by Cara Malone
Jade gave Ruby a look that bordered on ridicule. After a few seconds of consideration, during which time Celeste appeared in the doorway, her beachy waves flattened into glossy golden plaits, Jade said, “I don’t know, Keeping Up with the Kardashians?”
“Cute,” Ruby said, rolling her eyes.
“You ready?” Jade asked Celeste, walking over to the door. As they headed out of the office, she called over her shoulder, “Have a good night, sis.”
“You too,” Ruby said, leaning her head against Max’s shoulder. She said, “Sorry babe, I tried. She’s not much of a reader.”
“Thanks,” Max said. Ruby’s effort with Jade hadn’t gone unnoticed – she’d asked her sister about her favorite book because it was Max’s go-to question to get to know people. Most of the time, the answer offered a glimpse into the person’s personality, and Jade’s joking refusal to take the question seriously did just that.
Ruby asked, “Should we go into the den and find a movie to watch?”
“Sure,” Max said, following Ruby out of the office.
The den was a large, cozy room branching off from the foyer. It was secluded, with a pair of big, plush leather sofas and the biggest wall-mounted television Max had ever seen. They curled up on the couch together beneath a fuzzy blanket that was completely unnecessary for the season. Ruby found Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and put it on, and after a few minutes of cuddling together without any signs of activity from upstairs, Max slipped her hand beneath the blanket. Ruby was anxious about it, her eyes glued to the door instead of the television, but she didn’t stop Max from sliding her hand into her panties.
***
The next few days were like carbon copies of each other. During the day, Max and Ruby went into the city and checked out famous landmarks – everything from the museums to the zoos and, of course, the public library – and in the afternoons they floated lazily in the pool, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by Jade and Celeste.
In the evenings, they ate dinner with the family and Max managed to contribute to the conversation here and there, particularly when Lorna asked her about her plans after grad school and when Lamar asked about what her parents did. It was too anxiety-inducing to talk for long, though, because Max was always worried that she’d say something stupid and screw it all up again, so she stayed silent most of the time.
By no small miracle – and quite a bit of silence – Max managed to avoid making any further gaffes, although she also hadn’t mustered up the courage to talk to Lamar about the engagement ring. It wasn’t until Friday, two days before Max was scheduled to take a bus back to Granville, that her next challenge arose.
Lorna had planned a welcome home party for both of her daughters for that night, and Max had been dreading it ever since she learned about it midway through the week. If she had trouble carrying her end of the conversation around a dinner table, a party environment would be ten times worse.
Most people took for granted the amount of unspoken interaction and non-verbal cues that went into a simple backyard party with a handful of friends. Max knew from watching Ruby in social situations that some people were actually capable of recharging their batteries with the energy from others, but for Max a party full of strangers just felt like sinking into quicksand. The more she tried to fit in, the more hopeless it seemed, and the more people she had to talk to, the harder it was to keep from shutting down.
Of course, the pressure to be sociable and charming was intensified by the knowledge that it could very well be Max’s last opportunity to win over Lorna and Lamar. Just because she’d kept her mouth shut for the last few days and made a practice of avoiding them didn’t mean she was any closer to feeling comfortable enough with them to ask for Ruby’s hand in marriage. Far from it. Perhaps if Celeste weren’t there, modeling the ideal house guest in a way that Max could never replicate, she wouldn’t feel quite so out of place, but the truth was that the longer she stayed in Chicago, the more certain Max was that she and Ruby were from totally different worlds.
She woke up on Friday morning determined to give it one last college try, though. If she failed miserably, then at least there was a bus waiting for her on Sunday. The house was atypically busy that morning. Most days, everyone split off and went about their separate business right after breakfast, but today Lamar was the only one to leave for work. Lorna wasn’t rushing off to the restaurant and even Jade and Celeste took a day off from their city adventures to help get ready for the party.
Lorna’s cleaning service came to do a deep clean of the whole house, despite the fact that it was Max’s understanding that only the back yard would be used for the party, and after breakfast, everyone had a task to do. Lorna assigned them all, and Max was dismayed to hear her sending Ruby and Celeste out to the patio to decorate, while she would be staying in the kitchen to help her prepare the food. The thought of being alone with Lorna for so long struck fear into Max’s heart, and she thought that Lorna was far too intimidating to allow her to come up with anything charming or interesting to say.
Before she went outside with Celeste, though, Ruby pulled Max into the foyer and said in a whisper, “I told mama you would love to help her with the prep work. I figured it would be a good chance for the two of you to bond a little more, and I know you’ve been wanting that.”
“Thanks?” Max said, already feeling her heart rate beginning to rise at the idea. “Can’t you stay inside and help with the food too?”
“Just relax, babe. You’ll be fine and if you need me, I won’t be far away,” Ruby said, leading Max back into the kitchen where Lorna was piling bag after bag of fresh vegetables from the refrigerator onto the island. “Mama, are you ready for your new sous-chef?”
Lorna paused with a bundle of carrots in her hand and said, “Sure. Max, do you know how to julienne a carrot?”
Max just stared at her, wondering if she’d made that word up as some kind of test, and Ruby jumped in to help her. She said, “She can if you show her. Max is a quick study.”
“Okay,” Lorna said, setting the carrots down and digging back into the fridge for more. “Or maybe you can just cut some into sticks for the veggie tray.”
Lorna set Max up with a cutting board and a knife, and Ruby went outside to start hanging paper lanterns and string lights on the patio by the pool. Max focused on the carrots, peppers and celery that Lorna piled in front of her. Lorna was moving busily around the kitchen, seeming to be working on a handful of dishes all at once, and Max couldn’t think of a single thing to say to start the small talk. Would it be rude to try when Lorna was obviously putting all of her attention into the food?
Max was grateful that at least the task she’d been assigned had a specific set of instructions – something like decorating the back yard seemed to have an infinite number of possible configurations, but as long as all her veggie sticks were roughly the same size, the task was done correctly.
While Lorna was still zipping around from one end of the kitchen to another, and before Max had come up with anything to say, Jade joined them and she felt a bit of relief at no longer carrying the burden for making sure the conversation flowed.
“Here, pumpkin,” Lorna said, passing Jade a brown paper package that she unwrapped to reveal a few pounds of steak. “Cut that into cubes so we can make kebabs.”
Then she came over to check on Max, inspecting the progress of her veggie sticks and pointing out a safer way to hold the knife, and then she said, “So Max, Ruby tells me you were a sociology major in undergrad. That’s pretty close to Jade’s program of study, right?”
And with that, the ice had been broken. It was as good a point of entry as any, but Max never quite knew what to say during small talk, or when she’d answered a question satisfactorily. It seemed like most of the time she gave answers that were too abrupt, or else she rambled on long after most people would stop. When it was her turn to ask a question, she never knew what it should be, so she made it a general practice to avoid small talk all tog
ether. But Ruby was right – this was an excellent opportunity for bonding – and so she determined to give it her best effort.
“Psychology?” she asked. “Well, yes, they’re generally housed in the same academic building, so you could say they’re close.”
Lorna laughed, and Max thought this was a good sign. It was better than some of the other reactions she’d elicited this week, anyway. In truth, Max had about a dozen different arguments for why sociology and psychology were on opposite ends of the human behavior spectrum – a lot of people confused her for a psychology student when she was in undergrad – but she didn’t want to risk saying something that might sound derisive, so she let them both take it as a joke.
“Sociology is more about group behavior, right?” Jade asked as she cubed the meat on a cutting board at the opposite end of the island.
“Yes,” Max answered. “Psychology is about looking within, while sociology is more focused on the way people interact with each other.”
“And why did you choose that as your area of study?” Lorna asked.
Max didn’t particularly enjoy this question, although she’d heard it a lot in her four years as an undergraduate. The truthful answer was that she believed it was the best subject for her to study in order to understand the world around her. She thought that if she studied human interaction, she could understand it better, if only on a clinical level.
But explaining all of that often necessitated a discussion of Asperger’s Syndrome, and while she would probably have to talk to Ruby’s parents about it eventually, she really didn’t want her first week with them to be punctuated by a frank discussion of the ways in which her brain was different from a neurotypical person’s. She didn’t want that to be the lasting impression she left on Lorna and Jade, and Lamar.
So instead, she said, “I thought it would be more economically viable than psychology since I didn’t want to get a doctorate to practice, and I didn’t want to teach.”
That was the stock answer that she always gave before when she didn’t want to be drawn into the full explanation – which was almost never – but this time she was talking to someone who actually was studying psychology, and the way Jade’s face changed into a look of mild horror, Max guessed that she hadn’t considered that yet. Of course not… because it wouldn’t be an interaction with Ruby’s family without Max saying something offensive to one of them. Jade was so young, just finished with her freshman year, that she probably hadn’t even considered her post-graduate options yet.
“So Lorna,” Max said quickly, “what’s your favorite book?”
“Umm,” Lorna said with a long pause. Max wondered if the change in subject was too abrupt, but eventually she answered, “I think I’d have to go with the obvious answer – the Bible.”
None of them talked for a few minutes as Max turned her attention back to the veggies, stealing glances outside every now and then to watch Ruby hanging lanterns around the pool with Celeste. The conversation started up again soon, with Lorna asking Jade for details about living on the west coast, and what the Berkeley campus was like, and how her classes were, and Max listened politely.
She was tired of the small talk game already – she always lost – and neither of them seemed to mind that she kept to herself, chopping vegetables while they caught up on each other’s lives. Max didn’t belong here – not yet, maybe not ever – and for the moment, she was okay with it. She’d made a decent effort to socialize, and now she could melt into the background for a while.
She’d need to save her energy for the party, anyway.
CHAPTER 7
Ruby came inside after she and Celeste finished decorating the patio, curious to see how her little experiment of throwing Max and her mother together had gone. She thought that if she stepped out of the way and let Max fend for herself, she might do better than she thought.
Max was still standing where Ruby left her earlier, done with the veggie tray and working now on dicing apples for her mother’s famous ambrosia salad. Ruby wondered just how many people her mother had invited – the volume of carrot and celery sticks on the platter in front of Max seemed excessive, but at least it gave Max something to focus her attention on.
Ruby let her hand graze across the small of Max’s back as she walked behind her, then she went over to the refrigerator to retrieve a water bottle to combat the heat outside. She asked, “How’s it going in here?”
“Good,” her mother answered. “We have a little more prep work to do and then the food will be ready for the grill. Your girlfriend makes a very dedicated sous-chef.”
“Oh yeah?” Ruby asked, feeling proud.
Max didn’t look particularly comfortable, and Ruby decided to rescue her from kitchen duty soon, but from what Ruby had spied through the kitchen windows while she was hanging the lanterns, it looked like the three of them had managed to bond a little bit after all.
“Look at those veggie sticks,” Jade said, pointing at Max’s completed work. “They could be in a magazine.”
“Wow,” Ruby said. They really were exactingly cut, all of them uniform and neatly stacked. “Looks like you discovered a new talent, babe.”
“It just takes concentration and the standard amount of manual dexterity,” Max said with a shrug as she picked up the last apple on the counter in front of her.
Ruby grabbed one of the finished carrots and took a bite just because she knew it would rile Max up to touch her pristinely piled veggies. Then, grinning, she turned back to her mother and asked, “How many people are we expecting, anyway? This looks like enough veggie sticks to supply an entire elementary school with its afternoon snack.”
“I’m expecting fifteen,” her mother answered, ticking off the guests on her fingers. “There are the four of us, plus your father, a couple of our friends, Celeste, a few of Jade’s friends from high school, three of yours, oh, and Megan.”
“Megan’s coming?” Ruby asked.
This was news to her and she glanced over at Max, hoping that she wouldn’t think Ruby knew about this all along. Her mother usually had more tact than to invite her ex-girlfriend to a party with her current girlfriend. Max wasn’t looking at her, though. She was focusing on that last apple, taking far too much time to cut it up and add it to the ambrosia bowl.
“Yeah,” her mother said, looking at Jade and then at Ruby. “I just figured-”
“Mama, could you help me find the tablecloths?” Ruby asked abruptly, before the conversation could go any further in front of Max. “I can’t remember where we keep them.”
“They’re in the hall closet like they always have been, butterfly,” her mother said, but when she caught the direction of Ruby’s gaze, nodding significantly at Max, she washed her hands and followed Ruby.
Ruby set the water bottle down on the corner of the island and gave Max a quick, chaste kiss on the cheek, a familiar act that she’d done a thousand times before and which she hoped would reassure her now. She’d already seen how jealous Max could get when Megan came to visit Ruby last fall, and she didn’t want to go down that road again just because her mother made an error in judgment with the guest list.
As soon as they were out of earshot of the kitchen, Ruby hissed, “Why would you invite her?”
“Whoa,” her mother said, raising her hands defensively. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. Didn’t you tell me yourself that the two of you ended on good terms in the fall?”
“Yes, but being on good terms isn’t the same as wanting her at a party that my current girlfriend is going to be at,” Ruby said. She didn’t even think something like that would need to be stated – her mother was ordinarily a lot more socially conscious than this. “Max tends to get jealous sometimes, and she and Megan do not have a very good track record.”
“I’m sorry, butterfly,” her mother said. “I guess I wasn’t thinking about all of the guests involved. Should we disinvite her?”
Ruby sighed and checked the time on her phone. The party was going
to be starting in under two hours. “No, it’s a bit late for that. You really should have asked me about this first though, mama.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “What do you want me to do to make it easier?”
“I don’t know,” Ruby answered. “I’m going to go talk to Max about it.”
“Okay,” her mother answered, and as Ruby headed back to the kitchen, she called, “Hey, don’t you need those tablecloths?”
“No,” Ruby called back. “I brought them outside a while ago.”
***
Ruby brought Max outside with her to help set up the bar, filling ice buckets with bottled beer and making sure that all the tumblers were clean and ready to go. While they worked, she told Max, “I had no idea Megan was on the guest list. I’m sorry, I thought my mother had more sense than that.”
“Is she still coming?” Max asked.
“Yes,” Ruby said. “I thought it would be too rude to disinvite her so close to the event.”
Max seemed grudging about this, but she recognized that there was nothing to be done at this point so she agreed to Ruby’s plan.
“You know there’s nothing left between me and Megan, right?” she asked. Max gave her an unconvinced look, and Ruby added, “If I had my way, she wouldn’t be at the party tonight, but she will be so I need you to know that Megan and I are ancient history. I only have eyes for you, babe. Please tell me you believe that.”
Max sighed, but in the end she relented. “Yes, I believe you.”
Ruby gave Max a long, deep kiss that she hoped would underline her words. Then she said, “We’ll just mind our own business if you want, and I’m sure she can talk to Jade and Celeste. They seem to have struck up a friendship this summer.”
Secretly, though, Ruby hoped that she could persuade Max to talk to Megan at some point during the party – it seemed like a lot of Max’s jealousy stemmed from the belief that Megan still wanted Ruby back, and as far as Ruby was aware, that was not the case. She thought that if Max could just have a conversation with Megan, she’d see that there was nothing threatening there, and that in any case, Ruby had zero interest in Megan after their awful breakup.