Who Is Ruth?

I knew a woman, or rather knew of a woman, because I really didn’t know her. She came to our house one time. By ours I mean the house where I lived with my mother and father. This woman came in, I heard her name, but don’t even know if we saw each other or talked. There’s no real reason why I should remember this one day, those few minutes, when she came to our house, but I do. 

The woman’s name was Ruth. Her last name was hard to pronounce, but I think it was Dutch. (To preserve her identity, I won’t mention it here.) Ruth’s arrival was odd, inexplicable, because she was a stranger, yet walked in, did and said some things, then left. It was like a whirlwind. Five minutes later, I realized I wouldn’t recognize her if I passed her on the street. She came in and went out, taking her whirlwind with her. I don’t know how old I was then, but I was a very observant child, so I know she came and left, and I got the impression she wasn’t ever coming back. It was as if she didn’t want to get entangled. In what, I didn’t know. So… poof! She was gone.

Until I understood she wasn’t gone. Maybe I didn’t know the woman, but I couldn’t forget her. My mother had announced the visit, but it - both the announcement and the visit - didn’t amount to much. Did she take her coat off and sit down? I don’t know. Did she bring anything or leave with anything? I don’t know that either. How old was I when she came to our house? I don’t know that, so please don’t ask me. All I sensed was that her visit meant something to my mother, who had an intense expression on her face when she told me the first and last name of the visitor. Was it a visit or an errand the woman was running? I mean, both women seemed to be in a hurry. So please don’t ask me for any more details, because I can’t tell you any more than that. So many years have passed. You should be amazed that even this scrap of a memory remains. I am.

It’s entirely possible that I didn’t like this unfriendly woman who clearly had no time for me. Or maybe I was jealous that my mother was so focused on her for those limited minutes. She was fairly young, but still had to be a good fifteen years older than I, and it seemed that while she was there, I was not important. Memory says Ruth only stayed for about fifteen minutes, but we’ve already established that the details regarding that are hazy. For example, I don’t recall if she came alone or not. I remembered her afterward over the years, but I didn’t really care about her. How could I? She was a stranger to me. Not to my mother, obviously, but to me she was a stranger.

I think that Ruth showed up when my father died, which would have been at least ten years later, although please don’t hold me to that. I thought I saw her talking with my mother at the funeral parlor. Locked in my own grief, I couldn’t have cared less who she was or what they were talking about. It was enough to notice that she had reappeared and had offered some comforting words to Mom, who never did recover from Dad’s death.

The next year my sister died. Mary was really my half-sister and was twenty years older than I was. She was kind of like a second mother. I was in awe of her. She was so pretty and sophisticated, she liked Asian decor and her apartment had chartreuse, black, and gold everywhere: the couch, the lamps, the curtains. It was so modern, so different from my mother’s taste, our mother’s taste. Mom was older when I was born, and I always knew she was old-fashioned. I wished she were more like my friends’ mothers, that she didn’t like garish Victorian wallpaper and weren’t so prudish, but had to accept that was her way and it wasn’t really that important because she was such a good person. She seemed to love everybody, including me, of course.

Mary did cool things like solving crossword puzzles. (She said I had to do them too, so I started and have never stopped. Whenever I have to fly, I take a book of crosswords and think of the half-sister I knew as well as you can know a sibling who is two decades older than you.). Mary also said I had to like Elvis Presley, in her words, I had to get on his bandwagon, so I checked out who he was and started liking him. (I gave him up when he started gaining lots of weight and taking drugs because I don’t like those sorts of things.)

Mary was finally out of her misery after a long struggle with cancer. She was only 41. (Do the math and you’ll know how old I was.) I couldn’t make the connection between the beautiful woman I’d known, with her long blond hair and big, bold eyes, and the body in the casket, its face withered by pain and morphine. My mother was devastated, because barely a year before we’d been in the same place with my father. 

This time Ruth spoke with me. I recall we sat on one of the taupe-colored sofas, hard and brocaded, and talked. Except we had nothing to talk about because we didn’t know each other. I simply worried that my mother was feeling lost because I wasn’t next to her. Then Ruth left. She hadn’t stayed long. Our conversation hadn’t lasted long. I don’t remember what we talked about. Should I?

Years went by. I’ll skip over my grandfather’s funeral which was the following year, because even though he was Mom’s father, he had never been very nice to me. He had never been nice to anybody, perhaps. A lot of people, especially men, get cranky as they get up in years. He wasn’t a bad man, but he wasn’t a good grandfather. He always remembered everybody at Christmas and on birthdays, but he was stiff and stern the rest of the time. I guess I didn’t love him.

Finally, it was my mother’s turn and I was the adult standing beside the casket receiving condolences. It was unbearable and I was numb to the faces and words, but it was required. People came to pay their respects and you had to be polite, thank them for coming, share a common memory. Everybody seemed to love my mother. She had always tried to help others, had volunteered for different causes, was kind, gentle, etc. etc. Nobody heard a cross word from her ever, not even when her father in his final years and suffering from dementia, has slammed her with his cane. Mom always gave everybody the benefit of the doubt.

Then Ruth came. I can’t recall if she entered the funeral parlor or just stood by the doorway. I think somebody was with her, but don’t know if it was a young man or a young woman. That person just looked at me and said nothing. I refrained from saying anything as well.

“What did she die of?” was Ruth’s question. There was no greeting, just the question regarding the cause of my mother’s death. I explained that it had been her heart. Both Ruth and I knew Mom was up in years, so heart problems and high blood pressure were not out of the ordinary. But Ruth had a reason for asking, and she explained it. I wasn’t able to provide any more information, so after a couple of minutes of looking at each other straight on, saying nothing and not moving, she left. There had been no real good reason to continue the conversation. Although I might have wanted to keep talking, she appeared uninterested.

A few years later, I ran across Ruth-with-the-Dutch-last-name’s obituary online. It was pure coincidence, but there it was. Since we’d said good-by at the funeral home, I hadn’t given her much thought. To be honest, I’d never given her much thought because other than the visit to our house, she had only appeared when a casket was present. That alone was a frightening idea. Anyway, I got the feeling she didn’t like me much, because I don’t ever recall her smiling. Of course, not many people smile in a funeral parlor, so I shouldn’t expect that of her, I guess. Maybe I should have learned from my mother to be more generous with people. I don’t remember if Ruth’s obituary mentioned her cause of death, although she might have liked it to be included.

I probably wouldn’t be telling this story if I hadn’t found a letter tucked in my mother’s baby book when I was clearing out her house, the house I grew up in as an only child despite having Mary as my half-sibling. I found the letter just after Ruth’s obituary had come to my attention and that’s how I learned she had always lived about four miles down Route 31 from our house, the house I’d grown up in. 

The letter was explicit. It was from the couple who had adopted a toddler named Ruth because my mother already had Mary and was struggling to make ends meet. The couple had cajoled my mother into doing it, but perhaps Ruth didn’t know why she was surrendered. Ruth was healthy, intelligent, a good child, a pretty little girl. The couple thought my mother (Ruth’s mother) would like to know that, it seemed. Four miles away. A letter.

My mother had never told me my sister had a sister. She had never told me that I had another sister.

It didn’t matter, though, did it? 

Ruth didn’t matter, not really. She wasn’t much of a sister anyway, you have to admit. Let’s see:

I saw her four times, or maybe three. Or two.

At our house (not hers, not Ruth’s) when she rushed in and rushed out, maybe hadn’t said a single word to me, as if she had blinders on.

Maybe she was at my father’s funeral. (Remember: Not her father’s, my father’s.)

At Mary’s funeral. (I was starting to sense a pattern.)

At my (our) mother’s funeral. When I can’t remember if she even went in, although she must have. I did remember to mention earlier that the only thing Ruth wanted to know the last time we spoke was what Mom had died of. Ruth was ill with something and since she never knew her father, she was trying to get some genetic information. I had nothing to offer. I only knew my mother had been left by her idiot husband, whom she never saw again.

In Ruth’s obituary, I am not mentioned as her only surviving sister. Sisters born 20 and 16 years before me. Two older sisters with a father who was worthless. Sisters I pitied. Maybe being half-sisters left me on the margins of caring. Maybe I didn’t matter. This isn’t self-pity on my part. Not at all. It is simply a mystery. Chalk it up to not comprehending how people go in and out of other people’s lives, sometimes caring, sometimes not.

Other than the time she came to our house and we most likely did not speak, Ruth with the Dutch last name only came through my life when somebody passed away. That is the whole point of my telling this story.

Ruth with the last name I know and will not tell, with five children I think I never met but seem to know they were all tow-headed, was the Sister of Death. 

I think I was better off not having her in my life.

Except I do remember that when we met, whenever that was, it was like looking in a mirror. My face perfectly reflected in another, sixteen years older. Always there, never present.

What good is that? Memory asks.