Stern Men

6

MISS VERA ELLIS had never wanted Ruth’s mother to marry.

When Mary Smith-Ellis was a little girl, Miss Vera would say, “You know how difficult it was for me when your mother died.”

“Yes, Miss Vera,” Mary would say.

“I barely survived without her.”

“I know, Miss Vera.”

“You look so much like her.”

“Thank you.”

“I can’t do a thing without you!”

“Yes, I know.”

“My helpmate!”

“Yes, Miss Vera.”

Ruth’s mother had a most peculiar life with Miss Vera. Mary Smith-Ellis never had close friends or sweethearts. Her life was circumscribed by service-mending, corresponding, packing, shopping, braiding, reassuring, aiding, bathing, and so on. She had inherited the very workload that once burdened her mother and had been raised into servitude, exactly as her mother had been.

Winters in Concord, summers on Fort Niles. Mary did go to school, but only until she was sixteen, and only because Miss Vera did not want a complete idiot as a companion. Other than those years of schooling, Mary Smith-Ellis’s life consisted of chores for Miss Vera. In this manner, Mary passed through childhood and adolescence. Then she was a young woman, then one not so young. She had never had a suitor. She was not unattractive, but she was busy. She had work to do.

It was at the end of the summer of 1955 that Miss Vera Ellis decided to give a picnic for the people of Fort Niles. She had guests visiting Ellis House from Europe, and she wanted to show them the local spirit, so she planned to have a lobster bake on Gavin Beach, to which all the residents of Fort Niles were to be invited. The decision was without precedent. There had never before been social occasions attended by the locals of Fort Niles and the Ellis family, but Miss Vera thought it would be a delightful event. A novelty.

Mary, of course, organized everything. She spoke with the fishermen’s wives and arranged for them to bake the blueberry pies. She had a modest, quiet manner, and the fishermen’s wives liked her well enough. They knew she was from Ellis House, but they didn’t hold that against her. She seemed a nice girl, if a bit mousy and shy. Mary also ordered corn and potatoes and charcoal and beer. She borrowed long tables from the Fort Niles grammar school, and arranged to have the pews moved from the Fort Niles church down to the beach. She talked to Mr. Fred Burden of Courne Haven, who was a decent enough fiddler, and hired him to provide music. Finally, she needed to order several hundred pounds of lobster. The fishermen’s wives suggested that she discuss this with Mr. Angus Addams, who was the most prolific fisherman on the island. She was told to wait for his boat, the Sally Chestnut, at the dock in the middle of the afternoon.

So Mary went down to the dock on a windy August afternoon and picked her way around the tossed stacks of wrecked wooden lobster traps and nets and barrels. As each fisherman came past her, stinking in his high boots and sticky slicker, she asked, “Excuse me, sir? Are you Mr. Angus Addams? Excuse me? Are you the skipper of the Sally Chestnut, sir?”

They all shook their heads or grunted crude denials and passed right by. Even Angus Addams himself passed right by, with his head down. He had no idea who the hell this woman was and what the hell she wanted, and he had no interest in finding out. Ruth Thomas’s father was another of the men who passed Mary Smith-Ellis, and when she asked, “Are you Angus Addams?” he grunted a denial like that of the other men. Except that, after he passed, he slowed down and turned to take a look at the woman. A good long look.

She was pretty. She was nice-looking. She wore tailored tan trousers and a short-sleeved white blouse, with a small round collar decorated with tiny embroidered flowers. She did not wear makeup. She had a thin silver watch on her wrist, and her dark hair was short and neatly waved. She carried a notepad and a pencil. He liked her slim waist and her clean appearance. She looked tidy. Stan Thomas, a fastidious man, liked that.

Yes, Stan Thomas really looked her over.

“Are you Mr. Angus Addams, sir?” she was asking Wayne Pommeroy, who was staggering by with a broken trap on his shoulder. Wayne looked embarrassed and then angry at his embarrassment, and he hustled past without answering.

Stan Thomas was still looking her over when she turned and caught his eye. He smiled. She walked over, and she was smiling, as well, with a sort of sweet hopefulness. It was a nice smile.

“You’re sure you’re not Mr. Angus Addams?” she asked.

“No. I’m Stan Thomas.”

“I’m Mary Ellis,” she said, and held out her hand. “I work at Ellis House.”

Stan Thomas didn’t respond, but he didn’t look unfriendly, so she continued.

“My Aunt Vera is giving a party next Sunday for the whole island, and she’d like to purchase several hundred pounds of lobster.”

“She would?”

“That’s right.”

“Who’s she want to buy it from?”

“I don’t suppose it matters. I was told to look for Angus Addams, but it doesn’t matter to me.”

“I could sell them to her, but she’d have to pay the retail price.”

“Have you got that much lobster?”

“I can get it. It’s right out there.” He waved his hand at the ocean and grinned. “I just have to pick it up.”

Mary laughed.

“It would have to be retail price, though,” he repeated. “If I sell it to her.”

“Oh, I’m sure that would be fine. She wants to be certain there’s plenty of it.”

“I don’t want to lose any money on the deal. I got a distributor in Rockland who expects a certain amount of lobster from me every week.”

“I’m sure your price will be fine.”

“How you plan on cooking the lobster?”

“I suppose… I’m sorry… I don’t know, really.”

“I’ll do it for you.”

“Oh, Mr. Thomas!”

“I’ll build a big fire on the beach and boil them in garbage cans, with seaweed.”

“Oh, my goodness! Is that how?”

“That’s how.”

“Oh, my goodness! Garbage cans! You don’t say.”

“The Ellis family can buy new ones. I’ll order them for you. Pick them up in Rockland couple days from now.”

“Really?”

“The corn goes right on top. And the clams. I’ll do the whole thing for you. Sister, that’s the only way!”

“Mr. Thomas, we’ll certainly pay you for all that and would be very grateful. I actually had no idea how to do it.”

“No need,” Stan Thomas said. “Hell, I’ll do it for free.” He surprised himself with this tossed-off line. Stan Thomas had never done anything for free in his life.

“Mr. Thomas!”

“You can help me. How about that, Mary? You can be my helper. That would be pay enough for me.”

He put his hand on Mary’s arm and smiled. His hands were filthy and reeked of rotting herring bait, but what the hell. He liked the shade of her skin, which was darker and smoother than he was used to seeing around the island. She wasn’t as young as he’d thought at first. Now that he was up close, he could see she was no kid. But she was slim and had nice round breasts. He liked her serious, nervous little frown. A pretty mouth, too. He gave her arm a squeeze.

“I think you’ll be a real good helper,” he said.

She laughed. “I help all the time!” she said. “Believe me, Mr. Thomas, I’m a very good helper!”

It poured rain on the day of the picnic, and that was the last time the Ellis family tried entertaining the whole island. It was a miserable day. Miss Vera stayed down at the beach for only an hour and sat under a tarp, griping. Her European guests went for a walk along the beach and lost their umbrellas to the wind. One of the gentlemen from Austria complained that his camera was destroyed by the rain. Mr. Burden the fiddler got drunk in someone’s car, and played his fiddle in there, with the windows up and the doors locked. They couldn’t get him out for hours. Stan Thomas’s fire pit never really took off, what with the soaked sand and the driving rain, and the women of the island held their cakes and pies close against their bodies, as if they were protecting infants. The affair was a disaster.

Mary Smith-Ellis bustled around in a borrowed fisherman’s slicker, moving chairs under trees and covering tables with bed sheets, but there was no way to salvage the day. The party had been her event to organize, and it was a calamity, but Stan Thomas liked the way she took defeat without shutting down. He liked the way she kept moving around, trying to maintain cheer. She was a nervous woman, but he liked her energy. She was a good worker. He liked that a great deal. He was a good worker himself, and he scorned idleness in any man or woman.

“You should come to my house and warm up,” he told her as she rushed past him at the end of the afternoon.

“Oh, no,” she said. “You should come with me to Ellis House and warm up.”

She repeated this invitation later, after he had helped her return the tables to the school and the pews to the church, so he drove her up to Ellis House at the top of the island. He knew where it was, of course, although he’d never been inside.

“That sure must be a nice place to live,” he said.

They were sitting in his truck in the circular driveway; the window glass was fogged from their breath and their steaming wet clothes.

“Oh, they stay here only for the summer,” Mary said.

“What about you?”

“Of course I stay here, too. I stay wherever the family stays. I take care of Miss Vera.”

“You take care of Miss Vera Ellis? All the time?”

“I’m her helpmate,” Mary said, with a wan smile.

“And what’s your last name again?”

“Ellis.”

“Ellis?”

“That’s right.”

He couldn’t figure this out exactly. He couldn’t figure out who this woman was. A servant? She sure acted like a servant, and he’d seen the way that Vera Ellis bitch harped at her. But how come her last name was Ellis? Ellis? Was she a poor relative? Who ever heard of an Ellis hauling chairs and pews all over the place and bustling around in the rain with a borrowed slicker. He thought about asking her what the hell her story was, but she was a sweetheart, and he didn’t want to antagonize her. Instead, he took her hand. She let him take it.

Stan Thomas, after all, was a good-looking young man, with a trim haircut and handsome dark eyes. He wasn’t tall, but he had a fine, lean figure and an appealing intensity, a directness, that Mary liked very much. She didn’t mind his taking her hand at all, even after so short an acquaintance.

“How long are you going to be around?” he asked.

“Until the second week of September.”

“That’s right. That’s when they-you-always leave.”

“That’s right.”

“I want to see you again,” he said.

She laughed.

“I’m serious,” he said. “I’m going to want to do this again. I like holding your hand. When can I see you again?”

Mary thought silently for a few minutes and then said, in an open way, “I’d like to see you some more, too, Mr. Thomas.”

“Good. Call me Stan.”

“Yes.”

“So when can I see you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’m probably going to want to see you tomorrow. What about tomorrow? How can I see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Is there any reason I can’t see you tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Mary said, and turned to him suddenly with a look of near panic. “I don’t know!”

“You don’t know? Don’t you like me?”

“Yes, I do. I like you, Mr. Thomas. Stan.”

“Good. I’ll come by for you tomorrow around four o’clock. We’ll go for a drive.”

“Oh, my goodness.”

“That’s what we’re going to do,” said Stan Thomas. “Tell whoever you have to tell.”

“I don’t know that I have to tell anybody, but I don’t know whether I’ll have time to go for a drive.”

“Do whatever you have to do, then. Figure out a way. I really do want to see you. Hey! I insist on it!”

“Fine!” She laughed.

“Good. Am I still invited inside?”

“Of course!” Mary said. “Please do come inside!”

They got out of the truck, but Mary did not head up the walk to the grand front door. Dashing through the rain, she went around the side, and Stan Thomas chased her. She ran along the granite edge of the house, under the protection of the great eaves, and ducked inside a plain wooden door, holding it open for Stan. They were in a back hallway, and she took his slicker and hung it on a wall peg.

“We’ll go to the kitchen,” she said, and opened another door. A set of spiral iron stairs twisted down to a huge, old-fashioned cellar kitchen. There was a massive stone fireplace with iron hooks and pots and crevices that looked as though they were still being used for baking bread. One wall was lined with sinks, another with stoves and ovens. Bundled herbs hung from the ceilings, and the floor was clean worn tile. At the wide pine table in the center of the room sat a tiny middle-aged woman with short red hair and a keen face, nimbly snipping beans into a silver bowl.

“Hello, Edith,” said Mary.

The woman nodded her hello and said, “She wants you.”

“She does!”

“She keeps calling down for you.”

“Since what time?”

“Since all afternoon.”

“Oh, but I was busy returning all the chairs and tables,” Mary said, and she rushed over to one of the sinks, washed her hands in a speedy blur, and patted them dry on her slacks.

“She doesn’t know you’re back yet, Mary,” said the woman named Edith, “so you may as well have a cup of coffee and a seat.”

“I should really see what she needs.”

“What about your friend here?”

“Stan!” Mary said, and spun to look at him. Clearly, she had forgotten he was there. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to sit here and warm up with you, after all.”

“Have a cup of coffee and a seat, Mary,” said Edith, still snipping the beans. Her voice was commanding. “She doesn’t know you’re back yet.”

“Yes, Mary, have a cup of coffee and a seat,” said Stan Thomas, and Edith the bean-snipper flashed him a sidelong look. It was a fast snatch of a look, but it took in a whole lot of information.

“And why don’t you have a seat, sir?” Edith said.

“Thank you, ma’am, I will.” He sat.

“Get your guest a cup of coffee, Mary.”

Mary winced. “I can’t,” she said. “I have to check on Miss Vera.”

“She won’t die if you sit here for five minutes and dry off,” Edith said.

“I can’t!” Mary said. She flashed past Stan Thomas and Edith, right out the kitchen door. They heard her quick footsteps fluttering up the stairs as she called out, “Sorry!” and she was gone.

“I guess I can get the coffee for myself,” Stan Thomas said.

“I’ll get it for you. This is my kitchen.”

Edith left the beans and poured Stan a cup of coffee. Without asking how he took it, she added a splash of cream and did not offer any sugar, which was fine with him. She made herself a cup of the same.

“Are you courting her?” she asked, after she sat down. She was looking at him with a suspicion she made no attempt to mask.

“I only just met her.”

“Are you interested in her?”

Stan Thomas did not answer, but he raised his eyebrows in ironic surprise.

“I don’t have any advice for you, you know,” Edith said.

“You don’t have to give me any advice.”

“Somebody should.”

“Somebody like who?”

“You know, she’s already married, Mr.-?”

“Thomas. Stan Thomas.”

“She’s already married, Mr. Thomas.”

“No. She doesn’t wear a ring. She didn’t say anything.”

“She’s married to that old bitch up there.” Edith thrust a thin yellow thumb at the ceiling. “See how she scampers away even before she’s called?”

“Can I ask you a question?” Stan said. “Who the hell is she?”

“I don’t like your mouth,” Edith said, although her tone did not suggest she minded it all that much. She sighed. “Mary is technically Miss Vera’s niece. But she’s really her slave. It’s a family tradition. It was the same thing with her mother, and that poor woman only got out of the slavery by drowning. Mary’s mother was the one who got swept off by the wave back in twenty-seven. They never found her body. You heard about that?”

“I heard about that.”

“Oh, God, I’ve told this story a million times. Dr. Ellis adopted Jane as a playmate for his little girl-who is now that screaming pain-in-my-hole upstairs. Jane was Mary’s mother. She got pregnant by some Italian quarry worker. It was a scandal.”

“I heard something about it.”

“Well, they tried to keep it quiet, but people do like a good scandal.”

“They sure like a good one around here.”

“So she drowned, you know, and Miss Vera took over the baby and raised that little girl to be her helper, to replace the mother. And that’s who Mary is. And I, for one, cannot believe that the people who watch out for children allowed it.”

“What people who watch out for children?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t believe it’s legal for a child to be born into slavery in this day and age.”

“You don’t mean slavery.”

“I know exactly what I mean, Mr. Thomas. We all sat here in this house watching it come to pass, and we asked ourselves why nobody put a stop to it.”

“Why didn’t you put a stop to it?”

“I’m a cook, Mr. Thomas. I’m not a police officer. And what do you do? No, I’m sure I know. You live here, so of course you’re a fisherman.”

“Yes.”

“You make good money?”

“Good enough.”

“Good enough for what?”

“Good enough for around here.”

“Is your job dangerous?”

“Not too bad.”

“Would you like a real drink?”

“I sure would.”

Edith the cook went to a cabinet, moved around some bottles, and came back with a silver flask. She poured amber liquid from it into two clean coffee cups. She gave one to Stan. “You’re not a drunk, are you?” she asked.

“Are you?”

“Very funny, with my workload. Very funny.” Edith stared at Stan Thomas narrowly. “And you never married anyone from around here?”

“I never married anyone from around anywhere,” Stan said, and he laughed.

“You seem good-natured. Everything’s a big joke. How long have you been courting Mary?”

“Nobody’s courting anybody, ma’am.”

“How long have you been interested in Mary?”

“I only met her this week. I guess this is a bigger deal than I thought. I think she’s a nice girl.”

“She is a nice girl. But don’t they have nice girls right here on your island?”

“Hey, now take it easy.”

“Well, I think it’s unusual that you’re not married. How old are you?”

“I’m in my twenties. My late twenties.” Stan Thomas was twenty-five.

“A good-looking, good-natured man like you with a good business? Who isn’t a drunk? And not married yet? My understanding is that people marry young around here, especially the fishermen.”

“Maybe nobody around here likes me.”

“Smart mouth. Maybe you have bigger ambitions.”

“Listen, all I did was drive Mary around to do some errands.”

“Do you want to see her again? Is that your idea?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“She’s almost thirty years old, you know.”

“I think she looks swell.”

“And she is an Ellis-legally an Ellis-but she doesn’t have any money, so don’t go getting any ideas about that. They’ll never give her a dime except to keep her dressed and fed.”

“I don’t know what kind of ideas you think I have.”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“Well, I can see you’re trying to figure something out. I can see that pretty clear.”

“She doesn’t have a mother, Mr. Thomas. She is considered important around this house because Miss Vera needs her, but nobody in this house looks out for Mary. She’s a young woman without a mother to watch over her, and I’m trying to find out your intentions.”

“Well, you don’t talk like a mother. All respect to you, ma’am, but you talk like a father.”

This pleased Edith. “She doesn’t have one of those, either.”

“That’s a tough break.”

“How do you think you’ll go about seeing her, Mr. Thomas?”

“I think I’ll pick her up and take her for a drive sometimes.”

“Will you?”

“What do you make of that?”

“It’s none of my business.”

Stan Thomas laughed right out loud. “Oh, I’ll bet you can make just about anything your business, ma’am.”

“Very funny,” she said. She took another swig of hooch. “Everything’s a big joke with you. Mary’s leaving in a few weeks, you know. And she won’t be back until next June.”

“Then I’ll have to pick her up and take her for a drive every day, I guess.”

Stan Thomas treated Edith to his biggest smile, which was most winning.

Edith pronounced, “You’re in for a heap of trouble. Too bad, because I don’t dislike you, Mr. Thomas.”

“Thank you. I don’t dislike you, either.”

“Don’t you mess up that girl.”

“I don’t plan to mess up anybody,” he said.

Edith evidently thought their conversation was over, so she got back to the beans. Since she did not ask Stan Thomas to leave, he sat there in the kitchen of Ellis House for a while longer, hoping Mary would come back and sit with him. He waited and waited, but Mary did not return, so he finally went home. It was dark by then, and still raining. He figured he’d have to see her another day.

They were married the next August. It wasn’t a hasty wedding. It wasn’t an unexpected wedding, in that Stan told Mary back in June of 1956-the day after she returned to Fort Niles Island with the Ellis family-that they were going to get married by the end of that summer. He told her that she was going to stay on Fort Niles with him from now on and she could forget about being a slave to goddamn Miss Vera Ellis. So it had all been arranged well in advance. Still, the ceremony itself had the marks of haste.

Mary and Stan were married in Stan Thomas’s living room by Mort Beekman, who was then the traveling pastor for the Maine islands. Mort Beekman preceded Toby Wishnell. He was, at the time, the skipper of the New Hope. Unlike Wishnell, Pastor Mort Beekman was well liked. He had an air about him of not giving a shit, which was fine with everyone concerned. Beekman was no zealot, and that too put him in good standing with the fishermen in his far-flung parishes.

Stan Thomas and Mary Smith-Ellis had no witnesses at their ceremony, no rings, no attendants, but Pastor Mort Beekman, true to his nature, went right ahead with the ceremony. “What the hell do you need a witness for, anyhow?” he asked. Beekman happened to be on the island for a baptism, and what did he care about rings or attendants or witnesses? These two young people certainly looked like adults. Could they sign the certificate? Yes. Were they old enough to do this without anyone’s permission? Yes. Was it going to be a big hassle? No.

“Do you want all the praying and Scriptures and stuff?” Pastor Beekman asked the couple.

“No, thanks,” Stan said. “Just the wedding part.”

“Maybe a little praying…” Mary suggested hesitantly.

Pastor Mort Beekman sighed and scraped together a marriage ceremony with a little praying, for the sake of the lady. He couldn’t help noticing that she looked like hell, what with all the paleness and all the trembling. The whole ceremony was over in about four minutes. Stan Thomas slipped the pastor a ten-dollar bill on his way out the door.

“Much appreciated,” Stan said. “Thanks for coming by.”

“Sure enough,” said the pastor, and headed down to the boat so that he could get off the island before dark; there was never any decent lodging for him on Fort Niles, and he wasn’t about to stay overnight on that inhospitable rock.

It was the least ostentatious wedding in the history of the Ellis family. If, that is, Mary Smith-Ellis could be considered a member of the Ellis family, a matter now seriously in question.

“As your aunt,” Miss Vera had told Mary, “I must tell you that I think marriage would be a mistake for you. I think it a big mistake for you to handcuff yourself to this fisherman and to this island.”

“But you love this island,” Mary had said.

“Not in February, darling.”

“But I could visit you in February.”

“Darling, you’ll have a husband to look after, and there will be no time for visiting. I had a husband once myself, and I know. It was most restrictive,” she declared, although it had not in the least been restrictive.

To the surprise of many, Miss Vera did not put up further argument against Mary’s wedding plans. For those who had witnessed Vera’s violent outrage over Mary’s mother’s pregnancy thirty years earlier, and her tantrums at Mary’s mother’s death twenty-nine years earlier (not to mention her daily bouts of temper over sundry insignificant matters), this calm in the face of Mary’s news was a mystery. How could Vera stand for this? How could she lose another helpmate? How could she tolerate this disloyalty, this abandonment?

Perhaps nobody was more surprised by this reaction than Mary herself, who had lost ten pounds over the course of that summer from anxiety about Stan Thomas. What to do about Stan Thomas? He was not pressing her to see him, he was not taking her away from her responsibilities, but he persistently insisted that they would marry by the end of the summer. He’d been saying so since June. There did not seem to be room for negotiation.

“You think it’s a good idea, too,” he reminded her, and she did think so. She did like the idea of marrying. It wasn’t something she had thought about much before, but now it seemed exactly right. And he was so handsome. And he was so confident.

“We’re not getting any younger,” he reminded her, and indeed they were not.

Still, Mary vomited twice on the day she had to tell Miss Vera she was to marry Stan Thomas. She couldn’t put it off any longer and finally broke the news in the middle of July. But the conversation, surprisingly, was not difficult at all. Vera did not become enraged, although she had frequently become enraged over much smaller issues. Vera made her “this is a big mistake” statement as a concerned aunt, and then resigned herself to the idea entirely, leaving Mary to ask all the panicky questions.

“What will you do without me?” she asked.

“Mary, you sweet, sweet girl. Don’t let it cross your mind.” This was accompanied by a warm smile, a pat on the hand.

“But what will I do? I’ve never been away from you!”

“You are a lovely, capable young woman. You’ll be fine without me.”

“But you don’t think I should do this, do you?”

“Oh, Mary. What does it matter what I think?”

“You think he’ll be a bad husband.”

“I have never spoken a word against him.”

“But you don’t like him.”

“You’re the one who has to like him, Mary.”

“You think I’ll end up poor and alone.”

“Oh, you never will, Mary. You’ll always have a roof over your head. You’ll never end up selling matches in the city or something dreadful like that.”

“You think I won’t make friends here on the island. You think I’ll be lonely, and you think I’ll go crazy in the winter.”

“Who wouldn’t make friends with you?”

“You think I’m loose, running around with a fisherman. You think I’m turning out to be like my mother.”

“The things I think!” Miss Vera said, and laughed.

“I will be happy with Stan,” Mary said. “I will.”

“Then I couldn’t be happier for you. A happy bride is a radiant bride.”

“But where should we get married?”

“At a church of God, I dearly hope.”

Mary fell silent, as did Miss Vera. It was a tradition for Ellis brides to marry in the gardens of Ellis House, attended by the Episcopal Bishop of Concord, boated in for the occasion. Ellis brides had lavish weddings, witnessed by every available member of the Ellis family and by all the family’s dearest friends. Ellis brides had elegant receptions at Ellis House. So when Miss Vera Ellis suggested a marriage at an unnamed “church of God,” Mary had reason to be silent.

“But I want to get married here, at Ellis House.”

“Oh, Mary. You don’t want that headache. You should have a simple ceremony and get it over with.”

“But will you be there?” Mary asked, after a long while.

“Oh, darling.”

“Will you?”

“I would only cry and cry, darling, and spoil your special day.”

Later that afternoon, Mr. Lanford Ellis-Vera’s older brother and the reigning patriarch of the family-called Mary Smith-Ellis to his room to congratulate her on her forthcoming marriage. He expressed his hope that Stan Thomas was an honorable young man. He said, “You should buy yourself a pretty wedding gown,” and he passed her an envelope. She picked at the flap, and he said, “Don’t open it here.” He gave her a kiss. He gave her a squeeze on the hand and said, “We have always had the fondest feelings for you.” And he did not say more.

Mary didn’t open the envelope until she was alone in her room that evening. She counted out a thousand dollars in cash. Ten hundred-dollar bills, which she slipped under her pillow. That was a great deal of money for a wedding gown in 1956, but, in the end, Mary was married in a flowered cotton dress that she had sewn for herself two summers earlier. She didn’t want to spend the money. Instead, she decided to hand the envelope and its contents to Stan Thomas.

That money was what she brought to the marriage, along with her clothing and the sheets from her bed. These were all her possessions, after decades of service to the Ellis family.

In the Ellis mansion in Concord, Ruth Thomas’s mother showed her to her room. They had not seen each other for some time. Ruth didn’t like to visit Concord and rarely did. There had been some Christmases, in fact, when Ruth had elected to stay in her room at boarding school. She liked that more than being in Concord and the Ellis mansion. Last Christmas, for instance.

“You look wonderful, Ruth,” her mother said.

“Thank you. You look good, too.”

“Don’t you have any bags?”

“No. Not this time.”

“We put up new wallpaper for you.”

“It looks nice.”

“And here’s a picture of you when you were a little girl.”

“Look at that,” Ruth said, and leaned toward the framed photograph hanging on the wall next to the dresser. “That’s me?”

“That’s you.”

“What do I have in my hands?”

“Pebbles. Pebbles from the Ellises’ driveway.”

“Boy, look at those fists!”

“And there I am,” Ruth’s mother said.

“There you are.”

“I’m trying to get you to hand me the pebbles.”

“It doesn’t look as if you’re going to get them.”

“No, it doesn’t. I’ll bet I didn’t get them.”

“How old was I?”

“About two. So adorable.”

“And how old were you?”

“Oh. Thirty-three or so.”

“I never saw that picture before.”

“No, I don’t think you have.”

“I wonder who took it.”

“Miss Vera took it.”

Ruth Thomas sat down on the bed, a handsome brass heirloom covered with a lace spread. Her mother sat beside her and asked, “Does it smell a bit musty in here?”

“No, it’s fine.”

They sat quietly for a time. Ruth’s mother stood and raised the window shades. “We may as well let in some light,” she said, and sat down again.

“Thank you,” Ruth said.

“When I bought that wallpaper, I thought it was cherry blossoms, but now that I look at it, I think it’s apple blossoms. Isn’t that funny? I don’t know why I didn’t see that at first.”

“Apple blossoms are nice.”

“It doesn’t make any difference, I suppose.”

“Either way is nice. You did a good job with the wallpapering.”

“We paid a man to do it.”

“It looks really pretty.”

After another long silence, Mary Smith-Ellis Thomas took her daughter’s hand and asked, “Should we go see Ricky now?”

Ricky was in a baby’s crib, although he was nine years old. He was the size of a small child, a three-year-old, perhaps, and his fingers and toes were curled like talons. His hair was black and short, matted in the back because of the way he swiveled his head back and forth, back and forth. He was forever grinding his head against the mattress, forever flipping his face from side to side, as though searching desperately for something. And his eyes, too, rolled to the left and to the right, always seeking. He made screeching sounds and high-pitched whines and howls, but when Mary approached, he settled into a steady muttering.

“Here’s Mama,” she said. “Here’s Mama.”

She lifted him out of the crib and placed him, on his back, on a sheepskin mat on the floor. He could not sit up or hold up his head. He could not feed himself. He could not speak. On the sheepskin mat, his small, crooked legs flopped to one side and his arms to the other. Back and forth he swung his head, back and forth, and his fingers waved and tensed, fluttering in the air the way sea plants flutter in the water.

“Is he getting any better?” Ruth asked.

“Well,” her mother said, “I think so, Ruth. I always think he’s getting a little better, but nobody else ever sees it.”

“Where’s his nurse?”

“Oh, she’s around. She may be down in the kitchen, taking a break. She’s a new woman, and she seems very nice. She likes to sing to Ricky. Doesn’t she, Ricky? Doesn’t Sandra sing to you? Because she knows you like it. Doesn’t she?”

Mary spoke to him the way mothers speak to newborns, or the way Senator Simon Addams spoke to his dog Cookie, in a loving voice with no expectation of reply.

“Do you see your sister?” she asked. “Do you see your big sister? She came to visit you, little boy. She came to say hello to Ricky.”

“Hello there, Ricky,” said Ruth, trying to follow the cadence of her mother’s voice. “Hello there, little brother.”

Ruth felt sick. She bent over and patted Ricky’s head, which he whipped away from under her palm, and she felt his matted hair slip away in a flash-gone. She pulled back her hand, and he let his head rest for a moment. Then he flipped it with a suddenness that made Ruth start.

Ricky was born when Ruth was nine years old. He was born in a hospital in Rockland. Ruth never saw him when he was a baby, because her mother didn’t return to the island after Ricky was born. Her father went to Rockland with his wife when the baby was due, and Ruth stayed with Mrs. Pommeroy next door. Her mother was supposed to come back with a baby, but she never did. She didn’t come back, because something was wrong with the baby. Nobody had expected that.

According to what Ruth had heard, her father, from the moment he saw the severely retarded infant, started laying out the blame, fast and mean. He was disgusted and he was angry. Who had done this to his son? He immediately decided that the baby had inherited the sad condition from Mary’s ancestors. After all, what did anyone know of the Bath Naval Hospital orphan or of the Italian immigrant? Who knew what monsters had lurked in that dark past? Stan Thomas’s ancestors, on the other hand, were accounted for back to ten generations, and nothing of this sort had ever appeared. There had never been any freaks in Stan’s family. Obviously, Stan said, this is what you get for marrying someone whose background isn’t known. Yes, this is what you get.

Mary, still exhausted in her hospital bed, came back with her own demented defense. She was not normally a fighter, but she fought this time. She fought back dirty. Oh, yes, she said, all Stan’s ancestors could be accounted for, precisely because they were all related to one another. They were all siblings and first cousins, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize that, after enough generations of inbreeding and incest, this is what you get. This child, this Ricky-boy with the flippy head and the clawed hands.

“This is your son, Stan!” she said.

It was an ugly, wretched fight, and it upset the nurses in the maternity ward, who heard every cruel word. Some of the younger nurses cried. They had never heard anything like it. The head nurse came on duty at midnight and led Stan Thomas away from his wife’s room. The head nurse was a big woman, not easily intimidated, even by a tough-mouthed lobsterman. She hustled him away while Mary was still screaming at him.

“For the love of God,” the nurse snapped at Stan, “the woman needs her rest.”

A few afternoons later, a visitor came to see Mary and Stan and the new baby in the hospital; it was Mr. Lanford Ellis. Somehow, he had heard the news. He had sailed over to Rockland on the Stonecutter to pay his respects and to offer Mary and Stan the Ellis family’s condolences on their tragic situation. Stan and Mary were coolly reconciled by this time. At least they could be in the same room.

Lanford Ellis told Mary of a conversation he’d had with his sister Vera, and of their consensus. He and his sister had discussed the immediate problem and had agreed that Mary should not take the baby to Fort Niles Island. Mary would have no medical support there, no professional help for Ricky. The doctors had already announced that he would need round-the-clock care for the rest of his life. Did Mary and Stan have a plan?

Mary and Stan admitted that they did not. Lanford Ellis was sympathetic. He understood that this was a difficult time for the couple, and he had a suggestion. Because of the Ellis family’s attachment to Mary, they were prepared to help. Lanford Ellis would pay for Ricky’s care at an appropriate institution. For life. No matter the cost. He had heard of an excellent private facility in New Jersey.

“New Jersey?” Mary Thomas said, incredulous.

New Jersey did seem far away, Lanford Ellis conceded. But the home was said to be the best in the country. He had spoken with the administrator that morning. If Stan and Mary weren’t comfortable with the arrangement, there was one other possibility…

Or…

Or what?

Or, if Mary and her family moved to Concord, where Mary could resume her position as companion to Miss Vera, the Ellis family would provide Ricky with private care right there, at the Ellis mansion. Lanford Ellis would have part of the servants’ wing converted into a comfortable area for young Ricky. He would pay for good private nurses and for the finest medical care. For life. He would also find Stan Thomas a good job and would send Ruth to a good school.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Stan Thomas said, in a dangerously low voice. “Don’t you fucking dare try to take my wife back.”

“It is merely a suggestion,” said Lanford Ellis. “The decision is yours.” And he left.

“Did you people fucking poison her?” Stan Thomas shouted after Lanford as the old man walked away, down the hospital hall. Stan followed him. “Did you poison my wife? Did you people make this happen? Answer me! Did you goddamn people set this whole fucking thing up just to get her back?”

But Lanford Ellis had no more to say, and the big nurse stepped in once more.

Naturally, Ruth Thomas never knew the details of the argument her parents had following Mr. Ellis’s offer. But she did know that a few points were made immediately clear, right there in the hospital room. There was no way on earth that Mary Smith-Ellis Thomas, child of an orphan, was going to put her son, no matter how disabled, into an institution. And there was no way on earth that Stan Thomas, tenth-generation islander, was going to move to Concord, New Hampshire. Nor would he allow his daughter to move there, where she might be turned into a slave of Miss Vera Ellis, like her mother and her grandmother before her.

These points having been established, there was little room for negotiation. And whatever the severity of the argument, the decision was quick and final. Mary went to Concord with her son. She returned to the Ellis mansion and to her position with Vera Ellis. Stan Thomas went back to the island to join his daughter, alone. Not immediately, however. He went missing for a few months.

“Where did you go?” Ruth asked him when she was seventeen years old. “Where did you run off to for all that time?”

“I was angry,” he replied. “And it’s none of your business.”

“Where’s my mother?” Ruth asked her father, back when she was nine years old and he finally came back to Fort Niles, alone. His explanation was a disaster-something about what didn’t matter and what wasn’t worth asking about and what should be forgotten. Ruth puzzled over this, and then Mr. Pommeroy drowned, and she thought-it made perfect sense-that her mother may have drowned, too. Of course. That was the answer. A few weeks after reaching this conclusion, Ruth began receiving letters from her mother, which was confusing. She thought for a time that the letters came from heaven. As she grew older, she more or less pieced the story together. Eventually, Ruth felt she understood the event completely.

Now, in Ricky’s room, which smelled of his medicines, Ruth’s mother took a bottle of lotion from the dresser and sat on the floor beside her son. She rubbed the lotion into his strange feet, massaging and stretching his toes and pressing her thumbs into his curled arches.

“How’s your father?” she asked.

Ricky shrieked and muttered.

“He’s well,” Ruth said.

“Is he taking good care of you?”

“Maybe I’m taking good care of him.”

“I used to worry about your not getting enough love.”

“I got enough.”

Ruth’s mother looked so concerned, though, that Ruth tried to think of something to reassure her, some loving incident related to her father. She said, “On my birthdays, when he gives me presents, he always says, ‘Now, don’t go using your x-ray vision on it, Ruth.’ ”

“X-ray vision?”

“Before I open the present, you know? When I’m looking at the box? He always says that. ‘Don’t go using your x-ray vision on it, Ruth.’ He’s pretty funny.”

Mary Smith-Ellis Thomas nodded slowly, without looking the slightest bit less concerned.

“He gives you nice birthday presents?”

“Sure.”

“That’s good.”

“On my birthdays when I was little he used to stand me up on a chair and say, ‘Do you feel any bigger today? You sure look bigger.’ ”

“I remember him doing that.”

“We have a real good time,” Ruth said.

“Is Angus Addams still around?”

“Oh, sure. We see Angus about every day.”

“He used to scare me. I once saw him beating a child with a buoy. Back when I was first married.”

“No kidding. A child?”

“Some poor boy who was working on his boat.”

“Oh, not a child, then. His sternman, probably. Some lazy teenager. Angus is a tough boss, that’s for sure. He can’t fish with anyone these days. He doesn’t get along with anyone.”

“I don’t think he ever thought much of me.”

“He doesn’t like to let on that he thinks much of anybody.”

“You have to understand, Ruth, that I had never met people like that. You know, it was the first winter I was on Fort Niles that Angus Addams lost his finger while he was fishing. Do you remember hearing about that? It was such cold weather, and he wasn’t wearing gloves, so his hands got frozen. And I guess he caught his finger in-what is it?”

“The winch head.”

“He caught his finger in the winch head and it got twisted in some rope and was pulled right off. The other man on the boat said Angus kicked the finger overboard and kept fishing the rest of the day.”

“The way I heard it,” Ruth said, “he cauterized his hand with the lit end of his cigar so he could keep fishing all day.”

“Oh, Ruth.”

“I don’t know if I believe it, though. I’ve never once seen Angus Addams with a cigar in his mouth that was actually lit.”

“Oh, Ruth.”

“One thing’s for sure. He’s definitely missing a finger.”

Ruth’s mother said nothing. Ruth looked down at her hands. “Sorry,” she said. “You were trying to make a point?”

“Just that I’d never been around people who were so rough.”

Ruth thought to point out that many people found Miss Vera Ellis pretty rough, but she bit her tongue and said, “I see.”

“I’d been on the island only a year, you know, when Angus Addams came over to our house with Snoopy, his cat. He said, ‘I’m sick of this cat, Mary. If you don’t take it off my hands, I’ll shoot it right here in front of you.’ And he was carrying a gun. You know how big his voice is, how angry he always sounds? Well, I believed him, so of course I took the cat. Your father was furious; he told me to give the cat back, but Angus threatened again to shoot it in front of me. I didn’t want to see that cat get shot. Your dad said he wouldn’t do it, but I couldn’t be sure. She was a pretty cat. Do you remember Snoopy?”

“I think so.”

“Such a pretty, big white cat. Your father said Angus was playing a trick on us, his way to unload the cat. I guess it was a trick, because a few weeks later Snoopy had five kittens, and those kittens were our problem. Then I was the one who got angry, but your father and Angus thought it was a big joke. And Angus thought it was clever of him to trick me like that. He and your father teased me about it for months. Your father, you know, ended up drowning the kittens.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It was. But I think there was something wrong with those kittens, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Ruth said. “They couldn’t swim.”

“Ruth!”

“I’m just kidding. Sorry. It was a stupid joke.” Ruth hated herself. She was amazed once again at how swiftly she reached this point with her mother, this point of making a cruel joke at the expense of a woman who was so fragile. Despite her best intentions, she would, within minutes, say something that hurt her mother. In the company of her mother, Ruth could feel herself turn into a charging rhinoceros. A rhinoceros in a china shop. But why was her mother so easy to wound? Why was her mother such a china shop in the first place? Ruth wasn’t used to women like her. She was used to women like the Pommeroy sisters, who strode through life as though they were invincible. Ruth was more comfortable around tough people. Tough people made Ruth feel less like a… rhinoceros.

Mary rubbed her son’s legs and gently rotated each of his feet, stretching the ankle. “Oh, Ruth,” she said, “I was so hurt the day the kittens were drowned.”

“I’m sorry,” Ruth said, and she truly was. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, sweetheart. Do you want to help with Ricky? Will you help me rub him?”

“Sure,” Ruth said, although she could think of nothing less appealing.

“You can rub his hands. They say it’s good to keep them from getting too twisted, poor little guy.”

Ruth poured some lotion into her palm and started to rub one of Ricky’s hands. Immediately, she felt a movement in her stomach, a building wave like seasickness. Such an atrophied, lifeless little hand!

Ruth was once fishing with her father when he pulled up a trap with a molting lobster. It was not unusual, in the summertime, to find lobsters with new, soft shells only days old, but this lobster had probably molted an hour or so before. Its perfect and empty shell lay beside it in the trap, useless now, hollow armor. Ruth had held the naked lobster in her palm, and handling it had given her the same seasickness she now experienced in handling her brother. A lobster with no shell was boneless meat; when Ruth picked it up, the limp lobster hung on her hand, offering no more resistance than a wet sock. It hung there like something melting, as if it would eventually drip from her fingers. It was nothing like a normal lobster, nothing like one of those snappy fierce little tanks. And yet she could feel its life in her hand, its blood whirring in her palm. Its flesh was a bluish jelly, like a raw scallop. She had shuddered. Just by handling it, she had begun to kill it, leaving her fingerprints on its thin-skinned organs. She had flung it over the side of the boat and watched it sink, translucent. It didn’t have chance. It didn’t have a chance in the world. Something probably ate it before it even touched bottom.

“There,” said Ruth’s mother. “That’s good of you.”

“Poor little guy,” Ruth made herself say, working the lotion into her brother’s strange fingers, his wrist, his forearm. Her voice sounded strained, but her mother seemed not to notice. “Poor little guy.”

“Did you know that when your father was a little boy in the Fort Niles school, back in the forties, the teachers taught the children to tie knots? That was an important part of the curriculum on the island. And they were taught how to read tidal charts, too. In school! Can you imagine?”

“It was probably a good idea,” Ruth said. “It makes sense for island kids to know those things. Especially back then. They were going to be fishermen, right?”

“But in school, Ruth? Couldn’t they first teach the children to read and leave the knots till the afternoon?”

“I’m sure they learned to read, too.”

“That’s why we wanted to send you to private school.”

“Dad didn’t want it.”

“I meant the Ellises and I. I’m very proud of you, Ruth. I’m proud of how well you did. Eleventh in the class! And I’m proud that you learned French. Will you say something in French for me?”

Ruth laughed.

“What?” her mother asked. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing. It’s just that whenever I speak French around Angus Addams, he says, ‘What? Your what hurts?’ ”

“Oh, Ruth.” She sounded sad. “I’d hoped you would speak some French to me.”

“It’s not worth it, Mom. I have a stupid accent.”

“Well. Whatever you want, honey.”

They were quiet for a spell, and then Ruth’s mother said, “Your father probably wished you’d stayed on the island and learned to tie knots!”

“I’m sure that’s exactly what he wished,” Ruth said.

“And tides! I’m sure he wanted you to learn tides. I could never learn them, though I tried. Your father tried to teach me how to operate a boat. Driving the boat was easy, but somehow I was supposed to know where all the rocks and ledges were, and which ones popped up during which tides. They had practically no buoys out there, and the ones they had were always drifting off course, and your father would yell at me if I tried to navigate according to them. He didn’t trust the buoys, but how was I to know? And currents! I thought you were supposed to point the boat and pull the throttle. I didn’t know anything about currents!”

“How could you know?”

“How could I know, Ruth? I thought I knew about island life, because I’d spent my summers there, but I didn’t know a thing. I had no idea about how bad the wind gets in the winter. Did you know that some people lost their minds from it?”

“I think most people on Fort Niles did,” Ruth said and laughed.

“It doesn’t stop! My first winter there, the wind started blowing at the end of October and didn’t die down until April. I had the strangest dreams that winter, Ruth. I kept dreaming that the island was about to blow away. The trees on the island had long, long roots that reached right down to the ocean floor, and they were the only thing keeping the island from drifting away in the wind.”

“Were you scared?”

“I was terrified.”

“Wasn’t anybody nice to you?”

“Yes. Mrs. Pommeroy was nice to me.”

There was a knock at the door, and Ruth’s mother started. Ricky started, too, and began flipping his head back and forth. He screeched; it was a terrible sound, like the screech of an old car’s bad brakes.

“Shhh,” his mother said. “Shhh.”

Ruth opened the nursery door, and there stood Cal Cooley.

“Catching up?” he asked. He came in and bent his tall frame into a rocking chair. He smiled at Mary but did not look at Ricky.

“Miss Vera wants to go for a drive,” he said.

“Oh!” Mary exclaimed, and jumped to her feet. “I’ll fetch the nurse. We’ll get our coats. Ruth, go get your coat.”

“She wants to go shopping,” Cal said, still smiling, but looking at Ruth now. “She heard that Ruth arrived with no luggage.”

“And how did she hear that, Cal?” Ruth asked.

“Beats me. All I know is she wants to buy you some new clothes, Ruth.”

“I don’t need anything.”

“Told you so,” he said, with the greatest satisfaction. “I told you to bring your own clothes or Miss Vera would end up buying you new things and pissing you off.”

“Look, I don’t care,” Ruth said. “Whatever you people feel like making me do, I don’t care. I do not give a shit. Just get it over with.”

“Ruth!” exclaimed Mary, but Ruth didn’t care. The hell with all of them. Cal Cooley didn’t seem to care, either. He just shrugged.

They drove to the dress shop in the old two-tone Buick. It took Mary and Cal nearly an hour to get Miss Vera dressed and bundled up and down the stairs to the car, where she sat in the front passenger seat with her beaded purse on her lap. She had not been out of the house for several months, Mary said.

Miss Vera was so small; she was like a bird perched in the front seat. Her hands were tiny, and she trembled her thin fingers lightly across her beaded purse, as though reading Braille or praying with an endless rosary. She had lace gloves with her, which she set beside her on the seat. Whenever Cal Cooley turned a corner, she would put her left hand on the gloves, as though she were afraid they would slide away. She gasped at every turn, although Cal was driving at approximately the speed of a healthy pedestrian. Miss Vera wore a long mink coat and a hat with a black veil. Her voice was very quiet, with a slight waver. She smiled when she spoke, pronounced her words with a trace of a British accent, and delivered her every line wistfully.

“Oh, to go on a drive…” she said.

“Yes,” agreed Ruth’s mother.

“Do you know how to drive, Ruth?”

“I do,” said Ruth.

“Oh, how clever of you. I was never proficient, myself. I would always collide…” The memory set Miss Vera to tittering. She put her hand to her mouth, as shy girls do. Ruth had not remembered Miss Vera to be a giggler. It must have come with age, a late affectation. Ruth looked at the old woman and thought about how, back on Fort Niles Island, Miss Vera made the local men working on her yard drink from the garden hose. She wouldn’t allow them into the kitchen for a glass of water. Not on the hottest day. That practice of hers was so hated that it gave rise to an expression on the island: Drinking out of the hose. It indicated the lowest depth of insult. My wife got the house and the kids, too. That bitch really left me drinking out of the hose.

Cal Cooley, at a four-way intersection, paused at a stop sign and let another car pass through. Then, as he started to move, Miss Vera cried, “Wait!”

Cal stopped. There were no other cars in sight. He started up again.

“Wait!” repeated Miss Vera.

“We have the right of way,” Cal said. “It’s our turn to go.”

“I think it more prudent to wait. Other cars may be coming.”

Cal shifted into park and waited at the stop sign. No other cars appeared. For several minutes they sat in silence. Eventually a station wagon pulled up behind the Buick and the driver honked one short burst. Cal said nothing. Mary said nothing. Miss Vera said nothing. Ruth sank down into her seat and thought how full the world was of assholes. The station wagon driver honked again, twice, and Miss Vera said, “So rude.”

Cal rolled down his window and waved the station wagon by. It passed. They sat in the Buick at the stop sign. Another car pulled up behind them, and Cal waved it past, too. A red, rusted pickup truck passed them from the other direction. Then, as before, there were no cars to be seen.

Miss Vera clenched her gloves in her left hand and said, “Go!”

Cal drove slowly through the intersection and continued to the highway. Miss Vera giggled again. “An exploit!” she said.

They drove into the center of Concord, and Mary directed Cal Cooley to park in front of a ladies’ dress shop. The name, Blaire’s, was painted in gold on the window in elegant cursive.

“I won’t go in,” Miss Vera said. “It is too much effort. But tell Mr. Blaire to come here. I shall tell him what we need.”

Mary went into the shop and soon reappeared with a young man. She looked apprehensive. The young man walked to the passenger side of the car and tapped on the window. Miss Vera frowned. He grinned and gestured for her to roll down her window. Ruth’s mother stood behind him in a posture of overriding anxiety.

“Who the devil?” Miss Vera said.

“Maybe you should roll down your window and see what he wants,” Cal suggested.

“I’ll do no such thing!” She glared at the young man. His face shone in the morning sun, and he smiled at her, again making the window-rolling gesture. Ruth slid over in the back seat and rolled down her window.

“Ruth!” Miss Vera exclaimed.

“Can I help you?” Ruth asked the man.

“I’m Mr. Blaire,” the young man said. He reached his hand through the window to shake Ruth’s.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Blaire,” she said. “I’m Ruth Thomas.”

“He is not!” Miss Vera declared. She spun in her seat with a sudden and shocking agility and glared fiercely at the young man. “You are not Mr. Blaire. Mr. Blaire has a silver mustache!”

“That’s my father, ma’am. He’s retired, and I run the store.”

“Tell your father that Miss Vera Ellis wishes to speak to him.”

“I’d be happy to tell him, ma’am, but he’s not here. My father lives in Miami, ma’am.”

“Mary!”

Ruth’s mother rushed over to the Buick and stuck her head in Ruth’s window.

“Mary! When did this happen?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it.”

“I don’t need any clothes,” Ruth said. “I don’t need anything. Let’s go home.”

“When did your father retire?” Ruth’s mother asked the young Mr. Blaire. She was pale.

“Seven years ago, ma’am.”

“Impossible! He would have informed me!” Miss Vera said.

“Can we go someplace else?” Ruth asked. “Isn’t there another shop in Concord?”

“There is no shop in Concord but Blaire’s,” Miss Vera said.

“Well, we’re happy to hear that you think so,” said Mr. Blaire. “And I’m sure we can help you, ma’am.”

Miss Vera did not reply.

“My father taught me everything he knew, ma’am. All his customers are now my customers. As satisfied as ever!”

“Take your head out of my car.”

“Ma’am?”

“Remove your damn head from my car.”

Ruth started laughing. The young man pulled his head from the Buick and walked stiffly and quickly back into his shop. Mary followed, trying to touch his arm, trying to mollify him, but he shook her off.

“Young lady, this is not amusing.” Miss Vera turned again in her seat and leveled an evil glare at Ruth.

“Sorry.”

“Imagine!”

“Shall we head back home, Miss Vera?” Cal asked.

“We shall wait for Mary!” she snapped.

“Naturally. That’s what I meant.”

“That is not, however, what you said.”

“Pardon me.”

“Oh, the nitwits!” Miss Vera exclaimed. “Everywhere!”

Mary came back and sat silently beside her daughter. Cal pulled away from the curb, and Miss Vera said, with exasperation, “Careful! Careful, careful, careful.”

Nobody spoke on the drive home until they pulled up to the house. There, Miss Vera turned and smiled yellowly at Ruth. She giggled once again. She had composed herself. “We have a nice time, your mother and I,” she said. “After all those years of living with men, we are at last alone together. We don’t have husbands to tend to or brothers or fathers looking over us. Two independent ladies, and we do as we choose. Isn’t that right, Mary?”

“Yes.”

“I missed your mother when she ran off and married your father, Ruth. Did you know that?”

Ruth said nothing. Her mother looked at her nervously and said, in a low voice, “I’m sure Ruth knows that.”

“I remember her walking out of the house after she told me she was marrying a fisherman. I watched her walk away. I was upstairs in my bedroom. You know that room, Ruth? How it looks out over the front walk? Oh, my little Mary looked so small and brave. Oh, Mary. Your little shoulders were so square, as if to say, I can do anything! You dear girl, Mary. You poor, dear, sweet girl. You were so brave.”

Mary closed her eyes. Ruth felt an appalling, bilious anger rising in her throat.

“Yes, I watched your mother walk away, Ruth, and it made me cry. I sat in my room and shed tears. My brother came in and put his arm around me. You know how kind my brother Lanford is. Yes?”

Ruth could not speak. Her jaw was clenched so fiercely, she could not imagine releasing it to issue a single word. Certainly not a civil word. She might have let out a greased string of curses. She might have been able to do that for this wicked bitch.

“And my wonderful brother said to me, ‘Vera, everything will be fine.’ Do you know what I replied? I said, ‘Now I know how poor Mrs. Lindbergh felt!’ ”

They sat in silence for what seemed a year, letting that sentence hang over them. Ruth’s mind roiled. Could she hit this woman? Could she step out of this ancient car and walk back to Fort Niles?

“But now she is with me, where she belongs,” Miss Vera said. “And we do as we please. No husbands to tell us what to do. No children to look after. Except Ricky, of course. Poor Ricky. But he doesn’t ask much, heaven knows. Your mother and I are independent women, Ruth, and we have a good time together. We enjoy our independence, Ruth. We like it very much.”

Ruth stayed with her mother for a week. She wore the same clothes every day, and no one said another word about it. There were no more shopping trips. She slept in her clothes and put them on again every morning after her bath. She did not complain.

What did she care?

This was her survival strategy: Fuck it.

Fuck all of it. Whatever they asked of her, she would do. Whatever outrageous act of exploitation she saw Miss Vera commit against her mother, she would ignore. Ruth was doing time in Concord. Getting it over with. Trying to stay sane. Because if she’d reacted to everything that galled her, she’d have been in a constant state of disgust and rage, which would have made her mother more nervous and Miss Vera more predatory and Cal Cooley more smug. So she sat on it. Fuck it.

Every night before she went to bed she kissed her mother on the cheek. Miss Vera would ask coyly, “Where’s my kiss?” and Ruth would cross the room on steel legs, bend, and kiss that lavender cheek. She did this for her mother’s sake. She did this because it was less trouble than throwing an ashtray across the room. She could see the relief it brought her mother. Good. Whatever she could do to help, fine. Fuck it.

“Where’s my kiss?” Cal would ask every night.

And every night Ruth would mutter something like “Goodnight, Cal. Try to remember not to murder us in our sleep.”

And Miss Vera would say, “Such hateful words for a child your age.”

Yeah, Ruth thought. Yeah, whatever. She knew she should keep her mouth shut entirely, but she enjoyed getting a stab or two into Cal Cooley now and again. Made her feel like herself. Familiar, somehow. Comforting. She would carry the satisfaction to bed with her and curl up against it, as if it were a teddy bear. Her nightly poke at Cal would help Ruth Thomas go to sleep without stewing for hours over the eternal, nagging question: What fate had shoved her into the lives of the Ellis family? And why?