Bent Road - Lori Roy [57]
Pulling one sleeve down over her hand, Evie wipes the glass in the last frame and holds up the picture. A young man, much younger than Daddy, is lifting Aunt Eve off the ground. His arms are wrapped around her waist and Aunt Eve is smiling and holding a wide straw hat on her head with one hand so it won’t fall off. She is a girl, almost as old as Elaine, but not quite. The man is wearing a brown cowboy hat pushed high on his forehead. He has dark hair and is staring at Evie through the camera lens. Evie tilts her head left and right.
“He looks like Uncle Ray,” she says, smiling. “He’s so young and his eye is not so bad.”
Then she remembers the Uncle Ray who came to the house wanting a piece of Aunt Ruth’s pie and frowns. She looks around the room, at the closet full of dresses, at the Virgin Mary, at the window over the bed, wishing Aunt Eve would tell her the man isn’t Uncle Ray, but she doesn’t. Still hearing the clatter of Grandma Reesa’s pots and pans, Evie puts the first two pictures back in the center drawer, closes it and lays the third picture, the one of Aunt Eve and the happy man, in her small bag.
Chapter 17
Sitting at the kitchen table while waiting for the potatoes to boil, Celia fans the book for a fifth time, stirring up a small breeze that fluffs Evie’s bangs. On the count of three, Evie pokes a finger between the pages to mark the stopping point. The book, an early Christmas present from Ruth to Evie, falls open on the table. Celia takes a sip of spiced cider and stands to turn down the burner, leaving Ruth to study the book with Evie.
The family hasn’t returned to St. Anthony’s for a month of Sundays, and it is clear that mass in Hays doesn’t suit the rest of the town, almost as if mass in a different church, even if it is catholic, isn’t really mass at all. Even before the family had attended a single service at St. Bart’s, the other ladies in town stared and whispered when they saw Celia and Ruth in the grocery store. Good Christians attended St. Anthony’s every Sunday and good Christians didn’t leave their husbands, for any reason. Arthur had promised Reesa that the family would go back to St. Anthony’s for midnight mass on Christmas. Perhaps that would do a little something to make the town happy.
Though the rest of the town shakes their heads at the Scotts attending mass in Hays, it has kept Ruth out of Ray’s sight and he seems content to see Arthur at work every day, at least the days that Ray makes it to work. Arthur says Ray is probably drinking again so he doesn’t have time to worry about bringing Ruth home.
In the front room, Arthur struggles to force a crooked trunk into a straight tree stand, and out on the back porch, Daniel sifts through the boxes they moved from Detroit in search of the ones labeled CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS. The air smells of evergreen needles, sap and Ruth’s homemade spiced cider, making the house warm and cozy even as the wind whips though the attic and the sky darkens with signs of snow.
Studying page 275 of Evie’s book, Ruth wraps both hands around her mug, lifts it to her lips but doesn’t drink, and makes a tsk, tsk, tsk sound as she shakes her head.
“Is that not a good one?” Evie asks.
“Very poisonous,” Ruth says, glancing up at Celia and tapping the page that lays open on the table.
Celia leans over the book and reads the caption beneath the picture—narrow-leaved poison wedge root. Ruth stops tapping and lays one hand flat over the picture, spreading her fingers so she hides the plant. She leans back in her chair, as if checking on Arthur and Daniel.
“It’s good for her to learn about the poisonous ones, too, Ruth. To be on the safe side.”
Ruth lifts Evie’s chin so she’ll look Ruth in the eye. “This is definitely a bad one. Very bad. One of the worst.”
“Would it make me sick?”
“If you ate it, it would,” Ruth says, swallowing and clearing her throat. “But you’d never, ever eat something you found growing outside.”
“Except if it was in your garden.”
“Yes, that’s true.” Ruth points to the white leaves that look like tiny tubes with pointed ends.