The Last First Day (19 page)

Prost
, Dr. Wenning taught Ruth to say, raising her little ruby glass.

Your health.

Ruth looked up from
Alice
when she heard the lawn mower’s engine finally catch again. She watched her father stuff the handkerchief back into his pocket and turn to pivot the mower toward the house. When he looked up and saw her, sitting on the porch, she lifted her hand.

He waved back, his black hair shining in the sun.

He came toward the house, pushing a neat path.

When he neared the porch, she lifted her feet out of the way and he passed by, his shoulders bowed, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, one eye squinted against the smoke. Then he turned to go back in the direction of the garage. A fan of grass clippings filled the air, the clover in the grass smelling like honey.

Some of the cuttings settled in Ruth’s lap.

Later she realized that the racket of the mower’s engine had masked the sound of the black-and-white cars’ arriving on the street in front of the house.

There were nine police cars, parked one behind the other, Ruth counted later, fixing irrationally on this detail when she was led out to the street. She imagined how they had glided silently to a stop in front of the house, the men inside them flowing out onto the grass, running toward the house in a crouch, guns drawn.

Her father would not have heard the cars, nor would he have seen the men arrive, some of them in shirtsleeves and fedoras, some in uniform, all of them armed.

Something alerted Ruth, however, as she bent over her book. Had there been a sound? Later, she could never remember. She looked up from under her eyelashes—she would not lift her chin; some instinct had told her to keep her head down—and she saw first the pairs of black shoes coming in through a break in the hedge. Then, as if an invisible finger had tilted her chin helplessly upward, she raised her eyes.

The policemen streamed silently onto the grass, all of them training their guns on her father.

All of them except one, who pointed his weapon at her, the hand holding the gun resting on his other wrist.

She dropped her book and put her hands up.

She put her hands up because that’s what they did in the movies.

Her father had taken her to the movies from time to time. She liked Abbott and Costello.

Her father turned the lawn mower at the garage to begin the next stripe back toward the house. When he saw the policemen arranged in the backyard, guns pointed at him, he let go of the mower. It went on without him, mowing a crooked path, and Ruth saw him begin to run, heading for the hedge between the backyard and the alley. Was he intending to jump it? It was too high, she thought, beginning to get to her feet. He would never clear it.

Voices were raised. The gunshots were a sound like the air itself exploding in places.

The policeman pointing the gun at her came toward her at a run. He was shouting something, gesturing with the flat of his hand for her to get down.

She scraped her knee. Lying on her belly, she felt the warm, rough surface of the concrete against her cheek, a roaring sound in her ears like the waves in the ocean from the day before. She felt her heart banging against her ribs, against the concrete porch floor.

Somehow her coffee cup had been knocked over. She felt the damp against her face, smelled the milk and coffee.

The policeman knelt down beside her.

Look right here, Missy, he said. Look at me.

She lifted her gaze, looking up at his face as if there were nothing else in the world to look at, only turning her eyes away from him at the last second, following a volley of gunfire to see her father’s body bounce forward as if he had been lifted on invisible wires and then shoved roughly between his shoulder blades. He threw his arms open.

A spray of blood preceded him into the heavy air of the July morning.

That afternoon in the police station, Ruth said again and again that she and her father had been in Wells for only one day. Months later, however, sitting with Dr. and Mrs. van Dusen in their living room, three FBI agents perched uncomfortably on the slipcovered sofa and easy chairs, she learned that searches of the house had been conducted that day anyway, floorboards pried away, a section of the concrete in the garage that appeared freshly spackled broken up with pickaxes.

These efforts had revealed nothing, she was told that day in the van Dusens’ living room, not a single bill of the thousands, the tens of thousands her father had allegedly stolen over the years, arranging auctions for desperate farmers and small businessmen and then leaving town before any of the proceeds could be turned over to the anxious men and women trying to clear themselves of debt by divesting themselves of everything they owned.

Her father was alleged to be responsible for two deaths, the FBI agents said: In Ohio, one suspicious farmer had apparently gone to find the auctioneer at a warehouse office one evening and had been shot in the back. In upstate New York, a man
who supplied trucks for the sale of clock factory equipment was found drowned in a pond, a wound the size of a hammerhead on his brow.

No bank accounts ever emerged.

It was possible, Ruth understood eventually, that her father had opened accounts and rented post office boxes in various places. It was possible that he had given false names and addresses for all of it. It was even possible that he’d hidden the money somewhere, buried it in a field under a tree he imagined he would one day find his way back to, like a dog recovering a bone. She thought about these things over the years, the possibility of the money sitting in a bank deposit somewhere until after years had gone by, when she assumed that the contents would simply be gathered up and stuffed into a sack and taken … where? There must be someone, she supposed, who looked at accounts that were inactive for suspiciously long periods of time. What happened to unclaimed money? Did the banks give it away to orphans or widows, to firemen’s funds or to the government?

Sometimes she thought about the strange man Jake, about a little key or the code to a padlock concealed on his person somewhere. Maybe he was the keeper of the secret? Maybe he had taken the money?

But anyway, it wasn’t the money that interested her, of course, she told Dr. Wenning.

It was not about the
money
, she said to Peter. It was about never knowing, never knowing
anything at all
about her father or why he had done what the police said he’d done. She assumed
he
was
guilty, because the police had said so, but it was awful to contemplate.

She never forgot her father’s tongue twisters.

Round the rough and rugged rock the ragged rascal ran.

Once a fellow met a fellow in a field of beans. Can a fellow tell a fellow what a fellow means?

Her father survived his injuries the day he was finally caught in the backyard, but after six months in prison, he hanged himself in his jail cell. Or someone else did it for him, Ruth and Peter—older, more experienced by then—speculated later.

Her father did not contact her directly after being taken away—perhaps he had not been either able or allowed to, she imagined later. At some point it occurred to her that perhaps he had not been her real father, after all, that maybe somehow he had been saddled with her, the baby of an unfortunate acquaintance. The mystery of this possibility—that a man who could steal from people, who could shoot someone in the back or bash in his head with a hammer, could also take in and raise a baby, could care for her—would remain with Ruth, haunting her.

He was not unkind to me, she told Peter.

I
think
he loved me, she told Dr. Wenning once.

No, no. I’m
sure
he did, she said.

But actually, she realized finally, she was never really certain about that, either.

The van Dusens’ house was a small, pale gray Victorian. She realized later that it was in the same neighborhood as the
rented house in which she and her father had spent their single night in Wells—in fact, they had walked past it on their way to the beach for the fireworks display—but she did not recognize the house when the police car pulled up to the curb at the close of that endless day when her father was captured.

That was the word the police used.
Captured
.

It was explained to her late in the day that a local doctor would take her in for the night. Wells was a small town, and there was nothing else to be done with her immediately. (Surely that had been an oversight, Ruth thought later; hadn’t they known all about her?) Someone would come to get her in a day or so, she was told; a permanent place would be found for her. Meanwhile, the van Dusens would look after her.

When she was helped from the police car early that evening, Ruth felt hollowed out. She had thrown up repeatedly into a tiny corner porcelain sink in the ladies’ bathroom at the police station.

Now the last light of the day fell in fronds over the grass, over the quiet face of the house, over its deep front porch furnished with brown wicker furniture. Shrubs covered in lacy white blossoms lined the walkway of the house. Green urns spilling yellow flowers flanked the steps to the porch. In a front window, a lamp with a round blue glass shade floated like a planet hovering in the dusk. Ruth had an impression of silence and calm.

I don’t understand, she had said again and again at the police station.

That afternoon people had touched her shoulder and bent to offer her things, a glass of water, a handkerchief, once an
open box of candy, dark chocolates nestled in frilled paper. She had recoiled as if being offered poison.

A policeman sitting across from her at the table had riffled the pages of a notebook. Other relatives? he said. Anyone else we ought to know about?

What? Ruth had said. It was almost as if she couldn’t hear properly.

I think you might have made a mistake, she said once.

One of the policemen had rubbed his hand across his mouth in a distressed way. No, honey, he’d said. Afraid not. No mistake.

He’d asked again about the money, where it might be, what her father might have done with it.

She had looked back and forth among the three men in shirtsleeves who had crowded into the room. Two of them wore guns in holsters strapped over their shoulders.

I’ve never seen any money, she said.

One of them, leaning against the wall, arms folded, had shaken his head and looked away from her out the window.

Jesus Christ, he said. Jesus H. Christ.

Poor sucker kid.

The policeman holding her arm did not even have a chance to knock. The man who opened the door as they reached the porch was tall and slender, with a neat brown goatee and large, calm blue eyes. He was dressed in a white shirt, the material starched and ironed, and gray cuffed trousers. A crisp crease ran from his shoulder to his elbow, where the sleeves were rolled.

Behind him stretched a softly lit hallway with a shining floor. A blue and white bowl of flowers had been arranged on a table under a tall mirror. Directly ahead rose the stairs, covered in a cherry-colored carpet; a glass lamp with a dark shade illuminated a table on the landing above.

A woman came out of a lighted doorway adjoining the hall, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She was much shorter than her husband, her face round, her pale hair parted cleanly down the center and pulled back tightly in a bun. The skin around her eyes was pale, too, almost translucent. Around her nose and lips, little patches of redness flared, the suggestion of sensitivity. She wore a white blouse and an apron over a patterned skirt.

I’m Dr. van Dusen, the man said. How do you do, Ruth?

His voice was soft. He turned, put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. This is my wife, he said. Mrs. van Dusen.

The policeman ruffled Ruth’s hair roughly. Thanks, Doc, he said.

Ruth pulled away from his hand, the gesture too familiar.

You’ll be all right now, little girl, the policeman said, clearly embarrassed. He shuffled awkwardly on the porch, took off his hat and tucked it under his arm.

We didn’t know what else to do with her, he said over Ruth’s head. Apparently it’ll take someone a couple of days to get here.

It’s all right, Dr. van Dusen said.

He opened the door wider. Come in, Ruth, he said. You must be very tired. Mrs. van Dusen will take you upstairs.

Ruth could not bring herself to look at either of them. She understood that the gulf between her and the rest of the world, a gulf she had already felt to be almost insurmountably wide,
had now become vast beyond her imagining. She would just walk forward. In her mind there was a vague idea of escape, but not now. Not now, she thought, with so many people looking at her.

Mrs. van Dusen led Ruth up the stairs. At the landing she turned and preceded Ruth into a big bedroom with an expanse of pale green carpet. A large bed with a dark, heavily carved headboard stood against one wall.

Mrs. van Dusen turned down the coverlet away from the pillows on the bed, revealing their immaculate whiteness.

Then she seemed to be at a loss. Finally she indicated the bed, and Ruth understood that she was supposed to sit down. Was she to take off her clothes? Get under the sheets? She had no nightgown, she thought. How could she go to sleep without a nightgown?

Then the absurdity of this struck her—why was she worrying about a nightgown?—and she felt her legs tremble under her.

She sat down on the bed, the mattress billowing away softly beneath her. She had never been in a room so large or so clean. There were photographs in silver frames behind glass on a table topped with a woven cloth, yellow and scarlet threads in a geometric pattern. Roped and tasseled gold cords hung around heavy, dark blue curtains. Ruth stared at it all.

After a moment’s hesitation, Mrs. van Dusen knelt beside the bed and began to unlace Ruth’s shoes as if she were a child.

I’m sure you need to sleep now, Mrs. van Dusen said.

Ruth looked down at the top of Mrs. van Dusen’s head, the part in her hair.

She did not want Mrs. van Dusen taking off her shoes, but she did not know how to stop her.