by Amy Bourret
This siren, who almost lured Chaz to the cliffs, is a scarlet reminder as vivid as Hester Prynne’s A of his betrayal. “I don’t have anything to say to you.” Ruby brushes past the reporter, heads for the Jeep.
Little Miss Red Suit scurries after her. “Woman Chooses Foundling Over Biological Child!” Her whisky voice is somewhere between normal talking and clarion. “Nurture Trumps Nature!”
Ruby stops, turns to her. “Please. Just leave me alone.”
“The story is out there,” the reporter says. “Grant me an exclusive, and I’ll do it right. I won’t exploit you or your daughter. You don’t want those other headlines.”
Ruby leans against the side of the Jeep, her belly like the heavy medicine ball her grade-school teachers made the kids throw around the gym on snowy days. “How did you hear?”
The reporter steps in beside Ruby, her skinny red hip resting against the car. “The grandparents.”
Of course. Ruby just might vomit this news onto the driveway. The Tinsdales are already squirming at the possibility of a legal battle. If the Monteros fight through the court of public opinion…
“Mrs. Tinsdale already agreed to an interview.”
Ruby shakes her head. “She wouldn’t, Darla wouldn’t…”
“Not the trophy wife,” the reporter says, “the mother, his mother.” Little Miss Red Suit tells Ruby that old Mrs. Tinsdale of the high tea and crinoline, a woman who would tell you that a true lady’s name is in print only three times in her life—her birth, her marriage, and her death—rather liked the buzz she generated at her stuffy Dallas country club because of the trial, doesn’t mind stirring up a bit more interest.
Ruby drops her chin to her chest. She can’t face another media mad house, can’t put the salon through it again. And what about Lark, if the press gets hold of her? “I can’t…I won’t.”
Little Miss Red Suit shoves a card into Ruby’s hand, squeezes Ruby’s fingers as if she is kneading bread. “Call me. I promise to be fair.” She strides down the driveway, a vulture in search of her next carrion. “You don’t want those headlines.”
Ruby groans herself off the Jeep. She takes the crisp white card and tears it into snowflakes, a little flurry of winter there on the late-summer ground.
NINETY
“Don’t you think?” Ruby’s client asks.
Ruby looks up from her nail station, where she holds the client’s hand, brushing each fingertip with I’m Not a Waitress red. “Sorry?”
“Don’t you think a Russian theme for the Chamber Music Festival party would be fun?”
“Oh, yes.” Ruby takes the client’s other hand, bracing her own hand on her other pinkie, a manicurist trick for steady polish strokes. She has learned over the years; clients want pretty nails and an hour to vent to a good listener. The hand-in-hand intimacy of the manicure chair opens the floodgates. All that is required, desired even, from Ruby is a few “uh-huhs” and nods along the way, which is a good thing at the moment, because she is incapable of cogent thought.
She makes the occasional “mmhhh” noise as the client continues her monologue: it’s Shostakovich after all; they could hang jewel-toned fabrics from the ceiling, faux Fabergé eggs on the tables, create a whole Hermitage feel.
Ruby finishes the top coat on Mrs. Kremlin, then sends her to dry under the ultraviolet light with a comment that the Chamber Music Festival event surely will be a smash. She motions to Zara that she is ready for her next appointment, then readies her station, changing out the towels, laying out clean instruments, returning the bottle of polish to the rack on the wall.
When she steps from the back room with a fresh dish of warm sudsy water, Antoinette is sitting at the nail station. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“Yeah, I guess I have.” Ruby sets down the shallow manicure bowl, places Antoinette’s left hand in the suds. “I’m sorry. I…”
“No, I’m sorry,” Antoinette says. “For my family’s behavior. I didn’t know about the lawsuit. They didn’t even tell me. I had to hear it from a friend in the clerk’s office.” Antoinette shakes her head. “You didn’t think I had anything…you know I would have called to tell you.”
Not long ago, Ruby assured Antoinette that their friendship could survive anything. But this is a whole lot of anything, for anybody. “I don’t blame you. It’s just hard.” The ache of missing Chaz is still such tender skin. Being with his sister is like fingers picking away at bits of scab, making Ruby bleed again and again and again. And now a court battle with his family. Antoinette glances over at Margaret, who is sweeping a patch of already-swept tile around her station. “He left, you know.”
Ruby holds Antoinette’s right hand, squirts cuticle cream around each nail. “Left her?”
Antoinette takes her other hand out of the soaking dish, wipes it on a towel. The linen is marshmallow-white against Antoinette’s vanilla-cream skin. “No, left town.”
Ruby moves the dish to the other side of the table, dunks Antoinette’s right hand in the suds. She squirts the cuticle cream on Antoinette’s left hand, massages it around her fingernails, then nudges the cuticles with an orange stick.
Antoinette rubs her nose against her upper arm. “Left all of us. Phoenix. He quit the force and took a job with a company that helps people find runaway kids. Works for a guy he knew from that gang task force stuff.”
A bounty hunter of children. Chaz, too, is still a rescuer, trying to bring babies home. “How did your family, how are they about…”
“The prodigal son?” Antoinette’s cheeks flush with emotion. “They’re sure he’ll return someday to claim his rightful place. Just like the Bible story.”
Ruby dries Antoinette’s hand, sets the soaking dish aside. “I never understood that story.”
“Me neither.”
Ruby knows Antoinette refers to more than just a parable. She trims the cuticles on Antoinette’s other hand, files the nails into the squar-ish ovals that Antoinette likes, and lets her talk. The anger is directed at Chunk for not caring about Ruby’s baby—even wanting it to go away—until he found out it was a boy. All the pain that Antoinette has managed to bury through the years has burbled to the surface, of feeling slighted, held back, because she was a girl. “I just don’t know how to be around any of them right now.”
Ruby’s belly feels leaden, like a wrecking ball that has cut a swath of devastation through the Montero homestead before coming to rest again in her lap. “These are my problems, my actions. They shouldn’t drive you and your family apart.” Ruby lifts the lid of the apothecary jar, slips her clippers and metal files into the green antibacterial solution, replaces the lid.
“None of it should have ever happened, not to you or to Lark.” Antoinette hands Ruby a bottle of peachy nail polish. “My dad’s not going to let go of it. The suit, I mean. He’s a dog with a bone.”
NINETY-ONE
The Ms’ cabin on the Pecos River, just on the other side of the Santa Fe ski mountain, is a refuge. Dense pine forest blocks the view from the road behind Ruby; the river is a moat in front of her. She sits in a canvas soccer-mom chair, watches the dogs as they play. The big dogs jump from rock to rock. The terrier runs back and forth along the riverbank, barking at foam and floating sticks.
John’s warning that the press would crucify her was an understatement. Ruby is the fodder for the twenty-four-hour news machine. The street in front of her house is a parking lot of vans sprouting satellite dishes. If this were just about a gross invasion of privacy, like being raped in a public square, Ruby could bear it. She would be bruised, battered, but she would bear it.
But the Tinsdales are livid. John told her Philip is ranting about all kinds of legal action, against Ruby, against the Monteros. He’d sue God Himself if he could serve the papers. Ruby has left messages for Darla, but she hasn’t returned Ruby’s calls.
From the chair beside Ruby, Molly pats Ruby’s arm. “This will all blow over. It’ll be forgotten before the next news cycle.”
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br /> “A deal breaker. John said they’re calling it a deal breaker.” Ruby almost has to shout to be heard over the swift water.
“Chaz’s family won’t win. Your lawyer said the court wouldn’t grant them the injunction, right?”
“Wasn’t likely.” Ruby shakes her head. “There’s no such thing as a sure thing. But it’s not just the legal stuff that will kill the deal. The media attention…”
All the criticisms that have blared from the television now scroll across Ruby’s mind. The biology junkies argue that Lark belongs with the Tinsdales, and this baby with Ruby. The family-first activists are screaming about grandparents’ rights. Ruby has her moments when she wonders if they are all right. Maybe they are right.
She tries to quiet the arguments against the swap by focusing on the arguments she made for the deal in the first place. This baby won’t miss her, but Lark is withering in Texas. Giving her baby to the Tinsdales is recompense for keeping Lark after Ruby found her. But those reasons will be worthless if the Tinsdales back out of the agreement.
Clyde and Daisy bound past Ruby, showering her with icy river water. She jerks around.
“Relax,” Molly says. “It’s just Margaret.”
Clyde runs circles around the chairs, and Daisy escorts Margaret from the cabin. Dudley never shifts his attention from the river foam he is determined to bark into submission.
Margaret hands a portable telephone receiver to Ruby. “It’s John.”
NINETY-TWO
The inside of the Albuquerque airport looks like the face of the Mexican pyramids in the photos Ruby has seen. Two pairs of escalators and two wide staircases rise up to the middle tier. Beyond a few shops and restaurants at the second level, two more sets of escalators frame the stairways to the departure lounges above.
Ruby looks over her shoulder once again to make sure she hasn’t been followed, rides the escalators, up, up, up until she reaches the skylit top of the hill. She joins the short line winding through the security checkpoint, shows her gate pass to the first agent, walks through the metal detector.
“You got any contraband in there?” The security agent on the other side of the detector points to her belly. Ruby gives him the scantest of smiles in response, not wanting to engage him in the inevitable “when is it due, what is it, when my wife gave birth…”
At least he doesn’t try to touch her. She has realized through all of the mauling—by clients, by strangers on the street—just how much she values her personal-space bubble.
The plane is pulling to the jetway as Ruby arrives at the gate. Its orange and mustard nose sniffs at the window. A tide of people gushes through the tunnel. First out are the businessmen, wielding briefcases like shields as they push past the people milling around the gate area.
Next comes the old lady with the walker, holding up the line, probably the same way she does with her big Buick on her hometown streets. When she finally steps out of the jetway, people stream around her like river water around a rock, more businesspeople dragging their black suitcases, vacationing families laden with backpacks and strollers. Ruby doesn’t think traveling with cranky kids would be much of a vacation for the parents.
The stream sputters to a slow trickle before Ruby sees her, walking with a flight attendant and a young boy. For eighty-eight days, Ruby has prayed for this moment, not daring to hope too hard that it would actually happen. Yet now, when the time comes, she can’t move. She is frozen in place like a fat statue while a dad walks over to the attendant, signs the paperwork for the boy, ruffles the boy’s hair as he steers him past Ruby. The flight attendant looks at Ruby, tilts his head in a question. And still Ruby doesn’t move.
Finally, Lark drags the flight attendant over to Ruby. Ruby shows her ID, scribbles her name, and drops to her knees. She sweeps Lark into her arms, squeezes limbs, sniffs skin, strokes cheeks, laughs. And cries.
Until Lark scrabbles out of Ruby’s reach. “Mo-om. You’re making a scene.”
Those are the sweetest words Ruby has ever heard. She wants to clamp her hands over her ears, trap the sound in her head forever.
NINETY-THREE
Lark tugs Ruby to her feet, pats her belly. “Ho-ly moly. That was some watermelon seed you swallowed.”
Ruby chuckles through her sobs, but she can tell her daughter’s joking is forced. Lark was so stiff when Ruby hugged her, like a Barbie-Lark, with hard plastic skin and limbs that don’t quite bend. Then Lark smiles, a real smile, an imp smile. Her daughter is undoubtedly damaged, yet a Lark is still stirring underneath that shell.
Watching Lark walk down the stairs in front of her makes Ruby practically giddy. She still has to fly to Dallas for the sentencing hearing in a couple of weeks, but the presentencing report has been filed with the recommendation of the minimum fine and no jail time, and John is confident the judge will rubber-stamp the prosecutor’s terms. Ruby has been so caught up in fighting the Monteros and the public outcry that she hasn’t even noticed that a prison gate is no longer looming over her head like a guillotine.
Funny how the Monteros’ tactic of going to the press was actually the impetus for the Tinsdales to send Lark home. “It will quiet things down, take the press heat off her,” Darla said on the telephone. Off you, Ruby thought.
Yesterday, John had called with a trifecta of news: as expected, the New Mexico court ruled that the Monteros had no standing to stop the baby’s adoption and denied their motion; the Texas court signed the preliminary order for Lark’s adoption; and John and the Tinsdales’ lawyer had finalized the release of all civil claims. “The Monteros still could seek visitation rights through the Texas courts, but precedent is against them,” John added.
Darla’s call came this morning. “It’s not like we need to keep trying to bond with her after all.”
Ruby looks up at the big clock above the stairway. The conversation with Darla took place only seven hours ago.
“There really is no reason to wait,” Darla said. She would put Lark on a plane that afternoon. She would pack Lark’s things, ship them to Santa Fe. Ruby could taste the woman’s relief through the telephone. If Ruby hadn’t been so relieved herself, she might have been offended at Darla’s eagerness to rid herself of Lark. “I know you’re anxious to get your daughter home.”
Her daughter. Home. These are more words Ruby wants to roll around in her head, savor.
As they cross the passenger pickup lane on the way to the parking lot, Ruby takes Lark’s hand out of habit. Lark doesn’t pull her arm away, protest that she is not a baby anymore. Instead, she squeezes Ruby’s hand and holds it all the way to the car, as if she, too, is afraid that this moment will vaporize into a dream if she lets go.
Ruby maneuvers the car out of the airport exit and onto the interstate. Traffic through town is heavy; the exit lane to I-40 is backed up with workers heading home to the suburbs. As the Jeep passes under the freeway interchange, she thinks about that day almost ten years ago, when her car was new and she got mixed up at this intersection, before the swooping Big I, as the locals call it, was complete. Ruby looks over at Lark and sees the infant who rode backward in her carrier as well as the nine-year-old with gangly legs almost reaching the floor. That was a wrong turn that turned out right.
NINETY-FOUR
“Is it really over?” Lark’s voice is laced with anxiety, and some healthy anger.
“I think so, baby bird. I pray so.” Or, over but for a few minor details. For Lark, all is over but the healing. Ruby still must attend her sentencing, deal with any fallout from the Monteros’ antics, give birth, give away her other child.
The drive toward Santa Fe passes in a haze. Lark is quiet, almost shy, as Ruby tells her little things, lighthearted salon and flea-market stories from the weeks she was away. Ruby restrains herself from asking questions about the time in Texas. Lark will talk when she’s ready.
They each get lost in their own thoughts as the New Mexico sky melts into one of its trademark sunsets. Then, as the old Jeep wh
eezes up that last big hill, Lark points out the sign for Las Vegas. “Let’s go,” she says.
Ruby grips the steering wheel, closes her eyes for a second. Thank you, she says in her head. Thank you for this moment. Thank you that Lark’s scars can soften enough, even temporarily, to make the old family joke about Ruby thinking she was headed toward Las Vegas, Nevada, that day long ago. Thank you that her daughter is here to make the joke—Ruby glances at her belly wedged against the steering wheel—even if her son is going away.
They have just exited the highway onto Old Pecos Trail when Lark asks about Chaz.
“He had a bad accident, but he’s okay now.” Ruby tells Lark about the car wreck, Chaz’s injuries.
“It’s my fault.” Lark tugs at her neckline, lifts out Chaz’s Saint Christopher medal.
Ruby pulls over at the entrance to the Elks Lodge. “It is so not your fault. And he’s fine, he’s fine now. But…” Ruby tells her that he moved to Phoenix for a new job. She doesn’t go into details; she’s still trying to sort out the best way for Lark to hear that her mother is swapping the baby in her belly for her own return. “We decided not to be together anymore.”
“It’s my fault.” Lark fingers the small medallion as she begins to cry. “It’s all my fault.”
“Oh, baby.” Ruby slides Lark over the console and onto what remains of her lap. In a way, she’s relieved at her daughter’s tears; emotion, even raw emotion, is so much better than that stony resignation. And as she tries to convince Lark that neither Chaz’s accident nor the breakup was her fault, Ruby’s voice echoes in her own head and starts to chisel away at the frozen block of her own guilt.
Lark wearing a piece of metal was not to blame for the wreck, and neither was Ruby trying to get Chaz to agree to her plan. Someday, maybe both of them will be able to embrace the hard truth that they can’t control random events, instead of the more consoling idea of vindictive gods and bad karma.