Ruby (7 page)

“I work the eleven to seven today,” Denise was saying. She pointed at the Timex on her plump wrist.

Olivia nodded again. The woman did not want to waste time. Neither did Olivia.

“You’re her mother?” she asked.

“I hate to say yes, because who knows what trouble she’s in now. But yes.”

“When did you see her last?” Olivia asked, choosing her words carefully. All right, she thought, the girl is a real troublemaker. A bad seed. That really didn’t surprise her. The mother surprised her. But Olivia tried to get past that, to find out what exactly the mother knew, what she was willing to relinquish here.

“The day I walked into her room and saw that little bulging gut and knew she got herself knocked up, I said, ‘Get out here and talk to Bobby and me about that bun you got in your oven, and don’t be denying it.’ And she came out and started running off at the mouth about love and Ben and everything we didn’t know about everything. But you see, lady—”

“Olivia.”

“Olivia. Pretty name.”

Somehow, the way the woman said her name made Olivia want to jump into a hot bath.

“You see, Olivia,” Denise said, rolling all of Olivia’s vowels around her mouth, “I was there myself. All in love with Ruby’s father. Sixteen years old and stupid as a stone. My head was all full of love and sex and fairy tales. Then he left and I was stuck with a kid. Don’t get me wrong—I love her, but I didn’t know my ass from my elbow. We didn’t have a pot to piss in. My mother threw
us
out, we got the welfare and I used most of it to buy something to make me feel better. Beer or whatever.” She bent her head, embarrassed.

When she looked back up, she said, “Olivia. See, that’s a classy name. I didn’t even know how to pick a name right. Ruby sounded so highfalutin to me back then.” She laughed at her own foolishness.

“The thing is,” Olivia said, because she, too, was embarrassed by the woman’s talk-show story. She wanted to get to the point. “The thing is, Ruby is at my house, and she’s pregnant and needs some care. From a doctor and from an adult.”

The woman squinted at Olivia in the same way that Ruby had, sizing her up, figuring her out.

“And you want to be that adult?” the woman said.

“No. Not exactly. It’s just that she’s been sleeping in basements and—”

“Where’s Ben? Took off already? I think he’s got Ray beat there. Ray at least waited until Ruby was born and he realized he couldn’t stand the crying and the shitting and the spitting up.”

Now it was Olivia who sighed. The sun beating down on her back and head made her dizzy. That, and all the information she was getting about this woman Denise’s life, and about Ruby’s predicament. Olivia thought briefly about her own life, which seemed dull by comparison: the big brick house where she grew up, with its Oriental rugs and six-burner stove and parquet floors, the private school she hated and scorned, her dreams of escape, lying in her room reading poetry, sketching, playing her stereo too loud and burning incense. Olivia realized that until David’s death, she had not known unhappiness. Not really.

“Will you take her back? Help her out?” Olivia asked, hoping the answer would be no. How could this woman help Ruby?

Denise laughed, a short barklike laugh. “That’s why you came?” She laughed again, then glanced down at her watch. “Look, that girl is no good. She started fucking like a rabbit way before it was sensible, and I told her to get herself some birth-control pills, to use condoms so she didn’t get VD or AIDS or whatever, but she went ahead and did whatever she wanted. The drugs, the sex, the ‘nothing can happen to me’ attitude. I went there myself, and lady, it sucks. When the sex wears off and the high is gone, you got no money, no food, and a kid to boot. I wised up, and so will she.”

“But—”

“You think she needs some TLC, be my guest. Give it to her. In there, I got a husband and two boys who are all better off without a knocked-up wiseass kid to screw everything up.”

“I don’t want her so much as I want to help her,” Olivia explained.

“She’s in good hands, then, Miss Good Samaritan, Miss Holier Than Thou,” Denise said. “You got yourself a nice name and a car with New York plates and probably some good sense. God bless you.”

Before Olivia could protest, Denise slipped back inside. Olivia heard the door lock. She stood there a minute longer, not waiting for the door to open, but forcing herself to shape her plan. It was true. Olivia saw that now. She did not want the girl. What she wanted was that baby.

Olivia made the phone call from a phone booth at Big Ed’s, the local breakfast joint near the beach. She got the number from the Realtor, who was eager to sell the house. “I can’t wait to see what an artiste like yourself did with that little gem,” the Realtor said. An image of the wall flitted across Olivia’s mind. “Well”—she laughed nervously—“you’d be surprised.” Then she asked for the number of a good family lawyer in the area, and the Realtor happily gave her one.

“Time to tidy up affairs,” she’d said with forced sympathy.

The Realtor wore suits she bought from the Victoria’s Secret catalog and heels so high, they made Olivia feel off balance. Her nails, sharp and painted colors like coral or bright pink, drummed across everything she touched—the steering wheel of her Miata, papers that needed signing, her desktop. Olivia thought she could hear them drumming even now. She thanked her for the number and called the lawyer. The smell of bacon frying wrapped itself around her while she listened to the phone ringing in her ear.

“This is Ellen,” the lawyer said when she answered. “What can I do for you?”

Olivia had to speak above the breakfast noises to explain the situation. The old man at the grill—Big Ed himself? she wondered—listened and frowned.

“Well,” Ellen said, “in Rhode Island, a minor can consent to a private adoption if the father doesn’t object.”

What was it that Ruby’s mother had said? That Ben had taken off already? He wasn’t likely to object, Olivia thought. But still, she wanted assurance.

“Since ’95,” Ellen explained, “a father can assert rights and go to family court to acknowledge and prove paternity, or he can do it in writing if the mother doesn’t object. But he can also give up rights the same way.”

“It sounds so easy,” Olivia said.

“Private adoption is the way to go,” Ellen told her. “It
is
easy. Come to the office and get all the papers signed and you’re on your way.”

“On my way,” Olivia repeated. “Good.”

Big Ed scowled at her when she hung up. But Olivia didn’t mind. In fact, she sat at the counter and ate a Hungry Man’s Breakfast: three eggs, bacon, sausage, and three buttermilk pancakes. She paid and overtipped, then stepped outside into the bright summer day, moving toward home.

Of course, there was a moment of panic when Olivia imagined that Ruby was gone. Or that she was still up in the room where Olivia had left her, maybe dead or comatose. But in fact, Ruby was standing in the kitchen, eating Spaghetti-Os from the can, studying Olivia’s wall with great interest.

“I like it,” Ruby said when Olivia came in. She didn’t look at Olivia, just kept eating and staring.

“It’s just a crazy thing,” Olivia said, wanting to distract Ruby from the wall where the truth hung—David’s obituary was there, the newspaper story, all of it.

“That’s why I like it. I decapitated all my Barbies, you know, and then I stuck their heads in empty tuna fish cans, in plaster of paris.”

Olivia waited for an explanation, but none came.

“Where have you been?” Ruby asked, turning now to face her.

“Errands,” Olivia said.

“Like the post office and stuff?”

Olivia shrugged.

“I just got up,” Ruby said proudly.

Olivia decided that Ruby needed nutritious food, from all four food groups. “I was thinking we could go out to lunch. Are you still hungry?”

“Always,” Ruby said, grinning. “I eat tons and tons of food.”

“Good,” Olivia said. A baby needs protein at this point, she thought, for brain cells. Despite her Hungry Man’s Breakfast, Olivia’s own stomach felt empty and needy.

Ruby said, “You want to see something cool? If I drink a glass of real cold water fast, then lie down flat, the baby will kick like crazy.”

Before Olivia could respond—she wasn’t ready for the baby to kick!—Ruby guzzled a glass of water and dropped to the floor.

“Come here,” she ordered Olivia.

Olivia hesitated. Come here and what? she thought. She tasted bacon and syrup in the back of her throat. Sour.

“Quick!” Ruby shouted.

Olivia found herself scrambling to her knees beside the girl, suddenly eager for the baby’s response. She let Ruby guide her hand to somewhere on her big belly.

“There,” Ruby whispered, awed. “Feel?”

Olivia nodded, unable to say anything. All she could think about was what she was feeling.

Life.

Ruby watched houses. She walked with great purpose, sometimes making marks in a little notebook as she went. The houses did not seem to be in any special order. For a few days, she sat across the street from a plain bungalow in a development named Eastward Look. The house had aluminum siding, fake white brick along the lower third, a mailbox shaped like a lighthouse, and a profusion of marigolds growing in fat circles across the yard.

Then she watched a redwood and glass contemporary that was isolated down a dirt road next to the seminary. After that, it was the stone guest house of one of the mansions that sat perched on rocks above the ocean. And then she returned to Eastward Look and watched a small Tudor-style home with a playhouse in the backyard that was an exact replica of it. Ruby watched all of these houses, made notes in her notebook, then moved on.

The first time Olivia saw her doing it, at the bungalow, she had wondered if Ruby was planning to rob the house. She had imagined her making note of when the family was away, their daily routine, the possibilities of the goods inside: big-screen TVs, video cameras, fine jewelry.

But her pattern wasn’t consistent with that, Olivia realized. She didn’t watch them in a way that would allow her to know the family’s comings and goings. And she never went to the windows to look inside. She just sat at a safe distance, sometimes halfway smiling as she watched, sometimes her lips moving as if she was telling a story to someone.

Once, Olivia looked for that notebook. But Ruby always carried it with her. What could the girl possibly be doing? Olivia wondered. She was convinced there was an ulterior motive, and that it was not a good one.

Ruby sat on the low wooden fence that ran across the yard of a house kitty-corner to the one she was watching. That one,
hers,
was painted a happy yellow with green trim and shutters. There was a tangle of bikes of all sizes in the driveway, and tomatoes growing plump and red on vines in a fenced-off square in the side yard. Olivia watched Ruby watching, saw her scribble in her notebook, frowning in concentration as she wrote. The house was on a road that was a good shortcut to the beach, so it seemed natural that Olivia might be walking past, even though she had followed Ruby here, had watched as she headed carefully to this spot and took her place on the fence that gave her a clear, uninterrupted view of the yellow house.

“Hey,” Olivia said, “funny meeting you here.”

Ruby squinted up at her, suspicious.

“How did you find me?” she asked, closing her notebook firmly and holding on to it.

Olivia shrugged. “I don’t know. I was going to take a walk on the beach.”

The girl was still studying her in a way that made Olivia feel caught. She sat beside her on the fence and then she, too, had a good view of the yellow house.

“Cute, huh?” Olivia said, nodding her chin in the direction of the house.

Ruby turned her attention back to the house, too.

“Do you know what I think?” Ruby said. As usual, she didn’t wait for an answer. “I think the owners went to Brown or somewhere like that. And the mother, she played field hockey and the father played lacrosse and they got married outdoors somewhere, under a big striped tent, and there were lots of hors d’oeuvres, fancy ones, not pigs in a blanket or anything wrapped in bacon, but something else, like maybe baked cheese. You know they do that. They wrap it up and make the crust all fancy, with little leaves or something on it, and they bake it and you spread it on little pieces of bread. And I think they worked hard at solid jobs, maybe in a bank or someplace, and then they had three children in a row, all boys, and the mother stays home and makes sauce from real tomatoes and maybe even her own pasta.” She looked at Olivia, blinking. “You can do that, you know. In a special machine. Cut out different shapes and everything. I saw it on the Home Shopping Network.”

Olivia laughed. “Now how do you figure any of that just from sitting over here looking at a house?”

Ruby shrugged and then got off the fence. “Have fun at the beach,” she mumbled.

“Do you want to come?” Olivia asked her.

“Got to go,” Ruby said.

As Olivia watched her walk away, she couldn’t help but think that somehow she had disappointed Ruby.

She gave the girl a hat, a pale pink straw hat with a short brim and a top that resembled a muffin. It had a black ribbon around it that ended in a triple loop. Olivia had named the hat “Nicotiana.” It was from her flower series; she named all of her hats.

The girl took it reluctantly. “A hat?” she said. “I don’t know.” She twirled it around and around in her hands, studying it.

“I made it,” Olivia said. “That’s what I do. I’m a milliner.”

That seemed to worry the girl even more. “A milliner?”

“That one is called ‘Nicotiana.’ It came in a light blue, and off-white, too. I have series, you know. This was from my flower series.

“Like nicotine?” Ruby said, brightening.

“Yes.”

“Cool,” she said, and put it on.

It was really the wrong hat for her. Pink was a bad color on her, and the small brim made her face look too round and too big.

“Perfect,” Olivia said.

Ruby went into the tiny lavatory downstairs and stared at herself in the mirror. “God!” she gushed. “It’s great. It’s so cool. Sophisticated, huh? Don’t you think?”