Chapter 16 Roseate Spoonbill #2
She might as well have been a newlywed Seventh Day Adventist. If she wanted to study in her dorm room, Jack might let her
go or he might lock her in his apartment and leave, sometimes with nothing in the refrigerator except a jar of pickles and
a can of 7UP. If she didn’t want to have sex, he would hold her down and rape her. If he got mad, he threw away her textbooks
and she had to apologize before he would purchase new ones. He came to her classes and physically pulled her out, pretending
to be her father. She ran away but the police brought her back. When she tried to be firm and say that she was too young for
this kind of exclusive relationship, Jack told her she had two choices—his way or no way.
Ruth stopped and gripped the lip of the countertop. “And then, well, you can guess. At first she didn’t even want to confirm the pregnancy. She played these fairy-tale mental games with herself about stress, although it was her young, healthy body sending signals.”
Another month whirled past, and Felicity had to admit the only game she was playing was roulette. She showed Jack the test.
He lifted her up and spun her around. “My little girl, my two little girls,” he crooned. Felicity said the baby could be a
boy. Jack went right out and bought an early gender prediction test. With 99 percent accuracy and a cutesy pink ribbon streak,
it was Jack’s dream, a girl after four sons.
Felicity didn’t want to be a mother at nineteen. She didn’t want to get married, even if Jack got divorced. No longer sure
that she loved Jack, she was sure that she feared him. By the time she saw a doctor, there was no time to lose. But like so
many other young women, when Felicity saw the somersaulting image of her unborn daughter on an ultrasound, she could no longer
bring herself to stop that life.
She was going to be a mother. She wanted her own mother.
“So she ran from him,” Ruth said. “There was no way she could stand up against him. He was rich. He was influential. He was
a lawyer. But even more, he was a bad man.”
“You mean, Felicity was afraid he would make her future impossible,” I said.
“She was afraid he would kill her,” said Ruth. “He said he would kill her if she had an abortion or a miscarriage.”
Felicity had to think fast. She pretended a meltdown. She told Jack that her mother was suspicious and on the brink of coming
to Madison to bring her home. She further appealed to his sympathies; she actually wanted to go home, for a little while.
She wanted to give birth with her mother at her side—after all, Jack couldn’t exactly tell his wife why he had to rush off
to the hospital in the middle of the night, could he?
Later that night, Felicity confessed everything to Ruth.
“I went to Roman and said we could adopt the baby. We could raise her as our own. After all, he wanted more children, and
this baby would be a part of me. He was furious. He was disgusted. He refused. He called her a harlot. He gave up on me then
too, but he didn’t tell me that. He kept up appearances, to seem like a couple holding to the vows we made when we promised
for richer or for poorer. I didn’t know about the . . . the . . . other wife.”
The most Roman would agree to was for Ruth to help Felicity learn the ropes of parenthood, short-term, before she was out
the door. The sooner the better.
Ruth tried to sift through the silt for the saving grace: Felicity had completed one year of school with distinction. Life
was a journey not a race, right? She and her parents would help Felicity raise the baby, as in fact, they did, at first. When
Sparrow was born, a surprisingly swift and easy delivery, Ruth was at Felicity’s side. “I thought she was saying ‘Cleo’ and
that was weird enough . . . but I got used to it. At least, the middle name is old-fashioned. Like mine.”
“What is it?” I asked, not really wanting to know, irritated by her meandering around.
Clearly surprised, Ruth said, “It’s Irene.”
I did not know that.
“What did you tell Jack?”
“Felicity decided on that. She said I should call Jack and tell him that the baby died and Felicity nearly died as well.”
“What? Didn’t you think he’d check?”
“I did, but Felicity said, why would you think someone was lying about a thing like that, especially if you were talking to
the girl’s mother?”
I thought about it for a moment. “No reason, I guess. But that actually was a lie. She never lies.”
“She never had this much reason to lie. And she had this sort of world view, about the visible world. She had to read Plato in high school, didn’t you? In the ethics class? The world you don’t see is just as real as the world you see? Maybe more important?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t have that class. You mean Mr. Adi.”
“Yes. Imari Adi. Such a nice man. He just took two years off to try to actually become a philosopher. The idea Felicity had
was that you have to be strict with your mind to perfect your mind. It was like a dare—could you tell the truth all the time?
She would have lied. To save Sparrow. She did a lot worse than that. And anyway, she didn’t lie. She made me lie.”
That seemed like splitting hairs. But evidently, it worked. Jack sent flowers and a check for ten thousand dollars. But he
wasn’t letting it drop.
A week later, Jack showed up on Ruth’s porch, beautifully dressed and smiling, carrying roses and chocolates and jewelry boxes
of robin’s egg blue. He introduced himself and asked to see Felicity.
“I had no idea what to say. I just had to make it up. I said, oh wait, I said I would follow him to the hospital, because
only family was supposed to be allowed to visit Felicity. But I was so glad he was there because he could be with her when
they told her. And he said, told her what? I said, ‘When they tell her that she can’t ever have children anymore.’”
Ruth clearly had a gift. She told me that Jack’s face blanked and he mumbled something about maybe he should wait to see her
if she was still that sick. Ruth pretended like, no, no, it was a good idea to see her right then. Jack stalled. He made some
comment about how attractive the rectory was and Ruth told him that Felicity’s father was a very well-known minister with
a huge congregation and a TV ministry. At that, the man literally began to back away toward his car, and Ruth started to breathe
again.
Meanwhile, Felicity was upstairs, in a bedroom with the door closed, but had Sparrow begun to cry, it would have been all over.
Not long after, Felicity told Ruth that Jack sent his regrets that their “brief idyll” was over. It had been neither brief
nor idyllic, but she was glad it was over. In time-honored fashion, Felicity was left holding the bag, in the home of a man
she once wanted so much to be proud of her, but who now called her a disgrace. “He said Felicity took after me because I had
a baby too, when I was only seventeen.”
So sad, Ruth said, even if it was true.
I couldn’t help but interrupt. “True? Did you think it was true as well? Was it both Roman and you who were ashamed of her?
And him, lot of room to talk! Felicity was single, young, sort of naive. What was his excuse?”
Ruth shrugged. She . . . just shrugged. Every last drop of pity I might have had for Ruth dried up.
“So, Ruth, then what happened?”
“Before or after the winter break?”
“Before.” I hit my phone with my thumb to text Claire and Fay, hoping Ruth didn’t notice. She did not notice. She was long
gone into the past.
When Sheboygan became unbearable, Felicity went back to Madison.
“Did you really think she was going back to school?” I asked. Ruth didn’t answer. She turned and looked out at the backyard,
where paths of white stonework were dotted with conical small trees so glossily green they appeared spray-painted. An orange
tree and a grapefruit tree thrust out their heavy arms as if leaning on each other’s shoulders. “Did you?”
“Why would you think I didn’t?” Ruth nonanswered.
Of course, she was not. For Felicity, as she would later say, harlotry was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All she wanted was to fund her escape. She raked in money while Ruth and Ruth’s parents cared for Sparrow.
Jack Melodia would find out, and Felicity was perversely glad that being an escort would make her really damaged goods in his eyes.
She would run from past deceptions and future disasters, from Jack and Roman and her own green gullibility.
Ruth suggested Florida. It was home to her.
Felicity suggested Hawaii. Hawaii was much farther away. And home was a four-letter word.
She and Felicity were mother-and-daughter misogyny magnets.
Ruth had some substantial savings. But when she took money out, Roman reminded her, in this house, the man controlled the
money. Ruth pleaded, she still loved him, she could forgive him, but wasn’t a mother’s duty to save her child, even the black
sheep? Roman said, well, yes and no. Her duty was to him. This wasn’t a teaching of fundamentalist Christianity; it was a
teaching of the Roman empire. The money would show his flock that Roman was a good man. He would repay the church with money
he stole from Ruth. He’d wanted to ask her before, since she had to sign for funds to be withdrawn. It took a lot of nerve
to use his wife’s lifelong savings to help his reputation after the ruin he caused by cheating on his wife. But when he prayed
about it, Roman received the word that not only should he keep the money, but, if she refused to obey, he should tell Jack
where Felicity and the baby were. It was his opinion that Jack had the right to the little girl in any case, and it was wicked
to deceive him.
I wished my father were there, for many reasons. Among them was the joy he would take in this parable of hypocrisy.
“And then what?”
Ruth struggled to take part in the Advent festivities at Starbright Ministry. Despair was never a moral option. During a final