She’d smiled and opened the door. See you in six months.
“Do you and Grace want anything from the café …”
Six months. Half a year. When exactly would that be over? When exactly was that last appointment?
“Sounds like you’re having fun …”
I’d have to check my calendar, my notebook. Where was my notebook?
I always kept the notebook handy. So I could write things down. Important things like meds, exercise, sleep. My neurologist’s mantra. See you in six months.
How long is six months?
“Ruby?” Mark had a hand over the receiver and was smiling at me funny. “What are you searching for so intently?”
I looked down, saw my hand inside the bag. “Nothing,” I said, and curled my fingers into my palm, slowly drew my hand out. “I was just seeing what’s in here.”
Wrong answer. I could see it on his face. Six months might have ended yesterday.
“I mean, I packed in such a hurry, I wasn’t sure…” Wrong again. The girls brought it. Remember that, remember that. I picked up the underwear and socks, stuffed them back in the bag. “I need to go.”
“I’ll call you back,” Mark said into the phone. “Ruby, where are you going?”
“Canoeing.”
I hadn’t known that before I said it, but it made sense. A nice long paddle always set things straight, set me straight.
Mark threw back the sheet. “You’re going out this early?”
“It’s not early. It’s late.” I stuffed in the toiletries and the hair-brush. Pulled on my shoes.
“A nice long paddle,” I said, and got to my feet, swung the bag up onto my shoulder. It felt good there, as it always had. I walked with it to the door, wondering why I hadn’t used it in such a long time. And where it had been. And how Grace had known exactly what to put inside.
Except for the pills. Where were my pills?
In the bathroom. Secret pills. Shhhh. Don’t tell Grace.
“Ruby, wait,” Mark said.
I stood perfectly still in the doorway, studying the hall in front of me. Three doors, a potted plant, and a window with pretty ruffled curtains.
“I’ll go canoeing with you,” he said.
I could hear him dragging on jeans and zipping them up while I searched for the way out. Door number one, door number two, door number …
“Wait for me downstairs,” he called.
Stairs. Of course. Right there at the end of the hall. Idiot.
I headed over with renewed purpose. If I could just get outside, then I could find my way home, I was sure of it. And when I got home I would swallow my pills, grab my paddle, and go canoeing. And all would be well again. Meds and exercise. Meds and exercise.
I went down the stairs.
“Ruby.”
Mark was only a few steps behind when I reached the bottom. I stopped again. More doors, more furniture, more pictures that meant nothing. The burning question: How to get out?
“Over there,” Mark said softly, pointing to a big wooden door with a brass handle.
The front door.
“I knew that,” I said, marching across the foreign living room with its red tile floors and slippery area rugs. I grabbed the brass handle and pulled. Stepped out into a yard smelling of cinnamon and overrun with Russian olive and honeysuckle. “Needs pruning,” I muttered, and followed the stone path to the gate.
As soon as I was on the other side of that gate, things started to come together again. The city was to my left. Home was the other way, over the bridge. I looked back at the house. I recognized it now. It belonged to someone I knew. But why was Mark sleeping there?
I heard the ferry horn, bringing the hordes over again. Soon, the lagoons would be too crowded for a good fast paddle, and that was what the doctor ordered today.
“Ruby, wait up,” Mark called. “I’m coming with you.”
“Coming where?”
“Canoeing, of course.”
“You hate canoeing.”
He smiled and closed the gate behind him. “I used to hate canoeing. Today, I’m ready to love it.”
I started walking. “If you think I need company, you can think again.”
He managed to keep up, but was limping slightly and breathing heavily. “My desire to pick up a paddle has nothing to do with you. If last night taught me anything, it’s that I’m out of shape.”
That much was true. He had never been fat and flabby when he lived with me. It was good to know he was trying to do something about the problem. But what had happened last night? Why was he limping?
I walked faster. Over the bridge, turn left. Heading for familiar territory. I needed the peace of the water and the work of the paddle. And meds. Mustn’t forget the meds.
Once I had all of those, I would try again to think, to remember what had happened. I just needed to hold on a while longer.
Turning the corner onto my street, I broke into a run. Not a jog, a run that left Mark far behind and shouting my name. I didn’t stop. He’d catch up. He always did.
I drew up short at my gate, flipped the latch, and walked into a garden party. Not a big one. Just three women with towels on their heads sitting around my birdbath sipping coffee from my mugs and eating muffins. I recognized most as clients.
A horrible heat moved through my entire body, right down to my fingertips. Dear God. I’d forgotten all about them.
“Ruby, darling, how are you?” Audrey DeSanto called, and twiddled her fingertips at me over the rim of her cup. “Didn’t expect to see you today.”
I walked toward them. “I’m as surprised as you are.”
To Audrey’s left, Marla Cohen laughed and said, “You are such a card. By the way, Grace is doing a great job.” She shucked off the towel and ran her fingers through her hair. “And that bird she saved? No one can believe it survived the night. She’s definitely got the touch.”
What bird? What touch? What was she talking about?
To her left sat Judy Vanlith—a scowl on her face and a muffin bottom in her hand. “Ruby, you know I don’t like to complain.”
“But you will,” Marla said, and got to her feet. “I need more coffee.”
When Marla was halfway to the front door, Judy started again. “I don’t like to complain, but if I’d known you wouldn’t be working today, I wouldn’t have come. I have to be out by noon and she hasn’t even started the cut yet.”
“I understand,” I said. “I’ll have you on your way as soon as possible.”
Laughter, music, and women’s voices came at me from inside the house. Behind me, Audrey DeSanto started telling knock-knock jokes, trying to jolly Judy out of her bad mood. Knock-knock. Who’s there? How should I know? I couldn’t even think with all this racket. And somewhere in the yard a bird was singing and singing and singing.
“Ruby,” Mark called. He was at the gate, saying hello to my clients, making his way to where I stood, lost.
“You poor dear,” Audrey said to him. “We heard all about what happened. I can’t believe Liz would do such a thing.”
Liz? What did she have to do with anything? I hadn’t seen her in over two years. Not since Grace came home after the trial.
A girl with stop-sign red hair burst through my front door. “Daddy,” she called. “You should see what Grace and I found at the lighthouse!”
That yanked me out of my stupor. What had they found? And was it inside my house?
“Over here,” she said to him. “See? We found a cage and made a nest inside a box.”
Cage, box. What the hell was going on? I pushed past her to the stairs, swung back the door, and tried to make sense of the scene in my kitchen at least.
Two women on my couch, reading magazines and eating more of those muffins. Another leaning back over the sink and a third finishing her coffee at my workstation while Grace cut her hair. And everywhere at once, it seemed, was Mary Anne in one of her long skirts and ridiculous off-the-shoulder blouses, pouring coff
ee, serving muffins, and flapping her hands like a bird.
The women called out hello one after the other. Hi. How are you? Welcome, welcome. As though I was the unexpected surprise and not them.
“Mom,” Grace said. “Where’s Mark?”
Music came at me again from somewhere. The CD player on the shelf. But it was the wrong music. Too loud, too fast. Completely, utterly wrong.
“Ruby, sweetie,” Mary Anne said. “Good to see you. How are you feeling?”
She kissed me on the cheek and held out a cup. “I saw you at the gate, so I made a cup of tea.”
I ignored her and went straight to Grace. “What’s going on? Why didn’t you call me?”
She looked confused. “You said you didn’t want to work today.”
I shook my head. “I would never say such a thing. Never. What are you trying to pull?”
Grace’s cheeks pinkened and the women hushed, and somewhere outside that bloody bird kept on singing and singing.
“You told me last night,” Grace insisted. “You said you were going to stay and take care of Mark and that you’d be too tired to work this morning.”
That was why I was at his house, in his bed. To look after him and his aching knee. That made some sense, but the rest of Grace’s story was impossible. “Did I also tell you to handle everything on your own today?”
She looked down at the floor. “No. You told me to cancel the appointments.”
I drew my head back. “I what?”
“I swear it’s true.” Her eyes were bright and shiny. Any second now the lying bitch was going to cry. “You sent me home to call everyone and cancel.”
“She’s telling the truth,” said the girl with the stop-sign red hair. “I was there and so was my dad.”
I stared at the girl. The one who had stolen something from the lighthouse. Hidden it here in my home with Grace.
“Mom?”
I spun around. Pulled back my hand. Slapped that lying bitch right across the mouth. Watched her face crumple. The tears fall. If Mary Anne hadn’t grabbed her away, I’d have smacked her again. “I don’t know what you’ve cooked up here,” I said to Grace. “But it is about to stop.” I snatched the scissors from her hands. “Get out. I can’t look at you right now.”
“Ruby, it’s okay,” the woman in the chair said. “She does my hair every week. She knows what she’s doing. And she’s doing a great job.”
“A great job?” I had to laugh. “Look at this place. There’s water all over the floor. Hair everywhere. And what kind of music is that? This is Chez Ruby. We play Big Band here. Benny Good-man, Artie Shaw. Not this, this, drivel.”
“Ruby, really,” one of the couch potatoes said.
“It’s okay,” Grace said. “I understand. She’s been sick. She had cancer.”
The couch potatoes said, “Oh my.” Mary Anne’s eyebrows shot up and the woman in the chair said, “You poor thing.”
I looked over at Grace. “What are you talking about?”
“Mom, I know,” she said. “I know.”
I shook my head, punched a button on the CD player. Blessed silence. Except for that bird. I pointed the scissors at the window. “Will someone kill that thing?”
“Mom, please,” Grace whined, and I turned on her.
“Just answer me this. If I did tell you to cancel the appointments, then what are they doing here?”
“I didn’t think it would be good to cancel. I thought that if they just came I could—”
“What? You could what? Handle my shop alone? Make it Chez Grace for a day? Who were you kidding? You’re not capable of it, Gracie. Not for an instant. Do you hear me?”
“Ruby, put the scissors down.”
I turned, saw Mark in the doorway. “I can’t,” I told him. “I have work to do.”
“No, you don’t. We’re going canoeing, remember?”
“I can’t go anywhere now. I have clients. Grace can’t handle this alone.” I looked around. “Where’s my notebook? I need my notebook.”
“I don’t know about the notebook,” Mark said. “But I do know that Grace is doing okay on her own.”
I stared at him. “Mark, look around. She’s made a mockery of everything. And she’s taking too long, she always takes too long. Judy needs to be out by noon. She’ll never make it.” I turned to the woman in the chair. “What’s your name?”
“Ruby, it’s me,” she said. “Joannie from Algonquin Island.”
“Do you need to be out by noon?” She shook her head. “Then get out of the chair. Call Judy. Tell her to get in here.” I swung around to the women on the couch. “The rest of you … I don’t know. I’ll figure something out. But right now I need my goddamn notebook.”
Mark put his hands on my shoulders. “Ruby, give me the scissors.”
Maybe it was the way the silence suddenly pressed in on me or the looks on the faces all around me. I don’t think I’ll ever know what stopped me, what made me come back to the moment. But for some reason, I was acutely aware of what I had just done.
My daughter was outside, crying. My best friend was on the verge herself, and my clients—women I’d known for years, women I considered friends—were staring at me as though they’d never seen me before. They were right. They hadn’t. This was the new Ruby. Big Al’s girl. And she was down by more than a few points.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly and handed him the scissors. “I’m so sorry.”
Sweet, wonderful Mary Anne put her arms around me. Turned me away from all those accusing eyes and rounded mouths. “It’s okay,” she said. “You had a really rough night. It’s no wonder you’re a little tense.”
Avoid stress. Meds, exercise, sleep. Please God. I needed to sleep.
Another woman from Algonquin Island appeared at the door. This one I knew.
“Don’t get upset,” Mary Anne said. “I called her. She’s here to help.”
It was Lori, who worked at a salon in the city. Lori, who wanted to open her own place here on the Island. Lori, who was my worst nightmare and had somehow become the cavalry.
I had to laugh. It was that or cry and Grace was doing enough of that for both of us. “I’m sorry,” I said again.
Mary Anne waved a hand. “No more of that,” she said, guiding me past Lori to the door. “You take yourself canoeing. We’ll talk later.” She lowered her voice. “And Ruby, we will definitely talk later.”
I nodded and let her pass me off to Mark. “I have to kill that bird,” I told him as we stepped outside.
“Later,” he said, and for the first time in my life, I let myself be led away.
LIZ
The last time I woke to the sound of cartoons, I was nineteen years old and married to Antony Andreou. We’d only known each other six weeks when we decided it was meant to be—and the announcement of our engagement was equally appalling to both families. While his mother wept for days over the tragedy of a son brought low by the siren song of a barbarian, Ruby assumed the whole thing was about her—one more way for me to thumb my nose at her lifestyle, her choices, her many, many sacrifices.
She couldn’t understand that my decision to marry Tony had nothing to do with spite and everything to do with a match made in heaven, love at first sight, two hearts colliding—all of those wonderfully romantic notions that can still make me sigh if I’m ever dumb enough to turn on Sleepless in Seattle, or Ever After, or any of those made-for-women movies that offend me deeply on one level and are irresistible on another.
I can’t explain this weakness other than to say that I was young and impressionable when Mark moved in with us. Maybe it was the way he looked at my mother, or the way he defended her even when she was wrong, or the fact that he wasn’t afraid to say “I love you” out loud and often that made my little girl’s heart believe in charming princes and happily ever after.
Poor Grace was equally afflicted, and even though my mother’s fairy tale ended with Mark’s bags at the ferry dock and every lock on our house chan
ged, it was too late for either of us. The damage had been done. We were full-blown romantics, and when I said “I do” at City Hall, promising to love, honor, and spend my life with Tony, I meant it. How could I have known that Scooby-Doo would turn our love into to a lie?
The problem was that while Tony was prepared to fight for the right to marry the woman he loved, he saw no reason to fight the offer of a free room in his parent’s basement. We have to buy a house, right? Houses cost money, right? So we move into my old room, you finish law school while I go to work, and in five years, bam, we got a down payment. Makes sense, right?
It might have if not for the big TV in Tony’s room.
In all the weeks leading up to the wedding, no one had ever mentioned the fact that his five-year-old brother, George, had been eating breakfast and watching early morning cartoons on Tony’s television every day since he was born. I know for a fact that this omission had nothing to do with subterfuge and everything to do with being Greek, because if his mother had foreseen any difficulty in our future, she would have told me about it the moment her baby boy presented the barbarian slut as his intended.
The reason no one mentioned George’s little ritual was because no one saw it as a problem. Not even Tony. You have to get up for school, right? I have to go work, right? So where’s the problem? Unlock the door. Let the boy watch the TV.
Even if I refused, Georgie had his own controller and at 5:30 A.M. on the dot, the fat little bastard would flick on the TV, crank up the volume, and wait while the Flintstones or the Freakazoids or Scooby Doo came blasting into our room. Rets ret roing, reryrone.
The little shit knew he had me because not only was that television huge, it also had a five-speaker sound system and a subwoofer that could make your chest hum. The moment Scooby opened his mouth, I’d sit bolt upright, Tony would leap out of bed, and his mother would start stomping on the kitchen floor above us. What, are you crazy down there? Let him in before we all go deaf.
The few times I unplugged the goddamn television, the kid stood outside the door and howled like I’d cut off his arm or something. Which of course brought everybody down those stairs in seconds, all of them hollering and pointing fingers at the selfish bitch. I didn’t stand a chance in that ten-by-twelve-foot hellhole.
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