Patterns of Swallows (25 page)

"No, I'm sorry," Ruth
said, instantly contrite. "I had no call to bite your head off.
Thanks for bringing it out in the open at least." Then she
raised her voice and her head to look at the rest of the line-up
though she was still ostensibly speaking to Sandy. "I
appreciate that you'll talk about it to my face, not behind my back,"
she said.

Mom shrunk into herself and
avoided looking at anyone until the bag boy had loaded their
purchases into the trunk, and the women were alone in the car.

She hummed to herself in a way
that Ruth recognized.

"What?" Ruth said.
"Out with it."

"I think you already know.
If you don't, you should." Mrs. MacKellum wouldn't have dreamed
of saying such a thing to Ruth back in the old days.

"I know. I was rude to
Sandy. I embarrassed her and hurt her feelings, and I feel badly
about it. But I did what I could to fix it. I think she'll be
okay."

"Not just that. Did you
have to say what you said afterwards? So everyone could hear you?"

"Well, I meant it. It was
a good chance to tell all those old busybodies what I think about
their endless gossiping when I had them all together like that. I
don't get an opportunity every day to make a speech like that."
Ruth chuckled, pleased at the memory.

"But there are right ways
and wrong ways to do things."

"You know I believe in
saying things straight out. I think that is the right way to do
things," Ruth said.

"Believe me. I know you
do. But, my dear, it puts people's backs up. If you would just ...
modify your way of expressing yourself, sometimes ..."

"You mean, there could be a
nicer way to tell a bunch of old gossips that they're a bunch of old
gossips? Sometimes the truth hurts, but it needs to be said,
anyways. If I'd hurt them unfairly like I did Sandy, that would be
one thing. But I didn't hurt anything about that bunch except maybe
their pride. I just made 'em mad."

Mom had to laugh in spite of
herself. "Don't you care what they think about you?" she
asked, astonished.

"Why should I?" Ruth
asked, astonished back.

What
astonished her were ideas, new to her, growing out of her
mother-in-law's astonishment. It occurred to Ruth just then that
she
was the abnormal one. Maybe it was
normal
to
care more about what the general public thought about oneself than
almost anything else. She'd known other people who lived in such a
way, but she'd always thought of
them
as abnormal.

Then she wondered, all in a
hair's-breadth instant, if this abnormality in herself was congenital
or if her life's circumstances had twisted her.

And she pondered, in that same
instant, the sane insanity behind this abnormal normality. How could
it be a matter of such vital importance to (the rest of) the entire
human race what the rest of the entire human race thought about
oneself? The opinions of the masses were changeable as weather. It
just wasn't logical or practical to build anything on them. But was
she the only person who saw it that way?

Ruth's mother-in-law looked back
at her with no ready answer to the question. She was having
revelations of her own. Mrs. MacKellum had never bothered to wonder
if we should or shouldn't care about what other people think of us or
why we do. That first realization that a particular unquestioned
value of our own is not a universal one is always a revolutionary
concept.

Each realized that she was
looking at the other across that gulf no human can cross. There is
no bridge of perfect understanding between humans. Yet those moments
of realizing that truth are those moments where bridges can be built
towards partial understanding.

Ruth had a flash of insight, not
only into her mother-in-law's character but into her husband's.

Thought buried her as she helped
Mom carry the brown paper bags into the kitchen and as they unpacked
them together.

Ruth broke her preoccupied
silence to say, "I don't think he ever really loved me."

"What?" Mom said.

"I always knew that I felt
more for him than he did for me. But I felt sure he loved me in his
way. Now I see I was just deceiving myself."
"That's
simply not true, Ruth. Don't tell yourself things like that. I know
my son! It was just the hard time after his dad died and being out
of work and all. I guess he isn't one to deal with life's harsher
realities any better than Guy did. Just because Guy couldn't ...
face things, I don't tell myself that he never loved me. Though they
both committed very wrong and unloving acts in the way both of them
left their wives. But don't you start believing it was because
Graham never loved you! Where did that come from?"

"It's just that I suddenly
realized that what people thought about him was about the most
important thing in the world to Graham. I think that was what
attracted him to me in the first place. It was because I, being me
and saying right out whatever I think without bothering what anyone
else thinks about it, I said something to him the first time I saw
him after all my years away, and it hurt his feelings, I think. Or
made him mad, at least, and he felt a need to win me over because he
couldn't stand it that anyone should think badly of him."

"I don't doubt that
opposites do attract even if those differences are what makes
marriage challenging. But I know that your honesty is one of the
things that drew Graham to you. He said you were different than all
the other girls. I'm sure that's one of the things he noticed about
you right off that interested him. Your real-ness. I think he found
it refreshing compared to all the other girls who seemed artificial."

"That's not what I mean. I
mean, the more that I think about it, I think it was just because he
wanted to win my good opinion that he ever started going with me.
After that first time when I hurt his feelings, the next time he paid
any attention to me, he knew that he'd done something to give me a
bad opinion of him, and I think he couldn't live with that. That's
why he went out of his way to get back in my good graces. It wasn't
that he was interested in me, personally. It was about him and the
way I thought of him."

"He isn't a terrible
person, Ruth. You have to believe that. The things he's gone
through would break a lot stronger men."

"No, no, no. I don't mean
he's a terrible person. It's just that things are making sense to me
that have never made sense to me before. Like, why he would ever
notice me in the first place. I wondered, at the time when he first
asked me to go see a movie with him, what was behind it. I was
pretty sure he couldn't have really been interested in me. Now it
makes sense. My big appeal was the fact that he felt like I
disapproved of him and he was driven to change that."

"Ruth,
listen to yourself! Why shouldn't my son have noticed you? He told
me himself that it was because you were
good
and fine and, I think 'straight' was the word he used, that he was
attracted to you. He saw that beauty you have on the inside, I know
he did. And I know he appreciated it. You have to believe me that
he loved you, Ruth. I believe he still does, even if he has a funny
way of showing it. I don't know about the time you're talking about.
I don't know when he first started to notice you. Maybe you did
intrigue him and he had to get to know you at the beginning just
because you weren't like others, falling all over yourself to make a
good impression on him. Maybe you're right about the first time he
invited you out. But I know, as sure's sure, that he did come to see
you for what you are and to love you for it."

There was a stinging sensation
in Ruth's eyes that was very unfamiliar to her.

"I'd like to believe you,
Mom. I would. It's just that I'm beginning to see, now, how
important other people's opinions of him are to him."

"Look, Ruth. You know that
you and I got off to a rocky start, didn't we?"

"Yes, and I'm sorry for it.
It was my fault. Me and my outspokenness."

"No, it wasn't your fault.
I had a prejudice against you because you weren't ... well, you
weren't what Graham's father and I had planned for him. And because
I didn't know you. But don't you see? Now that I've got to know
you, don't you think I realize what a treasure you are? Don't you
worry! Graham knew what he had. The bigger question is, 'Why would
he toss it away?' I think it was only shame that made him do it. He
couldn't live with you always seeing his shame, so finally he up and
left. That's how I see it. But there's nothing you could have done
differently, my dear. You wouldn't want to be less than you are,
would you?"

The stinging grew stronger in
Ruth's eyes. It began to feel like she was cutting onions.

"Thank you, Mom. It means
a lot to me to hear you say things like that. If I can just keep
believing that Graham really did love me at one time, it makes all
the difference."

"I
mean what I say. You know, I once told Graham that you and he
weren't well-matched and it would lead to trouble. What I meant at
the time, I hope you'll forgive me saying so, was that you weren't
good enough for
my
son
.
But what I've come to see – I hate to say it, but I have to –
is that I was right about the two of you not being well-matched. But
that's because my son isn't good enough for you." The admission
cost her dearly, and her own eyes began to sting fiercely. She left
the kitchen abruptly to go and locate a hanky.

But he
is
good enough for me,
Ruth's
heart cried.
At
least, no one else could ever be
.
He's
the only one I could ever want.

*
* *

The burning question on Ruth's
mind also made for a little interesting speculation for the town at
large to indulge in.

The consensus of the townsfolk
as to whether "he loved her" or "he loved her not"
was that, if the daisy could have been made to reveal her secret but
certain knowledge on the question, it would have been a "not"
answer.

There were two schools of
thought: The first theory was that, back before there was a Ruth and
Graham, when there was only a Lily and Graham, Lily and Graham had
quarrelled. (Speculation came up dry on the cause of the quarrel,
but it was a moot point. They had quarrelled. It was common
knowledge.) Lily had "taken up" with Bo right away to get
back at Graham, and Graham had "taken up" with Ruth. Both
Lily and Graham were too proud and stubborn to make up the quarrel,
but they'd never "gotten over" each other.

Or maybe (this was the second
theory), Lily had grown bored of Graham and run after a man more
likely to be a challenge. But Bo Weaver, proving to be easy prey,
had soon lost his appeal. And Graham, "taking up" with
Ruth, soon regained his, someone else's grass always being greener.

The part where both schools of
thought agreed was on the point that Graham and Lily had never really
"gotten over" each other. Ruth had been a stopgap.

Whatever the speculation, they
were admittedly only speculations. The truth could never be known.

Was there truth to be known? In
this instance, as in all others, I believe there was. I believe
there is always truth to be known even if we can't know it.

In this instance, I believe the
truth to be that Graham had told Ruth the truth as he saw it in the
final note he wrote her. As much as he was capable, I believe he did
love Ruth. I find it impossible to believe that he could have known
a Ruth and loved a Lily.

Yet he didn't want to lower Ruth
to his level, and he couldn't bear his inability to rise to hers.
The burden of his failures weighed less with Lily.

It's admittedly speculation, as
well, but that's how I can't help but see it. You must decide for
yourself.

I'm not sure if Ruth ever fully
embraced one answer or the other to her burning question of that time
or if it continued to scorch her until it finally burned itself out.

*
* *

Ruth cared more about what other
people thought than she realized. If she cared nothing at all, she
wouldn't have felt a heaviness in her stomach every morning, walking
the six blocks to the Morning Glory Cafe, as though she'd eaten a
whole loaf of bread dough for breakfast.

She'd
become a pariah. It was different than being bereaved. People knew
what to say then. But being ... what? Being
left
was
another story. She understood that it didn't seem quite right to
treat her as though nothing at all had happened; yet it wasn't
something that could be talked about openly (not to her, at least).