The Other Side of Ruth

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

“Mrs. Galloway!”

Every time Ruth heard her name called, she perked up. It had been more than a week since Agnes kissed her on the stairs, and she was starting to wonder if she’d dreamed the encounter. Of course, Ruth did everything she could to avoid seeing the girl again, even taking a different route home from school so she wouldn’t walk by Agnes’s house.

Why on earth was she behaving this way?

Well, there were lots of reasons...

“Mrs. Galloway?”

Ruth covered the herbal HRT in her shopping basket with a bag of Halloween candy, then took a deep breath and turned.

It wasn’t Agnes.

The young woman standing before her had been a merciless overachiever at the school. That would have been five or ten years ago. Ruth always remembered the overachievers, and not particularly fondly. They had powerful, intense personalities, and they would step over their own grandmothers to get what they wanted.

Ruth replaced her genuine smile with a false one and said, “Hello, Stephanie. What are you up to these days?”

“Architecture, of course.” The girl’s voice was exactly as high-pitched and condescending as Ruth remembered it. “Finished my honours degree in two and a half years, youngest person ever to hold a high-level position at Marcus-Banerjee-White. I’m working on the museum overhaul now. Everyone’s always impressed when I tell them about it.”

“I’m sure they are. Good for you.” Ruth looked over the girl’s shoulder, as if she might spot something on the d**g store shelf that would save her from this conversation.

“What people don’t realize is that it takes an architect to design not only the bones of the structure, but also to lay out key elements...”

Shut up you little prat! Stop your self-important babbling! I don’t care!

All at once, the air changed. Ruth couldn’t figure out why until she spotted Agnes through a gap in the shelves.

“Well, good to see you again,” Ruth said. After cutting off Stephanie-the-Architect mid-sentence, she traced a zombie’s path toward Agnes. Her heart raced. Now that she’d spotted the girl, she was determined not to lose her again.

When Agnes joined the line for the post office, Ruth breathed a sigh of relief. Clearly, she wasn’t going anywhere fast.

“Howdy, stranger.” Ruth tilted her head in an attempt to be coy, but then worried she looked like an i***t and straightened up. “Long time no see.”

“Oh... Mrs. Galloway.” Agnes looked side to side like she was hoping to escape. “Hi... yeah... I’ve been meaning to write you or something, but I didn’t have your email address.”

“No worries. I’m not really on email, except work stuff.”

Ruth felt strangely perky despite Agnes’s apparent anxiety. There was so much she wanted to say, but not in the presence of gossipy neighbours.

Instead, she nodded to the boxes stacked in Agnes’s arms. “You’ve got a lot to mail, looks like.”

Agnes smiled. “It’s product. I got a huge order a couple weeks ago, from this feminist bookstore in the States. They saw my stuff online and asked if I could make some custom items—not just jewellery, but magnets and funky s**t like that. I’ve been working non-f*****g-stop to meet this deadline.”

The elderly woman in front of Agnes glanced over her shoulder. Tsk tsk tsk.

Two weeks ago Ruth might have done the same, but not anymore. She was smitten and there was no escaping infatuation like this.

Agnes rolled her eyes. “Anyway, got it all done, but I wanted to explain the other week.”

Ruth inhaled sharply. “It’s okay. No, no. Another time. It’s fine.”

Agnes’s brow furrowed momentarily, and then her eyes widened. She nodded.

“So, what are you doing for Halloween?” Ruth asked to fill the silence. “You probably have big plans with your friends—parties and clubs, that sort of thing.”

“Most of my friends are in Montreal. Like, I went to art school there, got my first job, quit my first job, got my second job, got f*****g fired by my douchebag boss, then I started my jewellery business. All in Montreal. It’s been years since I spent Halloween in Toronto. What does everybody do here, go down on Church Street?”

“You’re asking the wrong person.”

Ruth smiled grimly as she did the math. How old was Agnes, exactly? Old enough that it would be rude to ask her age?

“I’ll just be standing at my front door Halloween night,” Ruth said. “Spoiling the neighbourhood kids with shell-out.”

Agnes laughed, pressing her chin against the stack of boxes she was holding. “Shell-out? That’s so cute. That’s what my grandma used to call it.”

Ruth felt instantly ancient, and she swallowed that sour sensation like a pill.

“Trick-or-treat,” she corrected herself, squeezing the handles of her shopping basket for courage. “If you’re not doing anything, you’re welcome to spend the evening in my front hall.”

Cocking her head, Agnes shot Ruth a curious gaze, which could only be broken by a post office employee shouting, “I can help who’s next.”

Why did every cashier say that these days? I can help who’s next. What ever happened to next please? Too simple? Too grammatically correct? What?

“Wait for me, ‘kay?” Agnes dropped her stack of parcels on the counter. “This could take a while.”

“Yes, of course.” Ruth stood off to the side, watching Agnes interact with the young Asian woman who worked for the post office. She had every intention of waiting, but when she noticed the spark in that sullen postal worker’s eyes, she felt instantly uneasy.

Who was Ruth to flirt with a pretty young girl like Agnes? Just look how other women, women Agnes’s own age, responded to her.

For the first time, Ruth actively questioned this little obsession of hers. Her desire was absolutely ridiculous. Agnes ought to be with someone young and pretty, not someone like... Ruth.

Heaving a sigh, she turned toward the front of the d**g store and cashed out.

She was halfway home when she heard a laboured voice cutting through the cold autumn air. “Mrs. Galloway! Mrs. Galloway? Ruth! Wait up.”

Thank God!

Ruth turned and smiled, but Agnes’s lips curled into a concerned scowl. “I thought you were gonna wait.”

“I know, I just...”

“I really wanna talk about the other week.” Agnes shoved her bare hands in the pockets of her military-style jacket. She had on the same pair of grey jeans she’d been wearing the last time they’d met, and the same hightop sneakers. “Just... I was so wired because of this project, and I was going on no sleep and way too much caffeine. I hardly knew what I was saying or... doing...”

Ruth’s heart clenched, but she insisted, “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I would never normally do a thing like that.”

“A thing... like what?”

A thing like me?

Agnes’s dark eyes pleaded, but Ruth didn’t know for what. Forgiveness?

Her thick lashes fluttered as she looked to the ground. She let out a deep sigh, but didn’t answer.

The streetlights were just coming on. Men and women in business attire disembarked from the Queen streetcar and disbursed into the neighbourhood. Dog owners returned home from the boardwalk.

“A thing like what?” Ruth asked again. Her mind reeled, but she couldn’t come up with an answer, not on her own.

“It was wrong.” Agnes looked up, and those penetrating eyes urged Ruth toward an unknown precipice. “You’re married. So it was wrong.”

“No...”

What?

How could Ruth possibly respond but to plead? After a week and a half of hopeless obsession, how could she reject the possibility of foolish love? She was married, yes, on paper, but it wasn’t a happy marriage. It was, at best, a gloomy coexistence.

In all her years of living and working, Ruth had never realized there were possibilities for happiness out there in the world. It took the homecoming of a prodigal daughter, a neighbourhood pariah, to get her juices flowing. Damned if she was going to throw that away.

“I’m sorry.” Agnes grabbed Ruth’s forearm and gave it a kind squeeze. “I’ll see you around.”

Before Ruth could think what to say, Agnes took off, ascending the steep incline toward home. Sometimes it was a hassle, living on such a hilly street. Ruth just wanted to burrow beneath the earth, far away from life and love and any prospect of happiness. Because it never lasted, did it?

Nothing gold can stay.

Lawrence’s car was parked outside the house. His shoes stood neatly by the front door. Ruth scuttled upstairs before he could ask the daily question: “What did you learn at school today?”

What an infantilizing jerk Lawrence could be. And he didn’t even realize it, did he? He had no idea how much she disliked him, at times. Or how much she resented him.

Oh, why was she upset with Lawrence? He hadn’t done anything wrong. He was probably in his den downstairs, working on the computer or watching television. Rightfully, she ought to be upset with Agnes.

Locking her bedroom door, Ruth stomped to the en suite, casting off her cardigan along the way. She turned on the shower, then stripped like it was an Olympic sport. Averting the castigating stare of the woman in the mirror, Ruth peeled the shower curtain back and stepped under the warm cascade.

She looked at the showerhead as though it had all the answers. As though it were Agnes.

“How could you do this to me?”

And then, without warning, Ruth burst into tears.

She felt ridiculous crying like this, like the girls at school, her shoulders heaving with every messy sob. Her nose ran, and she wiped the glossy snot dripping down her lips like she was caught in a spider web. She felt disgusting, and all she could do about it was stick her face under the hot flow, hoping water could wash away her desires.

Impossible. The heat only encouraged her arousal.

How could she feel this kind of pain and still crave the girl’s affection?

“Why don’t you want me?”

Every word was a hiccupped sob.

“Agnes, I need you.”

Why? Why was she saying these things? Why was she even thinking them, or feeling them? Agnes was right—she was a wedded woman. She had no right seeking physical love outside her marriage.

“I have every right,” Ruth growled, tearing the handheld showerhead from its socket. “I want you, Agnes, you little tease.”

Ruth twisted the showerhead control to massage setting, and became a body again. Casting off all symptoms of sorrow and despair, she sprayed between her legs, from a distance at first, to give herself a chance to acclimate to the pulse.

She’d lost track of how many years she’d gone without s*x. This was the only reminder, the only remainder of pleasure in the life of her body. So often, she denied herself even this.

Not tonight.

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