A Virtuous Woman (Oprah's Book Club) (12 page)

As soon as she put Ruby’s broom up she looked at the kitchen clock and said, “Whew Lawd! I needs to call Nathan to get me.” And I thought, Oh shit. Then she asked me, she said, “Where’s the telefoam?” I told her I didn’t have one, I’d let it go a few months ago, and the closest one was Burr’s house right across the field. I pointed out the window. She said, “My knees is already give out. I can’t do no walking.” I thought to myself, I bet if the nearest telephone was at the honey bun factory you’d run over me getting out the door. But I didn’t feel like getting her started back up. I just wanted her to go home, so I went on to Burr’s and used his phone and said for Nathan to come carry his mama home.

The next time she got here about the same time, late, and strowed all her mess out over the table again. I told her, I said, “Mavis, I’ve got to go to help Burr out over yonder
and when I get back I expect to see something done, like the dishes washed, the floors swept, and so forth and so on.” And I said for her to watch herself with the toilet stool. She won’t half listening to me, bent way over, sticking her grape drinks in the refrigerator. She just said, “Somebody needs to do something about this nasty icebox.” I just thought, Lord God, and I wonder who.

Burr liked to’ve laughed his head off when I told him all about Mavis. I said, “You pay somebody ten dollars to cook and clean and then you eat chicken noodle soup out of the last clean bowl, you pay somebody all that money and see how hard you laugh.” He said he didn’t mean to laugh but it was still funny.

That afternoon I went on back across the field and I got closer and closer and I saw some clothes on the line, then I got closer and saw it was my work shirts and dungarees, then I got right near up on the yard and said, “What’s it doing with spots on them?” She’d bleached my clothes! I wanted to jerk a knot in her. I went in the door and yelled at her, I said, “What’s it doing with spots on my dungarees? You don’t bleach dungarees!” And listen to what she said to me, she said, “I got mixed up.” I said, “What?” And she just said, “I got mixed up I’m telling you,” and then she started back on what she was doing, which was opening one of her grape drinks between her knees. I thought to myself, Those knees won’t hold you to mop but they’ll
hold a grape drink. Then she took her drink in the living room and eased down on her donut pillow and started shaking her head. I followed her in there and asked her what was going on, and she said to me, “I sho’ wish you had a telefoam.” All I could say was for her to give me the damn number again, and I went on and called her boy. I told Burr about it and when he got through laughing he said he’d send June out here next weekend.

Nathan came and got her and I told her it wasn’t any need for her to come anymore, and I gave her twenty dollars plus five more for gas her boy used hauling her. I went on back in the house and said, “Well, I wipe my hands of that,” and I took and got a wrench and fixed my toilet.

See, it had sounded like the perfect setup to me. Didn’t it you? Isn’t it every man’s dream that when his wife dies he has somebody to step in and do for him? I guess Ruby was right on the mark when she used to catch me sending off for something about how to make a million dollars and say to me, “If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Give me the envelope. Save that stamp to mail a bill with.” I listened to her then. I’d listen to her now. I just wish it was somebody here like her now that could tell me what to do.

J
ack hasn’t had much to say today. I’ve sewn all day. A little while ago he came and stood beside me with his hands in his pockets and asked me what I was doing. I said, “Well, Jack, I’m sewing.” He’s so preoccupied with last night. I told him he should walk over to Burr’s, that I didn’t need him for anything until supper, but he won’t leave here today. I also told him we could go sit outside when I finished this skirt. It’s warm for November.

I told June I’d have her things ready by Saturday. I hope everything fits, hangs right. I’d hate for her to go off on her trip looking homemade. Nothing looks worse.

Jack can’t think of a thing to do, so the television goes on. Maybe he’ll fall asleep in front of it. He needs to either be distracted or asleep. Last night’s just eating at him.

Suppose he hadn’t been here? Would Cecil have talked
to me by myself? I don’t think so. I’ve always believed that Cecil and most everybody out here are a little afraid of me. They always seem to speak to me through Jack, like, “Jack, how’d you and Ruby like your trip to the mountains?” and I’m standing right there. They think it’s odd, I know they do, they think it’s peculiar as it can be, me married to him. Nobody’s understood, or tried to, except Burr and June and my family. I used to feel the urge to justify us to everybody who stared, but then it passed. Even the urge to tell women at the store that it was none of their business, that passed too. Maybe I just got used to being stared at. That’s people. You can’t change them for the world. One time, when we were first married, I told Jack how it bothered me, all the looking and knowing I was being talked about at every supper table up and down Milk Farm Road, and he said, “If they can’t find one thing to talk about, they’ll find another.” And that comes from a man who’s lived on this road all his life, been talked about at all those supper tables, if not for his blinking then for his weight, and if not for that then for being an old tenant married to somebody twenty years younger.

Mama and daddy were the only people I felt like I needed to explain anything to, and I finally did, but before I got to talking about Jack I had so many other things to cover. They sat and listened, so did Sudie Bee. Jack was out looking at the farm with Paul and Jimmy. We’d agreed that I
should talk to mama and daddy by myself awhile. When I finished, mama said, “Well, I guess you’ve about done it all!” Who’d have thought you could do it all without leaving the South? And then later that day I heard Sudie Bee in the pantry with Lester, filling him in on everything I’d said, and she told him, “Shame the law don’t allow Miss Ruby to marry her daddy. All she be wanting is to marry her daddy.”

I did want somebody to take care of me. I needed it. And when I felt all that goodness coming from Jack, it didn’t matter what the person looked like that sent it out to me. Maybe I did want a daddy, but that’s okay, too. I never heard any bells ringing and so forth, but look what’d happened to me when I did! The quiet kind of love is better than the other, lasted longer, been better to us. Oh, it’s no crime to want and need somebody to love and to be loved by and to go and do what you need to do to have that, but it’s certainly a pity when you want it so badly you’ll let it be anybody.

And I certainly went from good to bad to good mighty quick. And now the bad’s coming again, and it’ll get worse and worse, and Jack’ll have to be here with me and see me, and he’ll have to say, “Look what’s become of this woman I married.” If I’d knelt down with Cecil maybe I’d be looking forward to good again, but I couldn’t do that. I’ll just wish and try to make it so for Jack. My brothers
have promised to check on him, and I made Burr promise me the day after I was diagnosed to do anything he could here, June, too. And when I’ve finished this skirt for her I’ll go out to the freezer and look at everything and try to feel better. I’m counting on that working. And then I’ll come back in and see if Jack’s ready to go outside with me, and we’ll sit out there together until it’s too late to see the pine trees across the field.

I
washed my sheets for the first time in two months this morning, first time since June was here and stripped the bed down. They’re white, needed some bleach, but it won’t a drop left on account of Mavis going wild with it. I’m going to dye my dungarees back blue.

Know why I took and washed my sheets this morning? I did it for Ruby. It was Ruby that told me to do it. In a way it was Ruby.

See, last night I was laid in bed sleeping, just sleeping regular, and then I went to roll over and I couldn’t. What it was like was like it was somebody laying next to me on top of the covers. I thought it might be one of the dogs got in the house and crawled up in with me, but then I said it’d take Lassie to undo a lock and get in here. I went to turn again and I still couldn’t. Then I thought I might’ve been
just mixed up the first time. You know how it is when you wake up like that and think you’re doing something like getting some water and then you don’t know if you did or you didn’t.

Then I said, This is how Ruby used to do, how she used to lay on top of the covers when she’d get hot in the night. I’d have to wake her up and tell her I couldn’t sleep with her weighting the sheet down, keeping me from turning. And last night when I felt that same feeling I was pure scared to turn my head around and check her spot. Can’t you imagine!

I laid there still as I could and next thing I knew I was asleep again. First thing I did this morning was I got up and looked at her spot real close, looking for a dent like a body’d leave. I didn’t see one, but I said, That don’t mean she won’t here! Then I said, A spirit don’t have weight. But if it was Ruby and she wanted to be here with me awhile, she could take weight. She could do anything she wants to! Nothing stopping her!

See, every night I’ve laid in bed and wished Ruby was over there sleeping, laying on top of the covers, reading with the lights on, sitting up eating yogurt, just everything she used to do. I’ve wished so hard you could call it begging. And I thought, Of all the things I’ve wished for and I’ve not got, I’ve finally come through with this one.

But don’t run out and start wishing. It’s all got to be just right, like ripe for you. Nine and three-quarters times out of ten wishing won’t make a thing so, but you hit it one time and you’ll run around like somebody with no sense, like I have today. Not every man can wish a dead wife back. Suppose you bad-mouthed your wife, pulled mean drunks and beat her, and then she dies one day. Then you sit around saying how bad you wish you could make it up to her. Do you think she’d show up and give you another chance after the way she was pushed and pulled the first go-round? She’d be a fool to. And you’d be a bigger fool wasting time wishing. She’d just stay off somewhere and let you suffer.

I and Ruby watched all the Topper movies. We used to joke about hainting all the time. And last night I bet she was missing me like I was missing her, missing her all the nights she’d scramble around in and out of the covers, and I’d say, “Ruby, how about decide if you’re hot or cold,” and she’d go to sleep with one leg in and one leg out because she said she couldn’t make up her mind.

But I was just real touched by her coming, and what I have planned to do is to woo her into coming tonight. I know you can’t catch a haint and hold it forever, but don’t you know I would if I could? Don’t you know some you would?

Before I put the clean sheets back on I plan to sprinkle some of Ruby’s smelly-good powders over the mattress, shake some down in the pillow case. All her woman stuff’s still on her bureau. I haven’t moved anything. I don’t know what I’d do with any of it. And it’s not mine to be giving away or throwing out. I’d rather let Burr come in here after I’m gone and decide what’ll become of our business. But I’ll fix her room up for her. I figure why would a woman, be she dead or otherwise, want to crawl in a musty bed with the sheets gray? I’m tempted to lay down with my two-tones on. Ruby did evermore love me in a nice pair of shoes. I’ll wear the pajamas I got for Christmas a few years ago, still in the plastic, and I’ll act normal, like I’m not expecting anything but a good night’s sleep in my new pajamas and clean bed. I sure don’t need to look like I’m on the lookout for any irregular company. And maybe, just maybe, if I look enough like I’m minding my own business she’ll come in again and slip in beside me. I don’t know what I’ll do then. I wouldn’t want to scare her off.

What do you think of the odds? They say good things will happen when you least expect it and what goes around comes around and so forth. I just hope that’s so. But if something happens and she doesn’t show up, it won’t be the end of the world. She’s been here once, I’m sure.

And I’ll tell you, having your dead wife haint you can
really tip your day off to a fine start. Outside I’ve got the sheets flapping in the wind, I had the coffee turn out this morning, and I got a free sample of gargle in the mailbox. I think about all I’ve got left to do is fix up for her and say, “Ruby Pitt Woodrow Stokes! Come on down!”

F
or every minute Jack slept that night he was awake for two. Every branch scraping the roof was Ruby descending, every dog scrambling underneath the porch was Ruby rising. Only when he woke up at daylight and released himself from his damp, tangled sheets did he realize that his own body had fooled his heart the night before, just as trees and dogs had caused him to lie and wait. And sleeping and awake he had dreamt of Ruby. He needed relief from his night, but holding her pillow and crying as he’d done other nights would not help him. His frustration and anger had rooted in and taken hold well below the place where tears start, and so would not be washed up nor out by them. His pain was the sort that burrows in and tortures until the source of the struggle is understood, reconciled, and removed.

So little to you, foolish old man, you invent something, then get mad when what you thought was so ain’t so. Woke up wound around a thousand nights, pull the sheet out from the foot of the bed and it’ll wind around you, then wake up one night and call it Ruby, me laying on the sheet and calling for Ruby. No fool like a goddamn old fool. It’s what I get for wanting something. All I want me now is a drink of liquor, wanting to take a drink. Goddamn room smelling like babies, damn dusting powder in the sheets. Air it out then! Stood up by a haint, what I mean to tell you, and not even stood up by one real.

He got out of bed and opened a window. The view to Burr’s house was obscured by a lush thickness of flowering trees. He didn’t see June’s car there, or June on the porch with her father, hearing about Mavis, laughing some, then remembering Ruby.
I wish she’d been my mother. I wish she hadn’t died.