The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton

Author:Jane Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Twelve

IT isn’t fair that Ruby can’t tell everybody what happened in his life and here I am talking about the kind of person he is, talking about his wide blue eyes and his gutter balls at Town Lanes. Even though it isn’t fair there doesn’t seem to be a way around it. I can’t leave him out. I can’t pretend he doesn’t exist. After being stymied for months I realized I would just have to do my best to explain what happened to us. I would have to look at him as if I were a judge with jowls and squinty eyes, the type who can see around all sides of a person. If I were a judge I’d try to congratulate people for their good points and then I’d tell them gently how to improve. Except you have to have crystal clear vision to judge—and that’s a quality I don’t have perfected yet.

Afterwards, they brought Ruby’s counselor, Sherry, to see me. I think the idea was to try to make me understand absolutely everything so I could kiss it goodbye and not have it come nagging back at me. Sherry always smiled and said, “Hi there,” when she came for her visits, as if we’d been best friends for years. We weren’t best friends. I always had to look twice to see that her short blond hair wasn’t a snug-fitting cap. She came in her professional clothes and I imagined her putting on her sleek white pants without a thought of Ruby or me or Ma or Justy. She told me quite a bit about Ruby, while I sat hating her unless I got especially interested. She knew so many details about his life because she got him to talk to her through tricks and games. She had a glass bowl full of black licorice twists on her desk, which is probably the only reason he even showed up for his appointments.

Ruby and I didn’t talk about his life history all that much because we were creatures of the moment. I like to think of us rolling in the grass and chasing through the woods like we had no more notion of the world than savages. Sherry sat in the recliner chair by the window in its upright position and she said she wondered where she should start; she laughed, ruffling up her hair, saying that I should probably be telling her about Ruby. Then, as if she’d had a novel idea, she said maybe we could help each other understand him, fill in each other’s blanks. I knew she probably got her act straight out of a textbook that said, First, make a suggestion hinting at what you want; next, act surprised and laugh at your own thoughts; third, do whatever you need to do to trick the person into giving away all the secrets. I was on to her. She so wanted, she said, to start at the beginning of Ruby’s life, and naturally we followed her wishes.

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