Things went along this way for a few years. Cats came and went; the young pretty ones tended to go, and the old broken ones tended to stay. I got more relaxed and skillful with them; I could give the diabetic cats insulin and clip claws without getting scratched. Jim continued to put our house through startling transformations, and finally installed a bathroom right off the master bedroom. Ruth and I went to the movies now and then, but mostly we spent our time at the shelter, wrangling cats and playing cards.
Then Ruth died.
I don’t know how it happened. One Wednesday in July, she didn’t show up for her shift at the shelter. No one answered her phone. Jim and I were on vacation in Nova Scotia, so I heard about it the following Monday from Ellie, the director of the shelter. They had gotten worried; after all, Ruth was old, though she didn’t complain about her health. They’d called the emergency number on her volunteer application, but it was disconnected. It had been hot all week, in the upper nineties. They went to Ruth’s house and rang the bell. No answer. I had never been to Ruth’s house. Ellie said it was a small brick ranch-style place. She went around and looked in all the windows, which were open. No sign of Ruth. The police couldn’t find her either. “Maybe she went on vacation, and just forgot to tell you, Ma’am,” the officer suggested.
Ruth never came back. There was no body, no funeral, no grave.
I felt spurned. I couldn’t imagine Ruth leaving without saying goodbye. I worried that something terrible must have happened to her. But no one knew anything. Jim suggested that she might have amnesia, but he liked to listen to Radio Mystery Theater and I knew that sort of thing only happened in melodramas.
At the end of the summer, I got a registered letter at the shelter. I remember holding it in my hand, the weight of it, the pause before opening it, my puzzlement as to who might send me a letter at work. It was from a downtown law firm, and it informed me that Ruth had died and left me her house and its contents.
I’m ashamed to say that my first response was relief: Ruth hadn’t abandoned me, she had only died.
That evening Jim came into the kitchen as I was making dinner and said, “How was your day?” I opened my mouth to tell him about Ruth, about her house … and I said, “Just a day. How about you?”
