by Lee Conell
“I’m not in any zone. I’m saying, in a no-shame way, that your clothes won’t fit me. I just have to go with the fact that I look frumpy.”
“It can be good to look frumpy. Not that you do look frumpy.”
Ruby touched the hem of her fraying skirt.
“If you’re aware that you’re refusing to occupy a traditional feminine space, Rubes, you actually create a powerful statement. If anyone says anything bad about your clothes, just tell them you’re being deliberately frump. What about your hair?”
“It’s deliberately tangled.”
Caroline smiled. “I could at least brush your hair.”
Ruby found a brush and handed it to Caroline. “Are you excited for the party?” Ruby asked, as Caroline moved behind Ruby and smoothed down her hair.
“Oh, I guess. I’ve honestly been feeling distant from a lot of people lately. I think the marble-spork-feature thing has made my friend Annabel and my friend Kirsten kind of weird and jealous.”
Ruby had met both Annabel (impressive botanical arm tattoo) and Kirsten (made short films without dialogue) a few times before, but Caroline still always talked about them as “my friend Annabel” and “my friend Kirsten,” as if Ruby had forgotten who they were. It gave Ruby the impression that Caroline was an ambassador from a faraway land.
“Speaking of the party,” Caroline said, “the terrace door is kind of jammed? Do you think you can ask your dad if he’d come upstairs?”
“You should call him,” Ruby said. “Call him and leave a message on his machine.”
“You can’t just tell him?”
“Leave a message. That’s one of his rules. No intermediaries.”
Caroline began to brush. Nobody had been this close to Ruby for such a sustained amount of time since John. She felt so grateful she became discombobulated. Their childhood selves and their adult selves seemed not so separate.
“Keep still,” Caroline said. “I’m trying to comb out this rat nest.” It felt like she was brushing out the neural tangles of Ruby’s brain. Was this what meditating was like for her father? Ruby felt an uprising of love for Caroline so intense, she had to take a deep breath. Her nose filled with the scent of tangerines. The smell came from Caroline’s shampoo, but it made Ruby think of the orange peels Lily would leave on her windowsill. When she exhaled, instead of staying silent, she whispered, “I let a homeless woman into the building today, Caroline.”
She had not meant to say a thing. Something about that swell of love, that tingling along her scalp—the confession had simply happened. Caroline stopped brushing her hair. She moved in front of Ruby, her eyes wide. “What?” she said.
“You can’t tell my dad, is the thing.” Ruby clutched Caroline’s hand. She tried to squeeze enough to express urgency but not enough to produce pain. “I buzzed this woman in. She said she was related to Lily.”
“Lily? Lily in 5A? Like, Lily who is dead?”
“Yes. She looked like Lily, and so I did it, I just buzzed her in. I just reacted. My first instinct was to help her. To get her warm.”
“Oh, jeez, Ruby.” Caroline scooted closer, her long face distending with something like wonder. “Is she still in the building?”
“I don’t know. I went to the lobby after with my dad and didn’t see her.”
“She needs help. We need to get her to some services if you think she’s really homeless. She needs external resources. Oh, oh, or we could reach out to my friend Andy. He lives right around here. Remember that guy from my last party? He sort of had a crush on you, I think.” Caroline put the brush down on the bed. “He takes photographs of homeless people, and he has them tell their stories, and one homeless guy went viral and a TV network gave him a house. I’ve been wanting to collaborate with Andy for ages.”
Ruby closed her eyes. She remembered Andy and she hadn’t liked him very much. Why had she told Caroline anything? It was like she’d restarted the kind of game that she and Caroline used to play together.
“Where’s the woman now?” asked Caroline.
“I think she left.” She must have, right? Ruby would have heard something if she was hanging around. Her father would definitely have said something.
“You think she left?” Caroline said. “Or you know? Are you sure she isn’t in the building still?”
Ruby touched her professional skirt. How stupid she’d been. She’d romanticized this woman just to make herself feel better. She’d let her into the building without thinking about helping her once she was inside.
“Don’t do that thing where you get all dazed, kiddo. Are you sure she’s not still here? Are you sure? If you let her in, it’s a little bit your responsibility to make sure she’s okay.”
She felt like her interview had already begun. A new panic cut into her.
Caroline said, “Have you checked out Lily’s old apartment? She could just be alone up there, surrounded by dust.”
“I don’t know,” Ruby said.
“Do you want me to check 5A?” Caroline asked. “I could go to 5A and see if she’s there, while you get ready for the interview.”
“I told you. She’s gone.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.” Sweat spread down Ruby’s back. “I didn’t follow her. I just know she left the building a little after I let her in. I saw her leave on the intercom.”
“That’s not what you said a minute ago.”
“Caroline, forget it.”
Caroline sighed. “You’re upset.”
“No, no,” Ruby said. “I think I just need to be alone, to compose myself before the interview.”
Caroline got up to leave. She turned at the door. “We’re okay, right?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Are you still coming to my party tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Even though John might be there?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Andy will for sure be there. We can tell him about the woman you let into the building? If we can find her, maybe he can take her picture. Maybe we can help her.”
If we can find her, if we can help her. Ruby shook her head. “The woman left, Caroline. I’m positive. Let’s forget I mentioned it. My dad would freak out if he knew.”
“I know things have been tense with your dad,” Caroline said. “I just feel bad for the woman.”
“Me, too, obviously. That’s why I let her in.”
“But then you forgot about her?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Caroline. I just need to be alone right now, before the interview.”
“Okay, okay. I get that.” She stepped into the hall, but then she ducked her head back into Ruby’s room. “I really feel like you’re mad at me, Ruby.”
“I’m not mad.” And to get her to leave, Ruby knew what she must do. She rose to her feet. She gave Caroline a hug. She said, “I’ll see you tonight, okay? Thank you so much for checking in on me, Caroline. And for getting me this interview. Seriously. I’m so grateful.”
After Caroline left, Ruby looked at herself in the mirror for a long time and tried not to think about Lily’s cousin, possibly in the building somewhere right this moment, lost, alone. She hadn’t seen the woman leave, but how, really, could she still be here? The building was full of people coming and going. If she had stuck around, someone would have reported her by now. Once more, Ruby appraised her interview outfit: her blouse with the buttons, her skirt, her tights, her flats. If she could own her frumpiness, like Caroline suggested, it might even seem expensive. She would try her best.
She said to the mirror, “I have always loved dioramas.”
She said to her own reflection, “There’s something really artful about them. Right? I think so, too. That balance between preservation and mystery, education and the creative force. My favorite? The antelopes. O
r the rhino. Or the hunting dogs. Or the blue whale. Which, yes, not technically a diorama. But I love the belly button addition. Oh, I just can’t choose one favorite. Every diorama presents its own specific delights.”
She said to the dark spit-smoothed arches of her eyebrows, “Oh, yes, I know I’m early. I always get to appointments half an hour early because, right, punctuality is so important.”
She said, “My grandmother gave me a book about dioramas, mmhmm. When I was very young. She died recently, yes. I miss her every single day. But I memorized the book. Mhm. Exactly. It would mean so much to me to work here. Because the legacy. Oh, wow. Yes. Health insurance? With dental, even? Oh my god. I mean, oh my goodness. Wow. Yes. Thank you so much. Would you believe I actually brought the book with me? For luck? Looks like it worked! Yes, yes, thank you, wow.”
Then she grabbed Lily’s copy—the library’s copy—Ruby’s copy—of Behind the Glass: A Chronicle of Habitat Dioramas and slipped it into her tote bag, in case it was a necessary prop for the scene she envisioned creating during her interview, which now was in about an hour. She glanced into the mirror one more time, and there was child-Caroline’s voice again. They have no place to go. The words repeating like one of her father’s mantras. Caroline, keenly aware of the treatment of what was deemed “disposable,” was right to admonish Ruby. The woman was not disposable, not expendable. She was Ruby’s responsibility now that Ruby had buzzed her in. Plus, if the woman was still here, if she made trouble in the building, or trouble for Ruby’s father, it would be Ruby’s own fault. If she wanted to feel less like a child, if she wanted to speak with authority during this interview even, she needed to follow through on her own decisions, the good ones and the dumb ones. She should figure out if the woman was still in the building before she headed to the museum. If she was here, Ruby would find a safe, warm place for her to go before her parents found out what Ruby had done.
* * *
—
The basement floor outside the apartment was slick, newly mopped, though her father was nowhere to be seen. Probably he was in the middle of some job upstairs. She ducked her head into the laundry room in case the woman had huddled there. Dryers spun, shirtsleeves flailed, skirts were upturned, but no human beings. The garbage room was also empty. Ruby was wasting her time down here. If the woman was still in the building, she would probably be in Lily’s old apartment, at least until the demo crew showed up and reported her.
Ruby pushed the elevator call button. But it was morning rush hour now, tenants leaving for work, childcare providers taking their young charges to school, and the elevator was slow in making its way down. If Ruby exited the fire doors by the garbage room, she could use a maintenance stairway from the basement’s courtyard to get to the street. But there was no stairway to the lobby from the inside of the basement itself. When the building was first built, the basement was seen as entirely separate from the upper floors, a site designated only for the boiler and coal delivery and the delivery of foodstuffs sent up the dumbwaiters. Some kind of architectural symbolism lingering from the late nineteenth century. The only way to reach the upper floors from the inside of the basement, even today, was the elevator. Because of an old idea about what this building should be, Ruby would never be able to power herself upward and out of the basement into the rest of the building on her own two feet.
At last, the elevator made it to the basement again. If the woman was in 5A, Ruby would declare: “Your cousin Lily said I was like a granddaughter to her. That means in a way, you and I are family. And I want to help.” Just rehearsing the words in the elevator made Ruby feel close to crying, but in a noble single-tear-down-the-face kind of way, the kind of way that would make Lily’s cousin trust her. Maybe she could keep the woman in her room somehow until her interview was over? Her father would be busy with building stuff all morning. After her interview, she would rush back and do just as Caroline had said. She would find this woman some external resources.
Ruby hadn’t been to the fifth floor since Lily’s death. When she stepped off the elevator, the ripe-onion aroma left from Lily’s many stir-fries was all gone. The demo crew had taped a plastic door with a central zipper over the entranceway to 5A, to keep out the plaster and dust. Ruby pushed the plastic aside. The real door was not only unlocked, but ajar. “Hello?” Ruby called. No answer from cat or human. She stepped inside. Well. What had she been expecting? Lily’s blue-and-brown-plaid couch, still covered in Mel Blanc’s cat hair? The orange peels everywhere? The scratchy rug? The lamps with the shades askew? The piles of videos and books and newspapers?
No books, no cat, no hair, no newspapers, no couch, no fridge, no rug. The demo crew had already gotten rid of most walls that weren’t load bearing. Instead of orange peels, orange extension cords snaked across the floor. Bare light bulbs hung from wires where the lighting fixtures used to be. Wooden molding and pieces of door trim were piled where the easy chair had sat. In every remaining corner, there were plastic bags filled with debris. “Lily,” she said into the empty space. “Lily?” Ruby would have promised some deific neighborhood creditor five dozen sessions of people-watching at Bethesda Fountain, a summer’s worth of sunny days with bagels in Riverside Park, all personal memory of light in her favorite Hopper paintings at the Whitney, and one-third of the Museum of Natural History’s dioramas, just to hear Lily’s voice fill that wrecked apartment for a single instant.
But nothing.
Her face had become wet. Ruby walked to the bathroom, looking for paper towels or toilet paper, but of course Lily’s bathroom didn’t exist anymore. The tub had been broken out, and half of the original subfloor exposed. Thin wood slats where there once had been tile. Yet at the edge of the tile still intact, there, there—a pink tissue.
So it had been just as Ruby told Caroline: The woman had come to Lily’s old apartment after all, but once she had witnessed its changes, she had realized she had nowhere to stay here. She had left the building.
A creak, a slam, the front door opening and shutting again. Ruby raced out of the gutted bathroom. Somebody screamed. A man. Four Jamaican guys, part of the demo crew, stood in the doorway. “I told you this place was haunted,” one of the guys joked to another, but he was glancing nervously at Ruby as he said it, like he thought maybe she truly was a ghost or at the very least a tenant who might find a way to get him in trouble. “Excuse me,” she said, ducking her head, and walked around the men and out of the apartment.
Back in the basement, she washed her face. Then she grabbed the tote bag with Lily’s diorama book and took a great steadying breath. It wasn’t healthy for her, being back here. Thank god for Caroline and Caroline’s connections. Today Ruby would get a real job, the kind of job with benefits, the kind of job that aligned perfectly with her own artistic interests and her educational background, the kind of job that kept her out of basements and out of destroyed apartments. She would get the respect she wanted from John, from Caroline, from her mother, from her father. She would pay off her debts and find a new place to live and at last have the space and stillness to make her own art. She would talk about her future projects without feeling presumptuous. She’d perfect a little sardonic smile that she’d wear any time she said something seemingly sophomoric—like “autobiographical dioramas”—and the smile’s self-awareness would undermine whatever sounded stupid in her words. She would begin constructing dioramas of moments from her life, her own human history. The dioramas would be beautiful and wonderful and strange.
But on her way down the hall to the elevator, she saw that the fire door to the courtyard was propped open with a brick. She hadn’t thought to look for Lily’s cousin in the courtyard—she hadn’t thought the woman would want to go back outside. Elbowing the fire door open a little more, Ruby stepped out. The air was still cold, but not so bad as it had been earlier that morning.
The woman wasn’t out there. Ruby’s father was. He stood next to the alleyway where he
dragged the garbage out in the evenings. On a ledge that belonged to the church next door was, still, the nest. Inside the nest, still, the two pigeons he had fawned over. The birds’ heads were tilted to the side. They watched Ruby’s father hard. He must have been standing out there for a while, watching them back, unable to move, to complete the task he had told 2D he’d finish.
Her father turned to see Ruby watching him, too. He said, “Your mom told me I had to do this. So.”
“Do you need help?”
He turned back to the birds. He raised the broom. He held his shoulders stiffly, close to his neck. He paused. He lifted the broom still higher. “I’ll tell you what Caroline’s dad in the penthouse made me do once,” her father said then. “When he had a pigeon problem. I’ll tell you what he made me do, Ruby.”
“Okay.”
“He put a sticky gel around the cracks where the birds were nesting.”
Ruby lifted her leg and scratched the back of her calf with her toe.
“Then a bunch of the pigeons got gel on their wings. They couldn’t fly. They were stuck. Caroline’s dad called me to hit the flopping pigeons with a two-by-four, put them out of their misery. I thought maybe a hawk or owl would get them, which happens sometimes up there, but no hawk got them. No owl. And the pigeons were starving. So I had to do it.”
Ruby could not look at him.
She looked up instead, to the roof of the building. She imagined the penthouse apartment, and Caroline back up there now, looking down on her.
“You still mad at me for before, Ruby?” her father said. “About the woman? You seemed really, really mad.”
“You had to kill those birds,” Ruby said to the sky. “I understand that.” She looked down again. “But you didn’t have to kick Lily’s cousin out today. It’s not the same.”
“You’re very well-educated.” Her father reached into his pocket and pulled out a key. He took Ruby’s hand and pressed the key into her palm. “This is for 2D’s apartment. So you can take care of her fish after your interview. We each have our tasks, right?”