Mary’s imminent empty-nest status was magnified by the deaths of her parents in a one-car accident on the Monday after Easter. Fred and Loretta Stark were driving home from a doctor’s appointment and apparently lost control of the vehicle. It plunged off an overpass.
The event triggered additional guilt-ridden flashbacks to the poisoning of her dog in Moscow, all churned up and confused even more by Rusalka’s insistence that the Russians were not responsible: “Oh, no, darling. KGB is ruthless, yes, but Russians never poison French poodle.”
Rob was the last one to see Fred and Loretta alive. After the Easter meal at the Wangert’s, Grandpa Fred asked Rob to help with some gutter-cleaning, a task easily hired out. Fred insisted on doing the job, despite the infirmities of old age.
Anthony and Duncan flew home together for the funeral. Anthony wanted to take the train, out of respect for Grandpa Fred’s favorite form of travel, but trains no longer ran to Indianapolis.
During the flight, Duncan watched Anthony intently compose a eulogy. He cited Loretta’s familiar adages: “In every marriage there is a flower and a gardener.” He tried to soften Grandpa Fred’s reputation as a tight-fisted curmudgeon with the story of his annual twenty dollar donation to the Retired Brakemen’s Foundation.
Ward and Rob picked them up at the airport. It was unseasonably warm. Duncan immediately noted Mary’s absence. “Where’s Mom?” he asked. “She always comes to the airport.”
“Working on funeral arrangements,” Ward said, “She’s not doing well.”
Rob added, “It’s not that she’s all crying and devastated, but something’s wrong. It’s like she’s in a daze.”
Ward said, “Let’s try to make this weekend as smooth as possible for her.”
The ride together from the airport afforded the boys’ club some time for a powwow. Ward pretended to be stuck in left lane traffic and missed the 38th Street exit, forcing a longer route home.
“What do you mean, Mom’s in a daze?” Duncan asked.
Rob explained, “She goes over to Grandpa’s house to organize things, and I’ll show up a couple hours later and find her just sitting at the kitchen table, doing nothing.”
“Mom never does just nothing,” Anthony said.
“That’s his point,” Duncan said.
Trying to think long term, Anthony suggested, “Maybe it would be good for Mom to have Rob home for another year.”
“Easy for you to say,” Rob spouted. “Shit, I knew something like this would happen.”
“Careful now,” Ward admonished. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”
Anthony said, “Maybe I should think about not going to Yale next year. I could live at home and go to Butler.”
“Mary would be glad to know there’s such a level of concern for her,” Ward said. “This is just what they call a ‘shock phase.’ ”
Duncan jumped in with, “What about Grandpa Fred’s car accident? Was it raining or was there ice or what?”
“Nobody knows,” Ward answered. “I mean, no, it was not raining and there was no ice. They were driving Loretta’s pickup. Fred’s Dart was in the shop.”
“That means Loretta was driving.”
“Not necessarily.”
Rob groaned and added, “One of the policeman thought he, or she, might have done it intentionally.”
Now it was Anthony’s turn to spout reactively, “What an idiot! Why would he say something like that?”
“Flying off the overpass, it sort of recreated Robert’s plane crash,” Duncan observed.
“You know how Fred hated getting old,” Rob said. “And they’d just come from a doctor’s appointment where Grandma got some bad news about her diabetes.”
“The doctor brought up the possibility of a leg amputation,” Ward said. “She wouldn’t have been able to work in her garden.”
Duncan speculated, “She didn’t like getting old either. Who knows, maybe Grandma grabbed the wheel.”
“SHUT UP!” Anthony yelled. “Just shut the hell up!”
Father Tyler officiated at the funeral, and borrowing some of Anthony’s anecdotes, made Fred and Loretta Stark seem like pioneers of yore.
Rusalka provided Mary with Valium. It was not a large event. Some of Fred’s co-workers from the city transportation department showed up, and a few of the neighbors from Hickory Street. Anthony delivered his eulogy, which brought everyone to tears. Mary went through the motions. She felt grateful for her sons and husband, who took turns grasping her elbow and holding her hymnal and offering her tissue. She maintained control for most of the reception. Until a tall, black woman in a cape appeared in the receiving line.
Grief has a way of seizing on random triggers for expression. The woman said, “Hello, Mary Stark.” And Mary promptly collapsed onto her shoulder. Rusalka and the boys hurried to her side.
Across the room, Father Tyler grabbed Ward’s sleeve to hold him back. Paul whispered, “Let this happen. That’s Ruby Ashberry, a childhood friend of Mary’s. Ruby and I have been meeting on other matters, and she mentioned growing up with Mary, so I urged her to come today.”
“This is my crossing-guard captain.” Mary blubbered, by way of explanation. “I almost didn’t recognize you, Ruby,” she said, “especially with those hoop earrings.”
“You and I go back—way before earrings,” Ruby said.
The crossing-guard captain introduced herself to the family. For such a tall person, she had a small, delicate voice. “Ruby Ashberry. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“How did you know about it?” Mary sobbed.
Ruby answered, “Oh, we all read the obituaries now, don’t we? I used to stop in on your parents occasionally to say hello and get news of you.”
“I should have stayed in touch,” Mary said. “You’re even more beautiful, if that’s possible, with your hair cut short.”
“Thank you, baby,” Ruby replied. She smiled and her upper lip rose to reveal a perfect crest of plum-colored gums.
Rusalka noticed the absence of a wedding ring.
“What you doing now? What you doing with life these days?” Rusalka asked.
Ruby replied, “I am what I said I would always be.”
“Very glad somebody is that,” Rusalka said.
“A Sunday school teacher. I head the program at All Saints. And I’m studying with Father Tyler to be ordained as a priest.”
“The Episcopal Church doesn’t ordain women,” Anthony pointed out.
“Not yet,” Ruby said, “but as the song goes, ‘the times they are a-changin’.’ ”
Mary stifled another sob. “I’ve missed you. I should have called. It’s my fault.”
“I figured you were too busy being Mrs. Ward Wangert,” Ruby said.
Mary nodded solemnly, “I was.”
Despite all the well-meaning predictions that she would soon get through her “shock phase,” Mary grew ever more dazed. Days floated by with close examination of the changing dust patterns in her parents’ kitchen. She slowly wrote replies to condolence notes. She could dimly tolerate longer stretches of Rob’s lacrosse ball thumping against her garage door.
The numbness at least helped her ignore Rob’s eventual departure for boarding school.
Ward, Rusalka, and Ruby compared notes on their daily interactions with the bereaved. Rusalka observed, “I think she talk most to Ruby, who knew her best as little girl. I think Mary in big regression.”
Rusalka did not appear in the least threatened by Mary’s reconnection with Ruby. If anything, she seemed intrigued with this tall, alluring Negress. At the office, she inquired privately of Ward, “You think maybe this old friend is—how you Americans say—‘playing for the other team’?”
“Lesbian, you mean? Yes, it’s fairly obvious,” Ward stated.
“That not bother you?”
Ward shrugged indifferently. He was just glad that Mary was talking to someone.
Mary continued opening up to Ruby more than anyone else, which supported Rusalka and Ward’s working hypothesis that her parents’ sudden deaths had thrown her back to childhood. Ruby proposed taking her on an old-haunts tour. “We can reenact our old crossing guard routine,” she suggested.
Mary and Ruby retraced the steps of their after-school paper route through Hickory Place, a front-porch, working-class neighborhood miraculously immune to the fate of the deteriorating city. Ruby reminded Mary of their hide-and-seek afternoons inside the grounds of Crown Hill Cemetery, but Mary didn’t want to go near the cemetery. They stood on their respective traffic patrol corners near School #43.
Ruby was the captain, Mary the co-captain. They saluted and performed the hand gestures, signaling to the students that it was safe now to cross the street. They found the shack in the alley behind Gleason’s Variety where the grizzled Indianapolis News district manager was brave enough to allow a little white girl and a little black girl to share a paper route in 1939. He hunkered beside a coal-fired stove, collecting weekly dues from the newsies and doling out their cuts, which Mary and Ruby saved together in a coffee can hidden in a heat register at Mary’s house.
“Remind me: why did we hide it in the heat register?” Mary asked.
“To protect it from the Nazis,” Ruby said.
“Did we ever divvy up the money?
“I don’t remember.”
“Let’s check.”
This was a step in the right direction, because for weeks after the funeral, Mary would not allow anyone else inside her parents’ house. They found a Folgers’ can suspended by a length of twine in the back hall register. It contained seven dollars and forty three cents. Mary and Ruby promptly spent it at another stop on the old haunts tour, the Lindner’s Ice Cream Parlor.
“Your favorite used to be Rocky Road,” Ruby said, after Mary ordered a butterscotch sundae.
“I’ve had enough of that,” Mary sighed.
“Come on now, girl. A rocky road? You’ve had a charmed life,” Ruby countered.
Mary nodded, “Yes, you’re right. It’s just … I should have taken away his license. I should have gotten them into a nursing home.” She jabbed at her sundae.
Ruby said bluntly, “I know everyone is dancing around the possibility of your parents’ accident not being an accident. Don’t talk about it in front of Mary, they say, as if that hadn’t occurred to you.”
“Yes, but not for the reasons you think,” Mary winced and pushed her ice cream away. “It’s the violence of it, accident or not. Everyone in my family has died a violent death. I can’t help but wonder, who’s next? And what is it about me? Am I carrying some kind of curse? We were crossing guards. We took pride in getting people safely across the street. It feels like I’ve failed as a crossing guard.”
The longer Mary stayed depressed, the harder Ward found it to function normally. He felt both guilty and angry. He recovered from his father’s death in due order, why couldn’t she? He consulted with Father Tyler. As a chief vestryman, Ward was also concerned about Paul Tyler’s plans for ordaining Ruby.
“I’ve gone to bat for you on the overnight shelter and the expanded summer camp,” Ward said, “but I won’t be able to protect you on this one. And by the way, do you even have the authority? I thought only a bishop could ordain a priest.”
Paul said, “Normally, yes, but there is a precedent for rectors being able to ordain people to the deaconate.”
“Not women,” Ward said.
“Up until now.”
“And especially not lesbians,” Ward countered.
“She’s not an open lesbian,” Paul Tyler said.
“They’ll fire you and I won’t be able to stop it. This parish does not want to be put on the map by such a radical act.”
“It’s not radical in my eyes,” Paul said. “It’s long overdue.”
“That may be, but not here. Here, it’s a stunt,” Ward said.
Paul asked, “You don’t think Ruby is qualified?”
Ward stared at his minister. “Of course, she’s qualified. Even I can recognize that she’s a wonderful candidate …. Okay, now I understand why you urged her to come to the funeral, so I would meet her and come around to supporting the cause.”
“Fiendish, eh?” Paul Tyler smiled.
“The thing is, it doesn’t matter if I support the cause. I won’t be able to protect you from all those in this congregation who don’t,” Ward said.
Ward could be fiendish too. He didn’t want to lose one of his few male friends. As the spring progressed, Ruby became a frequent visitor to Rusalka’s office at Wangert Public Relations. The discussions about Mary began to occur without Ward present, or rather, with Ward seated in his office across the hall, occasionally lobbing in comments. He overheard laughter and whispered stories. They’d both caused minor car accidents, by swerving to avoid a Woolly Worm inching across the street! They both loved hot mustard.
As summer approached, Ward noticed a new tone in the conversations between Ruby and Rusalka. They focused on matters other than Mary’s condition. He overheard Ruby say, “You always hold your hands together, with thumbs and forefingers touching, so it makes a heart shape,” and Rusalka say, “I want us get dizzy again soon.”
They discussed encounter groups and membership in the local chapter of NOW. Hugs were exchanged, upon arrival and departure. They complimented each other on scarves and earrings. When Ruby snagged her blouse on a desk corner, Rusalka instantly produced a sewing kit from her purse and they retired to the ladies’ room for Rusalka to sew the button back on, which took quite a while.
The date of the Wangerts’ departure for Maine loomed. Ward summoned Ruby and Rusalka into his office. He opened his private bar and mixed them private drinks. He made a toast to vacation and the salubrious effects of Great Tusk on Mary. He said, “I know you consider me rather tweedy, so let me just put it right out there. If you two want more than a friendship, please feel free to explore life’s passions. Rusalka, don’t worry, you’ll still have a job and Mary is not going to be offended either.”
His overt motive was to sanction beforehand what he could not prevent. Covertly, he was angling to block Father Tyler, who, despite a headstrong progressive tilt, would certainly not ordain an open lesbian. Ward also wanted to believe that Rusalka’s outlandish play for Ruby meant that she could not possibly be a professional spy. He could put those fears to rest.
Much later, at the subcommittee investigation, Rusalka’s testimony revealed that she initially saw Ruby Ashberry as a conduit deeper into Mary’s life. Before discovering that she really, really liked the sex. Rusalka also loved Ruby for her valiant step-parenting of Vincent and Kayla.