JOHN AND ROSE
Chapter Fifty-One
August 20, 1931
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Rose walked silently beside John as they left
the train station. Ordinarily, she would have gone back to the studio, and John
back to the mill, but everyone was tired and emotionally drained from the
events of the night before, and none of them felt much like going back to work.
Rose was relieved when Sam nodded to them and
walked away in the direction of his home. She had given him the afternoon off
from work in order to say good-bye to Nadia, but she was glad that he showed no
desire to visit with them after he had seen Nadia off.
She knew that her feelings were irrational,
but a part of her couldn’t help but blame Sam for what had happened. Logically,
she knew that he was not to blame for what had happened the night before, or
for the rift in the family, but she couldn’t help it. Seeing him reminded of
the great risk they had taken the night before—it could as easily have ended in
injury and death for some of the people involved—and of the fact that Nadia,
the stepdaughter that she had known since she was a toddler, could have been
harmed by the men who had attacked the couple.
And though it was equally irrational, a part
of her blamed Sam for the fact that she had driven her mother from her home,
casting her out in a world that had few prospects for anyone, but especially
not an older woman who had worked only sporadically in her life, and who hadn’t
worked at all since the Depression had begun. She knew that Sam wasn’t to
blame—it was Ruth herself who had chosen to withhold the information that might
have prevented the attack on Sam and Nadia, and it was Rose who chosen to force
her mother from her home. Sam had been an innocent bystander who had been
caught up in the trouble because of circumstances beyond his control.
Ruth was lucky that John had offered her a
job in the mill, though it wasn’t a type of work that she had ever done before,
and there was no telling how well she would adapt to it. But John wasn’t the
sort of person who would allow his mother-in-law to wander hungry and homeless
if he could help it.
Strangely enough, that angered Rose all the
more. She felt betrayed, as though her husband had gone behind her back on an
issue that was of great importance to her. She knew that Ruth would be begging
on the streets without the job John had offered her, but a part of her felt
that John should simply have gone along with her wishes and pushed Ruth away,
forcing the woman to fend for herself and teaching her what life was like for
those who were on the outskirts of society.
But Rose didn’t know how to tell him this,
nor did she believe that he would understand. He helped people—it was in his
nature—and she doubted that it would even have occurred to him to push Ruth
away. He might not have liked her actions, but he didn’t know her as Rose did,
didn’t know what had happened in the past. In all likelihood, he would have
tried to ignore the problem in hopes that it would go away.
Rose knew that it wouldn’t have gone away.
The anger and tension would have simmered just under the surface, waiting to
break free, and when it finally had, the results would have been devastating,
perhaps more devastating than the damage that Rose’s furious impulse had
caused.
And yet, removing Ruth from the Calvert
household hadn’t solved anything. It had only created more problems, problems
that festered under the surface like a wound, and when they finally did come to
the surface, the results would be devastating.