While Mortals Sleep_ Unpublished Short Fiction - Kurt Vonnegut [36]
Ruth lay wide-eyed for an hour between the stiff sheets. Her thoughts came in disconnected pulses of brilliance—glimpses of this moment and that. Ted’s long, contemplative face appeared again and again. She saw him as a lonely child—as he had first come to her; then as a lover; then as a man. The shrine—commemorating a child, ignoring a man—made a pathetic kind of sense. For Mrs. Faulkner, Ted had died when he’d loved another woman.
Ruth threw back the covers, and walked to the window, needing the refreshment of a look at the outdoors. There was only a brick wall a few feet away, chinked with snow. She tiptoed down the hall, toward the big living room windows that framed the blue Adirondack foothills. She stopped.
Mrs. Faulkner, her gross figure silhouetted through a thin nightgown, stood before the shelf of souvenirs, talking to it. “Good night, darling, wherever you are. I hope you can hear me and know that your mother loves you.” She paused, and appeared to be listening, and looked wise. “And your child will be in good hands, darling—the same hands that cradled you.” She held up her hands for the shelf to see. “Good night, Ted. Sleep tight.”
Ruth stole back to bed. A few moments later, bare feet padded down the hall, a door closed, and all was still.
* * *
“Good morning, Miss Hurley.” Ruth blinked up at Ted’s mother. The brick wall outside the guest room window glared, the snow gone. The sun was high. “Did you sleep well, my child?” The voice was cheerful, intimate. “It’s almost noon. I have breakfast for you. Eggs, coffee, bacon, and biscuits. Would you like that?”
Ruth nodded and stretched, and drowsily doubted the nightmare of their meeting the night before. Sunlight was splashed everywhere, dispelling the funereal queasiness of their first encounter.
The table in the kitchen was aromatic with the peace and plenty of a leisurely breakfast.
As Ruth returned Mrs. Faulkner’s smile across her third cup of coffee, she was at her ease, content with starting a new life in these warm surroundings. The night before had been no more than a misunderstanding between two tired, nervous women.
Ted wasn’t mentioned—not at first. Mrs. Faulkner talked wittily about her early days as a businesswoman in a man’s world, made light of what must have been desperate years after her husband’s death. And then she encouraged Ruth to talk about herself, and she listened with flattering interest. “And I suppose you’ll be wanting to go back to the South to live someday.”
Ruth shrugged. “I have no real ties there—or anywhere else, for that matter. Father was an Army regular, and I’ve lived on practically every post you can name.”
“Where would you most like to make your home?” Mrs. Faulkner coaxed.
“Oh—this is a pleasant enough part of the country.”
“It’s awfully cold,” said Mrs. Faulkner with a laugh. “It’s the world headquarters for sinus trouble and asthma.”
“Well, I suppose Florida would be more easy going. I guess, if I had my choice, I’d like Florida best.”
“You have your choice, you know.”
Ruth set down her cup. “I plan to make my home here—the way Ted wanted me to.”
“I meant after the baby is born,” said Mrs. Faulkner. “Then you’d be free to go wherever you liked. You have the insurance money, and with what I could add to that you could get a nice little place in St. Petersburg or somewhere like that.”
“What about you? I thought you wanted to have the child near you.”
Mrs. Faulkner reached into the refrigerator. “Here, you poor dear, you need cream, don’t you.” She set the pitcher before Ruth. “Don’t you see how nicely it would work out for both of us? You could leave the child with me, and be free to lead the life a young woman should lead.” Her voice became confiding. “It’s what Ted wants for both of us.”
“I’m darned if it