Mothers and Other Liars

by Amy Bourret

  “I’m going to do that.” John turns to Ruby, tells her he doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time or create false expectations if this is not on the level. Ruby winces at his lawyerly words. He’s trying to protect her, she knows, but she wants to scream out, Don’t make her mad. Don’t make her change her mind.

  The conversation is short, just a few uh-huhs and I see’s on this end. John snaps the phone shut, hands it back to Darla. “Well, then.” He explains that the waiting period is still running, that the Tinsdales can withdraw their petition for adoption at any time. “But you need your own lawyer to draw up the papers. I want this so aboveboard that it knocks on the floor of heaven.”

  Heaven, Ruby thinks. Can this really be happening?

  Darla goes outside to her car, steps back inside the doorway with two Neiman Marcus bags stuffed with stuff. “Is that hers?” She sets the bags down and points to the artwork on the wall beside her. “Is that Lark’s?”

  “Yes.” Ruby puts the baby in his carrier and walks over to the painting, a bright red O’Keeffe-sque poppy, stands protectively beside it. “She gave it to me for Christmas last year.”

  “I had one framed,” Darla says. “One of the canvases she left behind.”

  Ruby won’t tell Lark about that, not yet anyway. Lark still would dig a Grand Canyon between her and Texas if she could. But she won’t tell Darla about Lark’s attitude, either.

  The two women walk outside and hug awkwardly at the door of the rented SUV; one zigs while the other zags.

  “Tell Lark, if she has any questions, wants to know anything…she can call.” Darla fumbles with her purse as she speaks, its contents spew to the ground. Her forehead almost collides with Ruby’s as they both squat, gather up pens and credit card receipts, a couple of pill bottles, sunglasses.

  “Tell her…tell her I’m sorry.”

  ONE HUNDRED SIXTEEN

  Darla stands, gets in the car, backs down the driveway. Ruby isn’t sure what to make of a woman who seems to have everything yet is happy with none of it. Maybe Darla is ill, Ruby thinks, remembering the pill bottles. Maybe she is using Philip as an excuse. Wherever the truth lies, Ruby does believe that underneath the trophy-wife veneer, beneath the excuses, is a mother who loves two children enough to give them away.

  Back inside, Ruby sits in the chair beside the baby—her baby. Clyde, confident that the Lark-zone is secure now that Darla has gone, abandons his post. He pads over and gives the baby a big lick, then lies down alongside the carrier.

  “What happens if they change their minds—again?” Ruby asks John.

  He shrugs, then talks her through the procedure: the Tinsdales sign and file a petition to withdraw the adoption papers here in the Santa Fe court. The judge sets a hearing and rules on their motion.

  “But what if he says no?” Ruby looks down at the baby, panic rising like gorge. “And what about me? I signed the papers terminating my rights. And there is that pesky felony conviction.”

  John makes some notes on a yellow pad. “We’ll just have to see.”

  Ruby needs a moment to make herself breathe before she again can find her voice. “If this works, if this really happens, what do we have to do to legally change his name?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” John gathers his papers. “This is not a done deal.”

  ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEEN

  “Keep them closed, Mom. Don’t peek.”

  Ruby lets herself be led across the uneven surface, her eyes squeezed shut. She clenches Lark’s hand, hoping that she, too, isn’t peeking. Ruby wants to experience this in one big moment, together with her daughter.

  “Okay,” Molly says. “One, two…open!”

  Ruby hesitates for just a second, then she opens her eyes. She doesn’t speak; she just looks. And looks. Beside her, Lark musters only a “Wow.”

  “Well?” Margaret asks. “What do you think?”

  “I think…” Ruby says, “I think it’s incredible. All those pictures, all those movies…but this, this is incredible.” Ruby stares out at the pewter expanse before her. The sheer vastness of the ocean, the power of the crashing waves, is more than she could have imagined.

  Molly steps up beside her, and Charlie reaches out from Molly’s arms, falls into Ruby’s grasp.

  “And what do you think?” Ruby asks her son, who giggles a reply.

  Ruby stands at the foamy edge of the water. Her toes make sucking noises as they sink into the sand. She watches Lark and Molly as they dash, shrieking, in and out of the waves curling into the beach. She marvels at the more ferocious breaks of surf farther out. She laughs as Charlie crawls around the silky sand, chasing crabs and water bugs, Chaz’s Saint Christopher medal swinging against his throat.

  Then, for a long time, Ruby just sits on a blanket. Lark and the Ms build a sand castle fit for Architectural Digest. A sleeping Charlie is delicious weight in Ruby’s lap; the face in repose pure Chaz. The carpet of water unfurls, closer and closer to her every time, until the sun drowns itself in the horizon.

  Ruby plays the what-if game. What if she hadn’t stopped for a drink at that rest stop? What if she hadn’t made that wrong turn in Albuquerque? What if Margaret hadn’t been in that parking lot? If Ruby had driven here, to California, back then, this would be her life, sand and ocean and salty breeze. Maybe she never would have seen the magazine article; maybe she and Lark would be happy surfer girls.

  Though then she wouldn’t have Charlie. Ruby wouldn’t choose to go through all the pain of the last year to get to where she is today, but this fourth life, which she built from the pile of rubble her last life left behind, feels as if it were supposed to be.

  Charlie is thriving. Lark is doing well. At Ruby’s urging, Lark called Darla to interview her for a class genealogy project. And—shock—the older Mrs. Tinsdale invited Lark up to Taos for an afternoon while she was there for an art retreat. Ruby has seen the Monteros a few awkward times. They want to be part of their grandson’s life, but they and Ruby need time. The water under that bridge is full of acrimony and blame and recriminations, from their legal challenge, from Chaz moving away.

  As for Chaz, Ruby hasn’t spoken to him. Sometimes she feels angry that he wants nothing to do with his own child, after he fought her plan so hard in the first place. Sometimes she imagines she’ll one day hear a knock at the door, and…

  Perhaps, someday, he can be part of Charlie’s life, or maybe that rift will never heal. This isn’t a happily-ever-after fairy tale after all.

  Mostly, Ruby feels peace. No, she can’t imagine the California life that could have been. She doesn’t even mind that she can’t feel the slightest hint of her mother here amid the trillion grains of sand.

  Tomorrow, Lark’s masterpiece of a sand castle will be gone, turrets and spiral stairways and all. Tomorrow this beach will be washed clean. But Ruby’s life is a mountain life. She lives with every crag, every crevice carved from the hours, good and bad, of her days.

  Ruby’s grandmother used to sing a hymn on wash days, an old African-American spiritual. “I’ve got peace like a river. I’ve got joy like a fountain. I’ve got love like the ocean.” Ruby understood the joy part from the beginning; at times she felt for herself the burble of joy rising inside her, like a spray of fireworks or a champagne bottle blasting its cork. And the vast waters before her now surely do express the love part, unquenchable, uncontainable, forever love.

  But the river part always confused her. The rivers that Ruby has known are anything but peaceful. They gush and surge and spill their banks. When she was young, Ruby imagined that the writer of the song must have had some quiet swimming hole in mind.

  But now, she sits on this shifting, sandy beach with her mountain family and smiles as Lark pulls her green “I am” shirt over strawberry shoulders. And Ruby thinks she was wrong back then. She thinks that the hymn writer had in mind those same rivers Ruby knows. For even in a roiling, battering river, peace can be found. Even, especially, there.

 
; AMY BOURRET is a graduate of Yale Law School and Texas Tech University, and a former partner in a national law firm. Her pro bono work with child advocacy organizations sparked the passion that fuels Mothers and Other Liars, her debut novel. She lived for several years in Santa Fe and now splits her time between Aspen, Colorado, and Dallas, Texas. Visit her at www.amybourret.com.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, locales, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. While Santa Fe, some other locales, and certain places and organizations portrayed in this work are real, they are used fictitiously and with creative license, including with respect to geography.

  MOTHERS AND OTHER LIARS. Copyright © 2010 by Amy Bourret. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bourret, Amy.

  Mothers and other liars / Amy Bourret.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-0-312-58658-4

  1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Foundlings—Fiction. 3. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 4. Santa Fe (N.M.)—Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.O8928M67 2010

  813'.6—dc22

  2009046750