Patterns of Swallows (22 page)

"What is wrong with you?"
Graham asked. "You knew Bernie and I had been planning this for
weeks. It's a good plan. It really is. I can show it to you all
down on paper. The plan is sound. Why do you have to get your back
up right away about everything? Especially where Bernie's concerned.
You think I want to go back to being a janitor? Or just do nothing
with my life? I want bigger things for us, Ruth. And this is the
only way I see right now of getting there. And I'd like for you to
be able to quit work. You know how hard it is on a man to have his
wife being the one bringing home the bacon?"

Graham's sudden vulnerability
would have melted her anger if she hadn't already had a good head of
steam built up.

"The answer is, 'No!'
Graham. I'm not signing over the farm for some fool idea of Bernie
Jansen's. We'd end up defaulting on the loan and losing the farm,
and then we'd really have nothing."

"Why do you have to assume
the worst all the time? Why can't you have a little faith in me for
once? Why do you think the business would fail? I'm not my father,
Ruth."

"I never said you were,
Graham. I do have faith in you. It's Bernie that would ruin things.
He doesn't stick with a job for longer than six months. He's worked
for every garage in town. At least all the ones foolish enough to
hire him. He'd saddle you with trying to run this business that
you've put all the risk into, and when he was bored of it, he'd cut
out, and you'd have no mechanic and pretty soon no garage. Can't you
see how it would end? Can't you see what he's like?"

"He's a good mechanic when
it comes down to that. The only reason he's bounced around some from
job to job is because it gets a man's goat, working for someone else.
He's had the dream of having his own place for a long time but no
way to make it happen. But together we could make it happen."

"Well, it can't happen
unless I sign the papers for that loan, and I'm just not going to do
that. I'm not going to let Bernie Jansen ruin you," Ruth said
in her stubborn tone.

Graham knew that wheedling and
cajoling would not change Ruth's stubborn tone. She'd used it on him
seldom, but when she had, he'd never had any luck changing her mind.
He said not another word to her but rolled over and refused to answer
her conciliatory, "Good night, Graham." For many wakeful
hours that night, he lay fuming and looking for alternative plans and
small revenges.

Ruth, on the other hand, though
her hours were just as wakeful, lost her anger and her stubbornness
almost as soon as she had finished assuring Graham she would never
sign over the farm.

She lay in the grip of an
overmastering terror for most of the night, and by morning, knew she
had to down her pride and tell Graham he could have the farm if he
wanted. Her fear of losing Graham was stronger than her fear of
losing the farm.

Graham accepted her apology and
her offer sulkily. He was still angry.

In days to come, she often
wondered how differently things might have turned out if she hadn't
initially resisted Graham's plans for opening the garage. But, of
course, all such wonderings are idle.

In the end, Ruth's sacrifice,
both of her pride and of her farm, didn't materialize into the
results Graham had hoped for. Bernie's unreliability surfaced before
any further steps past planning and dreaming could be taken.

After he had Ruth's agreement,
Graham pressed Bernie several times to go with him to talk to the
banks. But Bernie always had a reason why tomorrow or next week
would be a better time to set up an appointment.

Eventually, Graham stopped
pressing. They spent as much time together as ever, and Graham came
in late just as often as before, but whatever they talked about over
drinks at the local joint, it was no longer their business plans.

Bernie took a job at a new
garage that had just opened in Arrowhead and convinced Graham to
apply for a job there, too.

Bernie
was
a good mechanic. In his first week, he'd managed to impress his boss
who was new to town and hadn't previously known Bernie or his
reputation. Burt Aldon, the garage owner, agreed to give Graham a
try on Bernie's recommendation in spite of Graham's lack of
mechanical training and experience.

"Don't worry, Mr. Aldon.
He's messed around under a hood most of his life, and I can show him
everything he hasn't learned on his own. He's a fast learner. You
won't be sorry," Bernie assured his boss.

Graham was elated when Bernie
told him the news.

In reality, Graham knew very
little about cars, but he was determined to work hard and make good.

After a week on the new job,
Graham told Ruth she needed to give her notice at the Morning Glory.

But their income was tight with
the farm house sitting vacant. The renters had moved out a month
earlier, and no one else seemed to be in the market for renting a
large, old, draughty house a considerable distance from town.

Still, Graham was confident the
three of them could manage on his new salary, even if they did have
to scrimp and save a bit till they could find a new renter. He'd
rather do without a few luxuries than have his wife working. It was
a sore thorn in his pride to have his wife working as a waitress.

"I'm not doing it, Graham.
I've given in to you on everything else, but this is one time I'm not
going to. If it was just for my sake, I wouldn't care. But you have
to think about your mom. We need the extra income. We have to eat."
Ruth had her stubborn tone on again. But this time she meant it.

Graham raged, but she held her
ground. At first.

Again, within hours, Ruth had
relented. She dreaded the thought of telling Jim and Glo she was
quitting, but she told Graham she'd do it. This time, however, she
negotiated.

"But not right away,
Graham. After you've been at the garage for a couple months. Then
I'll do it. That will give us a little cushion with both of us
working. Just for those two months while we wait and see how the new
job turns out."

Graham grudgingly agreed. He
knew it was the best offer he was going to get though he felt it
implied a lack of confidence in his abilities.

In future days, Ruth also spent
wasted hours wondering how differently things would have turned out
if she had agreed immediately to quit her job, and if she'd followed
through on it.

She never got the chance.

Before the end of Graham's
second month of work, his new job had ended.

Burt Aldon was willing to
overlook Graham's lack of mechanical expertise, though he soon
realized it was a much greater lack than he'd been led to believe by
Bernie. He could see that Graham was a quick learner and tried hard.
He was trainable.

But, in those first two months
when Bernie and Graham repeatedly showed up late for work and
occasionally didn't show up at all, recovering from "the night
before," the limits of Mr. Aldon's patience were stretched to
the breaking point. Both of the men found themselves out of work
before there was a third month.

Ruth's was then the only income
in their household, and Graham said no more to her about quitting her
job.

His drinking became continual at
that point. Even his mother could no longer ignore it. When he
wasn't out with Bernie, he drank on the sly in the house. Ruth
rarely saw him completely sober.

His mother tried lecturing which
only made matters worse. Graham avoided his home.

Mrs. MacKellum was given to fits
of tears at odd times, but Ruth clenched her jaw and determined to
ride it out.

*
* *

There are some species, so I've
been told, where the female is more deadly than the male. Some would
claim that humanity is one of those species.

I don't know anything about
degrees of deadliness in comparing men and women. However, I have
seen more than one instance in which the stronger gender of the human
species is the female. Not in physical strength but in strength
where it counts the most.

Maybe women are often made from
a more resilient fibre because they need to be.

This was certainly true for both
Ruth and her mother-in-law.

Though one would never have
suspected it on first meeting, Mrs. MacKellum had proven to be her
husband's superior when it came to inner strength.

It would have surprised no one,
even on first meeting, that Ruth's husband had no internal fortitude
equal to his wife's.

But even Ruth, before she needed
it, would have been surprised to see how much strength she was
capable of.

There are those who believe that
circumstances change people. I believe that circumstances don't
change people so much as they reveal people.

However, I also tend to think,
as Ruth herself did, that the strength she drew on when she needed it
was not entirely from her own supply. She wasn't superhuman, after
all.

Somehow, the
Christmas season was limped through. Though there were small gifts
and a tree, no one in the MacKellum household celebrated –
actually
celebrated
– Christmas that year (though Graham probably would have called
what he did all throughout Christmas celebrating).

It was astonishing for Ruth to
remember that last Christmas – only one short yet very, very
long year ago – had been the happiest time of her life.

The closing of the old year and
the opening of the new was a relief to Ruth. This year would be a
better year; she knew it had to be. It could hardly be worse.

But even in the new year, things
were slow in looking brighter. Very slow.

Wintertime, which had been such
a delight to Ruth in years past, as had all of Arrowhead's seasons,
seemed interminable that year. She held her breath and waited for
spring, knowing things would look up with the return of the warmer
weather. She was sure of it.

But one cold, February night,
Ruth awoke to discover that Graham was no longer beside her in bed.
He'd been there when she'd gone to sleep.

She listened to the whir and the
gentle ticking of the electric alarm clock by the bed.

When she heard the sound of a
car door closing from somewhere in the street, she rolled over to
check the luminescent face on the clock. Its hands told her that it
was just barely after four o' clock in the morning.

Maybe Graham had slipped off to
the bathroom.

She lay still for long minutes,
willing him to come back to bed to calm the thudding of her heart.
When she heard the sound of a car door again, she got out from under
the covers, put on the fuzzy robe hanging from her hook on the
bedroom door, and made her way to the kitchen.

In later days, Ruth realized
that every moment of that early morning had crystallized in her
memory in still images, captured like photographs.

The first thing she noticed,
peering out the front door, was the front porch light, shedding a
triangle of light onto the snow in the driveway. That bore
examining. They always made sure the porch light was off before
heading up to bed for the night.

Then, by Graham's car parked
against the curb, she saw a shadow in motion.

Without pausing to think, she
slid her bare feet into a pair of galoshes that were sitting on the
mat and was out the door.

Someone was putting what looked
like a suitcase into the trunk of Graham's car. It took a moment to
register that it was Graham putting a suitcase into the trunk of his
car.

But there was someone else
standing by the open door on the passenger's side in the process of
climbing in. The someone else, with one foot in and one foot out of
the car, turned in Ruth's direction, alerted by the front door
opening and the crunch of the galoshes in the snow. The someone
else, Ruth could see by the light from the porch, was Lily Turnbull.

Ruth kept her feet moving toward
Lily, unsure what she would do if she ever reached her, but
continuing to slide her feet forward like a sleepwalker.

When Lily saw Ruth, her face
took on an inexplicable look of triumph. To her dying day, Ruth
could instantly recall from her mental visual bank that look on
Lily's face.

Lily finished getting into the
car, but she left the door open and continued to look at Ruth with
the same expression.

"Graham?" Ruth said
uncertainly, wondering if she was dreaming.

But he didn't answer her. He
only slammed the lid of the trunk.

"Close the door!" He
barked the order to Lily like a drill sergeant, positioning himself
hastily behind the wheel.

"Graham?" Ruth said
again. Maybe he hadn't heard her. Did he know she was standing
there? Maybe he hadn't seen her either.