by Connie Cook
* * *
Mrs. MacKellum's peaches took first place at the fall fair that year. In a way, it was Ruth's doing.
Mrs. MacKellum had responded graciously if not eagerly when Ruth asked her for a peach-canning lesson.
After picking a box of peaches from a local orchard, Ruth and her mother-in-law set aside an afternoon for peach canning.
Mrs. MacKellum arranged the first batch of fuzzy, rose-and-golden beauties in the kitchen sink.
"First, you pour boiling water over the peaches," she instructed Ruth.
"What's that for?" Ruth wanted to know. Ruth always wanted to know the reasons behind things.
"Oh, well, it loosens the skins, I suppose. It makes them easier to come off."
Before Ruth could remind herself that she was there to learn and take orders, she wrinkled her forehead.
"I've never heard of that before. I don't remember Mother doing it. Does it really work?"
Mrs. MacKellum opened her mouth to say, "Sure, it does," but she took a moment too long to get the words out, and the basic honesty of her nature kicked in.
"No," she admitted, her shoulders slumping in defeat.
They laughed.
It built slowly from a shared smile, but then they laughed together till they howled and tears flowed and their sides hurt.
"I always did it because my mother always did it, and she probably always did it because her mother always did it, and so on. Who knows where it started?" The words could hardly be forced out between gasps for air.
"Aren't we foolish creatures, we humans?" she asked when the fit had subsided and they were wiping their eyes.
"We are that," Ruth agreed.
It was the first time Mrs. MacKellum had canned peaches without using the boiling water trick. The slight browning effect the boiling water always had on her peaches was missing, and her peaches took first prize.
* * *
Shortly after Mrs. MacKellum had moved into Ruth and Graham's home, she had said to Ruth, "If I'm going to be living here with you, you can't keep calling me 'Mrs. MacKellum.' Do you think you could handle 'Mom'?"
Ruth had smiled and said she thought she could handle it just fine. But good intentions notwithstanding, she could handle it only gingerly and only after putting thought into it. She found herself continuously calling her mother-in-law, "Mrs ... I mean, Mom."
After "the peach day," as they began referring to it, Ruth was never tempted to call her mother-in-law anything but 'Mom.' The word flowed easily, like honey on her tongue, requiring no effort of thought at all.
The kitchen situation solved itself on that day, as well. From then on, when it was convenient, the women prepared meals together comfortably. "Mom" couldn't entirely keep herself from "bossing" Ruth occasionally, but when Ruth would say with her straight face and dry tone, "Is that like the boiling water for the peaches?" they couldn't help but smile at each other and laugh a little, and neither one was the worse for wear. I must say this for Mrs. MacKellum. She never minded a little teasing. In fact, a little gentle and kindly teasing was one sure way to her heart.
Chapter 13
When Ruth came home from work, Graham was sitting at the kitchen table, working figures on a piece of paper.
"Aren't you supposed to be at work?" she asked him.
"Nope!" he said, looking triumphant.
"Oh!" Ruth said, surprised but knowing Graham would tell her eventually when he was good and ready why it was he wasn't supposed to be at work.
"Where's Mom?" she asked.
"She walked to the Co-op to buy something for supper. We have the house to ourselves. Doesn't happen often anymore, does it?"
He pulled her onto his lap when she came near enough to see what he was writing on the piece of paper which he flipped over onto its blank side.
"Hey! Where's a kiss for your old man?" he said, not waiting for her to give him the answer to his question but roughly kissing her first.
"Graham!" She pulled away slightly from the hands holding her head. "Have you been drinking?"
"Does it mean I've been drinking just because I want to kiss my wife when I haven't seen her all day?" he evaded.
"Of course not," she said. "You just ... seem like you have."
"Just to celebrate," he said.
In their first year and a half of marriage, Graham's drinking had dwindled away almost to nothing. In the six months after his dad's death, it had picked up speed to arrive at frequent.
And furtive. He did his best to hide his indulgence, if not from his wife, from his disapproving mother. He never usually drank enough to make it obvious that he'd been partaking. Just enough to take the edge off of harsh reality. Ruth had never approached the subject with him before. But then he'd never been so close to drunk before. At least not in her presence.
"What are you celebrating?" she asked with a sense of foreboding.
"I'm celebrating the fact that as of today, I am no longer a janitor." He spat the last word out like an expletive.
"You quit?"
"I went in today and told them what they could do with that job they thought they were being so kind and charitable to give me. With charity like that, who needs enemies?"
"Oh Graham! What if you can't find anything else? Why didn't you find something else first and then quit?"
"Wouldjou stop worrying, woman! I already have something else in the works."
"What's that?" she asked cautiously. Graham's assurances had done nothing to abate her sense of foreboding.
"I'll tell you about it when our plans are a little farther along. Can't tell 'em yet. Too soon."
"Who's 'we'?"
"What?"
"You said, 'Our plans.' Wha'd'you mean? Whose plans?"
"Oh, just me 'n' Bernie Jansen. He's cooking up something for the two of us."
"Bernie Jansen! You're not palling around with him again, are you?"
"Why shouldn't I be?" Graham asked, flaring. "He's been a better pal to me through ... everything than any of my other old friends. Most of my old friends won't have anything to do with me now."
"But he's no good for you. You know he's not."
"When I want my wife to dictate my life for me, I'll ask," Graham growled, slapping a hand on the table and rising from his chair, nearly landing Ruth onto the floor. "Till then, I'll make my own decisions. And that includes decisions about who I'll spend my time with."
Graham tried to storm out of the kitchen, but the storm lost momentum after his nearly falling over a chair in his path that he hadn't seen. He kicked at the chair – an act which threw off his precarious balance. He caught the table for support, and exited the kitchen with as much of his wounded dignity as could be marshaled. He'd had enough liquid celebration to make his mood volatile and his feet unsteady.
* * *
Graham didn't come home for supper that evening.
"Where's Graham?" Mom asked when she got back from the store.
Ruth was in the kitchen starting supper.
"I don't know. He went out somewhere. He didn't tell me where he was going."
"Did the two of you have a fight?" Mom asked, concerned.
"Nothing big. I'm sure he'll be back for supper. He didn't say he wouldn't be."
Mom didn't pry, and Ruth didn't volunteer any further details.
"I picked up carrots at the store. I thought we could roast them with the beef you defrosted this morning. Maybe with a few potatoes."
"That sounds good. That's what I was thinking, too. Though I didn't think of the carrots. Thanks for picking them up. I've got the roast in already."
The roast stayed in longer than it should have while the women waited for Graham to come home. Before it was completely ruined, the two sat down to supper together without him.
"Maybe it was a bigger fight than you thought," Mom said with a worried crease in her forehead.
"Oh well. If he wants to sulk about nothing, I guess I can't stop him. He'll get over it. Or maybe he went out to meet
someone and something came up. I wouldn't worry," Ruth told her.
But Ruth was good and worried herself by the time she heard Graham's car pull into the driveway at two o' clock in the morning.
She wasn't sleeping, but she pretended she was when he staggered into the bedroom in the dark, undressed noisily, and slid clumsily under the covers next to her.
She had to say something then, get things out in the open, or she'd never sleep that night.
"Graham! You're drunk," she said in an angry hiss, mindful of his mother asleep in the next bedroom.
"Nah," he said. "I've had one or two, but I'm fine. Just feeling good." His volatile mood had swung back to jovial.
"You drove home in that state?" Ruth said. She wished away the accusatory note in her tone, but it remained.
"I told you, I'm fine. I've only had enough to help me relax."
"You were so relaxed you almost fell onto the bed."
"It's dark in here in case you hadn't noticed."
"Where were you, anyway? Why didn't you tell us you weren't going to be home for supper? Your mom was worried."
"Would you lay off? I wish I hadn't bothered coming home at all if I knew I was gonna get the third degree. Bernie 'n' me had some things to discuss if it's all the same to you. Don't worry. I was with Bernie the whole time. We had a lot to talk over, and then we had a couple drinks together to seal the deal. It got later than I realized, that's all."
"Oh, that's all, is it? You were with Bernie Jansen the whole time, like that's supposed to make me feel better, and sealed some kind of deal that I'm not supposed to know anything about with enough to make you stumbling drunk. After which you drive yourself home at two in the morning, and I'm just supposed to lie back and not worry my pretty, little head about it, is that it?"
Ruth regretted it all, even as she said it, but seemed powerless to stop the flow of words.
"Where're you going now?" she asked in alarm when Graham rolled out of bed and began pulling the top blanket off the bed and draping it over his arm.
"Apparently, if I want to get any sleep tonight, it has to be somewhere else. I'm going to the couch, seeing I know you won't." And he left.
He'll think it over tonight and feel bad about it all in the morning, and it'll blow over as quickly as it started, Ruth said to herself. But the sense of foreboding refused to budge.
* * *
Bernie had a girl with him that Mrs. MacKellum would have pegged as "cheap" and "painted" from the amount of makeup she wore and the peroxide colour of her hair and the heavy scent of perfume that permeated the atmosphere around her. Ruth didn't know the girl and so did her very best not to categorize her based only on her looks (and smell). It was an uphill battle, however. Especially when the peroxide blonde looked at her boldly, even challengingly, from under her artificially long, artificially black lashes when Ruth came to take their order.
For Graham's sake, she was determined to try hard with Bernie. She'd decided her dislike of Bernie was not worth the cost of her marriage. She forced out a smile at Bernie and the girl that came across as painful and felt as though it did. Faking friendliness was not among Ruth's catalogue of achievements. It was foreign to her nature to fake anything, and she did it poorly.
"Glenda, I'd like you to meet Ruth MacKellum. She's the wife of my new business partner, the one I've been telling you about, Graham MacKellum."
"How d'you do?" Glenda said coolly. She made no effort to fake friendliness.
Ruth refused to let the smile slip though it felt more painful by the second. "I'm glad to meet you, Glenda. What're the two of you having this evening, Bernie?"
"Give us a few more minutes, willya, Ruth? We haven't had a chance to look at our menus. I've been too busy bending Glenda's ear with all our plans for opening our own garage."
"Oh, I see. I'll give you some more time then." The smile was frozen on now.
Graham had continued to hedge when the subject of Bernie and their plans together came up. Ruth hadn't liked to press him, fearing another scene. It was the first she'd heard about their business plans, and it had to come from Bernie Jansen. Of all people.
"Yeah," Bernie went on, "Like I was telling Glenda, with Graham's expertise at running a business and my mechanical experience, the way I figure it, we can't miss. We'll start small, expand slowly, hire on more mechanics in time. Sell gas and cigarettes and bottles of pop and all that, too. Something for everything. It'll be a great little racket."
Bernie wasn't talking to Ruth anymore. He'd leaned back, slouched nonchalantly in his chair, one arm extended across the back of the empty seat next to him. His head was cocked back, looking out of half-lowered eyelids at Glenda, and everything he said was for her benefit. Ruth was only an excuse to repeat the spiel Glenda had heard at least once already.
Apparently, Glenda was capable of smiling when she chose as she had no problem smiling at Bernie. She listened raptly as though it was the first time she'd heard his plans.
"Graham'll be the brains behind the operation," Bernie said modestly, "and I'll provide the brawn. We'll be equal partners, though."
"And where's the capital coming from to open up?" Ruth couldn't stop herself from asking.
Bernie looked at her as though surprised to see her still there.
"Well, you know. I'm sure Graham 'n' you've talked it all over. Can't see that being a problem. The banks'll be happy to help finance two enterprising young gentlemen with a good name about town. And a decent collateral," Bernie finished, smirking at his own joke.
Ruth knew exactly what he meant by collateral, and she started a slow burn. But she held her peace and turned to wait on the table next to Bernie and Glenda's.
Marshall Mitchum (otherwise known as Mars), one of her regulars, a logging truck driver in his early thirties, handed her his menu and looked straight into her eyes with his own serious, brown ones.
"Are you ready to order, Mars?" she asked. She was afraid the fake smile was permanent. But now it felt angry, and she didn't want Mars to think she was angry at him. None of this was his fault.
"You know you deserve better, Ruth," he said boldly but quietly.
"What?" The shock of his abrupt comment wiped the smile off her face.
"Sorry. Maybe it's not my place to say so, but I couldn't help overhearing what Bernie was saying. It's hard not to overhear Bernie when he opens his big, loud trap. Big talk about opening a garage with your husband." Mars snorted. "It's never gonna be more than talk. You know, don't you, that rumour has it he and your husband have been spending a lot of hours together? At the tavern. They don't always leave alone, either."
Now Ruth was angry and at Mars. And she didn't mind anymore if he knew it.
"No one wants to say things like that to a woman about her husband, but you're too fine a person to be treated that way. I don't believe in talking behind people's backs. I thought it was time someone let you know the lie of the land if you didn't already," Mars continued.
"I'm sure you mean well, Mars, but if you don't believe in talking behind people's backs, maybe it's not me you should be talking to. Maybe it's Graham."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to hurt you. I'd never want to hurt you."
"You haven't hurt me, Mars. I trust my husband. I know he's not perfect, but who is? He's going through a rough patch, I admit, but he'll pull through. Now, are you ready to order?"
Mars put in his order in a thoroughly chastened manner.
Ruth couldn't imagine what he'd hoped to accomplish through being the bearer of bad news and town gossip. She was cold to him the next few weeks when he came into the Morning Glory, but he bore with her coldness so humbly that she had to forgive him.
He probably did think he was doing the right thing, she told herself.
Whatever Mars had hoped to accomplish, what he did accomplish was to plant unsettling imaginings into Ruth's head.
More and more, Graham had been going out in the evenings, coming in at all hours, hiding bottles around th
e house where he thought his wife and his mother wouldn't think to look.
The women carefully sidestepped any discussion on the subject. Graham couldn't possibly have hoped that either would be convinced when, in the evenings after supper, he would mumble something about needing to get together with Bernie to talk business and then not arrive back home until the wee hours.
Ruth had learned her lesson and always pretended to be asleep when he came in. She feared above all things to become a nagging, poison-tongued wife who drove her husband away by her own doing. And she understood her own inability to control her words.
But her lying-awake hours were filled by envisioning Graham at the local joint with Bernie; Graham talking cheap, familiar talk with girls like Glenda; Graham and Bernie leaving to "drive the girls home"; Graham sitting in the backseat with some girl, talking as big and as loudly as Bernie, his arm across the girl's shoulders.
Her imagination never went any farther than that. She knew Graham still loved her in his way, and she trusted him to an extent. She was sure Graham would never let anything go any farther than flirtatious talk and maybe an arm around a waist; maybe at the very worst, a quick, guilty kiss. She was sure it would never be any more than that.
But that was enough. Those imaginings were enough to play themselves over and over and over in her head until she feared for her sanity. She'd double her fist into a ball and bite down on it to keep from screaming out loud.
But what could she do except hang on and wait it out. If there were other girls, she knew they meant nothing. Graham would come to his senses. He'd been through a lot, after all. He'd find his way out. She just had to wait.
And pray. She prayed desperate, anguished prayers and wrestled against insidious doubts that they were never heard or would never be answered.
* * *
Mars had been right when he'd told Ruth that nothing would come of the plans Bernie and Graham had to open their own business.
But plans had progressed so far as for Graham to bring up the subject with Ruth finally.
"Y'know how we'd talked before when we were gonna try and get a loan to buy Mom's house about putting up the farm as collateral?" he said to her casually after they'd gone to bed on one of his rare nights in.