Seasons of Her Life (17 page)

Irma was shaken from her dark thoughts, when she noticed her husband do something strange. He threw the blades to the lawn mower onto his workbench. He smoothed back his hair and jerked up his trousers. Her hand flew to her mouth. She watched him walk out of the shed and cross the lawn, still in her line of vision, toward the Zacharys' property. As far as she knew, he'd never stepped foot on their property, but he was stepping on it now, walking toward the back porch, where he would be cut off from her line of vision. She knew where he was going and what he was going to do. She screamed as loud as her dry throat would allow, but there was no one to hear her.

 

The moment Grace heard steps on the back porch, she turned from the stove, where she was cooking up the last of the autumn grapes for winter jelly, a radiant smile on her face. When she saw that it wasn't Paul, her hand, holding a wooden spoon, froze in midair. Her first thought was that Irma had taken a turn for the worse; her second was that George had found the frivolous locket she'd given Opal and had come to return it. Then she looked into his eyes, and she knew at once exactly why he was there.

Grace backed up as she brandished the wooden spoon, grape jelly dripping to the floor. “I want you to leave my house, George. I want you to leave
now
! Paul will be home any second. He'll kill you, George. I know he will.” God, Paul took the dog to the store with him. She was trapped and she knew it. To fight or not to fight. If she fought him, he might do to her what he'd done to his wife. She couldn't just stand there and let him ... she couldn't.

“Slut!” George hissed. “Jezebel! Tramp!”

“Why are you here if I'm all those things?” Grace demanded, trying to reach the drainboard and the butcher knife. She'd whack off his fucking balls. Too late. George read her intent. He reached out and ripped the criss-cross straps of her halter-style sundress, exposing her breasts. Grace shrieked as she tried to cover her breasts with her arms, one hand still clutching the wooden spoon. Grape jelly trickled down between her breasts. She was more vulnerable this way, she realized, and as she moved backward, searching for something to fight with, she tripped over the step stool she'd used to get the paraffin from the top shelf.

He was on her then, ripping her sundress and red panties from her buttocks. With one arm he pinned her to the floor, while with the other hand he fumbled with his belt buckle.

Grace struggled, even though she knew it was futile. She couldn't give in to this bastard without a fight. The more she resisted, the more incensed he became.

He was like some hungry, frenzied animal as he drove into her, pawing and gouging her breasts, and when he'd had enough of them, he gripped her buttocks, cruelly kneading them. “This will teach you to mind your own business, you little tramp.”

She whimpered, soft cries of pain. He continued to thrust and thrash as he tensed and then seemed to relax. In one terrifying moment she thought they were fused together, that he would die atop her and she would never be free of him.

His own noises registered with hers, animal sounds, panting, groaning. When he uttered his last piglike squeal of excitement, Grace knew it was finally over. She rolled away and crawled to the doorway. He was on his knees, trying to pull up his pants with one hand while with the other he balanced himself.

Holding on to the door frame, Grace noticed the sound of her jelly bubbling in the enamel pot. It was the last of the autumn grapes, the best of the season. Paul's favorite. She wiped her eyes with the back of her arm. She wouldn't wait for Paul to kill him.

She moved so fast, she almost slipped as she reached for the bubbling pot of jelly. She blistered her hands, blisters she didn't feel. He was up now, on his feet, but not steady. She pitched the still-bubbling jelly at him, catching him directly in the stomach and groin. His yowl of pain brought a grimace to her face, but she didn't stop. She grabbed the frying pan from the drainboard and brought it down on his head in a mighty thrust. Still not satisfied with her retaliation, she dumped hot, melting paraffin all over him.

Grace was panting, her fear gone now that she was in control. She wondered again if this animal would die in her kitchen. “You want to play with the big dogs, Mr. Connors, then you better learn to piss in the tall grass,” she spat out. “Get out of my kitchen, and don't you ever come back. You're an animal, but I took care of that, didn't I, Georgie,” Grace cried hysterically. “You won't ever, ever be able to do it again.”

She watched through her tears as George struggled to get to the door. In her life she'd never seen such dead, evil eyes. She heard him fall down the back steps, heard his curses. She laughed, the sound strange and alien to her ears, then she sat down on the floor and cried, her toes digging and smearing into the rapidly cooling jelly.

What had just happened ... had happened only if she ... allowed herself to think about it. It would kill Paul. And Paul would kill George if she told him. Paul would go to jail and her life would be ruined. The town gossip would be that Grace had been asking for it.

She couldn't burden Paul with this. He'd never feel the same about her. Even if he said it didn't matter, it would. Nothing would ever be the same. She loved Paul too much to shame him.

“It never happened,” Grace said over and over as she cleaned the kitchen and the back steps. They'd have to live with the grape stains. As long as Paul didn't know, she could live with anything.

 

Dr. John Ashley was just about to close his office when the telephone rang. He listened, his jaw going slack, then a smile spread across his face. “I'll be right there. Imagine that,” he muttered, “George Connors making grape jelly.” Everyone in the world knew men didn't belong in the kitchen. And then a second call came from Grace Zachary as he was walking through the door. She'd burned her hands on a pot. He told her he'd be there shortly.

Somehow John Ashley had lived through seventy years of life without swearing. A casual damn didn't count. “I'll be a son of a bitch,” he muttered as he shuffled out to his ancient car. Who should he see to first—Grace or George? He cackled when he made the decision to see Grace. He wheezed and sneezed his way through town in his rickety car, wiping his old watery eyes from time to time.

George Connors did not attend the rosary being said for his mother that night, nor did he attend the funeral three days later. He was in the hospital with a team of doctors, none of them specialists, who were trying to treat his burns and reconstruct his penis.

One month later, the head of the nonspecialized surgical team looked at his colleagues and said, “I say we let him piss through a tube and call it a day.” They all agreed. “Put him in a private room. I think he's going to want to be alone.”

 

Count your blessings, Ruby Connors. Every day if necessary. Pep talks were good, important to one's well-being.

She missed Nola and Calvin, but she didn't cry anymore. She didn't cry for her grandmother either. She'd made the commitment to get on with her life and not look back the day after her father's unexpected visit. “Everything,” she said aloud, “is a learning experience.”

Ruby stared at herself in the long mirror attached to the back of her bedroom door. “I think, Ruby, you grew up, overnight.” She leaned closer to the mirror. “Yep, you did. Now it's time to move on.” She whirled around to face the calendar on the narrow wall behind her. “Time to move on,” she said again.

The summer of her life beckoned. She smiled. She took a tentative step, then another. “Now it's my time. I'm ready,” she said softly. “Oh, yes,” she said again and again, “I'm ready.”

Ruby Connors walked into the summer of her life with her shoulders straight and her head high.

1953

 

Ruby Connors stared up at the house numbers on the tree-lined
street. It was a nice neighborhood, close to the stores on 14th Street, but she didn't like the house or the neighborhood as much as she liked the old brick three-story on Kilbourne Place. She did like the front porch at 1454 Monroe Avenue, though, and spent the warm summer evenings sitting with the owners, Rena and Bruno, on old wicker chairs, discussing anything and everything. Still, it wasn't the same. Nothing was the same anymore.

For a moment the seven steps leading to the wide front porch seemed insurmountable. She squared her shoulders and walked up, careful to stay on the narrow unpainted portion. She found herself smiling at the hand-painted sign Bruno had erected:
STEY OF PENT.
He meant stay off the paint, but she wasn't going to mention his spelling to him. Bruno was proud of his limited English. How was it possible, she wondered, that strangers could come to this land and immediately buy a house, collect rent, and live comfortably? Financially, she was in just about the same position she had been in two years earlier, when Amber had married Nangi and moved to Saipan. Bruno and Rena had been here only eighteen months, and already they owned two houses and worked two jobs each. Which just went to prove you could do whatever you wanted if you worked at it.

The screen door banged behind Ruby. The hallway leading to the second floor was cool and dim. As always. Her hands traced the brilliant zigzag lightning bolts on the wallpaper that seemed to propel one upward at a faster than normal rate of speed. Rena liked brilliant colors in her attire as well as her decor. Ruby smiled as she always did at the vivid crimson, black, purple, and yellow lightning bolts. To her left, the white stairway gleamed with glossy white paint. It was Bruno's job to paint and Rena's to decorate.

The hallway was narrow, much like the one on Kilbourne Place, and Rena had carried the lightning-bolt pattern all the way through. It would, she thought, make the girls move faster up and down the hall and into the bathroom. Rena didn't like anyone to dilly-dally because she herself was always in constant motion. She often reminded Ruby of a shark, with the way she was never still, but there the similarity ended. Rena looked like a precocious chipmunk with her plumped-out cheeks and dark, inquisitive eyes.

It was a pleasant place, and she had her own room. She'd deliberately chosen the smallest so she wouldn't have to share. Her roommates were all new, and while they got along, they weren't friends. Ruby preferred it that way. Friends, real friends, like Nola, caused heartache.

Ruby kicked off her shoes and flopped down on the bed. For some reason, she wanted to cry, to bawl her head off, to kick and scream, to rail and rant. It would be childish and immature, but that's how she felt. Her eye flew to the calendar tacked to the back of her door. It had been two years ago today that she was supposed to have left with Calvin to get married.
Oh, Calvin, where are you?
Tears stung her eyes. She wiped them angrily. Damn you, Calvin, you never called; you didn't so much as send a postcard. If you
really
loved me, you would have given me a chance to explain.

Ruby sat up on the bed and crossed her legs, Indian fashion. It wasn't quite true that she wasn't any better off than she had been two years before. She had inherited three thousand dollars from her grandmother's estate. Her father hadn't been able to take that away from her. He'd tried, but her grandmother or her uncles had seen to it that the money was put in trust for her until she was twenty-one. She'd seen a copy of the will. The lawyer had forwarded it. Amber and Opal had each received a hundred dollars, and according to the will, her father's share of the estate was a little over five hundred dollars, because her debt had been wiped clean. Legally.

Boy, had she bawled that day. Free and clear for all of ten minutes. Some contrary streak in her, some honorable seed somewhere in her being, insisted a debt was a debt and she would honor it, so she kept sending her money home on the first of the month. In a way, she supposed she was rich, certainly better off than her roommates, better off than Amber or Opal. She had the money and the czarina's ring, a steady job, and a roof over her head. She was independent. And so damn lonely, but by her own choice. Maybe tonight she would splurge and call Nola and ask how her godchild was. She hadn't heard from her old friend in four months, and she was starting to worry. Yes, she'd call later. Nola would lift her spirits and tell her about the baby and the other orphans. Tears pricked her eyes again. God, why couldn't she be happy?
Calvin Santos, I hate your guts
. She sniffed miserably. Why couldn't you believe and trust in me? You didn't know me at all, you miserable ... you miserable ... you ... you ...

Ruby blew her nose twice. Her grandmother would have told her to pull up her socks, get moving, and don't look back. “Dammit, today I'm entitled to look back,” she muttered. She bent over and gave her imaginary socks a hitch before she headed for the living room to call Nola. She needed a friend now, not at eleven o'clock, when the rates were cheaper.

Little fingers of fear fluttered in Ruby's chest when she heard Mrs. Quantrell's tired voice on the other end of the line. The tiny little flutters took wing and exploded when she was told that Nola had taken the baby to Europe.

“Europe!” Ruby squeaked her dismay. “Why? What happened? When did she leave?”

The tired woman explained that Mr. Quantrell had contacted the Air Force and tracked down Alex, who had then come to Vermont and married Nola. He had taken her off to Germany, his next billet.

“It happened so quick, we barely had time to get things together for them. I'm sure she'll write to you, Ruby.”

The storm in Ruby's chest quieted. “Was . . . is she happy, Mrs. Quantrell?”

“I think so, child. The baby needs his father's name, and Alex, well, he seemed ... fatherhood is difficult.” Her voice brightened suddenly and sounded just like Nola's when she said, “She'll be able to visit all the famous houses of fashion and get a feel for it all over again. She was very happy about visiting France. Do you want me to tell her anything when I write to her?”

Of course she had at least two hundred things she wanted to tell Nola, but this wasn't the time. “Tell her ... tell her to be happy and not to forget me. Good-bye, Mrs. Quantrell.” Ruby cried then. She knew as sure as she knew she had to breathe to stay alive that like all the others she'd come to love, Nola was lost to her.

“Ruby, Ruby,” a soft, accented voice called softly. “Oh, honey, you're crying. What's wrong?” Rena, her landlady, asked as she swooped down on the girl like a protective mother bird.

Ruby sobbed and cried, hiccoughed and blubbered as she confided in the tiny woman with the kind eyes and soothing voice. She poured out her heart the way she would have to Grace Zachary.

Rena Musad was Egyptian. Today she was attired in an emerald-colored Indian sari with matching sandals and feathered headband. Jewelry clanked and rattled on her thin arms. She was beautiful and exotic, Ruby thought as she dried her eyes. At first glance she appeared fragile, breakable, until you looked into her licorice-colored eyes and saw the strength in them, the strength Bruno drew upon twenty-four hours a day. Rena was a driving force, one to be reckoned with. She was thirty-five, slender as a reed, and weighed no more than eighty-five pounds.

She listened now, her dark eyes sad yet stormy as Ruby unburdened herself, then businesslike when Ruby mentioned the three thousand dollars. Ruby hiccoughed for the last time, and Rena clapped her hands in delight. “You silly little pigeon, you must make that money work for you. From what you've told me, your grandmother did her best to make things secure for you. I think that you should buy some property. We will discuss it with Bruno. Shame on you, Ruby. You are such a smart girl, why didn't you think of this yourself?”

“I did. Today, as a matter of fact. That's why I called Nola. I was going to offer to help her, you know, give her a stake of some kind, but she's gone. You coming up here must be some kind of divine providence, don't you think?”

Rena had no idea what divine providence meant. The eight bracelets on both arms tinkled as she waved the mail under Ruby's nose. “You have two letters from that marine who keeps writing to you. While you read them I am going downstairs to fix Bruno his supper and talk to him. I will call the man who sold us this house and the two others we own. He is honest and will work for you, Ruby.” She added, “I will take thirty-five dollars as a commission if things work out.”

Ruby found herself nodding dumbly. Rena tapped her foot happily. It was then she saw the diamond imbedded in Rena's big toenail and the three gold ankle bracelets studded with rubies. Her jaw dropped.

“I believe in carrying my wealth with me. As much as I love Bruno, he is becoming Americanized. One cannot trust men. Ever. Remember that. Also remember that all your property is to remain in your name alone. I will be back later.”

“Rena . . . wait, what do you mean? Is your property in your name? Doesn't Bruno object?”

“On an hourly basis, but if he wants to share my bed, he does as I wish. As I said, he is becoming Americanized, but he still has much of our culture in him. What's mine is mine, and what's ours is mine, too. It's just as well. Bruno has no head for business.” She laughed merrily as she tinkled and clanked her way down the staircase to her first-floor apartment.

Ruby sat for a long time, digesting Rena's words, though as much to put off opening Andrew Blue's letters than anything else. She leaned back in her chair and stared about the oversize living room. It was comfortable, bright with color, thanks to Rena. Her roommates loved it; she did, too, when it came right down to it. The large, overstuffed sofa was covered in lemon-yellow chintz with meadow-green trim. The carpet was apple green, one shade deeper than the trim on the sofa and matching chair. Two cherry-red wingback chairs graced the farthest corner with a lampshade covered in sheer lemon-colored chiffon. At night it was warm and cozy with the light shining on the vibrant-colored furniture. The furniture was all cheap, Ruby knew. The covers had been made by Rena on her treadle Singer, but it didn't matter. Nola would approve. The house was clean, bright, and neat.

Ruby was opening the first letter from Andrew when two of her roommates came in from work. They greeted one another before the taller one announced that she had a date and asked if could she use the living room. Ruby nodded absently and made her way to her bedroom to be alone.

Andrew's first letter wasn't long, a page and a half. Ruby smiled as she read it, and then went on to the second. Andrew was witty, she had to give him that. In her own way, she treasured his letters because they reminded her that someone knew and cared she was alive.

Andrew had come to Washington twice in the past year and a half to see her. Secretly, she believed he'd had business to handle for his commanding officer at the Pentagon and she had been an afterthought, but it was nice to hear he had come all the way from North Carolina just to see her, even if it wasn't true. Now he was saying he wanted to visit again in a few weeks.
Oh, Calvin, where are you?

 

As always, the girls sat down together for dinner. Afterward, clean-up took exactly twelve minutes. It was Ruby's job to sweep the floor and take the trash downstairs to the alley, where Rena had a special can for their apartment. It was painted yellow with harlequin designs in flashy green and purple. It was blinding to the eye and could be seen all the way down the alley behind the house. At Christmastime Rena tied the trash can in silver and red and left a case of beer for the trash collectors. Ruby grinned as she forced the lid on the dent-free can. The painted can was the only one without a mark or dent of any kind. She herself had seen the trash collectors snort and make snide remarks about the colorful container, but she noticed that they handled it just short of reverently.

The smile stayed with Ruby as she started for the back stairway. She was halfway to the landing when Rena called her.

Ruby blinked when she entered the landlady's kitchen. It reminded her of the fireman's carnival back in Barstow. There were so many doodads, knickknacks, pictures, figurines, and calendars, it had a dizzying effect.

Bruno was seated at the table, eating alone, his plate on a piece of brown wrapping paper. Rena always served Bruno alone because she said she couldn't stand the way he dripped, slurped, and burped his way through a meal, and why should her dinner be spoiled? Ruby thought Bruno was a sweetheart for the way he tolerated Rena, who, in her opinion, was the Americanized one, not Bruno.

He grinned, revealing white teeth as he stuffed his mouth with a greasy concoction of grape leaves and a rice filling. Once Ruby had eaten one of Rena's delectable dinners and had paid for it with a raging case of diarrhea.

Bruno was a short man, not much taller than his diminutive wife, but he was round all over. He wore his shiny bald head like a king with a crown. His eyes were dark, like dessert dishes of chocolate pudding, and they always twinkled, even when he was upset with Rena, which was most of the time. He wasn't a pretty man, Ruby decided, with his dimples, his hawkish nose, and a chin that met folds of fat underneath. But his hands fascinated Ruby; they were big as ham hocks, with fingers like sausages. She liked Bruno.

“Sit, sit,” Rena said as she moved about the kitchen, pouring more lemonade for Bruno and snatching his plates away as soon as he finished. His bread plate and salad bowl were already in soapy water. Ruby perched on the edge of a chrome chair covered in raspberry-colored plastic. She waited, declining a glass of lemonade, which Rena had set before her on a napkin.