by Connie Cook
Ruth giggled a little weakly at Glo's humour, but the hysteria had passed.
"Now, Ruthie Darlin', there's somethin' Jim and me's bin thinkin' about. You haven't asked for any time off through all this, and we haven't liked to interfere, but I'm thinkin' it's time you took yourself a little time off. Right, Jim?"
Jim nodded.
"It won't happen again, Glo. Honest. I'm fine now. I think now that I've had one little breakdown, it's outta my system, and I'll be fine from now on."
"Darlin', you don't imagine I'm worried about how you're doin' on the job, do ya? It's you I'm worryin' about. I know you like to hang onto your independence somethin' fierce, but this time I'm makin' the decision for ya. You're gettin' a week off. Now, don't you worry," she said as Ruth tried to interrupt. "It's with pay, so don't you tell us you can't afford it. You don't have any choice on this one. Jim and I talked it all over, and that's just how it's gonna be."
Ruth realized that Jim and Glo had probably talked it over telepathically through a little eye contact as Glo was in the process of explaining it all to Ruth. It didn't matter. Whatever Glo said was always fine with Jim.
Ruth could only nod weakly and say, "Okay. Thanks, you two. I don't know what I'd do without you," before a different kind of hysteria threatened to engulf her. She fled the kitchen to check on Mrs. Handy and Philippa who were in for their weekly dinner out.
Chapter 16
The farm house had been vacant for months. No efforts had succeeded in finding renters for the old house.
There was no way around it. The two women needed to relocate to the farm house in order to make ends meet. Without the rent from the farm house to cover the rent on the bungalow in town, on Ruth's salary alone, the money she and Graham had put away was dipped into a little deeper every month in order to cover expenses.
"We can't go on spending your savings," Mom said to Ruth. "We have to find a way to live within our means."
Ruth agreed, but for Mom's sake, she hated to suggest moving back to the farm house. She knew it was drafty and inconvenient and wood-heated and would mean a lot more work for her mother-in-law while she was at the Morning Glory.
It was Mom who brought the subject up.
"You know what we could do?" she said one day with all the excitement of discovery alighting upon her. "What would you think about moving back into your old home? No sense having that old place sit empty and you paying the rent on this one when we could be living in a house you already own."
"It wouldn't be what you're used to," Ruth said hesitantly. The days were getting warmer but not so warm that the house wouldn't need to be heated. She wondered how her mother-in-law would cope with the old wood stove in the house.
"Well, then I'll get used to it," Mom said. She had a certain set to her shoulders that indicated her mind was made up, and she had them set now.
The pair handed in their notice to quit the bungalow by the end of March and then waited a good opportunity for Ruth to have a few days off to get their things moved.
The week off that Ruth's hysterical attack had earned her coincided well with the almost-end of the month of March, and Monday of that week was chosen as moving day.
On Sunday, Mom spread the word around to a few church friends. Bo Weaver had a pickup truck that, with enough trips, would accommodate all the furniture. He enlisted a few more, and on Monday, there was a cheerful group gathered to help in any way they could.
Some of the faces were different, but Ruth was reminded of her first return to the old farm house and the friends who had come alongside to help make the place livable. Philippa and Mrs. Handy and Bo were the only ones in the new group who had been part of the group of original helpers, but there were also two of the church men to help move the heavy items, and one more woman who came to help with the packing and cleaning.
It was a long day, but an enjoyable one. The most enjoyable for Ruth in weeks. Maybe months. She was surprised to learn she could still laugh (in non-hysterical fashion, I mean).
Tasks that would have taken Ruth and Mrs. MacKellum several days to accomplish alone were completed in short order, and by the end of Monday, the move was accomplished; all except the unpacking and the settling in.
* * *
Ruth had been in constant motion for so long that when she finally let her wheels grind to a halt the inevitable happened.
On Tuesday, the day after the big move, Ruth began to feel a sore throat coming on. Wednesday, she tried to help with the unpacking, but she couldn't keep the chills away. Her head felt as though it was floating away somewhere detached from her body, and the pain in her throat made her think carefully before every swallow. She finally gave up unpacking and went to bed.
Thursday, she rolled out of bed in the morning feeling just as bad if not worse, and Mom, taking one look at her, sent her right back where she'd come from.
"I can't spend all day in bed," Ruth said, speaking gingerly around the lump of burning coal in her throat. "I've got to get the fire going. It's not that warm out yet."
"Don't you think I've lit a fire before in my life?" Mom asked her. "Don't you worry! I haven't forgotten how to work a wood stove. I haven't always lived in a house with an electric furnace, you know. The first eighteen years of my life, we lived dirt poor in a little house on a farm in Saskatchewan that had no electricity and no indoor toilet, so I can manage one little wood stove, believe you me."
Being sick gave Ruth a little glimpse into a side of her mother-in-law that Ruth had never seen before. Mom was much more capable than Ruth had imagined.
Ruth spent most of the rest of her week off in bed. What started off as a bad sore throat and head cold soon developed into bronchitis. Mustard plasters, ginger teas, and all the home prescriptions Mom could remember availed nothing except to increase Ruth's discomfort with the foul-tasting remedies.
But Ruth refused to see Dr. Moffet.
"It's just a little bronchitis," she said. "I got it often when I was a kid. It'll go away in time. The doctor couldn't do anything for it, anyways."
When her week off was over, as soon as Glo heard Ruth's voice over the telephone, she and Jim voted unanimously (though Jim voted silently) for Ruth to have another week off.
"Don't you worry," Glo told her, "we've got Phoebe back temporary while you're away. She's got her mother to watch the baby, so don't you worry about a thing. We miss you, but we'll manage for another week. Or until you're all better. You just take all the time in the world you need, Darlin'."
For once, Ruth didn't argue. Physically, she felt too awful. And mentally, the relief was too great.
Another week away from the ruthless realities of the real world, another week of seeing no one but the one person who understood, another week without either pitying or judging eyes following her constantly – it was too good to be true! Good ol' bronchitis!
Mom had begun taking over the accounting for the household, seeing she did the marketing.
She sat at the kitchen table on Friday of their second week in their new home, frowning over a sheet of paper.
"There's just no way around it," she finally mumbled to herself.
"Around what?" Ruth inquired carelessly. She was humming and sewing a hem on a curtain for the window over the sink. Yellow checked. It would be friendly and welcoming in the big, sunlit farm kitchen in the summer. And in the winter, the yellow would give the illusion of sunshine.
"I'll have to go."
"What're you talking about?"
"I'll have to go live with Pat. Earl makes a good wage. And Pat's my own daughter. There's no reason you should have to take me in and not my own daughter. I can't live off of you forever, Ruth. There's just no way around it. Even without paying rent on the house in town, your income from the cafe just won't cover what we spend in a month, not for the two of us, not with bills to pay and property taxes to save for. And I refuse to be the cause of you running through all your savings. My son put a good dent in them with his drinking and carousing
and not working. At least he had the decency to leave you with what was still in the account when he left. I can't help but wonder what he's living on now, though."
"I'm sure he's found work by now. Of course, Lily probably had a fair bit of money of her own for the two of them to live on till Graham was working," Ruth said.
It was the first time Lily's name had been spoken between the two women since that eventful February morning. It cost Ruth a great effort to bring it out casually, but she succeeded fairly well in keeping her tone even and her voice from shaking.
There was thick silence in the room for a long moment.
"I know what the rumours around town have been saying, Ruth, but there's no need we have to listen to them. Just because the two of them left town around the same time, it doesn't have to mean they went together. Let's not jump to any conclusions till we know a little more," Mom said finally.
"I do know," Ruth said quietly and regretfully. She hated to cause pain. "I didn't tell you this before, but I saw them. I saw them leaving together that morning."
There was another long moment of silence before Mrs. MacKellum, without speaking a word, got up to leave the room. She wouldn't cry in front of Ruth. Ruth had enough to carry without having to comfort the grief of the mother of the boy who had caused her own.
She gave her an hour alone, but then Ruth went to find her mother-in-law. They had to get this leaving nonsense settled.
"Now, about you going to live with Pat and Earl, that just won't work, and you know it," was Ruth's first approach and an unwise one.
Mom bristled. "I don't see why not? She's my own daughter. After her father died, she made the offer to have me come and live with her and Earl, you know."
Ruth knew, but she was also fairly sure the offer had been an insincere one.
"Really? You think you could live with Earl?"
"We'd manage," Mom said, and she set her shoulders.
"I'm sure you could manage," Ruth hastily placated, "But what would I do?"
Her heart wrenched at the sight of the older woman, squaring her shoulders, making up her mind to live the rest of her days feeling leftover and unwanted. If only Ruth could convey the truth to her.
"Don't you see?" she pleaded. "I need you here. I need you with me. I need you. I want you here. I know it's not quite the same as being with your own daughter, but don't I count, too? After all, Pat has Earl and the kids."
"But," Mom faltered, "But Earl has a good job. I can't ask you to support me on a waitress's wages."
"Then I'll find a different job," Ruth said. "I'll get a job as a secretary. It wouldn't be a lot more, but it would be a little more, and that would be enough. I know it would. And living out here, we can eat what we grow. We can grow a big garden; not like that little postage stamp of a garden we had in town. It'll soon be time to start putting the garden in. And I'll need you to help with all the extra work around this place when I'm working. It's not like living in town. I really won't be able to keep up the housework and the garden and all while I'm working."
"Don't you see?" she said again. "I need you, I really do. And besides needing you, I want you." She couldn't explain beyond that.
"But if you want to go..." Ruth said, playing her trump card.
"Of course, I don't want to leave you," Mom said, anxious not to be misunderstood. "Of course I'd rather stay with you if I could be useful to you. But I don't know ... I just don't know. Earl has a good job. It's not fair to you."
"Well, how about this? I'll start out first thing tomorrow to see if I can't find a secretary job. I'll give my two weeks' notice at the cafe. If I can't find something with higher pay by then, well, you can do whatever you feel you have to, and I can go back to waitressing. Though I hope you'll stay even if we have to tighten our belts a little on my waitress's salary."
"But you love working at the Morning Glory," Mom said dismally. One way or the other, she could see Ruth would be forced to sacrifice on her behalf.
"I love working for Jim and Glo, that's true. But you don't realize how little I'm enjoying my job at the cafe these days," Ruth told her. And there must have been a ring of truth to her statement because Mom agreed to wait and see if Ruth could find another job in those two weeks.
* * *
Secretarial work was not as easy to come by as Ruth had pictured to herself. She'd imagined that two weeks should be plenty of time to locate a new job. Because her job at the Morning Glory had fallen into her lap as almost the first job she'd applied for, she was unnaturally optimistic about the job market.
And, though she'd given her notice, she was still working at the cafe for another two weeks which limited her hours for job searching.
Glo had taken the news hard that Ruth was planning to quit but not as hard as Jim had taken it.
"You just think it over," Jim told her. "If you get to the end of those two weeks and you haven't found nothin' else, or you think better of it, you don't have to follow through, y'know. You know we'll always take you back. We ain't gonna hire nobody new. Not till we know for sure."
It was a tremendously long speech for Jim and took a lot out of him. By contrast, Glo was strangely silent (which took a lot out of her).
It was very near the end of the two weeks Ruth had given herself, and she was beginning to worry. Not that staying on at the Morning Glory would be unbearable. It would surely get easier with time, but she felt sure that Mom would decide duty called her to go and live with Pat and Earl if Ruth couldn't find a better-paying job. And Ruth had tried almost everywhere.
There was one place in Arrowhead she hadn't tried yet, however.
Graham had refused to ask Gus Turnbull for a job, but a certain kind of pride had been a large factor in Graham's make-up. Ruth had a different kind of pride, and hers didn't preclude asking Gus Turnbull for work.
"I wonder if Mr. Turnbull would have a moment to see me," she asked the girl at the desk in the outer office. Ruth couldn't understand why but her heart was beating hard as though she'd run all the way to the sawmill.
"I believe Mr. Turnbull is engaged just now. I could make an appointment for you. What is it regarding?" the girl asked her, examining her out of ice-blue eyes behind horn rims. She looked very young, younger even than Ruth.
"I'd like to speak to him about a job," Ruth said, not knowing what else to say.
"And your name, please?"
"Ruth MacKellum."
Ruth wondered if it was pretence or if the girl genuinely had no idea who she was. She felt as though everyone in the entire Arrowhead valley knew who she was and knew every detail of her life. At least her life in the past few months. Was it possible she was still anonymous to a handful?
But the blue eyes opened a little wider at the name, and Ruth knew the girl recognized the name if not the face. Anonymity was an idle dream.
The door to the inner office opened, and Gus, himself, emerged.
"Marcie, I ... oh, hello, Ruth," he said. "Are you here to see me?"
"I did hope to see you," she said.
"Well, come on in then. Come right in. I have a few minutes to spare." The heartiness in his voice sounded false and even fearful to Ruth's ears. Was he expecting trouble from her?
"Now, what can I do for you?" he asked after they were seated.
"I was hoping you might have an opening in your office," she said, coming right to the point. "I have a little experience. I took a four-month secretarial course. I can show you my transcripts. I have them here. And I worked briefly in the office at MacKellums', so I'm somewhat familiar with this kind of work. I'm sorry there's no one to ask for my references from the mill. Actually, you could ask Dorothy Madden about my qualifications and abilities, though."
Ruth hadn't intended her remark about her lack of references to make Gus squirm. It was not her intention to play on his sympathies or guilt him into giving her a job. It had occurred to her while speaking that she had no references for her secretarial work to give him, and so she mentioned it.
"That wouldn't be necessary," he said quickly, "I have no doubt you're very capable. I'd like to be able to help you, Ruth, but problem is, we just don't have any positions available. I'd like to be able to help you, though," he repeated lamely.
"Maybe if something comes up ..." Ruth said preparing to leave.
"Of course. I'll make a note of it right here that you're looking for something. And if anything comes up ... I don't suppose you'd like to try working on the green chain with the men?" He smiled at his own little joke, and Ruth did her best to smile back.
"Well, sure, Ruth, if anything comes up, I'll certainly keep you in mind. Your number's listed in the directory, I assume?" Smiling to reassure her that he would definitely keep her in mind if something came up, Gus ushered her to the door, and Ruth was once more subjected to the study of a pair of cold, blue eyes as she left the office.
She'd known it was a very long shot, but one never knew until one tried, did one?
But perhaps some remnant of a vestigial conscience hounded Gus Turnbull for the next few days.
Or perhaps his wife, in learning that Ruth had been in to ask about a job, reminded him that it wouldn't look good if the town got to hear about it (as they assuredly would). The townsfolk would say that it was Gus Turnbull's daughter who had run away with that Chavinski girl's husband and you'd think the least Gus could do to make amends was to give her a job. But oh, no! Not old Gus!
Whether it was conscience or fear of public opinion that landed her the job, Ruth did indeed find herself working at A.A. Turnbull Enterprises within a week.
She was on the point of telling Jim and Glo she'd changed her mind and would stay on at the Morning Glory when she got the call one evening.
"Hello, Ruth? Yes, this is Gus Turnbull. After you left my office the other day, I got to thinking ... We could use someone as a filing clerk. Marcie, my regular secretary, she says I give her too much to do in a day to get through it all. Especially doing payroll and month's end billing. But we could probably keep you busy the rest of the time, too. I guess there's probably enough work for two, if you don't object to it not being much more than filing work and stuffing envelopes."