Ruthie shrugged off her parka and kicked off her boots. She shuffled into the kitchen, got herself a glass of water, and chugged it, leaning heavily on the counter, blinking in the harsh overhead light.
The dinner dishes were washed and put away, but there was a full cup of tea on the table. She touched it. Stone cold. Beside the tea was a slice of apple pie with one bite missing, the fork left resting on the plate. Never one to pass up a piece of her mother’s pie, Ruthie gobbled it down and set the dish in the sink.
She switched off the lights and went into the living room to turn off that light, too. The woodstove had burned down to coals. She threw on a couple of logs, banked it down for the night, and headed for bed.
As she crept up the steps, as quietly as she could, using the banister to keep her balance, head swimming from booze, one happy thought rose up above everything else: she was home free. She almost laughed aloud in triumph.
Halfway up, she stepped in a small puddle and stopped. There were several dirty puddles on the wooden stairs. It looked like someone had come up without taking their boots off. Annoyed about her wet socks, Ruthie climbed the rest of the stairs to the carpeted hall.
The door to her mother’s room was closed, no light underneath. Fawn’s door was open, and she could hear her little sister sigh in her sleep. Roscoe came out of Fawn’s room and trotted over to Ruthie, purring, his big fluffy tail waving in the air like a please-love-me flag.
Ruthie smiled down at the ash-gray cat, whispered, “Come on, old man,” and slipped into her room, the cat right behind her. The bed was unmade, her desk a messy pile of textbooks and papers from the semester that had just ended: English Composition, Intro to Sociology, Calculus I, Microcomputer Applications I. Though they hadn’t posted grades yet, she knew she’d aced all the classes, even if they had been as boring as shit.
“It’s so easy a trained rat could get a 4.0 GPA. It’s a subpar education,” she’d complained to her mother. “Is that what you want for me?”
“It’s just for one year,” her mother had said, a now familiar mantra.
Right.
Ruthie closed the door, pulled off her jeans and damp socks, and crawled into bed. Roscoe settled in beside her, kneading the blankets, circling once, twice, three times, before lying down and closing his eyes.
She dreamed of Fitzgerald’s again. A small bakery with steamy windows that smelled of fresh-baked bread and coffee. There was a long counter with a glass front that she stood in front of for what felt like hours, staring at rows of cupcakes, apple turnovers, cookies dusted with colored sugar that sparkled like jewels.
“What do you choose, Dove?” asked her mother. She held Ruthie’s small hand firmly in her own. Her mother wore smooth calfskin gloves. Ruthie pointed her other hand, chubby little-girl fingers smearing the glass.
A cupcake with pink sculpted icing.
Then Ruthie looked up to see her mother smiling down—only this was where the dream always went funny, because the woman standing over her wasn’t her mother at all. She was a tall, thin woman with heavy tortoiseshell glasses shaped like cat’s eyes.
“Good choice, Dove,” the woman said, ruffling her hair.
Then the dream changed, as it often did, and she was in a tiny dark room with a flickering light. There was someone else there with her—a little girl with blond hair and a dirty face. The room seemed to get smaller and smaller and there wasn’t enough air; Ruthie was gasping for breath, sobbing.
Ruthie opened her eyes. Roscoe was smothering her, his warm, heavy body draped over her nose and mouth.
“Get off me, you big lug,” Ruthie mumbled peevishly, shoving at him.
But it wasn’t the cat. It was her sister’s arm, clad in fleecy pajamas. Ruthie’s head pounded, and her mouth tasted like cat shit. She was in no mood for a visitor this early.
“What are you doing in here?” Ruthie snapped. Her twin bed was crowded enough without her little sister, who did acrobatics in her sleep, often waking up with her head down at the foot of her bed. Fawn sometimes crawled in with her mother in the night, but hadn’t gotten into Ruthie’s bed in ages.
Fawn didn’t answer. Ruthie rolled over to find that the mattress was warm and damp.
“Oh my God!” she yelped. “Did you pee in my bed?” She reached down. The mattress was soaked. So were her little sister’s fleece pajamas. Fawn kept her eyes closed tight, pretending to be asleep. Ruthie shoved at her, trying to roll her out of the bed.
“Go wake up Mom,” she said.
Fawn rolled over onto her belly, her face buried in the pillow. “Aacaaat,” she mumbled.
“What?” Ruthie asked, rolling her sister over to face her.
“I said, I can’t.” Fawn’s face was flushed and sweaty. The urine smell hit Ruthie hard, making her stomach flip.
“Why not?”
“She’s not here. She’s gone.”
Ruthie glanced over Fawn to the alarm clock. It was six-thirty in the morning. Her mother was rarely up before seven, much less out of the house. She needed a good three cups of coffee before she’d even speak most mornings.