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HUSBAND
Ruby sometimes doesn't know how she got to
this place. Not Black Cove Farm especially, although how she came here and stayed,
that is a complete mystery to her. But no--she wonders how she got to this
place of having a husband in her bed and two kids in the next room, and her
daddy on the porch, playing his fiddle and singing softly.
She'd never looked for any of this--husband, family, a place to call hers--but
somehow she got it all. And Ada, who'd been looking for a husband and a daddy
since she lost both, well, she ended up with neither.
Of course, Ada ended up with some things she hadn't been looking for. Gracie,
of course, though Ruby suspects that 'baby' was part of the husband and daddy
package that Ada'd expected, even though she wouldn't have known which end to
wrap and which to feed before she met Ruby.
And Ruby, well, Ada hadn't been looking for her, either, but she's got her all
the same. To Ada, Ruby is friend, caretaker, child, daddy, and husband all in
one most days.
Ruby sometimes wonders why Ada doesn't just go out and find herself a husband.
Yes, she'd birthed a bastard child, but everyone knew she'd been fixing to
marry Inman, so nobody much held it against her. And she was still as beautiful
as the day Ruby first met her, skin smooth and pale and hair golden-red in the
sunlight.
When Ruby asked her, though, Ada always just shook her head and told her,
"I'll never marry again. That'd be as wrong as Catherine marrying Linton,
and we both know how wrong that turned out to be." Ada always smiled
softly at that, and Ruby smiled back at the memory of lying next to Ada, their
arms and fingers brushing as they passed the book back and forth in the
candlelight.
"Besides," Ada'd always say, looking around at the cluttered kitchen
and full parlor, "I don't suppose there's much room for anybody else in
this house, is there?"
"No," Ruby'd say, slipping her arm around Ada's still-tiny waist,
"I suppose there ain't."
She meant it, too--there was no room for anybody else, in their house or in
their lives. They were full up. Besides, Georgia understood it when Ruby left
his bed in the middle of the night, but a man in Ada's bed would mean there was
no room for Ruby.
There were two men in the house, but the combination of their war wounds and
them being musicians meant they were both useless when it came to an honest
day's work, or almost anything not involving a tune and a shady porch. Instead
it was Ruby who made the list of chores for the day, and it was Ruby and Ada
who carried them out, while the two men sang and talked together and looked
after the children.
Ada sometimes called Ruby her husband, and though she meant it as a joke, it
still made Ruby glow with pride.
"Damn right, I'm your husband," she said. "Every house's got to
have at least one, and I do seem to be the most qualified here."
"That so?" Georgia said, swatting Ruby playfully with his
handkerchief. "Well then, Ada's husband, lets see you give her a
child."
"Oh, no. I'm happy enough with one child." Ada smoothed down the
flyaway hairs on Gracie's head. "A good husband knows when its time
to stop giving his wife children," she said, smiling wickedly (for Ada
anyhow) at Ruby's swelling belly.
"That's right," Ruby said. "And thats why I'm the best damn
husband Ada's ever had." She bit her tongue as soon as she said it, but
after a momentary flicker of pain, Ada just laughed, and leaned over to kiss
Ruby on the lips, right there in front of everyone.
"That's right, husband," she said. "You are."
End
