Mr. Splitfoot (20 page)

Ruth has presents for each of the three men, god’s eyes she made from a couple of sticks and some yarn, a craft learned at the home. Nat and Ceph remember, but to Mr. Bell they are new. He calls his “a thing of beauty” and hangs it from his suit coat’s button.

Ruth and Mr. Bell do dishes. Ceph continues to watch from his seat. He keeps his sunglasses on, but she’s sure he’s staring at Mr. Bell. Ceph looks awful. He barely says a word except when Mr. Bell steps into the other room to collect more dirty glasses. “I got myself a Christmas present,” he tells Ruth.

“That’s a good idea. What’d you get?”

“A thirty-two.”

“Thirty-two what?”

“Caliber.”

“A gun?”

He nods yes.

She turns back to the sink, scrubbing. “Sounds like a bad idea,” she finally says. “A really sad, bad idea. Did you really or are you just trying to frighten me? On Christmas?”

“What do you think?”

Ruth dries her hands on her thighs. “I think there must be some law that says it’s illegal to sell you a gun.”

“You’d think so, right?”

“Yes.”

“There is.”

“Good. I don’t want you to die, Ceph.”

He looks down at her kitchen floor. “You don’t want me to die, but you don’t want me around either.” She cannot argue with that.

They sing “Hark! The Herald Angels” and “Deck the Halls.” Ruth pretends Christmas, forces good feelings. They sing “O Holy Night.” Ceph doesn’t really sing, but he listens without being nasty. Ruth takes a turn sitting on his knee and then Nat’s and then, because the night is just so friendly, Mr. Bell’s.

A week later Mr. Bell says, “Some people called me. They want a session tonight.”

It’s New Year’s Eve. “Don’t you have plans?” she asks Mr. Bell.

“No. No plans.”

Nat sits on the windowsill in another guest bedroom where they’ve been sequestered. He wears royal blue. Mr. Bell always chooses jewel tones. “Ruth.” He presents a beet-colored gown. “For you.” She turns her back to the men and undresses, aware of the muscles in her shoulders. She asks for a zip. Mr. Bell beats Nat to her zipper. She shows them the outfit.

“I knew that would bring out your scar. Gorgeous,” Mr. Bell says. No one—excepting cruel children—ever speaks of her scar. She raises her hand to her nose.

“When I tell you something’s beautiful, don’t cover it.”

She lowers her hand.

Ruth decides she needs a glass of milk before she goes on. Mr. Bell is talking with the hostess, laughing. Mr. Bell with this woman. Mr. Bell with that woman. Why would Ruth care? They are in a private house. They’ve been invited here by wealthy people. “I need a glass of milk.” The hostess is sent for and moments later returns with the milk. Ruth sips. “Is this skim?”

“That’s all we have.”

Ruth holds the glass out for the wife to take back. Nat does not flinch. They face each other, locked as some muscled viper winds its way between their mouths. The movement sours Ruth’s stomach. “I need a glass of real milk.”

“Many apologies,” Mr. Bell offers. “I’ll dart out to the store.” He looks at Ruth like he’s proud of her.

“No,” the hostess says, sucking what she can from Ruth, absorbing an idea of power. “Don’t be silly. I can send my husband.”

The husband makes it to the store and back in twenty-five minutes. The wife pours a tall glass of whole milk and knocks on the bedroom door, her own bedroom door. Ruth drinks it down, missing the goats again.

As they enter the living room, the guests go quiet. Ruth squeezes deep into Nat’s grip. She listens. On a large brown couch with simple beige pillows, an anxious bearded man with thick glasses wears a navy collar shirt. He’s pale and chubby, plays too many video games. He’s not here for nostalgia. He’s here because someone died and didn’t tell him which bank account the money’s in. His wife sits beside him. She seems kind, has brown eyes that twinkle. Ruth thinks: Good cook, keeps secrets from her husband like that she’s looking for a message from a boy she once knew who died young. Beside her is a young woman in a wool skirt and wool tights, twenty-five maybe. She went to college and doesn’t believe any of this but misses her dead father regardless. And next to her is the Mother. “Ruth.” The Mother smiles. Her teeth are melted gray bits. The Mother is a black hole in the living room, fully empty of care or compassion or qualities a real mother might have.

“Silence, please.” Mr. Bell sways on his feet in the doorway like a Secret Service agent. He has no idea who the Mother is.

Any clarity or confidence Ruth felt is gone, sucked into the Mother. The people are waiting, eyebrows lifted in anticipation. Nat shrugs, So what. She’s nothing to us anymore but a paying customer. Get started.

Ruth shuts her eyes. She changes her breath, and the people gathered know things have begun. She exhales forcibly three times before making her call. “Spirit?” she asks. “Spirit, are you here? Join with us tonight.” Her body arches as if electrocuted or possessed. “There’s an older gentleman here with me. Yes. I’m getting chills. Look. Yes. He’s here. The first thing he wants to say is that in life he would never be here. He’s not a believer.”

The young college woman smiles before she cries.

“You lost your father?” Ruth asks. It’s that easy. Why else would a college girl be here?

She nods and tears are falling steadily now. The kind wife rushes a tissue to her friend. Mr. Bell is right. People who don’t believe in the dead are still affected by them.

“Well, he’s here with us tonight. He’s always with you. Is there something you’d like to say to him?”

She’s racked with sobs. It’s hard for her to speak. The Mother puts her hand on her shoulder. “I wish he knew so many things. He’s missed so much.”

“He’s not missing it. He sees.” Ruth listens a moment. “And he wants you to know he forgives you and he loves you.”

The woman stops crying and looks at Ruth. “Forgives me?”

“Yes?” The question mark is a mistake. “Is there anything else you want to say to him?”

The college girl is no longer crying but has hardened. “No, thank you.” Ruth went too far.

Nat times his entrance perfectly. “I’m speaking with a girl named Patricia.”

The Mother’s head cocks to the side, but the sign is not sure. Who is she here looking for?

Ruth reminds the guests. “Consider your dead. This could be an ancestor. Great-great-grandparent. You might not recognize your dead.”

Nat turns to look directly at the Mother. He speaks to her. “Patricia had long hair, braided. She wore emerald rings. Arthritis, maybe. She watches out for you and is taking care of you. Loving you and following your life. She says not to worry about that itchy rash?”

The Mother nods.

Nat bows his head.

Ruth says, “There’s a woman standing near me. She says her name is Willie?”

“Yes.” The hostess is astonished but really it had been easy for Ruth to look on the back of a black-and-white photo displayed on the bedroom vanity, a child in a christening gown.
Wilhelmina, 1938.
Once she has the name, anything’s possible. Ruth’s mind opens. “She’s saying she wants you to feed the birds.”

“The birds?”

“Yeah. Like outside. A feeder, you know?”

“Sure.” The wife nods. “I’ll do it.”

“She says she loves you and she misses you.”

The wife begins to sob.

“Is there anything you’d like to ask Wilhelmina? Or tell her? She’s here.”

The hostess bites her lip. “Tell her we’ve had a child. We named the child after her.”

Ruth looks down. She smiles without meaning it. “She already knows.” And then, because she’s feeling sheepish about the trouble with the milk, Ruth conjures a kitty cat dead since the ’90s. “Meow?” Ruth asks in her trance state.

“Sheba?” a guest asks. “Is that you?”

“Meow! Meow!”

Ruth tries to escape down the hallway when it is over, but the Mother stops her. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“How’ve you been?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I sell Mary Kay with the woman who lives here. She invited me.”

“Oh.”

“Ruth,” she says, and grabs Ruth’s hands, choking on a gurgle rising from her chest. “Please.” Some sort of flood.

“What?” Ruth directs her into a bathroom that smells of damp towels. Maybe the Mother wants to apologize for not taking care of them.

The Mother calms her voice. She breathes in and out through her nose like an actress. “I need you to talk to him for me.”

“Arthur?”

“No.”

“Nat?”

“No. My son.”

“You have a son?”

“Or daughter. I don’t know.” The Mother studies the tiling. Ruth sits on the rim of an enormous tub. The Mother kneels knee bones to tile. She lifts her hands to Ruth’s thighs, like she’s a beggar. “Please.”

“How come you never told anyone you have a kid?”

The Mother claws Ruth’s skin through the purple gown. “I had a miscarriage.” The Mother grips. “That’s why I need you to help me. No one’s helping me.” The Mother’s thick foundation makes her look like a zombie. There are tear streaks through the face pancake, riverbeds revealing red skin below.

“There’s nothing I can do.” Ruth’s dry, getting drier.

The Mother drops a cheek to Ruth’s legs. She squeezes, claws. Her mouth is wide open with no sounds coming out. Ruth sees her scalp. The brown and silver, wires on a bomb. Ruth imagines a story she could tell, about how the child was reincarnated into a pony on a farm where they help war veterans. But she doesn’t do it. The Mother doesn’t deserve it. Ruth keeps her mouth closed. All these parents who want their children. A freaking miscarriage. Who cares? She didn’t even know the kid. The Mother smells of oil. With her hands on either side of the Mother’s face, Ruth prepares to toss her skull off her lap like a head of turned lettuce. “It’s fake,” Ruth says finally. “I make it up.”

The Mother holds still in Ruth’s lap for one moment.

“It’s a lie,” Ruth says again. “I’ll give you your money back.”

The Mother’s face peels into disgust. “You make it up?”

“The dead are dead are dead. They don’t talk to me.”

“You’re a liar?” The Mother sharpens.

“Yes.”

The Mother wipes eyeliner expertly, using the edge of one finger as swab. “That’s got nothing to do with my child. You’re a cheat. That doesn’t mean there’s not a world greater than this. Just means you’ll never see that world. You’re not the gatekeeper, Ruth. You’re not even invited.”

Ruth nods. “I know.”

The Mother has a miserly thin mouth. She picks dried spit from her lip like a boll of cotton. “Good luck. You’ve got nothing else.” She arranges her clothing in the vanity’s mirror, looking extraordinarily human, plain, and broken. The Mother sleepwalks from the room. Her grease and grief linger.

Ruth spends a few minutes counting the tiles in front of her eyes, each one lined up next to its neighbor, each identical. A freaking miscarriage. Why did Ruth’s mother never look for her? Where did her sister go?

She swings her shod feet into the tub. Ruth closes the bath’s drain and turns the hot water tap on high. Beside the tub there’s a cylinder of Comet bleach scrub. Ruth shakes a generous quantity of the bluish powder into the water.

It’s time to find her sister El, to find their mother. Ruth needs to get out of here too. She climbs into the tub, into the Comet, as if it is her space pod. She rings in the new year, making herself clean and ready for a new life. The water scalds and purple dye leaks from her dress, brightly colored as any suicide.

H
IGHWAYS ARE BAD PLACES TO HIDE,
but I didn’t know we were hiding until Ruth started running. “Who is he?” Like a kind of torture, I keep asking her the same question. Ruth readjusts her headphones. I would think a person who doesn’t know what’s she’s running from can’t really be on the run, but that’s not true. Here I am.

A cop car coasts to a stop a few feet behind us. We keep walking. They turn on their lights so we stop. They sit in their car. We wait for them to get out, but the cops don’t get out, so I tell Ruth, “Fuck it. Let’s keep walking.” Then they hit us with the siren, which, that close, is a bolt of electricity from below, spine-clearing. It exits through my brain. They use their bullhorn. “Hold your position.”

When I worked in an office, it was the same thing, people using phrases that made no sense. “Action item,” they’d say, because our job was so dull we used mysterious phrases to make it seem more exciting, as if we were spies dealing with top-secret, pass-coded information. Only there was no way to break the code because none of the phrases meant anything: Bring it to the table. Deliverables. Go live. Leverage. With that said. Moving forward. Offline. Branded brain dump.

“What’d they say?” I ask Ruth. We lean against the guardrail and wait.

The cops finally climb out of their patrol car.

“Your car break down?” he asks me, as if Ruth’s become invisible. That’s fucked up but that’s what happens to women. We grow up into ghosts. No one wants to screw Ruth anymore so she’s invisible.

“Yeah. Her car.”

“Whose?”

“My aunt Ruth’s.”