R
ight after the accident, nobody worried about Sylvie wanting to stay at home. People could understand her fear of driving, of getting in a car even. They gave her her space. Room to grieve and to breathe. But months went by, winter came, and still she wouldn’t go anywhere unless she absolutely had to.
She couldn’t work, couldn’t listen to the urgency in the women’s voices as they waited for their babies to come, the excitement and the fear. She used to pride herself on being able to measure how dilated a woman was simply by talking to her on the phone, but now their voices only reminded her of what could be lost. She could no longer make that long trek toward uncertainty in the middle of the night; she realized how many times she had tempted fate and felt both fortunate and foolish. And so the women who had counted on her to bring their babies safely into the world stopped calling. Rumors circulated, she was sure, that she’d had a breakdown. That she’d lost her marbles. But what they couldn’t understand was that it wasn’t
grief
that confined her. It wasn’t her sadness or sorrow that made her shun the rest of the world. They didn’t know that seclusion began long before Jess and Ruby were even born.
People wonder if she is lonely. This is what Gloria would ask when she still came by. “Aren’t you lonely?” she would say, fear and tenderness and frustration in her eyes. But the answer wasn’t simple. Perhaps the question should be, rather, are you
lonelier?
Yes, she lives a secluded life here. Indeed, she has opted to cloister herself in this small house by the river, but is she any more isolated than she once was? Probably from an outsider’s perspective. The prevailing assumption is that if one is surrounded by people that one is not alone. But even then, even all those years when she was never physically by herself, she was beginning to feel the chasm growing between her and the rest of the world. It was like a small tear in the seam of a dress, a certain pulling away. A ripping. And once it started, there was no stopping it. Of course, she tried so hard to keep it together, to tether herself to the world. She filled her life with people. With friends and family. But even then she knew that the mere presence of people in one’s life cannot eliminate the terrifying sense of one’s aloneness in the world. Being surrounded by people is not the same as connection. As friendship. As love. When Robert came along, she believed for a little while that she had found the answer, the bridge that crossed the deep canyon. And the children too became links between herself and normalcy. The accident didn’t start it, it just proved the faultiness, the tenuousness of these connections.
But that bridge is gone now. Robert and Ruby are gone. Jess is gone.
And so
yes,
she is lonely. She feels that ragged tear where she once ripped herself away from the rest of the world every day, though its violence has faded into a dull aching reminder. But she is not any lonelier than she was before she sequestered herself.
There is no verb form for the word
recluse.
There is only the noun. And it is she. A woman who is tired of being terrified and finds little solace, even in the confines of her own home.
Reclude.
That is a verb, but it is the exact opposite of what it sounds like. To reclude means to open. To
un
close.
Recluse. Reclude.
A door that swings two ways. One way opens to the world. And the other shuts it away.
T
he girl listens to Nessa.
For the first time in so long (months, years, lifetimes?) someone seems to hear her. To
want
to hear her anyway. Because the words remain trapped inside. But this little girl sits patiently, her face as wide open as a flower, and Nessa wonders if she might wait forever to hear what it is that she has to say.
The girl came to her with a backpack filled with food. She offered Nessa sandwiches, grapes sweet and plump on their branches. She held the Thermos to her lips and helped her drink, as though she were a child herself. The milk ran down her chin as she gulped and gulped. It was cold and thick and delicious.
She is still ravenous, each bite inspiring her hunger rather than appeasing it. She feels like she could eat forever. Her mouth fills with a flood of tastes: salty turkey, sharp cheese, sweet tomatoes. The bread is thick and soft and good. She eats cookies and a dark ripe plum. Drinks more milk, wipes her face with the back of her sleeve.
“My name is Ruby,” the girl says finally, when Nessa takes a break from gorging herself. Breathless from the wild chewing and swallowing. She offers Nessa her hand and Nessa looks at it in wonderment.
Her whole life has been made up of hands. People have always wanted to touch her. “The way you want to touch a painting in a museum,” her mother used to say. At first she said this with pride, but later she said it with a hint of something else. Something bitter. By the time she was a teenager, her mother seemed disgusted by it, by this need Nessa inspired in people.
Even as a child, she remembers people touching her. Her hair, mostly. Gripping her chin. Touching her back and tickling her feet. As she grew older, people were more able to control this impulse, knowing that it was less acceptable to reach out and stroke the hair of a young woman than it was a little girl. But she could see it in their eyes, this desire, this urge to hold on. Because beauty is an elusive thing. It comes and goes. She has always understood that it is fleeting, and she doesn’t blame those who wanted to capture it. She pities them instead for believing that the ephemeral can somehow be contained. She, of all people, knows this is a foolish endeavor. But here is this girl reaching out for her, though oddly she seems to want nothing in return.
“My mother lives in that house, the one across the river,” she says.
Nessa nods. The house where she hurt her foot, where she stole vegetables.
The girl pops a grape into her own mouth and chews solemnly. She reaches into the backpack again and pulls out a bottle. She unscrews the top and shakes two pills into her tiny palm. “Here, take these,” she says, handing her the pills and the Thermos of milk. “It’s just Tylenol. It will make your foot feel better.”
Nessa accepts the pills, remembers vaguely the list of things she is not supposed to eat, drink, or swallow because of the baby. No sushi, no alcohol, no aspirin. She pops the two dry pills in her mouth and swallows them with another cold rush of milk.
“Do you want me to help you with your foot?” the girl asks.
Nessa nods. Because of the baby, she can barely even see her feet anymore. She tried to examine the damage the trap had done, but felt light-headed when she bent over. She knows that it is cut, swollen. Damaged, maybe even broken.
“I took a first aid class at school,” Ruby says. “It was just for PE, so I don’t really remember much. I mean, I can do this. But I probably couldn’t do CPR or anything.”
Nessa sits with her feet out in front of her, and the little girl slips off her thick sock. The entire top of her foot is swollen, and her toes look like sausages too. Her toenails are long. She can’t remember the last time she clipped them. Her ankles are filthy and there is thick sludge between her toes. She is embarrassed, but the girl does not even flinch. Instead, she pulls a bag of ice from the magical backpack. Most of it has melted, but it still feels wonderfully cold on Nessa’s foot, which seems to be radiating heat now, even without the thick wool sock on.
“Your big toe is cut a little bit,” Ruby says. “I brought some first aid cream and a Band-Aid. But I think they might be broken. I don’t know how to fix that.”
Nessa looks at the little girl tending to her feet and is overwhelmed with gratitude. With bewilderment. Where did this child come from? Who sent her here? She wants to ask her questions. She is curious about so many things. If she could, she would ask her why she looks so sad. Because despite the fact that she is still just a child, her face and eyes look older. Wiser and more wounded and wearied than they should. She would like to ask her what happened that changed her. But as she wraps the Band-Aid around her toe and then a soft Ace bandage around her foot, it’s as though she is swaddling her, and the words are also wrapped somewhere inside.
It is quiet inside the shack, though outside there is a bird calling over and over again, its overture ignored. Still, it shrieks out again and again, as though mere repetition will demand a response.
The girl hands Nessa a handful of dried apricots, and she puts them in her mouth. The fruit is thick and sweet.
“My brother died,” the little girl says suddenly, as though Nessa has actually spoken the words she’s been thinking. “He was only seven.”
Nessa’s eyes widen.
“My mom is really sick, she won’t leave the house, but my dad wants us to move away. And my best friend is mean now.
Really
mean.”
Nessa battles the tears that are welling up in her eyes. She remembers the waitress at the diner. It couldn’t be, she thinks. This couldn’t
possibly
be the midwife’s daughter?
“But I’m going to build a bridge,” the girl says suddenly. And her face brightens. All that sadness seems, for a moment, to slip away. She reaches into her backpack and digs through one of the pockets. “Do you want to see?” she asks, and Nessa leans forward. This, this movement toward instead of away, her
Yes.
“Look,” she says, and suddenly her face and voice belong to that of a little girl again. An excited little girl. This is the sound of hope, Nessa thinks.
“This is the Ponte di Rialto in Venice. That’s in Italy. Isn’t it beautiful?”
Nessa leans forward again.
Yes.
Her fingers touch the photograph. The white stone bridge with the portico in the center. The impossible architecture of it. The beauty is astonishing.
“It burned once. And then it collapsed while people were watching a parade on it. But they rebuilt it again and again. Nobody expected it to last, but it’s been used the last four hundred years. It’s a miracle.”
No, she thinks.
This is the miracle.
Right here.
S
he is Ruby’s secret. This new friend. Her name is Nessa. She wrote that down for her. She doesn’t know how she wound up in the woods behind their house, she only knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s there. That it’s her job to protect her.
Ruby hates to leave her there alone and hurt, but she has to go into town before Izzy and Marcy get out of swimming lessons. She needs to get the plans she and Izzy made for the bridge. She can’t do anything until she has the designs that Izzy started on the computer. Not if she wants to win the contest. She hopes that if she gets to her house early enough, that Gloria can help her.
She doesn’t even bother going inside her mother’s house again. She just goes around to the front yard, gets her bike, and rides away. She imagines her mother watching her as she pedals into the misty morning. She squeezes her eyes shut for a second and thinks about the bird, its entrails bleeding through the morning paper.
The wind is furious today. It seems to be trying to knock her off of her bike. She thinks about her father, about the storm. She doesn’t let herself imagine what will happen if their trip home is delayed, if she has to stay here once school starts. And then she realizes how selfish she is being. That her Uncle Larry’s house could be in danger. They studied hurricanes in fifth grade. She remembers the pictures of all the destruction. She tries to recollect the science behind the devastation, the simple combinations that create a storm that wreaks such havoc.
When she gets into town, she rides past the entrance to the pool but doesn’t even bother to look through the gates for Izzy. It’s only ten, she and Marcy will be there for another half hour. She knows that they are probably giggling and sharing a towel in the chilly morning air. She imagines they are wearing their matching sunglasses from the fair yesterday. She needs to get to Gloria first.
She drops her bike in the driveway in front of Miss Piggy and then thinks that maybe she should pull it around to the back so Izzy doesn’t know she’s there. She walks it around Grover’s car and leans it against the back fence railing. She can hear somebody in the kitchen, and so instead of going to the front of the house, she knocks tentatively on the back door.
“Ruby Tuesday!” Izzy’s Dad, Neil, says, opening the door wide. He’s still wearing his pajamas. Since school let out he’s let his beard grow too, and he looks like Sasquatch. He’s six and a half feet tall. He used to give her and Izzy rides on his shoulders, and they had to duck so they wouldn’t hit their heads on the ceiling.
“Come in, come in,” he says. “I just made some babies.” He gestures to the giant Dutch pancakes that are his specialty. They look like cartoon pancakes, giant puffy things cooked in cast iron skillets. They are Ruby’s favorite.
“Where’s Izzy?” he asks. “You guys done with swim lessons already?”
She shakes her head and sits down on one of the stools at the counter, which is covered with junk mail and dirty dishes. “I quit swimming lessons.”
“Oh,” he says and slips a Dutch baby onto a plate. “I see.” He pushes the plate in front of her. “Raspberries? I just picked them this morning.”
She nods, and he drops a handful of berries onto the pancake and dusts it with powdered sugar. He hands her ajar filled with warm syrup, and she drizzles it over the pancake. She knows she should ask about the bridge plans and leave before Izzy gets back, but she is drawn to the familiarity and warmth of this kitchen.
“Are you meeting Izzy and Marcy?”
She shakes her head, and he scowls. He sits down next to her with his own pancake and smothers it in berries and sugar and syrup. He looks toward the doorway and then leans in conspiratorially. “If it’s any consolation, I’m not much of a fan of Marcy Davidson’s either.”
She feels a smile creeping across her face despite herself, and she sighs.
“Ruby!” Gloria says, swinging the back door open. She’s been in the shed throwing pots. She’s wearing her overalls that are covered with clay and glaze. “They hardly even need me to stand up,” she always joked.
“I know you don’t have a TV up at your mom’s, but have you listened to the news about the storm at all?”
“My dad called,” she says. “They’re getting ready for it.”
Gloria grabs the newspaper off the counter and flips through, searching for something. She gets to the weather and points at a map of the U.S., a comma-shaped orange-and-red-and-blue blob moving along the East Coast.
“They’re expecting landfall this weekend. In the Carolinas and then moving up the coast. I hope they’re not planning to drive through this mess,” she says, shaking her head.
Ruby nods. And then she thinks about the girl in the shack. The shack whose roof is caved in. There’s no way she can stay dry in there. For a moment she feels like she should say something to Gloria about her. To tell her about the girl. But then she stops herself. Nessa doesn’t want anyone to know that she was there. She made that clear.
“I’m sure your uncle has been through this before. They’ll be fine. But we’re going to get some wet weather up here. Maybe even some flooding. Do you guys have any sandbags?”
Ruby takes a mental inventory of the shed. Plywood, tools, the broken lawnmower. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, I can get some extras and bring them up to your mom.” She pauses. “Would that be okay? If I brought some by?”
Ruby is quiet. She thinks about the signs her mom made, and the look on Gloria’s face when she pulled up to the house last night.
“I’d like to see her,” Gloria says.
Ruby nods and takes another bite of her pancake so she doesn’t have to speak.
“I’ve got to turn the heat up on the kiln in about a half hour. But if you hang out, I can give you a ride back home and drop the sandbags at the same time. Sound good?”
It doesn’t sound good, not at all, because in a half hour Izzy and Marcy will be back. But she doesn’t have much of a choice. She stays in the kitchen with Gloria and Neil until she hears Izzy and Marcy coming through the front of the house. They are laughing as they enter the kitchen doorway, but when Marcy sees Ruby, she crosses her arms and frowns.
Izzy says, “Hi,” and then stands there like she’s found an alien at the counter eating her dad’s Dutch babies instead of her oldest friend in the world.
“Hi,” Ruby says, and then, because she knows that with Izzy’s parents there she’ll be safe, she says, “I just came by to get the bridge designs from your computer. I was hoping you could print them out.”
Izzy’s face goes white the way it always does when she’s starting to panic.
Marcy says, “What bridge designs?”
“Um, Ruby and I were partners for the contest. Before, um . . .”
“Oh,” Marcy says dismissively and rolls her eyes.
“Marcy and I have actually decided to be a team,” Izzy starts, her face going from white to red, and she stutters. “You know, since she’s staying here and everything. It’s just easier, you know, like because she’s already here and because it’s coming up so soon.”
“We were working on it all summer!” Ruby says, feeling anger welling up inside of her. “For two whole months. Those are
my
ideas.”
Gloria says, “Maybe the three of you could be a team?”
Ruby shakes her head and looks to Neil for help, and he nods. “Izzy, you can’t just take the plans you and Ruby worked on together. If you and Marcy are a team, then you have to start from scratch. But I don’t really see why this is necessary, if you and Ruby have already done so much work . . .”
“Forget it!” Ruby says, and she feels like if she doesn’t get out of the house, she’s going to cry. “I’ll just do it on my own. Take the stupid plans.” She realizes that in eleven years, she’s never ever yelled at Izzy. Not even once. It feels awful. It makes her whole body ache.
“No,” Neil says, shaking his head. “Izzy, go print out what you’ve got right now.”
But Ruby is already grabbing her backpack and walking out the back door, wondering how this all backfired and where she should go from here. She hears their muffled voices inside and then Gloria is coming out the back and putting her arm around her. She resists but then leans into her, unable to refuse this small comfort.
“She’s being terrible,” Gloria says. “I’m so sorry. I’ll talk to her.”
Ruby shakes her head. “Why? It’s not going to change her mind. You can’t change people’s minds.” And suddenly she is overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness. She thinks about her dad wanting to move them away, about her mom refusing to leave the house, about Izzy and Marcy. People will do what they want to do. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. And now, here is Gloria wanting to go see her mom.
Gloria picks up Ruby’s bike and puts it in the back of her truck. “We’ll stop by the hardware store and get some sandbags on the way. Okay?” And because Ruby knows that nothing she says matters at all anymore, she just nods. And as they drive out of town toward the hardware store, she tries to imagine the sort of bridge Marcy Davidson would come up with. She’d probably want to bedazzle it. Ruby thinks of her sparkly cell phone cover, and snorts. Marcy Davidson is about the worst partner Izzy could possibly choose. She cheats off her neighbor’s papers and even copies during art. She’s got about as many original ideas as that mama raccoon.
The raccoon. Shoot! She still hasn’t spoken to the people at Animal Control. But if the girl is the one who tripped the trap, then that means the mama raccoon is still out there somewhere. While she still has reception, she dials the number for Animal Control and explains about the trap, about the mother, the babies on the porch. They say they can’t come out until tomorrow. When she hangs up, she leans against the window of the truck and watches the trees grow thick around them.
“I’ll get you those plans, Ruby,” Gloria says as they finish loading sandbags into the back of the truck. “I’m so sorry she’s being such a pill.”
“Whatever,” Ruby says. “It was a stupid idea anyway.”