“He’ll be back, Celia,” Arthur says. “That’s for damn sure. You think any father is going to let his son grow up in another man’s house?”
“We don’t know it will be a boy.”
Arthur throws his gloves on the ground. He looks like he wants to kick something, but the only thing close enough is the dead bird. He seems to think about it but kicks the ground instead.
“God damn it, Celia. Boy or girl, it doesn’t matter. You think I’ll be able to keep Ray away? I have to work, you know. I can’t be here every God damned second. You think I’ll be able to keep Ruth and her baby safe?”
Celia closes her eyes but does not back away. She can smell the aftershave Arthur splashed on for Father Flannery, his worn leather gloves, his wool jacket. He is more of a man now that they are living in Kansas. She would never say it to him, imply that he was less before, doesn’t even like to think it. Waiting until Arthur has finished shouting and the night air has fallen silent again, Celia opens her eyes.
“Yes,” she says, hoping Arthur will protect them all, hoping he is stronger here in Kansas because he has to be. “Yes, I do.”
Ruth stands on the back porch. Father Flannery’s cologne hangs in the air, rich and spicy. She breathes it in, the same smell as Sunday morning mass. Waiting for her face to heal, she hasn’t been to St. Anthony’s for almost a month. Celia and Arthur were afraid of the things people might say if they saw the swollen eyes, blackened and bruised cheek and jaw, split lip. They wanted to protect Ruth. In the early years of her marriage, Ruth had been afraid, too. The first time Ray put a fist to her, she hid her cuts and bruises with powder and scarves, but then she realized that people knew the beatings were inevitable, and shouldn’t Ruth have known the same?
Through the screened door, she listens for Arthur and wishes he would come inside so they could deliver the food to the Robisons. Going there takes her close to church, a half block away, takes her close enough to feel like she’s still being a good Christian. Now that Ruth is living with Arthur and his family, she rides along on the deliveries to the Robisons and walks the food to Mary’s front door, even puts it in the refrigerator and cleans out the spoiled leftovers, mostly things Ruth brought the week before. She hopes Arthur will still take her, that he won’t be too angry.
Mary never asks why Ruth suddenly started coming along, but she knows. Everyone knows. And every week, as Ruth jots baking instructions on the notepad near the telephone, Mary Robison tells Ruth to stop troubling herself, that all this lovely food won’t bring Julianne home. Nothing, nothing, will bring Julianne home. Ruth always smiles as best she can and continues to bake the pies and mix up the casseroles, because once, when they were so much younger, she and Mary Robison were friends, and Eve, too. The three of them, when they were young, when they had long, shiny hair and bright, clear skin, before husbands and children, they were friends. Because this is true, and because maybe, even though she can’t let the thought settle in long before blinking it away, Ray did something awful to Julianne Robison, Ruth still takes the food.
Ruth’s first lie to Floyd was a reflex. Standing in her kitchen, Ray watching her, Floyd slapping his beige hat on his thigh, she nodded yes, that Ray had been home all night. She lied out of reflex, the same as a person raises her arms to her face to fend off a fist. She lied because she was afraid not to. A hundred nights, Ray had gone off without telling Ruth where he was going, and a hundred nights, no little girl went missing. But the night Julianne disappeared was different. Ray remembered that once he had been happy. He remembered Eve because she skipped out of Mother’s back door and stood right before him, smiling up with blue eyes and tender, flushed cheeks. Only it wasn’t Eve, it was Arthur’s youngest, and as deeply as Ray must have remembered what it was like to be happy, the moment he walked back into his own home with Ruth, he must have remembered that it was all gone.
“Daniel,” Ruth says, when a set of footsteps stop at the top of the basement stairs. She turns toward the house. “Is that you?’
“I’m sorry, Aunt Ruth.” He is about to close the door but stops when he sees her. “I didn’t see you out there.”
Ruth points across the porch to the gun cabinet in the back hallway.
“I think you didn’t quite get things put away as you’d like,” she says. “I thought you might want to tend to it before your father does.”
Daniel scoots a small stool to the cabinet. He can’t quite reach the top where Arthur keeps the key to the lock.
“Thank you,” Daniel says, as the cabinet hinges creak and the lock snaps into place. He stands in the dark doorway, the kitchen light shining behind him. “I think your water is boiling. Do you want me to shut it off?”
“No, thank you.”
Outside, Arthur and Celia’s voices fade.
“You know, Daniel,” Ruth says. “Your father, when he was a boy, he was a good shot. I’ll bet you are, too. In your blood, you know. Are you a good shot?”
Daniel shuffles his feet and clasps his hands behind his back. “Yes, ma’am,” he says. “I guess I am.”
“So I thought.”
“Is everything okay, Aunt Ruth?” Daniel asks, setting the stool back in its spot on the porch. “Aren’t you cold out here? Do you want a coat or something?”
Ruth smiles into the darkness to hear Daniel’s voice sounding more like a man’s than a boy’s. These children, Daniel and Evie, are ghosts of her childhood. Daniel so like his father, a young Arthur, working his way toward manhood, hoping nothing will derail him. Evie, resembling Eve so strongly, sometimes too painful to look at.
“I’m fine,” she says, nodding toward the cabinet. “You take care.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Beyond the screened door, Mother stands at the bottom of the stairs, her back to Ruth. As large as she is, Mother looks small there at the bottom of the steps, her head lowered, her shoulders sagging. Past Mother, on the far side of the garage where the porch light barely reaches, Celia and Arthur have started arguing again. Arthur’s voice is tired and desperate, as tired and desperate as Ruth has felt for twenty years, while Celia’s words have hope, the same hope that Ruth knows is growing inside her. She felt this hope with all three of her babies, but knew, even from the beginning, that none of them would live. Ray had beaten them out of her. Not literally. He never even knew they had been there, nestled inside Ruth’s womb. Sadness killed those babies.
The first pregnancy had surprised Ruth. The baby didn’t come in the beginning months of marriage. Ray had needed her, almost loved her in those early days. Together, they had mourned Eve, leaving no room for anyone else, not even a baby. Soon after, Arthur left to follow the best jobs in the country all the way to Detroit, but really Father drove him away, and Mother said no one should judge what’s between a man and his son. Best to let things rest in peace. Arthur’s leaving was the end of something for Ruth and Ray, or maybe it was the beginning of living with the truth, and this was when Ruth felt the smallest inkling of her first baby. She didn’t arrive with a vengeance, this baby that Ruth was certain was a girl, but with a blush of nausea, a hint of fatigue, the tiniest shift in perspective. And then she vanished, bled away in spots and smudges that Ruth bleached out in the bathroom sink while Ray slept in the next room. Then came the second and third. Something inside her, some glimmer of hope, sparked those babies that bled away like the first. Ruth knew that without hope, no more children would live or die, so she gave up on happiness and a future and that was the end of her babies-until now.