Indiana-Michigan Line, 1934
Mother’s voice floated from John’s bedroom out to the kitchen to where Ruth jacked the pump at the sink. How could anyone gab so much to a man who was fast asleep? She spoke so little to everyone else, just tinted, tinted, tinted all day. That’s all Ruth could remember Mother doing since she was a kid, just tinting. And washing clothes. Not being much of a parent.
Ruth caught a jelly-jarful of water and, plucking her dress from her sweaty skin, drank it. A fly rammed against the rusty window screen, each furious buzz a protest at being denied the freedom that seemed so clearly at hand. Outside, chickens muttered as they strolled under the clothes on the line. Black and white cats slept on the sunny dirt by the barn, serenaded by the clank of cowbells and the groans of the cattle grazing in the pasture on the other side of the wire fence. Crickets chirped from the weeds at the base of the outbuildings, from one of which could be heard the chime of tools in use, and Nick whistling.
Ruth swelled with anticipation—until she remembered that her sister, June, was coming. She unhooked the screen one-handed and swept out the fly.
She refilled her glass. She did not understand the urgency of June’s visit. Why did she insist upon coming now? It wasn’t as if they kept up with each other. When was the last time Ruth had visited June, four years ago? June had paid to have her and the kids take the train to St. Paul. Ruth had been miserable the whole time, skulking through June’s marble mansion, the hayseed mouse visiting her sophisticated relations.
The kids had thought the place was a fairyland. They didn’t mean to, but they drove a dagger into Ruth’s heart each time they packed into June’s big peach-colored bathtub and scooted up and back on their bellies, singing and laughing, their bare bottoms shining in the water like porpoises. It killed her to see them crowd around the toilet, four dark heads watching the water gush into the bowl when they took turns flushing, and when they gathered around the refrigerator just to open the door and see the light come on.
She felt even worse when June last visited her, before John got sick, the gracious queen pretending that the peasant’s lowly sticks of furniture were lovely. They weren’t lovely. They were worn, hideous, and not at all representative of Ruth’s taste. What she would buy if only she had the money! But no one would ever know her excellent taste. She was doomed to be the poor sister, lesser in all things.
It had always been this way. Even back when Ruth was six and June was eight, Mother had entered them in a beauty pageant held by the Sunbeam Bakery in Fort Wayne. All the contestants had to do was eat a slice of bread. Of course, June and her yellow ringlets won. She even ate cute. All Ruth got was a loaf of Sunbeam bread and a long stare from her mother followed by the pronouncement: I never worry about you.
Ruth thought that Mother should.
June topped her at everything. June had wavy blond hair; Ruth’s was brown and straight. June had golden skin; Ruth’s skimmed-milk flesh was shot through with veins. June developed curves in her early teens; Ruth was still waiting for hers at thirty. June was popular and busy and held the only high school class officer position available to a girl—secretary; Ruth could only manage one best friend, the ever-loyal Barbara. Ruth saw the way boys looked at her sister when she and June were walking downtown or went to a theater together. The boys would get loud and act silly, but June would ignore them. Meanwhile, Ruth stared right at them, daring them to see her, though she might as well have been a fire hydrant.
Yet, away from June, Ruth had her male admirers. Before she had been married and cloistered on the farm, she had known how to get the attention of the boys in high school, if she really truly wanted it. Mainly, she just had to act like she was interested in what they thought. Sometimes it wasn’t too much of a ruse. She was interested at times, if they were smart. She liked clever boys who made her laugh. John had made her laugh. She could make him laugh, too. And other important things.
She remembered some years back, in the early days of their marriage, when on a hot afternoon in late May, she’d insisted that John dig in the lilac cutting she’d gotten from a neighbor. He’d already spent hours putting in new fence posts and was filthy and exhausted.
Oh, the sight of him when he had come back inside the house after planting the lilac, stripped to the waist, unselfconsciously muscular, dirt streaked, and grumpy. She had been swamped with desire. Her mother was visiting, so Ruth lured him out to the milking shed by saying the cream separator needed fixing. He groused all the way out there, complaining that she should have told him that morning, but once he started fiddling with the separator, she seized his face and kissed him mid-grumble. His bad mood soon improved.
After that, saying that the cream separator needed repair was their secret code for intimacy. Eventually just the word “cream” was enough to make them smile. Even someone innocently asking to pass it produced a knowing look between them.
Now, standing at the sink with her empty jelly jar, the memory of the life they’d shared drove a pain through her heart that hurt all the way to her fingertips. They had been good together, no matter that he’d loved June first. She had worked the farm with him in a way that June never could have, pitching in with the milking, taking care of the calves, the chickens, the horses, anything living, while doing the best job she could of mothering her daughters. Working with animals was something that she was better at than June, something she loved, and John knew it and appreciated it. Those years they had been a team, working hard, laughing hard, lovemaking hard. She had been her best with him. Finally, finally, she had actually been proud of herself. And then he had left her, not by choice, but he’d left her, just the same.
She furiously pumped another glass of water. She was putting it to her lips when she heard the tractor rumble and sputter and then roar to life in the machine shed.
Nick rode out on the stuttering beast, looked for her, then waved when he saw her, the shirt under his arm wet. She could imagine how he smelled. Like a man.
She pulled back from the window, hesitated, then waved. Let June come. Ruth wasn’t ashamed. What was wrong with wanting more than her sad and lonely life? June, with her cornucopia of plenty, had no right to begrudge her at least a smidgeon of happiness. Hadn’t Ruth paid enough already for what she’d done?
She dumped her glass and went out.