Drowning Ruth (16 page)

The wheels of the buggy jounced recklessly over the rutted road, and Carl devoted all of his attention to the driving. When they reached the well-groomed track that led up the hill to the sanatorium, he glanced at Ruth on the seat beside him. The bow was half undone and had slipped down her head and her hair looked as if it had never been brushed. What was that clump in the back? Burrs? One stocking had slipped to her ankle, the shoe on the other foot had come untied. Her dress had bunched strangely over her sash. She was disintegrating before his eyes. He clucked Frenchie on and drove faster.

The track was carved through a thick wood and branches sliced the sunlight into a thousand pieces. At the top of the hill the trees thinned, and the building emerged, cream-colored brick, five stories high and square. A smaller building on the right of Lannon stone and newer construction housed the director and his family, consisting of a wife, two roly-poly boys and an Irish setter. The children and the dog were chasing each other about the green lawn and paid no attention to Carl and Ruth as they went inside.

The place had once been a monastery and the monks' former cells were now private or semiprivate rooms, but except that the windows and heavy doors could be locked only from the outside, the atmosphere was one of a spa, or so Carl imagined. Cream and maroon tiles formed the floor of the vestibule and of the lobby, easy to care for yet attractive. The stairway was made of a dark, highly polished wood. Occasionally a cacophony would echo through the
halls, a sudden scream, a laugh that continued too long, or a spitting stream of imprecations, but most of the patients, at least those in Amanda's wing, kept their troubles to themselves.

He was familiar to the receptionist, and she looked up from the letter she was writing just long enough to smile and wave them on. “She's upstairs this morning,” she said.

He removed his hat and climbed the uncarpeted stairs, pausing on the second-floor landing to smooth back his hair and straighten his tie and to gaze out the window down at the boys, who were now doing their best to ride the dog. Ruth's little hand worked its way into his.

Outside the door of Room 312, he stopped. He knelt in front of Ruth and tried to put her costume back together. “Ruthie,” he said, “you behave now. If you're good, she might come home. All right? You be good.” She stared at Amanda's door and said nothing. He sighed, straightened and knocked.

Like Ruth, Amanda gave no answer, but then she never did. His knock was a warning, rather than a request.

He opened the door, and gently pushed Ruth ahead of himself into the room. “Look who I've brought to see you today, Amanda.”

Tentatively, as if she thought Ruth might only be an illusion, Amanda rose from her chair and reached to touch the girl's face with her fingertips.

Ruth jumped back. “I hate you!” she shouted. “I hate you!” Carl stared at her, more shocked by the fact that she was speaking than by what she said. Amanda stared at her too. Horrified at her own words, Ruth backed away, back and back, until—“Ruthie, be careful!”—but it was too late, she'd lost her balance on the stairs and fell, bumping and sliding to the landing.

Amanda reached her first, gathered her in her arms, rocked her as she screamed, her lip bloody from banging against her teeth. “It's all right, Ruthie. It's all right,” she said. “For a moment there, you were flying. I saw it. You were really flying.”

At last Ruth's sobs became quiet tears, and she snuggled her face into Amanda's shoulder. “Aunt Mandy,” she whispered.

“What, Ruthie?”

“You can come home now. I made her go away.”

She was reckless just like you, Mattie.

After you learned to walk, you ran from room to room, shrieking and laughing. I told you to be careful, but you wouldn't stop. You would never stop until you tripped and fell or pinched your finger in a door, and then how you would scream and cry, as if you were the only one who had ever gotten hurt.

You were only four the first time you followed me through the winter woods. I was already halfway across the ice when I heard your voice.

“Wait, Mandy! Wait!”

I turned and saw you, so ungainly in your layers of wool, the peak on your brown velvet cap drooping as you struggled toward me over the ice.

“Go away!” I shouted, my voice booming across the glassy lake. “Leave me alone!”

But you never cared what I said, did you? Not when you wanted your way. You scuffled on, your boots scratching along the snowy ice. I started back, all set to drag you home. Why should I share my island with you? But you reached me before I'd gone ten steps, and you grabbed my leg with your mittened hands to steady yourself.

“Please take me with you, Mandy.”

I couldn't refuse you.

The island was better, so much better, with two. Remember
the little leanto we built out there? Remember our garden, our “crops”? You wanted radishes and I thought we should have nasturtiums. We planted them both, remember?

And remember when you were a queen? You made a crown out of honeysuckle. You painted your face with bloodroot. “Go to Suscatoon,” you said to the dragonflies, “and bring me back some salt… What's a queen name?” you asked me, your hair all draggled, your face dirty. “What should my name be, if I'm the queen?” “Imogene,” I said. I only thought of it because it rhymed, but you decided it was the prettiest name you'd ever heard. From then on, whenever we were on the island, you wanted me to call you Imogene, remember that? Queen Imogene. Do you remember?

We would wade out into the water and splash, and when it got too deep for you, you would cling to me, your little arms around my neck, your skinny legs hooked around my middle, weightless in the buoying water. I loved that, your holding tight that way, your needing me to hold you up. You felt safe with me. You knew I would take care of you.

But then, somehow, you began to drift away. Just a few inches at first—you would let go with your legs but keep your arms tight, or loosen your arms but keep your legs locked around me. I told you “no.” I told you to hold on tight. But you wouldn't. You began to let go altogether, a moment here, a moment there, ducking underwater and then grabbing hold of me again, dashing the water from your eyes with one hand and coughing. But I scolded you. I held tight to your smooth, slippery skin. “It's not safe,” I told you. “You stay with me.” I wouldn't let you swim away. I wouldn't let you go.

You should've listened to me, Mattie, when I told you to go back. You should've let me alone. You and Ruth with your wailing and your crying—letting the whole world know my business—why couldn't you let me go?

Why did you let me go, Mattie? I told you to hold on. I would
never have let you go, but you made me. It was you. You made me do it. I'll never forgive you. Never!

Wait, Mattie—I'm not angry. Don't be scared—I won't scold you. I'm laughing, see? It's all right. I didn't mean it. You can come back now, Mattie. You hear me? Come back.

All of that with Clement Owens was water under the bridge, a month gone at least, by March 1919, when I went home to start over, to start fresh with Mattie and her baby Ruth.

The trouble was I didn't feel much better at home than I'd felt working at the hospital, and after what had happened the last time I'd come home ill, I was cautious.

“Better not get too close,” I warned Mattie the next morning, when I staggered in from the milking after losing my breakfast behind the barn.

Still, there was no fever and now that I was away from the hospital I was sure I'd be able to shake it.

“It's nothing,” I snapped, when on the third or fourth day Mat-tie suggested I call Dr. Karbler. “I'm a nurse, aren't I? Don't you think I know?”

I'd bowed out of kitchen duty and stuck to outdoor chores, despite my promises that first night, because the thought of food made me queasy and the fresh air seemed to help. On Friday, Mat-tie announced that she'd made me a treat.

“This'll bring your appetite back,” she said, dramatically sweeping the platter of perch from the oven where she'd been keeping it warm.

Perch had always been one of my favorite dishes, but that evening I broke into a sweat and could barely make it outside in time.

“Too bad,” Mattie said later, feeding me crackers and cheese. “But Pickles was pleased. She ate a whole fish.” Then she giggled.

“What?”

“Oh, I was just thinking of the last time perch made me sick, back when I was carrying Ruth. Poor Carl. He swore he'd never go fishing again.” She smiled.

But I couldn't smile, for Mathilda's words had caught me. After she'd left my room, I struggled to fling them off. I got up and paced. I threw open the window and thrust my head into the cold air, but the harder I tried to escape the more firmly the idea set in my brain. It was true, all right.

I'd tried to pretend otherwise. I'd told myself it was only worry or grief or loneliness that was making me dizzy and tired and sick. But I hardly needed to be a nurse to realize that something more solid than unhappiness was growing inside of me.

I'd tried to return to the way things were, but it was no use. Coming home couldn't change me back into the girl I'd once been.

All I could think to do was run away again. I packed my bag and sat on the edge of my bed, one hand pressed against my abdomen, and thought about where I could go to get away from this thing.

There were places, I knew, where the sisters took you in until it was over, even if you weren't Catholic. I'd heard about another
nurse going to one of those places and now I shuddered at the shame and scorn I'd felt for her. Frieda, her name was. Maybe that's what I'd call myself.

I'd go there. The sisters would teach me how to pray. Maybe I'd stay on afterward, become a nun. But they probably didn't let you do that. Thinking that I could never become a nun, I started to cry. It was a silly thing to cry about—I didn't even want to be a nun. Still, I burrowed my head into the pillow and sobbed. Then I lay for a long time with my face on the wet pillowcase. At least Mama and Papa wouldn't know, I thought. At least they were safe from my shame.

I drew my feet up on the bed without taking off my shoes. Downstairs, Mathilda was playing the piano and singing “Hello, my baby. Hello, my honey. Hello, my ragtime girl.” Now and then a discordant note rang out and I knew Ruth was on her lap, her little palms patting the keys, because once I had sat on my mother's lap in just that way. I was so tired suddenly, so tired I decided that I could spend one more night at home. No one knew the truth. No one was likely to know it for months. I could afford a little sleep.

Mama always went into the back room when she felt one of her spells coming on. She drew the curtains and lay on the daybed, turning her face to the wall and squeezing a pillow over her ears to keep the cicadas' hum and the birds' songs out. My father would close her door.

“You see how it hurts her when you don't act right,” he would say to me. “Now be good and quiet.” And then he would leave the house.

I tried to be good and quiet. I went up to my room and played with my doll or looked at my picture book, but after a while I always got scared, thinking of my mother in that dark room, all by herself, thinking she might be crying, thinking she might be dead,
thinking she might have gone away. So I crept downstairs and carefully, silently turned the knob and pushed open the door a crack, just to see, just to make sure.

And, of course, she was always there, her back to the room, her head buried. Except the one time she wasn't.

The daybed was empty. The blanket that usually covered her shoulders was crumpled on the floor. The room was small, but I ran across it and dropped to the floor to look under the furniture. No, she was gone.

I searched then, the bedrooms, the kitchen cupboards, the wardrobe, the pantry. I asked the hired girl who was wringing out clothes on the back porch. “Where's my mama, Gert?”

“She's gotta be somewheres. Maybe she went to town.”

Gert didn't know Mama the way I did. Mama wouldn't go to town sick. She wouldn't go without telling me.

I tried to open the trapdoor that led to the attic. I thought of how goblins and witches might have snatched her away. I thought of how she would be calling to me, frightened, her arms stretching for me from a place I couldn't see. I thought finally of a likely place—the outhouse—but she wasn't there either. I walked through the barn, calling her, checking all the stalls.

Finally, running back to the house, I noticed that the cellar door was open. I stepped slowly down into the damp darkness, keeping my shoulder tight against the wall so I wouldn't pitch off the open side of the stairs. At the bottom, I found her, sitting on the dirt floor, her forehead pressed against the sweating stone.

She turned to me then, her face strangely white in the dimness. But she wasn't my mother. She mocked me. “Mama! Mama!” she said, making fun of the way I'd been calling her. Then she rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Please. Keep that intolerable child quiet,” she said.

I didn't know what child she meant. It wasn't until years later that I realized she meant me.