Mothers and Other Liars

by Amy Bourret

  This furniture business just sort of happened. She made a changing table for Lark from a garage-sale desk, then some patio chairs for the Ms’s anniversary and a lamp table for Rosa, a stylist at the salon, from the pieces of an old armoire. Then requests started coming in from friends of friends of friends. Her most popular deck chairs are a simple assemblage of the scraps of wood left over from other projects.

  On a regular day, working the flea market makes Ruby’s head spin. Today it is in danger of flying off into the stratosphere. Thoughts are fireflies flitting around inside her skull, tiny explosions bursting here and there and there, like the ones she caught as a child and put in a mason jar next to her tall, narrow bed, watching them in the dark until her eyelids were leaden. She deals with customers on autopilot—yes, she makes them herself; yes, they are reclaimed wood; that one there she made from a dining room set she found in an estate sale down in Lincoln; yes, she takes custom orders—while she bashes a useless net around the inside of her head, trying to capture the panic of fireflies.

  What should she do? How can she live with herself if she doesn’t come forward; how can she live without Lark if she does? She spots Beer Barrel Pete ambling past her booth. Pete, with a face of desert wood and a waterfall of silver hair down to his waist, is a flea-market fixture and purveyor of all kinds of goods, mostly illegal. Passports, she thinks. Pete helped Ruby out before; she’s sure he would do it again. Maybe Mexico is the answer. Jay has friends and connections down there. Maybe she and Lark could just disappear, start over.

  Could she make a new life for them on the run, always looking over her shoulder? Would that life be better for Lark than the alternative? What will happen to Ruby? Lark, Ruby, Lark, Ruby. How will either of them survive? What will they each look like when—if—they reach the other side of this long, dark tunnel?

  Ruby understands the marrow-deep determination of that other mother, who never gave up hope. She has that same mother-tiger determination to protect Lark. All morning, she has kept one eye on her daughter, an ear listening for a frantic bark from Clyde. Watching for a suit-clad arm trying to grab Lark from the booth.

  NINE

  When the tide of people ebbs in the afternoon, Ruby and Lark take a break. Ruby spreads an old quilt on the ground behind Jay’s trailer, and they have a picnic in the dust. After Chaz left last night, Ruby fried chicken in the cast-iron skillet. She made potato salad, giving herself a mini-facial in the steam over the stove. The brownies got an extra squeeze of chocolate syrup. And this morning before she woke Lark, she tucked their lunch into the neoprene cooler that staves off botulism so much better than the old wicker basket.

  Every moment, every gesture, of these days cries for ceremony, not knowing how long they will last. Toasters come with guarantees, not life. A person never knows when a building is going to crumble to the ground around his ankles or a bus careen around a corner to flatten him like a cartoon character. A person never knows when her daughter is going to be snatched away, shattering her life as surely as bricks and tires.

  Lark tears off a piece of chicken, tosses it toward Clyde. He nabs it out of the air, jaws snapping shut like one of those fly-catching plants. The food hits his stomach without touching his mouth; now you see it, now you don’t.

  “Mmm,” Lark says through a mouthful of chicken. “Almost as good as Nana’s.”

  Ruby swats at her leg. “And just how would you know, seeing as how you never tasted Nana’s chicken?”

  “That’s what you always say.” Lark shrugs. “Like you’re trying to steal her ribbon from the county fair.”

  Ruby just shakes her head at her wise-beyond-years daughter—and the truth of the statement. All these years and it is still Nana’s pan and Nana’s recipe. “It’s not a competition, baby bird. I’m just trying to do her proud.”

  Lark unloads a heaping forkful of potato salad into her mouth. “Mmm…” She giggles, but her potato-salad smile doesn’t fill her big brown eyes, doesn’t even reach them. She’s definitely putting on a show.

  Leaning back on her elbows, Ruby decides just to soak up the moment with her daughter. Maybe Lark’s memory will hold on to a crumpled edge of this picnic. Maybe even if she doesn’t remember this particular day, a warm, sepia-tinged feeling will wash over her when she picnics with her own daughter someday.

  God only knows what is going to happen to her and Lark, but just for now Ruby wants to be selfish and proud that her wonderful sprite is the product of moments like this, moments spent with Ruby.

  “Aunt Wonnie!”

  Lark’s cry yanks Ruby from her ruminations.

  “Hey, Larklette. What’s the deal, pickle?” When Antoinette plops down on the quilt, Clyde jumps up to greet her. Ruby and Lark both manage to grab their lemonade cups; only the potato salad container and a couple of brownies are trampled in the excitement. “Fried chicken. Fancy.”

  “Yeah,” Lark says. “Mom’s trying to bribe me. She just hasn’t told me why.”

  Ruby busies herself, brushing brownie crumbs and clumps of potato salad into her napkin. She averts her eyes from both her daughter and her best friend.

  “See what I mean, jelly bean?”

  “I see nothin’,” Antoinette says. “I know nothin’.”

  “Then you, Aunt Wonnie, are as blind as my pet bat.” Lark’s nickname for Antoinette comes from her thinking that when Antoinette first introduced herself, like so many other grown-ups, she was telling Lark to call her “Auntie” something. Their banter comes from years of the three of them taking road trips around the state in search of wood for Ruby’s furniture.

  “Speaking of blind,” Ruby says. “How was your date last night?”

  Lark whistles. “Must’ve been real good for you to come out to the flea market to dish about it.”

  Antoinette laughs. “You, Miss Sassy Pants, are getting entirely too sassy for your pants.”

  “But you hate the flea market,” Lark says.

  “Well?” Ruby asks.

  Antoinette shoots Ruby a look. “If only I was blind.”

  “Beauty’s only skin deep, Aunt Wonnie. Skin deep.”

  Ruby knows Antoinette is not referring to her date. She digs a newspaper sleeve from her tote bag, holds it out to Lark. “Take Clyde on poop patrol.”

  Lark stomps to her feet. “You always make me miss the good stuff.”

  Ruby points her thumb over her shoulder. “Go. Then it’s back to work for the both of you.”

  As she and Clyde step around the trailer, Lark calls out over her shoulder, “Tyrant. They have child labor laws, you know.”

  TEN

  This restaurant down off Guadalupe is one Ruby usually avoids. A favorite of hotel concierges, it teems with tourists, though she can’t understand why anyone would come to Santa Fe, green chili capital of the universe, to eat Italian. The cavernous glass-and-tile space is crowded and loud, especially on a Saturday evening. But Chaz decided they needed something different, festive, so here they are.

  Lark points to Ruby’s water glass. “The book says you have to drink lots of milk.”

  Ruby only recently told Lark about the baby, after she commented on Ruby’s blossoming bustline. Ever since, Lark has been reading pregnancy manuals in between Harry Potters. Now she makes a big production of slurping her Coke—Coke that Ruby can no longer drink. Ruby knows Lark is trying to get a rise out of her. She is tired from the flea market. She is hungry from the wait for their table. She is nine.

  Ruby is not very good company right now, either. Chaz asks, “Would you like an appetizer?” and she thinks, What should I do? Chaz says, “How was the flea market?” and she thinks, Antoinette didn’t buy my anniversary-of-Nana’s-death story one bit.

  The plate of antipasto is vibrant against the white tablecloth, like a Santa Fe garden in June. When she first moved here, she had to get used to the unending sea of brown, brown hills Dalmatian-dotted with scrubby piñon bushes, brown roads, brown adobe buildings. Yet Ruby soon appreciated the subtl
e gradations of brown, and found her craving for color sated in little slashes—lilac bushes heavy with blooms like grapes in a vineyard, windows blue-trimmed to keep evil spirits away.

  As she thinks about going to jail, more than hard-core inmates or lack of privacy, the thought of gray walls, gray floors, gray food makes her feel as if her blood is puddling at her ankles. Ruby could face years in prison. A lifetime without Lark. And she doesn’t even want to think about what will happen to the baby inside her.

  Ruby breaks off a chunk of bread, dabs it in olive oil. Her daughter picks at a salad, which Lark insisted she wanted even though she rarely eats greens. While Chaz makes conversation. He’s trying to be sweet, really, the nice dinner, paying special attention to Lark.

  Catching his eye, Ruby smiles an “I love you.” He squeezes her thigh, his eyes answering, “I love you more.”

  Chaz doesn’t talk much about his work, especially not in front of Lark, and tonight is no exception. But, like the dishes at the kitchen window across the restaurant, he has plenty of topics all lined up. Sports. Sports is always a good one. Lark is a sports fan. He talks baseball stats, he talks football preseason. Lark just moves lettuce around on her plate, and Ruby bites into another piece of bread, a less painful way of biting her tongue.

  The waitress takes away the antipasto and Lark’s uneaten salad before serving the main course. As she sets a plate in front of Chaz, her arm seems to go out of its way to brush his sleeve. She is pretty, the waitress, young, thin. Reminding Ruby that she is not so young, or so pretty, and very soon will be bigger than the table. Chaz smiles up at the girl, one of his Chaz specials, and the waitress’s face flushes. Reminding Ruby that her boyfriend is handsome and gets hit on regularly in this man-starved town. He’s a consummate flirt, harmless, Ruby trusts. And at least for now, he’s her flirt.

  Ruby chokes down her chicken parmigiana. Chaz tried to cajole her into ordering the fish special, said that omega-3 is good for the baby, that she needed the protein, until Ruby cut him off with a look that could fell redwood. Then she switched from pasta to the chicken, a boneless breast to throw him a bone. At least the restaurant, despite the chef’s special, doesn’t smell fishy. She hasn’t had any weird cravings yet, but strong odors send her running to the john these days.

  Chaz and Lark, she notices, each have their own technique with their spaghetti; Chaz is a cutter, Lark a spinner. Yet they both end up slurping noodles in the end. Ruby thinks there must be something profound in that one, that no matter what, everyone has to slurp noodles in the end. But she is much too tired for profound right now.

  Chaz leans back in his chair, looks from Ruby to Lark to Ruby. “Let’s just run away.”

  The clatter of Ruby’s fork against her plate echoes across the restaurant. Her mind-reading boyfriend has just voiced the thought that has been screaming in her head all day. “You would…could you really?”

  “Sure.” Chaz grasps Ruby’s hand. “You, me, one imp, and an imp-to-be. Las Vegas, baby.”

  “The real Las Vegas,” Lark says.

  Chaz nods. “The real one. And after, we can do it all over again proper, with Father Paul and my folks.”

  “Two weddings!” Lark squeals.

  Ruby’s rib cage collapses against her gut. Chaz is joking about eloping, not talking about forever running away. A couple of thin gold bands won’t solve her mess.

  Chaz looks down at Ruby’s belly. “They’re going to figure it out eventually.”

  “I can just stay away,” Ruby says.

  “Right.” Chaz chuckles. “As if that won’t raise questions when you don’t show up tomorrow. Or the next, say, twenty Sunday dinners?”

  Chaz’s family is tight-knit, Catholic, Hispanic. Four generations of mamas have ruled that roost from the same casita on a narrow lane off Canyon Road. They are everything Ruby isn’t, yet they have embraced her, and Lark, in their elbow-to-elbow, something’s-always-cooking family. But they don’t know about the baby.

  Ruby wonders how embracing the Monteros will be when they find out she’s pregnant. Not to mention her other little bombshell.

  ELEVEN

  Early Sunday morning, Ruby steals into Lark’s room, whispers to Clyde to keep her daughter safe. Then she slips out of the house. The sun hasn’t yet burned away the haze of dawn as she walks down the hill, and the air still holds on to the coolness of night.

  The doors are open at the little Episcopal church. Ruby pads down the red-carpeted center aisle and slides into a pew. The few times she and Lark have attended this church, Ruby felt an unfamiliar comfort in the repeated ritual, as if, like the mountains, the ritual gave her something to which she could cling. And she desperately wants to find some of that comfort today.

  Growing up, Ruby and her grandparents attended the Congregational church in their Iowa town. Ruby remembers Nana running off with boiled chickens to prepare funeral casseroles in the church basement, or disappearing Tuesday mornings to the ladies’ auxiliary. Her grandfather and Nana each had their own Bibles. On summer evenings, they sat on the wicker porch chairs reading them side by side.

  Then after her grandfather died, Nana sort of lost interest in the church. She didn’t seem mad at God; she still prayed and quoted to Ruby from her Bible all the time. Ruby figured she just couldn’t bother to put on her Sunday best anymore.

  Ruby didn’t mind. She believes in God all right, but she’s not sure she believes in organized religion. Over the years, she and Lark have visited many of the churches in town. They have gone with the Ms each December to the Our Lady of Guadalupe church for its namesake saint’s festival, arriving before dawn to a chain of farolitos and a candlelit sanctuary. They have never missed attending a Christmas or Easter service somewhere. They have even attended a Jewish Seder. She wanted to expose Lark to as much as possible, then let her decide her own beliefs, rather than cram any one denomination down her throat. Especially when Ruby herself has felt closer to God on the mountaintops than she ever has in a pew.

  But here, today, she finds herself craving all the organization she can get. As she bows her head, she’s not even sure what to pray for. Yet she can’t help feel, or hope anyway, that maybe God will hear what ever prayer that surfaces a little better in this quiet, sacred place.

  She is still trying to formulate the words of a prayer when a black-robed pastor stops beside the pew. “Can I help?” His tone is soothing.

  “I don’t know,” Ruby whispers.

  The pastor sits down beside Ruby, folds his hands in his lap. The heavy silver cross he wears on a chain around his neck gleams red, like an omen, from the sunlight that ripples through the eastern stained-glass window. This man is not the elderly rector Ruby has seen here before; he is young, not more than Ruby’s age. His patient demeanor is disarming.

  “What if someone has done something that they didn’t think was so wrong at the time, but turns out to have been very wrong to other people? What would God say to that?”

  “We Episcopalians don’t undertake confession as the Catholics do. Here, your confession, and your forgiveness, is between you and the Lord.” The pastor pauses, rubs the cross at his chest, as if it were a rosary, as if maybe he wasn’t sure those mackerel snappers, as her grandfather used to call the Catholics in their town, didn’t have the right idea after all. “Just remember that the Lord always forgives. Always.”

  One of Ruby’s fifth-grade classmates used to tell playground stories about catechism, which the Catholic children attended every Wednesday night for a whole year. Ruby thought it sounded like a pretty good deal: once a week you sit in a booth and tell a priest your transgressions. If you haven’t done anything bad that week, or maybe if you don’t want to say what you did do, you just say something minor, like that you had bad thoughts about your parents. And voilà!, you were absolved of everything, clean as the day you were born, all for a few Hail Marys and a lecture from a screen-shrouded priest.

  The pastor stands, places a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. She t
ries to channel his goodness, his grace, from his fingers, through her shirt, and into her skin. “I’m here, if you want to talk.”

  After he leaves, Ruby stares into the middle distance. It clings to her like the odor of mothballs on wool, the scent of unconfessed sin. Will everyone else smell it on her, too?

  TWELVE

  At the Monteros’ front door, Ruby drapes her arm across Lark’s back and closes her eyes. She is trying hard enough to keep her head above water without wading into this emotional pool. You can do it, she thinks. Just act normal. Then the door swings open, and she and Lark are swept into the swirling waters of Monteroland.

  “Come in, come in.” Chaz’s mother, Celeste, smells of oregano and affection. She places her hands on Lark’s cheeks, kisses her forehead. Ruby flinches just a bit when Celeste hugs her. She’s wearing a loose sundress, but she worries that Celeste will notice her expanding bustline and thickening waist.

  When Chaz steps into the hall from the living room, his is a photo-negative of Celeste’s greeting, a big smack on the lips for Ruby, and for Lark a hug that lifts the kid off her feet. “Can you handle spaghetti two meals in a row?”

  Lark cocks her head. “As if you really need to ask.”

  Chaz pulls Lark into the living room, where the men are yelling at the television and elbowing and high-fiving each other. Lark squeezes into a spot on the sofa between Chaz’s father and an uncle, her “What’s the score?” barely audible over the macho roar.

  Chaz’s father, after whom Chaz is named, has been saddled with the nickname Chunk since he was a skinny little boy. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, he has long since grown into the moniker. He is shorter than Chaz and his sisters—their height comes from Celeste’s side—as wide as he is tall. He has always been uneasy if not unfriendly around Ruby, but he’s taken a shine to Lark. As he ruffles Lark’s hair, says something that makes her laugh, Ruby follows Celeste to the kitchen.