Patterns of Swallows (20 page)

Ruth said nothing more on the
subject. Not then.

Graham did eventually find work
though the job he accepted involved swallowing a mighty lump of pride
in the accepting. The Co-op needed someone to stock the shelves.

In addition to the
pride-swallowing, it meant working nights. For many reasons, it
wasn't quite what Graham had envisioned for himself.

"It's temporary until
something better comes along, and it won't be long till something
does. It's a slow time of year right now. It'll pick up and
people'll start hiring again once summer hits," Graham assured
Ruth and himself.

But summer came along, and
things didn't pick up. At the beginning of June, in anticipation of
"things picking up," Graham quit the shelf-stocking job
which he thoroughly despised as demeaning and mindless (besides being
low-paying). But early July found him still jobless.

"Graham, don't be so
stubborn. Why can't I go back to work? Just for a little while
until you find something else?" Ruth pleaded.

But if there was any alternative
at all, Graham had no intention of letting Ruth go back to work. And
certainly not while he was out of work. Maybe if her income was only
supplementing his, it would have been bearable. But it was
unthinkable for him to live off of his wife.

By
mid-July when "things" still hadn't "picked up,"
Graham swallowed the small remainder of pride left in his possession
(or so he thought) and took a job sweeping the floors of the press
room and, after-hours, cleaning the offices of the
Arrowhead
Reflections,
Arrowhead's weekly paper.

The pay was not enough for the
small family of three to live on, so he swallowed the rest of his
pride (there was more left than he'd imagined) and told Ruth, it
didn't matter to him; she could do what she wanted. If she wanted to
go back to work at the cafe, what difference did it make? No one
would be surprised that a janitor's wife worked as a waitress. That
was just how their life was going to be from now on, he supposed, and
he'd better get used to it.

*
* *

Living with her mother-in-law
was not quite the smooth ride Ruth had assured her husband it would
be. Misunderstandings occurred regularly, and tempers flared or
sensitive feelings smarted occasionally. (The temper was Ruth's and
the sensitive feelings her mother-in-law's.)

The stickiest problem was a
small one but, like many other small things, assumed an importance
far beyond its diminutive dimensions. The use of the kitchen and the
distribution of the duties in the kitchen were touchy situations that
Ruth didn't gain the wisdom for solving until several months had gone
by.

At the start, Ruth prepared all
the meals while Mrs. MacKellum miserably avoided the kitchen. They
divided the other household chores amicably enough between them, each
holding her own domain of absolute sway. Ruth never fussed about how
the flower beds were kept or insisted on keeping them, and her
mother-in-law never hankered after growing vegetables or interfered
in Ruth's methods of growing them. But Mrs. MacKellum knew better
than to venture into the kitchen with Ruth there; not because Ruth
wanted the kitchen to herself but because her mother-in-law knew she
would be unable to manage silence when she saw Ruth doing things
"wrong" in the kitchen or keep her hands from rearranging
things to her liking and she feared another scene such as the one
that had caused the tension early on in the marriage. Yet she pined
for a kitchen.

On Ruth's part, she understood
the impulse that kept her mother-in-law out of her kitchen and
thought it was wise. She knew she would be unable to manage silence
if she was "bossed" in her own kitchen or found things
rearranged not to her liking. Plainly, the lot of cooking the meals
had to fall wholly to one woman or the other. Some tasks could not
be shared peaceably.

Yet neither woman was happy with
the arrangement. It wasn't that Ruth minded being responsible for
all the meal preparations. What she did mind was knowing her
mother-in-law was unhappy without a kitchen.

For some unknown reason, the
situation couldn't be discussed openly. It was only ever understood
mutually through the sixth sense women share, and it was understood
mutually that neither had a solution.

When Ruth started back to work
part-time at the Morning Glory, Mrs. MacKellum gradually began taking
over the cooking of all the meals. Ruth's shifts often didn't allow
her to be at home to cook meals when they needed to be cooked, so her
mother-in-law quite naturally took it over.

She was a great deal happier; it
was visible. But Ruth wasn't. It went against her grain. She felt
as though she was taking advantage and not doing her part. There had
to be a better solution than this all-or-nothing kind of
kitchen-sharing.

During peach season, Graham said
to Ruth one day, "You know what I miss? Canned peaches. I've
never had canned peaches since we've been married."

"No, I suppose not,"
Ruth said without much feeling on the subject. She'd never really
liked canned peaches.

"You know how to can
peaches, don't you?" Graham persisted.

"I guess so. In theory. I
remember Mother canning them. I've just never bothered. I'm not
wild about them."

"You should get my mom to
show you. She makes the best peaches. She always used to enter hers
at the fall fair, y'know. I guess she probably won't this year,
though."

Graham's comments put an idea
into Ruth's head. It might be a first step toward breaking down the
barriers that divided the women – either from the other woman
or from the kitchen. As long as she could keep her temper under
control and learn to take orders for once.

*
* *

Mrs. MacKellum's peaches took
first place at the fall fair that year. In a way, it was Ruth's
doing.

Mrs. MacKellum had responded
graciously if not eagerly when Ruth asked her for a peach-canning
lesson.

After picking a box of peaches
from a local orchard, Ruth and her mother-in-law set aside an
afternoon for peach canning.

Mrs. MacKellum arranged the
first batch of fuzzy, rose-and-golden beauties in the kitchen sink.

"First, you pour boiling
water over the peaches," she instructed Ruth.

"What's that for?"
Ruth wanted to know. Ruth always wanted to know the reasons behind
things.

"Oh, well, it loosens the
skins, I suppose. It makes them easier to come off."

Before Ruth could remind herself
that she was there to learn and take orders, she wrinkled her
forehead.

"I've never heard of that
before. I don't remember Mother doing it. Does it really work?"

Mrs. MacKellum opened her mouth
to say, "Sure, it does," but she took a moment too long to
get the words out, and the basic honesty of her nature kicked in.

"No," she admitted,
her shoulders slumping in defeat.

They laughed.

It built slowly from a shared
smile, but then they laughed together till they howled and tears
flowed and their sides hurt.

"I always did it because my
mother always did it, and she probably always did it because her
mother always did it, and so on. Who knows where it started?"
The words could hardly be forced out between gasps for air.

"Aren't we foolish
creatures, we humans?" she asked when the fit had subsided and
they were wiping their eyes.

"We are that," Ruth
agreed.

It was the first time Mrs.
MacKellum had canned peaches without using the boiling water trick.
The slight browning effect the boiling water always had on her
peaches was missing, and her peaches took first prize.

*
* *

Shortly after Mrs. MacKellum had
moved into Ruth and Graham's home, she had said to Ruth, "If I'm
going to be living here with you, you can't keep calling me 'Mrs.
MacKellum.' Do you think you could handle 'Mom'?"

Ruth had smiled and said she
thought she could handle it just fine. But good intentions
notwithstanding, she could handle it only gingerly and only after
putting thought into it. She found herself continuously calling her
mother-in-law, "Mrs ... I mean, Mom."

After "the peach day,"
as they began referring to it, Ruth was never tempted to call her
mother-in-law anything but 'Mom.' The word flowed easily, like honey
on her tongue, requiring no effort of thought at all.

The kitchen situation solved
itself on that day, as well. From then on, when it was convenient,
the women prepared meals together comfortably. "Mom"
couldn't entirely keep herself from "bossing" Ruth
occasionally, but when Ruth would say with her straight face and dry
tone, "Is that like the boiling water for the peaches?"
they couldn't help but smile at each other and laugh a little, and
neither one was the worse for wear. I must say this for Mrs.
MacKellum. She never minded a little teasing. In fact, a little
gentle and kindly teasing was one sure way to her heart.

When Ruth came home from work,
Graham was sitting at the kitchen table, working figures on a piece
of paper.

"Aren't you supposed to be
at work?" she asked him.

"Nope!" he said,
looking triumphant.

"Oh!" Ruth said,
surprised but knowing Graham would tell her eventually when he was
good and ready why it was he wasn't supposed to be at work.

"Where's Mom?" she
asked.

"She walked to the Co-op to
buy something for supper. We have the house to ourselves. Doesn't
happen often anymore, does it?"

He pulled her onto his lap when
she came near enough to see what he was writing on the piece of paper
which he flipped over onto its blank side.

"Hey! Where's a kiss for
your old man?" he said, not waiting for her to give him the
answer to his question but roughly kissing her first.

"Graham!" She pulled
away slightly from the hands holding her head. "Have you been
drinking?"

"Does it mean I've been
drinking just because I want to kiss my wife when I haven't seen her
all day?" he evaded.

"Of course not," she
said. "You just ... seem like you have."

"Just to celebrate,"
he said.

In their first year and a half
of marriage, Graham's drinking had dwindled away almost to nothing.
In the six months after his dad's death, it had picked up speed to
arrive at frequent.

And furtive. He did his best to
hide his indulgence, if not from his wife, from his disapproving
mother. He never usually drank enough to make it obvious that he'd
been partaking. Just enough to take the edge off of harsh reality.
Ruth had never approached the subject with him before. But then he'd
never been so close to drunk before. At least not in her presence.

"What are you celebrating?"
she asked with a sense of foreboding.

"I'm celebrating the fact
that as of today, I am no longer a janitor." He spat the last
word out like an expletive.

"You quit?"

"I went in today and told
them what they could do with that job they thought they were being so
kind and charitable to give me. With charity like that, who needs
enemies?"

"Oh Graham! What if you
can't find anything else? Why didn't you find something else first
and then quit?"

"Wouldjou stop worrying,
woman! I already have something else in the works."

"What's that?" she
asked cautiously. Graham's assurances had done nothing to abate her
sense of foreboding.

"I'll tell you about it
when our plans are a little farther along. Can't tell 'em yet. Too
soon."

"Who's 'we'?"

"What?"

"You said, 'Our plans.'
Wha'd'you mean? Whose plans?"

"Oh, just me 'n' Bernie
Jansen. He's cooking up something for the two of us."

"Bernie Jansen! You're not
palling around with him again, are you?"

"Why shouldn't I be?"
Graham asked, flaring. "He's been a better pal to me through
... everything than any of my other old friends. Most of my old
friends won't have anything to do with me now."

"But he's no good for you.
You know he's not."

"When I want my wife to
dictate my life for me, I'll ask," Graham growled, slapping a
hand on the table and rising from his chair, nearly landing Ruth onto
the floor. "Till then, I'll make my own decisions. And that
includes decisions about who I'll spend my time with."

Graham tried to storm out of the
kitchen, but the storm lost momentum after his nearly falling over a
chair in his path that he hadn't seen. He kicked at the chair –
an act which threw off his precarious balance. He caught the table
for support, and exited the kitchen with as much of his wounded
dignity as could be marshaled. He'd had enough liquid celebration to
make his mood volatile and his feet unsteady.