As Ruby makes her way over to Amsterdam, the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine rises up before her, impossibly ornate amongst the low-rise buildings of modern, residential New York. She has no time for God, but the church itself is so beautiful, so compelling, that curiosity leads her up the wide stairs, through the thick double doors. Inside, the cavernous cathedral echoes with sunlight, a kaleidoscopic flower beckoning her forward, and Ruby finds herself stunned at the vista. She scrambles for a five-dollar bill to put in the donation box at the entrance to the nave, and she shifts her weight to her toes, not wanting to clomp her feet against the floor. Perhaps it would be different if the church were filled with worshippers, but here, on this mid-week afternoon, she is one of only twenty or so people moving slowly amongst the thick columns and arches. She feels a serenity she had not expected, a peacefulness, despite the obvious grandeur of the church.
And she remembers to look up.
Quietly exploring the cathedral, a lump grows in Ruby’s throat, expands until it feels painful to swallow. A wall of names, of dates and dashes, too many to speak out loud, makes her feel faint, and she considers sitting down, trying out a version of prayer to steady herself, but there’s another woman standing here before this wall, before these names, and she is already praying, head bowed, tears streaming down her face. Ruby blinks back her own tears and moves on.
When she arrives at the Cathedral’s Poets Corner, the lump in Ruby’s throat finally dislodges, hot tears spilling over, causing the words etched across the stone tablets of the floor and walls to blur. She is standing before a memorial to the wordsmiths of this country, the ones who have painstakingly translated the human experience into tiny, perfect sentences. Writers who mapped the world and its sorrows with their words.
Alone, she reads aloud quotes from those poets whose names she knows best.
There’s Millay with her songs and epitaphs. Dickinson describing captivity and consciousness. Emerson and Hemingway asking only for truth, and Hughes with his soul deep as a river. Baldwin, talking about disturbing the peace.
And this.
Walt Whitman. A man, a poet, who so loved New York, and was loved by New York in return.
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
It is others who move away now, leaving the sobbing woman alone with her poets and her sorrow. Generations of writers reaching down to wrap their arms around her, gently pressing their means of survival into her bones.
She invites Josh over as soon as she gets home. Says she has something to tell him, but there are no words when he walks into that tiny studio, fills it up, and she rushes at him, pours herself over his skin before he has the chance to say hello.
When they make love this very first time, they are clumsy, careful. Learning their way around the new body before them, this new tangle of nerves. They laugh against each other’s mouths and close their eyes when they should keep them open, but there is no embarrassment or hesitation in these hours of exploration. They teach each other, welcoming the lessons, and when Ruby comes against Josh’s hand she feels as if she is expanding into the vast, empty corners of her body, the hollow finally filled.
I’ve been stopped here, waiting for you, she whispers, but he is electric now, the blue light humming all through him drowning out her admission. No matter. They will try this again and again. And they will get better at finding each other, each and every time.
Noah pays for my funeral. He does not attend the service itself, staying true to his claim that he will never visit Wisconsin. But he pays for the flowers and the casket, and the sandwiches served after. The burning of my body, too. Asking only whether they might consider doing something special with my ashes. He talks of nebulae, of bright night skies and dying stars, and nobody understands.
‘Ruby,’ he says. ‘We will have to do something ourselves. For her.’
On the day of the funeral, media reports say the little chapel on the corner of Pearson and Flushing is packed with mourners, with people spilling out onto the gravel driveway, craning to hear the service inside. There are kids from my high school, and gawkers from out of town, and Tammy and her mother sit in the front row, next to Gloria. Mother and daughter and guardian united, enjoying their brief moment in the spotlight. They have meetings with crime show producers already booked, and last week they gave an interview for one of those weekly tabloid magazines. I don’t mind. I’d like to give them something outside of this town, outside of these people. Tammy was always good to me. Perhaps this is a chance for her mother and Gloria to do better, too.
In that interview, Gloria spoke about my mother. Things I knew. The extreme violence of her childhood, the disintegrations of home and family, until she ran away at eighteen years old, and no one bothered to come find her. The way she brought me up on her own from there, wanting, Gloria said, nothing but the best for her Alice. Things, too, I did not know. How that traumatised child never really grew up, how my mother suffered from breaks in reality I must have thought were games at the time. She did, it turns out, whatever she could to ensure my safety, from dealing drugs to sleeping with cold, old men for money. Forgetting to protect herself and getting deeper and deeper into trouble with her own mind, and the law. Not even Gloria could say what caused my mom to pull the trigger that afternoon, but she did say this: ‘I know that woman loved her daughter with all her heart. At least now, they can be together.’
Mr Jackson does not attend the funeral either; he is already long gone from town. House packed up and makeshift studio closed. He won’t be returning to school in the fall. Impossible now, with all those rumours buzzing about him. Most of the young girls he taught scoff at the idea of this man taking advantage of Alice Lee. More like the other way round, some of them say, because they like him better. Unaware of the tremble under my skin when Mr Jackson first asked me to take my clothes off, these young girls can’t understand you sometimes say yes as a means of survival. Not until it is their turn to say yes, some day.
At any rate, my teacher has gone to ground. He will emerge, eventually, with his own story to tell, a wound that will draw other young women to him, call them over. There was a girl he loved, and she died, he will tell them. Rearranging the truth until he believes it. Convinced he seeks solace, not power, when he takes another seventeen-year-old girl into his arms and into his bed.
One of these girls, eventually, will share her story. This time, there will be people looking for her, and when they find her, there will be another knock at Mr Jackson’s door. That knock won’t happen for some time yet, but you can hear it well enough, can’t you? Now that we know what to listen for.
My friends go down to the river together. It is the first day of summer. A whole season has passed, and the sky is blue, bright.
Noah carries long-stemmed roses, a rainbow mix of colours. Ruby holds a small silver padlock close to her chest. They greet each other warmly and hug. Franklin has a purple scarf tied neatly around his furry neck.
There are lots of people out and about on this clear day, as Noah and Ruby weave around children and dogs and fields with baseball games in their fifth and sixth innings. Ruby is once again struck by the idea that people actually go about their lives up here. Neighbourhoods full of children and families and sports teams and pets, hours spent together in a communal backyard.
They walk past one of the dog runs. Off their leashes, a clamour of pups and old mutts rush around, chasing balls and tails and each other. Ruby stops for a moment at the fence, thinks of me, considers how she might have jogged right past me at this very spot someday. Imagines the striking, yellow-blonde girl calling back a wayward beagle or pug, lunging for a designer leash, dogs circling around her. Noah sees this, too, the might-have-been of this meeting, and gives Ruby a gentle nudge with his shoulder.
They keep walking toward the water.
Both Ruby and Noah grow silent as they approach the little beach. The river is calm today, the view clear across to New Jersey. To Ruby, those wooden posts poking
up out of the water still look eerie, a reminder of hidden depths. But aside from these markers, she acknowledges there is nothing extraordinary about this place, nothing good or bad or mysterious. This place would have remained one small, innocuous part of a sprawling city park, were it not for an angry, entitled man, and an April morning when life stopped and started, all at the same time.
‘Are you all right?’ Noah asks, bright, beautiful flowers framing his face.
Ruby nods.
‘I was just thinking. How this place is really nothing special.’ She looks down at a discarded juice wrapper, fluttering on the rocks. ‘I could have run past here a thousand times and never given it a thought.
‘And yet,’ she turns to Noah, her fingers pressed tight around the padlock, ‘this is also the most incredible place. It’s where I found Alice. I felt so guilty at the time. Like I should have done more. But what if I’d kept on running that day? What if I never stopped. Can you imagine what I would have missed?’
‘Can you imagine?’ Noah repeats, before taking one of his roses and tossing it into the river.
They watch as the flower bobs around, a bright yellow star dancing across the murky water. Silently, they throw the remaining roses over the railings, one by one, bright, beautiful colours suffusing the dark surface of the Hudson. As the last of the flowers land on the water, Ruby crouches down and clips the padlock around a wire at the base of the metal railing. Feeling the click as it closes shut, tracing her index finger over the letter A engraved on its shiny surface.
On the path behind them a child shrieks, giggles, and Ruby stands up, takes a deep breath, New York City filling her lungs.
‘Thank you, Alice Lee,’ she says quietly, and then she turns from the rocks, from the river, and walks away.
If I had lived.
The woman sits down on the park bench next to me, tries to catch her breath. She had been running south along the river. Forgetting she would have to double back until she had gone just that little bit too far, almost as far as the Cruise Terminal. Now she’s got her head between her legs, willing everything to slow down, and she might not have noticed me today, but for Franklin sticking that wet nose of his up against her lowered cheek. His welcome sign.
She jerks up at his touch, startled, but then her face softens into a smile.
‘Hey there, young man,’ she says, scratching behind the grinning dog’s ear.
‘Your dog,’ she laughs, turning to me, ‘is quite forward.’
‘Oh, he’s not mine,’ I start to say, but this no longer feels true. Instead, I smile back at her.
‘Yes, Franklin is a true New Yorker. Knows what he wants.’
‘Something I have yet to master,’ the woman responds.
‘Where are you from, then?’ I ask, struck by her accent.
‘Who knows, sometimes,’ she answers, and we look at each other really, truly for the first time. Sky and earth, meeting.
‘I’m Alice,’ I say, holding out my hand.
‘Ruby,’ she responds, our touch a small spark.
‘I just moved here a month ago,’ she continues, and we soon discover we arrived on the same dusky night, on the cusp of the same rainy spring.
‘I ran away,’ I confess, and she tells me she came here to get away from someone. A man.
‘Me, too!’ I exclaim, finally playing the right kind of snap.
‘You did? How old are you, Alice?’ Ruby asks, her eyebrows raised.
‘I’m eighteen. You?’
‘I’m thirty-six. So, you’re exactly half my age, then.’
‘Or you’re exactly double mine,’ I shoot back, and I know then, in the way she laughs, that we’re going to be friends. We talk on that park bench for at least an hour, Franklin at our feet, shifting his watery gaze between us. We discuss our strange new city, and the places we left behind, and we dance up to the edges of the men we came here to get away from.
‘It’s complicated,’ she sighs.
‘It sure is,’ I reply. Knowing I will get to tell her the full story.
Someday.
We stay chatting so long that when a raindrop unceremoniously plops against Franklin’s head, we are both surprised to see the sky has gone dark. Heavy rain, on its way yet again.
‘I got stuck here in the park recently. On one of those really stormy mornings,’ Ruby says, holding her palm out in front of her, feeling the air. ‘I’ll admit it was kinda scary, being out here alone.’
‘Last Tuesday? With all the thunder and lightning?’ I ask, excitedly. Snap! ‘I was out here too, taking pictures of the storm. Maybe not my smartest idea, but the photos turned out really great! What doesn’t kill you, and all that.’
‘You should be careful—’ Ruby starts, and then shrugs. ‘Actually, you seem like a girl who can take care of herself. And I’d love to see your pictures some time.’ She looks thoughtful now. ‘It’s nice to know I wasn’t out here alone after all, Alice.’
If I had lived. Had somebody else not decided for me that morning, we might have discovered we were looking for each other the whole time.
We might have met and shared our stories in such a different way.
That Ruby should be the one to find my body. This is one of the two most remarkable things. The way she stayed with me, took me home with her. Suffered the nightmares and confusions, lived with my questions, and her own. She pushed through her own wild waves and kept me afloat, there beside her, before she even knew my name.
Strangers can change your life. Isn’t that the truth. I changed the life of Ruby Jones—for the better, I hope. Even though there must have been times when it didn’t feel like it. When she might have preferred to keep that sorrow of hers simmering, instead of having it all boil over the way it did.
And Noah. Placing that ad. Knowing someone like me would come along. Noah with his IOUs, and his small smiles, and his New York lessons, telling me all the things I wanted to know. And some of the things I didn’t.
I changed his life, too. I know it. Pulled him back into the world, right before I was pulled out of it. I only wish we’d had more time together before it happened. That, and I should have known from the start. Noah never stopped waiting for me to come home.
Ruby and Noah. My bookends in New York. Think of all the risks they took when they let me in, how far they had to travel to meet me. So that when the two of them finally came together, all the little pieces of me came together, too.
Pull the world into you—and nothing seems so far away anymore.
‘You need to join Death Club, Noah.’
Ruby repeats the invitation offered up to her a lifetime ago. Before she knew my name. Before they knew each other. And Noah accepts the offer, because he is as lonely as she was back then, and because, sometimes, you get out of your own way. Sometimes you follow yourself home.
The other Death Club members are excited to meet Noah, and agree to this spontaneous meeting at the dive bar near Riverside. My local, Ruby explains, texting the address. Come take part in our memorial for Alice. One rule only—this she will enforce until she and Noah are ready, until the trial and resultant conviction make him impossible to avoid—no speaking about that other man, please.
I watch as each member of Death Club arrives. Lennie, tumbling through the door, the fine dust of every dead person she has ever worked on surrounding her, as close to a nebula as anything I’ve seen on earth. Sue arriving next, all that latent motherlove and concern preceding her. Then Josh, hastening to the bar, thinking of Ruby’s mouth against his, the way she wraps herself around him, so that his whole body looks like fireflies as he walks toward her this warm June night.
They greet Noah as if he is a long-lost friend. Nobody minds the sticky floor and the uneven chairs and the distracted barman watching his game. These five members of Death Club—six if you count Franklin, lying at Noah’s feet—are simply glad to have found each other. Dotted around the table, they look like a constellation, and I trace the pattern they make, memorise it.
Knowing, as hours pass, as they glow brighter, that something is changing this night. They are talking about me in different tones, mystery and urgency has been replaced by sadness, poignancy. If I had lived … but I did not. I was murdered down by a river while I was going about my life, loving the sky and the rain and Noah and this newfound feeling I might get to have a happy life, after all.
(If I can make it there. And I so very nearly did.)
I think I understand. That they no longer wonder who I am. Tonight, they get to remember me, instead.
So, what happens next? It is Noah who poses the question, as I knew he eventually would.
Where do the dead go? Are they lost to us, or are they still there—here—with us, now?
‘Can both be true?’ Sue asks in response, thinking of Lisa, and those rare, beautiful times she has returned to her mother in dreams. I am not the only one, it seems, who shows up in this way. As I consider this, I catch a glimpse of Lisa herself. Somewhere not too far from here. She is willowy, beautiful, and though I cannot be sure, it looks as though she is holding out her hand.
Something is changing this night.
‘Well, basic physics tells us that energy is constant,’ Noah responds in that familiar, easy way of his. ‘It can neither be created nor destroyed; it simply changes state, finds its expression elsewhere. Thinking about it that way, every atom of Alice has always existed. Always, in one form or another. This means she’s everywhere now, not just the one place, as we are.’
Before You Knew My Name Page 26