The Book of Ruth (21 page)

May and I came home at night and I did the chores with Ruby trailing behind like a good old dog. May always made the meal. We all had tasks we were responsible for in our household. When I came in with the eggs we sat right down to supper and usually we ate in silence, working on chewing and swallowing, getting nourished. May isn’t the greatest chef on earth, but I was used to her food because I had eaten it every day of my life. She made three pans of meat loaf stretched with ground soybeans, which lasted for a week, and then the next week we ate macaroni and cheese for as long as possible, and occasionally she butchered a chicken, which meant eating the entire bird: liver, gizzard, necks, heart. Of course we always had something special for Sunday noon, a good day to be alive if eating was something a person enjoyed. We usually had a roast and mashed potatoes and Jell-O or fruit salad, and cake. And then back to Mondays, and May’s habit of making enough goulash for two million people, so it would last for eternity. This was her way of being The Cook. She was always so tired at the end of the day. She didn’t want to spend each night over the boiling pot. There were TV shows she wanted to watch; there were her sore feet she wanted to elevate.

May and I could tell Ruby didn’t savor her menus. He wasn’t crazy about onions and watered-down stew. He called out “jackpot” once, when he hit a piece of meat. He was used to eating hamburgers and fish sandwiches at McDonald’s. He ate five a day when he was a bachelor. French fries were his idea of food, which is why his complexion was the color of asphalt. If Ruby hit something distasteful in May’s casserole, such as a tough piece of eggplant, he spit it out in his napkin, for all to see and hear. I practically wanted to take him aside and scold him, not to mention regurgitate, because I knew how insulted May felt. She’s sensitive about her cooking. But May, perhaps because her brand-new life was going downhill, apparently said to herself, Why bother? She started to make the suppers worse and worse. Her favorite slogan was “Give people their money’s worth.”

When she washed the dishes she’d say to Ruby, “I always save the dishwater for soup stock. It cooks up so wonderful.”

He couldn’t figure out if she was joking or not. He stood still in the middle of the floor staring at her while she poured the gray dishwater into a half-gallon container. He never blinked, watching the crumbs swirl around in the jar.

The first two weeks in December May served split-pea soup without relief. Seemed like there wasn’t any ham in it, if you don’t count the gristle. The soup was green and loosey-goosey, and Ruby figured she went out to the chicken shed and scraped up what the sick chickens made. I didn’t like to think about such unpleasantness, but I had to agree with him. One night, after what seemed like three years of split-pea soup, Ruby pushed his chair out when May stuck the bowl of chicken loosey-goosey in front of him, and he made a long noise that suggested trouble forthcoming from deep in his gut. May was waiting for it, you could just tell. She stood over him and said so sweetly, “You think you’re awful smart, sitting around all day long, waiting for me to serve you—you cook, see how it suits you, Mr. Fancy Pants, see if it changes your attitude.” She smiled long and nice. He didn’t know where to look.

He got up and went out that night, without me. He drove the lemon Daisy dumped in our yard into town and bought a hamburger. Louise from the cleaners said later that she saw him at the Stillwater Cafe, sitting all by himself with two burgers and a pile of fries. She said she could hear the juke box just by looking at the quaking windows. Ruby knows where the switch is to turn it way up.

When he got home at midnight I was in bed. I couldn’t figure out what else to do, except try to dream of Mr. Darcy. I saw Mr. Darcy eating french fries, Mr. Darcy whacking on birdhouses, Mr. Darcy rubbing up against tree trunks. I was terrified that Ruby was gone for good. We hadn’t been married two months yet. What would I tell everybody? He crawled over me as if I was an irritating stump. When he got comfortable he said, “Baby, here I am. It’s Mr. Chef Boy-R-Dee.”

I managed to laugh while Ruby talked about how he was going to go out and shoot a deer for May. He talked about wrapping the tail up in banana peel and coating it with chocolate. Sometimes I think my calling is the stage. I could be an actress with convincing fake smiles. I hugged Ruby, because we were still a couple. I was so thankful.

The first night Ruby made frozen pizza. I bought him his favorite—pepperoni—on the way home from work. When he set it on the table he said, “Ladies, you’re getting my special tonight.” May didn’t crack a smile.

The next night we had hot dogs. We had some in the freezer and Ruby boiled them for so long they blew up to the size of sewer pipes. May spat her bites out in her napkin. Ruby loved using the tongs we had to serve the wieners. He got a charge out of handling everything in the kitchen, hot and cold, with them. The whole time we ate he was doing a dance with the tongs and a bag of potato chips. I was dying of laughter but I kept a straight face while May ate her parboiled peas. After supper she marched into the living room, making it clear she wanted to watch her programs alone. Ruby and I spent all night doing the dishes and dancing and grabbing each other with the tongs. We ended up under the table with our pants off. After May went to bed, Ruby insisted I use the tongs to guide him inside.

The third night we had scrambled eggs and dry toast, because I forgot to buy margarine on the way home. When May put her fork into her mouth, she all of a sudden looked like she was tasting the most bitter substance in existence. Her frown stretched down into her neck. She got up and spat her food into the sink so vigorously I thought she might bring up a shrunken heart.

She turned around when she uttered, “That is the most revolting food I ever ate in my life.” She probably wasn’t counting the time I made scalloped onions out of tulip bulbs. May’s gigantic head became enlarged when she was disgusted or angry, and the veins in her neck stood out and throbbed.

Ruby didn’t say anything. He ate his eggs. He whispered, “Looks like Ma didn’t like my extra-special creation. I put the hen’s mash in our eggs just for her.” He took another bite. “Cluck cluck, they ain’t too bad.”

I was too tired and hungry and frightened to laugh. I dropped my fork thinking about what May would do if she ever realized that Ruby was feeding her mash. She might sue for divorce, or put a gun to Ruby’s head and make him vacuum forever.

After we ate our gritty eggs Ruby and I went outside to walk in the woods. It was raw and we shivered, but we made no attempt to touch each other and get warm. We sat up in the haymow, only there isn’t a single bale of hay, and Ruby tried to make me laugh by doing a concert. I didn’t feel like laughing. His fingers were white with the cold, playing his pretend guitar.

The next night no one said anything. Ruby didn’t cook and May didn’t cook. There we were after a long day at work without one speck to eat. Ruby and May sat in the living room watching TV with all their might. They sat upright. They weren’t either one of them going to budge. It looked funny, if you were in a giggling mood, to see their good posture. I stared out into the night, seeing my own reflection, and it seemed to me it was shriveling with every second I stood waiting. I knew I was going to scream. I was opening my mouth when Ruby jumped up. He stood shifting around on his feet, scratching his chin and glancing quickly at the sofa.

May didn’t pay attention so he left for the kitchen. I was about to go after him when I heard him say to the refrigerator, “You are one great big field of fart.”

“What’d did he say?” May asked, alert all of a sudden.

I didn’t know what to tell her. I said, “Nothin’.”

“
WHAT’D HE SAY?
”

“That you remind him of some of them natural processes,” I said. Ruby was already out of the house. We could hear the car starting up.

I didn’t stay to hear May return his compliment. I was so mad at those two for wrecking our lives over a few eggs. I stalked off without looking to see if she was still glued to the TV. Perhaps she was going to settle down to eat her private stash of sweet rolls.

It was December. The wind was in no way attentive to my sorrows as I went along the road. It slashed right through my body. I had to wish for a planet where the breeze takes you in its arms and rocks you to sleep. I held my hat to my head and walked along the dark highway. Every time car lights blinded me I felt like an animal exposed and in the limelight right before it becomes a road kill. I saw myself lying in a heap, bruised and dead, waiting to be discovered in the morning by the county highway crew.

“Running away already?” Daisy said to me at the door of the Footes’ house, and I said, “Nope.”

I walked straight past her into their kitchen. Then I sat down and put my head on the table and cried, just like Dee Dee used to for May. I was ashamed of the scorn I used to feel for Dee Dee and all her problems. I was just as needy, and probably always had been. Even though Daisy was a slut, if you’re speaking plain English, she’s got this big heart. She put her hands on my shoulders and said, “You tell me about it.”

Wouldn’t you know it, before I could get a word out the phone rang. Dee Dee kept saying into the receiver, “Well! . . . Well! . . . Oh? Dear!”

I raised my head long enough to say to Daisy, “I bet you a dollar it’s my ma.”

Sure enough, Dee Dee hung up the phone, made a beeline for the freezer, took some food out, turned to Daisy, and said, “Poor May.” She drove off to our house instantly, just as good friends should. We all needed people to tell us that we were the ones who had been deeply wronged.

I sat sobbing, telling Daisy that May and Ruby couldn’t stand each other, and that sometimes Ruby was scared of her because she let her rattling false teeth swim around in her mouth. I tried to describe May for the first time in my life. I said, “Daisy, the only pleasure she gets is from holding people under her thumb. She’s happy when she’s let you know how miserable her life is. If you catch her smiling she quick frowns.” I stopped because I wanted to get it right. It was all coming out in little pieces and that’s not how I intended it. I looked into Daisy’s face and said, “I let her down every day.”

I don’t think Daisy heard me because she said, “If only we could find her a man. She probably just needs a good screw. I bet all her problems would improve after a one-night stand.”

I hated advice like that. I said, “How are we going to do anything different, Daisy?”

I explained that May was the banker and we barely made ends meet. She made Ruby fork over cash for his food and the hot baths he loved to take, but we weren’t extra rich, especially with deep winter coming and the oil it took to heat the house. I admitted that in October we had three dollars at the end of the month. There were two days when we didn’t have groceries and May dug up a chicken in the freezer from 1964. Of course we still had the wedding bills to pay off. May kept complaining about the expensive ceremony, but she was the one who demanded that we have the bakery cake and the flowers.

“Things look bad,” Daisy said. “You and me are going to get crocked.”

Daisy and I went downtown. She was working at the grocery store so she treated. We drank too much of a certain mixed drink that contained everything in the liquor cabinet. When I was under the influence I told Daisy I’d love to see her on a motorcycle with nothing on, and she cracked up. She picked out all the old men in the room and discussed how they’d suit May as a boyfriend. Mr. Stevens, the one with the wooden leg who’s always the Indian in parades, was her favorite choice. “Don’t he look sexy in his headdress on the Fourth of July?” she asked me. “Come to think of it, I bet your brother would like him. I bet you a million dollars he’s a homo.”

We looked at each other and burst out laughing. We had to get up and squat against the wall, and take walks holding our stomachs, and just when we’d get control we’d look at each other and break up all over again.

When I knew it was coming I went out in the cold and got sick on the curb. I cried all the way home while Daisy drove like a maniac. I was half hoping we’d crash into a tree and lose our lights.

After Daisy let me off I stood on the back porch spying in the kitchen window. There’s no storms on the windows so I could hear every word. May was standing at the counter cutting up a chicken and Dee Dee worked at the table chopping onions. It looked like they were cooking enough for the next two months. Dee Dee set her knife down, raised her glass high, and said, “Here’s another one to you and me.” She chugged it and then wiped her mouth on the hem of one of May’s gingham aprons that she was wearing. She said, “Nobody knows what we suffer. They drive off and get broken and expect us to lick their wounds when they come back. At least you have Matt. Count your blessings. Did he call you this week?”

I heard May say, “Every Sunday.”

“Is he coming for Christmas?” Tears caused by onions were dripping from Dee Dee’s eyes. May always gave her the lowest jobs.

May gnawed on her toothpick before she spoke. “He just can’t get away from his work for more than two seconds. Them professors have him working night and day. Course he’s the top student. There ain’t no free lunch though—that’s what you have to do when you’re on full scholarship.”

“Did he send you a picture of his girlfriend yet?” Dee Dee asked.

“Now where did I put it?” May rustled up a bunch of
Penny-savers
that were on the sideboard. “Yeah, he sent one, but just like a boy, you can’t hardly see nothin’ of her face. If it would have been a good photo I wouldn’t have lost it. She’s a cheerleader for the football team. Real cute. He said maybe for Easter vacation he’d bring her home.”

“Now, May,” Dee Dee said, coming over to look through the piles of clipped coupons, “you have such a good son. Count your blessings. I got three lousy kids, not one born with any sense. Randall’s a good boy, and I couldn’t live without him, but you know as well as I do that he ain’t going to amount to anything big like your Matt.”

May went to the pot on the stove and stirred. “I have a feeling them two sex fiends ain’t ever coming back.”