It was still a pleasant place but it was starting to get too small. At dinnertime, the library was largely empty. I couldn’t find Ruthie anywhere on the ground floor. I paused long enough to look over the best sellers, from Majorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk to Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas. I’d still take John D. MacDonald and Peter Rabe.
I went upstairs, to the reference section.
Ruthie sat at a long table near the back of the second floor. She looked up when I started walking toward her, my slushy shoes squeaking on the floor. She was reading a book. As soon as she saw me, the book was closed and quickly put on the empty chair next to her. Whatever she was reading, she didn’t want to share it with me.
I sat down. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“How you doing?”
“Just studying. You know, for a test.”
“So what’d you do with the Potassium Permangatel?”
“The what?”
“The stuff you stole from Rexall’s.”
“Oh. It was for a science experiment. You know, at school.”
“What kind of experiment?”
She looked at me steadily for a long moment.
“You going to tell Mom and Dad?”
“No.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You ever stolen anything before?”
“No.”
“You plan on stealing anything else?”
“No.”
Now I looked at her steadily for a long moment. “So what’s going on, Ruthie?”
“It’s just all these tests. I’m worn out.
That’s why I took that stuff at Rexall’s.
One of the girls at school told me it was really good stuff if you were rundown. Said she got all her energy back.”
“So it’s for energy?”
She nodded.
“I thought it was for a science experiment.”
“Well, I used it for the experiment and for myself.”
“And you didn’t have enough money?”
“Right.”
“Or you wouldn’t have stolen it?”
“Right.”
“Ruthie, we’ve had a charge account at Rexall for years.”
“I mst’ve forgot.”
“I love you, Ruthie.”
“I know you do.”
“So be honest with me. Whatever it is, I want to help you.”
She shrugged. “It was just for a science experiment.
I mst’ve forgotten about our charge account. I needed to get back to school right away.”
I stood up. She looked happy I was going. “I’ll be right back. Wait here.”
I like the second floor of the library. One has the sense of timelessness there. The dust and the opaque windows, the neat and hushed rows of books. It’s like being inside the time capsule they buried over at Runyon Park last summer.
But the library time capsule would be filled with Chaucer and Melville and Poe and Dreiser and people like that. There was something almost religious about a life of contemplation and every once in a while I wished I was monastic. I knew it wouldn’t last much longer than a day or two and then I’d be wanting to see the new Tony Curtis at the Strand or buying the new Everly Brothers record or the latest Shell Scott novel.
But it was nice to think about sometimes.
I found what I wanted and came back.
“Guess what I did,” I said.
“What?”
“Looked up Potassium Permangatel in the medical reference book.”
“Oh.”
I put my hand on hers. “Maybe we should go for a ride.”
“A ride? What for?”
“So we can talk.”
“We can talk here.”
“No, we can’t,” I said.
We went outside. Four boys were having a furious snowball fight. They stopped abruptly when two girls walked by. The girls, who obviously considered themselves more mature than the boys, rolled their eyes at the very idea of snowball fights.
We walked to my car.
“Your car is always so cold,” Ruthie said.
“Not in the summer.”
“Very funny. And it happens to be winter.”
We got in.
“God, can you turn on the heater?”
“It’s on. It just takes a while to warm up.”
“I’m sorry I’m so crabby.”
“You’re always crabby. It’s part of your charm.”
“Not this crabby.” Then, “You know, don’t you?”
“Yeah. The medical reference book.”
“What’d it say?”
“Well, you know, about douching.”
She sighed and looked out the window. “Just what I always wanted to have. A conversation with my brother about douching.”
“Maybe later we could talk about menstrual cramps.”
I was driving out the river road. The ice-covered river was beautiful in the silver moonlight. The heater was roaring. It was still colder than hell in the ragtop. The seats were like ice.
“I sure hope it works,” she said.
“What happened?”
“Well, then what do you think happened?”
“Boy, you really are crabby.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Was it, uh, all right for you?”
“You mean doing it?”
“Yeah.” Doing it. My kid sister. Doing it. Sweet little Ruthie McCain.
“Does he know? The father, I mean?”
“Yes. He knows.”
“You told him?”
“I wrote him a letter.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said he was scared. He said this’ll screw up his whole life. He wants to start in premed at the university next year.”
“How about your life? What’s supposed to happen to your life?”
She looked out the window some more, the way Pamela did driving home last night. You could see the paper mill along the river, big and modern and alien in the night, floodlights giving it the look of a prison. Somehow it seemed wrong, even obscene, out here on the prairie where the Indians had roamed for several hundred years.
“You going to tell me who this little bastard is?”
“First of all, he’s not little. And second of all, he’s not a bastard. And third of all, no, I’m not going to tell you. And it’s not going to do you any good to get mad.”
I couldn’t believe how calm she was.
“God, Ruthie, don’t you want to cry or something?”
“No, do you?”
We rode along some more.
“Mind if I play the radio?” she said.
“We shouldn’t listen to the radio at a time like this.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. We just shouldn’t.”
“Are we punishing ourselves or something?” she said.
“Maybe.”
“Then can I have a cigarette?”
“A cigarette? Since when do you smoke?”
“I just smoke every once in a while. Don’t worry, I don’t inhale or anything.”
“You’re my little sister.”
“And you’re my big brother. What the hell does that prove?”
We rode along some more. I accidentally on purpose forgot to give her a cigarette. She didn’t mention it again.
“God, I wish you hadn’t found out about this.”
“I’m your brother, remember?”
“We already went through that. And anyway, I’m the one who did it and it’s my responsibility.”
“Do you love him?”
She thought a moment. “I did until I saw what a little boy he is. I’m a lot more grown up than he is.”
“So marriage is out?”
“Absolutely.” Then, “I’ll just have to try this stuff is all.”
“You actually think it’ll work?”
“I guess it does sometimes.”
“Who said?”
“Jenny knows somebody it worked for.”
“Oh, yes, Jenny, the sixteen-year-old gynecologist.”
“God, I wish you hadn’t found out. You’re worse than he is about this.”
“I just can’t believe how cool you’re being.
Don’t you care what happens to your future?”
“How is getting into a panic going to help me? I just have to try to think through this the best I can.”
I didn’t say anything for a time. Just looked out at the frozen, snow-covered river in the moonlight, sled tracks deep in the snow, the faraway small islands of birch and pine. In the summer you could see girls in bikinis all night long on those islands, headlight flashes of flesh and drunken merriment.
I looked over at my seventeen-year-old sister. She really was calm. And she was right. My intensity wasn’t helping either of us. “I guess that’s why you’re the valedictorian of your class and I graduated with a big C-plus average.”