by T. Greenwood
Izzy grabs a half-full box of Wheat Thins and a tub of whipped cream cheese and Ruby follows her down the hall. They both peek in at Grover, who is watching a movie in his room.
“Hi, Grover!” Ruby says.
“Hello, ladies!” he says, waving to them from his recliner.
He always leaves the door open in case they want to come in and visit. Sometimes they hang out and watch movies or play Gin Rummy with him. But today, Ruby is determined to make some progress with the bridge plans.
Izzy’s mother is in the guest bathroom, crouched down looking at something on the floor. Her mother dyes her hair with streaks of hot pink now, ever since Izzy’s aunt got breast cancer last year. “It’s a gesture,” she explains when people ask, and around here people always ask. “Solidarity.”
“Hi, Gloria,” Ruby says.
“Hi, Ruby,” she says, standing up. She always looks just a bit startled, her eyes wide like Izzy’s. “Wait a minute, will one of you guys get the door for me?” She’s got her hands cupped together and she’s peering into a gap where her thumbs come together. “It’s a daddy longlegs,” she says.
Ruby rushes to the front door and opens it for her, and Gloria goes outside, releasing the insect into the grass by the front porch. For some reason this makes Ruby think about her mother’s birds. Gloria’s still wearing her pajamas, which have bright yellow ducks all over them.
“Did you hear about the hurricane coming up the coast?” Gloria asks when they go back in. “Probably going to be a rainy weekend ahead. You and your mom going to be okay?”
“Yeah. We’ll be fine. Bunk patched the roof for her earlier this summer.”
Gloria squeezes Ruby in a hug. She smells like clay. “How is she?” Gloria asks then, and her face looks sad. Ruby doesn’t know the last time they even saw each other; she thinks she probably visited her at the hospital. But she doesn’t know if she’s been to see her at the house.
“She’s good,” Ruby lies.
“Well, you let her know we’re here if she needs anything. Anything at all.”
And she knows that while some people say things like this, they’re just saying them to seem nice, but Gloria means it. After the accident she came to the house almost every single day for months. Until Ruby’s dad got out of the hospital, she even slept on the sofa some nights. But then her dad gave up, and after awhile, even Gloria could see that things weren’t getting better. That maybe they might never get better.
“Come on,” Izzy says, exasperated again, and yanks her arm.
Izzy has her own computer, and so they’ve been doing most of the work at her house. Izzy’s dad brought home a bridge-building software program from the high school. Ruby keeps a notebook with her ideas and sketches, but Izzy’s the one who translates all her scribbles into something real, plugging them into the computer and watching as it generates the 3-D images. The competition is for the entire state. Which means there are going to be some pretty awesome bridges. They’ve looked at all the designs from last year online, and it’s sort of intimidating. But Ruby has ideas. That’s one thing she never runs out of.
Izzy’s door has a TOXIC WASTE sign hanging on it, and she’s not kidding. Her room is always a disaster. She’s the messiest person Ruby knows. Ruby can’t believe Gloria doesn’t care; she just closes the door when it gets too bad. Ruby’s mom would never let her room get like that.
But today when Izzy opens the door, it’s like they’ve slipped into an alternate universe. The bed is made, the carpet has been vacuumed, and all the crap that’s usually all over the floor is neatly put away. There isn’t a dirty dish or dirty T-shirt in sight. Her collection of snow globes is lined up on her bureau, and her desk is clear of debris.
Izzy pretends like everything’s normal and goes to her desk to turn on her computer.
“You cleaned your room,” Ruby says.
“Duh,” Izzy says and all of a sudden Ruby gets that bad feeling she’s been getting all summer.
“I just mean, it looks nice,” Ruby says, trying to make everything better again. She just wants Izzy back. Normal, messy, tangled hair, mismatched-sock Izzy. She doesn’t like this Izzy.
“So, listen,” Izzy says, not looking at Ruby. “You can only stay a little while today.”
“Huh?”
“Um, Marcy Davidson is coming over this afternoon.”
Marcy Davidson. Ruby doesn’t even know what to say. It feels like somebody knocked the wind out of her. Marcy Davidson lives down the street from Izzy in the big green house. The “Kermit” to Izzy’s “Miss Piggy.” Her parents own a realty company. Their faces are plastered on every FOR SALE sign in Quimby. She’s one of the rich girls, one of the popular girls at school. And Izzy hates Marcy. Once, in the second grade, Izzy laughed while she was drinking milk and it came out of her nose. Marcy tortured her for the whole year, called her Snotface. Back then Marcy was mean, but now she is the meanest kind of mean: the kind where she’s nice to your face and then says things behind your back. Ruby can’t imagine any situation where Marcy would ever even be in the same room as Izzy, never mind coming over to her house to hang out.
“What?” Ruby asks.
“Her mom and dad are going to a conference in Boston, so she’s staying here. I thought you knew. That’s why you couldn’t come this week. My mom told your dad.”
Ruby feels as though someone is sitting on her chest. So this is why she’s been sent to her mother’s. Because her dad asked Gloria first and she said no. “Marcy Davidson?”
Izzy nods but she won’t even look at Ruby. She’s just staring at the computer screen as it boots up.
“Well, when are we supposed to finish the bridge designs then?” Ruby asks, trying hard not to cry.
Izzy shrugs. “We can work on them now. Then maybe after her mom and dad come back next weekend. It’s like no big deal, Ruby.” There again, that awful condescending tone, making Ruby feel like she’s an annoying little kid instead of her best friend. But it is a big deal. Ruby has been thinking about the bridge all summer. Even if Izzy doesn’t think it matters. It does. To Ruby.
“What about the fair?” Ruby asks then, even though she already knows the answer.
“We’re going on Wednesday,” Izzy says. “You can come if you want.”
But Ruby doesn’t want. Ruby wants nothing to do with any of this. With Marcy, with this new Izzy. Ruby feels stupid. And still that crushing feeling in her chest. She wonders if she’s too young to have a heart attack.
“I gotta get back to my mom’s anyway,” Ruby says. She wants to do something, say something that will make Izzy feel as bad as she feels right now. But instead she just says, “I guess I’ll see you at swimming lessons tomorrow.”
Ruby goes to her door then and realizes that Izzy’s Einstein poster is gone. There’s been a life-size poster of Einstein hanging there for as long as she can remember. But instead of Einstein and his crazy hair, there’s a color poster of One Direction, pulled out of the middle of one of those teen magazines they sell at the drugstore. And as she looks at the guys’ faces, bisected by the creases where it was folded in the magazine, she realizes that Izzy is changing. And this makes her chest ache more than any stupid bridge project. More than Marcy Davidson.
“Well, bye,” Ruby says, hoping Izzy will say something, that it’s not too late for her to come to her senses, but knowing that if she thinks she can be friends with Marcy Davidson, then sense left her a long time ago.
She takes the stairs two at a time and rushes past Grover’s open door and then past Gloria, who is doing something in the kitchen. She leaves Izzy’s house but she doesn’t know where she should go. She doesn’t want to go back to her mom’s house. And so she pedals away from Izzy’s house, past Marcy’s house, and heads over to the library. But it’s Sunday. Closed.
Outside she sits on the steps, dials the number for the phone company, and waits for almost fifteen minutes before somebody finally helps her. While she waits, she looks across the street
. All of the shops are closed except for the salon and the drugstore. Suddenly, the door next to the salon swings open and a pregnant lady with long blond dreadlocks and a big backpack barrels out. Her face is red; it looks like she’s been crying. She looks lost. She looks up and down the street before ducking down the alley between the used bookstore and the artist gallery. Ruby stands up, thinks about following her, but then a voice comes on the other line.
“Fairpoint, how can I help you?”
Ruby gives them her mom’s address and tells them the phone’s out. They say they’ll send somebody tomorrow. They give her a confirmation number she writes in pen on her hand. She calls her dad then and tells him everything’s taken care of. What she wants to tell him is to come home. That her mom is sad, that Izzy’s being mean, and that she just wants him to come back. But instead she just says, “Where are you now?”
“Just crossed the border into Massachusetts. Listen, I’ll call the house tomorrow. You said they’re coming to fix the phone tomorrow morning, right?”
“Yeah. Tomorrow.”
“How’s your mom?” her dad asks then, and Ruby can picture his face. The way he draws a breath in whenever he talks about her. The way his eyebrows lower and his nostrils flare.
“She made Mickey Mouse pancakes,” Ruby says.
As Nessa stumbles back down the stairs and outside, she feels sick. Dizzy.
Her mother is gone. And beyond the confirmation of this, the finality of this, there is the undeniable and inescapable fact that she is still hungry. Starving. Hunger doesn’t care that her mother is gone. Baby animals in the wild, abandoned by their mother, still need food. Nourishment. Infants without their mothers’ milk must find other ways to survive.
The last thing she ate was a bruised apple an old woman on the bus had offered her from her bag. It was mealy and sweet, but it had taken the edge off at least. Though now the edge has returned, dull and serrated.
In Portland, she had been able to scavenge. Foraging in Dumpsters and trash bins usually yielded enough to survive on. And even when it didn’t, while it had pained her to do so, she’d also been able to count on the kindness (or pity) of strangers. She had only to sit on the sidewalk with her hand outstretched for a moment before someone would drop a dollar in her palm.
But here, the streets are not littered with the detritus of urban life. The sidewalk is clear of both trash and people. Leaving her mother’s apartment building, she feels like a castaway, surfacing on a deserted island. Her mother is gone. But that does not change the simple truth: she needs food and she needs a place to sleep.
She has ten dollars in her pocket. It is the last of the money she stole from Mica. She had vowed to herself that she would not touch it. That it was her emergency fund. Though she wasn’t sure how ten dollars might be able to save her in an emergency.
And so now, her stomach angry with hunger, the baby demanding, demanding, she ducks into a diner and takes a seat in a back booth.
Her heart stutters when she realizes that the waitress is a girl she remembers from high school, though she was older than Nessa, a couple of years ahead of her at school. Nessa always thought she had a friendly face: plump and inviting. Heart stammering, Nessa waits for recognition, for the waitress, Marla, to remember her. But soon it is clear that she has no recollection of Nessa, or, perhaps, it’s that Nessa is simply unrecognizable.
“Good morning,” Marla chirps and hands her a menu.
Nessa wonders if she had stayed in Quimby if this would be her life now: a blue uniform, her name etched into a gold name tag. Sensible shoes.
“When are you due?” Marla asks brightly, setting down a carafe of ice water, lemons floating inside.
Nessa shakes her head, blushes.
A cloud passes over the waitress’s face. “I’m sorry,” she says. “None of my beeswax.”
Nessa shakes her head, trying to relay, No, no, it’s okay.
She points to the special, handwritten on a piece of paper paper-clipped to the menu.
“Okeydoke,” the waitress says, her face nothing but sunshine again.
The special comes with eggs and bacon, hash browns, a biscuit heavy with creamy gravy. She eats and eats, and then uses the biscuit to wipe the plate clean. Afterwards, she drinks glass after glass of ice water, filling any empty spaces that remain. She leaves the ten-dollar bill on a $9.50 tab and starts to get up to leave, ashamed.
“Hey,” the waitress says, reaching for her arm. Her fingers are so cold, it makes Nessa jump. Nessa looks down at the ten-dollar bill, feels her face redden.
“Listen, if you don’t have nobody yet, there’s a lady, a midwife. She delivered me and all my brothers.”
Nessa looks up at her.
“Her name’s Sylvie Dupont. Lives by the river, out near Hudson’s, the general store? On the way to Lake Gormlaith.”
Nessa nods, forces a smile. She hasn’t thought that far ahead; she hasn’t thought past her mother’s door.
“ ’Course since the accident, I’m not sure if she’s still practicing.”
She doesn’t understand.
“She lost her little boy. Now she don’t leave her house. But she might help you. If you went to her.”
Nessa’s stomach roils, the breakfast suddenly leaden in her stomach, bile rising in her throat. She feels like she might vomit. She needs to get out of here. She rushes to the ladies’ room, feeling vertiginous. She locks the door and grips the edge of the sink. Once she has steadied herself, she runs cold water over a bunch of paper towels, and presses them against her forehead. When she puts them back under the faucet, the water runs brown into the sink.
Reeling, she rushes outside and back down the street. It is Sunday, and everything is closed. The streets are vacant; it is quiet. She stops when she gets to a pay phone. She pulls the slip of paper from her backpack and studies the name, the number. But even as she lifts the receiver to dial, she realizes she doesn’t have a quarter. And never mind that even if she did, even if she dropped it into the slot and punched the numbers into the keypad, even if he answered, he would only be met with silence. It’s been two years since she’s uttered a single word.
In the darkness, Sylvie listens to the new sounds in the house. To the new old sounds. Her room and Ruby’s room share a wall, and on the other side she hears Ruby as she jumps into her bed and clicks on her light. She hears a zipper, and when she closes her eyes, she can almost see Ruby’s hand reaching into her backpack, finding whatever book she is reading. She wonders what world she will slip into tonight and knows this ability is something she has given her: a genetic inheritance like her dark hair and Robert’s green eyes. Because the only time Sylvie leaves the house anymore is through the paper portals of her novels.
Sylvie wasn’t a reader as a child like Ruby is. She didn’t really start reading until after she became a midwife, after she realized that sleep would elude her on the nights when she was waiting for a baby to come. She never understood how Robert could sleep on the nights he was on call. At any moment he could receive word of an emergency, yet he still managed to close his eyes and fall into a deep slumber, his body claiming the rest it needed so that when the call did come (and it always came) he was alert and had the necessary strength to deal with whatever emergency was at hand. He has always been able to separate himself from the possibility of disaster and the actual disaster. She remembers hundreds of nights in this bed, as she lay reading (her eyes blurry with exhaustion) with Robert snoring next to her, waiting for the phone to ring. Expecting the shrill tremble of it, and wondering if it was life or death waiting on the other end of the line.
It was Gloria who gave her her first books, who brought her armloads of the novels she’d kept from college. They were mostly tattered paperbacks with yellow USED stickers along the spines. The pages were riddled with illegible notes in the margins, with yellow highlighter bleeding through to the other side. But she was grateful for the diversion, grew to rely on it. She wonders what she would do now wi
thout her books. What would distract her from all the new potential catastrophes, both real and imagined?
Tonight she tries to focus on the page, on one of the new books that Effie has delivered, but she is too tired to make sense of the words. The ink is blurry on the paper. Her days, as predictable and uneventful as they are, still manage to wear her down. Fear is a cumbersome thing. Regret even heavier. By the time she climbs into her bed at night, her limbs ache with the exhaustion of another day, though as she turns out the light and closes her eyes, her body rests but her mind races. Like a car long after the ignition has been turned off, the engine ticking, ticking. The hood still hot to the touch. Because while her days are predictable, as an ascetic’s grim routine will be, her nights are capricious. Sleep is like the river. Changeable. Sometimes it is still, harmless, and sleep is nothing but a simple shutting down. But other times it is a violent thing, which pulls her into its current. On nights like these there is nothing to do but to surrender to its sway.
Nessa stands at the edge of the road and thrusts her thumb out into the night, her hand, her entire arm enclosed by the darkness. There is no moon. There are no streetlights. And there are no cars on the road to cast their beams on her. The night is swallowing her whole. Her backpack digs into her shoulders, and she wonders what she could sacrifice in order to lighten the load. What she could spare. She tries not to think about all the things she’s given up or lost on this long journey.
After she left her mother’s apartment in town, she walked all the way to Lake Gormlaith to her grandfather’s old house. By the time she arrived, her ankles ached, and her feet and hands were tingling and swollen. His absence, unlike her mother’s, was expected. Still, the unfamiliar car in the driveway, the toys in the yard, the child in a sagging diaper staring at her through the screen door made her throat grow thick. And so she’d kept walking, stopping only when she got to the boat access area, taking off her shoes and wading into the lake. The cold water had numbed her aching feet. And she considered just walking into the water, making her whole body insensate.