth smiled and shook hands dutifully around the room.

  We’re glad you’re here, my dear, the headmaster said. Your Peter is doing a super job. Derry’s lucky to have him.

  Someone helped her into her coat, and then the headmaster opened the front door. She and Peter stepped into the darkness, calling good night.

  The headmaster closed the door behind them.

  Ruth registered the silence around them, the night sky bristling coldly with stars. The temperature had been below freezing for several days, but Ruth felt feverish. She unbuttoned her coat as they left the driveway and turned down the lane back toward the center of campus. The loose tops of her galoshes—Peter’s galoshes, actually—flapped around her calves. She’d been in too much of a hurry to leave to buckle them properly.

  Peter walked in silence beside her.

  I wasn’t supposed to be there, she said.

  I guess not, Peter said, but there wasn’t any harm in it. They were glad you were there. Anyway, I’m sorry.

  Do you want to know what people asked me tonight? she said finally.

  Peter said nothing.

  Someone asked me my name, she said. Someone else asked me how old I was. She puffed out a breath. And, before dinner, three people asked how we’d met.

  Peter hunched down inside his collar. She could tell he felt wearied by her.

  Well, it is a story, he said.

  Ruth shot him a look of anger. It’s not the kind of story you tell people, she said, and you know it.

  She slipped on the path in her open galoshes, felt cold snow against her ankle.

  They want a love story, Peter, she said. Hearts and flowers and doves.

  We have love, he said. He tried to catch her hand.

  We have terrible things in our past, Peter, she said. My father is not dinner table conversation. Nor is an abortion, for god’s sake.

  They almost never talked about that time. She’d said that last part because she felt mean.

  Peter, striding along b
eside her, said nothing.

  It was always like this between them, she thought helplessly. She said too much; Peter said nothing at all.

  It was not that they ever disputed Ruth’s past, the tragic business of Ruth’s father and the way in which Ruth and Peter had been delivered to each other. There was no disputing those facts, of course, or any part of their shared history, the time before their marriage, the doctor who had ended the pregnancy, nearly ending Ruth’s own life as well. But what was she to do with her past, she thought? What was she to do with the loneliness and sadness that came up inside her sometimes, the way those feelings transformed so quickly into anger?

  Ah, Ruth. Do not punish yourself so, Dr. Wenning had said to her once. Your childhood would explain a lifetime of bad behavior in very many people. You are not a bad person because you feel sad sometimes. And that boy Peter loves you. You know he does.

  Still, Ruth knew that it was difficult to live with someone who struggled as much as she did sometimes. She wished she could believe in God. What a relief it would be. But she just couldn’t manage it. In truth she sometimes felt repulsed by the idea of a God who seemed to preside over so much suffering in the world. And she was equally repulsed, though she knew it was uncharitable of her, by what she saw as the credulousness of those who claimed to believe—or perhaps, like Peter, really did believe—by the kneeling and rising and murmuring of prayers and singing.

  Something about it, about even Peter’s faith, struck her as smug and horrible.

  How are you so sure? she asked Peter once.

  I just am, he said. I don’t know why or how.

  Simple as that? Ruth said.

  Well, not simple, he said.

  No, she cried. It’s not simple!

  You’re right, he said. You’re right.

  She put her head in her hands. I can’t fight with you, she said.

  I’m trying, he said. Give me credit here.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, she said.

  In general that first year at Derry, Ruth tried just to follow Dr. Wenning’s advice.

  Once every few weeks, she packed a sandwich and a thermos of tea and drove from Derry to New Haven, where she sat in Dr. Wenning’s office and tried to help her with her increasingly disorganized papers, meanwhile listening to Dr. Wenning opine about the mental habits of the optimist, exercises of positive thinking designed to help Ruth defeat the voices of despair inside her.