Chapter 7: The Photograph on the Floor
Jessi was on her knees beside Ruth before Ivan had fully crossed the threshold.
"Ruth.
Ruth, it's me.
It's Jessi."
Ruth looked at her.
Her grip on the photograph tightened.
"I'm waiting for Carol," she said.
"She said she'd come before supper."
Carol was Jessi's mother.
Carol had been gone for six years.
"I know," Jessi said.
She didn't correct her.
"I know you are."
"She's late." Ruth looked toward the window.
"She's always late.
I've told her."
Ivan stood just inside the doorway.
He looked at the room — the door had been unlocked from the inside, which meant Ruth had opened it herself and then forgotten.
The small stove in the kitchenette had one burner turned to low.
Nothing on it.
He crossed to it quietly and turned it off.
Jessi was still on the floor beside Ruth, one hand over Ruth's hands, the other resting on her knee.
"Are you hurt?" Jessi asked.
"Can you tell me if anything hurts?"
Ruth looked at her with mild irritation.
"I sat down to look at this." She held up the photograph.
"My legs got tired."
"Okay.
Can we help you up?"
"In a minute." Ruth looked at the photograph again.
"This was taken in front of Carol's first house.
She was so proud of that house.
Terrible kitchen, but she loved it." A pause.
"Do you know Carol?"
Jessi's hand pressed down slightly on Ruth's.
"I do.
I know her very well."
"She has a daughter." Ruth tilted her head.
"Pretty girl.
Serious.
Always watching everything."
Ivan watched his wife's face.
She kept it still.
Only her jaw moved, once, and then was still again.
"That sounds right," Jessi said.
"She'll be here soon." Ruth seemed satisfied by this.
"Help me up, then.
I don't want her to find me on the floor."
Ivan came forward and between them they got Ruth upright and onto the edge of the bed.
She was lighter than she looked.
Her wrist, where Ivan steadied her, felt like something that needed careful handling.
Ruth looked up at him once she was seated.
"You're the husband," she said.
"I am."
"You look better than last time."
Ivan glanced at Jessi.
Jessi almost smiled.
"Thank you," he said.
Ruth smoothed her skirt.
She set the photograph carefully on the nightstand, face up.
"Is something happening?" she asked.
"You both have that look."
"What look?" Jessi asked.
"The look people get when they have to say something they don't want to say." Ruth folded her hands.
"Carol gets it too.
Just say it.
I've been alive long enough."
Jessi sat down on the edge of the bed beside her.
Ivan pulled the wooden chair close.
"The building has been sold," Jessi said.
"The new owners are asking everyone to leave.
You have to move, Ruth."
Ruth was quiet.
"We've found a place," Jessi continued.
"It's called Sycamore House.
It's in Gilbert.
It has a garden with a birdbath, and the room has a south-facing window.
The director is kind.
I've met her." She paused.
"I think you'll be safe there."
Ruth looked at the window.
At the thin curtains, the particular angle of afternoon light she had been watching for two years.
"Will you come?" she asked.
"Every week," Jessi said.
"I promise."
"And him?" Ruth looked at Ivan.
"Yes," Ivan said.
"Me too."
Ruth was quiet for another moment.
Her hands moved slowly in her lap.
"I don't like new places," she said.
"I know."
"I get confused."
"I know.
We'll go slowly.
You'll see it before you move in.
You can tell us what you want to bring."
Ruth looked at the photograph on the nightstand.
"I want to bring this."
"It goes first," Jessi said.
"Before anything else."
Ruth nodded.
She seemed to be processing something, working through it in the way she worked through things now — not linearly, but in loops, circling back, finding the edges.
"Will Carol know where I am?" she asked.
Jessi's breath caught.
Just slightly.
Just for a second.
"Yes," she said.
"She'll know."
Ruth patted Jessi's hand.
Once, twice.
The same gesture she used when she knew a silence needed company.
"All right then," she said.
"All right."
Ivan looked at the room.
The medication bottles lined up on the dresser.
The handwritten notes on the wall.
The library books with their soft spines.
The single photograph now placed face-up on the nightstand.
He thought about what it cost to pack a life into what fit on a nightstand.
What it cost to lose the particular creak of a floorboard, the sound of a neighbor's footsteps at two in the morning, the angle of light through curtains you'd watched for two years.
He thought about his own house.
The living room turned into an office.
The marriage turned into background noise.
The things that disappear slowly, without announcement, until one morning a child asks a question over cereal and the floor drops out.
"Ruth," he said.
She looked at him.
"I'm going to fix the bird feeder at the new place before you arrive.
So it's there when you get to the room."
Ruth studied him.
"You know how to fix a bird feeder?"
"I'll learn."
She made the dry sound again — the one that was almost a laugh.
"Carol was right about you," she said.
Ivan went still.
"What did she say?"
But Ruth had already looked away, back toward the window, her hands moving their slow count in her lap, whatever thread she'd been holding already drifting loose.
Jessi looked at Ivan across the bed.
Her eyes were bright in a way that had nothing to do with happiness and everything to do with the particular ache of a moment that cannot be held.
May you like
He reached across and took her hand.
She let him.
