Though pride forbade her from conceding as much to Abe, one look at the property on Bainbridge Island and Ruth was already sold. Five hilltop acres of rolling pasture lined with fruit trees: apple, pear, plum, and cherry. Beyond the orchard, an irrigation pond, maybe seventy feet across, hemmed in by maple and alder; an old clapboard barn, splintered but still sturdy. There was a henhouse, half covered, a hundred and forty feet square, and a large vegetable garden, overgrown but ready to reclaim. The entire property, ringed by mature stands of cedar and fir, was accessed via a gravel drive perhaps a quarter mile long. The house itself had been built around the turn of the century and showed some wear and tear with its sloping floors, and blistered paint, and mossy shingles, but it lacked nothing in the way of charm, with its double-hung windows and its wide front porch. That the house and the property required reclamation and upkeep, that the place begged for love and attention, was not a deterrent to Ruth, rather an incentive, an invitation to shape her surroundings. Though he’d gone about it all wrong, and she was still loath to forgive him for it, Abe had been right: The newness and possibility won Ruth over.
They got a dog, what would be the first of many, a little wire-haired Jack Russell terrier they called Rowdy, who lived up to every bit of his name; forever darting, and leaping, and yipping, ferreting out moles and chasing parcel trucks up the driveway.
In her third trimester, she was pulling up carpet and cultivating flower beds when she wasn’t tending to their newly adopted hens, an even dozen, Hy-Lines and Orpingtons, acquired for mere dollars from an island farmer named Suimatsu. Daily, with Karen on her hip and Anne beside her, they scattered feed and delighted in watching the hens peck away at the pellets, or the bread heels, or the unfinished oatmeal. Ruth and Anne cleaned the nesting boxes and collected eggs, brown all, of various sizes, far more eggs than they could ever eat, despite all the omelets and egg dips and failed quiche experiments. Twice a week, they walked the surplus eggs to the end of the driveway and set a big basket beside the mailbox with a “Free Eggs” sign, and always somebody helped themselves, if not the neighbors, then the coyotes or the raccoons. The hens were a revelation not for their utilitarian benefits but for their mere presence on the farm. It never failed to delight Ruth, the way they charged the gate when they saw Ruth and the girls coming, the flock of them bounding like some farcical cavalry, useless wings tucked fast against their overplump bodies, bobbing side to side atop their skinny legs as though they were spring-loaded. Anne named every hen—Comet, and Sprite, and Brownie, and Sparkle—though Ruth could scarcely tell them apart from one day to the next.
Abe, for his part, worked long days at the office, building his clientele, while devoting the better part of his weekends to cultivating avocations that spoke to his status as a pillar of the community: Kiwanis and the Sons of Norway, Scouts, attending matches, Little League games, sponsoring parade floats—whatever opportunity presented itself, Abe attended virtually any gathering that might help him pave inroads to the next whole life policy. Thus, Ruth saw Abe less than ever those early days on the island, and yet her life was fuller than ever. Every day Ruth found herself less dependent upon Abe as she grew into herself, gaining confidence with each new task she undertook. It was less the stuff of art and poetry, and more the stuff of utility and purpose, the satisfaction of completing tasks that made a tangible impact on the life of her family and herself, the feeding and watering that accounted for the eggs and vegetables that fed them, the fence that was mended to keep the coyotes out, the gutter that she’d rerouted to save their foundation.
Then there was town, five miles south of the farm. Not exactly what you’d call metropolitan, the little hamlet of Winslow, the entirety of it strung down a single two-lane boulevard hemmed on either side by diagonal parking, a menagerie of brick-and-mortar storefronts, a hardware store, a bank, a Rexall, an appliance store, a barber, a salon, a Christian Science reading room, a white-steepled church at the western end its tallest and most stately structure. Winslow boasted none of the bustle of the city, none of the glorious urban racket, the traffic or construction, nor did Winslow offer the youthful vitality of campus life, a realm that now seemed a part of some distant past. What Winslow did offer was the promise of community, and of fast-growing familiarity, a grocer, and a banker, and a postal clerk who called her by name. In Ruth’s enthusiasm for the urbane and the high-minded, she’d all but forgotten those niceties of small-town living that she’d grown up with in Shelton. And yet, unlikely as it seemed for such a small town, Bainbridge Island seemed to be more diverse than Seattle, with its large Japanese and Filipino populations. The influence of these cultures was felt everywhere on the island, woven deep into its fabric, just as sure as the Scandinavian influence; the names—Nakata, Hayashida, Koura, Corpuz, Rapada, Bello—were as ubiquitous as Hansen, and Gunderson, and Olsen, on road signs, park names, businesses, and farms.
Ruth had first encountered the Seabold Church her second week on the island. She was driving the back roads aimlessly in the Buick, attempting to lull Karen to sleep, when she caught a fleeting glimpse of its white bell tower tucked between the trees. She circled back to get a better look and was taken by the simple elegance of the structure, its plain façade, its tiny chapel, its cupola dwarfed by the firs and cedars all around, like a sanctuary tucked within the larger expanse of an evergreen cathedral.
The very next Sunday, Ruth coaxed the girls into dresses, Ruth cramming her very pregnant self into a shapeless maternity skirt and a colorful print smock with an all-around yoke from the Sears catalog. Though Abe had encouraged her to attend, he bowed out at the last minute.
“You know me, Ruthie,” he said. “I’m just not a church guy.”
“You believe in God,” she observed.
“Sure,” he said. “Something like that. I just…the Sunday thing, all that hand-holding and singing, I don’t know, it never appealed to me. Sundays are about football, walking the dog, futzing around the house.”
“You don’t watch football.”
“Look, honey, I’ve got nothing against it, really. The God stuff is more personal for me. I don’t need all the theatrics.”
Ruth couldn’t help but think of that first night at the Dog House with Fred and Mandy, how Abe had all but begged to accompany Ruth to church the next day, just to be near her. Now that he’d secured a future with Ruth, such eager devotion was a thing of the past.
“Besides, I’ve got that Kiwanis thing,” he said.
“Think of the insurance you could sell,” said Ruth.
Though intended as sarcasm, the comment was nearly enough to persuade Abe, before he apparently realized he could just as easily deploy Ruth to this end.
“That’s where you come in,” he said.
“I am not shilling insurance policies to the congregation, Abe. Forget it.”
“I’m not asking you to sell policies. Just…you know, let it be known here and there that I sell insurance, mention it when you get a chance, afterward at coffee and such. I can give you a stack of business cards.”
“No!” she said. “Absolutely not.”
Despite his lack of shame, it pleased Ruth that Abe was so motivated to succeed financially. It was a comfort to know her children were well provided for. As much as Ruth loved her parents, she’d never known such assurances as a child. Security seemed to breed the kind of confidence you couldn’t fake. For was it not easier to take leaps when you had a safety net beneath you, easier to gamble when you had the resources to cover your losses? In Ruth’s mind, this was an entitlement everyone should enjoy.
Rather than the curiosity Ruth had expected would meet their appearance for the first time, she and the girls were greeted at Seabold Methodist with smiles and friendly nods as they filed into a pew near the rear of the chapel, a room longer than it was wide, with four gothic windows at even intervals along each wall and eight or ten pews on either side of the aisle. Attendance was robust, perhaps seventy-five or eighty faithful: young families, along with middle-aged and elderly couples. Beyond those initial acknowledgments, the eyes of the congregation were not upon her in those moments before the pastor took his place at the pulpit.
He was a rather young man, not much older than Ruth, square chinned, bright-eyed, and prematurely balding, his figure lean beneath a baggy stole. His sermon comprised a bit about community with a nod to Ecclesiastes that was rather poignant, and a short reading from Galatians. The proceedings shifted to thank-yous and prayers offered on behalf of friends and relatives of the congregation, blessings for a deceased aunt, a sick nephew, a good thought for a daughter gone off to college, all of it punctuated by song. For, more than anything, the service leaned heavily on the hymnal: “I Sing the Almighty Power of God,” “Maker, in Whom We Live,” and “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.”
It was song that most genuinely embodied fellowship in Ruth’s mind, the pulse of the collective, the communing of voices, the comfort of shedding the self, of capitulating to the larger body. It mattered not whether one could hold a tune, for the man or woman or child beside you or across the aisle could elevate you by extension, simply by singing along. That was the beauty of a choral hymn, that in concurrence it was greater than the sum of its parts.
Karen was perfectly well-behaved through it all. Anne stood dutifully when prompted, but unsure of herself, she moved her mouth silently through the hymns.
In closing, the pastor quoted from 1 Peter 3:8:
“ ‘Finally, all of you,’ ” he said, “ ‘have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.’ ”
Afterward, the congregation filed into the fellowship hall, where coffee and snacks were on hand. Anne shyly partook of cookies and cider along with the other children, Karen, on chubby legs, all but attached to Anne’s side.
Ruth was standing at the coffee station when she was approached by the organist, a formidable woman nearly six feet tall with a shock of red, curly hair.
“You have a lovely voice,” she said.
“Me, are you kidding?” said Ruth.
“I’m not,” said the organist. “It was such a…well, a relief to hear a new voice.”
She reached out a hand, digits long and sturdy, fingertips calloused. Ruth’s own hand felt tiny and insufficient in comparison.
“I’m Bess Delory,” she announced.
“Ruth Winter,” said Ruth. “Those are my daughters, Anne and Karen, over there.”
“And this one?” said Bess Delory, indicating Ruth’s pregnant belly.
“A boy, we hope,” said Ruth.
“And your husband, he’s not with us today?”
“Not this time,” said Ruth. “He had a Kiwanis event.”
Though it behooved her to drop a hint about life insurance at this juncture, Ruth resisted the impulse.
“So,” Ruth said. “You mean to say you can actually hear me with all those other voices? Way in the back?”
“Yes,” Bess said. “Like an angel amidst a choir of ogres. You have excellent pitch and a genuine vibrato, both rarities around here, though few are lacking in spirit. Between you and me,” she said, leaning in to assume a conspiratorial tone, “most everybody else is as flat as the Everglades.”
In her months on the island, Ruth had made many acquaintances, some fleeting, some habitual, most all of them pleasant, but she’d yet to meet anybody she could call a friend, someone with whom she could share with absolute candor and no fear of judgment, someone with whom she could laugh, and complain, and gossip. Bess Delory was all that and more. Though their interactions in those formative weeks were limited to the fellowship hall, by the time Kyle was born that winter, they were dear friends.
Kyle was delivered on the farm by a neighbor named Mitsu Nakata, a youthful fifty-year-old midwife who had delivered nearly two dozen island babies in twenty years, some by design and others by necessity. For all Ruth’s initial anxiety about a home birth on the island, far from the medical resources of the city, her labor with Kyle proved to be her shortest by a mile. Abe, for the first time, was present for the delivery, pacing about so incessantly that amidst her fierce pushing and gasping and teeth gritting, Ruth’s eyes followed his progress around the room until it drove her to distraction.
“Stand still, for heaven’s sake!” she shouted.
Abe didn’t move another muscle until it was time to squat beside Mitsu and receive the baby.
In possession of good color, clear lungs, and a healthy appetite for nursing (unlike Karen, who had gone mercifully light on Ruth, and even weaned herself at fourteen months), Kyle, like Karen before him, proved to be a mellow baby from the start. Though Ruth never admitted it to anyone, this temperament made Kyle and Karen her favorites in most respects, and she always viewed them as her most self-sufficient children, though there was plenty of evidence to suggest that the distinction rightfully belonged to Anne, who, aside from a colicky condition beyond her control, emerged from infancy into toddlerhood speaking in full sentences, dressing herself, and squirreling away loose change in a jar.
As a newborn, Kyle slept for hours beside Ruth in a bassinet as she sanded shutters and cleared the garden, coaxing the girls to put their busy hands to work weeding the flower beds, turning the soil, and mounding potato plots. Karen especially loved the work. More than the others, she was naturally drawn to the outside world, always picking flowers and collecting pine cones and colored rocks, or conducting funerals for ants and potato bugs. She was such a beauty, Karen, combining the best physical attributes of both Abe and Ruth, and such a sweet, gentle soul.
Late that spring, as the garden was coming into its own, Ruth invited Fred and Mandy out to the farm, an invitation that was long overdue. Fred and Mandy had married the year after Ruth and Abe, and five years later, they remained childless. Mandy was working as a paralegal, and Fred was managing his father’s mail advertising business in Renton.
Ruth prepared for their visit all day that Saturday, cooking and cleaning and arranging flowers, while Abe was out shaking hands at the pancake breakfast and Little League jamboree. The impulse to impress Fred and Mandy with her new life was not one she was proud of, but it was one she was powerless to resist, as though she needed it. They both thought Ruth and Abe were crazy to move out of the city, and Ruth wanted to not only redeem the decision but make it look like a stroke of genius: the freshly mowed pasture, the blossoming orchard, the bountiful garden, the polite, well-behaved kids, the charming extra room for guests that they never could’ve afforded in Seattle, the rustic farm dinner of roast chicken and vegetables, fresh deviled eggs from the hens.
“You guys actually did it,” said Fred, wiping the chicken grease from his mouth with a cloth napkin. “Congratulations. I gotta say, it took some intestinal fortitude leaving a good job, a good neighborhood, your friends.”
“What do you do about your hair?” said Mandy. “Have they got anyone over here?”
“I hear there’s a gal downtown who’s pretty good,” said Ruth. “But to be honest, I haven’t given it much thought—as you can probably tell.”
“Stop it!” said Mandy. “You look great. It’s hard to believe you’ve had three kids.”
“I concur,” chimed in Fred. “You both look great.”
Mandy had barely aged since UW. If anything, she seemed more comfortable with her natural beauty. Ruth felt frumpy next to her, with her mousy hair and her baggy jeans.
Once during dinner, Mandy caught Ruth admiring her for a little too long and gave her an inquisitive look.
“Do I have something on my face?” she said.
“It’s just so good to see you,” said Ruth.
Indeed, it was nice to see Mandy, to have company, validating to have their new lives seen by people who’d known them previously, as if their life weren’t 100 percent real until it was witnessed.
“So, what are the possibilities with this place?” Fred inquired. “Could you subdivide the five acres, say four big lots, and put in a couple houses, sell them for a healthy profit?”
“Why on earth would we want to do that?” said Ruth. “We came out here for the space.”
“Couldn’t do it if we wanted,” said Abe. “Minimum lot size is five acres.”
“That’s too bad,” said Fred. “Seems like a guy ought to be able to do whatever he wants with his land if he owns it, don’t you think? Free country. Seems like a goofy law to me.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” said Abe.
“All it takes is one neighbor with a dollar sign for a heart and you’re looking out your window at tract housing instead of fields and forests,” said Ruth. “The limits are put in place for everybody.”
“I’d say it’s owing more to a lack of infrastructure,” said Abe.
“Or maybe too much infrastructure,” said Fred.
“That could be, too,” Abe conceded.
“It’s for the common good,” said Ruth.
“You’re starting to sound like Jack Kennedy,” said Abe.
As a man who had essentially bluffed his way into a lucrative career in life insurance, a man who, within a calendar year on the island, had already sponsored a Little League team and a Scout troop, and weekly took out ads in the Bainbridge Island Review, Abe had proven himself nothing if not enterprising, a quality that informed his political views as much as anything else. He saw Nixon and the Republican Party as champions of free enterprise and the sort of unfettered American opportunity that allowed the cream to rise to the top, whereas he viewed Kennedy as a meddling interventionist and a blue-blooded phony. If Ruth had to guess, Fred and Mandy’s sympathies lay with Nixon’s camp. But Ruth had never been reluctant to express an unpopular opinion.
“If that’s intended as a slight,” she said, “I certainly don’t take it as one. I wouldn’t trust Nixon with my best serving platter. He’s so greasy, he’d probably drop it.”
“That’s not grease,” said Abe. “It’s called sweat. It comes from hard work. Besides, Kennedy’s too young.”
“You know, Nixon is young, too,” said Ruth. “He just looks old.”
“That’s from hard work, too!” said Abe. “At least Nixon’s a guy who made his own way up the ladder, unlike your wealthy Harvard boy, who just walked into opportunity like it was his birthright.”
“Take it easy, you two,” Fred said. “It’s only politics.”
Irritated as Ruth was by what she considered to be Abe’s ideological shortcomings, Fred was right, it was only politics. At the end of the day, Ruth and Abe wanted essentially the same things. But she couldn’t help but feel that every year the ideological divide was widening, that Abe saw the world as a set of prescribed principles that were sacrosanct to preserving a certain status quo, while Ruth was always looking to expand her purview.
After dinner, the girls were dispatched up the stairs to their rooms. Abe and Fred retired to the garage with their cans of Rainier as Mandy joined Ruth in the kitchen, helping set Kyle in the playpen, then dealing with the dishes.
“Funny how they disappear at cleanup time,” Mandy said, rolling up the sleeves of her blouse.
But before Mandy could pick up a dish towel, Kyle began to fuss.
“You want to hold him?” said Ruth.
“Do I?” said Mandy. “I’ve been dyin’ to get my hands on him. Those cheeks!”
“He just cut a tooth,” said Ruth. “That’s why he’s slobbering so much.”
“A tooth! Sheesh. I can’t believe it’s taken Fred and I almost a year to get out here,” Mandy said as Ruth hoisted Kyle out of the playpen and into Mandy’s arms.
“It’s really not that far, though, is it?” said Ruth.
“No,” she said. “It just seems like it with the ferry. And yet, it’s like a world away,” said Mandy, bouncing Kyle gently as he continued to squirm in her arms.
“I should have invited you six months ago,” said Ruth. “But with the baby, and the house, and the whole transition…”
“Believe me, sister, I understand. I don’t know how you do it. I can barely manage having a job. But look at this, look at you.”
Mandy seemed a natural with Kyle on her hip, unperturbed by the boy’s fussing and writhing.
“The ferry ride was so romantic,” Mandy said. “That is, well, uh, it might have been, if Fred hadn’t brought a bunch of paperwork with him. Honestly, he hardly even looks at me anymore.”
“Wait’ll you have kids,” said Ruth.
“If we have kids,” said Mandy. “I’m beginning to doubt it.”
“Is that what you want?” said Ruth.
Mandy looked at once hopeful and sad, close and faraway. “Ha! You think I know what I want?” she said.
Ruth set her stack of dishes aside. It was good to see Mandy.
“Why don’t I pour you a glass of wine?” Ruth said.
“Got anything stronger?” said Mandy.
They retired to the living room, dishes be damned, as Mandy sipped her wine and Kyle fell asleep in her arms.
“Here,” said Ruth, reaching out. “I’ll take him.”
“No way,” said Mandy. “C’mon, have one glass with me, Ruthie. Just one.”
“If I wasn’t nursing, I would,” said Ruth.
“My sister swears one glass puts them to sleep.”
Ruth finally conceded to four or five ounces in a coffee mug. It was nice to have Mandy pushing her again. Mandy had always believed in her, always tried to press Ruth into situations she thought would be good for Ruth, Abe being the prime example.
“You need a break, Ruthie,” she said. “What are you gonna do about day care? Is that even an option out here? Or are you just stuck with the kids all the time?”
“I wouldn’t say stuck with them,” said Ruth, although the truth was that pretty much every day at some point, she felt exactly that way. It was nearly impossible to shower most days. Not to mention she had zero privacy. And while she enjoyed a good deal of success occupying the girls outdoors, where she could breathe deeply and sink into her surroundings, and she loved that time with them, the idea of sitting down with a book, or pen and paper, was nearly inconceivable.
“Be honest, are you happy, Ruthie?”
“I am,” said Ruth. “Really, truly, I mean it. It’s a lot, the kids, the farm, but…more than half the time I’m happy, like at least sixty-forty.”
“God, at this point, I’d take forty-sixty,” said Mandy.
Ashamed as Ruth might have been to admit it, that Mandy, childless, professionally advancing Mandy, her figure still taut and perky at twenty-five, was anything less than happy was almost a comfort to Ruth, a roundabout confirmation that abandoning her independence and starting a family had been a good move, after all, even if Ruth hadn’t planned it that way. Compromise and sacrifice may have been the rule, but having a family had not been a compromise, had not been a sacrifice in the larger view. Or that is what Ruth was telling herself as she sipped her wine, her arms and bosom and lap mercifully free of children for the moment, her girls likely sleeping, though they hadn’t brushed their teeth, her husband in the garage, her old friend sitting across from her, wineglass still half-full.
Fred was leaning against the workbench, elbow on the vise, clutching his second can of Rainier as he cast his eyes about the organized clutter of the garage, most of it involving Ruth’s projects; half-built rabbit hutches, and painted cupboard doors left to dry.
“I don’t know how you do it, pal,” said Fred. “I mean, three kids? Living out here in the boondocks. What do you do for excitement?”
“Between the job and the family, believe me, I’ve got plenty of excitement. It’s not glamorous, but it keeps me on my toes.”
“What about Ruth? What about living in Paris and finishing college? All that’s gone by the wayside?”
“I don’t want to say she outgrew it, that wouldn’t be fair,” said Abe. “I guess in a way she sort of…sacrificed it.”
“For the common good, you mean?” said Fred.
“Well, when you put it that way,” said Abe.
“Maybe she’s onto something,” Fred said. “Maybe I’m just too tied up in myself. When I think about it, really, what sacrifices have I ever made?”
“You gave me the bed by the window freshman year,” said Abe.
“You’ve got me there,” said Fred. “But I didn’t want the glare of the sun in the morning, anyway, and my side was quieter because there was no traffic on the other side of the wall.”
“Come to think of it, me taking the window was your idea,” said Abe. “You’re pretty good, Fred, I guess I never realized how good.”
“I try,” said Fred.
“How’s the mail advertising racket, anyway?”
“Growing,” he said. “But I’m still hustling. And look at you, Mr. Successful. Ruthie says you’re like a pillar of the community, selling life insurance in the cereal aisle.”
“You really ought to think about a whole life policy yourself, Fred.”
“Yeah, Ruth already gave me the company line,” he said. “You two are ruthless.”
“Wait’ll you have kids,” said Abe. “You’ll change your tune.”
Abruptly, Fred’s manner took a sober turn as he set his can of Rainier on the workbench.
“Some days, I don’t think we’re gonna make it, Abe. For a while, I thought, okay, we’ll have a kid, that’ll take the pressure off. But the more it doesn’t happen, the more I think that’s not what I want, not yet. Or maybe not what she wants. I don’t know anything anymore, Abe. God, how I long for those days at UW, when the future didn’t seem to matter. It was just something to conquer later.”
“Have you guys seen a doctor?” said Abe.
“Doctor? Ha. We’ve seen four doctors. I’ve…you know…into plastic cups.”
“And?”
“And they gave me a women’s catalog to look at, you know, lingerie, bras, that kind of thing.”
“And?”
“It’s pretty tame stuff. The bra section is okay.”
“And?”
Fred heaved a sigh, then took a pull of his beer.
“It’s me,” said Fred. “Okay? People always assume it’s the woman, you know? She’s barren or whatever. But it’s me, buddy. I’m firing blanks. And you know what, you know what I say?” Fred finished his beer in one gulp and crumpled the can. “Big deal, that’s what I say. No offense, but what’s so great about kids? I’m busy enough as it is. Mandy swears she wants one, but I really don’t think she has any idea how hard it’s gonna be, stuck at home. She lives to shop with her girlfriends, she likes her job. I was hoping this would scare her off the idea, like she’d get a little taste of domestic life, watching Ruthie run around after the kids with a baby stuck to her hip? But dang it, your kids are perfect, it’s all so perfect here. I don’t stand a chance, Abe.”
Abe clapped Fred on the shoulder. “Aw, c’mon, Fred, it’ll all work out. You two have got a great life.”
But even as he said it, the words sounded hollow to Abe. Poor Fred. Abe could no longer even imagine a life without kids. Not that he did much of the heavy lifting, and it wasn’t that he couldn’t imagine the freedom, because he largely still had that. Half the time, he wasn’t even home for dinner, and one or two nights a week, he arrived just in time for a victory lap before the kids went down, sitting Anne and Karen on his knee, regaling them with his exploits in town, slipping them nickels and dimes, before tucking them into bed.
Actually, Abe was acutely aware, not for the first time, of how easy Ruth made it to be a father and a man, and he was so grateful for her, and so grateful for the opportunity to support a family, to be depended upon. He couldn’t imagine life without kids. And that was all because of Ruth. He was a lucky son of a gun, Abe Winter.