by Bill Cameron
When the door shut behind him, someone let out a long breath. Then Ashley started laughing, a gibbering squeal Ruby Jane felt in her teeth. Clarice gave her a look, and drew herself to full height. “We were going to invite you to the party, but the thing is—no dykes.”
“Clarice—” She struggled to find her voice. “—why do you have to be like this?”
“I’m not the one making out with her girlfriend.”
“We weren’t making out.”
“What do lesbos call it?”
Ruby Jane’s head spun. Gabi reached out to take her hand. “Ruby, let’s go.”
The sheet of ice broke loose. She shrank away from Gabi’s touch, instantly struck by the ease with which she could compound a mistake.
“Gabi, it’s not—”
It was too late. She refused to look at Ruby Jane. Her eyes in their dark hollows were fixed on the floor. “I need to go home.”
“Wait—”
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
Ruby Jane turned, but Gabi was already gone. The door clanged shut. Clarice put a hand on Ruby Jane’s arm. “Let the little dyke go.”
Ruby Jane wanted to follow Gabi, to talk to her, to find a way to make sense of what happened. She didn’t know what was holding her back. A writhing weight in her belly held her in place, a strange and desperate need to be understood.
Moira smirked. “We still know what you are.” Ashley continued to giggle, the sound a jangle of nerves.
“No.” The open space surrounded Ruby Jane like a storm cloud. She drew in a breath heavy with uncertainty and looked at Clarice. The other two didn’t matter. Yet she had nothing to say.
She fled.
- 34 -
Post-Season, April 1989
Warm air heavy with the scent of cheese and rising dough wafted toward the open door. All the tables were full, as were the stools at the counter. Madonna sang from the jukebox, the tune and timbre of her voice recognizable even if the chatter drowned out the lyrics. Ruby Jane stood in the doorway, a hot ache at her core. A tremor passed through her hands. She closed her eyes, tried to reach that centered place she could always find on the court. An amped Femzilla at the post was less intimidating.
Huck sat in the corner, jammed among a half dozen boys around a four-top, two pizza trays half-empty on the table, the blockhead core. No one worried about weight in the off-season. She knew what was in store for the night ahead. Pizza Palace, then raid the most recently stocked liquor cabinet. The party might be at a house, or out on the man-made lake next to the trailer park, or in someone’s barn. The details varied, but the general sequence was the same every weekend. Unless some outside force interrupted the routine.
Like her.
She crossed the room, the sounds of conversation parting before her like tall grass. The blockheads broke out laughing. Fart joke, she assumed. Huck looked up as she neared the table, his big grin softening.
“Huck?”
“Hey, Ruby.” He straightened up a little in his chair.
“You got a minute?”
He looked at Malo, deferring to his captain. She refused to defer to Clarice. Malo grinned at Ruby Jane, his lip curling into a leer. “What’s up, Dunks?”
“None of your goddamn business.” The boys hooted, but she ignored them. “Huck, please?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure.”
“Outside?”
Blockheads exchanged looks as they uncurled from around the four-top. She knew what they were thinking, but she didn’t care. Huck got to his feet, and she took his hand, pulled him after her to the door.
“Ruby? Is everything all right?”
One of the blockheads loosed a piercing whistle from the corner.
“Outside.”
The night was chilly after the crowded warmth of the Palace. She pulled him around the corner, out of view of the windows.
“What’s going on, Ruby?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“You wanted to see me?”
Blockhead. But instead of making a remark, she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into his neck. She inhaled Irish Spring and pizza sauce.
“Ruby—?”
She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to explain any of it. She didn’t know how to explain any of it. Gabi kissed, and then Clarice said, and then I wouldn’t—How could she make sense of it to him when she couldn’t make sense of it to herself? All she knew was she felt sad and alone and scared, all for reasons she couldn’t comprehend.
“It’s been a weird year.” She spoke into the fabric of his shirt, her voice muffled.
“Tell me about it.”
“Take me home?”
He was quiet for a moment. “You need a ride?”
She hesitated, then pulled him tighter to herself as if she could squeeze courage out of him. “Not my home.”
He took a long time to respond. “Are you sure?”
She felt unmoored, incapable of certainty about anything except her need to forget herself. She let him lead her to his car. They didn’t speak during the short drive to his house on the edge of town. He parked behind the garage and said one word. “Ruby.” She put a finger to his lips, shocked by the heat of his skin. She almost turned back. But, moments later, when he shut his bedroom door behind her, she closed her eyes and imagined a girl who could desire another without restraint.
I know why I’m here, she thought, unsurprised by how easy it was to deceive herself.
- 35 -
Interview, April 1989
“How did you know I was here?”
Mrs. Parmelee wore a pair of battered cross-trainers, old jeans, and a tatty, washed-out polo shirt. She’d pulled her hair off her forehead with a tortoiseshell band. Dark circles rimmed her eyes. An errant wisp of grey hair hung loose at her temple. A weight seemed to tug at the corners of her mouth, making her face longer than usual. Ruby Jane found herself unsettled, as though she’d come across her teacher at a graveside.
Mrs. Parmelee keyed on Ruby Jane’s unease. “I came from home.” She glanced down at herself, waved a hand dismissively. “It was a crazy day at school. If not for Mr. Unger, I think we’d have an outbreak of Lord of the Flies. He decided on an early release.”
Nothing like a little blood and bedlam to bring out everyone’s holiday spirit.
Ruby Jane sat in Grabel’s spot, as if his seat could somehow confer power. Through the closed door at her back, a rabble of voices of argued, one louder than the others. She couldn’t make out the words, but it wasn’t hard to guess the subject. Nash had dared allow a visitor to see Grabel’s prisoner. Detective Pervo wouldn’t understand that in Nash’s world, a few years out of Valley View, Mrs. Parmelee held greater authority than Grabel would ever know.
Mrs. Parmelee took the chair next to her. Ruby Jane stirred, then folded her hands and looked out the window. She imagined herself back at school, seated in Mrs. Parmelee’s classroom. Another detention. Everything in its place, Mrs. Parmelee at her desk. If she closed her eyelids to narrow slits, she could imagine Cézanne’s vision of the quarry in the unfocused haze through her lashes.
“I heard what happened.” They were both quiet for a long moment. “Clarice is saying she had you arrested.”
Ruby Jane rubbed the drying tears on her cheeks. “She wishes.”
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I called your mother, but she had nothing to say.”
“I’m surprised she was coherent enough to not tell you anything.”
“It was … an interesting conversation.”
“They always are.”
“I wish there was something I could do for you there.”
“You showed up here. That’s a hell of a lot more than you can say about Bella.”
Mrs. Parmelee took Ruby Jane’s hand. “I’m sorry. I really am.” Her skin was warm and smooth. Ruby Jane felt an unexpected sense of calm come over h
er. Through her eyelashes, sunlight climbed the quarry wall. Shadows melted like butter and flowed over the stone face. She blinked, squeezed her teacher’s hand back.
“What can you tell me?”
“It’s not about Clarice. She’s a side show.”
Behind her, the muffled voices continued their quarrel. Her eyes stung. She thought of Gabi and the onions in her kitchen. They should have skipped the banquet. Made that stir fry and watched a movie on HBO. Eaten ice cream.
Ruby Jane wanted to tell Mrs. Parmelee the whole sordid tale. But not here, not while she remained within Grabel’s grasp. The cassette recorder was quiet and dead on the table, but anyone could be listening. For all she knew, the phone on the credenza functioned as an intercom. Grabel and the chief, even Nash, might be listening to everything from the next room, their squabbling a ruse.
“It’s about your father, isn’t it?”
She flinched. Does everyone already know? She opened her mouth to retort, but held her tongue. Even so, Mrs. Parmelee guessed her thought.
“Ours is a small community, honey. Word gets around.”
“It’s sick.”
“I won’t argue the point.”
“It’s worse than school.”
“Some things never change.”
“There’s nothing I can tell them.”
Mrs. Parmelee knew what she meant by that as well. “Ruby, let me tell you what I’ve learned. Okay?”
Ruby Jane frowned at the table top. She didn’t want to know what Mrs. Parmelee had learned, afraid, perhaps, her discoveries might lie too close to the truth. She only wanted to escape. To pound the asphalt, to dribble, to shoot. To climb the fluid terra-cotta quarry walls. Rain threes from the corner. Feel the wind in her face, smell warm stone. But she knew they could keep her as long as they wanted.
“Sure.”
“You’ve put yourself in a difficult position. It’s not fair, but it’s the way things are.”
“What do you mean?”
“Clarice has a lot of pull around here. You can’t say the same.”
“Because of one missed shot in the tournament.”
“Like I said, it’s not fair.”
“You’re saying if I made that shot, she’d be sitting here?”
“No, but she is the one people believe in right now.”
“And I broke her nose.”
“Yes.”
“She deserved it.”
Mrs. Parmelee licked her lips. “What she deserved is beside the point. This isn’t the Old West. No matter how valid your grievance against her, in the eyes of the law you committed assault. And though I hate to say it, I believe you’re this close to getting charged.” She held up her hand, finger and thumb half an inch apart. “Mr. Grabel thinks it will give him some leverage over you.”
“So why not charge me?”
“You said it yourself. Clarice is a side show.”
Outside, the starlings returned with a clatter. The birds poured off the roof like water from a clogged gutter, their calls shrill and disconcerting. Her vision of the quarry washed away with their passage. She sighed and dropped her face into her hands, elbows on the table’s edge. She’d been in this cramped, sour room for far too long. Her tongue felt thick and dry. Nash had promised her something to drink.
“Ruby? What are you thinking?”
Clarice was a smart girl. Her parents were no dummies either. She could press charges, drag Ruby Jane into juvie court. But what would happen then? It had been a fraught, unsettling week. Ruby Jane had no history of legal trouble. Not like this. With all that had happened, the mitigating circumstances would work in her favor. An assault charge would go nowhere. Clarice surely knew it.
But something more serious, a missing father and a drunken admission late one night, now that might have legs. Ruby Jane could picture it: Clarice answering Grabel’s questions. “Has anything like this ever happened before?” No, … But then Clarice could offer a tentative, well, maybe this is nothing, but … dropped at the right moment, Grabel wouldn’t be able to resist Clarice’s gold nugget of accusation.
If it led to a genuine crime, the result might be far worse than the wrist slap a girlfight would bring. And if not, interrogation by Detective Pervert offered a measure of vengeance Clarice would never see in juvenile court.
Ruby Jane pushed her fingers through her hair and sat back. “Clarice is screwing with me.”
Mrs. Parmelee went around the table to the window and leaned against the glass. Her dark hair haloed her long face. “Honey, it’s going to get worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“Has Mr. Grabel mentioned Gabi yet?”
“No.” Her voice struggled to rise from a hollow in her chest.
“There’s talk about you and Gabi, and Clarice is doing most of the talking. You can assume Mr. Grabel has heard, and will try to use it against you if nothing else works.”
Ruby Jane sagged. She could almost hear the whispers, could almost feel the Clarice’s lies and insinuations bearing down on her.
You should have seen Ruby and Gabi after the banquet, their tongues were like snails wrestling—
It would be bad enough at school, the talk and the looks, the sudden lulls in conversation as she walked past. But if Detective Pervert started in on her—“Fuck Gabi Schilling—oh, sorry. Poor choice of words.”
Gabi didn’t deserve that.
Mrs. Parmelee moved away from the window and kneeled at Ruby Jane’s side. “Do you remember the conversation in my classroom a couple of months ago?”
She would never forget. Sometimes all you can do is take matters into your own hands. Ruby Jane stared at her hands.
“I can help you.”
“How?”
“Don’t worry about that. But there’s something I need to know.”
“You want to know what they think I’ve done. If it’s true.”
Mrs. Parmelee shook her head. “I know you, honey, maybe better than you realize. All I need to know is if you want my help.”
Ruby Jane opened her mouth to respond, just as quickly closed it again. She dropped her hands into her lap. The idea Mrs. Parmelee might put an end to this nightmare sent a trill of anticipation through her, followed by a shadow of doubt.
Do I deserve what she’s offering me? Does Jimmie?
Ruby Jane thought back to that day in the classroom, the long awkward pauses during Mrs. Parmelee’s unexpected revelation. The message then and the message now was clear: the facts were less important than the truth they hid.
Only she could answer her own troubling questions. Did she deserve to go free? Jimmie pulled the trigger. Ruby Jane dug the hole. Perhaps the time had come to let justice have its way.
Ruby Jane gazed out the window, unable to invoke the Bibemus Quarry again. She felt insubstantial, like the filmy clouds which hung loose and fluid in the thin grey sky. At her back loomed Grabel. Before her, Bella.
Jimmie is the weak one.
Bella—mother, dispossessed rich girl, perpetual drunk—had concocted the whole dark scheme.
You never know who’s going to come looking for you, baby girl.
Something hardened within her. She didn’t care if she lost. She only cared that Bella not win.
She met Mrs. Parmelee’s gaze. “I’m ready to get out of here.”
“Of course you are.”
“What are you going to do?”
Now Mrs. Parmelee smiled. “I’m going to have a little talk with Mr. Grabel.”
- 36 -
Stormy Night, August 1988
Ruby? Is that you, baby girl?
She shivered at the sound of Dale’s voice rising out of the shadows. The last time he referred to her as “baby girl,” he was lying in a pool of his own blood. She’d returned from a run and entered a house throbbing with noise. Bella sat at the dining room table, head in her hands, sobbing. Ice melted in a glass between her elbows. Jimmie, somewhere upstairs, vomited a torrent of pungent obscenities. Dale�
��s moans set the base line, a pathetic drone laced with slurred entreaties for help.
Ruby Jane stepped over a broken bourbon bottle on the kitchen floor, paused at the dining room door.
“What happened?” She’d run thirteen miles at marathon pace in the cold January air. Her quads felt like they’d been stabbed with needles. All she wanted was a banana, a bottle of Gatorade, and a hot shower. “Mother, I asked you what’s going on.”
Bella ignored her. Ruby Jane moved into the hallway and found Dale at the foot of the stairs, Jimmie on the landing above. Dale moaned and reached toward her with a bloody hand. A gash on his forehead drained into his eyes and down his cheek, puddled beneath his head. His legs were a tangle on the ground.
“He hit me, baby girl. He hit me with that goddamn club.”
Ruby Jane looked up the stairway. Jimmie’s useless arm, in a cast since the last fight, dangled at his side. With his good hand, he wrung at his hair. The light from the landing shone on his face. She made out the stark red shape of a fist, all five knuckles clear in the soft tissue below the cheek bone. Jimmie never started anything.
“What happened?” She directed her question up the stairwell, but Dale stirred at her feet. “I tol’ you, baby—”
“Jimmie?”
He turned his broken hand over and grimaced. “Same as fucking always.”
Dale’s groping paw found her ankle and she sighed. She tugged free of his grip and went into the kitchen, soaked a dishtowel in cold water and tossed a dry towel over her shoulder. She returned to the hallway and set to washing the blood off Dale’s face. He winced when she touched the ragged wound with the damp cloth. “How bad is it, baby girl?”
“I look like a doctor to you?”
She pressed the dry cloth to the wound, told him to hold it there. Looked up the stairs.
“Jimmie, help me get him to the car. He needs stitches. And we need to get your arm looked at.”
“Let him bleed to death.”
“You don’t want that.”
“You’re next, Roo. Soon as I’m out of here, you’re next.”