Patterns of Swallows (47 page)

Mrs.
Turnbull's face crumpled.

"I'm
so sorry. I really am," Ruth said softly, taking her
unresponsive hand. "I understand a little more now how a mother
must feel in a situation like this. I can't imagine how I'd feel to
lose Gabriel. Especially if we'd been estranged."

Edie
fished in her purse for a handkerchief.

"You
and your mother-in-law forgave her without any fuss, I suppose. And
convinced her that, of course, God would be eager to forgive her."
Ruth was astonished by the bitterness in Edie's tone.

"After
a person has been forgiven of murder, there's not really anything she
has the right not to forgive," Ruth said cryptically. She had
no idea why she'd spoken out the private thoughts she'd been thinking
about Joshua Bella, but then she had no idea what to say to Lily's
mother. Was there any understanding her?

"What
are you insinuating, Ruth? How do you imagine I'm a murderer?"
There was no mistaking the anger in the tone now.

"I
... I didn't mean you," Ruth said.

"I
suppose you mean what they teach you in that church of yours. 'We're
all responsible for the death of God's Son.' We're all guilty of
murder, you mean. That's just the sort of false guilt they like to
heap on you there. Harsh, unloving, judgmental doctrine like that is
the reason Gus and I found elsewhere to attend. 'Judge not that ye
be not judged,' after all. That's in the Bible, too, you know. Just
tell me this. Do you really mean to tell me that you've forgiven
Lily?"

"Well,
as you say, 'Judge not that ye be not judged.' I've been forgiven
for a great deal myself. And so, yes, I believe I have forgiven
her."

"Just
like that? Just like that she can be forgiven? Free and easy?
Without having to pay for anything she did?"

Ruth
considered her words carefully again before speaking them. Mrs.
Turnbull was a complete enigma to her. She seemed to believe that
God had no right to hold anything Lily had done against her, as
though it was none of His concern in the first place. Yet she also
seemed to believe that it was impossible for Ruth
not
to hold anything Lily had done against her.

After
a pause while she prayed for the right words, she said slowly,
"There's always a price involved in forgiving, Mrs. Turnbull.
But forgiveness means that the one who pays the price is the one
doing the forgiving. Not the one being forgiven. That's just how it
works. Otherwise, it's not forgiveness."

Mrs.
Turnbull crumpled again.

Ruth
could only watch her helplessly while she buried her face in her
handkerchief.

"How
can you forgive her? I don't think I can forgive her," she said
at length, muffled by the handkerchief and almost too low to hear.

"I
... what do you ... I don't understand. Why don't you think you can
forgive her?"

"For
dying!" Edie Turnbull raised her head and exposed the
unutterable weariness in her face to Ruth. "I can't forgive her
for dying. If nothing ... if they ... if she hadn't done what she
did, she'd still be alive today and at home with me and her father.
I can't forgive her for it."

Ruth
reached for her hand again.

"I'll
pray for you," she said simply and meant it.

As
they rose to leave the tea room, Edie said with a sudden rush of
tenderness, "How is the baby? I do think of him often."

Ruth
suddenly found plenty to say to Mrs. Turnbull.

"He's
very well. I mean, he has a bit of a cold at the moment, but
generally he's excellent. He's such an adorable little fellow.
Always so good-natured. Hardly even cries. He's started smiling at
everything now. And growing like a little weed. Mom says he looks
just like Graham did at that age. That may be because grandmothers
always say things like that, though. I think he looks only just like
himself," Ruth said and then was a little embarrassed to be
rambling on like any proud mother of a new baby.

"Please
come and see him. You must come and see him. Any time. You'll
always be welcome if you come to visit him. Mr. Turnbull, too."

Mrs.
Turnbull gave her a slight, sad smile. "I'd like that. Some
day, perhaps."

Apparently,
if Gabriel was to be a MacKellum, he couldn't also be a Turnbull. At
least not if Gus Turnbull had anything to say about it. But Ruth
hoped Gabriel would some day be able to know his Grandma Turnbull.
There was in her something worth knowing after all!

If
there was a steep price Ruth had paid for her share in the
forgiveness Lily had been granted, there was a great reward that came
along with it. But that, too, is the nature of forgiveness. There
is always a reward. (We may wonder how God could consider His reward
worth His cost, but the inevitable conclusion arises that He must do
so.)

Those
were sweet days for Ruth, those days of early spring in Arrowhead.

Little
Gabe was growing fatter and dearer by the day.

Ruth
could hardly tear herself away to go off to work every day. Mom
could hardly leave him to nap or amuse himself in his crib while she
did her housework. Theirs was one household which was completely
under the sway of its lord and master. And its lord and master was
only four months old.

Still,
he showed no signs of being spoiled as yet. He continued to be
good-tempered and sunny.

"One
of us will have to learn to toughen up with him when he gets old
enough to be naughty," Ruth said, smiling into his face and
shaking her hair over him for him to catch hold of in his chubby
fists.

"He'll
never be naughty, will Grandma's good boy! No, he never will.
That's my lad. That's Grandma's little man," said Grandma's
little man's grandma. And you can well imagine the tone of voice and
the expression of her face as she took him out of Ruth's arms.

"Well,
that settles that. It's up to me to toughen up, then," Ruth
said, laughing at her mother-in-law's nonsense. "I hope it's
healthy for a 'little man' to be raised by two women. Will we know
what to do with him without some male influence?" she asked,
suddenly worried.

"Hmmph!"
Mom snorted. And by the wordless expression, she may have been
indicating her doubt that the little man
would
grow
up without some male influence. Ruth had not entirely managed to
keep up appearances of being wholly indifferent to Bo. At least not
to the point where she could deceive her sharp-eyed mother-in-law.

In
fact, Bo was Ruth's one taste of bitter in those sweet days of
spring.

She
had not entirely managed to convince herself that she was wholly
indifferent, either. But, as women will, she was busily occupied in
convincing herself that Bo was now wholly indifferent.

For
two people who worked together, they saw each other seldom on the
job, and Ruth could only believe it was because Bo arranged things so
that they saw each other seldom. That may indeed have been the case,
but if it was, I can't make myself believe that it spoke of Bo's
complete indifference.

To
be fair to Bo, his work managing the Hoffstetter orchards kept him
out-of-doors most of the day, supervising the tail end of the winter
pruning of the apple trees. But Ruth, in an unusually sensitive
state, put the fact of Bo's lack of presence in the packing shed down
to her presence in it.

*
* *

The
day was a fine one in mid-April, and Ruth felt like some fresh air.

"C'mon,
Gabe. You and I are going for a walk," she told him, bundling
him up. The air was warm in the sunshine, but it would be cool in
the shade, and they were going to a shady spot.

It
was a spot Ruth hadn't visited since the day of Graham's burial. For
some inexplicable reason, maybe a touch of not-unpleasant
melancholia, she wanted to take Gabe there today.

"Mom,
I need some air. I'm going to take Gabe out for a little. Would you
like to come along?"

"I'll
stay and get supper ready. You go ahead. Supper will be ready in an
hour or so."

"We'll
be back by then. It'll be Gabe's supper time by then, too, so we'll
have to be back."

"Enjoy
yourself." Mom smiled at the sight of her daughter-in-law,
bright in her blue spring jacket with a red, plaid blouse peeking
out, holding the baby on her hip with one hand and pulling his buggy
with the other. Ruth had new life and colour these days. Motherhood
suited her wonderfully.

Ruth
loaded the buggy and the baby in the car and drove to the cemetery.
She parked at the entrance and pushed Gabe in his buggy up the paved
path to the top near the stand of tall pines.

It
was a goodish climb. The rural cemetery was set on one of
Arrowhead's many small hills.

This
was no city cemetery with neatly laid-out, modern plots and no
foliage to speak of other than trim grass and flowers of remembrance.
It was an old cemetery and had a certain natural wildness about it,
left to its own devices for the most part.

The
peace of the place and its air of solemnity crept into Ruth's soul,
suiting her mood perfectly. She wasn't sad exactly. In fact, she
was very nearly happy. Contented. But in a quiet, wistful way.

She'd
come for a specific reason, she realized, as she sat on the ground
under the pines, holding Gabriel on her knee so that he was facing
two headstones.

"Eli
('Guy') Haskell MacKellum. Loving husband and father. 'The LORD
redeemeth the soul of his servants: and none of them that trust in
him shall be desolate.' Psalm 34:22," one proclaimed.

The
other said simply, "Graham Haskell MacKellum" and his
dates.

We
should have had a verse put on it
,
Ruth thought, but now as then – as at the time of the choosing
of the epitaph – nothing suitable came to mind. Till the stone
eroded into illegibility, it would record nothing of the man other
than the bare facts of his name and the dates of his brief history.
Nothing of his hopes, his dreams, his occasional, treasured moments
of extraordinary thoughtfulness and tenderness, his teasing, boyish
grin, his very humanness.

"Your
father, Little One. I wish there was more for you to know him by. I
wish you could have known him and grown to love him. I wish ... I
don't know what I wish. I wish I'll have the right words to tell you
all about him someday. That might be tricky though. I guess I wish
you'll end up a better man than your father was. But he was only a
man. Just a man. And faults and all, I loved him."

She
recognized that the past tense meant more to her than just a
convention of speech. She realized that the task she'd come here to
perform was the task of finally saying good-bye.

Turning
Gabe to her, she buried her face in his little shirt front as he
tugged on her hair and tried to get masses of it into his mouth.

Then
a sound from below her in the graveyard caught her attention. It was
the sound of the slow swinging of the cast iron gate at the entrance.

In
another moment, she had identified the person coming through the gate
as Bo.

She
shrunk back under the pines, hoping he wouldn't see her at the top of
the hill. But of course he'd know she was there. Her car was right
by the entrance.

She
waited until he spotted her and came toward her before making any
noise or movement.

"Hello,
Gabe. Hello, Ruth," he said. He had a pair of pruning shears
in his hand.

"Hello,"
she said. The mood of the place was still upon her, and she felt
disinclined for speech.

"No
better place to come to in all of Arrowhead to do a bit of thinking,
is there? No more peaceful spot. I come now and again for a bit of
peace and quiet and to trim back the mock orange bushes from around
Dad's grave. They grow wild at that spot, and they like to take
over. Beautiful, though, when they bloom. Nothing has a fragrance
like a mock orange."