Harry & Ruth by Howard Owen Page A

quarter. Earnhardt, he informs them, has won again.
    Paul has the remote control and switches back and forth between the Tampa and Miami games, checking other scores when they appear across the bottom of the screen. He has a $50 bet riding on Atlanta, and every time anything happens to change the score, he either curses or cheers. He needs the excitement, needs for something to happen.
    The 4 o’clock game has just started when the shoppers return. Naomi, Tran, Leigh and Ruth come walking in with only a few inconsequential purchases in their arms. Ruth looks happy, even though she’s only carrying one bag that could hold, at most, a blouse or a shirt, some early Christmas gift.
    Ruth tells them that she is tired, that she needs to take a short nap. Tran and Naomi are busy in the kitchen, putting out sandwiches and paper plates, along with cold steamed shrimp and cocktail sauce.
    They eat an early supper, and Ruth says she would like to walk along the beach. Hank offers to join her; Naomi says maybe later.
    The wind has picked up as they walk along the flat, seemingly endless coast. They get their bearings from a flash of red in the far distance, the roof of the Sugar Beach Inn.
    â€œThey said on the radio that the hurricane is stalled out there,” Ruth says, looking toward the horizon as if she can see it.
    â€œLooks pretty clear to me.”
    â€œWell, they can come up quick. We ought to tune in the Weather Channel when we get back to the house. That is, if all the football games are off.”
    He tells her there is a one-hour window of opportunity between the end of the 4 o’clock game and the start of the 8 o’clock game.
    The sun is within an hour of the horizon, and the sky is already starting to show orange and yellow. This is the perfect time of day to be at the beach, Ruth believes. Even she can find beauty in it now.
    â€œDid you find anything worth buying?” Hank asks his mother.
    â€œNo, but I bought something anyhow.”
    â€œWell, as long as you’re happy.”
    They walk along the Gulf beach with its miniature waves and sand dunes. Even the shells, Hank notices, are smaller than life.
    About half an hour out, Ruth says she’s tired, that she wants to turn around.
    Where they are, the island juts out into the water in a dogleg, and they turn away from the setting sun into a rising moon, almost full. By the time they get back to the cottage, it’s dark enough that the moon and sky are bright orange and deep purple.
    They stop at the steps leading up from the beach to admire the colors for a moment before the chill drives them indoors.
    Ruth stares out at the approaching night.
    She’s quiet for a while, then she says, “Does Naomi seem a little distant to you?”
    â€œNo,” Hank lies, “she just needs time to get settled. We don’t see her that often. It takes a while to get so you can just talk normal.”
    Ruth sighs.
    â€œIt’s been a long, long time since we could do that. I know parents and children grow apart, that you can’t keep them with you forever, but I never thought it would be that way with me and Naomi.”
    â€œWe are two women against the world,” Ruth wrote once to Harry, when Naomi was 4. She was so proud of her: how early she walked and talked, how quickly she took to swimming, how pretty she was.
    Even after Ruth’s marriage, she wrote more about her daughter than she did her two sons combined, as much as she loved them. She had always thought, without even having to actively imagine it, that they would be the mother and daughter who lived in the same town, went out to lunch together, grew old and very old together, best friends for life. She had believed what they’d built in that cheap Newport apartment and then on Henry Flood’s farm would outlive the years, the men, everything else.
    As Naomi was becoming a teen-ager, Ruth started hinting in her letters to Harry that all was not