Ruby & Roland Read online

  RUBY & ROLAND

  Also by Faith Sullivan

  Repent, Lanny Merkel

  Watchdog

  Mrs. Demming and the Mythical Beast

  HARVESTER NOVELS:

  The Cape Ann

  The Empress of One

  What a Woman Must Do

  Gardenias

  Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse

  RUBY & ROLAND

  A Novel

  FAITH SULLIVAN

  MILKWEED EDITIONS

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  © 2019, Text by Faith Sullivan

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415. (800) 520-6455

  milkweed.org

  Published 2019 by Milkweed Editions

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover design by Mary Austin Speaker

  Cover art by Josef Wenig, from the bookplate of J. Čapek; image courtesy of the Pratt Institute

  Libraries—Ex Libris Collection.

  19 20 21 22 23 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  Milkweed Editions, an independent nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from the Alan B. Slifka Foundation and its president, Riva Ariella Ritvo-Slifka; the Ballard Spahr Foundation; Copper Nickel; the Jerome Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the National Poetry Series; the Target Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. Also, this activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. For a full listing of Milkweed Editions supporters, please visit milkweed.org.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Sullivan, Faith, author.

  Title: Ruby and Roland : a novel / Faith Sullivan.

  Description: First edition. | Minneapolis, Minnesota : Milkweed Editions, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019012601 (print) | LCCN 2019013533 (ebook) | ISBN 9781571319968 (ebook) | ISBN 9781571311320 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  Classification: LCC PS3569.U3469 (ebook) | LCC PS3569.U3469 R83 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019012601

  Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world’s endangered forests and conserve natural resources. Ruby & Roland was printed on acid-free 30% postconsumer-waste paper by Sheridan Books, Inc.

  For Margaret and Davis, Jane, Sylvie, and new daughter Soomi.

  And for my Wednesday Writers. If you didn’t exist,

  I’d have to invent you.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  When I am dead and opened,

  you shall find Calais lying in my heart.

  MARY I (1516–1558)

  RUBY & ROLAND

  CHAPTER ONE

  I had a tiny red birthmark on my chest when I was born, a mark no bigger than the head of a pin on which ten thousand angels are said to dance. Serena, my mother, a woman of fanciful nature, declared it a ruby, hence my name. Denton, my father, felt it more resembled a radish. However, “radish” was thought an unsuitable name.

  Serena was a teacher of grammar, locution, and literature at the public high school, Denton Drake an instructor of mathematics in the small normal school. When I was old enough, they saw to it that I read books, and Serena encouraged me to write little poems and essays. And, before that, when I was very small, Serena read lovely stories to me, stories about little girls in soft dresses who spread tea cloths in gazebos and poured pretend tea from china pots, or about other little girls who played with kittens under spreading plane trees while their nannies watched from nearby. I knew—and told Serena that I knew—that one day I would have a gazebo and a little girl of my own, and that for her fifth birthday I would buy her a china tea set. Then, on my sixth birthday, I woke to find at the foot of my bed a box with cellophane on the lid and, inside, a china tea set! On top was a note. “Happy Birthday, darling Ruby. Sorry there’s no gazebo. Love, Serena and Denton.”

  Serena was endlessly clever. For instance, in our lunch pails (lidded, silver-colored lard pails, emptied and scrubbed out), she suggested that we write daily notes to each other, tucking them in with the food. Until I was in second grade, she said I need only draw pictures for her pail. But after that, she expected me to pen something original or copy an extract from a good source.

  When I turned eight, Serena began reading me Shakespeare’s sonnets, her slender fingers turning each page as if it were gossamer. Coming to the last line of a sonnet, she’d ask, “Did you understand?” Once in a while I ventured a guess, but usually I was uncertain, so we discussed them.

  Of the many sonnets, I had favorites, of course. After I’d forgotten to make my bed and tidy my room and was feeling contrite, I wrote to Serena,

  When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

  I all alone beweep my outcast state,

  And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries …

  How grand and important I felt knowing that “bootless” didn’t mean going without boots but, rather, “hopeless” or “unavailing.”

  At dinner, Serena told me that when she read the folded note at lunch, she laughed out loud. The teacher across the hall poked her head in to ask what was so funny. Oh joy, to make Serena laugh! It wasn’t very hard, but her laughter always made me feel I’d earned a gold star.

  On my tenth birthday, when I was allowed to wear my party dress to school, Serena folded a special note into my pail. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” it read. “Thou art more lovely and more temperate.” How I swanned through geography and penmanship that afternoon.

  If you are wondering why I call my mother Serena, and always did, well, it’s because she was childlike—“fey,” I think the word is. And it is my limited observation that teachers of grammar, locution, and literature are often of this nature. Serena and I were more like intimate friends than mother and daughter. We drank tea, real tea, from my set. We played house, recited verses, and were very silly together, making faces, laughing at the same things—for instance the way Mrs. Bullfinch next door invited every traveling salesman into her parlor to demonstrate his wares and to listen as her plump fingers beat out “Champagne Charlie” on the piano, while her outmoded sop
rano quavered and wavered the verse like a trinkling little waterfall.

  Vibrato notwithstanding, Mrs. Bullfinch piped with gusto, “Champagne Charlie is my name … Roguein’ and stealin’ is my game. I got drunk last night and all the nights before; ain’t gonna get drunk no more.” This she followed with “Whispering Hope,” at which point Serena suggested that the commercial traveler was likely whispering hope that the recital might be nearing an end.

  And what of my darling Denton? With his silken moustache and dark Byronic looks (Serena had shown me a picture of the poet; she admired the Romantics), Denton was the handsomest man in Beardsley. He taught me to waltz and two-step. He called me “Ruby, my jewel,” and the other girls in Miss Jensen’s sixth grade were Nile green with envy. His deep voice made me feel safe and cosseted.

  Serena and Denton were, I was later told, too happy and devoted to live. That’s the sort of thing people said in those days. Maybe they still do. “Happy and devoted” was a death sentence. And, sure enough, the end came for them in a hired sleigh one winter night.

  When my mother left me with my great-aunt Bertha that fateful evening—Mrs. Bullfinch wasn’t available—the old woman asked with characteristic scorn, “Why in heaven’s name would you hire a sleigh to ride into the country just because the snowfall is ‘too beautiful’?” Aunt Bertha was as cold-blooded as the ordinary garden skink. But I understand the “why,” even if she didn’t. Other than a man kissing you on your ruby birthmark and pressing his body against you, a beautiful snowfall is the closest thing to magic that can be found.

  At Aunt’s, I spent the evening reading Little Women and wandering to the front window to look for Serena and Denton. Pulling aside the lace curtain, I saw that indeed the snowfall was too beautiful. And there was so much of it. Drifts and drifts.

  “Don’t muss the curtains,” Aunt Bertha admonished. “They were starched in October and I don’t want to do it again until May.” Not that Aunt had starched them herself; Beatrice, her hired girl, did that sort of thing.

  No matter how many times I crossed to the window, I did not see my parents coming up the walk. In the dining room adjoining the parlor, Aunt sat at the table reading the Bible and sighing, impatient for bed but unable to retire until I was fetched. Her hands lying on either side of the splayed gold-edged pages were knotted, the veins like blue worms crawling beneath the skin.

  At some point she fell asleep, sitting straight as a gatepost. On the brown velour sofa, I too dozed but woke with a start when Aunt cried, “Good heavens! It’s past midnight and they’re not back.” She hurried to the window, slapping the curtains aside.

  “Frivolous, inconsiderate people! They’re out there dead somewhere.”

  The next morning—in that year of 1910—a uniformed constable came to tell us that a farmer had found Serena and Denton frozen, their lame horse nearly dead. Later in the day, Aunt sat me down on the brown sofa and told me that I would stay with her until other arrangements could be made. She entertained no desire to accommodate a penniless twelve-year-old orphan frivolous by birth.

  From our rented house on Chestnut Street, I was allowed to retrieve a tintype wedding portrait of my parents, the tea set, some of Serena’s books, and a small painting by Clarice Manetti, a teacher of art at the college: the bank of a stream where a cowherd lay in dappled sunlight, in the background cows coming down to drink. Something about the cowherd had pleased Serena, and it pleased me. The sunlight, eternal in the cowherd’s world, played kindly with his pale hair and winsome features. I thought I would marry him when I grew up. When I told Serena this, she said, “I shouldn’t wonder. He looks like a boy who reads Keats.”

  Beyond these few treasures, all else would be sold to pay for Serena and Denton’s burials.

  “Not that books and sheet music and a few sticks of furniture will pay for much,” Aunt disparaged.

  A weeping Mrs. Bullfinch sang “Whispering Hope.” In addition to Aunt and me, the funeral in the Congregational church was attended by both my parents’ colleagues. Aunt admonished me beforehand not to make a fool of myself by carrying on, but everyone’s kindness nearly undid me in the vestibule after the service.

  “Your mother was such fun,” Miss Greene told me. “She always had a little joke or a pretty line of poetry to share.”

  “And her laugh was beautiful,” Miss Harold added. “Like music. It made you happy just to hear it.”

  “She was kind to everyone. Even had a good word for …” Here, Mr. Heppworth, the typing and bookkeeping teacher, leaned close. “For Principal Evans.” He nodded, certain that I understood.

  Doctor Barnes, dean of the normal school, patted my head and assured me that one day in the faculty smoker my father had described me as “an enchanting child.” Smelling strongly of cigars, the man hooked his thumbs into his vest pockets and smiled smugly. Patting me once more, he moved on to mingle, never looking back.

  But young (a master’s degree at twenty-two!) Barrett Cromwell, Denton’s fellow mathematics and physics professor and a dear companion of both my parents, took my mittened hands in his and told me, “Try to be strong, little Ruby. Your loss is great.” Unlike my aunt, he said, “If you wish to weep, that is your right. It isn’t a weakness. And if ever you need me, you can reach me at the college. Drop me a line from time to time.” Tears gathered in his eyes as he studied me, as if to memorize my face. “You remind me so much of your mother,” he said, then bent and kissed the top of my head.

  Following the funeral, Aunt told me that my parents’ coffins would be stacked in the little brick building by the cemetery gate, awaiting the spring thaw. The next day, she explained that she would turn to Reverend Bass, the Congregational minister, about my future.

  Why Aunt Bertha disliked me and my mother before me, I did not understand. I could not see that we had done her any unkindness. On the contrary, Serena had tried her best to be a thoughtful niece. The night of the fatal sleigh ride, she’d brought Aunt a tin of holiday cookies in consideration for watching me. Aunt’s dislike was a mystery.

  At any rate, when all was said and done, a place was found for me with “God-fearing people” in Salisbury, a town in north-central Iowa, near the Minnesota border. I knew nothing of Iowa nor of Minnesota except where they were on a map in my geography book.

  In lieu of Aunt, Reverend Bass saw me off at the station. The train carried me across the Mississippi River, west and north to Salisbury. For the first few hours, I took Professor Cromwell’s advice and shed a million tears. I wept for the only place I’d ever known, the only house I’d ever lived in, the only parents I would ever have, darling Serena and Denton. One day, when I had money, I would come back to Beardsley and visit them. If they were buried in paupers’ graves, I would buy them each a beautiful tombstone. On Serena’s, the mason would carve, “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright” from Romeo and Juliet, and on Denton’s, “A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart” from The Merry Wives of Windsor.

  From the train window as we departed, I could see the cemetery in the distance, even the brick house where Serena and Denton lay waiting for spring.

  CHAPTER TWO

  An elderly, God-fearing couple met me at the Salisbury depot and introduced themselves as Herr and Frau Oster, German Lutherans. I had been intended for Congregationalists, but that family had suffered a tragedy and plans were altered. Through the local newspaper editor, this silent couple fell heir to me. They seemed, if not sanguine, at least resigned. Herr Oster helped me into the buggy. Someone from the depot would deliver my small trunk later.

  I had never seen, nor could I easily imagine, a mud fence, though the expression “homely as a mud fence” was common. Herr and Frau Oster, however, must surely be archetypical of mud fences if homeliness was the criteria and, by homeliness, I mean a lack of beauty or notable features. The Osters had faces their own mothers could not pick out in a crowd.

  Describing an exceedingly plain face is difficult. Nothing grabs t
he attention. In fairness, however, Frau Oster did possess a colorless mole of compelling proportions on the tip of her chin. But, otherwise, her face was a bowl of vanilla pudding.

  Likewise, Herr Oster owned a single identifying mark, one ear that stood out from his head a good deal more than the other, like the handle of a pitcher. And as he was deaf in the opposite ear, he often tilted his head, lending a further impression of a pitcher being emptied.

  The house we approached was as plain as the Osters themselves. No trim or furbelow was lavished on it. Plain white clapboard, without shutter or scalloped shingle or bit of latticework anywhere evident. Nor had the builder squandered a precious penny for etched or stained glass. And no syllable was frittered on the ride, nor when next we alit in a rutted drive. Without a word, Frau Oster led the way to the front porch. Next to “homely,” “laconic” is the word most apt for the Osters. And inside, Frau Oster indicated with a nod that I was meant to climb the stairs to the second floor. I followed her to a small bedroom of conspicuous simplicity: an iron bed with white feather tick, a small table, a chifforobe, and a picture of the child Jesus at prayer. The walls of the room were covered with a white-on-white wallpaper that resembled feathers in a blizzard, the ceiling was white beadboard.

  When my trunk arrived, I placed the precious tintype of my parents on the table and two or three of Serena’s books on the lower shelf. The rest I stacked in the bottom of the chifforobe. The painting of the cowherd I stood atop the same bureau. Tomorrow, I would find a place for the china tea set, wrapped piece by piece in my clothes.

  As I was to learn, the feather tick was a mixed blessing. While it was warm, it was filled not with eiderdown but, rather, chicken feathers from the Osters’ own fowl. Chicken feathers, even small ones, have sharpish quills that pierce the tick and needle you when you’re trying to fall asleep.

  Though plain and laconic, the Osters were not unkind. I had thought that I might be their hired girl, but they registered me in the public school. For that I will always remember them fondly. This is not to say that chores weren’t expected. In the backyard a chicken coop housed a substantial number of tenants, and it was my duty to feed them and collect their eggs. The hens were possessive, the rooster combative. The first morning, the biddies complained in full voice as I tried to gather the eggs. Seeing that I was new, they took advantage, two of the hens pecking my hand and drawing blood, the rooster chasing me around the backyard in the snow. However, by the end of the week, I had taken their measure, and began to enjoy stealing from them. At this, Frau Oster said “Gut.”