Elizabeth Gilbert - Stern Men

Cal Cooley, at a four-way intersection, paused at a stop sign and let another car pass through. Then, as he started to move, Miss Vera cried, “Wait!”

Cal stopped. There were no other cars in sight. He started up again.

“Wait!” repeated Miss Vera.

“We have the right of way,” Cal said. “It’s our turn to go.”

“I think it more prudent to wait. Other cars may be coming.”

Cal shifted into park and waited at the stop sign. No other cars appeared. For several minutes they sat in silence. Eventually a station wagon pulled up behind the Buick and the driver honked one short burst. Cal said nothing. Mary said nothing. Miss Vera said nothing. Ruth sank down into her seat and thought how full the world was of assholes. The station wagon driver honked again, twice, and Miss Vera said, “So rude.”

Cal rolled down his window and waved the station wagon by. It passed. They sat in the Buick at the stop sign. Another car pulled up behind them, and Cal waved it past, too. A red, rusted pickup truck passed them from the other direction. Then, as before, there were no cars to be seen.

Miss Vera clenched her gloves in her left hand and said, “Go!”

Cal drove slowly through the intersection and continued to the highway. Miss Vera giggled again. “An exploit!” she said.

They drove into the center of Concord, and Mary directed Cal Cooley to park in front of a ladies’ dress shop. The name, Blaire’s, was painted in gold on the window in elegant cursive.

“I won’t go in,” Miss Vera said. “It is too much effort. But tell Mr. Blaire to come here. I shall tell him what we need.”

Mary went into the shop and soon reappeared with a young man. She looked apprehensive. The young man walked to the passenger side of the car and tapped on the window. Miss Vera frowned. He grinned and gestured for her to roll down her window. Ruth’s mother stood behind him in a posture of overriding anxiety.

“Who the devil? ” Miss Vera said.

“Maybe you should roll down your window and see what he wants,” Cal suggested.

“I’ll do no such thing!” She glared at the young man. His face shone in the morning sun, and he smiled at her, again making the window-rolling gesture. Ruth slid over in the back seat and rolled down her window.

“Ruth!” Miss Vera exclaimed.

“Can I help you?” Ruth asked the man.

“I’m Mr. Blaire,” the young man said. He reached his hand through the window to shake Ruth’s.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Blaire,” she said. “I’m Ruth Thomas.”

“He is not!” Miss Vera declared. She spun in her seat with a sudden and shocking agility and glared fiercely at the young man. “You are not Mr. Blaire. Mr. Blaire has a silver mustache!”

“That’s my father, ma’am. He’s retired, and I run the store.”

“Tell your father that Miss Vera Ellis wishes to speak to him.”

“I’d be happy to tell him, ma’am, but he’s not here. My father lives in Miami, ma’am.”

“Mary!”

Ruth’s mother rushed over to the Buick and stuck her head in Ruth’s window.

“Mary! When did this happen?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it.”

“I don’t need any clothes,” Ruth said. “I don’t need anything. Let’s go home.”

“When did your father retire?” Ruth’s mother asked the young Mr. Blaire. She was pale.

“Seven years ago, ma’am.”

“Impossible! He would have informed me!” Miss Vera said.

“Can we go someplace else?” Ruth asked. “Isn’t there another shop in Concord?”

“There is no shop in Concord but Blaire’s,” Miss Vera said.

“Well, we’re happy to hear that you think so,” said Mr. Blaire. “And I’m sure we can help you, ma’am.”

Miss Vera did not reply.

“My father taught me everything he knew, ma’am. All his customers are now my customers. As satisfied as ever!”

“Take your head out of my car.”

“Ma’am?”

“Remove your damn head from my car.”

Ruth started laughing. The young man pulled his head from the Buick and walked stiffly and quickly back into his shop. Mary followed, trying to touch his arm, trying to mollify him, but he shook her off.

“Young lady, this is not amusing.” Miss Vera turned again in her seat and leveled an evil glare at Ruth.

“Sorry.”

“Imagine!”

“Shall we head back home, Miss Vera?” Cal asked.

“We shall wait for Mary!” she snapped.

“Naturally. That’s what I meant.”

“That is not, however, what you said.”

“Pardon me.”

“Oh, the nitwits! ” Miss Vera exclaimed. “Everywhere!”

Mary came back and sat silently beside her daughter. Cal pulled away from the curb, and Miss Vera said, with exasperation, “Careful! Careful, careful, careful.”

Nobody spoke on the drive home until they pulled up to the house. There, Miss Vera turned and smiled yellowly at Ruth. She giggled once again. She had composed herself. “We have a nice time, your mother and I,” she said. “After all those years of living with men, we are at last alone together. We don’t have husbands to tend to or brothers or fathers looking over us. Two independent ladies, and we do as we choose. Isn’t that right, Mary?”

“Yes.”

“I missed your mother when she ran off and married your father, Ruth. Did you know that?”

Ruth said nothing. Her mother looked at her nervously and said, in a low voice, “I’m sure Ruth knows that.”

“I remember her walking out of the house after she told me she was marrying a fisherman. I watched her walk away. I was upstairs in my bedroom. You know that room, Ruth? How it looks out over the front walk? Oh, my little Mary looked so small and brave. Oh, Mary. Your little shoulders were so square, as if to say, I can do anything! You dear girl, Mary. You poor, dear, sweet girl. You were so brave.”

Mary closed her eyes. Ruth felt an appalling, bilious anger rising in her throat.

“Yes, I watched your mother walk away, Ruth, and it made me cry. I sat in my room and shed tears. My brother came in and put his arm around me. You know how kind my brother Lanford is. Yes?”

Ruth could not speak. Her jaw was clenched so fiercely, she could not imagine releasing it to issue a single word. Certainly not a civil word. She might have let out a greased string of curses. She might have been able to do that for this wicked bitch.

“And my wonderful brother said to me, ‘Vera, everything will be fine.’ Do you know what I replied? I said, ‘Now I know how poor Mrs. Lindbergh felt!’ ”

They sat in silence for what seemed a year, letting that sentence hang over them. Ruth’s mind roiled. Could she hit this woman? Could she step out of this ancient car and walk back to Fort Niles?

“But now she is with me, where she belongs,” Miss Vera said. “And we do as we please. No husbands to tell us what to do. No children to look after. Except Ricky, of course. Poor Ricky. But he doesn’t ask much, heaven knows. Your mother and I are independent women, Ruth, and we have a good time together. We enjoy our independence, Ruth. We like it very much.”

Ruth stayed with her mother for a week. She wore the same clothes every day, and no one said another word about it. There were no more shopping trips. She slept in her clothes and put them on again every morning after her bath. She did not complain.

What did she care?

This was her survival strategy: Fuck it.

Fuck all of it. Whatever they asked of her, she would do. Whatever outrageous act of exploitation she saw Miss Vera commit against her mother, she would ignore. Ruth was doing time in Concord. Getting it over with. Trying to stay sane. Because if she’d reacted to everything that galled her, she’d have been in a constant state of disgust and rage, which would have made her mother more nervous and Miss Vera more predatory and Cal Cooley more smug. So she sat on it. Fuck it.