Harry & Ruth (13 page)

Harry didn't truly understand, until some time in May, what the attraction was. He was at his desk, writing to Ruth, when he picked up her most recent letter and the scent of her perfume, unchanged since 1943, reached his nose. It triggered memories of how she smelled, the deeper aroma that was Ruth herself. And that triggered memories of Ruth's voice, the musical quality of it. Marianne Nobles didn't really resemble Ruth Crowder Flood. In a dark room, though, with the blinds drawn and other senses taking over, he knew now to whom he had been making love.

He voluntarily told only one person about his fall from grace, and his discovery, and she wrote back that he ought to get on with the life he had before the past did him in entirely. But Harry didn't stop seeing Marianne Nobles. He always told himself, one more time, that's it, but around 3 in the afternoon, the mere thought of what they had done the last time gave him such an erection that he had to sit and read the
Wall Street Journal
for a full minute before he could get up and go to the water cooler without drawing unwanted attention.

The one person he definitely had no plans to tell was Gloria. Instead, she had to find out from her best friend, whose cousin's daughter lived in an apartment in the same complex as Marianne Nobles.

Harry had committed his share of heedless acts as his star rose closer to partnership. Famously, he and another broker had started drinking one afternoon, began talking about a jazz club Harry favored in Greenwich Village, and before it was over, they were on a train headed for New York City. For that one, he had to buy Gloria a diamond necklace.

He told himself that Gloria wasn't hurting for money, that Martin and Nancy were going to the best private schools little Jewish children in Richmond could attend, that they did enjoy nice vacations together, that they still did have their good times. And Gloria was not always so great, sometimes more interested in her birth family than him, always talking about when—not if, when—her mother would move in with them. He was entitled, he told himself, although the ultimate entitlement he had not allowed himself until Marianne Nobles invited him inside.

The day Gloria left, Harry called home at 4:30 to tell her he would be late for dinner, and no one answered. He didn't think anything about it. She could have been at the community pool with the kids, or visiting her mother. His main response, he realized later, was relief.

He was caught unawares by the empty house when he came home at quarter past seven, twilight bringing a welcoming glow to all the windows on Dabney Lane except his. Gloria always had dinner ready, even if it had to be reheated for him. He turned on the lights, checked the children's bedrooms as if everyone might be hiding in there, ready to surprise him, and then came to his and Gloria's room. And saw the note lying on their properly-made bed.

“Harry,” she wrote, “I have left you. I have taken the kids. You will hear from my lawyer tomorrow. Enough is enough. Gloria.”

He called his mother-in-law. Eileen Tannebaum informed him that his wife and children would be out of town for the next few days. He could not bring himself to ask what was wrong; he knew and was certain she knew as well.

Gloria's leaving shook him badly. Once he confirmed the reason for her leaving, he swore off Marianne Nobles forever in his mind, and he would keep that promise. He spent four days haggard at work, almost sleepless at home, calling his mother-in-law twice just in case Gloria had checked in with her. He had to concede that Eileen probably was kinder to him than he deserved.

On the following Tuesday evening, Harry was at home when the doorbell rang. He closed his eyes, praying for another chance. When he saw his wife and children, he fell to the parquet floor and tried to encompass them all at once, finally wrapping his arms around Gloria's knees, almost causing her to fall. He cried the way he hadn't cried since he was a child. She said nothing, just patted him on the head.

He told her almost everything; she had already decided to come back.

Nothing, though, seemed the same to Harry afterward, once the relief and false honeymoon passed, except the love they both felt for their son and daughter. He remembered an older broker who once told him about a sexual fall from grace. His wife found out eventually, they went through “some rough times,” and finally things settled down. The word the man used was “stabilized,” and it stuck with Harry in the months and years after he stopped seeing Marianne Nobles.

All through this first real crisis of his marriage, Harry kept writing Ruth, telling his troubles, sympathizing with hers. Her letters in return were never judgmental, and he loved her for that.

“Maybe I should just drop everything, drive down to Saraw and carry you away,” he wrote her that August. He was only half-kidding.

“Harry,” she wrote back, “I have enough problems as it is.”

THIRTEEN

There had been a long silence from Ruth late that fall, while Harry and Gloria were applying damage control to their marriage.

Harry thought it might be her way of ending their old friendship at last, although he could not see the end coming in her most recent letter, and he had read it over many times, taking it from his locked trunk at work to study it for clues and portents. There was nothing there except a straightforward account of a woman trying to raise a family on a withering farm while her husband slowly lost his mind.

The next letter he received from Saraw was postmarked Dec. 3, and it was not from Ruth, but rather from the only other resident of that town who knew his address.

Ruth had wondered once if things do get better. After reading Mercy's letter, Harry could understand her doubt.

“Dear Mr. Stein,” it started, “I am writing for my cousin, Ruth Crowder Flood …”

At the end of the letter, Mercy allowed herself a rare uncharitable gesture:

“Mr. Stein, it is a terrible thing to say, but why couldn't it have been Henry Flood instead?”

The house where Ruth Crowder Flood spent her married life looks solid enough now, as if a century of storms and hard times had bounced off it forever without leaving a scratch.

It is an illusion.

What is still known as the old Flood place, out of the family now in all except name, looks much as it did at sunset on Nov. 5, 1954. The exterior was barely damaged.

It was typical of farmhouses in the area. It had a screened-in porch facing east. Downstairs, there was a long hallway with kitchen, dining room, living room, bedroom, parlor and bathroom doors leading off it. Upstairs were two bedrooms and a plunder room.

Naomi was 11. She had her own room upstairs. Hank and Paul, who were 5 and 3, had the other one. The baby, Susanna Lee, was 14 months old, barely walking.

Susanna had been sleeping in the same room with Ruth and Henry, but Ruth decided it was time for her to move upstairs, too. They could have kept her in their room for another year, but Ruth had read that it was best to separate yourself from the child at night, to give it a sense of independence.

“Naomi and I slept in the same room, same bed, until she was 3,” Ruth would say later, “and it never seemed to be a problem. Why I put my faith in that book, I'll never know.”

They had waited until Hank and Paul were 2 to move them upstairs.

Ruth had to accept, finally, that they moved Susanna out of their room at least in part because they wanted to.

The baby hardly ever cried, but she kept Henry awake at night, making little noises. He was a light sleeper who suffered terribly from insomnia, and when he was awake, Ruth felt she should be awake, too. If there was to be any peace, she thought, they would have to put Susanna in another room.

They could have left her downstairs, next door in the parlor, but Ruth thought the child needed to have someone in the same room with her, and besides, Naomi was a sound sleeper.

Naomi was not pleased when they put the crib in her room. She and her brothers adored Susanna, a chubby blonde dumpling who grinned and drooled and was never colicky, but she thought she was too old to share her bedroom with a 1-year-old.

After Naomi sulked for two days, though, she got used to Susanna's presence, even let the child share her bed whenever a thunderstorm frightened her.

The plunder room was a catch-all, full of old clothes, old newspapers and magazines deemed to be worth keeping by someone at some time, decades of empty jars saved out of thrift and habit, and kerosene lamps.

When Hurricane Hazel had come through in October, saving its worst damage for areas west of Saraw, it knocked down power lines, disrupting electrical service for a week at the Floods' and elsewhere. A tree fell against the side of the roof. Did all this trauma somehow change something inside the walls of the Crowder home? Did some thin piece of wiring somewhere disconnect, or almost disconnect, waiting until the middle of that dark November night to do its worst? Ruth still thinks about it, still wonders.

The fire started in the plunder room, sometime after 2 a.m.

Nothing was more frightening to the farm families in rural Pembroke County. Most of them remembered the prewar days when kerosene lanterns placed them always one false move from a fire that could only be fought, hopelessly, with water hand-pumped from a well. Even in 1954, the nearest fire department was in Newport. Afterward, the town of Saraw would buy its own water truck and start a volunteer company.

By the time Ruth and Henry were awakened, by smoke and heat and the distant crying and screaming of their children, it was almost too late. Twice Henry tried to climb the stairs in tar-black smoke, before it overcame him. Meanwhile, Ruth had run outside.

On the front of the house, there was a tin roof over the porch, with a window above it. Naomi, awakened by the choking smoke, grabbed the baby and carried her through the suffocating blackness, holding her breath and putting her hand over Susanna's mouth, to that window, closed since summer and stuck shut. It usually took Henry's strong arms to open it again in the spring, but Naomi somehow got the window up. The smoke blew past her as if it were going up a chimney.

Hank and Paul were at her heels, hanging on to her gown. Naomi stood there, with the heat already singeing her, knowing what she had to do, working up her nerve. She heard her mother, below, screaming for them to jump. She couldn't see Henry lying on the ground, left where Ruth had dragged him out through the porch and down the brick front steps. It was a cloudy, moonless night, lit only by flames.

From the lip of the tin roof to the ground was an 8-foot fall, and with the speed built up from sliding down the 30-degree pitch, it would not be an easy landing. Ruth and Naomi both knew that.

Still, there was no choice. Naomi could hear her mother's voice below, instructing her.

She grabbed Hank first, forcing him through the opening, into the cold night air. She said later that she figured that if Hank went, Paul would follow. The force of a 5-year-old sliding off the roof almost knocked Ruth's breath away when she tried to catch him. She had never in her life held on to anything so hard. She rolled Hank away from her, still crying and moaning, and waited for Paul.

Ruth could see nothing above her by this time. She had to depend on Naomi to tell her what she was doing.

“Here comes Paul, Momma,” Naomi screamed, and Ruth had to position herself by sound. Paul was making so much noise that it wasn't hard to do. She caught him more easily than she had Hank, laid him gently to one side, with his brother.

By this time, Henry was on his hands and knees, trying to vomit and cough the smoke away.

Now just Naomi and Susanna were left. It had been easier to send the boys down; Susanna was whimpering quietly. Naomi would always remember that, and how the child clung to her legs. She picked her little sister up and pried her hands loose, then pushed her through the opening. Ruth could hear Naomi, through the smoke and noise, telling her to get ready for Susanna.

From the time Ruth awoke until it was all over was less than 5 minutes. All four of her children came down the roof in less than 60 seconds.

At the very moment when Naomi slid her baby sister down the tin roof, Henry righted himself and charged back into the house. Ruth was distracted for no more than a second, but when she strained to hear cloth against tin (for Susanna was now silent), she couldn't.

There were hydrangea bushes all along the front of the porch, and a more kindly universe might have deposited Susanna in one of those, the miracle baby in next day's paper, saved from death by soft green foliage, cooing for curious strangers.

From where Naomi slid her forward, the baby actually would have stood a good chance of landing either in shrubbery or Ruth's arms. Perhaps Susanna made some panicky sideways movement as she slid.

She landed on the brick steps, with a solid thunk like an ax as it first strikes a stump. Sometimes, even now, Ruth will hear an approximation of that sound and have to stop, grab hard onto something or someone nearby, and close her eyes for an instant.

Susanna's skull bore an indentation of the left side, a sharp right angle where it collided with the bricks.

Naomi, half sliding and half jumping, her nightgown smoking, suffered a dislocated shoulder and first-degree burns. There was no one to catch her. Ruth was already holding the body of her youngest, caressing her desperately, trying to wake her up.

Hank broke his arm. Henry, overcome by smoke inhalation, spent two days in the hospital, getting out just in time for Susanna's funeral.

Over the years, Ruth has played it back in her mind thousands of times. She has never, will never be able to forget that almost inaudible sound that screams to her now, the one she didn't hear in time—the sound of her baby sliding away from her.

Against all odds, the fire department from Newport, called by a neighbor, arrived in time to save the exterior of the house. Half the town's adult male population showed up, and several of those were employed to keep Henry Flood from running back into the structure again, assuring him over and over that everyone was out.