Read Online Harry & Ruth by Howard Owen - Free Book Online Page A

close to the vest, you know. Maybe I should call Ruth.”
    As he hears Artie walking toward the living room, Harry feigns sleep.
    â€œMaybe he should …” Harry hears his brother-in-law stop in midsentence. Then there’s a long pause before Artie Marks tiptoes back to the kitchen and says something Harry’s ears can’t pick up. Before long, he can hear, feel Freda walking softly toward him, then stopping and whispering to Artie, “Look at him,” the way you might point out a child or a dog in unguarded repose. He feels the blanket being pulled to his chin.
    Freda and Artie go back to the kitchen. Harry squints one eye open to see that they are out of sight, then shifts position slightly. In seconds, he is asleep again.
    The next thing he knows, they’re waking him.
    â€œHey, Harry,” Artie says. “Want some breakfast?”
    â€œSure. Yeah, thanks.”
    â€œWhat’s the matter? Is that guest bed too hard for you?”
    â€œNah. Sometimes I just need to move around, find another spot. Sneak up on the sandman.”
    Harry yawns. He smells french toast and bagels and cream cheese. He is, he realizes, hungry.
    They go back into the kitchen, and Harry untangles himself and shuffles back to his bedroom, where he tries to comb his sad hair and brushes his teeth.
    When he comes back out, finding them in the breakfast nook overlooking a yard full of birdfeeders and hardwoods, Freda looks at him and frowns.
    â€œAre you OK?”
    â€œSure. Slept like a baby.”
    Freda knows he’s lying. He appreciates that she doesn’t cry, and he’s glad he will only be making a short visit. He wanted to see Freda again, although they no longer seem to have much to talk about. He guesses he did it because he felt he ought to.
    Old age, son of a bitch that it is, is not without its consolations, thinks Harry Stein. People care, more than he reckons they should. He revels in the balm of that care; he would not forfeit an ounce of it, no matter how ill-gotten.

SEVEN
    Ruth still remembers most of what she wrote to Harry Stein that March day in 1943.
    She tells herself that she tried not to make it sound pitiful, and that she tried not to make him feel guilty, although a larger part of her than she would admit wanted him to go AWOL, renounce all other encumbrances, to women and family and armies, and rush back to her side, tears streaming from his cheeks, vowing never to leave again.
    â€œIt seems a good time to write (if there is a good time to write someone who never writes back),” she began, then begged his forgiveness (but didn’t throw the paper away and start again). She knew he might already have been shipped overseas. “At least, Harry,” she wrote, “let me know you are alive.”
    She saw no point in telling him before he left. She despised girls who traded on weakness.
    â€œWhat we did,” she wrote, “we did for my pleasure as well as yours. I knew it was foolish. (It makes me blush to think of some censor somewhere reading this, but it must be told.)”
    She did tell him, though. She could not bear to do otherwise.
    â€œYou are the first to know (assuming this letter reaches you in a timely manner),” she wrote. “I wasn’t sure when you left, didn’t want to be sure, I suppose. Now, there can be no doubt. Soon, I will have to tell my grandparents and the rest. Of course you are the father. Do not panic. (You do not seem the panicky kind. Neither am I. Do not think that I am running around like a chicken with my head chopped off.) I claim no hold on you. You had your life planned for you before you ever came to Saraw, before that September night a thousand years ago. When we said goodbye, at that awful train station, I meant goodbye. But we also said we would write, that we would ‘stay in touch,’ whatever that means.”
    Ruth had already had three weeks to swallow the sometimes sobering, sometimes