Bent Road - Lori Roy [38]
Ruth’s first lie to Floyd was a reflex. Standing in her kitchen, Ray watching her, Floyd slapping his beige hat on his thigh, she nodded yes, that Ray had been home all night. She lied out of reflex, the same as a person raises her arms to her face to fend off a fist. She lied because she was afraid not to. A hundred nights, Ray had gone off without telling Ruth where he was going, and a hundred nights, no little girl went missing. But the night Julianne disappeared was different. Ray remembered that once he had been happy. He remembered Eve because she skipped out of Mother’s back door and stood right before him, smiling up with blue eyes and tender, flushed cheeks. Only it wasn’t Eve, it was Arthur’s youngest, and as deeply as Ray must have remembered what it was like to be happy, the moment he walked back into his own home with Ruth, he must have remembered that it was all gone.
“Daniel,” Ruth says, when a set of footsteps stop at the top of the basement stairs. She turns toward the house. “Is that you?’
“I’m sorry, Aunt Ruth.” He is about to close the door but stops when he sees her. “I didn’t see you out there.”
Ruth points across the porch to the gun cabinet in the back hallway.
“I think you didn’t quite get things put away as you’d like,” she says. “I thought you might want to tend to it before your father does.”
Daniel scoots a small stool to the cabinet. He can’t quite reach the top where Arthur keeps the key to the lock.
“Thank you,” Daniel says, as the cabinet hinges creak and the lock snaps into place. He stands in the dark doorway, the kitchen light shining behind him. “I think your water is boiling. Do you want me to shut it off?”
“No, thank you.”
Outside, Arthur and Celia’s voices fade.
“You know, Daniel,” Ruth says. “Your father, when he was a boy, he was a good shot. I’ll bet you are, too. In your blood, you know. Are you a good shot?”
Daniel shuffles his feet and clasps his hands behind his back. “Yes, ma’am,” he says. “I guess I am.”
“So I thought.”
“Is everything okay, Aunt Ruth?” Daniel asks, setting the stool back in its spot on the porch. “Aren’t you cold out here? Do you want a coat or something?”
Ruth smiles into the darkness to hear Daniel’s voice sounding more like a man’s than a boy’s. These children, Daniel and Evie, are ghosts of her childhood. Daniel so like his father, a young Arthur, working his way toward manhood, hoping nothing will derail him. Evie, resembling Eve so strongly, sometimes too painful to look at.
“I’m fine,” she says, nodding toward the cabinet. “You take care.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Beyond the screened door, Mother stands at the bottom of the stairs, her back to Ruth. As large as she is, Mother looks small there at the bottom of the steps, her head lowered, her shoulders sagging. Past Mother, on the far side of the garage where the porch light barely reaches, Celia and Arthur have started arguing again. Arthur’s voice is tired and desperate, as tired and desperate as Ruth has felt for twenty years, while Celia’s words have hope, the same hope that Ruth knows is growing inside her. She felt this hope with all three of her babies, but knew, even from the beginning, that none of them would live. Ray had beaten them out of her. Not literally. He never even knew they had been there, nestled inside Ruth’s womb. Sadness killed those babies.
The first pregnancy had surprised Ruth. The baby didn’t come in the beginning months of marriage. Ray had needed her, almost loved her in those early days. Together, they had mourned Eve, leaving no room for anyone else, not even a baby. Soon after, Arthur left to follow the best jobs in the country all the way to Detroit, but really Father drove him away, and Mother said no one should judge what’s between a man and his son. Best to let things rest in peace. Arthur’s leaving was the end