The Lobotomist's Wife(14)
“Sorry, dear, but I have a feeling you won’t care in a moment.” Bernard stood behind Ruth and she almost jumped as he placed his hand on her shoulder. “Some good news! Our Ruth is finally getting married.”
“Married?” Helen looked as if she was trying to mask her shock and contain her relief. Ruth knew she had long ago given up hope that her daughter would actually find a suitable mate.
“It is true. This fine doctor desires to make Ruth his wife.” Ruth tried not to notice the slight sound of disbelief in Bernard’s tone.
“Mrs. Emeraldine, I think your daughter is a magnificent woman, inside and out. I have found, in her, an unexpected partner. And, with your permission, I would like nothing more than to share my life with her as husband and wife.”
“Oh my, yes!” Helen leapt up, clapping. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Chapter Five
Ruth had little time for or interest in frivolous friendships. She was collegial with the staff at Emeraldine, and she occasionally attended informal reunions with her classmates from college, but after Harry died, there was only one person in the world whom she considered a true friend: Susie Davenport. Besides the fact that she shared Ruth’s desire to help the less fortunate—working as a social worker and an advocate for the poor in Manhattan—she understood Ruth implicitly, never pushing her to feel or be anything other than what she was. Ruth cherished Susie like a sister. Hers was the only opinion that Ruth trusted. So, when Susie insisted that it was time to bring Robert to Magnolia Bluff, Ruth knew she was right. Still, she hesitated. Before Robert, the happiest days of Ruth’s life had been at Magnolia Bluff with Harry. She needed Robert to love it as much as she did, and she wasn’t sure that he would in the off-season, when the estate was largely closed up, cold, and unstaffed.
“I don’t know, Susie,” Ruth said into the phone. “It isn’t all that comfortable in winter. He works so hard all week and I know he likes to get some rest on the weekends. It is one thing to go there with you and Meg, but—”
“Excuse me? Am I speaking to Ruth Emeraldine? The same woman who told her former fiancé, the boy who every girl in our sorority house was dying to marry, that he needed to accept the limited time she had to spend with him, or find someone else?”
Ruth laughed. It was true. Ruth had never worried about taking care of the needs of a man (other than Harry). As she sat on the phone with her best friend, she suddenly felt like she had become her mother. “You make a compelling argument.” Ruth smiled. “Still, I want Robert to love Magnolia Bluff as much as I do. Maybe I should wait until spring to bring him there.”
“Nonsense. You love it there in winter. Meg and I love it in winter because of how much joy it brings you to be there. If the man you are marrying can’t appreciate that, then he isn’t worth your time. Anyway, if Robert passed the Bernard and Helen test, a cold weekend at the beach will be a piece of cake.”
Ruth laughed. “All right, well, I still wish you could join us.”
“We have a rally this weekend that we can’t miss. But I will expect another invitation soon. Much as I adore living like a bohemian, I would never say no to the splendor of your family’s summer estate. Especially in the coldest months of the year!”
“And that, Susie Davenport, is why I will love you forever.”
Magnolia Bluff was one of the original estates on the Westchester waterfront. Built by Ruth’s grandfather, Thomas Emeraldine, after he acquired the Western Railroad, the Tudor mansion was the toast of the summer season. Adorned with striking pitched copper roofs, the elegant main house was ornamented with sturdy but sophisticated herringbone-patterned brick, complemented by accents of wood on the stucco lower walls. It sat on an enviable land outcropping with the sea on three sides, and the property’s expansive lawns and gardens were designed to take full advantage of the cool ocean breeze. In spite of its seeming formality, Magnolia Bluff held the majority of Ruth’s most treasured childhood memories. It was the only place where she and Harry could just be for weeks on end, happily swimming in the sound, sunning on their small stretch of sand, and riding bikes to the confectionery for Mary Janes and Hershey’s bars.
The first few summers after Harry died, Ruth felt that her once joyful retreat had become more of a haunted house. The smell of fresh-cut grass mingling with the mild tang of the sea, the peaceful embrace of the canopy of trees that lined the long drive, the craggy rock stairs leading down to the water, all of it just reminded her of how alone she felt without her brother. How he would have marveled at the transformation of their once-quiet village. With the new D. W. Griffith studio on Mr. Flagler’s old estate, her mother’s parties were now often frequented by Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, and the yacht club had moved, expanding membership to include many insufferable young men that Harry would have loved to dissect and teasingly suggest to Ruth as suitable mates. But without Harry, all the joy of the seaside home was gone.
By the time Robert entered her life, Ruth avoided Magnolia Bluff in summer altogether, preferring to go when the house stood empty. Her parents thought she was mad, but she found it comforting, perhaps because the gloominess of a beach town in winter better matched her mood. The damp, dark rooms and covered furniture, the cold, windy beach and empty streets—she found it peaceful somehow.
Now that she was officially engaged, she knew it was time to clean out the ghosts of Harry and reclaim it as her own.