The Boy in the Burning House (12 page)

“Yeah, well, then I don't need to tell you.” Her face was wan, exhausted.

“Here.” He led her over to the rocker where he stood like a chauffeur who had just opened the door to a limo. “The best seat in the house.”

She didn't argue.

“Pee-ew!” he said, as she sat down.

“Shut up!” She pulled off her shoes and curled up in the chair. “So I've been living in a barn for a week. What do you expect?”

“It isn't the barn,” said Jim. “It's the perfume trying to cover the barn.”

She growled at him. “My daddy — my
real
daddy — gave me rose water for my seventh birthday. I've worn it ever since. Every single day.”

A car drove by on the line and Ruth Rose jumped like a startled hare.

“It's all right,” he said, checking the front window.

“When's your mother coming back?” Ruth Rose settled back in her chair, but with her filthy feet firmly on the ground.

“Her note says around five, but she won't mind. You can stay here if you want.”

Ruth Rose's eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you can stay here. Your mom even gave me some stuff of yours.”

Ruth Rose was on her feet again and heading for the door.

“Wait!”

She didn't listen. She was on the porch and heading down the steps before she realized she had forgotten her shoes. She marched back into the kitchen and started trying to squeeze her foot into one of them. Muck poured out onto the rug.

“What's wrong with you?” demanded Jim. “We're not going to tell anyone you're here. Is that what you're worried about?”

She looked up. He could see she wanted to believe him.

“We were there — at church — when you did your thing. I think it was the bravest thing I ever saw in my life.” She stopped putting on her shoe and looked at him. He had to make her believe in him.

“I've found out some stuff,” he said. He expected her to ask what — he was dying to tell her. Then he realized she was shaking like a leaf.

He jumped up again. “Stay right here!” He ran out of the room into the front parlour, turned and came back. “I'm not phoning anyone or anything. There's only one phone and it's right over there.” He pointed to the table. “Don't go anywhere.”

Through the parlour, up the stairs, into the bathroom. He put the stopper in the tub and started running hot water. He read the instructions on some bath soap of his mother's and carefully measured a capful of the stuff into the gushing, steaming stream. The room immediately smelled of evening primrose. Perfect.

He raced around a bit more, getting towels and the bag Nancy Fisher had given him, all of which he left in
the bathroom, and then he raced down to the kitchen, afraid all the time that she would be gone. But she was still there. Snoot had found her and was holding onto her.

“I ran you a really hot bath. If you still think I'm going to rat on you, you can take the phone in the tub.”

Jim realized he had been shouting. Not angrily — he hoped it didn't sound angry. He was shouting from joy or tension or some other crazy thing. Shouting to use up some of the energy he had been storing while he waited for her to show up, half afraid she had disappeared forever. People did that.

She didn't take the phone. Jim made a salad as his mother had asked him to in her note. He cleaned up the mess Ruth Rose had left on the floor and then he set the table for three. He hadn't done that for a long time.

She came down just before five, her hair all stringy but clean and hay-free. She had dabbed on some of her rose water and it was sweet, no longer having to fight with the smell of cow manure. She was wearing a shapeless pair of worn brown cords that belonged to his mother and a turtleneck of her own. She had cinched the pants up tight around her skinny waist.

She went straight to the window to see if anyone was coming. Then she looked around as if she were disoriented, until Jim realized she was searching for her sneakers. He led her to the sink. Her sneakers were submerged in filthy water. He pulled them out and rubbed away the caked-on muck. Then, while she watched, he stuffed them full of newspaper and put them on a baking tray beside the woodstove.

“It's not a trap,” he said. “Honest.”

She smiled dully and sat down on the rocking chair, still without saying a word.

“There's stew,” he said. The aroma filled the old kitchen. She looked at the crockpot, then looked at the table set for three.

“I can wait,” she said, and her voice was like a little girl's voice, as if it had shrunk in the bath.

Jim looked at the clock, looked out the window expectantly. “We'll talk later when my mother's gone to work.”

He looked hard at her. She nodded, slack-jawed. There was a kind of dreamy look on her face. At first he had thought it was just because she had washed away her heavy eye make-up, but suddenly he realized what it really was.

“Did you take one of your pills?”

Her head bobbed up and down. She held up her fingers in a peace sign.

“Two?”

She nodded again and grinned. It reminded Jim of Gladys. It made him mad, for some reason, as if it wasn't the real Ruth Rose. And it sure wasn't the same Ruth Rose who had stormed the Church of the Blessed Transfiguration. That was the comrade he was looking for.

“Listen,” he said. “Don't tell my mother your theories about Father being a murderer. I don't think she's ready for that. But don't lie, either, if you can help it. Don't freak out, okay?”

“Why do you think I took my good-girl medicine?” said Ruth Rose.

Jim started to slice up the bread for supper. He wasn't doing such a good job of it. The pieces started out too thick and ended up way too thin.

Ruth Rose started to giggle,

“Shut up,” he said, which only made her giggle more. Then he started laughing, too.

And that was how Iris Hawkins found them both. Laughing their heads off amidst the ruins of a freshly baked loaf of bread.

It had not occurred to Jim that there would be any question of Ruth Rose being sent away. Without ever having discussed the issue with his mother, Jim had somehow expected her to welcome Ruth Rose if she showed up at the farm. Father Fisher might have talked to Iris Hawkins, but she wasn't the kind of person who acted impulsively or assumed things without hearing the whole story.

That's what Jim thought. So when his mother's look of shock passed, only to be replaced by wary politeness, he was taken aback.

Watching Ruth Rose shake his mother's hand politely, he realized that taking her pills had been exactly the right thing for her to do. As opposed to pulling a knife or screaming obscenities, for instance.

Jim and Iris had not discussed the outburst at the church two Sundays earlier, but he had seen something in her eyes that had led him to believe she might be hearing the same things he was hearing, seeing the same things, wondering the same dark thoughts. When Father resumed the pulpit, she had watched him like a cat watching a bird in a tree. That, at least, was what Jim wanted to believe.

As they sat down to dinner together, Jim felt a little flame of confidence ignite inside him. Things are going
to be all right, he told himself. He trusted his mother. He could see her warming to Ruth Rose. And amplifying his faith as sure as blowing on a fire were the words she said directly after grace. “Thank God, girl, you're safe.”

They managed to get through dinner talking about bovine mastitis and how the broody hen was now sitting on more than a dozen eggs and looking pretty uncomfortable. Jim even answered his mother at length when she asked him how school had gone that day, though he avoided pulling out the canary yellow notice about the Father Plan.

But, finally, Iris Hawkins folded her strong, work-worn hands under her chin, looked squarely at Ruth Rose and said, “What are your plans?”

Jim jumped in. “She can stay here, can't she?”

Iris ignored the interruption. She gazed steadily at their guest.

Ruth Rose glanced nervously at Jim, then down at the table and the plate she had polished clean.

“I can't go back to them,” she said.

“Not even to Nancy?”

Ruth Rose shrugged, “Mom's okay, but she's cracking up.”

Iris didn't say anything. She reached out and gently lifted Ruth Rose's chin so that the girl could see her smile. Ruth Rose seemed to take some courage from that, managing a little experimental smile herself.

Jim cleared the table. The kitchen was filled with the clicking of the stove and the dripping outside. The rain had stopped.

“We don't need to reach any decisions right this minute,” said Iris. “Except, I'm going to have to let your mom know you're safe.”

“No,” snapped Ruth Rose. Then she looked glum. “You let her know and he'll be over like a shot.”

Iris frowned. “Well, here's the deal. I tell Nancy. If Nancy wants to tell Father, that's her business.”

Ruth Rose looked dubious. “You think she can keep anything from him?”

Iris bent forward to look into Ruth Rose's face, hidden behind her hair.

“How about this,” she said gently. “I phone your mom when he's not there. That way, at least, she's got some time to think it over.”

Ruth Rose looked up. She didn't look convinced. Iris looked at her watch; it was just after six.

“Tonight is Bible study night. Starts at seven,” Iris said. “Your father won't be back home until nine or so. I'm willing to tell Nancy you're welcome to stay here for a bit, that you need some time to cool out, or whatever. What she does with the information is up to her, but at least she will have some time to think about it in peace. Does that seem fair?”

Ruth Rose's drugged-up eyes looked sad, as if maybe she found it hard to imagine her mother in any kind of peace. She shrugged, sighed.

“We can try it,” she said. “But she'll tell him. And then I'm toast.”

“Are you afraid they'll institutionalize you again?”

Jim didn't know his mother knew about that and couldn't believe she would bring it up. Ruth Rose looked offended.

“Is that what he tells people? It's so not true.” Her head flopped back and she shook her unkempt hair. “That isn't what happened. I don't expect you to believe me,” she said. “Nobody ever does.”

“Try me.”

Ruth Rose took a deep breath.

“When you get sent away to the funny farm it's because a doctor recommended it. Right? Usually more than one doctor. Well, no doctor saw me before I got shipped off. It was after I got arrested.” She glanced at Jim.

“She broke into the church,” he said. “Father had her arrested.”

Iris nodded. “Go on.”

“I was sent to what's called an RTC, which you've never heard of, I bet. Well, just look it up under “teen help” on the Net. It means Residential Treatment Centre. Safe Haven, this place was called. It was up near Arnprior and it was pretty much a jail, if you want to know. A jail for loud-mouthed brats. I wasn't charged with anything. No authorities — no doctor, no cops, nobody.” She looked sulky. “The Safe Haven people came in the middle of the night for me. Right into my own home. I'm not kidding. Ask my mom.”

She paused as if maybe Iris was going to phone right then. But they kept listening. Jim had been filling the sink with washing-up water. He turned off the tap.

“I wake up and there are three complete strangers standing in my bedroom. I don't know them and they're standing over me — a female nurse and two beefy guys in uniform. One's got a tattoo, like he's maybe an ex-biker or something. It's like a nightmare, but it's real. They get me up and pack my bags. I've never been so scared in my life. They give me a sedative — an injection, like in some movie. And there's my mother at the doorway sitting in her wheelchair in her nightie bawling her eyes out and Father praying on his knees. Then, poof! I'm outa there and outa their lives.”

She stopped. She seemed to be struggling to tell them, struggling against the Diazepam gauze around every nerve bundle, struggling against the memory of being snatched. She glared at them, daring them to disbelieve her. What she saw seemed to give her enough confidence to go on.

“I was at Safe Haven for a month. It costs a fortune — I don't know where Father got the money. They treat you like dirt, intimidate you, humiliate you and it costs your parents hundreds of dollars a day. Cool, eh? And you can't get away. Not until you break.”

Ruth Rose looked thoughtful for a moment. “So I broke,” she said. Then she grinned suddenly. “There was me in little pieces all over the floor. Oh, I'm such a bad girl, ‘and Oh, sir,' this and Oh, ma'am, ‘that… and'What chore should I do now… ‘At Safe Haven, they like it when you break. Except I kept all the pieces. And as soon as I got home, I put them back together again.”

At 7:01, Ruth Rose made the call. Jim could hear her mother crying with relief.

Then Iris Hawkins took over. “Nancy, I really don't want to interfere,” she said. “But maybe it would be a break for all of you if she stays here a while. She can help me with the chores — heaven knows we could use the help. That ought to keep her out of mischief.” She glanced at Ruth Rose, winking.

Iris didn't need to do too much convincing. She did more listening than anything else and her expression changed as the conversation continued. She became grave. “Yes,” she said. “I see…oh, my…”

Jim and Ruth Rose exchanged curious glances.

“But, why, Nancy?” Iris asked. “Why can't you tell me now?”

Nancy's voice grew louder, more agitated. Ruth Rose wanted the phone but Iris held her off. “Yes, I understand…I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…yes…yes, of course…” And then there was a long pause before she said, as gently as she could, “But, Nancy, in a way it is my business…I mean, if Ruth Rose is going to stay here.” The voice at the other end of the line quieted again.