There was only one purpose for a dress like this, Maye thought as she returned the folds of the sleeve softly, putting it back exactly as it had been and smoothing it with her fingers.
It was a wedding dress.
13
There’s a Fire Inside of Every One of Us
“W hat are you doing in here?”
Maye turned around quickly. She hadn’t heard Ruby come up the stairs, hadn’t heard her standing in the doorway behind her.
“Who said you could come in here?” Ruby demanded angrily, her voice growing louder as she came closer to Maye. “What are you doing? Why are you in here?”
“I…I needed to wash up,” Maye stuttered. “And Papa needed water—the sink in the kitchen—I couldn’t get it on, so I followed Papa up the stairs and I thought this was the bathroom. I didn’t know, Ruby, it was the first door, I thought it was the bathroom.”
“Well, it’s not the bathroom!” Ruby roared. “Do you see a sink? Do you see a toilet? This is not the bathroom! This is Mama’s room!”
“I didn’t mean any harm, Ruby, it was an accident,” Maye said calmly. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I came in here by mistake, and the dresses were so beautiful I had to look at them. They’re exquisite.”
Ruby looked at the floor, shaking her head, and didn’t say anything until she looked back up at Maye with glassy, tear-filled eyes. “Those dresses,” she said in the smallest little voice. “My mother made them. It was a long, long time ago.”
“They’re beautiful,” Maye said. “Are they yours?”
“Can we go back downstairs?” Ruby didn’t ask, but demanded. “I don’t come in here. No one should be in here.”
“Sure,” Maye replied, stepping closer to Ruby but keeping an arm’s distance just in case she had a basket of rocks or a blow-torch behind her back. Since Ruby hadn’t tried to stone or sear anyone since the day she first knocked on the boxer head door Maye figured the time was ripe.
Ruby turned the lights out, returning the dresses to darkness, and shut the room back up.
“That’s the bathroom,” the old woman said as she pointed to the second door on the right and started down the stairs. “You can clean up in there.”
Maye washed her hands off, wiped them on the back of her overalls, and climbed back down the shaky stairs. In the living room, Ruby sat on the edge of the couch, smoking a cigarette and sipping out of a plastic tumbler.
Maye wasn’t sure what to say—she had never seen Ruby so upset, and in the short time that she’d known her, she had mistakenly thought she’d experienced the old woman’s range of emotions. Bitterness to rage to extra bitterness. She decided on the inane, not because she didn’t want to know what was up there in that room, and not because she didn’t care, but because a tough old battle-ax had been pushed into terrain they were both unfamiliar with, and that was just about enough for anybody.
“That fence sure was long,” Maye relayed to Ruby, who didn’t turn around. “It’s ten times longer than it looks.”
Ruby didn’t turn around. She said nothing, She simply sat on the edge of the sofa, sucking on her cigarette and sipping from her cup.
“When I won that pageant fifty years ago,” she finally said after a tense, long pause, still not looking at Maye, not looking at anything really, “it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. Sure, I had done the splits, but I was the queen. Me. Ruby Spicer. I had never been the queen of anything, the first place in anything, not even in my imagination. Not even in any wild thought I mighta had. That day—it was like I had passed through some kind of magic door. After I tumbled and Lula set off the fireworks, I put on that fancy blue dress up there and I stood on that stage in the town square and they put a crown on my head. They put a crown on this mess of red hair! I just laughed and laughed, but inside I was waiting for them to announce that they had made a mistake. But it was real. Nobody counted wrong, none of the judges took back their vote. It was true, I was the queen. I had won.”
Maye walked around the couch and sat down next to the old woman, who still did not turn to look at her, keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead.
“Everything was good, everything was perfect, just the way it should be for a young girl,” Ruby continued. “I was going to be a queen for a year. I went to all the dances, and everywhere I went, people took pictures of me doing this, doing that. It almost got to be silly. The opening of a grocery store, even! Who would have believed it! I got to sit on a throne during the Spaulding Festival, waving to all the people on either side of the street, watching them waving back. Waving back at me! People were so nice. My folks were real proud, and I was proud to have made them proud, see? They were always proud of Lula—she was a good student and a thoughtful daughter and did all that was expected of her. She married the Captain, settled down, whereas I was a little bit more of a troublemaker. Skipping school, staying out late, smoking.”
Ruby cracked a bit of a smile. “I started young,” she added. “I had a nice beau. He was so handsome and polite, and so kind to me. He was the smartest man I had ever met, and once he finished up his studies at the Polytechnic Institute in a couple of years, we were to be married. And my mother started sewing that dress upstairs, with that beautiful silk she went all the way to Seattle to get.
“He was a lovely man. Brought me flowers all the time, and the day I was crowned, you should have seen the ones he had made up for me. It wasn’t a bouquet—they were so heavy I could barely lift them. All of my favorite flowers—roses, tulips, peonies. Some of them weren’t even in season, that’s what a nice fellow he was. He went to some trouble there. I knew I was going to have a very happy life with him.
“But things don’t always happen the way you plan them, or even the way they are supposed to. Things sometimes get a mind of their own and follow a path you never imagined. All of a sudden, you are where you are. And there’s not much you can do about it.”
“Is that why you’re out here?” Maye asked gently. “Because of that fellow? Did he break it off?”
“Of course he broke it off!” Ruby cried as she turned and looked at Maye harshly. “What kind of man wouldn’t? Of course he did. There was nothing else he could do! There was no choice. He had no choice. I know that. Don’t think I don’t know that!”
“I’m not sure I understand, Ruby,” Maye said slowly.
“Wendy Dulden had been my best friend since I was four years old,” the old woman began again, almost impatiently. “We did everything together—wore the same clothes, took all the same classes, had malteds every day after school at Hopkins. The kind of friend you make once in a lifetime. I had known her since I was a bitty girl. Her folks lived out on the next farm over. Oh, we liked all of the same things, we flirted with the same boys, cheated off each other during tests, shared our homework. We skipped class when the days got hot and went for a dip in New River. We could be a little smarty-pants at times, but we had so much fun together. I could just say one word and Wendy would know exactly what I was thinking. It was wonderful having a friend like that. Almost like a twin.
“But between going to events and doing all the engagement things you’re supposed to do, I couldn’t spend as much time with her as I used to. I was busy, day and night, planning, sewing, making appearances. I barely had time to sleep! And then one day, at an event, something bad happened. Hopkins Market got a big, new beautiful sign and I was supposed to be there to cut the ribbon on it before they hoisted it up. And as soon as I got to the market, there was a little girl who asked to wear my crown. So I took it off and gave it to her to try on, but then the photographers showed up, and I needed it back. Well, she started to cry, and I tried to explain that I needed it for the pictures, and that it was my job to stand and smile with the crown on my head so the photographers could do their job, but that little girl did not care. She wanted the crown and that was it. She kept jumping up at me trying to snatch the crown from my head, and her mother stood there and did absolutely nothing! After the little girl
kicked me in the leg for ignoring her, I lit a cigarette. Well, I had just cut the ribbon, the cameras were flashing away, and as I stepped back so they could get a better shot, I heard a little girl cry.”
“So that’s what you had in your hand in all of those pictures!” Maye exclaimed. “It wasn’t a pencil, it was a cigarette?”
“Well, of course it was!” Ruby rattled. “You’ve got everybody looking at you, staring at you, taking pictures, ‘Look this way, look that way, over here,’ and if I had a cigarette, I was smooth as glass. If I didn’t, I’d be shaking all over!” And to that, the old woman wrapped her wrinkled accordion lips around the filter of her Viceroy cigarette and drew on it deeply.
“Then the little girl started to scream, and as I turned around, I saw that a bit of her hair—just a little bit, mind you, a little tiny bit, not even a fistful—had been singed as she was jumping up to get my crown again, and maybe there was a small, minuscule flame, barely visible to the naked eye. So little it wasn’t even a match’s worth. So I took the only thing I had with me, my little blue satin purse, and swatted her head and beat that fire out. I tell you, I felt awful, and I did everything I could to help her. But then she pointed at me, screaming, ‘She did it! She did it!’ I had no idea what she was talking about until one of the photographers said I had burned her with the tip of my cigarette when I backed up. Well, it was just a tiny bit of hair—in a month, no one would have known any better—and I put the fire out myself! But then an anonymous letter to the editor popped up in the newspaper, demanding that I stop smoking at events because now ‘all of Spaulding’s children were in danger.’ And then there was another unsigned letter, and another. Pretty soon, the whole town was up in arms and before I knew it, people were demanding that I not smoke at all during events. Well, I was furious! It was only one little girl I burned, and it never would have happened if she wasn’t trying to steal my tiara! I would have given her some of my own hair if I coulda, but to take away smoking? Everybody smoked then, it wasn’t just me! People even smoked in restaurants; it was very acceptable back then. I couldn’t fulfill my duties. It was hard, I got so nervous, kind of like stage fright, and the more I thought about it, the more nervous I became, until it took everything I had just to get to the event, let alone get in front of people! Smoking was a part of my image, a part of my glamour.”
Ruby put down the cigarette long enough to cough deeply in what sounded like a lungquake, shaking and tumbling those lungs until she got up what she needed and then hocked it into a previously hidden—and stained—crumpled paper towel she drew from under her sleeve.
Maye shuddered and wished she had a paper towel herself, but one from her own sleeve.
“I was so afraid I was going to lose the crown. I was so afraid I was going to get impeached, or revoked, or whatever it is they do to queens when they don’t do what they’re supposed to. What is that called?”
“Beheading,” Maye offered, “but I don’t think you were in any danger of that here.”
“Well, they didn’t take away my crown,” Ruby went on. “But they did have a City Council meeting about it, and who should stand up and speak out against me? My best friend, Wendy Dulden. My best friend! How do you like that? She said I was a danger to everyone within an arm’s distance of me and that the innocent, harmless hair of all little children would be in jeopardy if I wasn’t stopped. I couldn’t believe it. The council agreed to let me keep the crown as long as I just went to an event once a month or so. But I tell you, I was so angry. I was the queen! I deserved to serve out all of my duties, not just one a month! What harm was one little cigarette going to do as long as a rotten little kid wasn’t lurking behind me? And I let it be known, too, that their decision was not fair. And I let Wendy know that best friends don’t do that to best friends. They stick together, and she was just mad because I was getting married! And I let the City Council know it wasn’t right what they did, and that I was going to put up a stink and speak my mind until they changed theirs. And I meant it. They had no right to take away my cigarettes; they had no right. It made me furious!
“So I decided I just wasn’t going to pay attention to their silly rules, and at my next event, which was the spelling bee, I lit up a cigarette and I smoked it. And Wendy saw me, and told a policeman, and he gave me a ticket! I was fined ten dollars! So, at the next event, I was giving an award to the Employee of the Year at the factory, and I lit up another cigarette and smoked that one, too. And I got another fine. And another and another. And soon I ended up owing the town a hundred dollars!”
“What did your fiancé say?” Maye asked.
“He offered to pay it!” Ruby screeched. “He said he should just pay it and forget the whole thing, just be nice and quiet, he said. Lula said the same thing; so did Mama and Papa. Do my one event a month and keep my crown. Go back to living our lives the way they were. But my life wasn’t going to be the way it was, whether I kept quiet or not. And then, things started burning down.”
“Fire?” Maye questioned. “You mean when the courthouse caught fire?”
“Oh, more than the courthouse,” Ruby explained. “More than the courthouse. Half this town burned right to the ground. The movie theater, the bakery, the market, the bank, and even City Hall went up, right when the City Council was having a meeting. Almost every corner of town had something lit up. Places just went up, no rhyme or reason. It was just gone.”
Maye gasped. “What happened? Was it during a drought? Was it like the Chicago fire? How did the fire start?”
“Not just one fire,” the old woman said. “There was almost a fire every night for weeks. It seemed like it would never end. People were scared, they were frightened, they wanted to find out who was doing it, who was setting the buildings on fire, but all the police knew was that the fires were started by cigarettes. Every single one of the fires was started by a lit cigarette. They found butts at several of them. It was a mystery, who was setting these fires. Until someone on the City Council decided to point a finger at me, because I had said that I would do whatever I had to do to make Spaulding let me smoke at events again.
“But I’ll tell you, Girl, every time one of those damn fires was set, I was here, right here in this house, right here in this room, listening to the radio, playing cards with my folks, or adding more beads to that white dress. But they didn’t believe me. No one believed me, except for Mama and Papa because they knew I was telling the truth. So they put a policemen outside the house to watch me and where I went, and don’t you know, those fires stopped. They stopped. Then everyone was convinced I was the one. The town decided to take back the crown, and I lost my Sewer Pipe Queen title.
“Then I got the letter calling off the wedding, as I figured he would. I was heartbroken, everything had crumbled so quickly, I was so confused. How could all of these people think I did it? My whole life was gone one day, just as if someone had set a fire to it. It just came undone. I thought it couldn’t get any worse, and then, in a couple of days, the Captain secretly came out to the house and told me I needed to leave.”
“Was he going to help you to escape by boat?” Maye asked.
“A boat?” Ruby scoffed. “He wasn’t a ship’s captain, he was a police captain. He said I needed to get out of town because the chief was sure I had done it and it was looking like they were going to charge me. They all told me to go; my folks and Lula said I should leave Spaulding and start over somewhere else where no one knew me while it was all sorted out. I thought they were crazy; I knew I hadn’t done anything, and I thought I could just wait it out here until the whole thing blew over. And besides, where would I go? I’d never known any place but Spaulding. I couldn’t just leave; this was the place I wanted to be. It was the place I loved to be. The Captain told the chief I had skipped town and was gone, so they just let it be. And that was that.”
“For fifty years,” Maye thought, and realized she had said it out loud.
“For a long time,” Ruby said, nodding. “A lon
g time. After my folks passed on years later, I’m sure a few people figured I was out here at the farm, but by that time, no one said anything. Lula covered up pretty well and took care of basic things for me, but then she went over, too, about ten years ago, after she got sick with cancer. So I started breeding the dogs for something to do, and for the company, and that turned out to be a fine thing. I finally got a phone, but no one much comes by, except for the nosy TV reporter, and then you. So I’ve just been out here, ever since. I stayed in this house, and waited and waited.”
Maye looked at the old woman as a slice of light illuminated her face, her deeply set wrinkles, her thin, lipstick-smudged lips, and her soft, folded eyes that Maye just noticed were a forlorn shade of gray.
“What were you waiting for?” she asked quietly.
Ruby finally turned, her gray eyes looking into Maye’s.
“I kept hoping they would change their minds about me,” the old, weathered woman said simply.
But it never happened. The town that Ruby Spicer loved so much went on and rebuilt itself exactly as it had been, exactly how it needed to be, while a once-pretty girl sat just outside of town, waiting for the town to forgive her when instead it just forgot her.
Mickey smelled the dogs before Maye even turned the corner into Ruby’s driveway.
Puppy was the first one out of the house, racing up to the car and springing on his hind feet into the air, as if he wanted to be the one to officially greet the new visitor.
“Careful, Puppy, careful,” Maye said as she tried to keep the dog from jumping on her sweater amid his trampoline-style hops, some of which brought them nose to nose. “This is vintage and it needs to be dry-cleaned.”
Papa and Mama followed close behind, with Captain and Junior bringing up the rear. Other dogs might have been hesitant to enter such an established pack, but Mickey jumped right into the fray and immediately threw himself on his back as if to say gleefully, “Smell me—I’m new!” and the boxers greeted him as if they were old friends. Once everyone was satisfied they’d had a good-enough whiff, Mickey leaped back up and happily returned Puppy’s playful nudges and bites.