“I wish there were some little boys my age around here,” said Kitty Pommeroy. Nobody seemed to hear this but Ruth, who snorted in disgust.
“I always wanted a little girl,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “But I had a whole bunch of boys. Is it fun? Is it fun dressing Candy up all pretty? My boys wouldn’t let me touch them. And Ruth always had short hair, so it wasn’t fun to play with.”
“You’re the one who kept it short,” Ruth said. “I wanted my hair to be just like yours, but you were always cutting it.”
“You couldn’t keep it combed, sweetheart.”
“I can dress myself,” Candy said.
“I’m sure you can, sweetheart.”
“No bangs.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “We’re not giving you any bangs, even though they’d be beautiful.” She expertly circled the puff of curls she had created on top of Candy’s head with a wide white ribbon. “Adorable?” she asked Dotty.
“Adorable,” said Dotty. “Precious. You did a great job. I can never get her to sit still, and I don’t know anything about styling hair. Obviously. I mean, look at me. This is about as good as I get.”
“There you go. Thank you, Candy.” Mrs Pommeroy bent over and kissed the little girl on the cheek. “You were very brave.”
“Obviously,” said Candy.
“Obviously,” said Ruth.
“You’re next, Dotty. We’ll do the bride, and you can go get dressed, and then we’ll do your friends. Somebody should tell them to start coming over. What do you want me to do with your hair?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just want to look happy,” Dotty instructed. “Can you do that for me?”
“You can’t hide a happy bride, even under a bad hairstyle,” Mrs. Pommeroy said. “I could wrap your head in a towel, and if you’re happy, you’d still look beautiful, marrying your man.”
“Only God can make a happy bride,” Kitty Pommeroy said very seriously, for some reason.
Dotty considered this and sighed. “Well,” she said, and spat her gum into a used tissue she’d fished out of her bathrobe pocket, “see what you can do for me. Just do your best.”
Mrs. Pommeroy set to work on Dotty Wishnell’s wedding day hair, and Ruth left the women and went to look more closely at Pastor Wishnell’s house. She could not make any sense of its delicate, feminine style. She walked the length of the long, curving porch, with its wicker furniture and bright cushions. That must be the work of the mysterious Mrs. Post. She saw a bird feeder, shaped like a little house and cheerfully painted red. Knowing that she was trespassing, but overcome by curiosity, she let herself into the house through the French doors that opened from the porch. Now she was in a small parlor, a sitting room. Brightly covered books lay on end tables, and doilies covered the backs of the sofa and chairs.
She walked next through a living room papered in a print of pale green lilies. A ceramic Persian cat crouched next to the fireplace, and a real tabby cat reclined on the back of a rose-colored couch. The cat looked at Ruth and, unconcerned, went back to sleep. Ruth touched a handmade afghan on a rocking chair. Pastor Wishnell lived here? Owney Wishnell lived here? She walked on. The kitchen smelled of vanilla, and a coffee cake sat on the counter. She noticed stairs at the back of the kitchen. What was upstairs? She was out of her mind, to be snooping around like this. She’d be hard put to explain to anyone what she was doing upstairs in Pastor Toby Wishnell’s house, but she was dying to find Owney’s bedroom. She wanted to see where he slept.
She walked up the steep wooden stairs and, on the next floor, peered into an immaculate bathroom, with a potted fern hanging in the window and a small cake of lavender soap in a dish above the sink. There was a framed photograph of a small girl and a small boy, kissing. BEST FRIENDS, it read below in pink script.
Ruth moved to the doorway of a bedroom containing stuffed animals propped against the pillows. The next bedroom had a beautiful sleigh bed and its own bathroom. The last bedroom had a single bed with a rose-covered quilt. Where did Owney sleep? Not with the teddy bears, surely. Not on the sleigh bed. She couldn’t picture that. She had no sense of Owney at all in this house.
But Ruth kept exploring. She climbed up to the third floor. It was hot, with sloping ceilings. Seeing a partly closed door, she naturally pushed it open. And walked in on Pastor Wishnell.
“Oh,” Ruth said.
He looked at her from behind an ironing board. He was in his black trousers. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. That’s what he was ironing. His torso was long and seemed to have no muscle or fat or hair. He lifted his shirt off the ironing board, slid his arms into the starched sleeves, and fastened the buttons, bottom to top, slowly.
“I was looking for Owney,” Ruth said.
“He’s gone to Fort Niles to pick up Mr. Ellis.”
“Oh, really? Sorry.”
“You knew that very well.”
“Oh, that’s right. Yes, I did know that. Sorry.”
“This is not your house, Miss Thomas. What made you think you were free to wander about it?”
“That’s right. Sorry to have bothered you.” Ruth backed into the hallway.
Pastor Wishnell said, “No, Miss Thomas. Come in.”
Ruth paused, then stepped back into the room. She thought to herself, Fuck, and looked around. Well, this was certainly Pastor Wishnell’s room. This was the first room in the house that made any sense. It was stark and blank. The walls and ceiling were white; even the bare wooden floor was whitewashed. The room smelled faintly of shoe polish. The pastor’s bed was a narrow brass frame, with a blue woollen blanket and a thin pillow. Under the bed was a pair of leather slippers. The bedside table held no lamp or book, and the room’s single window had only a window shade, no curtain. There was a dresser, and on it a small pewter plate holding a few coins. The dominant object in the room was a large, dark wooden desk, beside which was a bookcase filled with heavy volumes. The desk held an electric typewriter, a stack of paper, a soup can of pencils.
Hanging above the desk was a map of the coast of Maine, covered with pencil marks. Ruth looked for Fort Niles, instinctively. It was unmarked. She wondered what that meant. Unsaved? Ungrateful?
The pastor unplugged the iron, wrapped the cord around it, and set it on his desk.
“You have a pretty house,” Ruth said. She put her hands in her pockets, trying to look casual, as if she’d been invited here. Pastor Wishnell folded the ironing board and placed it inside the closet.
“Were you named after the Ruth of the Bible?” he asked. “Have a seat.”
“I don’t know who I was named after.”
“Don’t you know your Bible?”
“Not too much.”
“Ruth was a great woman of the Old Testament. She was the model of female loyalty.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You might enjoy reading the Bible, Ruth. It contains many wonderful stories.”
Ruth thought, Exactly. Stories. Action-adventure. Ruth was an atheist. She had decided that the year before, when she learned the word. She was still having fun with the idea. She hadn’t told anyone, but the knowledge gave her a thrill.
“Why aren’t you helping Mrs. Pommeroy?” he asked.
“I’m going to do that right now,” Ruth said, and thought about making a run for it.
“Ruth,” Pastor Wishnell said, “sit down. You can sit on the bed.”
There was no bed in the world that Ruth wanted less to sit on than Pastor Wishnell’s. She sat down.
“Don’t you ever get tired of Fort Niles?” he asked. He tucked his shirt into his pants, in four smooth strokes, with flat palms. His hair was damp, and she could see the tooth marks from a comb. His skin was pale as fine linen. He leaned against the side of the desk, folded his arms, and looked at her.