by Laura Briggs
Alice crossed her arms. It was bad enough to experience a hallucination, much less be insulted by one. “You think I’m not grown-up enough to deal with this on my own? I don’t need some vision or delusion, or whatever, to help me figure out whether I have a good relationship or not.”
“There’s more to romance and marriage than you realize, child. You can take my word on that.” Ruth strode to the mantel, pausing in front of a picture of Alice and Warren, taken at a birthday party.
Alice rolled her eyes, something she never would have dared to do in front of her real-life grandmother. “I’m pretty sure I know what the marriage vows are about. Even if I don’t have ten years of marriage to back it up,” she added, quoting the number of years behind her grandmother’s own union.
Ruth paused for a moment, her hand resting beside her own photograph. “Best that you know the truth about my life before you make it an example for yourself.”
Alice uncrossed her arms, confused. “But I’ve seen the photos of you and grandpa. You were married in Johnsonville by the Justice of the Peace.”
“Oh, I’m not denying the marriage, child. Merely the ideas you have about it.”
“I don’t understand,” Alice said. “I spent every summer on the farm with you, listening to you and Dad and his siblings tell stories about living there.”
“Stories a little child might not see as anything more than sentimental,” her grandmother answered. “Which is why you need to read my journal. To remember the little things one so often takes for granted.”
“Your journal?” Alice repeated, resisting the urge to laugh aloud with these words. “Which one? The garden book? The kitchen one?” All of which consisted of household hints, canning recipes, ways to bind a handmade broom—but not any advice on love, as far as Alice knew.
“Perhaps you should take another look before you make that claim,” her grandmother suggested, apparently reading her mind.
Reason enough for Alice to obey.
The journals were in the kitchen, tucked between cookbooks on foreign cuisine and pastry recipes. Alice’s mother had given them to her just a few months after she began dating Warren. “Just in case,” she said, a meaningful smile curving her lips that Alice pretended to ignore.
Since then, she’d glanced through them occasionally for advice on removing paint stains from carpet and different fabrics. But she’d never come across any surprising personal revelations.
Pulling the first one from the shelf, she flipped its pages, revealing notations on Ruth’s garden. Peas planted on the twenty-third, rows of corn germinating in seed pots in the old barn. The second volume was Ruth’s housekeeping journal, which contained a daily record of household chores.
“Nothing here,” Alice said. She drew the third journal from its spot and studied its faded spine. The cracked lettering had grown almost invisible, but at last, she made out the words ‘prayer journal.’ As she opened it, a loose page escaped and fluttered to the floor.
She picked it up and scanned a passage copied in Ruth’s familiar, spidery handwriting:
August 5th, 1978. It’s always hardest on the ones left behind after a death, they say. I guess it must be true, except I think it would be hard on the ones who have gone if they knew how we really felt. Imagine what Gerald would say if I told him that I don’t feel anything sometimes, except the bills and the children, and the things that have to be done to keep us together as best I can. I sometimes wonder if he would be feeling the same in my place. I sometimes wonder—did he love me at all?
Ghosts Of Romances Past
14
Alice stared at the words on the page, shocked beyond speech. Ruth’s long ago words on her husband’s death seemed surreal. As if they belonged in someone else’s life, not her simple, straightforward grandmother’s existence.
She flipped back to the beginning of the journal, hoping for an explanation to the shocking passage she’d just read. The pages were loosely bound between the spine, the connecting threads fraying as she turned them one by one, unraveling like the secrets they once bound together.
March 11, 1951. Gerald brought me home as soon as we were officially married. I can’t believe I’m really not Ruth Morrowby any longer and will be a Headley from now on. And I can’t say I’ll miss the pity many’s bestowed on me for being passed over by other boys. Now my mind’s on our work and the future God intends for us.
I reckon I can hold my head up when I see Charlie Goodson on the street. Ever since he married Jenny Brisby, I felt that I couldn’t look him in the eye for fear I would see pity or contempt there.
A plain girl can’t expect to have many suitors; and while I was sorry to lose Charlie a while ago, I’m pleased to be married now to anyone. I was a might lonely on the shelf and figuring I wasn’t going to get picked at all. Much less by a boy as hard to please as Gerald.
I still remember seeing him at the basketball games. He would sit in the stands, surrounded by a crowd of girls. He teased them all, of course; he always did in school, even me who wasn’t worth much of a second look. He never did see me at those games, but I only went once or twice. The baby needed looking after at home most evenings.
A raw ache filled Alice as she read those words. Her grandmother’s strong features and lanky wisps of hair earned her a reputation as homely. She imagined long evenings spent in chores at home while other small town youth were out in groups at the local soda shop or the high school games. Lonely nights spent tucking in younger siblings, all vanquished by a smile from a handsome young man.
With a sigh, she scanned the next several pages. Many of the entries contained prayer requests for neighbors and family members, as well as Ruth’s pleas for guidance in raising for her firstborn child. Then came the first sign of trouble in her grandmother’s married life:
March 11th, 1953. Gerald came home late again last night. Said the boys were playing cards at the gas station so he sat a spell with them and had a soda pop. He forgot the bag of oatmeal and the applesauce for Teddy that I asked him to get since the doctor said he can’t have any solid foods yet. He spent the day breaking sod in the east field and didn’t say more than two words when he came home to dinner, so I propped Teddy up on the porch to watch me while I weeded the garden.
I fried a chicken for supper, the way Gerald likes. He still said my potatoes ain’t the same as his mama’s, so I reckon I better try something new. I knitted him a new sweater, but he didn’t see it when he went upstairs. He fell asleep across the bed, so the cables was all rumpled when he got up. He says it don’t matter, it’ll get all stretched out wearing it in the fields anyway.
Today we’ve been married two years.
Alice frowned, her fingers uncreasing the page’s dog-eared corner. Was this her lesson—to make sure her future husband brought respect and appreciation to the marriage? But then, didn’t most couples struggle to combine their two worlds, setting aside individual needs for the well-being of the family?
The years passed as she flipped a few pages ahead. Ruth’s journal was sporadic, its notations crowded together for a few months, then neglected until early the next year. But what she wrote was heartfelt, as if she was telling her secrets to a sympathetic friend.
April 26th, 1962. We took out a new loan to buy the wheat thresher and the new tractor. I was dead set against it, what with the mortgage and the new room Gerald added on, but he insisted that we go ahead and take it. We ain’t paid off the barn yet from last fall, but he won’t hear of us falling behind the times, as he calls it. I don’t mention them on Sundays with the folks. My daddy don’t believe in biting off more than you can chew, so I reckon he wouldn’t think highly of what me and Gerald are having to do now.
I put aside a little money for the children. Teddy and Minnie are growing so fast, it seems as if it won’t be more than two shakes before they’re ready for college. I don’t want them left behind by progress, either.
There were several more entries in between, as Alice turned t
he pages. Then the space went blank, except for a short notation at the bottom.
November 17th, 1963. A man came to the door last night from the state police. He drove me to the hospital in Kansas City because Gerald had been in a bad accident with the car. When I got there, he was all bandaged in bed and looked so different I wouldn’t have known him if the doctor hadn’t told me straight out who it was. He said I could sit alone with him and left me; so did the policeman. I sat there until it was morning, but he didn’t wake up. He didn’t wake up ever again.
Ghosts Of Romances Past
15
Tears pooled in Alice’s eyes, despite the distance of time. Of course, she’d known about her grandfather’s accident for years. But she’d never gripped its far-reaching implications for his already burdened young wife.
November 19th, 1963. We had the funeral today. I didn’t want little Jesse to come, he’s so young. But pastor said it would be good for him to say goodbye along with everyone else. Minnie cried and cried, but Teddy was quiet. I suppose he feels he’s got to be a man, now that his father’s gone. Too much for a little boy, I’m afraid.
I wish I could say I felt my heart broken, or that the dull ache in my chest was what those writers tell about in books. Somehow it doesn’t feel like I thought it should. It feels lonely and cold, but not as if I couldn’t go on living.
Sometimes I wonder if this was God’s plan for my life, or did I make a mistake somewhere? The preacher says there are no accidents, and I know he’s right. But I sometimes wonder if Gerald was supposed to die in that terrible accident and leave us like this. Or if I was supposed to marry him at all or just was afraid not to. It’s a terrible thing to think, and I feel guilty every time I look at our children’s faces.
Is it awful that the thing you miss most about a person is that they’re gone?
So many things made sense now that hadn’t before. Like why Ruth never had time for friends or outside interests, but spent much of her life alone in the same farmhouse she came to as a bride. Or why she held such a no-frills, practical approach to almost every aspect of life.
“Where are your flowers, Grandma?” Alice asked on one of her many childhood visits to the farmhouse, where Ruth spent her mornings kneeling in the dirt, her fingers pulling weeds from around the base of a squash plant.
“Don’t need flowers, child,” Ruth answered. “Reckon the ones in the bucket up on the porch are enough.” Bright red peonies were clustered in a rusty pail retired from farm work. They were planted with tender care, but Ruth’s calloused hands were more at home in the garden. Weeding, hoeing, and reaping the harvest of a long year’s labor.
“Food tastes sweeter when you’ve done the work for it,” she claimed. She stewed tomatoes and canned them in long rows in the same pantry where the cookies sat in their jar.
“Is that what grandfather said, too?” Alice asked. She took a bite from a raisin-eyed cookie and watched from her seat at the table. Behind her grandmother was a plain whitewashed wall decorated with framed calendar prints and a photo of her wedding day.
“I reckon he would agree with that,” she answered. “He was a good hand at farming, your grandfather. Spent all his time with the dirt, making it soft and ready for planting.”
At the time, those words seemed a compliment to her grandfather and his work ethic. Now, in light of the journal passages, Alice could see the tiredness in Ruth’s eyes, as she spoke of a man more in tune with the land than the heart of his wife. A man sparing with his affection, even as he sought to build a successful life for his family.
March 31st, 1964. I went to the bank today and talked to them and it’s real bad news. The farm’s mortgage ain’t even half paid, and they think we’ll fall behind. All the loans for the barn and equipment are unpaid, including the wheat thresher. The lawyer says I should sell up and take the children to my family.
It’s all too much to bear, and I don’t know what do. Even after I prayed, I’m not sure I have the strength to face this trial. I’ve lost a husband and now I’m losing my home. There’s three mouths depending on me, and I don’t know where I’m going to get the money to keep us all together.
Oh, Lord, what am I supposed to do?
Strange her grandmother never mentioned financial troubles; whenever her son Ted and his daughter came for a visit, she concentrated only on keeping the house in order and baking an extra pie for dinner.
March 6th, 1968. I worked late at the five and dime closing up the store, now that Mr. Perkins lets me have mornings off to take Minnie to kindergarten. Teddy wants to earn extra money on a paper route, so I told him he could. He wants a new bicycle for Christmas, and I know we can’t afford one.
Now that the wheat thresher and tractor sold, that’s a few less debts. Whatever part I get from the wheat crop this year will be small, but it’ll all go towards the mortgage. I want to keep the house and land together as long as I can, for my children and for Gerald’s memory. Mr. Wilson wants to be generous when harvest time comes, but I’ll make him take his fair share. It’s the least I can do, what with him running the farm now.
All through the years, Ruth kept a photo of her husband above the kitchen table. A simple black and white image in a frame, showing him absorbed in his labors, his face hidden from the lens by the sunlight and shadows in contrast.
“Is that Grandfather?” Alice asked, pointing to the image the first time she visited the farmhouse.
“Sure is,” her father answered. He hoisted her up to touch the frame, which was perfectly dusted. A small shelf beneath held his pipe and matches, a fishing lure from his tackle box. Almost like a shrine, she thought, years later when she visited the farm. Or a memorial.
The picture and the shelf below never changed, remaining steadfast until the day her grandmother was hospitalized with symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Now the photo lay in a box of Ruth’s things that Alice’s mother planned to take to the nursing home sometime.
June 5th, 1968. There’s only so much you can do for a memory, they say. And when I hear rumors about our money troubles, it’s hard to hold my head high. But I reckon he was my husband; and no matter what comes, I made a promise to him that I intend to keep. I won’t let our children forget their father, and I won’t let the Headley legacy go onto strangers if I can help it.
It may be all I ever had, but it’s my promise. And if God’s willing, I’ll do my best to see it through.
****
There was one last entry on the pages, penned long after her grandmother had succeeded in paying the farm’s mortgage and kept the promise to herself, that her children would get a decent education and an opportunity for the future.
June 27th, 1981. I prayed tonight for a good marriage for all my children. Sometimes I’m afraid they’ll misunderstand why I did things the way I did. There would’ve been no good in saying aloud all of Gerald’s faults. Just like there was no good in crying over what we couldn’t change. I may have been hard sometimes in the way we live, but I hope I was always fair to them. I always did what I thought was best.
Maybe they won’t ever have a need to understand it. If God is willing, maybe they’ll choose better partners to share life’s burdens.
“Now I think you understand what I mean.” Without turning her head, Alice knew Ruth was standing in the doorway behind her. “You have to be certain this is the life you want before you say yes. Remember that, because you’ll be part of it forever, one way or another.”
Alice wiped the dampness beneath her eyes. “I don’t know what to do. I want to make the right decision, so why can’t you just tell me what it is?”
No answer came, only the faint ticking of the kitchen clock. Alice twisted to find an empty doorway. Ruth was gone, along with any final words of wisdom or warning on the biggest decision of her life.
Ghosts Of Romances Past
16
It was almost three in the morning, and Alice should have been asleep. Her forehead ached, a physical reminder that her checkup a
ppointment was five hours away.
Instead, she was hunched over a computer keyboard at the local college campus research center, scrolling through database results for journal articles on hallucinations and minor head trauma. Or any evidence that she wasn’t losing her mind.
A murmuring sound caught her ear, and Alice swiveled to glance behind her. But there were no phantom family members in sight, just the lab assistant and a handful of stressed college students working on last-minute papers.
She sighed and moved the computer mouse over an article link for symptoms of something called intracranial hematoma. Which is worse? she wondered. Having a serious illness or finding out the hallucinations are something beyond scientific explanation?
Even now, she shuddered at this afternoon’s encounter with the journal, her grandmother’s years of loneliness and guilt. A long ago mistake that had the power to leave Alice sleepless and halfway across town. After all, what if she was on the verge of making the same terrible blunder?
She struggled to focus on the screen, the words blurring together in the glow. Resting her head on a hand, she longed for a little comfort, a familiar voice from someone real and present-day, even at this late hour.
Creeping into the foyer, she pulled out the cell phone and calculated the time difference. It was only eleven p.m. in Alaska, where her mother, Dolores, was still on her annual cruise with a group of friends from her Sunday school circle. Dialing the number, she hoped her mother wasn’t too busy, or too tired to talk
“Alice?” her mother answered after three rings. “Is everything all right?”
“Its fine, Mom,” she reassured her. “I just wanted to say hello. I haven’t talked to you since before your flight.”