Authors: Bethany Chase
Life is everywhere life, life in ourselves, not in what is outside us.
âFyodor Dostoyevsky to his brother Mikhail Dostoyevsky, December 22, 1849
As the weeks slipped by until my filing date, flicking past and out of view like the landscape outside a fast-moving car, dread congealed in my stomach. It took me a while to identify it, because it was so far from what I was expecting to feel. What I'd expected to feel, what I deserved to feel, was relief. A rising sense of buoyancy at the prospect of severing the last ties between myself and my faithless train wreck of a husband. But that wasn't it. That wasn't it at all.
Meanwhile, I roped my schedule with Neil firmly back to two days a week from where it had somehow slipped to three. I started getting texts like
It's been three days since I kissed you. Can you show me how it works again?
and
It's mighty cold in my bedâI'm concerned about possible health consequences,
but I substituted occasional stolen workday interludes in place of the extra sleepover. Frankly I felt it was better for both of us that way.
I finally confessed about him, piled on my couch next to Ruby under a complex arrangement of blankets while we watched
A Christmas Story
late at night on Christmas Eve. I'd been laughing till I was gasping for breath, and at one point I nudged her irritably in the shoulder.
“Why have we never watched this before? This is basically the best movie I've ever seen.”
“Care. I have tried to get you to watch this movie at least thirty thousand times. What is the variable between this year and every other year?”
I sighed, not even having to answer.
“Speaking of whom,” said Ruby, “you're barely over a month till your filing date. Are you completely freaking out?”
One of the most perplexing things about Ruby is that in any given delicate situation, she can either be so willfully, mulishly obtuse you want to strangle her with her own hairâor she will abandon all social niceties and grab the proverbial bull, bellowing, by his horns. But it was late, and I was tired.
I stared ahead at the TV screen, where Ralphie's father struggled to reassemble his shattered major award. “Honestly? I'm scared shitless.”
Ruby shifted position on the couch, sending one knee into my spleen. “You shouldn't be. This is the right call, and you know it. As your breakup coach, I think what you need to stave off the filing blues is a trip.”
This bore every sign of trouble. Also adventure, it was true, but mainly trouble.
“Where are we going, Cancun? We gonna see if we can catch some college kids at the end of their winter break?”
“Close!” she said cheerfully. “We are going to Vegas.”
“Rube, are you serious? No. I'm down to go someplace warm, but Vegas is really not my kind of place.”
“Which is exactly why I picked it,” she said. “Dragging you out of your comfort zone is super fun for me. Merry Christmas! Hope you like your present, 'cause you're sure as hell not getting anything else. Hey, the fire is getting a little low, can you put another log on?”
“God, you're a pain in the ass,” I muttered, unearthing myself from the blanket fort to drop another log into the cheerful blaze in my woodstove, doing the requisite poking and turning that Ruby insisted meant I had a better idea of how to maintain the fire than she did. “So, Vegas, really? When were you thinking of going?”
“The weekend after next, and don't even try to act horrified, because I know you don't have any plans. Sorry not sorry,” she said, and tipped back her mug of spiked cider.
“I do have plans, actually.”
“Caroline.”
“I do!”
“Well, they can't be that important. You have two weeks to get yourself in order, including getting a wax in case you run into any eligible gentlemen. I'm assuming your vagina looks like Sasquatch at this point.”
I smacked the side of her head. “Screw you! It does not!”
“Baby Sasquatch?”
“My vagina is in excellent condition, thank you very much. I've been seeing somebody.”
She lowered her mug in surprise. “Wow. Already?”
“ââAlready?' It's been almost five months! And besides, it's not like there's some kind of mourning period; I'm getting a divorce.”
She flipped her free hand palm up, like,
Hello.
“Uh, there's totally a mourning period.”
“Oh, like you know so much about it.”
“You know what? Screw you. My advice isn't automatically invalid because I haven't personally experienced something.”
“In this case, it is.”
“Got it. Well then, feel free to ignore me. Enjoy your kamikaze rebound. I'm sure the guy will. Poor fucker.”
“You don't need to lose any sleep over him, believe me,” I muttered into my cider. “At least not as far as I go. He's got more than enough baggage of his own.”
“Oh good, even better.”
She stared at me, then nudged me with her bony, wool-covered toes, but I ignored her. I did not want to talk about Neil, either the gorgeous stuff or the stuff that made me sad. Or, I suppose if I was being honest, I didn't want to talk about the gorgeous stuff
because of
the stuff that made me sad.
January was a new month, a new yearâand, after the requisite “settling in” days after New Year's, a chance to give one last knock at the Diana Ramirez piñata. Neil had suggested a while back that I should make a menu of sorts for our prospective donor, full of tasty, tempting items she might spend her money on, so I started with a template of an older one he gave me and updated the offerings from that. A lot of what was already on it would workâ$22,000 to buy some new computers to expand the interactive multimedia lab (she was a techie, so this ought to be a shoo-in); a $15,000 grant to fund a hands-on painting program at Kidspace (who wouldn't want to help introduce kids to art?); $30,000 to subsidize a summer concert series featuring musicians to be mutually agreed upon by Diana and the museum.
The main thing I wanted to add was a direct grant to an artist, through a working residency at the museum. I loved the concept of giving an artist a studio, not a gallery. It was something I had been wanting to try out for a long time, because it introduced museum visitors not just to the finished product of artwork, but the act of making it. It demystified the process in a way that I thought was extremely important. And I knew exactly the artist I wanted to propose.
“Forty thousand dollars for a six-month residence for Farren Walker?” Neil let the list drop to his desk and looked up at me with a tired sigh. “Not Farren again. You know Tom's not going to back you on that one.”
“I know he didn't last time, but if I can get Diana on boardâ”
“Care, tell me what specifically leads you to believe you can get Diana on board with Farren?”
“She was into Farren's work that time at my house. I know she was pretty zoned out when we had her at the museum, but I've been thinking about it, and I think she gets intimidated by big, serious art like the LeWitts and the climate change installation. She doesn't want to admit it, but it's too abstract for her. She told me that she's interested in the process of making things by hand, so I think she'd really dig a residency where an artist can demonstrate their process and interact with visitors.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But I bet you could find somebody who would make more of a splash for us, and a splash is a
good
thing. Farren Walker is not going to make a big splash. Honestly? If you can stand it, I think it wouldn't be the worst idea to look at Patrick Timothy.”
“No,” I said, my voice like the crack of a whip. “Why would you even say that?”
He sighed and rubbed his brow with one hand. “Because, aside from your completely understandable dislike, the guy is the real deal. You said so yourself.”
“He is. But a photographer makes no sense for a working residency. I'm telling you, Diana will love this idea.”
“But Patrick's credentialsâ”
“Oh my god!” I yelled, stamping my foot for emphasis. “Do
you
want to jump into bed with the guy, too? Look, I get it. Farren's not young and media-friendly like Patrick. She's not sexy. But she's an exceptional talent.”
“An exceptional talent that no one outside of Massachusetts has heard of.”
“Which is exactly the point! Come on, Neil, we're supposed to be shining a light on the best, the most creative, the most groundbreaking. Patrick is fantastic but he's not groundbreaking.”
“Maybe not to you, but he does have buzz, and he'll get people in the door.”
“Tom's Murakami show is going to get more than enough people in the door. I want to give a spot to someone below-the-radar. And unlike Patrick who sold out his first show at the Haldoran in two weeks, Farren actually needs the money. I want her to have this. She deserves it.”
Neil drew his hand slowly over his head. “I know, but baby⦔
“Don't âbaby' me,” I snapped. “I'm pitching Farren and that's that.”
So, I realized as I clipped my way along the resonant wooden floor of the hallway toward my office, that had to be one of the reasons why sleeping with your co-worker was generally held not to be the greatest of ideas. Because, potentially, you might disagree about something work related. At work. And the person you were sleeping with might not be your boss, but maybe he still had a say in what you did and an opinion that had to be paid attention toâand it might infuriate you. For example, when he was saying something that made a lot of sense, professionally, but was completely inconsiderate on a personal level. And he might call you “baby” in his sexy voice and it might piss you off because it made you want to be mellow to him when you knew damn well you ought to stick to your guns.
I put Farren on the menu. I gave a glancing compromise to Neil, in a footnote to the effect that we were open to discussing other artists before finalizing any plans. But I also attached the document I'd written up the last time I pitched Farren, which included a bunch of photos I'd taken of her working in her studio, and a terrific portrait of her beaming Muppet face. It was a misleading photoâshe looked innocent in it. “Don't be fooled by the grandma face,” I wrote by hand on the page. “The woman is a menace and the most delightfully inappropriate person I know. You should come to her studio to meet her and watch her work.”
There's your personal connection, Neil.
I paid Ruby a couple hundred bucks to throw the menu into Illustrator to make it look fancy and print it on the appropriate weight of card stock. I mailed it to Diana with a friendly little note, and thenâ¦we waited.
“Try not to get into too much trouble in Vegas,” Neil said, while an Ella Fitzgerald song drifted in the background the Friday morning before I drove down to the city to meet Ruby for our flight. “Remember the house always wins.”
“That sounds like a metaphor for life,” I said, winding my hair into its customary chignon. Neil loved to watch me put my hair up in the morning almost as much as he loved to take it down at night. It was very Edwardian of him, and I'd been trying to squash how much I adored it.
He smiled. “I suppose it is.”
“I don't think you have to worry about us. Ruby talks a big game, but we're way more likely to end up watching a John Belushi marathon in our bathrobes than we are to join a celebrity entourage.”
“We haven't talked about this,” he said, “but I'm hoping you won't be interested in any of the invites you're going to get. To other guys' hotel rooms. I'd like to keep you all to myself, if that's all right with you.”
My hands stilled briefly on my hair as my body flushed with warmth. “Oh. Yeah. Okay, sure.”
He stepped close and got right into my space the way I loved. “Well, then. I guess that makes you my girlfriend?”
Suddenly, hurt spurted out of me before I could slam my fingers over the crack. “I don't know. Does that mean I'd be allowed to touch you in front of your children?”
Neil blew a sigh through his lips and kissed me, one hand gently holding my jaw. “Damn it. I knew you were upset about that. I should have made you talk about it. Look, babyâ¦I wasn't rejecting you. I'm sorry I made you feel like that. I just need to be careful toward them. This is the first time I've dated anyone since their mom died, and the most important thing is for them to feel comfortable. I have to take things slow, okay?”
He was right. I knew he was. But the thought pinched at me that I wanted to feel important, too. I deserved to. If nothing else, my marriage had given me that. “I understand that. And I understand what you need out ofâ¦this. I guess I just thought you would have started to feel ready to open that up to them a little bit by now. It's not like it's only a few months since she died.”
“I know. But it's not just the girls, it's my in-laws too, and⦔
And you. It is actually also you. It will always be you.
I gazed up into his lovely face with those deep, understanding eyes, and saw the mistake I'd somehow made.
So this is what this feels like,
I thought.
“So then no, I'm not going to be your girlfriend. It's clearly too much for you.”
“Careâ”
“And besides,” I continued, “how can I be somebody's girlfriend if I'm still somebody else's wife?”
Neil stroked my cheek with his thumb for an instant, then dropped his hand against his thigh and stepped back. “That sounds like a pretty fair question,” he said quietly. “You let me know when you figure out how to answer it.”
During the day you can't see the latitudes and you can't really see a star, but they're both still there.
âUncle Lynn Martin to Peggy, Dorothy, Chuck and Dick Jones, date unknown
The morning of our flight, Ruby was bitterly resisting getting out of bed. Last night she'd been impossible, careening around her apartment like a trapped pigeon, packing and repacking her monogrammed leather duffel, then staging and restaging the obligatory predeparture photograph of it for her blog. Duffel parked among tangled white linens, the zipper partially open to reveal a spill of dark gray sequins, with her pencil-heeled black satin sandals tossed insouciantly nearby.
Look out, Vegas, we're comin' for ya.
“Forget the stupid photo,” I'd told her. “We have to get up in five hours.”
“I'm not tired,” she'd said. “I want to get this right. It's important.”
“It's
not
important, it's a photo of your freaking suitcase,” I'd said, which had earned me a dirty glare.
But now, of course, she groaned when I elbowed her.
“Ruby. Chop-chop.”
“FiiiiiÂiiiiiÂiiine.”
It occurred to me, as I studied her, slumped open-mouthed against the taxi window half an hour later, that Ruby was the only girl I knew who could make having
actually
just rolled out of bed look good. She had her sheaf of hair swirled into its customary ball on the top of her head, and her heavy black-framed glasses softened the effect of the purple shadows under her eyes. Her throat and chin were invisible under a cream cashmere scarf so thick it looked as if her head were floating on top of it. Tailored burgundy wool trench coat, slim ankle-length jeans, crisp white Chucksâ¦my sister was
chic.
When had that happened?
Chic notwithstanding, she did make me feel like I was maneuvering a toddler through the airport; I had to be in charge of both of our IDs and tickets because she was too catatonic to be trusted.
“Can you go and get me a coffee?” she whispered, eyes closed, as she collapsed into a seat at our gate, the strength required for standing evidently beyond her.
Five minutes later, my phone rang while I was waiting behind several equally bleary-eyed people for the unidentified obstruction at the Starbucks register to clear, and I swiped it to talk without even looking at it: “Oh my god, I'm coming! Somebody's reinventing the American currency system up here. Hang in there, little vampire.”
But instead of Ruby grumbling at the delay, all I heard was Jonathan's warm laughter. “Let me guessâRuby's on her ass âwatching the bags' and you're in line for coffee?”
“Blaster. How did youâwhat? Are you inside my brain? How did you know we were at the airport? How did you even know I was awake at all?”
“Oh. You said it was an early flight, so I just guessed. Wanted to wish you good luck before you guys took off.”
“Ruby said one of her exes told her there's a weird juju thing where clueless newbie girls are known to do well at the craps table,” I said, shuffling forward in the line.
“Really? Which ex was that?”
“Damned if I know. Right now I'm focused on remembering every subtle nuance of her coffee order. I gotta go.”
“Have fun,” he said, laughing.
The reason I'd never been to Vegas before was simply that I knew I'd hate it. Ruby has a natural affinity for the campy, the boldly artificial, and the weird, but I have never been that way; I tend to admire things that deserve it and leave the rest aside. This eruption of glass, concrete, and neon was an eyesore on the wind-scraped desert of Nevada, and the wink-wink wackiness of the mini pyramid and Eiffel Tower felt like Disney in a way having nothing to do with fun.
After arriving at midday, we napped for a while, then snacked on room service in bathrobes (I hadn't been kidding) before launching our preparty ablutions in the enormous brown marble bathroom. I was halfway through my makeup when I heard Ruby's phone ringing once, then again. Which was so hilariously typical. Anyone who knew Ruby knew to call her twiceâonce to (maybe) get her attention, and then again to reiterate that you actually did in fact want to talk to her.
“Oh crap, can you get that?” she called from the shower, wet face poked around the edge of the curtain. “It might be our restaurant calling back about that time change for the reservation.”
“Sure.”
“Wait, shit, no,” she yelled after me.
“I got it,” I yelled back, locating the phone buried under her discarded jeans. I dug it out, already opening my mouth to answer the call with “Ruby Fairley's phone” or something equally awkward, when my hand froze around the phone. The missed call was not from the restaurant, it was a different name entirely. Less a name, really, than what looked like a nickname: Tennessee. And just in case I wanted to tell myself the reference was to a different personâperhaps some dashing fellow named after his mother's favorite playwright whom Ruby had met in the snack aisle at her bodegaâright underneath the missed call, two recent texts floated unclaimed on the screen:
Pretty girl, you gotta tell Caroline. I almost blew it this morning.
And,
Have fun. Love you.
“Care, gimme it.” Ruby came charging out of the bathroom, one hand extended toward me, the other clutching her hastily wrapped towel. Her skin was damp and flushed from her shower.
Reflexively, I clutched the phone against my chest. “Hey, Ruby? What is it that my best friend Jonathan wants you to tell me?”
Her lips formed a perfect little O of dismay, but no words came out.
“Okay. Let's try this one. Which I'm pretty sure is actually more to the point. Why is my best friend Jonathan texting you that he loves you?”
She inhaled deeply and squared her shoulders. “Because he does.”
The facts snapped into place like a deadbolt sliding home. They were dating. Clearly had been for a while. My best friend.
My
person. My 99.5 percent platonic main guy. Had been hiding a relationship with my own freaking sister.
And then the second wave of it hit me, like an aftershock.
He was going to break my little sister's heart.
“If you hurt her, I swear to Christ I will cut off your fucking dick with your favorite Wusthof knife and run it through a meat grinder while you watch.”
I was storming. I was screaming into my phone in the middle of the hotel hallway, and a family passing with two blond toddlers stared at me reproachfully, but I didn't care. Who the fuck even brings toddlers to Vegas?
“Care, I'm not going to hurt her.” Jonathan's voice was infuriatingly calm.
“Right. Sure. What are you even doing with her, Jonathan?” I yelled, as I stomped into the elevator and punched the button for the lobby. I didn't know where I was going, I just had to get out of earshot of Ruby. Although admittedly there was a strong possibility she heard the line about the meat grinder. “Why are you messing around with my little sister?”
“I'm not messing around.”
“All you ever
do
is mess around. Why Ruby? And anyway, when? How? What the hell exactly is going on here?”
He sighed. “We've been together since the end of the summer.”
“What?”
My mind flew back to the three of us on the couch on my porch, passing a bottle of Adam's wine back and forth as we drank directly from the nozzle. Jonathan teasing her, Ruby laughing. Ruby always laughed louder and brighter when there was a guy she liked around. How could I have missed it? “So, what, like, since my house?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Listen, we wanted to tell you, but you've had so much stuff going on.”
“So you're telling me you have been screwing my sister for
four months
and it's never managed to come up in conversation before now?”
“I'm sorry. We should have talked to you sooner.”
“You should have talked to me
first,
” I said, as the elevator doors opened and the noise of the lobby rushed around me, voices bouncing off marble. “That's what a normal person would have done.
Hey, friend of fifteen years, I really like your little sister. Is it cool if I date her? I promise I'll treat her the way she deserves.
”
“Right, but you had just discovered this whole mess with Adam. It didn't seem like the time. You've been in a pretty crappy place the last few months; we didn't want to rub your face in it. And anyway, I am treating her the way she deserves. I love her, Care.”
“Do you?” I turned down the hallway that led to the hotel's conference center and slumped onto a bench opposite one of the large windows overlooking the pool.
“Yeah. I really do.”
That quiet warmth in his voice, I could hear it. If it were anybody else making him sound that happy, I would have been smiling so hard my face hurt. But Ruby?
My
Ruby? It didn't even make sense. The two of them had always existed in separate spheres of my life; the thought of them merging into this unnatural two-headed monster was utterly beyond bizarre. Not to mention terrifying.
“Well, please tell me I'm wrong that you haven't told her we kissed. I know she was keeping the relationship a secret but there is no way she could have been chill about that this whole time.”
“Yeah. Iâ¦no.”
“Jonathan!”
“I thought about it. Obviously. But it didn't seem necessary.”
I leapt to my feet and started pacing again. “Are you kidding me?”
“Not kidding you, no. Why would I have to tell her everything I ever did before we were together?”
“You wouldn't, but a smart man would have told his girlfriend that he made out once with her sister. Especially if the girlfriend was possessive and territorial, and used to be convinced that the man and the sister had a thing for each other.”
“That's exactly why I didn't tell her. She would make way too big a deal of it. She has no reason to worry about us, and I don't want her obsessing about something that doesn't mean what she'd think it does. You and I were there, and we know what that was, but Ruby wouldn't get it.”
“I don't know. It seems like something she should know.”
“Well, she's not going to. I'm not going to tell her, and you're not either.” He heard my hesitant noise and barreled forward. “Repeat after me: No, Jonathan, I will not tell my sister that you and I briefly kissed when I was in extreme emotional distress.”
“Excuse me, it wasn't that brief,” I grumbled.
“Caroline.”
“All right,” I sighed. “I won't tell her.”
“Thank you,” he said, voice thrumming with relief.
I was so very glad to hear it. So happy my little sister had someone looking out for her tender heart. And so shot through with pain at how badly I missed meaning that much to someone. I probably never would again.
Ruby was still in her towel when I went back upstairs. “Are you done freaking out?” she said, leaning close to the mirror to sweep a mascara wand through her long lashes.
I stared at her like I'd never seen her before. My sister:
Jonathan's girlfriend?
It's not that she wasn't his type; Jonathan's type had never been more specific than “pretty face, big smile.” He liked a dynamic personality, which Ruby had.
But Ruby liked fratty banker types. Decent, basic guys who inspired about the same depth of emotional response as a
Friends
episode. Jonathan was complex and challenging, passionate in many ways but forbiddingly inflexible in others. They'd been dating four months; did she even have a clue yet what an utter pigheaded ass he could be during an argument? At what point would he figure out that pouting in response to criticism was not a behavior she was going to grow out o
f?
And Jonathan could be
critical.
As I leaned against the doorway, mentally embroidering ever more dire scenarios in which two of the people I loved most in the world steered each other's hearts off a cliff to crash in blooming fireballs, Ruby slapped the mascara tube down on the counter and spun to face me.
“What, Caroline? What is it? You think I'm not good enough for him? I shouldn't get my hopes up?”
“No. Of course not, where are you getting that?”
“It's so obvious you would think that. âWhat is perfect Jonathan doing with stupid little Ruby?'â”
“Ruby, I don't think you're stupid. That's not fair at all.”
“Fine. Not stupid, but flighty. Flaky. Not together enough for him and all his big plans.”
I opened my mouth. Okay, it was possible this was one of the reasons why I wouldn't have pegged the two of them as a natural fit. Jonathan was the most fiercely ambitious person I knew; Ruby wasâ¦not.
“Yeah, see?” she said triumphantly. “You do. Well, if you'd asked, if you'd given one single shit about somebody else's life, I could have told you I have plans too. The blog is doing incredibly well. I'm not going back to advertising, I'm sticking with it. I have some sponsors and collaborations coming in. I'm teaching a styling workshop in February and I had to add more dates because the first one sold out in two hours.”
“Peanut, that's
amazing
! Why haven't you told me all this before now?”
“Because you didn't ask. Do you even look at the blog?”
“Of course! Not every single day, butâ”
“Well, not too much lately, or else you might have noticed I've been doing a lot more food styling the last few months. Almost like I've been spending a lot of time with a chef,” she spat, hurling her hair clip into her toiletry bag with deadly aim. The force with which it landed knocked her jar of concealer loose, spattering pale beige powder across the marble counter.
I rubbed my fingers up and down the center of my forehead (Adam called it my worry line) and sighed. Yes, Ruby was being dramatic, but she was also right. I had been so absorbed in my own life the last few months that I'd been missing out on everybody else's. Ruby's success; herâ
incredibly weird
ârelationship. Forget my perceived inability to respond positively to her and Jonathan's big news; if I hadn't been so mired in my own drama this summer when they were at my house, I would have been alert enough to wave the requisite racing flags to divert them away from each other in the first place. The only person I know who likes flirting more than Jonathan is Ruby. Interested in each other, they must have been
unbelievably
obvious. They must have been sniffing each other's asses like puppies.