Ruby (22 page)

“What did I say?” he asked nervously.

Olivia shook her head. How would she ever handle a baby? Babies had things like colic, cradle cap, clubfoot, lazy eyes. Babies shit all over themselves and cried all night. What had she been thinking?

“I must be crazy,” she finally managed to say.

Jake was kneeling beside her now.

“I do this, too, you know,” he told her. “Lose it, I mean. I never lost someone the way you did. But my ex-wife and my daughter moved to Australia. Can you believe that? I think it’s the farthest place they could have moved to. But my ex-wife married an Australian doctor and they moved to Perth. When it snows here, they’re at the beach. Do you know that their Santa’s sleigh is pulled by kangaroos? They might as well have moved to Mars.”

Something in what he said—or maybe it was how he said it—told Olivia that he understood, that perhaps he was the first person who did.

“When they first moved,” Jake said, “I immediately told my girlfriend that I wanted to get married and have a baby. ‘Why wait?’ I said. But it was just to have something. A replacement family, I guess. By that time, we’d been divorced several years, but we had joint custody. I mean, Gillian was with me three nights a week. How do you continue that when she’s halfway around the world?”

“Did you do it?” Olivia asked him.

“Have another baby?” He shook his head. “Thank God. We actually tried. What I had instead was a total breakdown. I flew out there, to Perth, and tried to live there. I even tried to win my ex-wife back. What a disaster. Look,” he said, “all I’m saying is that maybe, just maybe, adopting this baby isn’t what you think.”

“I’m thirty-seven years old,” Olivia said, “and the love of my life is dead, and who knows when or if I’ll get married again. Who knows what my life is going to be like from now on.”

“No one,” Jake said.

“This girl,” Olivia told him, “I think someone sent her to me.”

“Who sent her?” he asked gently.

But Olivia only shrugged and looked down at the floor.

Jake stood, handed her a box of Kleenex. “Bring her in. I’ll get the forms ready. Make sure the father isn’t going to stake some kind of paternal claim.”

For the rest of the day, she wondered why what stuck in her mind the most about him was the word
girlfriend,
the way Jake had said it.

When Olivia saw Winnie step off the train, her heart lurched as if she’d spotted a lover. There was her friend, dressed in black Capri pants and a scoop-neck black shirt, and underneath it a little watermelon of a baby, tight and round and perfect. She was wearing one of Olivia’s hats: Columbine. She walked like a New Yorker, arrogant, sure, fast.

Olivia ran to her, forgetting to close the car door behind her.

“You look wonderful,” Olivia said after they’d hugged and examined each other.

“
I
look like hell,” Winnie said. She ran her fingers through her hair, even though it was cut short, just the way Olivia always imagined her doing when they were on the phone. “The sleek profile for fall,” Winnie explained. “Of course, it means paying extra close attention to other details—the tweezed eyebrows, the straight eyeliner. Does it sound like copy from
You?
”

“Naturally,” Olivia said.

Winnie spun around. “Twenty-three pounds and counting. But the thing to do, afterward, is Pilates. We just did this whole piece on it. The equipment looks like some form of medieval torture, but if you need toning, it’s the only way to go. Meanwhile,” Winnie said, peering closely into Olivia’s face, “you look incredible. Or at least good. Which is a step up from the last time I saw you. Several steps up. I would almost accuse you of being in love, if I didn’t know better.”

“What does love get you? A house in Rhinebeck?” Olivia said, guiding her toward the car, unwilling to let go of her arm. “I could have warned you. You fall in love and you do crazy things.”

“I actually make recipes from Laurel’s Kitchen. Can you believe it? That’s another thing. Jeff’s a vegetarian.” Winnie sighed. “A vegetarian investment banker. Isn’t that incredibly oxymoronic?”

They stopped in front of Olivia’s car. “Wonderfully oxymoronic,” Olivia said as Winnie patted the hood of the car affectionately. She didn’t hate Winnie at all. She adored her.

“It still runs?” Winnie was saying. “What does it have, a million miles?”

“One hundred and eighty-seven thousand,” Olivia said.

“And you can just leave your car door open around here and no one takes it?”

“I don’t know about that,” Olivia said, sliding into the car.

When Winnie finally got herself arranged inside, Olivia sat without moving, taking in her friend’s smells, her presence.

“God,” Olivia said finally. “You’re really here.”

“I’ve been a total shit, haven’t I?” Winnie said. “Not coming for so long. Me, me, me, me.”

“I hated you for being happy.”

“I hated me. But I couldn’t stop. I wanted you to be with me all the way.”

“Look at you,” Olivia said. She reached over and rested her hand on her friend’s taut belly.

“We didn’t even think, you know?” Winnie said, her voice hushed. “We just had sex like teenagers, thoughtless, reckless sex. Too many margaritas. Too much mariachi. Sex on the beach, on our little balcony, even on the plane on the way home. I guess we’re members of that stupid club. What’s it called?”

“Mile High?”

Winnie rolled her eyes. “Not worth it. Too cramped. And now I’ve got a vegetarian husband and a country house and a basketball for a stomach.” She paused and pointed one finger and thumb at Olivia, a gun aimed right at her heart. “You wait, Olivia. It’s going to happen for you, too.”

“Don’t,” Olivia said.

“It
will
happen again. Someday you will look back and wonder how you got from here to there. Babies and mariachi. The works.”

“Okay,” Olivia said.

“And now let’s go home, because I fall asleep so early, and I brought pictures to show you.”

“We can’t go home,” Olivia said. “Not until we’ve talked.

“Don’t tell me you have a boarder or something? Or wait. A lover?” Winnie grabbed Olivia’s arm too urgently. “Do you?”

Olivia started the car. “No. But I did let Janice fix me up.”

“Janice.” Winnie groaned. “Has it been that bad up here? Not with one of Carl’s friends, I hope.”

“Poor guy. Poor nice guy,” Olivia said.

Winnie let her hand stay on Olivia’s arm. “You can have a lover and still not love him. It could be purely physical, the way it was in the good old days. You could just take this poor nice guy, friend of Carl, and fuck his lights out. Orgasms are therapeutic. Good for the skin.”

The surfer boy flashed through Olivia’s mind and she couldn’t shake him. He had full lips and a good chin. He had, she’d noticed in his office, one pierced ear, and she had found it sexy.

“Remember how when you and Josh broke up I talked you into going out on a date with the guy from the farmers’ market? The one with the good lettuce?”

“He said Feb-
u
-ary,” Olivia said.

“Remember how I thought he might be Amish? And I had you all set to go and live on a big farm in Pennsylvania, to swear off buttons and cars and live a simple life?”

“He said li-
berry
,” Olivia said.

“My point is …” Winnie began.

But Olivia stopped listening. She knew Winnie’s point. That farmer, Olivia remembered, had had the softest hands. He used to rub beeswax on them every morning. Instead of a bottle of wine, he’d brought her two big jars of amber-colored honey and a pattypan squash. She had slept with him, too, and Winnie had been right—she had felt better about things. But Josh hadn’t been dead. And Olivia hadn’t been about to make changes on her own, at least nothing like adopting a baby.

“Hello?” Winnie said. “If you’re not going to listen to my good advice, then you at least have to let me pee. Hello?”

“I’m here,” Olivia said.

Winnie squeezed her arm. “I’m here, too.”

On summer nights, the Coast Guard House restaurant opened their deck and people sat at tables overlooking the ocean. Olivia ordered a margarita with extra salt and Winnie ordered warm water with lemon.

“See the light from the lighthouse,” Olivia said. “Wait. It’ll sweep across in a minute.”

“Why do I keep expecting you to tell me something big?”

“I do have to tell you something,” Olivia said. “Big.”

“My God.” Winnie laughed. “I just had the weirdest feeling. Like you were going to tell me you were pregnant or something.”

“I guess I should just say it,” Olivia said. She laughed, too, because she was so nervous.

“You aren’t pregnant, are you?” Winnie’s voice turned suddenly very serious. “You didn’t do the turkey-baster thing, did you? Or Carl’s friend?”

“Not exactly.”

Now Winnie was frowning. “Olivia?”

“Did I tell you I started jogging? It’s strange, I know, but I started, and one day I came home and this girl, this teenager, was in my house—”

“Robbing you?”

“No. Not exactly. Not then anyway.”

“Stop saying ‘not exactly,’” Winnie said. “You’re making me nervous.”

“The thing is,” Olivia said, “
she’s
pregnant. Pregnant like you.”

“The girl?”

Olivia nodded. “Ruby. And she’s living with me now.”

Winnie was still frowning. “Living with you?”

“The thing is,” Olivia said again, “she’s giving me the baby.”

Winnie could be counted on to tell Olivia she was crazy. To remind her that she was still in mourning, that she hadn’t even taken the step of sleeping with someone again, never mind adopting a baby. Winnie could be counted on to tell Olivia that their babies would be best friends. Little city babies, little New Yorkers. She could be counted on to say that no matter how it turned out—the kid could change her mind; Olivia could change
her
mind—no matter, it would be the absolutely right thing. By the time they were back in the car, headed home, Winnie was repeating all the fun baby things they would do together. The park on Bleecker Street, little high-tops in size zero.

When they pulled into the driveway, Winnie said, “Now we can do things like go to watch them light the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center and go to musicals. We’ll have a reason.”

Olivia was that much closer to getting this baby: Winnie understood. Winnie would help.

But they didn’t talk about the baby with Ruby. Instead, Winnie took a mango and kiwi tart from her big straw bag, and a pound of macadamia nuts, and they sat on the living room rug—Winnie, Olivia, and Ruby—and they ate until Winnie said, “It’s time.” Then she took a fat brown photo album from her big straw bag. “The husband,” Olivia said. “The house in Rhinebeck.”

“What’s Rhinebeck?” Ruby said.

Winnie took Olivia’s hand. “I made this for you,” she said. “These are all the pictures I had of you guys. It’s a good thing, I think—to remember the way it was.”

“You think I don’t remember?” Olivia said, but she stared hard at that brown album.

“I know it’s totally different,” Ruby said, “but it’s like my old dog, Rover. He got hit by a car, and for the longest time I slept with his little toys and stuff, and I wouldn’t let my mother throw away his dog dish because I had made it in school, in art class. And then one day, I like took out this picture of Rover and me, when he was new, just a little puppy, and it broke my heart, seeing him so little, and I kept thinking he only had like five years to live and he was so dumb and happy. But then I kept that picture on my bureau. You know, like in the corner of my mirror? And after a while, it didn’t make me sad. It even made me kind of happy.” Ruby considered this, then added quickly, “I mean, it’s like totally different, but you know.” Then she smiled, pleased with herself.

Olivia picked up the album and fingered it the way she used to touch that minicassette that held David’s voice. The power we give objects, she thought. What are pictures, after all? Flat. One-dimensional. Not even true representations of the thing itself. Tricks of light can blur faces or send red dots into people’s eyes.

Ruby’s voice rose above Olivia. She said, “I imagine him to be very handsome. Mysterious, even. Like Omar Sharif.”

“How would you know Omar Sharif?” Winnie said. “You’re too young to know Omar Sharif.”

“Oh please,” Ruby groaned. “That’s like saying I shouldn’t know about the Civil War, or Julius Caesar, or anything that happened before 1982.”

“Jesus Christ,” Winnie said, “don’t even tell me you were born in 1982. That is too depressing. Jesus.”

Olivia looked at the two of them. “He wasn’t particularly handsome,” she said. “Not really.”

“He wasn’t
not
handsome,” Winnie said. “All of his parts fit together nicely.”

“Not dark and mysterious?” Ruby asked, disappointed. “But he has to be. With a little mustache and piercing eyes.”

Olivia opened the photo album. “See for yourself,” she said to Ruby, but it was really a directive to herself.

At first, she couldn’t focus. But slowly, the faces and images became clear and Olivia realized she was looking at her own wedding. The silly Polaroids that Rex had taken that day.

“Wow,” Ruby said, “you look beautiful.”

She was right, Olivia
did
look beautiful in her wedding hat, her face so happy beneath it. There she was, smiling up at David, who looked right at the camera.

Olivia let her fingers drop to his face. She touched the flat laminated surface of his cheeks. So alive was he in this picture, she imagined her touch would settle on real warm flesh. But of course it was just plastic over paper.

“When I went to the hospital,” Olivia said, “I didn’t really look at him. I glanced. To be sure, you know. And even then he was clearly so dead. So not there.”

“You had to identify the body? Like on TV cop shows?” Ruby said, impressed.

Olivia nodded, keeping her fingers on
this
David, thinking how that other one, laid out in a cold room on a metal table, was just that:
the body.

Winnie began to turn the pages, to narrate what lay before them. There were other pieces of their lives: a New Year’s Eve party, the two of them walking through Washington Square Park, smiling over a pan of lasagna, nestled on their couch in their apartment on Bethune Street, and finally the two of them here, in Rhode Island, dramatically posed in each room like Disneyland tour guides.