Ruth and Ray had come into their marriage late in life. Ruth had lost her first husband early to heart failure. Ray’s wife had left him when their children were grown. To their second marriage, both Starlings brought a horde of children and a fierce sense of autonomy. They smoked and drank and swore at each other. At the holidays, the whole brood shored up in one house and had it out over various cuts of venison that Ray had hunted.
Ruth and Ray were the only couple over fifty whom I knew to have a visible sex life. There was something of the tongue in the way they treated each other. Even when Ray was drinking and Ruth was yelling there was an intimacy between their bodies that felt comforting. Though age had left its indications — Ray had a case of beer tired around his middle, and Ruth blonded her hair — the pair were compact of body. After a day of mowing and tending the property, Ray would stumble, shirtless and sweaty, down to the pool where Ruth was watching us swim. The Starlings owned acreage. An outdoorsman and daytime drinker, one had the feeling Ray celebrated this fact to considerable advantage. At the end of the day, despite his sunburnt stupor, he retained a buzz and an eye for his wife’s figure. This fact was known to anyone who visited them. Ruth often went about the house bare-chested, her low cut black one-piece barely pulled up over her nipples, the straps hanging loosely at her sides.
Those afternoons I spent with them, the two often retired around the pool in adjoining lawn chairs. After exchanging words, Ruth poured herself a drink from the bottle in the storage shed and returned to nuzzle her feet in Ray’s lap.
Ruth was an RN at the local hospital. According to Mother, she assisted one of the young transplants living on the other side of the mountain fresh out of his residency in the city. Ruth was said to have delivered most people in the town and accompanied a good number of folks to the other side as well. A lapsed Catholic, she lent a practical eye toward good health and clean living. She dismissed the Separatists as new age voodoo practiced by thick-bodied women and closeted leftists. To Ruth, matters of the heart were an issue of protection. Ray himself said she’d married him on the off chance she ever found herself in a situation.
An ex-marine, Ray was scheming to avoid the order of the world. Bosses, like government, fit him like hand-me-downs. Most nights he worked late at his barbershop, a hole in the wall he’d set up on the corner of one of the little side roads in town where it emptied out into highway. He’d bought the place off the young couple living in the house next door when they were looking to finance their first baby. It had once been their garage.
Ray was a man who had lost his sport. What he had left of life was his gut, his gun, and the second woman he’d ever let into his home. With his first wife, he’d given birth to three incidental beauties. One in particular had that kind of drop-dead quality. At the holidays she was always bringing around men who seemed to slide off the couch and into her arms. Their suits had that cheap sheen. Bank managers. Owners of franchises. The last one I’d met sold pharmaceuticals and tended bar.
Ray claimed he bought his first Colt to protect himself those nights he closed up the barber shop. He never went far without it or his whiskey and kept a box of bullets under the sink in the kitchen. Father said Ray figured on protecting what beauty he’d brought into the world.
Unmoved by Margaret’s invitations, that summer Ruth watched over Birdie and me more weekends than not.
There was something of the devil in Mother the night she ignited the blowout plan. It was dark by the time her Camry pulled up in the Starlings’ drive. Mother beeped twice. This was outside the boundaries of her character. It was her habit to ring the bell or come in for a cup of tea or coffee. That night, she was in a hurry. Ruth shooed Birdie and I down the driveway toward the headlights. Mother hardly looked herself in the car. She had recently cut short her hair. Her long brown waves were now shorn in a modish bob that she blew straight and wore tucked behind one ear. Mother had the bone structure of an aristocrat and a tongue to match. Father said her nose alone could stop traffic. The recent cut seemed to take advantage of these assets. Under the porch light, she and the car acquired a certain celebrity. Together, they were waiting to shuttle us off to some greater fate.
The Bottom Feeder was dark as we pulled into the drive leading up to it. Mother had neglected to leave the porch lights on, her normal habit of protection. She said she liked to come home to a house that looked like it had people living in it. The three of us made our way down the gravel toward the house. The sound of the coyotes howling in the distance lending the air around us a vacuum-like quality. A knot grew in my stomach.
I clasped my hand around side of Mother and linked my thumb over top of her belt, fingering the pant loop. I felt the waifishness of her body, the hawk-like way her hipbones darted out from her skin as she walked. Despite all impediments to glamour, she wore belts that highlighted the trimness of her waist. That evening she was wearing the brown snakeskin with the brass buckle. She’d bought it with Granny Olga in the city.
The front door was unlocked. The bolt had caught on the frame, but hadn’t yet slipped into the notch to secure the house. One push from Mother and the door swung wide. The foyer inside was dark. Mother’s windows at the back of the house were open. A good breeze was coming in. Normally, the ventilation would have delighted her. That night Mother was quiet. I felt the side of her ribs expand as she drew in a breath.
“Get in the car,” she said. “There’s been a break-in.”
The light from the Starlings’ television lit up their kitchen. They kept a small portable on the counter so they could sit around the table and listen to the late night shows while they played cards. Mother was up the stairs before Birdie and I had time to catch her. “Get inside, girls,” Ruth said, shuffling us into the house.
The floor around the table in the Starlings’ kitchen was covered with newspapers. Bits of cut glass and foil. The air smelled of copper. Those nights Ray was too drunk for cards, Ruth had taken to craftwork. That summer, she was designing a line of lampshades.
“Sit down and make yourselves busy,” Ruth said to Birdie and me. She removed several wire frames from the chairs and ran to the front of the house to call upstairs to Ray.
Mother was still on the phone when Ray was rummaging around under the sink in the kitchen. The back of his shirt glowed red in the thin light of the lamp over the table, one of Ruth’s creations. He straightened up and slipped the revolver into the sheath which hung from his belt. The front of his undershirt was stained with a brownish liquid.
Mother came in from the living room. Her face was blotchy and bloated. She wrapped the phone cord around the palm of her hand.
“I’ll just have a look around,” Ray said.
Mother stared at his gun.
“I’m going with you,” she said.
Birdie and I were asleep when Ruth drove us home. The house looked like a bomb had blown up inside it. There was a light on in every room. They’d turned the Bottom Feeder end over end looking for something criminal.
Father met us halfway down the drive. He and Ruth exchanged glances. He carried Birdie toward the house. I followed behind.
“I’ll send her out now,” he called over his shoulder.
Ray was in the living room with Mother. An ashtray half-full between them. Mother’d been crying. She looked at us as Father carried Birdie upstairs to bed.
In that moment, Mother appeared entirely outside of herself. The image of Father carrying Birdie up the stairs seemed at odds with her capacity. I often wondered if Mother would just as soon curl up in Father’s arms than bear a daily maternal impulse. We were all fearful to admit this. On the outskirts of the town, Mother was removed from something vital.