Bishop's Road (17 page)

Fall is much too soon this year but pretty enough anyway that most people don't care. Along the river the leaves are changing to yellow gold and burgundy. Now is the time to stake out a blueberry patch on the hills; it's so easy to find the bushes when they turn flame red. Draw a little map for yourself and keep it tucked away until next year. Some nights there's a dusting of frost and only the calendula and marigold, the marguerite daisies, alyssum, malva have the tenacity to hang on, wait for the sun to warm their cold petals and then they're as nice as you'd want. In Eve's garden the zinnias and poppies are blooming over and over as though to please her one last time. She washes her pots and wheelbarrow but the flowers keep on growing.

Ruth has gone away. She borrowed Dorrie's car and some money from Ginny Mustard. Judy made sandwiches for the trip. She put a few things in a small suitcase and no one knows the wherefore and the why, just that she'll be back and they should keep their chins up. The darkness went with her or maybe it got off at the overpass as she was heading out of town. Either way the house is bright again except when Patrick comes by, which he does a couple of times a day to ask if anyone has heard from Ruth and to see if they need any heavy lifting done or walls painted. Their answer at first was no but now each tries to think of a little something to keep him busy since he doesn't seem to want to go home. They feed him and get him to change a lightbulb or move a dresser or take a look in the basement to find out what the strange sounds might be coming from the water heater. He's easy enough to have in the house even as gloomy as he is all the time and they tolerate him the way they do the kittens, stepping around him when he's underfoot and shooing him to another room when he takes up too much space in the kitchen. They send him outside
to rake leaves or spread compost. He's building a potting shed and replacing some of the rotting boards on the back step. But he doesn't whistle while he works or smile very often.

Ruth has gone home. Home to the place she was born. Home that is empty now, but for the sad thing that haunts the landing at the top of the stairs just outside her old bedroom door, sits and listens in cold bare feet and flannelette nightgown. Blue. Frayed at the edges. Much like Ruth herself. She has come to do penance in the only place cruel enough and hard enough to grant her absolution.

Ruth's mother despised this village. The rocks and the cliffs and the pathetic scraps of earth around the clapboard houses that hang on for dear life and at first glance seem fragile but are as tough as the coltsfoot sticking out of the pebbles at their feet. She hated all of it. The people were ignorant and dull as dishwater, she used to say. She wanted more than this. Nagged her husband to move away to a real town with a decent school and social opportunities but he never would. The fishing was fine. His family had been here for generations and besides, they owned their home. They would never find better than this anywhere else. He had been through the war. Had seen as much of the rest of the world as he cared to and would live and die here thank you very much. What was he thinking to marry a teacher? He might have known she'd get fancy notions one of these days. Grand ideas about what was proper and what wasn't and how to dress and sit and eat and speak and she drove him right up the wall with her picking all the time. When she took to drinking it got worse. The fights lasted long into the night and Ruth wouldn't sleep until they were finished. Listened from her perch on the landing at the top of the stairs.

The house stands back from rock a few hundred feet or so. Nasty cruel vertical layers razor sharp and a million years from Africa or wherever they were before the earth shifted and the
waters rose. From a distance they look inviting. You think, I'll sit here with my sandwich and apple and watch clouds and dream awhile but up close you can see that the only place comfortable is underwater where the waves have beaten the stone to submission. So you must have your lunch on the grass at the land's edge with the seagulls that scream if you take too long to fling your scraps.

Behind and to the sides of the house are rose bushes gone mad. They push hard against the walls and might crush if they ever felt the need. Among them, stunted pine and alder and way at the back aspen to keep you awake at night with their gossip. Lonely looking from the rocks. Derelict. There's a wind blowing through the rooms and the roof makes heavy sighs like something in very old pain.

The village was abandoned thirty-five years ago. Resettled. Its inhabitants moved a few miles down the road where there was more of what Ruth's mother wanted in her life. Forty houses, once yellow, red, green against the fog, boat launches, the wharf, church, school, all lonely grey and crumbling with nobody home except the feral cats. If Ruth had ever wanted kittens she has them now. And they are about as friendly as she feels, snarling when she comes upon them, backs arched and tails puffed three times normal size.

Gardens abandoned went wild. Everywhere the remnants of a summer that must have been beautiful. Hollyhock, delphinium, foxglove grow year after year wherever they damn well please. Mint, rhubarb and lavender. Ivy, unchecked, filled ditches, climbed over fences and down the road, in through broken windows and rotting doors.

The house is cold. Ruth wants to light a fire but doesn't know if the chimney is safe. She fills a bucket with water from the well and drags it to the living room, just in case. It's all the care she feels like taking now. She hauls wood from the shed. She peels paper from the walls of her parents' bedroom. It has been there
for a hundred years and comes away easily once she gets a corner pulled up. She feeds her fire faded flowers and it works. Her toes are warm. She falls asleep on the rug and the sad thing is crying, shivering, on the landing at the top of the stairs.

Ruth wakes to sunshine through dirty, cracked windows and a brown mouse just beyond her reach, staring with black eyes. “You're the fool. There are cats everywhere. It's a good thing the old man is not around - he'd have you mashed to nothing with a broom and flung in the trash before you could blink.”

The house is cold again, the fire long dead. Ruth finds rags in the kitchen, wipes a circle clean in the living room window, stares at the ocean for a few minutes before washing her face, brushing her teeth. She walks the village one end to the other again and again. Sits in the old church for hours with the cats that lie about the altar and leap over pews, fight in the aisle. She closes her eyes and hears Father Murphy sing the mass, preach eternal damnation, salvation, take your pick.
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth and of all things visible and invisible.
She can smell incense.

At the house she scrubs with cold water, no soap, the living room. Windows. Floor. Furniture deemed unacceptable for the new home, what will people think if they see us dragging that garbage along. Job's Landing is not like this place you know, it's going to be hard enough fitting in anyway, I won't have them taking us for a crowd of peasants. And they had gone, her mother thrilled with the idea, her father grumbling all the way, her brother ready for his own place with his new bride and Ruth not caring one way or the other.

She scrubs the walls higher and higher as far as she can reach and that's not good enough so she stands on a rotting chair and by the time she is done even the ceiling gleams, and the light fixture. She takes the rug she slept on outside to the fence and beats it with a stick and the dust is in her eyes and ears and nose
and she is crying. She goes to the ocean. Stands on the rocks too close for comfort. Thinks she might let the waves take her but knows they don't want her, will throw her back bloodied and broken. She is no longer part of water and water knows that. Even a lake would tell her float. Her toes curl in her shoes to grip the slippery rock. She is not brave. She does not want to die.

For days she wanders the house. Takes her rug and a bucket of water, scrubs her parents' room and sleeps where their bed was, her brother's room and sleeps where his bed was, her room and sleeps a while, sits at the top of the stairs and listens, sleeps a while, sits at the top of the stairs and listens, sleeps a while. She has eaten all of her sandwiches and is down to water when the house is finished, clean as it can be with no soap. She gathers lavender and branches of rose hips, fills the bucket and puts the arrangement in the middle of the living room floor. Tells the sad thing at the top of the stairs in bare feet and shivering to get in the car, you might as well come with me, and drives to Job's Landing.

It is late and dark when she arrives at her brother's house but she knocks at the door anyway. When Matthew answers he does not recognize her until she speaks. He makes coffee. Joanna wakes and prepares the guest room. They are happy to see her, to know that she is alive after all this time. They sit quietly at the kitchen table. Ruth showers and sleeps. Time enough tomorrow to find out why she's here.

“I've been to the old place. Spent three days there. Or four. Hard to tell. I cleaned it top to bottom. The village looks so much prettier with no people. Nature just kind of moved in and grew all over it. The gardens have gone wild. I met a man. The
first one worth knowing for as far back as I can remember. But I've been unbelievably stupid. Fed him a pack of lies. He's come to see me but I can't even look at him. Knowing I lied. I've been feeling like crap so I went to the old place. Considered throwing myself into the ocean but I'm too much a wimp.”

Matthew and Joanna take the day off. Listen to Ruth. “We didn't know what had become of you. The last letter was twenty-five years ago. From Jamaica. Where have you been all this time?”

“Around. You can't go wrong being a great waitress. Especially if you don't care how seedy the bar. If you stay one step ahead of immigration. Not all that difficult, really. But when you start looking your age it's not so easy. They like the young ones with perky tits. Once your ass starts to fall down around the back of your knees you're pretty much washed up. I got tired. Now I do nothing. Your taxes have been feeding me for a good six years now. I have a room in a nuthouse and I pretty much do fuck all.”

Joanna says, “Peter is fine. Do you want to see some pictures?”

Ruth starts to cry. “Yes. Where is he? His birthdays are the hardest times. Usually I just get very drunk the night before so I can feel like shit all day.”

“He's in the city, now. Teaching at the university. Married to a really wonderful woman. Sarah. They have two children. A boy and a girl. Joseph and Eleanor. Eleanor looks so much like you it's eerie, Ruth.”

“Does he know? Did you tell him?”

“We did what you wanted. As far as he's concerned you're his aunt, long missing, but his aunt anyway. We've always talked about you. I have all the pictures that Mom and Dad took. We used to go through them now and then when he was young. You can be proud, Ruthie. He's a great father and husband.”

“I can't take any pride in that. You raised him.”

“But he's strong, Ruth. Stronger than I ever have been. That came from you,” says Matthew.

“Hell. I can't even fling myself into the ocean when I want to. No. Whatever he is he got from you two. I want to see him. I won't give away our secret. No matter what. I have to get back soon. A crazy old lady is threatening to die and I should be there I guess, or the others will fall apart and I'd hate to have to clean up that mess. Besides, I may have a date with the courts.”