Mr. Splitfoot

~ ~ ~

MR. BELL DRIVES to a new colonial. He doesn’t have the keys and curses in a foreign language. “My friend forgot to leave them under the mat.” He boosts Ruth on his knee, hoists her through the bathroom window.

It seems unlikely that Mr. Bell has friends.

Ruth moves quietly through the house. It’s chilly inside. She lets them in the front door. Mr. Bell cranks the thermostat up to seventy-five. He has a new dress for Ruth. Less Florida retiree, more Atlantic City palm reader. “Perfect,” he says. “Except, come here.” Ruth sits on the coffee table. Mr. Bell pulls the table closer to his perch on the couch. He takes her chin in his hand. He pulls a wand of mascara, a round of dark eye shadow, and a lipstick called Raisin Hell from a plastic zip bag.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Found it in the bathroom.”

“So your friend who lives here is a girl?”

He studies Ruth’s face. “I respect your intelligence too much to construct a narrative that might convince you of a reality far from the truth.” Mr. Bell applies makeup to Ruth’s lips and eyes, dusting her cheeks with fine glitter. “So.” With his work done, he asks, “You want to get married?”

She nods.

“And you want to marry me?”

She nods again.

“OK,” he says. “We’ll get married.”

“What about the birth certificate problem?”

“They’ll take a baptismal record plus a license. I checked.”

Ceph had been a waste. “You were baptized?”

“Two or three times to be sure.” He looks at her face from all angles, studying his work. “Get me some tissues, Nat.”

Nat does.

“So you and I can get married?”

“Yes.” Mr. Bell blots Ruth’s lips, rubbing a bit of the excess color onto her cheekbones, across her scar. “Perfect.”

She touches Mr. Bell’s knee. “Thank you.” She feels fire at the center of their triangle.

Mr. Bell shuts Nat and Ruth in the bedroom, whispering through the door, “Soon, lovelies.” They watch an episode of Hollywood Extra and the end of an old movie, The Swimmer. Burt Lancaster in square trunks. She simmers, set to boil. “We’re going to be free soon.”

Nat squeezes her hands. The doorbell rings. In the mirrored closet, they check their clothes, noses, and teeth. They hear voices from the living room. The buzzer buzzes again and again and once again. Mr. Bell says, “I’m sorry for your loss.” He makes the women blush, leaving his ringed hands on their waists a moment longer than a more timid person might. He has the confidence of youth. He touches their collarbones while removing their coats. The price goes up.

Finally he swings open the bedroom door. Ruth and Nat stand ready, charged to receive and inform. “Ladies!” Mr. Bell addresses those gathered, then whispers into the hollow between Nat’s right ear and Ruth’s left, “The one in the suit’s the fickin’ mayor’s brother.” His voice grows loud again. “And gentlemen! Your attention this minute, right here, forever.” Nat and Ruth, glorious blossoms, step into a room full of sad people.

At City Hall Ruth removes her winter parka quickly so it won’t spoil her outfit. Underneath she wears one of the gowns Mr. Bell bought her, sea-foam silk. Nat carries her bouquet and the signed forms from the Father. Nat takes her arm. Mr. Bell wears the same suit he wears every day, and when the clerk asks, “Do you, Carl Bell, take Ruth Sykes to be your lawfully wedded wife?” Ruth and Nat catch eyes, wondering why he never told them his name. Carl. It’s so normal. “I pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss your bride.” Mr. Bell, his pale skin against his dark hair, dark lips, kneels to kiss her hand, holding it as one would an injured moth.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you, my dear.” Mr. Bell might even be a gentleman.

Outside the leaves on the trees are red and orange and gold. This is Ruth’s wedding day. They go to Hook’s to celebrate. Nat sits next to the bride. He toasts the newlyweds with a cup of coffee. “Your name is Carl?”

“Shhh.” Mr. Bell finds the sugar shaker empty and positions it at the edge of the table for a refill.

“What?” Nat looks behind him in the booth. “What’s wrong with Carl?”

“Carl Bell sounds like fast food. Plus, I’m trying to forget where I come from.”

“Where’s that?”

He scratches his chin. “Hmm. I already forgot.” Mr. Bell polishes off his coffee and smacks his lips. The three smile.

“Thank you,” Ruth says again.

“It was no trouble.”

Their place mats have a map of New York State printed in pale red ink. Niagara, Finger Lakes, Lady Liberty, the High Peaks, the racetrack at Saratoga, the Erie Canal.

“Never knew we had a state insect.” The waitress appears. “Pancakes?” Mr. Bell asks them. “Belgian waffles?”

Ruth nods.

“Two orders of waffles, please. Whipped cream.”

“I’ll have an egg sandwich with cheese,” Nat says.

The waitress takes note, sees the empty sugar shaker, and, leaving her pencil behind, disappears to refill the shaker.

Mr. Bell smiles again at Ruth. He uses the waitress’s pencil to doodle on his place mat. Ruth half imagines he’ll write R.S. + C.B. in a heart, the way he keeps smiling at her. Outside someone has potted decorative kale heads in Italianate concrete planters. Cars come and go in the parking lot.

“What’s that about?” Nat asks.

On the map of New York State, Mr. Bell has reproduced the same pattern they found in his sketchbook, connected points.

“Old habit. Something I like to draw.”

“But what is it?”

Mr. Bell lifts his brows twice. “Well.” He spins the map right side up to Nat and Ruth. He circles each point as he names them. “Scriba. Cambria. South Byron. Schenectady. Seneca Falls, go, Suffragettes. Bethlehem. Burlington. Mount Morris. Yorktown. Peekskill. And closer to home, Tomhannock and Lasher Creek. Meteorite landings in our fair state.”

Ruth is slightly disappointed.

“What about the lines between?”

“Ley lines,” Mr. Bell says. “That’s me trying to make some sense.”

“Of what?”

“Patterns, predictions.”

“Predicting what?”

“Where my mom went.”

They look at the map. “Where’d your mom go?”

“I don’t know. I lost her.”

“Why would your mom follow meteorites?”

“They used to be of interest to her.”

Mr. Bell studies the lines, his face pinched with figuring. “But I checked all those places already and didn’t find her.” He exhales, shaking his head. “So what I once read as the handiwork of God, now looks like a random mess.”

“I think it looks like Ruth’s scar,” Nat says.

Mr. Bell studies Ruth’s face. “My, yes.” He nods, smiles again. “Yes. I guess I can see that. Hmm. That’s odd.”

“Maybe Ruth is God.”

Mr. Bell winks. “Wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”

The waitress appears. She deposits their food, dropping a plate of hot waffles on top of the map and meteorites, and when her hands are once again empty, she notices that Mr. Bell has her pencil. She scowls, underpaid, full of furor. She reappropriates her forgotten item with a humph.

A week after the wedding, Nat and Ruth find an apartment in Troy above a veterinary hospital. They pay cash for six months’ rent. The first night there, they sleep half awake under coats. They have no sheets yet, just the mattress the last tenant left behind. Matthew 6:26: The birds of the air neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet Heavenly Father feeds them.

Ruth curls her head into the crook of Nat’s arm as one who’s bloodthirsty, a truth of twisted love. Fangs, claws, a matted tail. “Son,” she says into his elbow, pulling a hot wire through their hearts, though there’s been no adoption. The Father let Nat go for five hundred dollars cash, saying he’d deal with the State. The Father is disgusted. He wouldn’t even look at them. He wouldn’t give them a lift to town. He was furious because he’d had to return the cash Zeke had given him for Ruth.

“What about ‘Be fruitful and multiply’?” Ruth asked before she left.

“What about ‘Honor your Father’? I gave my consent so you could marry an upstanding member of our community, and you sneak off and marry someone else?”

Ruth kept Mr. Bell’s secret identity from the Father and the other kids. She didn’t want her problems to become Mr. Bell’s.

“I can find out who he is, Ruth. It would take me two seconds.”

“I know.” But she hoped he didn’t really care where she’d gone as long as she was gone.

Mr. Bell honked the horn twice and helped load what they had into the trunk of his car. After seventeen years, what Nat and Ruth had turned out to be very little outside of three plastic bags full of cash. All the children except Ceph came out to tell them goodbye. Raffaella put her flipper on the hood of Mr. Bell’s car. “Is he your husband?” she asked Ruth.

“Him?” Ruth acted shocked. “That would be weird.” Which wasn’t a lie.

Ruth slipped each child eighty dollars like a visiting grandma paying them off, expunging her guilt only slightly, the oldest girl walking away from the littler ones, as if being born a girl makes her responsible for everyone alive.

Nat and Ruth select new blankets and towels from the discount store. They shop as if they are the married couple. They even fill out a pharmacy-bought Last Will and Testament, leaving each other everything they own including a couple of shirts and a brand-new cheese grater. They buy groceries. It takes two hours to fill their cart the first time because so few things in the grocery store look like food. Ruth picks up a package of Twizzlers. “What is it?” she asks Nat. He shakes his head.

They tell people, “She is my sister, he is my brother,” because if they told people they were sisters, Nat would probably get beaten up. Nights when they are not working, they go downtown to be among other people. Ruth wears her new jeans. They find a restaurant or a park bench. Ruth sits on Nat’s lap, leaning into his chest, his hand between her thighs as a word wedged into the white space. Hard to read and not at all like a brother.

The other kids become phantoms. Love of Christ! is a bad dream Ruth had. Though at quiet times she misses things she’d never thought she’d miss: dipping candles, laundry, singing together, having something to do each day, Ceph, even Ceph.

Mr. Bell picks them up for work. He smiles at Ruth a bit longer, sometimes dazed as if watching fairies dance on a lily leaf. Ruth, his wife, is something he can’t believe.

“He won’t stop smiling at me,” she tells Nat.

“Yeah. What a jerk.” But he doesn’t mean it. They study Mr. Bell’s boots, his chin, his hair, as if these totems might explain where he came from, how he found them, and who he is.

The sun sets early now. Ruth does not enroll in public school as she was instructed to do. Instead she buys the newspaper every morning. She bakes a lot. Nat sometimes says, “I wish I were a poet,” but a week passes and the urge does too. Ruth builds new bird feeders.

Life in the apartment is quiet after the home. They buy a used couch, a Chesterfield according to the man at the Salvation Army. At night, after the doctors and techs have gone home, the dogs downstairs howl at being left alone.

In the day Nat and Ruth find people on their doorstep, most often a mother without her kids. The mothers sit on the curb, slumped over a pile of matted fur: an overweight German shepherd, a cat who’s lost its teeth, a mangy Newfoundland with flaking bald spots, a poodle with pus for eyes. The animals move in slow motion, looking off at something shiny beyond their owners’ shoulders, unaware. The mothers say goodbye. The mothers sob, stroking their pitiful creatures. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry,” or “Mamma loves you. You know that, right?”

Nat and Ruth toast the recently departed. “To Nellie.”

“To Blue. To Boo.”

A song from the ’80s comes on the radio and they dance. They think it is a new song, because to them it is.

It’s hard to find homemade goat’s milk yogurt in downtown Troy.

The landlord turns on the heat. That’s never happened before either. They live on the top floor. They are unaccustomed to warmth. Nat’s skin feels damp as if he’s melting.

“It is hot as hell.” Ruth opens a window and sticks her head outside. A man disappears into the dark on the sidewalk.

“Truly.” Nat joins her.

“We need some food.”

“Seven-Eleven?”

“Ten-four.” They try their best to be disciples of Mr. Bell.

By the convenience store beer coolers, there are a few soldiers from the Forty-Second Infantry and an old man wearing a party sombrero. He’s deposited an assortment of stuffed plastic bags by his side.

“Bud? Miller? Schlitz?” the soldiers want to know.

“Where’s the goddamn antiperspirant?” the sombrero asked. “How much are the bananas?”

Nat buys a bag of pretzels, thin mints, a Fresca, and a six-pack of beer. The cashier asks to see ID. “Sure,” Nat says, “sure,” and passes him his ID that clearly states he’s only seventeen years old. The cashier looks at it, hands it back, and sells Nat the beer anyway.

Outside they eat the pretzels on the curb. “What was up with that?”

“I erased his mind.”

It starts to snow, just a little, first snow of the year. “Really?” Ruth asks.

A large kid, big as a Sasquatch, skulks across the parking lot wearing a lined canvas coat, hardly enough clothing for this weather, a sure signal to the world that he is deranged. His shoulders are up, his head down. He shakes his chin in disagreement. They watch him get closer. Ruth would be scared of him if it weren’t Ceph.

“Ceph,” she calls. She’s not seen him since she left.

“Nuth. Rat.” He doesn’t stop.

“Where you headed?”

Ceph keeps going as if she hadn’t said a thing.

“What are you so mad about?”

But Ceph won’t stop and Ruth already knows what he’s mad about.

They walk a circuit through town. They go to the high school, to the Texaco, down to the river. “What do you think Mr. Bell’s doing tonight?”

“I don’t know. He’s your husband,” Nat says.

Kids in sedans breeze by. Kids with parents. Kids whose parents taught them how to drive. Spoiled brats. Nat dribbles saliva onto the sidewalk. It’ll be frozen by midnight. The moon rises, the moon sets. Ruth squeezes her hands into the back pockets of her blue jeans.

A few days later Ceph shows up underneath her window when Nat is out. Ceph yells, “Bring me down a cigarette!” The word “bitch” is silent but understood. Ceph scares the dogs with his yelling. They begin to howl.

Ruth doesn’t even smoke. She meets him on the sidewalk but won’t let him upstairs. He’s mad she didn’t take him with her. He is confusing her with his mother. “You’re going to be fine. You’ll find a job. Save your money and you can get an apartment. It’s not that hard when you have a job.”

“You think I could live by myself? Alone-like? I can’t do that.”

Ceph’s wearing a pair of dark sunglasses and a brown leather jacket. He’s carrying a cane.

“What’s the costume about?” she asks.

Ceph burns. He’s trying to look like a man, a tough man. He’s terrified. He had parents for too long, and now he doesn’t know how to take care of himself. “You said you were mine.”

Ruth shuts her eyes. “I was wrong about that.”

“Some meth-bitch gave me herps.”

She wants to ask, Before or after me? but she’s scared it will make him angrier. Plus, she’s pretty sure no one else would actually have sex with Ceph. No one besides her, that is.

When she doesn’t respond, he quotes Scripture, slowly, fully. “‘The devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.’”

“I think you need some help,” Ruth says.

“That’s why I’m here.”

So she lets him upstairs.

“Which kitchen knife is sharpest?” he asks.

“What is it, Ceph? What’s wrong with you?”

His body is shaking slightly, a minor earthquake. “I’m eighteen soon.”

“That’s great. You’re going to be free.”

“Free to what?”

But Ruth has to think for so long that Ceph puts his head in her lap and falls asleep. Ruth lets him sleep. She thinks, It’s the least I can do.

When he finally wakes, the room is almost dark. Ruth’s thighs are hard with stillness. “You look like a Neanderthal when you sleep,” she tells him.

“What’s a Neanderthal?”

“One of our ancestors.”

“Like George Washington?”

“No.”

Ruth makes Ceph a mozzarella and tomato sandwich. Mr. Bell taught her how. Mr. Bell likes food from Little Italy. Capicola, sun-dried tomatoes, blood oranges. Mr. Bell showed her where to shop. Ruth offers Ceph a salad called arugula. “Can’t eat that.”

So Ceph takes her to Burger King in the Father’s truck, an absurd vehicle. Its tires are so large, it’s barely street legal. The Father has sunk a fortune into this truck. Its black paint has been detailed precisely with red and orange flames, a visor painted to read HOLY ROLLER, and JOHN 3:16 in white script over the gas tank.

“How come you have his truck?”

No answer.

“Does he know?”

“You think?”

Ceph orders from the drive-thru for both of them. “You pay,” he says, and she does. Ceph thinks Ruth should pay for everything: his mom being dead, the world’s cruelty, the stinky burgers and fries. When she cracks the window, Ceph tells her, “Roll up. Black people live here,” and she’s so glad she’s not married to Ceph.

Like a stomach flu, word of Nat and Ruth’s talents spreads. A librarian tells an aunt who tells a dentist who tells a lawyer. Nat and Ruth buy new clothes. They eat new foods. They have a stereo for playing new music. They have a hand-held beater for making cakes and muffins, a comforter filled with a down-like product. They have an electric yogurt maker and a scrub brush for cleaning the toilet when it’s dirty. Each object enters their home as a holy totem, a relic from the world they never knew. They study it, learn it, and eventually grow used to it.

A few days later Ceph leaves her a message. “I put my head in an oven.” Ruth walks through the snow to the Father’s house to see if it’s true. She doesn’t want Ceph to die. She just wants him to leave her alone.

Ruth feels like a celebrity at Love of Christ! since she managed to escape. She brings a box of bakery cookies, fancy Italian ones, even if the Father will just throw them away untasted.

The congregation is gathered in the barn. Ruth looks for Ceph in there. The Father is standing on top of his stool up front. He’s got the people on their feet. Fists are raised. A few congregants stomp, jumping as children in a tantrum. There’s sweat in the Father’s hair. He arches back with power. “God does not love everyone!” he screams. “God does not love everyone!” He gets the parish chanting, laying his own track on top, detailing a record of God’s hatred. “Leviticus! ‘And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcasses upon the carcasses of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.’ Psalms! ‘The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.’ Psalms again! ‘Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man.’ And Psalms again! ‘The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.’”

“Amen!” someone cries out. “Hatred!”

“Proverbs!” the Father keeps on, spit, furor flying. “‘The mouth of strange women is a deep pit. He that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein.’ Malachi! ‘And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.’” Must mean the Mother ran off again.

Ceph’s not in the barn. Ruth shuts the door behind her. Her bird feeder is empty. She finds Ceph inside the house watching TV.

“How come you don’t have to go to church anymore?” she asks.

Ceph just looks at her.

“You need a gas stove to kill yourself, Ceph. This one’s electric.”

“I don’t need a stove.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear—”

“’Cause I’m going to buy a gun.”

“Did you call your caseworker?” Someone, anyone, besides her.

“On vacation till the new year.”

“What’s going on, Ceph?”

“Friday the Thirteenth.” Totally contraband.

“No. What’s going on?” Ruth’s voice is steady.

“Who’s your husband, Ruth?”

“Who cares. It’s not like I love him.”

“That’s good.”

“Why?”

Ceph shuts off the tube remotely, still looking into the darkened set. He’s wearing gray sweatpants, plastic flip-flops, and an undershirt with something like chocolate ice cream dribbled down the front. Pitiful. “Come on. Let’s walk,” she says, if only to prove the Father wrong. The hairs of Ceph’s chest are visible through the fabric. “Put on a coat, please. And some damn boots,” Ruth says.

Ceph points out local disasters on their walk downtown. “Bunny rabbits under the lawn mower there. I saw it.” And “Gunther Wright was decapitated there. You know Gunther?”

“No.” They pass Walgreens, Popeye’s, and the Recovery Sports Bar, neon Budweiser sign in the window. “You’re making it worse.” The sun cuts a square of light through some trees. “You’re choosing to make it worse.” They pass another pharmacy. And then another. “Let’s get coffee.” She’s freezing. Ruth takes one step into Hook’s Diner and sees Mr. Bell at the counter. Her husband. She never just runs into him. She’s tried to run into him before and never has, but now, the one time she doesn’t want to see him, there he is, talking to someone, arguing maybe. A tall guy in a wool cap. Ruth can’t see the guy’s face because they’re sitting at the counter. She tries to listen, but they are too far away because it sounds like Mr. Bell is saying, “ANFO? ANFO?” And that makes no sense. She wants to get Ceph away from Mr. Bell. She feels the panic worst in her lungs.

“Changed my mind.” She backs Ceph out the door.

“What? Let’s get coffee.”

She’s desperate. “Maybe you can stay with us until you figure out a place,” she says as she walks out the door.

“Really?” he asks once they’re outside, down the block, out of Mr. Bell’s sight.

“No. On second thought, that wouldn’t work.”

They sneak into the Hilton’s swimming pool. Tika told them about this trick. It’s in the basement of the hotel. It’s empty. Winter in Troy, New York. No one wants to swim. Ruth strips down to her underwear on the tiled deck. “Come in.” Her voice bounces off the floor, ceiling, and mirrored wall. She clears a rainbow film from the surface before lowering her body into the water. It’s warm enough to host a municipality of germs. Ruth thinks of the Hudson and Burt Lancaster. No one swims in the Hudson since GE ruined it.

“Your tits are hot.” Ceph stands on the deck. “I’ll miss your tits.” He adjusts the waistband of his sweats. Looks into the mirror.

“Where are you going?”

“Far from here.”

Ruth looks down at her simple, lumpen, soaking wet brassiere. “Good,” she says. “That’s the spirit, Ceph. Get out of here. Find a new town, a new life.” She’s relieved he’ll be gone soon. “Come on in.”

“Can’t swim.”

“I can’t either.” Swimming was not one of the skills Father Arthur thought important. Ruth falls forward in the shallow end. The water enters her ears. It’s got her surrounded. Why does she feel responsible for Ceph? Why is he making her feel responsible for him?

Ceph is saying words back in the dry air, but it all sounds like bubbles underwater. She doesn’t want to hear him talking his gorilla talk. She wants to believe that she can escape the life she’s led so far, casualty-free. Bubble, bubble, bubble. Ruth holds her breath, floats on her belly. She tries to think of Nat, liquid, pitch blue. They’re going to be OK. She imagines Nat swimming up to meet her out of the deep end. What took you so long? Nat pours them an underwater tea party, then knocks it out of the way. He slaps her hard across the face. Her neck falls back slowly, dramatically wounded like a matinee idol. Her lungs are empty. She stays underwater until her brain starts to pop, until Nat becomes Mr. Bell. You?

It doesn’t have to hurt, dear.

It does if I want to feel it.

Mr. Bell sips his underwater tea. We forgot, Till death do us part. He lifts his hand to Ruth as water enters her lungs. She surfaces, sputtering, coughing. That hadn’t been one of their vows.

“Did you hear what I said?” Ceph asks.

“No.” She spits chlorine from her mouth.

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“Good fucking friend.”

“What’d you say?”

“You didn’t hear nothing?”

“No.”

“I said I would have married you. I would have taken care of you.” He’s standing by the edge of the pool still wearing his dirty, sad clothes. He’s nothing to her, a blank or, worse, a blob. She doesn’t even like Ceph.

“You can’t take care of yourself.”

“You were mine.”

“Well.”

“You lied?”

“Why do you want me?” Her head is at his foot level.

“I can’t be alone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So where do I go?” For a moment she thinks he will start to cry. She really hopes he won’t because she knows if he cries in front of her, he’ll only hate her more.

“You have no one? An aunt? A granny?”

“No. Just you.”

“But, Ceph.”

“What?”

“I don’t even like you.”

“Don’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

“Who’d you marry, Ruth? Who is he?”

Ruth sinks under again. Hudson plus Erie. The river under the river, under the city. And the city under that. So many lonely people. Water moves around Ruth. The tides on the Hudson. What does one broken child mean to the world? Time passes, growing older, cut deeper and chilled by the current against her legs. Dirty water that circles in eddies on its way down to the next town.

Christmas comes. Ruth invites Ceph and Mr. Bell over for dinner. She warned Mr. Bell not to tell anyone he’s her husband, especially Ceph.

“Lie?” Mr. Bell asked.

“Yes.”

“No problem.”

Ruth and Nat cook all manner of foods. A ham, brownies, potatoes, wild rice with butter, Brussels sprouts with chestnuts, cornbread. Mr. Bell brings a bottle of wine and some green apples.

In the kitchen Ceph is under foot at every turn like a real baby, getting in the way. “I’m trying to put a meal out, Ceph. Could you, please?”

“What?” he asks.

“It’s like you’re following me. Even in this tiny kitchen.”

“I am following you. I’ve got nowhere else. I’m going to follow you wherever you go. Wherever.”

Ruth shuts her eyes. Merry Christmas, she says it inside, ten times fast. She opens her eyes. “Ceph, sit down.” And he finally does.

Ruth has presents for each of the three men, god’s eyes she made from a couple of sticks and some yarn, a craft learned at the home. Nat and Ceph remember, but to Mr. Bell they are new. He calls his “a thing of beauty” and hangs it from his suit coat’s button.

Ruth and Mr. Bell do dishes. Ceph continues to watch from his seat. He keeps his sunglasses on, but she’s sure he’s staring at Mr. Bell. Ceph looks awful. He barely says a word except when Mr. Bell steps into the other room to collect more dirty glasses. “I got myself a Christmas present,” he tells Ruth.

“That’s a good idea. What’d you get?”

“A thirty-two.”

“Thirty-two what?”

“Caliber.”

“A gun?”

He nods yes.

She turns back to the sink, scrubbing. “Sounds like a bad idea,” she finally says. “A really sad, bad idea. Did you really or are you just trying to frighten me? On Christmas?”

“What do you think?”

Ruth dries her hands on her thighs. “I think there must be some law that says it’s illegal to sell you a gun.”

“You’d think so, right?”

“Yes.”

“There is.”

“Good. I don’t want you to die, Ceph.”

He looks down at her kitchen floor. “You don’t want me to die, but you don’t want me around either.” She cannot argue with that.

They sing “Hark! The Herald Angels” and “Deck the Halls.” Ruth pretends Christmas, forces good feelings. They sing “O Holy Night.” Ceph doesn’t really sing, but he listens without being nasty. Ruth takes a turn sitting on his knee and then Nat’s and then, because the night is just so friendly, Mr. Bell’s.

A week later Mr. Bell says, “Some people called me. They want a session tonight.”

It’s New Year’s Eve. “Don’t you have plans?” she asks Mr. Bell.

“No. No plans.”

Nat sits on the windowsill in another guest bedroom where they’ve been sequestered. He wears royal blue. Mr. Bell always chooses jewel tones. “Ruth.” He presents a beet-colored gown. “For you.” She turns her back to the men and undresses, aware of the muscles in her shoulders. She asks for a zip. Mr. Bell beats Nat to her zipper. She shows them the outfit.

“I knew that would bring out your scar. Gorgeous,” Mr. Bell says. No one — excepting cruel children — ever speaks of her scar. She raises her hand to her nose.

“When I tell you something’s beautiful, don’t cover it.”

She lowers her hand.

Ruth decides she needs a glass of milk before she goes on. Mr. Bell is talking with the hostess, laughing. Mr. Bell with this woman. Mr. Bell with that woman. Why would Ruth care? They are in a private house. They’ve been invited here by wealthy people. “I need a glass of milk.” The hostess is sent for and moments later returns with the milk. Ruth sips. “Is this skim?”

“That’s all we have.”

Ruth holds the glass out for the wife to take back. Nat does not flinch. They face each other, locked as some muscled viper winds its way between their mouths. The movement sours Ruth’s stomach. “I need a glass of real milk.”

“Many apologies,” Mr. Bell offers. “I’ll dart out to the store.” He looks at Ruth like he’s proud of her.

“No,” the hostess says, sucking what she can from Ruth, absorbing an idea of power. “Don’t be silly. I can send my husband.”

The husband makes it to the store and back in twenty-five minutes. The wife pours a tall glass of whole milk and knocks on the bedroom door, her own bedroom door. Ruth drinks it down, missing the goats again.

As they enter the living room, the guests go quiet. Ruth squeezes deep into Nat’s grip. She listens. On a large brown couch with simple beige pillows, an anxious bearded man with thick glasses wears a navy collar shirt. He’s pale and chubby, plays too many video games. He’s not here for nostalgia. He’s here because someone died and didn’t tell him which bank account the money’s in. His wife sits beside him. She seems kind, has brown eyes that twinkle. Ruth thinks: Good cook, keeps secrets from her husband like that she’s looking for a message from a boy she once knew who died young. Beside her is a young woman in a wool skirt and wool tights, twenty-five maybe. She went to college and doesn’t believe any of this but misses her dead father regardless. And next to her is the Mother. “Ruth.” The Mother smiles. Her teeth are melted gray bits. The Mother is a black hole in the living room, fully empty of care or compassion or qualities a real mother might have.

“Silence, please.” Mr. Bell sways on his feet in the doorway like a Secret Service agent. He has no idea who the Mother is.

Any clarity or confidence Ruth felt is gone, sucked into the Mother. The people are waiting, eyebrows lifted in anticipation. Nat shrugs, So what. She’s nothing to us anymore but a paying customer. Get started.

Ruth shuts her eyes. She changes her breath, and the people gathered know things have begun. She exhales forcibly three times before making her call. “Spirit?” she asks. “Spirit, are you here? Join with us tonight.” Her body arches as if electrocuted or possessed. “There’s an older gentleman here with me. Yes. I’m getting chills. Look. Yes. He’s here. The first thing he wants to say is that in life he would never be here. He’s not a believer.”

The young college woman smiles before she cries.

“You lost your father?” Ruth asks. It’s that easy. Why else would a college girl be here?

She nods and tears are falling steadily now. The kind wife rushes a tissue to her friend. Mr. Bell is right. People who don’t believe in the dead are still affected by them.

“Well, he’s here with us tonight. He’s always with you. Is there something you’d like to say to him?”

She’s racked with sobs. It’s hard for her to speak. The Mother puts her hand on her shoulder. “I wish he knew so many things. He’s missed so much.”

“He’s not missing it. He sees.” Ruth listens a moment. “And he wants you to know he forgives you and he loves you.”

The woman stops crying and looks at Ruth. “Forgives me?”

“Yes?” The question mark is a mistake. “Is there anything else you want to say to him?”

The college girl is no longer crying but has hardened. “No, thank you.” Ruth went too far.

Nat times his entrance perfectly. “I’m speaking with a girl named Patricia.”

The Mother’s head cocks to the side, but the sign is not sure. Who is she here looking for?

Ruth reminds the guests. “Consider your dead. This could be an ancestor. Great-great-grandparent. You might not recognize your dead.”

Nat turns to look directly at the Mother. He speaks to her. “Patricia had long hair, braided. She wore emerald rings. Arthritis, maybe. She watches out for you and is taking care of you. Loving you and following your life. She says not to worry about that itchy rash?”

The Mother nods.

Nat bows his head.

Ruth says, “There’s a woman standing near me. She says her name is Willie?”

“Yes.” The hostess is astonished but really it had been easy for Ruth to look on the back of a black-and-white photo displayed on the bedroom vanity, a child in a christening gown. Wilhelmina, 1938. Once she has the name, anything’s possible. Ruth’s mind opens. “She’s saying she wants you to feed the birds.”

“The birds?”

“Yeah. Like outside. A feeder, you know?”

“Sure.” The wife nods. “I’ll do it.”

“She says she loves you and she misses you.”

The wife begins to sob.

“Is there anything you’d like to ask Wilhelmina? Or tell her? She’s here.”

The hostess bites her lip. “Tell her we’ve had a child. We named the child after her.”

Ruth looks down. She smiles without meaning it. “She already knows.” And then, because she’s feeling sheepish about the trouble with the milk, Ruth conjures a kitty cat dead since the ’90s. “Meow?” Ruth asks in her trance state.

“Sheba?” a guest asks. “Is that you?”

“Meow! Meow!”

Ruth tries to escape down the hallway when it is over, but the Mother stops her. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“How’ve you been?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I sell Mary Kay with the woman who lives here. She invited me.”

“Oh.”

“Ruth,” she says, and grabs Ruth’s hands, choking on a gurgle rising from her chest. “Please.” Some sort of flood.

“What?” Ruth directs her into a bathroom that smells of damp towels. Maybe the Mother wants to apologize for not taking care of them.

The Mother calms her voice. She breathes in and out through her nose like an actress. “I need you to talk to him for me.”

“Arthur?”

“No.”

“Nat?”

“No. My son.”

“You have a son?”

“Or daughter. I don’t know.” The Mother studies the tiling. Ruth sits on the rim of an enormous tub. The Mother kneels knee bones to tile. She lifts her hands to Ruth’s thighs, like she’s a beggar. “Please.”

“How come you never told anyone you have a kid?”

The Mother claws Ruth’s skin through the purple gown. “I had a miscarriage.” The Mother grips. “That’s why I need you to help me. No one’s helping me.” The Mother’s thick foundation makes her look like a zombie. There are tear streaks through the face pancake, riverbeds revealing red skin below.

“There’s nothing I can do.” Ruth’s dry, getting drier.

The Mother drops a cheek to Ruth’s legs. She squeezes, claws. Her mouth is wide open with no sounds coming out. Ruth sees her scalp. The brown and silver, wires on a bomb. Ruth imagines a story she could tell, about how the child was reincarnated into a pony on a farm where they help war veterans. But she doesn’t do it. The Mother doesn’t deserve it. Ruth keeps her mouth closed. All these parents who want their children. A freaking miscarriage. Who cares? She didn’t even know the kid. The Mother smells of oil. With her hands on either side of the Mother’s face, Ruth prepares to toss her skull off her lap like a head of turned lettuce. “It’s fake,” Ruth says finally. “I make it up.”

The Mother holds still in Ruth’s lap for one moment.

“It’s a lie,” Ruth says again. “I’ll give you your money back.”

The Mother’s face peels into disgust. “You make it up?”

“The dead are dead are dead. They don’t talk to me.”

“You’re a liar?” The Mother sharpens.

“Yes.”

The Mother wipes eyeliner expertly, using the edge of one finger as swab. “That’s got nothing to do with my child. You’re a cheat. That doesn’t mean there’s not a world greater than this. Just means you’ll never see that world. You’re not the gatekeeper, Ruth. You’re not even invited.”

Ruth nods. “I know.”

The Mother has a miserly thin mouth. She picks dried spit from her lip like a boll of cotton. “Good luck. You’ve got nothing else.” She arranges her clothing in the vanity’s mirror, looking extraordinarily human, plain, and broken. The Mother sleepwalks from the room. Her grease and grief linger.

Ruth spends a few minutes counting the tiles in front of her eyes, each one lined up next to its neighbor, each identical. A freaking miscarriage. Why did Ruth’s mother never look for her? Where did her sister go?

She swings her shod feet into the tub. Ruth closes the bath’s drain and turns the hot water tap on high. Beside the tub there’s a cylinder of Comet bleach scrub. Ruth shakes a generous quantity of the bluish powder into the water.

It’s time to find her sister El, to find their mother. Ruth needs to get out of here too. She climbs into the tub, into the Comet, as if it is her space pod. She rings in the new year, making herself clean and ready for a new life. The water scalds and purple dye leaks from her dress, brightly colored as any suicide.