That Ruth’s indiscretion had only been a kiss, that the event had been isolated rather than serialized, and that she had not consummated her amour with Leonard Haruto was of little consolation to Abe. Nor did the fact that he’d never entertained such treachery himself serve as fuel for his hostility. Abe’s misgivings were mostly with himself following the affair, if it could be called one. He began to wonder—at his desk, in the car, standing at the register at Winslow Drugs—whether he hadn’t permitted or even encouraged Ruth’s disloyalty. Perhaps the deficit in their marriage was owing not to Ruth’s nature, which had never shown itself to be duplicitous, but to his own failings as a husband and lover? Whatever need had inclined Ruth toward such recklessness, it must have been an imperative that Abe had been unable or unwilling to fulfill.
Self-pity dogged Abe for weeks, a wistful awareness that despite all his efforts, he was not enough. Doubt was his constant companion as he executed a thorough inventory of his failures. Though he’d worked hard to provide for his wife and family; striven relentlessly to serve as a model husband; kept Ruth’s photograph on his desktop for all to see at the office; brought flowers and candy when custom prescribed (birthdays, anniversaries, insensitive remarks); indulged her interests, from chickens to gardens to greenhouses, with little regard to expense; endured the naivety and misguided good intentions of her politics—none of it had been enough. Leonard Haruto, this gardener and handyman, had offered Ruth something that Abe could not. But what?
This sense that he was lacking despite his every effort hectored Abe from the time he took his first sip of morning coffee in the kitchen, not six feet from Ruth, whose manner remained one of sheepish acquiescence in the weeks following her confession, until his final waking moments of the day as he lay beside her in bed, close enough to feel her warmth, yet miles away. Abe almost relished his own vulnerability as one might derive gratification from an achy bruise, begging to be touched. Poor, jilted Abe, not good enough despite his noble efforts.
It took weeks for this pitiful melancholy to harden into something resembling outrage. How could she? The ingratitude! He’d busted his tail to provide a life for Ruth. Hell, he’d essentially moved to Bainbridge Island for her. Abe was no farmer, but he’d bought a farm for Ruth, because he knew she would take to the lifestyle. And she did. She loved her gardening and her hens, she loved reaping the fruits of her labors. She never lacked for anything so far as Abe could see. He provided all of it for her, and his thank-you was Leonard Haruto?
But Abe did not act upon his anger. Instead, like it was a candle, he let his indignation burn down gradually of its own accord. Not that he didn’t go out of his way to make Ruth suffer. While he may not have visited his anger on Ruth explicitly, he tortured her with his inaccessibility and seeming indifference. It was almost as if he was daring Ruth to seek fulfillment elsewhere, as if in his passivity he was offering her a choice: Keep your bucolic life on the farm with your healthy, good-looking children, your fresh eggs and flowers and pears, your husband willing to foot the bill for your fancies (even if he did not share them), willing to work overtime so that there would always be more than enough for you and your children (unlike your own impoverished childhood), or walk away from all of it, leave it behind and run to Leonard Haruto.
Abe reasoned that Ruth needed him. So, he bet on himself, which meant forcing Ruth to take the lead in their reconciliation, to recognize and acknowledge that what she had so recklessly jeopardized was a life that many would aspire to. It was up to Ruth to win Abe back.
More than anyone, Anne may have inadvertently encouraged their marital accord by presenting them with a common adversary, a challenge that required Abe and Ruth to maintain an uneasy alliance as parents, if nothing else.
“What is she rebelling against? That’s what I want to know,” said Abe, pacing the living room floor, impelled by Anne’s most recent display of audacity, her refusal to man the Bainbridge Island Insurance booth and hand out leaflets during the Rotary auction, a vocation she considered beneath her dignity. No way, Dad. I’m not a puppet for the establishment!
“We can’t take it personally,” Ruth insisted.
“Well, we’re the ones that have to live with her, so how else are we supposed to take it?”
“It’s not just Anne, Abe. It’s all of them, her friends. It might be her whole generation, the way things are looking.”
“Baloney!” said Abe. “I see plenty of decent kids out there, and a lot of them are serving their country.”
“She’s fourteen years old,” said Ruth.
“Exactly,” said Abe. “So, why does she get to hold us hostage? She’s begging me to teach her how to drive; how am I supposed to trust her with the station wagon? She doesn’t work, doesn’t contribute anything to the household, all she does is defy us. These kids crap on everything we’ve granted them with our hard work, and yet, look at them: They’re lazy, permissive, and for all their complaining about the status quo, they don’t offer any solutions—just slogans and hair, grubby jeans and guitars. You know what she said the other day? She said America is soulless, it’s all about suppression and commercialism. Where does she even get this stuff?”
“She’s not entirely wrong, you know,” said Ruth.
“Good heavens,” said Abe. “Not you, too? Go ask some kid in China about suppression. Just how the hell has America suppressed our lovely daughter? She lacks for nothing!”
“I think it’s about more than her,” said Ruth.
But unwilling to listen, Abe waved the idea off. “I just hope to God she outgrows it,” he said. “And that it doesn’t infect Karen.”
“It’s not a disease,” said Ruth.
“We’ll see about that,” said Abe.
Despite their philosophical differences, abetted by habit and necessity, Abe and Ruth gradually achieved equilibrium once more. Three months after the fact, Abe made his amends with Ruth in the station wagon. Anne was babysitting Karen and Kyle, and Abe had surprised Ruth with a rare night out, dinner at the Martinique.
“I can see things from your perspective now,” he said, his eyes on the road as they drove south in the spitting rain, stands of fir on one side, sodden farmland on the other. “I dragged you out here to this island, away from your coffeehouses and museums and all the things you cherished about the city, then I just left you here by yourself with the kids to hold it all together, thinking I was doing you a favor. I wasn’t here for you enough, and I’m sorry. You never asked for any of this.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But you were right to think you were doing me a favor. It’s a beautiful life here, one I didn’t see for myself, and I love it, I truly do. Then you got busy. And I understood. But the longer you stayed busy, the harder it was to understand. We already had everything we needed, but still you were gone all the time. I began to feel invisible.”
“I’m sorry,” said Abe.
“It’s no excuse,” said Ruth. “I might have said something, I should have pushed you harder, I could’ve expressed my needs instead of expecting you to intuit them.”
“I should have intuited them,” he said. “I’m your husband.”
“It’s still no excuse,” said Ruth.
They deferred to silence for a moment, Ruth gazing out the side window at the fields.
“I think we understand each other better now,” she said.
Among the few dining options in town, the Martinique was Ruth’s preferred destination, and thus had become Abe’s default preference. It wasn’t that the Martinique’s Parisian fare exceeded Abe’s expectation that particular evening, for he knew exactly what to expect from his boeuf bourguignon (too rich, too heavy, undercooked), it was the company that surprised. Ruth was effervescent. It was as though some obstacle, having stood between them, obscuring their view of one another, had been suddenly removed and they could see each other as never before. Ruth was her lively old self, but something more, as if she’d actually grown beyond what she’d once aspired to be. She was engaged, curious, optimistic; she seemed to laugh more freely, even at Abe’s lame jokes. Maybe he ought to buy Leonard Haruto a thank-you card for his trouble. Whatever that flirtation amounted to, it seemed to have unlocked something in his wife.
In a rather rare display of intemperance, they finished a bottle of chardonnay between them, and a glass of Pernod, thus Abe and Ruth were both tipsy when they arrived home to find Kyle and Karen in front of the television, and Anne where else but in her room, the strains of some husky-voiced rock ’n’ roller audible through the closed door.
“Lights off at ten,” said Abe.
“Don’t forget to brush your teeth,” said Ruth as they walked past them into the bedroom, where they wasted little time removing their clothes and turning off the lamp.
No sooner did they lie side by side in the darkness than Abe felt the warmth of Ruth’s hand on his chest, slowly working its way down his torso, and soon his blood was rushing in the same direction.
“I’m late,” Ruth said as she topped off Abe’s coffee at the kitchen table, where Abe’s face was buried in the Post-Intelligencer, a paper he still read begrudgingly every morning despite having almost canceled his subscription after their endorsement of Jack Kennedy nearly a decade ago.
“Late for what?” he said.
“That’s what you said the first time,” said Ruth.
Abe lowered the PI slowly as the reality dawned on him. Ruth could almost hear his thoughts: Another child? Now? All these years later? He could hardly stand the other three at this point.
“That’s great,” he said. “Right? I mean, isn’t it? We’ve got the room. We make great kids.”
Even less certain than Abe, Ruth leaned into these assurances. “At least we know what to expect by now,” said Ruth.
“Oh, boy, do we,” said Abe, setting his paper aside to reach for Ruth’s hand. When he had hold of it, he pulled her in close, slapping her playfully on the backside with his free hand.
“I suppose I better give Mitsu Nakata a call,” she said, pulling away from him.
Ultimately, the pregnancy, unplanned and previously unwanted, served to galvanize their marriage. After years of growing apart, Abe and Ruth were collaborating once more on a mutual project: Theodore, if it was a boy, or Madeline, if it was a girl.
At twelve weeks, they resolved to tell the kids, who had failed to notice the slight change in their mother’s abdomen. They gathered them in the living room after dinner one evening, a feat that required no small amount of finagling, and in the case of Anne, a legitimate threat to her precious sovereignty.
“Ugh,” said Anne upon hearing the announcement.
“Is this a joke?” said Karen.
“No,” said Ruth.
“As if it’s not chaotic enough around here,” said Anne. “It’s impossible to get any privacy as it is.”
“I don’t want a little brother,” said Kyle.
“Well,” said Abe, “then you better hope it’s a girl.”
“I want a little sister even less, I’m already outnumbered.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, buddy.”
In the meantime, it seemed that Ruth’s impropriety with Leonard Haruto, or more precisely its resolution, had continued to pay dividends for their marriage. How else could she explain that Abe was more present than ever before with this pregnancy, not just physically but emotionally? For the first time in over fifteen years of marriage, Abe began to express a tenderness hitherto unknown, little flourishes of affection—a peck on the cheek in passing, a brief shoulder rub at the breakfast table, the occasional foot massage in the evening. He was more attentive to Ruth, anticipating her needs and considering her comfort as never before. He brought her tea in the evenings when she was sprawled on the sofa with her legs splayed, her inner thighs sweating, her collapsed arches aching. Though she deemed herself unsightly, already bigger and more cumbersome in her second trimester than she’d ever been in her third, Abe professed to admire her shape. Despite her condition, their couplings became more frequent and more ardent. Had it been possible to impregnate Ruth twice, Abe almost certainly would have succeeded in the endeavor.
The baby was born in August of 1970. Ten years after she’d helped steward Kyle into the world, Mitsu Nakata delivered the baby in the living room of the farmhouse. She was a Madeline, not a Theodore, a designation promptly shortened to Maddie. Eight pounds, nine ounces, ostensibly healthy, with good color and a formidable set of lungs.
Everything was different with Maddie from the start. It wasn’t just Abe. Now, with the benefit of an additional decade of experience and maturity, Ruth found herself more composed in the face of the inevitable difficulties presented by child-rearing. Now that she could foresee problems and anticipate the infant’s needs more proficiently, momentary setbacks did not devolve so quickly into calamities, and calmness usually prevailed. Where she had always taken the lead with Anne and Karen and Kyle, Ruth allowed Maddie to soothe herself, which she always did eventually. Sometimes that meant letting her cry for a few minutes while she packed Kyle’s lunch or scratched out a grocery list.
Abe was more attentive to Maddie than he’d been with the other three infants. He held her more and looked more comfortable doing so. Like Ruth, he no longer panicked at the first sign of trouble and, as often as not, was able to finesse Maddie himself rather than handing her off to Ruth.
Though their lives returned to relative normalcy, it was impossible to avoid the lingering specter of Leonard Haruto on an island as small as Bainbridge. Surely, Abe must have seen Leonard piloting his red truck down Winslow Way past Bainbridge Island Insurance, his name embellishing the door like a taunt. Ruth could not imagine what that must have been like for Abe.
It was only by sheer diligence that Ruth managed to avoid run-ins with Leonard. When in town, she remained ever awake to the possibility that Leonard might be mailing a letter, or popping into T&C for a carton of eggs, or doing business at Bainbridge Gardens. On several such occasions, she’d spotted Leonard before he saw her and, dodging into the canned vegetable aisle or behind a pallet of fertilizer, had managed to escape his notice. But such contingencies were unsustainable. A reunion was unavoidable.
Of all places, it came to pass at the dump on a Saturday afternoon, where Ruth was purging the farm of four Hefty bags bursting with busted and cast-off toys, puzzles with missing pieces, broken mixers, mateless socks, cracked baby bottles, curlers, combs with broken teeth, dried-up jars of wood glue, and all manner of household detritus.
Both Ruth and Leonard pretended not to see each other at the pay station, a charade that proved untenable once Leonard backed his red truck full of scrap wood right next to the station wagon. Their eyes crossed fleetingly before Leonard diverted his attention to the bed of his truck as he slipped into a pair of leather gloves. The thought that Leonard Haruto should feel shame for an unwanted transaction he was all but powerless to stop had troubled Ruth for a year. Bad enough to have injured her husband; she had also wronged Leonard by assaulting him in the greenhouse.
Side by side like strangers at the edge of the landfill, heaving their refuse into the abyss, Ruth could no longer endure the silence. She turned to Leonard Haruto and looked at him until she managed to hold his gaze.
“I owe you an apology,” she said.
Sometimes all it took was an acknowledgment, for that simple apology helped Ruth close the door on Leonard Haruto, once and for all. It should have come as a relief. So why, on the drive home, did Ruth find her spirits flagging? Was it because her life began to feel like a series of closing doors, eschewing one possibility after another? Was it because she saw a future where fewer and fewer doors would open for her, a future where her appetites, and yearnings, and aspirations—romance, poetry, Paris—would one by one be left out in the cold? Or was it something else?
When Ruth arrived back at the farm in the afternoon, she hesitated on the front porch. She had yet to open the door, and already she could hear the kettle screeching, the TV blaring, and the baby wailing over the thrum of rock ’n’ roll music from behind the closed door of Anne’s bedroom. Ruth lingered a moment to gather resolve, a little prayer upon her lips:
Dear God, please give me the strength to get through this day.