Ruby (18 page)

She said, “Yes. Come then. August first.”

“I’m a whale. I’m hot and cranky,” Winnie said.

“I know.”

It wasn’t until after she hung up that Olivia realized Ruby would still be there. Two hot and cranky pregnant women, Olivia thought. Maybe Winnie would actually understand. Wasn’t she someone whom Olivia could count on?

Olivia woke to the sound of shouting from outside.

“Her husband is dead, you asshole!” Ruby said.

Olivia went to the window and looked out. Ben stood there, his arms spread like he was about to take flight. And Ruby, her hair wet and her back covered with sand—they’d been to the beach, Olivia guessed—paced back and forth in front of him.

A chill crept up Olivia’s arms, sending the hairs there on end.

She could not hear what Ben was saying. Was he trying to take Ruby from her? Or the baby? Or both? Olivia hadn’t trusted him, this longhaired poet who claimed to be genetically linked to the introduction of ice cream in America.

“You can’t leave like this,” Ruby said.

“I can do whatever I want,” he said, and he turned from her and headed down the path, toward the road.

Ruby hesitated, then started after him. She ran so awkwardly that Olivia willed her to stop. Olivia remembered how Ben had described her tiny waist, the way he’d shaped such a small circle with his hands.

Both of them disappeared from Olivia’s sight.

She stood there, gripping the windowsill for balance. It was another hot, muggy day with air that was too heavy and stagnant. If Ruby came back, they would go to the beach. They would take cold watermelon, a jug of lemonade, a treat from Winnie’s food basket. If Ruby came back. Olivia was ready to start bargaining, the way she had when she got the news about David. If you make this go away, she’d said to God or whoever might be listening, I will join the Peace Corps, give away all of my earthly possessions, do anything,
anything.

What bargain could she make now? she wondered, watching the hydrangeas that bordered the path out. The hydrangeas here grew the most beautiful shade of blue. She tried to remember why. A heavily alkaline soil? Or heavily acid? That was something else David would have known. She tried to name the shade of blue. Periwinkle? Somewhere she had once read that the color of hydrangeas could easily be manipulated by changing the chemical balance of the soil. The ones in her parents’ yard were a pale pink.

Olivia sighed.

Still no Ruby.

Only minutes had passed—ten, fifteen? But they seemed endless.

From somewhere toward the beach came the sound of firecrackers. It was the Fourth of July. She had promised Amy that she would go to a barbecue at her condo. She had promised to take potato salad.

Still no Ruby.

David had made the best potato salad. He’d used sour cream and mayonnaise. He’d used fresh dill. Today was the day Olivia and David had planned to have a big party here. The house would be finished. They would have a baby.
What a lovely, lovely life.

The hydrangeas hung blue and still in the hot summer air.

Olivia imagined the kind of party she and David would have made here. There was room in the yard for a big striped tent. David’s specialty was sate, chicken and shrimp, skewers of them with a peanut dipping sauce. They would have grilled corn. They would make drinks in the blender with rum and fruit juice. In a box somewhere Olivia had a collection of brightly colored plastic mermaids and fish that she’d bought at the Sixth Avenue flea market. She saw herself on their lawn, with a baby in her arms, moving through a crowd of their friends, handing out tropical drinks with hot pink mermaids and electric blue dolphins perched on the rims. She was tanned and confident; she was loved. Olivia saw herself there, and almost,
almost,
saw David turning toward her.

Olivia leaned toward the window, as if leaning that way might bring her to him, to that time that would not ever be.

And when she leaned closer, a figure appeared, moved in front of the hydrangeas, came down the path.

Sunburned and crying and pregnant and young: Ruby walked back to Olivia.

Olivia had to take Ruby to Amy’s party. The girl had cried on and off nonstop ever since Ben left. “Can’t you just say I’m a neighbor’s kid? I promise I won’t say a word or eat any food or anything. I just don’t want to be home alone with my thoughts.” She blew her nose loudly for emphasis.

On the ride to Amy’s, while Olivia’s stomach knotted tighter and tighter—she really had gone mad, taking Ruby along to a family party—Ruby asked, “Which neighbor?” She looked terrible. Her nose was running and her eyes were puffy and her fingers and ankles were swollen.

“They won’t ask,” Olivia said. “Don’t worry.”

“You need details to convince them,” Ruby mumbled, wiping her nose on the shred of tissue she’d been clutching.

But by the time they pulled into the parking lot at Amy’s condo, Ruby was staring sadly out the window and humming an old familiar song softly. “Baby, baby, don’t get hooked on me.”

She almost smiled when she saw Olivia glancing over at her, frowning.

“B. J. Thomas,” Ruby said. “I know so many unimportant things.”

For some reason, this started her crying again, and they sat in the car, Olivia ineffectively patting Ruby’s arm to console her, when really her mind was trying to sort out if the baby Ruby was setting free was Ben or the real baby. Impulsively, Olivia reached across the stick shift and rested her head lightly on Ruby’s stomach. They sat like that, each listening for something different. Ruby’s hand settled on Olivia’s head, and gently, she stroked her hair, the way a mother would.

It was a small party because everyone had to fit on Amy’s terrace overlooking the scenic route and the grill took up quite a bit of space. Even though Amy kept the condo in her divorce settlement, she took a lot of furniture and household items that worked better in the Victorian in Providence that her ex-husband and his girlfriend still lived in. Like the grill, a gas one with fold-down countertops and areas for warming and smoking.

“This is where I’m staying,” Ruby announced, and she flopped into a wing-back chair. “Cool at last.”

Olivia’s mother came toward them immediately, wearing the frowning, worried expression she had worn since David died. Olivia wondered if her mother ever relaxed her face into its normal shape, or if this was it now: mother of a daughter with a dead husband.

“Honey,” she said, taking Olivia’s hands and pressing them into her own. “How are you?”

Olivia’s mother was small and delicate, with a sweet voice that Amy and Olivia used to love to imitate.

“I’m fine,” Olivia said, pulling her hands away.

“Are you?” her mother asked again, her expression deepening.

“Mom,” Olivia said too sharply, “David is still dead. This is the best it gets for me. I’m up. I’m here. Now drop it.”

She felt dizzy, not from the heat or her mother’s strong, sweet lily-scented perfume, but from what she had said. In her mind, Olivia had turned her husband’s name over and over. She had felt it on her tongue. But she had not ever said it out loud like that:
David is dead.

Her mother fluttered around her now, mumbling the weak words of hope and encouragement that she’d been mumbling for ten months. In fact, Olivia realized, they were the same words she’d been hearing from her mother her whole life: “Everything happens for the best.
Que sera sera.
One door closes and another opens. …” There was no end to the platitudes of reassurance her mother offered. They were not a family that discussed feelings too closely; they kept emotion at arm’s length. Olivia’s mother often looked almost frightened at Olivia’s mourning—the sobs and screams and waning that she did at first, the more recent outbursts, which seemed to come without any provocation.

There had been times when her mother’s cold comfort actually helped, like a good slap in the face. Other times, the suffocating sympathy from strangers was better for Olivia. People did not know what to give her; they asked again and again: “What can I do? What do you need?” But the truth was, Olivia didn’t know, either.

Her mother’s fluttering brought her right at Ruby’s chair.

“Oh, dear,” she said, and looked around nervously.

Olivia came up behind her mother and placed a hand on her small shoulder, causing her mother to jump slightly. Olivia stood a good six inches above her mother, and she could see her pink scalp—Like a baby’s, Olivia thought—through her thin hair.

“Mom,” Olivia said, “this is the neighbor’s daughter. Ruby.”

“Oh, dear,” her mother said again, staring at Ruby’s pregnant belly. Her mother liked to think that there were no drugs or teenage pregnancies or wayward girls. She peered at Ruby and talked in the voice she saved for waitresses and salesclerks, detached and superior. “Which neighbor?” she asked. “In the big house?”

Ruby grinned up at her. “The next one down. Weathered shingles? Blue shutters?”

Olivia was taken aback by the ease of the lie, and by her mother’s acceptance.

“Yes,” her mother said, nodding. “I know the one.”

“They’re in the Berkshires for the long weekend and Olivia was nice enough to look after me,” Ruby said. She narrowed her eyes at something across the room. “God,” she said, getting to her feet—an act that made Olivia hold her breath slightly; it always looked as if Ruby was on the verge of tipping over backward. “Is that shrimp cocktail?” Ruby asked. She must have decided it was, because she was off for the hors d’oeuvres table.

Olivia’s mother watched her go.

“My goodness,” she said. “She can’t be more than seventeen.”

“Fifteen, actually,” Olivia told her.

Her mother gasped. “How awful. Is there a boy involved somehow?”

“Well, of course there is, Mom. That’s how you
get
pregnant.”

This was like the conversations Olivia had had with her mother her whole life. “How awful,” her mother would say, that some girl’s mother was on welfare, or her brother had gone to jail; that such a nice boy would wear a leather jacket or get a tattoo or waste his life in art school. The implication being, How awful that Olivia is with this dreadful person.

“There’s no need for sarcasm, Olivia,” her mother said. “I just meant, what will this girl do? They don’t have those homes anymore, do they? And I’ve heard”—she lowered her voice, then continued—“that there are girls in New Jersey who actually put their babies in Dumpsters.”

“Well,” Olivia said, “they do kill them first, Mom.”

No sooner had she said it than she wished she hadn’t. She wanted nothing more than to tell her mother the truth. That baby is going to be mine, she wanted to shout to her mother, to everyone, to the world. Then she looked at her, the pink rouge settled in the lines on her face, the lipstick bleeding into the corners of her mouth, the resort wear outfit she had carefully chosen for today—white pants, a red sleeveless turtleneck, a blue cotton blazer with big brass buttons, and all the accessories matching—and Olivia knew she could not tell her mother anything at all.

“Newt Gingrich wants to bring those homes back—homes for unwed mothers. And I think he’s right. Not that anyone listens to common sense anymore,” her mother said, adjusting and readjusting her gold charm bracelet.

“Actually,” Olivia said, “she’s got an adoption all lined up.”

“Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it?” her mother said. She still watched Ruby greedily eating shrimp. “Such a nice home, too,” her mother added.

Amy was slamming bowls and serving spoons around in the kitchen. When she saw Olivia standing in the doorway, she looked relieved.

“Remember the Galapagos Islands?” she said.

“Darwin?”

“No. Edward.”

Olivia did remember then: Amy’s ex-husband, Edward, wanted to take their son, Matthew, there.

“Or should I say Edward and the bimbo?” Amy continued, sloppily dumping salad into a bowl. “Or should I say Edward and the soon-to-be
Mrs.
Edward. And get this: Matthew wants to go with them. ‘Giant turtles,’ he said. ‘Awesome.’ The little traitor. They’re getting married and going to the Galapagos Islands to look at turtles for their honeymoon. I mean, we went to Maui for our honeymoon.” Amy held up a bowl of Jell-O with bananas and strawberries inside. “And another thing, who brings Jell-O to a party? I mean, it’s the nineties. People do not eat Jell-O anymore.”

Olivia put her arms around her sister’s shoulders. “It’s not that bad.”

“Sure. It only means he
loves
her, that’s all. It only means that my own son loves them both.”

“I meant the Jell-O,” Olivia said. “The Jell-O isn’t so bad.”

Amy laughed, but she stayed nestled in Olivia’s arms. “It was one thing being left for some kind of crazy affair. It’s another thing when your husband actually loves someone. I mean, I know that since that thing happened to you, it’s hard to imagine that something like this can be so terrible—”

Olivia turned her sister so that they faced each other.

“Amy,” she said, “‘that thing’ is that David died.” She felt less dizzy this time, but her voice dropped to a whisper. “David is dead,” she said.

Amy’s eyes widened as if she were hearing the news for the first time. “Oh my God, Olivia,” she said.

From the doorway, Ruby said, “Great. Jell-O. I love when they put fruit it in.”

She came in and took the bowl from Amy, holding it up to the light. “Is it fruit cocktail in there? That’s the best. Bananas turn brown. Once my mother called the Jell-O hot line to find out how to keep the bananas from turning brown, but they didn’t have any advice, so we just stick to fruit cocktail.” Lowering her voice, she added, “Did you know there’s like pork in Jell-O? Honest to God. Maybe that’s why it’s so good.”

She grinned and shook Amy’s hand with her other hand.

“I’m Ruby. I live in that house next to Olivia’s. The weathered shingled one with the blue shutters? My folks are sort of embarrassed to have me with them in this condition, so they went off to the Berkshires, and Olivia is kind of taking care of me.”

Amy frowned, and it was as if Olivia were reading right into her brain. Olivia can hardly take care of herself. How is she supposed to look after you?