by Connie Cook
"Yes?" Ruth said, knowing what was coming and bracing herself.
"Well, I was thinking. Y'know Bernie and I are talking about opening up our own garage. It would be a great little racket. I'd handle all the business end of things 'cause Bernie wouldn't have a clue about that, and he'd do all the mechanical work. We'd sell gas and whatever else. Something for everyone. We couldn't miss. I was thinking it would be a good idea to work on getting that loan we'd talked about. We could use the farm for collateral still."
The nearly verbatim speech that she'd heard from Bernie's own lips not long ago made her want to shake Graham.
"Are you crazy?" she exploded.
"What is wrong with you?" Graham asked. "You knew Bernie and I had been planning this for weeks. It's a good plan. It really is. I can show it to you all down on paper. The plan is sound. Why do you have to get your back up right away about everything? Especially where Bernie's concerned. You think I want to go back to being a janitor? Or just do nothing with my life? I want bigger things for us, Ruth. And this is the only way I see right now of getting there. And I'd like for you to be able to quit work. You know how hard it is on a man to have his wife being the one bringing home the bacon?"
Graham's sudden vulnerability would have melted her anger if she hadn't already had a good head of steam built up.
"The answer is, 'No!' Graham. I'm not signing over the farm for some fool idea of Bernie Jansen's. We'd end up defaulting on the loan and losing the farm, and then we'd really have nothing."
"Why do you have to assume the worst all the time? Why can't you have a little faith in me for once? Why do you think the business would fail? I'm not my father, Ruth."
"I never said you were, Graham. I do have faith in you. It's Bernie that would ruin things. He doesn't stick with a job for longer than six months. He's worked for every garage in town. At least all the ones foolish enough to hire him. He'd saddle you with trying to run this business that you've put all the risk into, and when he was bored of it, he'd cut out, and you'd have no mechanic and pretty soon no garage. Can't you see how it would end? Can't you see what he's like?"
"He's a good mechanic when it comes down to that. The only reason he's bounced around some from job to job is because it gets a man's goat, working for someone else. He's had the dream of having his own place for a long time but no way to make it happen. But together we could make it happen."
"Well, it can't happen unless I sign the papers for that loan, and I'm just not going to do that. I'm not going to let Bernie Jansen ruin you," Ruth said in her stubborn tone.
Graham knew that wheedling and cajoling would not change Ruth's stubborn tone. She'd used it on him seldom, but when she had, he'd never had any luck changing her mind. He said not another word to her but rolled over and refused to answer her conciliatory, "Good night, Graham." For many wakeful hours that night, he lay fuming and looking for alternative plans and small revenges.
Ruth, on the other hand, though her hours were just as wakeful, lost her anger and her stubbornness almost as soon as she had finished assuring Graham she would never sign over the farm.
She lay in the grip of an overmastering terror for most of the night, and by morning, knew she had to down her pride and tell Graham he could have the farm if he wanted. Her fear of losing Graham was stronger than her fear of losing the farm.
Graham accepted her apology and her offer sulkily. He was still angry.
In days to come, she often wondered how differently things might have turned out if she hadn't initially resisted Graham's plans for opening the garage. But, of course, all such wonderings are idle.
In the end, Ruth's sacrifice, both of her pride and of her farm, didn't materialize into the results Graham had hoped for. Bernie's unreliability surfaced before any further steps past planning and dreaming could be taken.
After he had Ruth's agreement, Graham pressed Bernie several times to go with him to talk to the banks. But Bernie always had a reason why tomorrow or next week would be a better time to set up an appointment.
Eventually, Graham stopped pressing. They spent as much time together as ever, and Graham came in late just as often as before, but whatever they talked about over drinks at the local joint, it was no longer their business plans.
Bernie took a job at a new garage that had just opened in Arrowhead and convinced Graham to apply for a job there, too.
Bernie was a good mechanic. In his first week, he'd managed to impress his boss who was new to town and hadn't previously known Bernie or his reputation. Burt Aldon, the garage owner, agreed to give Graham a try on Bernie's recommendation in spite of Graham's lack of mechanical training and experience.
"Don't worry, Mr. Aldon. He's messed around under a hood most of his life, and I can show him everything he hasn't learned on his own. He's a fast learner. You won't be sorry," Bernie assured his boss.
Graham was elated when Bernie told him the news.
In reality, Graham knew very little about cars, but he was determined to work hard and make good.
After a week on the new job, Graham told Ruth she needed to give her notice at the Morning Glory.
But their income was tight with the farm house sitting vacant. The renters had moved out a month earlier, and no one else seemed to be in the market for renting a large, old, draughty house a considerable distance from town.
Still, Graham was confident the three of them could manage on his new salary, even if they did have to scrimp and save a bit till they could find a new renter. He'd rather do without a few luxuries than have his wife working. It was a sore thorn in his pride to have his wife working as a waitress.
"I'm not doing it, Graham. I've given in to you on everything else, but this is one time I'm not going to. If it was just for my sake, I wouldn't care. But you have to think about your mom. We need the extra income. We have to eat." Ruth had her stubborn tone on again. But this time she meant it.
Graham raged, but she held her ground. At first.
Again, within hours, Ruth had relented. She dreaded the thought of telling Jim and Glo she was quitting, but she told Graham she'd do it. This time, however, she negotiated.
"But not right away, Graham. After you've been at the garage for a couple months. Then I'll do it. That will give us a little cushion with both of us working. Just for those two months while we wait and see how the new job turns out."
Graham grudgingly agreed. He knew it was the best offer he was going to get though he felt it implied a lack of confidence in his abilities.
In future days, Ruth also spent wasted hours wondering how differently things would have turned out if she had agreed immediately to quit her job, and if she'd followed through on it.
She never got the chance.
Before the end of Graham's second month of work, his new job had ended.
Burt Aldon was willing to overlook Graham's lack of mechanical expertise, though he soon realized it was a much greater lack than he'd been led to believe by Bernie. He could see that Graham was a quick learner and tried hard. He was trainable.
But, in those first two months when Bernie and Graham repeatedly showed up late for work and occasionally didn't show up at all, recovering from "the night before," the limits of Mr. Aldon's patience were stretched to the breaking point. Both of the men found themselves out of work before there was a third month.
Ruth's was then the only income in their household, and Graham said no more to her about quitting her job.
His drinking became continual at that point. Even his mother could no longer ignore it. When he wasn't out with Bernie, he drank on the sly in the house. Ruth rarely saw him completely sober.
His mother tried lecturing which only made matters worse. Graham avoided his home.
Mrs. MacKellum was given to fits of tears at odd times, but Ruth clenched her jaw and determined to ride it out.
* * *
There are some species, so I've been told, where the female is more deadly than the male. Some would claim that hum
anity is one of those species.
I don't know anything about degrees of deadliness in comparing men and women. However, I have seen more than one instance in which the stronger gender of the human species is the female. Not in physical strength but in strength where it counts the most.
Maybe women are often made from a more resilient fibre because they need to be.
This was certainly true for both Ruth and her mother-in-law.
Though one would never have suspected it on first meeting, Mrs. MacKellum had proven to be her husband's superior when it came to inner strength.
It would have surprised no one, even on first meeting, that Ruth's husband had no internal fortitude equal to his wife's.
But even Ruth, before she needed it, would have been surprised to see how much strength she was capable of.
There are those who believe that circumstances change people. I believe that circumstances don't change people so much as they reveal people.
However, I also tend to think, as Ruth herself did, that the strength she drew on when she needed it was not entirely from her own supply. She wasn't superhuman, after all.
Chapter 14
Somehow, the Christmas season was limped through. Though there were small gifts and a tree, no one in the MacKellum household celebrated – actually celebrated – Christmas that year (though Graham probably would have called what he did all throughout Christmas celebrating).
It was astonishing for Ruth to remember that last Christmas – only one short yet very, very long year ago – had been the happiest time of her life.
The closing of the old year and the opening of the new was a relief to Ruth. This year would be a better year; she knew it had to be. It could hardly be worse.
But even in the new year, things were slow in looking brighter. Very slow.
Wintertime, which had been such a delight to Ruth in years past, as had all of Arrowhead's seasons, seemed interminable that year. She held her breath and waited for spring, knowing things would look up with the return of the warmer weather. She was sure of it.
But one cold, February night, Ruth awoke to discover that Graham was no longer beside her in bed. He'd been there when she'd gone to sleep.
She listened to the whir and the gentle ticking of the electric alarm clock by the bed.
When she heard the sound of a car door closing from somewhere in the street, she rolled over to check the luminescent face on the clock. Its hands told her that it was just barely after four o' clock in the morning.
Maybe Graham had slipped off to the bathroom.
She lay still for long minutes, willing him to come back to bed to calm the thudding of her heart. When she heard the sound of a car door again, she got out from under the covers, put on the fuzzy robe hanging from her hook on the bedroom door, and made her way to the kitchen.
In later days, Ruth realized that every moment of that early morning had crystallized in her memory in still images, captured like photographs.
The first thing she noticed, peering out the front door, was the front porch light, shedding a triangle of light onto the snow in the driveway. That bore examining. They always made sure the porch light was off before heading up to bed for the night.
Then, by Graham's car parked against the curb, she saw a shadow in motion.
Without pausing to think, she slid her bare feet into a pair of galoshes that were sitting on the mat and was out the door.
Someone was putting what looked like a suitcase into the trunk of Graham's car. It took a moment to register that it was Graham putting a suitcase into the trunk of his car.
But there was someone else standing by the open door on the passenger's side in the process of climbing in. The someone else, with one foot in and one foot out of the car, turned in Ruth's direction, alerted by the front door opening and the crunch of the galoshes in the snow. The someone else, Ruth could see by the light from the porch, was Lily Turnbull.
Ruth kept her feet moving toward Lily, unsure what she would do if she ever reached her, but continuing to slide her feet forward like a sleepwalker.
When Lily saw Ruth, her face took on an inexplicable look of triumph. To her dying day, Ruth could instantly recall from her mental visual bank that look on Lily's face.
Lily finished getting into the car, but she left the door open and continued to look at Ruth with the same expression.
"Graham?" Ruth said uncertainly, wondering if she was dreaming.
But he didn't answer her. He only slammed the lid of the trunk.
"Close the door!" He barked the order to Lily like a drill sergeant, positioning himself hastily behind the wheel.
"Graham?" Ruth said again. Maybe he hadn't heard her. Did he know she was standing there? Maybe he hadn't seen her either.
Graham started the car. It was cold, and it resisted his first attempt, turning over but not catching. When it caught, the noise of the engine was a desecration of the sacred silence of the early hours.
"Close the door!" he said. His volume had amplified, and he added a string of curses for good measure.
But Lily wasn't ready to close her door.
She smiled (if it could be called a smile – at any rate, the corners of her mouth lifted) at Ruth.
"I told you I'd never forgive you," she said in silken tones to Ruth.
"What?" Ruth said. Her brain had not begun to make sense of anything her senses were telling her.
"I told you I'd never forgive you," Lily repeated, "and I never have. You prim-faced, perfect, little prig. I never could stand you. Whatever you get is what you've got coming to you."
"What?" Ruth said.
But Lily slammed her door shut, and the car roared away, taking Lily and Graham with it.
* * *
Ruth lay in bed and shook, partially from being out in the snow in only her robe and partially from uncertainty. Her feet felt like ice when they brushed against each other.
She tried out a hundred different explanations in her mind to find one that fit. The one she liked best was that Lily was taking a vacation. She had an early bus or train to catch, and when she and Graham had run into each other sometime, she'd mentioned her trip and managed to get Graham to agree to take her to the station, not wanting to bother her parents.
Ruth had no idea where Graham and Lily could have run into each other, but Arrowhead was a small town. You always ran into people you knew everywhere you went.
She could imagine Lily chancing to meet up with Graham somewhere last night. At ... wherever it was Graham had been before he came home. Lily had happened to be there, too.
Or maybe they'd passed each other on the street yesterday. (The Turnbulls lived just around the corner, after all.) And they had chatted as people must in a small town whenever they see each other, even accidentally. And Lily had complained about the early bus she had to catch in the morning. She'd mentioned that she hated to ask her parents to roll out of bed at four on a February morning to drive her to the station. And Graham had gallantly said, "I could take you. I don't mind. I'm not working. I can always go back to sleep." And Lily had laughed and said, "Well, if you're sure." And Graham had said, "What are old friends for?" And they'd arranged that Lily, living near by, could walk over in the morning with her suitcase so that Graham, in coming to collect her, wouldn't wake her parents. And they'd parted then, and he'd gone home to his wife and to his bed and had simply forgotten to mention to his wife about bumping into Lily and the arrangements they'd made.
Or maybe he hadn't wanted to bother his wife about it, knowing she'd think she had to get up and fuss over him and put on a pot of coffee to warm his chilled blood when he got back from the station.
Ruth considered getting up to put on a pot of coffee for him. But no! Graham hadn't wanted her to do that. That was why he hadn't told her where he was going or why. Besides, when he got back, he'd probably want to go right back to sleep, and coffee would keep him awake.
But where was he? Why wasn't he back yet? Maybe the bus or t
he train was late? And, of course, he wouldn't leave Lily there on her own. He'd wait until she was safely aboard before coming home to crawl back into bed.
And as the hands on the luminescent clock crawled around ... where was he? Surely the bus wasn't as late as all that!
Maybe he didn't take Lily to the station. Maybe he'd had to drive her out of town – all the way to Camille or maybe even farther for some reason. Some emergency had come up. Or some secret misfortune. It was something she hadn't wanted to tell her parents, but somehow she'd told it all to Graham as they passed each other on the street one day. When he'd mentioned that she looked worried, her eyes had welled up with tears, and the whole, sad tale had come spilling out into the sympathetic ears of an old friend. And, of course, he'd gallantly said he'd do whatever he could to help. Whatever it was, it was something she couldn't tell her parents which explained why Graham was taking her wherever she was going. And it also explained why he hadn't told his wife. It was something he had to keep secret. Maybe Lily was ill and had to see a specialist in the city and didn't want anyone to know she was sick.
Maybe Ruth shouldn't expect Graham back until this evening. She'd get up and get ready for work and maybe by the time she got home from work, he'd be there, waiting for her. She rose in the half-darkness, pulled the bed covers up, and hastily smoothed them without bothering to make the bed properly.
But what had Lily meant by that look of triumph and the strange speech she'd made before she and Graham drove off? None of that part made any sense. But then. Why should Lily make sense? Ruth had never been able to understand Lily Turnbull before. Why should she expect to start now?
It was as though Lily was pretending she and Graham were ... leaving together. Permanently, like. Not just for the day while Graham drove her to Camille.
Knowing Lily, it was like her to pretend something like that. She'd claim later she'd only been joking, but they'd both know it was intended to hurt and to worry Ruth. But Ruth wasn't about to let it. She wasn't falling for any of Lily's cruel jokes. No wonder Graham had been annoyed at Lily. He'd never sworn at Ruth the way he had at Lily. It was too stupid of Lily.