The worst of it, Supra gave over with a snide grin, was how they were keeping house like a Christian married couple, but how her son Percy had told her he’d gone by late one night and still seen Ruby cooing and petting little piles of dirt by the chinaberry tree.
Tressie Renfolk concluded that Ruby Bell looked good enough, but crazy still hung around her eyelashes.
IN SPITE of all of this, Ruby and Ephram kept right on living. While Ruby hid the sweet ache Ephram’s presence gave her, she would turn over a small smile or a gentle look now and again.
That first night in the rain, with the door fresh and scrubbed, with her standing, confused, not knowing what to do, Ephram had told her, “Ruby you got to know I’m marriage bound, and I aim to treat you like the lady you is until that day offer up its glory.”
She had to give a bored shrug to keep him from seeing the gratitude in her eyes.
Mornings gave way to afternoons with Ruby drinking coffee and eating the scrambled eggs and toast with raspberry jam Ephram cooked for her, then watching him as he walked off to the Red Bus to go to the Piggly Wiggly in Newton. Each day Ruby stopped to look at the world the man had made for her. Fruit sat in a bowl on the table. There were clean plates with tiny blue flowers on them, and matching blue placemats, napkins and true-life silverware.
He brought her the Beaumont Bugle and she stepped back into time and learned about: the new speed limit, Nixon and a hotel called Watergate. He brought a transistor radio and she heard a woman named Roberta Flack sing “Killing Me Softly” on an FM station. She had cried hard into her sleeve and was grateful that Ephram had not been nearby to see it.
Every morning Ruby did the unthinkable, made up her own bed, then walked into the spinning day to tend to her children. They glowed, the sun gleaming on their faces, their bodies waving in the light, making rainbows that flashed on the earth. They often hopped upon her and followed her into the pristine house, tugging with hundreds of hands on her clothing. They hid under the bed and under her skirt; in the beams of the ceiling and inside the sink. They drifted and skipped and jumped Mary Mack with an invisible rope. They loved the home almost as much as the chinaberry and Ruby played ring-around-a-rosy with them late into the afternoon.
While they napped Ruby would wander into the thick of the piney woods and let nature rush through her. Tuesday she washed against the sand of Marion Lake and felt silver fish swimming in her belly. Wednesday and Thursday she waved as a field of bluebells, letting the bees tickle her fingers and toes. Friday through Sunday were for the earth — the black gumbo clay with its pill bugs and wriggling worms.
When she made it home she would wait for Ephram. When he arrived she would quickly lean down like she was wiping away something on the stair, or picking at the hem on her dress, then she would step into the house with only a tired look.
Each day he brought her gifts. She barely nodded thanks when he brought her roses on Tuesday. On Wednesday, she took the small bottle of perfume from Avon but accidentally knocked it into the woodbin, where it cracked — the smell filling the house with sickly gardenia sweet. She drank his chicory coffee with rich cream because she loved it so, and held his smiles because they tickled something in her chest. On Thursday he brought her glazed doughnut twists for Friday breakfast. She felt saliva arc from her mouth before she could devour five of them.
Still, if he had so much as lifted her shirt, stroked her leg, she would have settled into herself, but night after night he lay next to her like a deacon. Friday he brought her maple syrup for Saturday pancakes; Saturday he planted sweet peas in her front yard. As she watched him sweating, something perched upon her like a dove. She shook it off, but on Sunday as he hammered her roof it came back and decided to nest.
Monday evening it rained as he toted home a bag of fresh apples from Jordon’s Orchard in Jasper. He laid them at her feet and against her better judgment she circled his neck with her arms. They stood together like that. The woody scent of him entered her lungs. She pulled him tight until they pushed into one another, kissing, with the smell of wet earth rolling over their toes from the open doorway, the scent lining the floor and playing in the folds of their clothes. The bag of apples resting just inside the house.
When their breath came in hot gusts, Ephram bent his head down and held her like she was a cloud he couldn’t squeeze lest it disappear. He stepped back and looked at her grinning. Her beauty shook him: the smooth tan of her skin, her collarbone and shoulders, her neck as graceful as a queen’s, and her eyes — her eyes were where her heart lived.
“What chu got there, gal?” He let his fingers linger on her cheek.
“Just a mole,” she answered.
“Naw, it ain’t. That there’s a beauty spot.”
“It’s just a mole.”
“Yes, Ruby, it sure is.” He held her face, as soft as a peach, and turned it up to the single light. “It sure is. Looka there. Somebody round here got them a beauty spot where anybody can see it.”
“Do not.” He saw a chuckle rising from her chest.
“So do. Miss Beauty Spot.”
“You better stop it.”
“Cain’t stop it when it be right there staring at me.”
She mock-slapped him against his chest and began to turn. “Now that’s enough.”
Ephram wouldn’t let her leave. He spun her softly in a bitty two-step. “All right then, Miss Beauty—”
He kissed her again and Ruby felt the rock inside of her begin to crumble.
He held her so firm and so long her chest ached and a pinch in her throat came out in soft sobs. She cried into his open mouth. Now inches away but still crying, she pulled him down to the floor with her and she let her salt mix with his old sweaty collar.
She sniffed in deeply. “See? I open up for one drop of good and out come all this.”
He softly joked, “All a’ what? That ain’t but a little faucet … Miss Beauty Spot.”
And she began laughing.
“I don’t know what happens now,” Ruby whispered.
“Well, that one ain’t so hard.”
“What do you mean?”
“Cuz we can sit here, or we can stand up, or we can walk outside, or we can lay ourselves down, or any hundred number things what come to our mind. What you feel like doing, Miss Ruby Bell?”
“I don’t feel like doing … anything.”
“Nothing?”
“No. I can’t say one way or another, so nothing suits me fine.”
“I can tell you what I want — and it ain’t nothing. I want something from you, Ruby.”
“What you want from me?”
“I need you to look at me. I need you to see me, right here. Right here. I ain’t nowhere but here. I need you to see that.”
Ruby stared at the man in front of her. “I see.” Suddenly she did. A good man sat before her, strong and patient. She had thought not one existed in the entire world, but here he was, looking right into her, skin still wet with rain.
“Thank you.” He paused, then, “What do you want Ruby?”
So she told him the truth. “I want you with me in sleep every night. And when I wake up, every morning, I want you there too.”
“So that ain’t so hard is it?”
Ruby shook her head no. Ephram rose and offered her his hand and they walked to the bed.
Ruby smiled. Ephram took off his shirt and slacks and shone like dark wood against the white of his undergarments. They sat on the bed, brown against caramel, breathing in the scent of gardenia as the rain began to rage.