Mr. Splitfoot (15 page)

Nat and Ruth buy a box of Frosted Mini-Wheats and two pairs of jeans for her, the first pants she’s ever owned. She hides them in her closet. They buy a used Ping-Pong table for the kids at the home. The Father doesn’t like that. He smolders. He doesn’t know how to play Ping-Pong. He doesn’t know how they got the money, but he knows it’s sinful. “God placed the law in men and you shall yield!” He locks Ruth in the downstairs bathroom. He goes at Nat’s backside with a length of plastic tubing right outside the bathroom door. Ruth sings any song she can think of, something for Nat to hold on to, “Here You Come Again,” “Old Dan Tucker” loud as she can.

Eventually Ruth falls asleep on the tile floor. When the Father unlocks the bathroom, he hits her in the head with the door. “Forgive me,” the Father says. He’s weepy. She passes him by. She does not offer forgiveness. Upstairs she applies a beeswax salve to the welts on Nat’s back.

The Father damns the Ping-Pong table. He packs it up and sells it for twenty-five dollars at a flea market held in town on Saturdays. He uses the money to purchase flannel sheets for his bed in order to purify the funds.

But still there is no yielding. Ruth tries on her new jeans when they are alone in their room. She bends over, strokes her thighs. No wonder the Father never lets her have them.

“How do you feel?” Nat asks.

She squats, stretching the fabric. “In these pants, I could do things I’ve never done before.”

“How do you feel about those drawings we saw in Mr. Bell’s stuff?”

She straightens up. “It’s not my scar. The drawings were old. He didn’t even know me yet.”

“Then let’s ask him what they are.”

“It’s none of our business. We were digging through his bag.” Ruth changes back into her dress before going downstairs. “Don’t scare him off. Please.”

At breakfast the Father calls her name. He’s leaning against the countertop in a bright white T-shirt with a red cross, like a lifeguard, except it’s a crucifix and the shirt says
MY LIFEGUARD WALKS ON WATER
. Maybe that’s why the Father never taught them to swim.

Nat looks up at her name.

“You know a man named Zeke?” the Father asks her.

“Not really.”

“Owns that self-storage down by the river?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, he knows you. Come on.” He pulls out her chair. “We need to talk.”

Ruth follows the Father up to his room. She hasn’t been inside in years. The Mother’s stretched out on the bed reading a book called
Dawn of Dementia.
She looks up. “Ruth. How’ve you been, honey?”

On TV the news anchor helps some Chinese lady demonstrate a recipe for pickling cabbage. The newscaster wrinkles his nose. “Woo!” He shakes his telegenic hands. “That’s a spicy meata-ball!”

There’s lots Ruth would like to tell the Mother, but she’s distracted by the room: laundry both ways; a pink starter kit from Mary Kay cosmetics, including twelve shades of lipstick, skin regimens for oily, normal, and dry, and seven eye shadows. None of it yet sold. On top of the kit there are several afghans, a few issues of
More
magazine, and two two-liter bottles filled with ocher pee. There’s a stack of word puzzle magazines, a box of Almond Roca, two artificial flowers, a fringed leather jacket hanging below a poster of Stevie Nicks. The Mother’s built a fortress from things purchased at the 24-hour pharmacy. An Easter basket with plastic green grass, a white teddy bear holding a red embroidered heart, a pillow with electronic massaging balls. Four pairs of Isotoner slippers. Padded envelopes. Acrylic yarn. Three jumbo boxes of Special K with freeze-dried strawberries. “I’m fine.”

“So Zeke,” the Father says. “Seems you’ve caught his eye. And we’re proud of you, Ruth. Mother and I wish you the best. We hope your marriage will be a fruitful one.”

The Mother belches loudly. “Pardon. IBS,” she explains.

Ruth has no idea. IRS? “Marriage?”

“Yes. I didn’t even know you two were friendly.”

“We aren’t.”

“There’s so much about your life these days I don’t know,” the Father says. “And I figure if you’re already grown and gone, you might as well actually go.” The Father waves something out of the air, enjoying his moment of cruelty less than he’d hoped. “You’ll need our consent, seeing as you’re only seventeen. But we’re happy to give it.”

“Consent to—”

“Get married.”

Ruth’s head tilts hard to the left. “You want me to marry a stranger?”

“Heavenly Father has led me to believe that this is exactly what you were made for. That’s why your appendix ruptured. Now I understand why my prayers couldn’t heal you that night.” He moves slowly, taking her shoulders in his hands, squeezing hard enough to grind her bones. “Happy for you,” he says. “I worked this out special. Zeke’ll take care of you.”

“How old is he?”

The Father shrugs. “My age?”

“Old.”

“Not that old and, you know, there’s never charges when you’re married.”

“Charges?”

“Rape.”

The Mother experiences a further wave of cramps.

“If I get married, I’m allowed to move out of the home?”

“Of course.”

Ruth focuses on the Father’s fly. “What about Nat?”

“Once you’re married to Zeke, you could probably start adoption proceedings. The state is more or less giving away dysfunctional seventeen-year-olds.”

“Make me Nat’s mother?”

“If your husband approves. Everybody wins. Most importantly”—and the Father, his chest puffed up, points an index finger up to the sky before deflating, acknowledging that not everything in his plan is lovely. “What am I supposed to do, Ruth? Turn you out on the street?”

She shakes her head no. “I won’t end up on the streets. I’ll find a job.”

“I know it’s scary, but it’s less scary than aging out with nowhere to go and no one to take care of you.”

“Nat’ll take care of me.”

“Nat can’t take care of his shoelaces.”

“That’s not true. I’ll take care of me. I always have.” This pisses off the Father.

“You want to give me some more lip?” he asks.

“No.”

“Now we need to discuss some things about your wedding night.”

The Mother’s sick gut pinches her mouth into a turnip. “Happy for you, honey, but I need to visit the commode.” She takes that cue, exiting the bedroom quickly before more poison leaks out.

“You want me to get married?” Ruth asks.

The Father doesn’t answer that question. “Let’s see.” Chin in his hand. “So. You’ve seen the rabbits, when they’re in a fever?”

“Sick?”

“No, dear. When they cleave to one another. Inserted, bred—”

He’s talking about fucking. “Yes.”

“Well, it’s nearly the same with humans, but I’d like to explain a few things. There is a loving way a husband treats his wife. Caresses and movements privy only to those wed in God’s eyes. Certain actions and membranes.”

“Pardon?”

“You don’t know this yet, Ruth, but your body conceals private chambers open only to your husband’s probing key.” He lifts his hands, fingers splayed like a shining sun. “Secret cavities that belong to him alone.”

Ruth feels sick. Is he kidding?

“And in the moment a husband and his wife’s flesh are bonded as one, certain fluids will be exchanged. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I don’t want to, Father Arthur. Please don’t kick me out.”

The Father shuts his eyes. He remembers El and the day she had to go. He’d heard she’d found nothing but trouble down in Troy. “You’re scared, girl,” the Father says, “and I understand, but a woman can’t bow her knee to God until she bows her knee to her husband. Find Christ and lose your fear.” He smiles. He takes her hand. “A blushing bride, my, you’ve grown. We’ll work it out for you, dear. Happy for you.”

Ruth looks up at the Stevie Nicks poster, meditating on this beautiful woman. Marriage would mean no more state. A kitchen, a refrigerator of her own. Zeke humping up on her front and back each night until she’s eighteen, but if Nat could come with her, she’d be OK. I’ll go see the man, she thinks. See what sort he is. What’s coarse in her life will lift her up, carry her down past the industrial park and the anonymous block of buildings whose sign reads
TOOL AND DIE
. All the way to the self-storage office. Her fingertips will buzz, freedom in there, for Nat and her, lovely as the sun through a bottle of old pee.

Each séance takes place in a different home. “My cousin’s boss is out of town.” Mr. Bell picks Ruth and Nat up at the appointed time and takes them to a new address. The car windows are rolled down even though it’s cold. The outside air smells of balsam and rain. In the back seat Ruth fingers a realty sign that’d been yanked from the ground. She watches Mr. Bell drive. He’s a creature who makes his own tools. She admires that.

“What did Father Arthur want?”

“Some loose ends from the hospital.”

Nat nods. Mr. Bell parks.

Some of the houses have books. Some have TVs that cover entire walls. One has a room given over to a collection of dull-looking rocks. One has no furniture in it at all. “My uncle’s condo,” Mr. Bell explains.

Nat and Ruth dress in clothes provided by Mr. Bell. He tells them that their clothes, the stuff from the Father, scare people. “
Children of the Corn,
” he says.

“What’s that? Like we’re farmers?”

“No. Sociopaths.” He gives her a wink.

Nat and Ruth wait in the bedroom until he comes to fetch them. She sits in a windowsill. “You know I’m making my bit up?” she tells Nat.

“I’m fine with that.”

“But you’re really talking to dead people, right?”

“How many times are you going to ask me that?”

“Can you just tell me the truth?”

“I talk to dead people. Yes, yes, yes, I do.” To the tune of “Skip to My Lou.”

“Good because otherwise it would be stealing. I don’t want to steal from people who are already so sad.”

When Nat and Ruth are led into the living room, the guests are sitting cross-legged on the floor as if telling ghost stories around a campfire. Ruth and Nat join them there.

“But they’re children.” One man wrenches his spine to complain to Mr. Bell.

“Precisely.” Mr. Bell pats the man’s shoulder, a familiar gesture. The man smiles as if the teacher just praised his correct answer. “Children have not yet hardened the divide between life and realms of the undead. In India”—Mr. Bell lifts a curled finger to his temple—“the most attuned mediums are always children. India,” he repeats, “and Brazil. And”—feeling inspired—“Morocco, of course.”

“Brrrriiinnnng!” Nat’s off. He twists his hands, tuning in. “I’m speaking with a man named Lester. Yes. Anyone have a Lester? Sorry Leroy. No Leonard.”

“Yes!”

“Brrrinnnggg! Yes, sorry. Leonard. Now Leonard was your—”

“Grandfather.”

“I was about to say that. Brrrrriiiinng! Served in World War II, yes?”

“How did you know?”

“He told me.” Nat had practiced too.

“Grandpa.”

“You’re a hick, and nobody ever helped a hick but a hick himself!”

“Pardon?” the man asks.

“I’m standin’ here on my hind legs. Even a dog can do that. Are you standin’ on your hind legs?”

The man looks around himself. He remains sitting.

Nat foams, spits, rails, swinging his arms. “Here it is, ya hicks! Nail up anybody who stands in your way! Give me the hammer and I’ll do it myself!”

Mr. Bell rubs his hands together. He’s really not that much older than Ruth, but he works it with confidence, with his suit, and people believe it.

“Grandpa Leo?”

Later Ruth hits on a vein. “I see a toddler in a costume,” she whispers in her trance. “Dressed as a lion.” She pauses. “No, it’s a bear. A dog.”

One of the mothers explodes, grief on the walls of this foreclosed home. “That was her second Halloween. She was a poodle.”

“Yes,” Ruth says. “I see jack-o’-lanterns. Candy corn.”

The mother rolls with sorrow, as if there is a button inside her Ruth can just keep pushing, flooding fresh tears from a never-empty well. At least the mother will sleep tonight.

Afterward, over chicken with cashew nuts, they count the money. Ruth gets quiet. “Sweetheart, sweetheart.” Mr. Bell touches her hand. “It’s not as if you’re pretending the dead are alive. People want to be told what they already know—the dead were once here and they loved us. You should be happy to tell people that.”

Ruth nods.

“Why do we split it three ways?” Nat wants to know.

Mr. Bell pushes his Adam’s apple left then right in a samba beat. “Because there’s no end to my generosity.” He exhales with an open mouth, blowing breath and insult Nat’s way. Mr. Bell looks to Ruth again. “Buck up, little flower.”

She and Nat keep their money stuffed up the hollow leg of their metal bed frame. Eventually the bed can hold no more. Nat slices open the lining of his winter coat and fills it, like a transfusion refluffing the flat garment with cash. It’s so much money, Nat doesn’t bring up the three-way split ever again.

Word spreads. People line up to talk to the dead. Parents who have lost their children. Children who’ve lost their parents. A young woman who survived, in utero, the car crash that killed her mother sits beside the father of a boy who’d mixed a potion of Drano and grapefruit juice for his girlfriend and himself. The town alderman misses his mother. A high school history teacher whose nephew was caught in an undertow. Mr. Bell collects them. It’s not hard. Dead people are everywhere.

Sometimes the same people return, though Ruth, in the spirit of egalitarianism, has each new person receive word from their dead before issuing repeat performances.

Mr. Bell counsels a skeptic in the hallway. “Sometimes it’s two or three generations removed. You might not recognize a great-great-aunt. Don’t worry. She knows you.” He squeezes the man’s arm. “Please leave your coats in here,” Mr. Bell requests. “We’ve found it best to be unencumbered by material possessions when spirit is present.”

And Ruth is quite like a spirit. “Mary?” her voice crackles, the warm static of an old radio. “Is someone here looking for Mary?” Silence. “I’m sorry. The name is Larry. Larry?”