“I’m not much help cutting hair,” Ruth said, but the pastor and Owney were gone. One in each direction.
Cal looked at Ruth and lifted a satisfied eyebrow. “I wonder why you’re so eager to hang around that boy.”
“Because he doesn’t annoy the fuck out of me, Cal.”
“I annoy the fuck out of you, Ruth?”
“Oh, not you. I didn’t mean you.”
“I enjoyed our little trip to Concord. Mr. Ellis had a lot of questions for me when I got back. He wanted to know how you and your mother got along, and if you seemed at home there. I told him that you’d both got along swimmingly and that you seemed very much at home there, but I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you about it. Come to think of it, perhaps you should write him a note when you get the chance, thanking him for having sponsored the trip. It’s important to him that the two of you have a good relationship, considering how close your mother and grandmother have been to the Ellis family. And it’s important to him that you get as much time off Fort Niles as possible, Ruth. I told him I’d be happy to take you to Concord at any time, and that we had a good time traveling together. I do enjoy it, Ruth.” He was giving her his heavy-lidded stare now. “Although I can’t get out of my head this idea that someday the two of us will end up in a motel along Route One having filthy sex together.”
Ruth laughed. “Get it out of your head.”
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because Old Cal Cooley is such a funny man,” Ruth said. Which was not at all the truth. The truth was that Ruth was laughing because she had decided-as she often did, with varying degrees of success-that Old Cal Cooley was not going to get to her. She wouldn’t allow it. He could heap upon her loads of his most insidious abuse, but she would not rise to it. Certainly not today.
“I know it’s only a matter of time before you start having filthy sex with somebody, Ruth. All signs point to it.”
“Now we’re going to play a different kind of game,” Ruth said. “Now you leave me alone for a while.”
“And you should keep yourself away from Owney Wishnell, by the way,” Cal said as he walked down the porch steps and wandered into the garden. “It’s obvious that you’re up to something with that boy, and nobody likes it.”
“Nobody?” Ruth called after him. “Really, Cal? Nobody?”
“Get over here, you big old man,” Kitty Pommeroy said to Cal when she saw him. Cal Cooley turned on his heel and walked stiffly in the other direction. He was going back to Fort Niles to get Mr. Ellis.
The bride, Dotty Wishnell, was a likable blonde in her mid-thirties. She’d been married before, but her husband died of testicular cancer. She and her daughter, Candy, who was six years old, were the first to have their hair done. Dotty Wishnell walked over to Pastor Wishnell’s house in her bathrobe, her hair wet and uncombed. Ruth thought this was a pretty relaxed way for a bride to walk around on her wedding day, and it made Ruth like the woman right away. Dotty had an attractive enough face, but she looked exhausted. She had no makeup on yet, and she was chewing gum. She had deep lines across her forehead and around her mouth.
Dotty Wishnell’s daughter was extremely quiet. Candy was going to be her mother’s maid of honor, which Ruth thought an awfully serious job for a six-year-old, but Candy seemed up to it. She had a grown-up face for a child, a face that didn’t belong anywhere near a child.
“Are you nervous about being the maid of honor?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked Candy.
“Obviously not.” Candy had the firm mouth of the aging Queen Victoria. She wore a most judgmental expression, and those lips of hers were firmly set. “I was already a flower girl at Miss Dorphman’s wedding, and we aren’t even related.”
“Who’s Miss Dorphman?”
“Obviously she’s my teacher.”
“Obviously,” Ruth repeated, and Kitty Pommeroy and Mrs. Pommeroy both laughed. Dotty laughed, too. Candy looked at the four women as if she were disappointed in the lot of them.
“Oh, great,” Candy said, as if she had already had this kind of irritating day and wasn’t looking forward to another. “So far, so bad.”
Dotty Wishnell asked Mrs. Pommeroy to take care of Candy first and see whether she could give her thin brown hair some curls. Dotty Wishnell wanted her daughter to look “adorable.” Mrs. Pommeroy said it would be easy to make such an adorable child look adorable, and she would do all she could to make everyone happy.
“I could give her the cutest little bangs,” she said.
“No bangs,” Candy insisted. “No way.”
“She doesn’t even know what bangs are,” Dotty said.
“I do so, Mom,” said Candy.
Mrs. Pommeroy set to work on Candy’s hair while Dotty stood and watched. The two women talked comfortably with each other, although they’d never before met.
“The good thing is,” Dotty told Mrs. Pommeroy, “that Candy doesn’t have to change her name. Candy’s daddy was a Burden, and her new daddy is a Burden, too. My first husband and Charlie were first cousins, believe it or not. Charlie was one of the ushers at my first wedding, and today he’s the groom. Yesterday I said to him, ‘You never know how things are going to turn out,’ and he said, ‘You never know.’ He’s going to adopt Candy, he said.”
“I lost my first husband, too,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Actually, he was my only husband. I was a young thing like you. It’s true; you never know.”
“How did your husband die?”
“He drowned.”
“What was his last name?”
“It was Pommeroy, sweetheart.”
“I think I remember that.”
“It was in 1967. But we don’t need to talk about that today, because today’s a happy day.”
“You poor thing.”
“You poor thing. Oh, don’t you worry about me, Dotty. What happened to me was a long, long time ago. But you lost your husband only last year, right? That’s what Pastor Wishnell said.”
“Last year,” Dotty replied, staring ahead. The women were silent for a while. “March twentieth, 1975.”
“My dad died,” Candy said.
“We don’t need to talk about that today,” Mrs. Pommeroy said, forming another perfect ring in Candy’s hair with her damp finger. “Today is a happy day. Today is your mommy’s wedding.”
“Well, I’m getting another husband today, that’s for sure,” said Dotty. “I’m getting a new one. This island is no place to live without a husband. And you’re getting a new daddy, Candy. Isn’t that right?”
Candy did not express an opinion on this.
“Does Candy have other little girls to play with on Courne Haven?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked.
“No,” Dotty said. “There are some teenage girls around, but they aren’t too interested in playing with Candy, and next year they’ll be going inland to school. Mostly, it’s little boys around here.”
“It was the same thing with Ruth when she was little! All she had were my boys to play with.”
“Is that your daughter?” Dotty asked, looking at Ruth.
“She’s practically my daughter,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. My daughtah… “And she grew up with nothing but boys around.”
“Was that hard on you?” Dotty asked Ruth.
“It was the worst,” Ruth said. “It ruined me completely.”
Dotty’s face collapsed into worry. Mrs. Pommeroy said, “She’s teasing. It was fine. Ruth loved my boys. They were like her brothers. Candy will be fine.”
“I think Candy wishes she could be a girly-girl sometimes, and play girly games for a change,” said Dotty. “I’m the only girl she can play with, and I’m no fun. I haven’t been much fun all year.”
“That’s because my dad died,” Candy said.
“We don’t need to talk about that today, honey,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “Today your mommy’s getting married. Today’s a happy day, sweetheart.”