I shrugged. “I’m supposed to be at the library.”
“Your mother and I used to meet here sometimes for coffee before she passed away. Did you know that?”
“No.” I shook my head. I knew Martha’s had been here for a long time, but I hadn’t imagined it had been there when my own mother was alive.
“Seems like an answer to prayer to find you here.”
I suddenly didn’t feel like saying anything, so I busied myself putting the letters back in the hatbox. I noticed that he was looking at the envelopes. He reached over to help me stack them, and then a look of bewilderment shadowed his face as he studied one.
“What are all these?”
“Letters from Blake Birkirt.”
“Your grandfather,” he corrected.
“Yes. Grandpa.”
He placed the letter on top of the stack and then studied my face. Embarrassed, I rubbed beneath my eyes and glanced out the window.
His voice was soft. “Have you been receiving these letters all along?”
“No, Kitty has been setting them aside. Tonight is the first time…”
He cleared his throat. “I came at a bad time after all. I can leave.”
“No, please. Don’t leave. You came at a good time. Maybe you can help me piece together some of the information from these letters.”
He shrugged. “I can try.”
I shuffled the letters and was surprised when a key tinkled from one of the envelopes onto the floor. Dr. Larimer leaned over and picked it up. Looking curiously at it, he handed it to me.
“I might be able to help you with this one. People don’t use keys like this much anymore. It belongs to an old house I bet. Probably either the loft or the house Ruby lived in with her parents, their little cottage.”
I somehow wasn’t surprised that he seemed to know about the loft. Our eyes met, and I felt an inexplicable connection with him for the briefest moment. The knowledge of someone else besides Kitty sharing one small detail of my life engulfed me, and suddenly I was in tears again. I wished more than anything that Ruby hadn’t died.
“You spent a lot of time with him, you know?”
“Were you with us?”
“During some visits, when you were between six months old and two. Sometimes when I visited my grandparents, I would stop by Frances-DiCamillo to see you and Ruby.”
“You were there?”
He was silent for a while, staring at me in a way that didn’t make me feel uncomfortable, only extremely sad as I noted the same grief in his eyes as my own. The words of Emily Dickinson were there again.
I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes—
I wonder if It weighs like Mine—
Or has an Easier size.
I knew its size wasn’t easier for him, only different.
“You and Ruby weren’t together?
“We were friends then. Truly friends.”
“What about before?”
“You look like you’ve had enough surprises for one night.”
“What’s one more?” I tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a guttural sob. “I need to know about my mother, Dr. Larimer.”
He took a deep breath and leaned forward.
“Okay, but first it’s Matt to you. Not Dr. Larimer.”
I shook my head. “Kitty would never go for that kind of casual disrespect.” This time I managed a real smile, and he chuckled in response.
“I’m sure of that, but still it’s Matt from now on, okay?”
“Sure.”
I stared at this man who’d always had a strange part in my world that I could never explain—remaining a stranger yet familiar in my life. He had a clean-cut look about him that reminded me somewhat of Susannah’s husband, Troy, but Matt was older, probably late thirties or early forties. He had early gray hair in his brown sideburns and a hint of fine, branching lines crinkling at the corner of his eyes. I could easily see how Ruby’s feelings toward him had turned from childhood friendship to something more. There was kindness in his eyes that was real despite the serious way in which he carried himself. I also finally understood why he had always been so personable with Kitty. He knew Kitty and me. He probably knew more about the culminating information of my life than I did but presumably had never been allowed to say anything.
“Did Kitty forbid you to tell me the nature of your friendship with Ruby?”
He sighed, staring out the window toward the river.
“Yes, and at first I agreed. Now I’m not sure I can keep my word anymore.”
“What happened when Ruby died?”
“You know what happened, Lucy.” He stared at me with his kind eyes again, and I felt small, like a little girl without any parents to keep me safe.
“I mean what else?”
“At the hospital?”
I nodded yes.
“I was only a resident at the same hospital I’m at now, but of course when I heard about Ruby, I wanted to help. I didn’t tell the doctors I knew her so well, and they allowed me to assist. When they saw me get emotional during the consultations with the team about her chances of recovery, they knew. They tried to take me off the team, but when I refused to go home, they decided to let me stay. As you know, there was no chance of her recovery, Lucy. Her brain was no longer active. It was only the machines that kept her organs alive.”
I swiped at the tear escaping down my cheek.
“I followed up with Kitty a few weeks afterward, and she let me see you. I knew it had been traumatic. You lost your memories really fast, and you were at a very fragile time in your life. The mind of a child is very sensitive, and I agreed with Kitty that you needed to have nothing but love and security.”
The sudden memory of his presence on the day of Ruby’s death flooded my mind with a brightness that pierced my consciousness. The lights had hurt my eyes; the gleaming floors, metallic and white, had been everywhere. Ruby was being rolled away down the hall. Remembering caused me to reach up and rub my forehead, the pain physical as well as emotional.
“Thank you for stopping the nurses so I could say good-bye to Ruby,” I croaked.
He attempted a halfhearted grin. “You would’ve been hard to keep away.”
He was right. I still felt the horrendous longing that had propelled me down the hallway in that awful moment. “I was afraid.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “And it’s okay.”
He made a movement with his hand to reach toward me when Mrs. Schneider quietly shuffled over to us. She placed her hand on Matt’s shoulder.
“Matt, what will it be?”
I didn’t miss the fact she called him Matt.
“Oh, the usual. Thanks.”
“You come here often?” I was surprised.
“About once a week. It’s a good place to get away from the demands of people. I like to do research while I’m here too; you know, read boring medical journals and so forth.”
I nodded. It was a nice place to get away from everyday things. I often came with Kitty, who liked the tea and Mrs. Schneider—who was better known as Martha to most.
“But I’ve never seen you here.”
“When I come, it’s usually in the evening.”
I shook my head in surprise. “All this time we’ve been hanging out at the same coffee shop? Maybe we could have spoken about things earlier.”
“I couldn’t have told you anything before now. At least I wouldn’t have felt right about it.”
Mrs. Schneider set the tea in front of Matt and glanced at me.
“For a moment there you looked like your mother.” She winked and walked away.
I tried not to show my shock but couldn’t help it. “Does everybody know about my past but me?”
“No, no. It’s just that Martha’s has been here for many years, believe it or not. If you haven’t noticed, things don’t rotate so much in this neighborhood. Ruby and I met here sometimes when she was attending school. You did know she was a stude
nt at the university, right?”
“I’ve always known that.” I motioned toward the hatbox. “And one of these letters was congratulating me for being accepted into Ruby’s alma mater.”
“That’s why Ruby chose this location for an apartment, or rather, why your grandpa encouraged her to live in this area. Anyway, we weren’t together at that point. We could only meet as friends. I was no longer available, a big mistake I regretted at the time, but I’m at peace about it now.”
He looked down at his tea as he slowly stirred sugar into it. His eyebrows were knit together, and he looked sad. I didn’t think he was at peace at all.
“You cared about her?”
“I loved her.”
He said this simply, as a fact, and looked back out the window at a houseboat maneuvering its way around the bend in the river. “I think it’s the reason she was so sad sometimes.”
“Sad?”
“I was terrible at sticking up for what I really wanted in life, so I let Ruby slip away from me. I think we both bumped into each other here on purpose. I know it was definitely wrong since I was attached to someone else, but we were only friends. That’s the sad truth, but just being in the same room occasionally helped ease our pain.”
His story was even sadder than Kitty’s in some ways. I felt like reaching across to hold his hand but realized he might be offended. After all, I was just Ruby’s little girl. How could I comfort him?
There were so many things I didn’t know about Ruby that Kitty had been very adept at keeping under wraps. I could see how it had been easy for her to do in the beginning. I’d spent so much of my time with Kitty at home or at the museum that I was a virtual recluse, and I hadn’t minded at all. I had always been a loner at heart, it seemed, and so I thrived in our world of solitude. It was becoming more and more apparent of late that the reclusive life had been purposeful.
“Stop me if I’m telling you something you already know.”
I shook my head. “No, because it’s your perspective I want to hear. Besides I hardly know anything about Ruby, as you can see. The only things that really make me feel closer to her are the paintings and her piano.”
He nodded, and I knew he understood.
“She played beautifully. And her paintings were remarkable, in my opinion. I’m not an art critic, but there was always a search, a sort of desperation, in her paintings that I identified with.”
“Yes.” I nodded in agreement. “I guess…I guess she was desperate at times in her life. I’ve felt the same sometimes.”
“Do you paint as well?”
“Yes.”
“I never knew that.”
I just smiled. I guess I had never mentioned it during our brief doctor appointments.
“What do you paint?”
“I paint Ruby.”
He smiled, not surprised.
“I paint her and Kitty. I paint memories when I have them. That’s why I have so many unfinished canvases. But music is different. I compose it, which I don’t think she ever did. I love playing her piano. It makes me feel close to her.”
“She always said that playing made her feel closer to La Rosaleda.”
“Really?”
“But that was long after Kitty had taken her from there. By the time Kitty convinced Ruby to move from San Francisco to Sacramento, she was ready to try going to school, and that’s when she started attending your university. Her grades had been wonderful, but she’d been to so many different schools, all public, that the university seemed reluctant to accept her transcripts. That’s where your grandpa stepped in. I know it sounds like favoritism, but he knew the dean through some business investments, and it only took a phone call and maybe a donation to get the board to actually read Ruby’s application. Once they read it, they saw the great potential she had.”
I leaned closer to him across the table. “The reason we moved into our apartment is so she could go to school here?”
“Yes, and the apartments weren’t easy to get either. Have you taken a look around? You might have a tiny, old apartment, but the historic location and the real estate value is phenomenal. And you and Kitty are living in a very smart investment. Your grandpa picked a good area for you and Ruby to live. He made sure you would be okay.”
“Investment?” I was confused. Kitty had always talked about paying rent.
“Your grandpa owns your apartment.”
“You still know Grandpa?”
He smiled. “He will want to see you now that you know.”
My eyes smarted as I realized what Kitty had kept from me all these years. It’s not that I thought she lied. If I knew Kitty, she had probably been sending Blake a check every month out of pure pride and pulling money out of the account he’d set up and sending it back to him when she couldn’t make the payment with her own small wage. That must be the rent check I’d seen her write once a month for years. Now that I thought about it, she’d always left the “pay to the order of” line blank. She’d said it was for the landlord’s stamp, but it must have been so I wouldn’t see Blake’s name.
I shook my head angrily.
“Kitty has kept so many things secret from me. How did she think she could continue to do this when I became an adult?”
“I doubt she thought she could keep it secret forever, and now you’re asking questions. It’s hard for her. She has tried to protect you for many years. I think you’re ready to know the truth, but I think she’s afraid of what it might do to you.”
“She’s afraid of what it might do to her!”
Matt sipped his tea, weighing his answer, perhaps wanting to be supportive of Kitty but not hurt my feelings. He knew more, I was sure of that.
“Maybe it’s true that she’s worried what it might do to her. That isn’t such a surprising way for her to feel. At least if you knew everything, you might agree.”
“That’s the problem. She divulges a little bit at a time but leaves out details that are very important to my life!”
“Ah, Kitty does hope you will recall things.”
“Only what she wants me to remember,” I corrected.
“Lucy, your grandmother doesn’t want your memories lost, but you need to give her some time. You don’t have to know everything now, do you? There are some things that have to do with her encounter with my father that you might never know about.”
I hadn’t wanted to bring up Mike Larimer, Matt’s dad, and how he had almost fathered a baby with Kitty, or that she had chosen to end that pregnancy.
“Does my grandpa talk about that?”
“Not anymore. I only see Blake every couple of months when I go visit my grandparents. All he ever wants to talk about has nothing to do with the past. He only wants to ask me about you and Kitty and how you both are now. He always asks if you’ve been in my office lately.”
“You divulge our secret medical information?” I teased, trying to lighten up the conversation a little.
“Not exactly.” He chuckled. “But I tell him what I can and what I think is appropriate so he knows how you both are doing. If you want, sue me. Everyone likes to sue doctors.”
We both laughed.
“I’m not going to sue you,” I assured him.
I was silent then, still trying to absorb that while I had lived a life under what I thought was Kitty’s cautious protection, I’d been secretly cared for by my grandfather, who had known exactly where I was all these years. Why had he stayed away?
Blake Birkirt had written me letters that went unanswered, but he’d never shown up on our doorstep even when he could have. I knew what Kitty’s pride was like, and I could respect his seeming desire to respect her need for separation, but I’d been denied a relationship with him in the process. And yet… how could I be mad at him? I was too tired to be mad anymore. This was all so confusing that I could scarcely even stay mad at Kitty. More and more I was finding myself swaying back and forth between anger and compassion for her.
“I imagine Kitty hasn’
t lived as easily as you think with all these secrets swimming around in her heart, Lucy. I don’t know what her big fear is, but it’s so big that her husband has been within reach for more than twenty years and she hasn’t contacted him once.”
“She has read every one of his letters,” I said, pointing to the hatbox.
“She certainly hasn’t picked you up and moved you to a secret location either, has she?”
I shook my head no.
“So what about you and Ruby? Why didn’t you just marry my mother and take her to La Rosaleda to live since you were in love?”
His face looked pained. “Lucy, you know I have a wife and children now, right?”
“Yes.”
“It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to get into it all here, but my wife and I haven’t always been as happy as we are now. There was a time when we were pushed together by people who were more worried about appearances than whether or not we were right for each other. That was when your mother was pushed out of my life, and I admit it’s my own fault. I should have fought for her.”
When I heard Matt Larimer’s version of the story, I felt the closest to Ruby I had ever felt. He filled in details I’d only imagined about Ruby—what her dreams were, what she longed for, what she wanted in life, her joys, her pains. Most important to me, I finally learned about the man she’d loved: a sad story about unrequited passion that was more amazing to me than any fiction. And even more heartbreaking.
LOVE CAN’T BRING BACK THE DEAD
Matt
26
Ruby used to say we were open canvases.” Matt smiled at the memory of when he and Ruby were so very young at La Rosaleda. He could see the two of them, as if in one of Ruby’s portraits: Ruby at his side, alive and beautiful, a friend to lean on in a life that had been constantly unstable. They were walking through a vineyard. It was Frances-DiCamillo. They were holding hands. “She said we could paint it however we wanted to.”
Matt pulled Ruby along one row that angled up and over a hill, allowing a spectacular view of the valley before them. The vines stretched for miles, all fully leafed with only a glimpse of the grapes that would soon spring in full clusters.
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