Elizabeth Gilbert - Stern Men

RUTH SPENT MOST of the fall of 1976 in hiding. Her father had not expressly thrown her out of the house, but he did not make her feel welcome there after the incident. The incident was not that Ruth and Owney had been caught by Pastor Wishnell, hiking out of the Courne Haven woods at daybreak after Dotty Wishnell’s wedding. That was unpleasant, but the incident occurred four days later, at dinner, when Ruth asked her father, “Don’t you even want to know what I was doing in the woods with Owney Wishnell?”

Ruth and her father had been stepping around each other for days, not speaking, somehow managing to avoid eating meals together. On this night, Ruth had roasted a chicken and had it ready when her father came in from fishing. “Don’t worry about me,” he’d said, when he saw Ruth setting the table for two. “I’ll pick some dinner up over at Angus’s,” and Ruth said, “No, Dad, let’s eat here, you and me.”

They didn’t talk much over dinner. “I did a good job with this chicken, didn’t I?” Ruth asked, and her father said that, sure, she’d done a real good job. She asked how things were working out with Robin Pommeroy, whom her father had recently hired back, and Stan said the kid was as stupid as ever, what did you expect? That sort of talk. They finished dinner quietly.

As Stan Thomas picked up his plate and headed to the sink, Ruth asked, “Dad. Don’t you even want to know what I was doing in the woods with Owney Wishnell?”

“No.”

“No?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t care who you spend your time with, Ruth, or what you do with him.”

Stan Thomas rinsed off his plate, came back to the table, and took Ruth’s plate without asking whether she was finished with dinner and without looking at her. He rinsed her plate, poured himself a glass of milk, and cut himself a slice of Mrs. Pommeroy’s blueberry cake, which was sitting on the counter under a sweaty tent of plastic wrap. He ate the cake with his hands, leaning over the sink. He wiped the crumbs on his jeans with both hands and covered the cake with the plastic wrap again.

“I’m heading over to Angus’s,” he said.

“You know, Dad,” she said, “I’ll tell you something.” She didn’t get up from her chair. “I think you should have an opinion about this.”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t.”

“Well, you should. You know why? Because we were having sex.”

He picked his jacket off the back of his chair, put it on, and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Ruth asked.

“Angus’s. Said that already.”

“That’s all you have to say? That’s your opinion?”

“Don’t have any opinion.”

“Dad, I’ll tell you something else. There’s a lot of things going on around here that you should have an opinion about.”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t.”

“Liar,” Ruth said.

He looked at her. “That’s no way to talk to your father.”

“Why? You are a liar.”

“That’s no way to talk to any person.”

“I’m just a little tired of your saying you don’t care what goes on around here. I think that’s pretty damn weak.”

“It doesn’t do me any good to care about what’s going on.”

“You don’t care if I go to Concord or stay here,” she said. “You don’t care if Mr. Ellis gives me money. You don’t care if I work on a fishing boat forever or get hauled off to college. You don’t care if I stay up all night having sex with a Wishnell. Really, Dad? You don’t care about that? ”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, come on. You’re such a liar.”

“Stop saying that.”

“I’ll say what I want to say.”

“It doesn’t matter what I care, Ruth. Whatever happens to you or your mother won’t have anything to do with me. Believe me. I got nothing to do with it. I learned that a long time ago.”

“Me or my mother ?”

“That’s right. I got no say in any decisions involving either one of you. So what the hell.”

“My mother ? What are you, kidding me? You could totally dominate my mother if you bothered. She’s never in her life made a decision on her own, Dad.”

“I got no say over her.”

“Who does, then?”

“You know who.”

Ruth and her father looked at each other for a long minute. “You could stand up to the Ellises if you wanted to, Dad.”

“No, I couldn’t, Ruth. And neither can you.”

“Liar.”

“I told you to stop saying that.”

“Pussy,” Ruth said, to her own immense surprise.

“If you don’t watch your fucking mouth,” Ruth’s father said, and he walked out of the house.

That was the incident.

Ruth finished cleaning up the kitchen and headed over to Mrs. Pommeroy’s. She cried for about an hour on her bed while Mrs. Pommeroy stroked her hair and said, “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Ruth said, “He’s just such a pussy.”

“Where did you learn that word, hon?”

“He’s such a fucking coward. It’s pathetic. Why can’t he be more like Angus Addams? Why can’t he stand up for something?”

“You wouldn’t really want Angus Addams for a father, would you, Ruth?”

This made Ruth cry harder, and Mrs. Pommeroy said, “Oh, sweetheart. You’re sure having a tough time this year.”

Robin came into the room and said, “What’s all the noise? Who’s blubbering?” Ruth shouted, “Get him out of here!” Robin said, “It’s my house, bitch.” And Mrs. Pommeroy said, “You two are like brother and sister.”

Ruth stopped crying and said, “I can’t believe this fucking place.”

“What place?” Mrs. Pommeroy asked. “ What place, hon?”

Ruth stayed at the Pommeroy house through July and August and on into the beginning of September. Sometimes she went next door to her house, to her father’s house, when she knew he’d be out hauling, and picked up a clean blouse or a book to read, or tried to guess what he’d been eating. She had nothing to do. She had no job. She had given up even pretending that she wanted to work as a sternman, and nobody asked her anymore what plans she had. She was clearly never going to be offered work on a boat. And for people who didn’t work on boats on Fort Niles in 1976, there wasn’t a whole lot else to do.

Ruth had nothing to occupy herself. At least Mrs. Pommeroy could do needlepoint. And Kitty Pommeroy had her alcoholism for companionship. Webster Pommeroy had the mudflats to sift through, and Senator Simon had his dream of the Museum of Natural History. Ruth had nothing. Sometimes she thought she most resembled the oldest citizens of Fort Niles, the tiny ancient women who sat at their front windows and parted the curtains to see what was going on out there, on the rare instances that anyone walked past their homes.

She was sharing Mrs. Pommeroy’s home with Webster and Robin and Timothy Pommeroy, and with Robin’s fat wife, Opal, and their big baby, Eddie. She was also sharing it with Kitty Pommeroy, who’d been thrown out of her house by Ruth’s Uncle Len Thomas. Len had taken up Florida Cobb, of all desperate women. Florida Cobb, Russ and Ivy Cobb’s grown daughter, who rarely said a word and who’d spent her life gaining weight and painting pictures on sand dollars, was now living with Len Thomas. Kitty was in bad shape over this. She’d threatened Len with a shotgun, but he took it away from her and blasted it into her oven.

“I thought Florida Cobb was my goddamn friend,” Kitty said to Ruth, although Florida Cobb had never been anyone’s friend.

Kitty told Mrs. Pommeroy the whole sad story of her last night at home with Len Thomas. Ruth could hear the two women talking in Mrs. Pommeroy’s bedroom, with the door shut. She could hear Kitty sobbing and sobbing. When Mrs. Pommeroy finally came out, Ruth asked, “What did she say? What’s the story?”