Chapter 17
Ruth and Ellen owned a tiny house in a row of sixteen, all painted bright, primary colors. They faced what had once been a brickyard. The yard had closed down unexpectedly four weeks after they had signed the mortgage, making their home instantly worth thousands more. The yard, Ellen told me as she took my coat, was being converted into a seed nursery by one of the big garden-center chains.
Ruth showed me the living room—small, but with ingenious shelving—then led me into the big kitchen. Ellen followed but said nothing.
There was a bathroom extension, compact and rather chilly, and a back door that led out onto several square feet of concrete.
“We’re going to turn it into a patio or something, but we need to get the inside of the house fixed up first.”
“It looks fine to me.” And it did: clean, bright, open.
“You should have seen it before. Upstairs is still a bit of a mess.”
Ellen handed me a big glass of cold white wine. I drank it as I followed Ruth to look around upstairs. Ellen filled it again for me when we came down.
We sat in the bay window of the living room, at an old table with scarred legs covered with a cheerful cloth. Handmade stained-glass shades colored the lamplight, dimming it enough, so that I could barely see the thin patches in the chenille curtains. The room felt warm and vibrant and jewel-like, and I wondered if they knew how much I envied them.
Ellen brought in soup. We started to eat. I did not know what to say. I had hurt these two a while ago, yet here I was, eating their food.
I cleared my throat, waved my spoon at the walls. “Do you think these colors would suit my flat?”
“Tell us what it’s like.” There were rich shadows under Ruth’s cheekbones, along her jaw.
“Empty. I mean, bare. Long and narrow, low ceiling. Strange angles at the roof and corners.” My soup was gone. I refilled my wineglass, just to have something to do with my hands. “A high window, but wide. From my bed it looks like the horizon a long, long way off.” That surprised me, but they weren’t giving me funny looks. I was encouraged. “In the late afternoon and early morning, the light slants in and sort of washes the walls. Sometimes it’s like stumbling out of a dark tent to desert sunshine, to sand stretching away in the distance.” I held my wineglass up until the light turned it gold. “I want the air to feel as though it’s this color. Sunshine on sand.” I felt very pleased with myself. “Yes. A sort of sandy peachy color.”
Ruth got up and went to the bookshelf that ran along the long wall over the couch. She brought back an old book of photographs. We pushed aside glasses and bowls.
“How about this?” Dunes, blue sky. Camel prints into the horizon. “Or this?” Sunset, sand the color of orange and caramel. “If you find the right color, they’ll match it for you.”
Ellen brought back a tray with two covered dishes and we had to set the book aside. We spent a moment spooning things onto our plates: some kind of spicy vegetable casserole, with roasted potatoes and baked parsnip and carrots.
I tasted the parsnips cautiously. They were light, sweet like fresh pastry. “These are good.” We ate quietly, looked at some more pictures. Ellen said nothing much. I drank steadily.
“Thank you,” I said, and gestured to my empty plate, the book of photographs. “I’m grateful.”
Ellen leaned back in her chair. “You should be.” Ruth shot her a look but she ignored it. “I’ll be honest. I didn’t want you to come. What you did was unforgivable, except that I did a few things I’m not very proud of while I was with Spanner. She has that effect on people.”
“She didn’t exactly hold a gun to my head.” I wondered why I was defending Spanner. Or maybe I was defending myself; I wasn’t a child to be told what to do. At least not anymore.
“True.”
Ruth was utterly still. Ellen seemed to be waiting for something. Something from me. I emptied the wine bottle into my glass, took a hefty swallow. “How did you meet Spanner?”
“In a bar,” Ellen said. “She was playing pool. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. You know how she is.” Oh yes. “She was losing. Not very gracefully.” I could imagine: the glint in her eyes, hair thrown back, anger flushing her cheeks, her strides around the table getting more and more like the stalk of some hunting animal. “One thing led to another.” She picked up a fresh wine bottle and gestured at Ruth’s glass.
“That’s the third bottle.”
“I know.”
Ruth sighed and pushed her glass across the table. I was getting drunk, but I nodded when it was my turn. Ellen filled her own last.
“So, how about you, Lore? How did you meet Spanner?”
I thought about how to answer, because the question wasn’t only How did you meet her? but Who are you, where are you from? They didn’t need to tell me their backgrounds, because they were Ruth-and-Ellen and Ellen-and-Ruth. Their coupledom said We’re nice people, otherwise we wouldn’t have lived together so long, wouldn’t be capable of love. But I had lived for over two years with a woman they both stepped around very carefully, which made me suspect in itself; and now I was alone. They wanted a pedigree, a provenance, a way of knowing what to expect in the future. I understood it and resented it at the same time.
“I was naked and bleeding, left for dead in the city center. She found me.” I didn’t look at them. “She took me-” I swallowed; I had nearly said home. “She took me back to her flat on Springbank. I had to stay with her because I couldn’t use my real name, For fear my parents… for fear…” Even though I knew what they must be assuming, this felt too close to the truth for comfort. “Anyway, I was a babe in the woods. I had no idea how to support myself. Spanner showed me how.” Now I met their eyes. “And, yes, I did some things I’m not proud of. You don’t know the half of it.”
“But you didn’t know any better,” Ruth said, trying to excuse me, trying to make everything all right.
“Yes, I did. I think I always did. Just as I’m sure Ellen there knew at the time. We can tell ourselves that we had to, we had no choice, until we’re blue in the face, but how many days did I starve while I tried to find other ways to make money? None. I had food, shelter, access to the net. I didn’t need to do those things.” I wanted her to understand. Poor Ruth, or lucky Ruth, who had never had to look inside herself and face what stared back.
“But you mustn’t feel guilty.”
“Why mustn’t I? I am guilty. But you know what bothers me? I don’t feel guilty. Not really. Sometimes I feel this heavy weight in the pit of my stomach, but it’s more like an acknowledgment of stupidity than guilt. I was so stupid.”
“And young,” Ellen said.
I hadn’t looked at it quite that way, maybe because I hadn’t felt young since I was about seven years old. “You might be right. But I knew, all those nights when I lay awake, trying not to think about what I had just done that evening, or afternoon, or morning, I knew that what I was doing was wrong. Oh, most of the time I didn’t care that I hurt others-”
“Not even us?”
It would be easy to lie. I sighed. “Not even you. I was more concerned with how low I must have sunk to do that, what it meant for me, not how you felt. I’m sorry.”
Ruth touched my hand briefly.
“I wonder if Spanner would have corrupted me if I’d spent more than five weeks with her,” Ellen said thoughtfully.
“She didn’t corrupt me;” She had just showed me what was there, pointed me inward to all the seams and twisted paths. “That’s something you can only do to yourself.” It was hot. I was thirsty, but I didn’t want to get up in the middle of this to get a glass of water, not until they understood. I drank more wine. “We all have wounds. We all get hurt. But self-pity, lack of courage, leads to a sort of… mortification of the soul. Corruption. And then it takes more courage, costs more pain, to clean it up afterward.”