42
With work settled, we fell into a routine that I wouldn’t call uncomfortable. And before I knew it, it was the beginning of June. Ruth’s two-week visit had stretched to three months, with no end in sight.
Then again, she never said two weeks.
I had.
I glanced back through the calendar on the refrigerator before fastening it on the new month.
My circled first day on our own long abandoned.
And I realized that I had resigned myself to her presence.
She no longer redecorated or brought home animals or set fires—though I supposed I couldn’t entirely rule that one out from happening again.
She still complained about my cooking and tried to feed us inedible meals.
But life had calmed down.
Until she came home from a date with Mr. Greene, slamming the door behind her and storming upstairs to her room.
The children hadn’t even finished dinner yet. I looked at the two of them.
“What was that ?” Bobby asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said, standing and putting my napkin on the table. I hadn’t expected teenage behavior until Susie started dating in seven or eight years. “I’ll go check on her.”
I climbed the stairs, wondering if this was how my mother felt when I came home from a date with Donnie Goldblum after he tried to stick his hand up my blouse. Though I doubted Ruth would be as shocked as I had been. And she had the hatpin Mr. Greene had given her after all.
I knocked gently on the door. “Ruth?” I asked. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” she said. The door remained shut. If one of my kids were inside, I would have opened it, but it felt wrong with Ruth, even in my house.
“Can I come in?”
I heard the lock turning, but the door stayed shut. I wasn’t positive if she had locked it or unlocked it, but I tried the knob, and it opened. Ruth was sitting on the bed, facing the wall, her back to me.
“Are you okay?”
“The absolute nerve of that man,” she huffed.
I scanned her for blood. The hatpin had looked sharp. “You didn’t use the hatpin, did you?” I asked. I really needed to call Janet immediately if she had.
“No,” Ruth said.
“What happened?”
“He—he—he proposed .”
“He what ?”
“We’ve been seeing each other maybe a couple of months,” she said. “The very idea that he would think ... no ... I’m not burying another husband. I’m not. I’m not doing it. I’m not. I—”
“Shh,” I said, sitting on the bed next to her and putting an arm around her. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” Her shoulders heaved as she breathed heavily. “You have a home here as long as you want it.”
She looked at me in surprise. “I do?”
“You do.”
“What about when I’m old and doddering and can’t be of any help?”
“Ruth,” I said, “you caused an explosion in my kitchen and got me fired. Do you really think you can do anything worse when you’re older? Besides, once the kids go off to college, I don’t want to be all alone.”
“You could remarry.”
“So could you. And sooner than me apparently.”
She shuddered. “So we’ll just be two lonely old widows alone in this house until I die, and then you become Susie’s problem?”
I shrugged. “Or Bobby’s. But we won’t be lonely until then. We’ll have each other. And I get the feeling you’re not leaving us anytime soon.”
Ruth shook her head. “If I’ve learned one thing in this life, it’s that you never know when someone’s time is up.”
“How old were your parents?” I asked, genuinely curious. Harry had a few memories of them from his early childhood, but I was fuzzy on when—and how—they had died.
“Not that old. My mother was about my age. Cancer. When she was gone, my father simply gave up.”
“Was that before ...?” I trailed off, not wanting to bring up Abe’s death.
She nodded. “In five years, I lost both of my parents, my husband, and one sister. In ten, I had lost everyone except Harry and my sister Alice.”
I tried to imagine being truly alone. But there was no way to imagine that without experiencing it. What would have happened to Harry had something happened to Ruth in those years?
A tear trickled out of the corner of my eye, and I wiped at it to keep her from seeing. I wished desperately that I had been better about bringing the children to see Ruth in the two years after Harry had died. How must she have felt, truly isolated, in that house?
“It’s hard to move on,” she said finally. “From that much loss.”
The loss of Harry alone had nearly crushed me under its weight.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have pushed you to go out with Mr. Greene. I thought ...”
“You thought you were getting rid of me,” she said flatly.
“I did,” I admitted. “But I also thought I was helping two people find some happiness. The way you talked to each other at the birthday party ... I thought—”
“I know,” Ruth said. “I thought the same with those men for you.”
“Maybe neither of us was cut out to be a matchmaker,” I said. “Maybe it has to happen on its own. If at all.”
“Matchmakers in 1963,” Ruth said, a ghost of a smile on her face. “No. The world has moved on.”
“The kids are still finishing dinner,” I said. “Come down and eat with us?”
“I couldn’t eat,” she said.
“I’ll be forced to throw out the leftovers if you don’t.”
She shook her head, but the mood had lifted. “Another knife to my heart. You’re a cold woman, Barbara Feldman.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“No,” Ruth agreed, rising from the bed. “I don’t. But if you throw those leftovers out, I’m redecorating the whole house again.”
“Oh good,” I said, and she looked up at me. “You’re feeling better.”
“A little. However, if he starts showing up with singing telegrams again, I’m going to use that hatpin.”
“Just don’t kill him,” I warned. “I’d bet Beverly Diamond could argue you out of charges for assault, but murder is entirely different. And Janet and Eddie would be miffed.”
“Marriage,” she said, shaking her head again. “I need a husband like I need a loch in kop . The old fool.”
I secretly disagreed—Mr. Greene was definitely preferable to a hole in the head—but I told myself to ask Eddie to tell his father to slow down. She might come around yet.
“They’re good for opening pickle jars,” I said.
“So is a whack with a spoon.”
She had a point there. “Come on,” I said. “I made apricot chicken. You’ll love it.”
“ Apricot chicken? Oy.”
“It was one of Harry’s favorites. I haven’t made it in a long time.”
“Barbara,” Ruth said, turning serious. “I have something to tell you that you may not like. But Harry grew up eating my food. He was being polite to you.”
“Maybe so,” I said, putting an arm around her shoulders and trying not to laugh thinking about Harry’s description of the way his childhood dog used to waddle from all the inedible food he slipped her.