In the ten years since Abe walked into Bainbridge Island Insurance and talked his way into a job, he’d been the cash cow of the agency. A few of the older agents had dropped out within six months of Abe’s arrival, and their replacements were hard-pressed to perform anywhere near Abe’s sales threshold. Not only had he virtually cornered the island market in full life, the game was changing, and Abe was ahead of it, offering PUAs and term riders to existing customers while stacking up big commissions not only for the benefit of himself and his family, but for Todd Hall and the agency, as well. Abe had also brought a lot of business lines into the mix at BII—commercial, auto, bank. In the meantime, through his tireless outreach and hustle, he’d made himself the face of the agency and a well-regarded figure in the community at large.
Abe’s Bainbridge Island Insurance Seagulls, coached by Dick Wyman, who once pitched in the Detroit Tigers farm system, were nothing less than a Little League dynasty, in their baby-blue pinstripes. They had the sharpest uniforms; and the best equipment, and old Dick even persuaded the twelve-year-olds to wear their hair short. Every Fourth of July and Scotch Broom Parade, Abe was near the front of the procession, usually riding shotgun in Bill Ostenson’s 1927 Model T roadster, waving at spectators, familiar faces many, pelting the kids with hard candy and Tootsie Rolls out the open convertible as they inched down Winslow Way, where midway through town Abe never failed to smile as they passed the Bainbridge Island Insurance Office, three doors down from the Winslow Clinic.
The first half of the 1960s had been very good to the Winters financially, as they’d been for much of America. The Winters were on their way to paying off the farm, they were stacking up savings, and Abe’s earnings provided an abundant life for his kids, one heavily complemented by Ruth’s tireless organization, guidance, and dependability at home. They were a good team, Abe and Ruth. Even as the country seemed to grow more divided, with reason and moderation on the wane, and discord and dissension on the rise, the status quo in doubt, the Winters endured and even thrived despite their differences.
Thanks chiefly to Abe, Bainbridge Island Insurance accumulated profits at a rate that had allowed Todd and Jean Hall to buy a vacation home on Lake Chelan and take a two-week vacation in Acapulco every February. Not to mention the powder-blue Caddy Todd drove to work when he wasn’t driving the Olds 98 convertible with its overhead valves and telescopic steering wheel. Abe, by contrast, was at the helm of a wood-paneled Country Squire wagon—in fairness, a choice he owed to his growing family more than his income.
Though Abe was living the good life, it wasn’t quite all that he’d yearned for when he’d decided the agent’s life was for him, back when he was an underwriter at Safeco, a few years removed from UW. Despite his prosperity, Abe was feeling a little stuck professionally.
Abe’s father used to say: “Unless you’re the lead dog on the team, the view never changes.”
The time had come for Abe to take the lead.
Todd Hall was pushing fifty-five, if he wasn’t already there. Todd’s own sales numbers had begun a steady decline the day Abe joined the agency, and yet, all these years later, his standard of living was still more extravagant than Abe’s. In fact, Todd had given up sales entirely three years prior to manage the agency exclusively, while Abe was still making him money hand over fist. Not that he begrudged Todd this bounty. After all, Todd had given him the opportunity in the first place. Todd had mentored Abe, though the latter had learned everything Todd had to teach him within a couple of years. And without Todd Hall, there would have been no farm, no life on Bainbridge Island, no growing savings account, no investment portfolio.
That said, if Abe bought Todd out (a big if), Abe would no longer have to split those commissions with anybody. Sure, he’d have a little overhead if he owned the agency, but he could make money a whole lot faster with a little more effort. And if Abe brought in younger, more savvy agents, he could make that nut with even less effort. The clincher was that such a transfer of ownership would be beneficial to Todd, as well.
“Think of it, buddy,” Abe said over lunch in the murky confines of the Tillicum Room in the rear of the Martinique, where Todd was enjoying a double MacNaughton on the rocks with his prime rib, and Abe a lime and soda with his lemon glazed chicken. “Be honest,” said Abe. “Twenty-five years in the game, right?”
“Twenty-seven,” said Todd. “But who’s counting?”
“You gotta be burnt, pal,” Abe said.
“To a crisp,” said Todd.
“You’re going to get out eventually, right? You gotta.”
“Eventually, yeah. That’s the plan,” said Todd.
“So, why wait?” Abe asked. “Let’s say I buy you out today on a ten-year contract at eight and a quarter percent. No more sweating it out with the applications, no more carrying the weight for the incompetent agents, no more phone calls, no sales work, no having to be anywhere or put out any fires. You can just sit by a pool or go hit a round of golf at Wing Point. Think of the time you’ll have with Jean. You can travel, go to Scotland, go to the Bahamas, go see the pyramids. And the beauty of it all, the real reason you ought to just jump now, is that you’ll be stacking up cash the entire time. Just imagine it: You shoot a dang birdie on the seventh hole, and you make a stack of cash at the same time. You’re finally reading War and Peace, but you’re doing it in sunglasses and swim trunks, and guess what? You just made three hundred bucks. How does that sound, Todd?”
“Keep talking,” said Todd.
Abe kept talking until halfway through Todd’s second MacNaughton, when Todd, by then mentally bronzed in swim trunks and well-read in the pre-revolutionary Russians, had no recourse but to sell the agency to Abe.
Once again, Abe had managed to talk his way up another rung of the ladder. In twenty years, he could take that final step and sell the agency, just as Todd had sold it to him. But in the meantime, he’d be lead dog, and the view would only get better and better.
While buying the agency may have been a financial coup, the wealth came at a cost, and what it cost Abe was time, and headaches, and never-ending responsibilities, not the least of which was pulling in new agents and training them. His first hire was a young man named Ted DeWitt, straight out of Central Washington University. Good-looking kid, great with the numbers and details, though not nearly as personable or charming as Abe would’ve liked. It was pretty clear that DeWitt wouldn’t last long in sales, but Abe needed bodies, and he was desperate to get some younger blood in the office. The island was getting younger, and Abe needed younger agents.
But not just anyone could sell insurance. It took a certain warmth and a knack for engendering trust; a firm (but not too firm) handshake; an ability to actively listen to the mind-numbingly prosaic concerns of the average consumer; a facility for modulating one’s voice—tone, timbre, volume—when the moment called for it. In short, it took a certain charisma. His fellow Kiwanian Jim Mathison, from the chamber of commerce, was a young man with a good deal of charisma and, Abe thought, a lot of promise going to waste.
“C’mon, Jim,” said Abe. “I’m telling you you’ve got the gift. I mean, Bainbridge Auto Freight? What even is that?”
“Well, Abe, maybe it’s not as glamorous as insurance sales, but it’s stable. I’ve got a three-year-old kid, and Kelly’s pregnant with number two. Now is hardly the time to change careers.”
Not only did Abe fail to recruit Jim Mathison, it would take him six years to sell Jim and Kelly a policy.
Owning the agency was a good deal more work than Abe had anticipated. Beyond staffing, Abe found himself overseeing the office in such detail that he was tasked with choosing between wallpaper swatches and office furniture when he wasn’t delegating, motivating, or educating the other agents, whose personal problems somehow became his personal problems, all while continuing to sell policies himself across all lines and remaining the face of the agency.
It wasn’t long before the added obligations began to take their toll on the home front. Where Abe used to arrive home late several nights a week, he hardly ever made it home for dinner anymore, instead eating takeout from the Lemon Tree at his desk, if he took dinner at all.
Ruth, having no doubt grown weary of his absence and all the responsibility that fell upon her with the kids and the property, seemed to grow distant as 1969 wore on. Abe’s attempts—albeit blundering—at intimacy were usually met with aloofness, or a strained enthusiasm when there was any at all. More and more, their dialogues seemed to focus on the kids or the farm, and rarely on their conditions or plans as husband and wife. At times theirs seemed to resemble a business partnership more than a marriage. Ruth lived her daily life, Abe lived his.
While nightly in bed, Abe expressed his curiosity about Ruth’s days, this curiosity was not reciprocal, as Ruth seemed to entertain little interest about his daily life. Abe could hardly blame her for being bored by the insurance racket, and maybe she’d heard it all before, but couldn’t she see what it meant for her and Annie, and Karen, and Kyle? Yes, it was hard work, but weren’t their lives full? For that, couldn’t Abe expect a little gratitude, a little indulgence in return, even if it was feigned?
Though Ruth professed to love her life on the farm when pressed, more often she seemed discontent, especially during the summer, when the kids were out of school, when she had less time to herself. She seemed restless during these months, as though she wanted to be somewhere else. It was true that Abe owed them all a vacation, and he was planning a trip to Arizona in the fall, even if it meant taking the kids out of school.
In addition to this gradual growing apart, the kids, particularly Anne, were taking a toll on their union. Quickly approaching her fourteenth birthday, Anne had finished eighth grade in less than commendable fashion, with plummeting grades and a burgeoning antisocial streak. She wanted nothing to do with her parents or her younger siblings. When she was home at all, Anne sequestered herself behind her bedroom door, sometimes with music, sometimes talking on the phone with a friend, the phone cord stretched to its limit from the hallway. But as often as not, Anne dwelled amidst conspicuous silence in her room, her thoughts and actions unknown to Abe or Ruth. The child was annoyed when summoned, irritable when questioned, and less than enthusiastic when forced to comply with anything. No cheerfulness could seem to arouse her spirits or stir her from her state of teenage torpor. Apathy seemed to be the rule with Anne in those days. Given every opportunity to thrive, given a beautiful home, and good schools, and a reliable moral compass, that any child of Abe’s should entertain indifference was unacceptable.
How to handle Anne’s behavior provided yet another point of contention for Abe and Ruth. Over and over, their ideological differences clashed, whether it was Ruth’s flaky politics, or her lax parenting, or her willful naivety regarding certain inconvenient realities of the world.
“It’s those kids she’s hanging out with,” insisted Abe. “The Carlson girl, Gus Fromm’s kid, the Dolinger boy. They’re bad influences. The loud music, the scraggly hair, the torn jeans, the antiestablishment crap. You know what the Carlson girl and—”
“Kari,” said Ruth. “Her name is Kari.”
“Well, you know what Kari and Fromm’s daughter—”
“Melissa,” said Ruth.
“Well, you know what those two have in common? They’re older than Annie. Worse, they’ve both got older siblings. Gus’s got an eighteen-year-old son that wants to burn American flags.”
“His name is Steven.”
“I don’t care what his name is, it’s all bad news. The Dolinger boy smokes cigarettes, I’ve seen him out back of the bowling alley. And the older Carlson girl is apparently some kind of feminist agitator in Berkeley now. What are these kids up in arms about, anyway? They’ve got a great way of life, thanks to the grit of their forebears; they’re secure; they’ve got good futures in front of them. They’re insured. The young Blacks, the Latins, now, that I can understand—they’ve got a legitimate beef. But Gus Fromm’s kid? C’mon, Annie, they’re just malcontents, spoiled brats playing at being adults.”
“This isn’t about anybody else’s kids, Abe. This is about Anne. You’ve got to understand, it’s hormones,” Ruth said. “Anne’s got a good head on her shoulders, it’s just a hard time for her right now, she’s going through a lot.”
“Like what? What’s so hard about going to school and pulling Cs and living on a farm? We should have grounded her after last semester when she started getting Bs. We should’ve kept making her go to church on Sunday.”
“You don’t go,” Ruth observed.
“That’s different,” he said. “The point is, we’re not holding her accountable, plain and simple.”
“Abe, she needs to learn to account for herself, don’t you see?”
“I don’t really see it that way, Ruth. I think you’re taking a very laissez-faire attitude about all of this. I think Annie needs guidance, structure, some rules. What I don’t think she needs is to be running around with kids that are two grades ahead of her.”
“She’s precocious, Abe. Where are they gonna run around, anyway? It’s Bainbridge Island. It’s not like they’re going to get tied up in some criminal underworld.”
“You watch,” warned Abe. “Pretty soon, Anne will start infecting Karen. After all, Karen looks up to Anne. What kind of example is her older sister setting for her by dating troublemakers?”
“She’s not dating anyone,” insisted Ruth. “If you’re talking about Jeff Kleist, he’s just a friend. They’ve been classmates since second grade. They got through algebra together. Abe, you’re blowing this all out of proportion. Anne will be fine. Karen will be fine. Kyle will be fine. Just let them get through these awkward years.”
What about us? That’s what Abe wanted to ask. Would they be fine? What could Abe do to reinvigorate their marriage? What could he do to be a better husband, when he was already doing the best he knew how?
Though she invariably defended Anne’s recent behavior, Ruth found it almost as vexing as Abe did. After all, what had Ruth ever done but nurture and indulge Anne, guide her, comfort her, support her, even when that meant giving her some space, like the last six months that she’d spent locked away in secrecy? In return, Ruth’s efforts were greeted with sullenness and resentment, and a snotty brand of semi-cooperation when she got any at all. As the eldest sibling, Anne had always proved helpful with Karen or Kyle, whether it was occupying them on Ruth’s behalf, persuading them, or, as Abe had alluded to, guiding them by example. Well, not anymore. Anne was all about Anne these days. She could no longer be bothered by Karen or Kyle, no matter how much they idolized her and studied her every move.
“Ugh,” she would say. “Can you please tell them to leave me alone?” or “Why does Karen have to come?” or “Can’t they use the other bathroom? It’s so annoying!”
Moreover, Anne refused to go to church anymore.
“You said I could decide for myself when I was old enough,” Anne said. “Well, I’m old enough. Tell God not to take it personally. You shouldn’t, either.”
Anne might have been pregnant or suicidal for all Ruth knew. It didn’t matter how Ruth tried to elicit information about the girl’s life. She was anything but forthright around the dinner table, fielding Ruth’s frequent queries with offhanded yeses and nos and I don’t knows, if Ruth was lucky enough to get that much. Mostly, Anne’s communications consisted of grunts or sighs or eye rolls.
Then there was Abe, stellar provider but absentee husband and father. For all his child-rearing philosophies and his contempt for Ruth’s own, he sure didn’t practice parenting much. An occasional game of catch with Kyle on a Saturday, a lame insurance joke for Karen’s benefit (What’s the difference between an actuary and an accountant?), or an occasional admonishment or directive, usually directed in anger at teenage Anne. Never mind that Ruth had the best appliances and ample resources at her disposal. Children weren’t something to be bought, they weren’t domestic chores to be executed like laundry or errands, children were needy, complicated, hormonal souls who no matter their age existed in a state of perpetual transition, and transitions were always tough. Ruth could have used some help in the parenting department.
As for the state of their marriage, by 1969 it seemed that Ruth and Abe had little in common anymore, so little that Ruth was frequently forced to wonder if they ever really had. She’d always believed that despite their differing worldviews and polarized opinions, they shared the same values at the end of the day. But what were those values, exactly, if not family?
With Abe AWOL and Anne no longer her helper and friend, Ruth dwelled in a state of isolation on the farm, not unlike the Roanoke days, when she was left to dirty diapers and playground picnics, with no adult company all day long. Her dealings outside the farm were largely transactional. After Mandy and Fred had divorced three years prior, loyalties had proven tricky, and Ruth spoke to Mandy less and less until she hadn’t spoken to her in over a year. Thank heavens for Bess Delory, her wit, and wisdom, and companionship.
“It’s not you, honey, trust me,” Bess assured her as the two women kneeled side by side weeding Ruth’s flower beds. “There’s only two things you can do to get a man’s attention after fifteen years of marriage. The first is dent the car. And the second takes about four minutes. What you need is more projects, Ruthie.”
“Look around you,” said Ruth. “I’ve got the garden, the orchard, the chickens, a pond that needs dredging.”
“What about a greenhouse?”
“For what?”
“Tomatoes, chili peppers, herbs, you name it,” said Bess. “Honey, you could grow orchids in a greenhouse.”
Bess was right; the busier Ruth kept herself, the healthier her mindset. The more tasks Ruth could devote herself to, particularly tasks that served to gratify her sense of creative purpose or independence, the happier she was likely to be.
The trouble began with a visit to Island Gardens on Winslow Way, where, seeking guidance for her new greenhouse, Ruth was referred to a contractor and master gardener on the north end of the island named Leonard Haruto, a young widower specializing in greenhouses. Ruth contacted Haruto by telephone, and they scheduled a consultation at the farm, where Ruth had already staked out a flat building site for the structure.
Leonard Haruto arrived the following Wednesday in an old red pickup truck, scrupulously maintained, with Haruto Design emblazoned on both doors. He hopped out of the driver’s seat nimbly, clutching a clipboard in his right hand. Framed by medium-length dark hair, his smiling face was open and perfectly symmetrical, a countenance that engendered trust almost immediately.
After they’d exchanged pleasantries, Ruth led Haruto to the back of the house.
“A beautiful garden,” he observed on their way past the neat rows of raised beds, lettuce, spinach, fennel, and mustard greens, then past the brimming flower garden. “Your canna lilies are impressive,” said Leonard. “I wish mine looked that good. Not enough sun at my place.”
Nor did Ruth’s hydrangeas or lilacs escape Leonard Haruto’s keen eye.
“You’ve maintained those hydrangeas well,” he said.
Ruth could feel herself blushing at the compliment and found herself simultaneously annoyed when Karen cut them off in front of the building site.
“Is it really gonna be that big?” she said.
“Go back up to the house, honey,” said Ruth. “Mr. Haruto and I are talking about business things.”
Leonard Haruto was not a large man, nor was he powerfully built, but he carried himself with noble grace. Clearly, he was athletic, and strong despite his slight frame, which could be seen in the sinew of his lean arms. But what attracted Ruth most to Haruto, when she considered him alongside big lumbering Abe, was an almost feminine aspect, not only in the effortless grace of his comportment but in his unapologetic passion for gardening.
For the better part of a decade on the farm, Abe had never even noticed Ruth’s hydrangeas or lilacs, let alone noted the way she fussed over them, fighting back the shade-making menace of cedar limbs so that her lilacs could receive proper sun, deadheading her hydrangeas every winter so that next year’s blooms could flourish. Haruto noticed all of this, acknowledging the care and expertise that Ruth poured into her garden. Regarding the orchard, however, Leonard was a little less complimentary.
“Good trees, but you’re pruning the stone fruit too early in the year. Wait until late summer, you’ll get a higher yield.”
Expense was not an issue for Ruth where the greenhouse was concerned. Abe was not cheap in that respect. Whatever the greenhouse cost, he would be willing to pay. She suspected this sort of financial latitude on the part of an otherwise fiscally responsible Abe was owing to vanity. Abe liked to see his money put to use in ways that he could easily admire. Despite this lack of budget restraints, Haruto was conscientious enough to talk Ruth’s twelve-by-thirty footprint down to ten by sixteen.
“It’s too big, you won’t require that much space for your purposes,” he insisted. “Besides, it’ll cost you a fortune to heat in winter if you’re planning on exotics.”
Ruth found herself more than willing to defer to Leonard Haruto on this or any other gardening matter. She was awed by his knowledge and equally compelled by his gentle, easy confidence as he imparted it. How thrilling it was to discuss something besides term life insurance or school calendars.
It took the better part of two weeks to construct the greenhouse from the concrete slab up, Haruto working five days a week, arriving at nine a.m. and leaving in the afternoon. The first few days, Ruth left Leonard to his work as he marked the area, dug the foundation, built the forms, and finally poured the concrete and raked it smooth and perfectly flat. Occasionally, she peered out the window to admire Leonard’s progress and the methodical way he went about his work: sure, precise, but unhurried. There was a certain poetry to it. Rather than throw himself at the job, he let the work come to him.
By the third afternoon, Ruth began bringing Leonard pitchers of water and sandwiches, lingering at the construction site as he partook of them. Each day, their familiarity grew. Ruth shooed Kyle and Karen off when they dared interrupt her conversations with Leonard. They were the most stimulating conversations Ruth had engaged in since college, lively, and thoughtful, and unpredictable. With Leonard, she spoke of gardening and island life, and places they’d seen, though neither of them had strayed beyond the Pacific Northwest. And to Ruth’s delight, they even talked about poetry. It was clear that Leonard could apprehend poetry in a way that Abe was never able to.
“Real poetry is to live a beautiful life,” he told her, taking a measurement.
“That’s a beautiful thought,” said Ruth.
“It is not mine,” said Leonard. “It’s Bashō’s.”
“Bashō!” said Ruth. “How well I remember him from college! ‘Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.’ ”
“Indeed,” said Leonard. “The true flowers.”
“Where did you learn Bashō?” Ruth said.
Leonard averted his eyes to the measuring tape, as though the question embarrassed him. “From Atsuko’s mother.”
“Atsuko?”
“Atsuko was my wife.”
For three days, every glance at Leonard’s ring finger had served as a reminder to Ruth of the underlying sadness in Leonard’s placid demeanor, though this was the first time he’d made any reference to his wife. Ruth understood that it was not an invitation to delve further into the subject, but she could not resist her curiosity.
“What was she like?”
“My mother-in-law? She was formidable. She was only four foot ten, but she—”
“No, Atsuko,” said Ruth, who felt the blood rushing to her face. Was it rude to make such an inquiry, especially with such keen interest?
Again, Leonard’s eyes sought refuge in his tasks. “Atsuko was…also formidable,” said Leonard. “But in a quieter way.”
Here, Leonard offered nothing further, whether because he believed this characterization to be sufficiently informative or, more likely, because he wished to speak no further of Atsuko. But Ruth could not help herself.
“By formidable, you mean…?”
Leonard considered, eyes still on his work.
“Confident,” he said. “Determined. Strong. Everything I wasn’t.”
With this, Leonard fell silent once more as he set to mounting a bracket, which Ruth took as a wordless appeal to jettison the topic. Yet it took considerable restraint to abandon her line of questioning. For Ruth felt she had to know. She was less interested in Atsuko’s passing and more in her living embodiment: Was she beautiful? Was she bright? How had they first met? And how was it that Leonard’s loss, or, more precisely, his endurance in the face of such privation, rendered him so hopelessly compelling to Ruth? It was as though she was trying to convince herself that her attraction to Leonard was rooted in her pity for him, and that this sympathy allowed her to entertain an otherwise indiscreet impulse.
As the days wore on and Ruth’s interest grew keener still, Leonard Haruto seemed largely oblivious of her admiration. When the work was completed, Ruth couldn’t bear to see her new companion go. Thus, she extended Leonard’s employment, not as a contractor but as a gardening consultant. Leonard would oversee the setup and the stocking of the greenhouse, help her select her exotics, educate her in their care and maintenance. In this capacity, Leonard returned to the farm on a half dozen occasions. Ruth savored every moment. How wonderful it was to be learning things again! Despite his vocation as a builder, Leonard had small, soft hands that fascinated Ruth with their facility as he turned the soil between his fingers or dexterously demonstrated how to prune her hibiscus.
Though it had never been her intention, Ruth became bolder in initiating little intimacies with Leonard, grazing shoulders and hands as they worked side by side in the greenhouse. To feel his body so close was to recall an exhilaration she had not known in ages, had in fact never quite known with Abe, about whom she’d entertained reservations from the moment she met him, moral, ideological, and, yes, physical. His bearish embrace, his big, clumsy fingers, his impatience to consummate the act of intimacy, as if it were a job to be completed. Whereas Leonard was a portrait of physical patience, shy in engaging, a state quite likely owing to his sense of decorum and the fact that Ruth was a married woman, but Ruth didn’t care. Daily, she pushed Leonard closer to the precipice until finally, one afternoon in the greenhouse, Leonard relented, if only reluctantly, acquiescing to Ruth’s advances as she all but trapped him in a corner, her heart thumping like a kettle drum.
Ruth and Haruto had been in their embrace less than five seconds when Anne walked through the greenhouse door, interrupting them.
Ruth pulled away instantly from Leonard, who averted his eyes as Anne fled the scene.
Visibly bewildered and presumably racked with guilt, Leonard still could not take his eyes off his shoe tops as he attempted a response.
“I…”
“Go,” said Ruth. “Please.”
Leonard Haruto took leave of the farm immediately, his red truck trailing a cloud of dust as it disappeared up the long driveway.
When Ruth caught up to Anne in the kitchen, she sent Karen and Kyle outside to play.
“But a few minutes ago, you told us to play inside,” Karen observed.
“Do as you’re told, young lady,” said Ruth, ashamed of her scolding tone.
Not until Karen and Kyle were safely outside and out of earshot did Ruth dare to speak.
“What happened out there…it was—”
“I saw what it was,” said Anne. “I don’t want to know any more than that.”
“It was only—”
“I don’t care, Mom,” Anne said, her tone venomous. “Really, I don’t even want to know. That’s between you and Dad.”
And those were the last words Anne ever said on the matter. For the five remaining weeks of summer, Ruth’s indiscretion with Leonard Haruto remained Anne and Ruth’s secret, a knowledge that passed surreptitiously between them in the most fleeting of glances, always with a nagging knowledge on Ruth’s part that whether Anne had any intention, or was even capable, of exercising it, she held massive leverage over Ruth, until that intolerable fact became her oppressor and, coupled with her own guilt, compelled Ruth to come clean with Abe, a confession sure to subject their marriage to the biggest test yet.
She disclosed her trespass as they lay in bed, about the only place they ever spoke at any length anymore. Expecting the worst, Ruth could scarcely believe it when Abe took the news calmly, almost matter-of-factly.
“Who else knows about this?” he said.
“Nobody,” lied Ruth.
“Good,” he said. “This can’t get out, do you understand? And that means not telling Bess, either.”
“Of course not,” said Ruth. “I understand.”
That his biggest concern was running damage control was not only shocking but disappointing.
“This Leonard, how do you know he won’t go blabbing all over town?” Abe said.
“I just know,” she said. “It’s not his nature.”
“Hmph, his nature,” said Abe. “I’m supposed to trust a man who fools around with a married woman?”
“I initiated it,” said Ruth. “He didn’t want to. He tried to—”
“Stop!” said Abe. “I don’t want to hear another word. Why tell me at all if you’re the only ones who know? Why not just pretend it never happened?”
“Because I owe you the truth. It was in our vows,” said Ruth. “I’m telling you because I have to be accountable for my actions before either of us can forgive me.”
Abe frowned, brow deeply furrowed, staring holes into the dresser opposite the bed.
“If you can forgive me,” Ruth said.
Abe lingered in a deep silence, the duration of which was unnerving to Ruth, who was hanging on his next syllable. But it never came. Instead, Abe snapped off the lamp without another word, pulled the covers over him, and rolled away from her in bed.
Was it over? Had she been forgiven?
That Abe could absorb this news and make so little ado, that he would greet it with so little anger, or disillusionment, or even surprise, was almost enough to make Ruth want to jump in the car and drive to Leonard Haruto’s house and fall into his arms. Lying there stiffly next to Abe in bed, it occurred to Ruth that he might indeed have taken the news harder if she’d dented the car instead of making a cuckold of him. But later that night, she felt him tossing wakefully beside her for hours, until he finally got out of bed, stepped into his slippers, and retreated to the kitchen.
After a moment, Ruth crept down the hallway after Abe and peered around the corner into the kitchen, unbeknownst to him. He was sitting at the breakfast table, clutching a glass of milk, head bowed, tears streaming down his face.
Ruth knew better than to try to comfort him, which would only exacerbate the wound to his pride, so she left him there with his grief and returned to bed, where she lay awake half the night.