by Carr, Suzie
“I hurt her feelings.”
He squinted at me. “How badly?”
“Very badly. I told her she was incapable.”
He turned serious. “Do you think she is?”
“At times she’s been a little reckless with her life.”
“Does she laugh while being reckless?”
“She’s always smiling.”
“Are others laughing along with her?”
“Always.”
“Then you must let her be.”
“I already have. I backed out of her life months ago. She told me back then that she thinks I’m controlling because I like to help mend people.”
“Are you a therapist?”
I laughed. “Hell no.”
“Then, stop mending.”
I nodded.
He stared off to the television. “Why do you come visit me?”
“Because I like you.”
“Are you trying to mend me?”
“More like you’re mending me,” I said.
He looked back at me and smiled. “An old man like me?”
I nodded. “More than you’ll ever know.”
He sighed and labored for a breath. “Promise me something, dear.”
“Anything.”
“Well two things. One, don’t trap her. Two, take care of her.”
“Sir,” I said, leaning in. “Those two things can’t be compatible. You said so yourself. She’s got wings, and those wings need to fly.”
“Those wings also need air to lift them up. So promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Now listen carefully. Ruby doesn’t trust easily.”
“I know. I doubt she’d ever take my call again, if I’m even brave enough to press send.”
“I’m going to ensure that one day she will take your call. She’ll take it, because you’re going to tell her I told you a secret.”
“You’ve got a secret?”
“I’m going to tell you my secret, because I trust you.”
I leaned in closer. “You’ve got my word.”
“I’m not going to last much longer.”
“Stop.” I tapped his hand.
“When I die, I want you to show her something for me. Can you do that?”
“Stop talking like this.”
“I buried a time capsule treasure for her back when I sold The Rafters. It’s got a bunch of sentimental things that we shared over the years. I was feeling nostalgic back then. I wanted her to get back there one day. So, I planted the time capsule and told my lawyer about it. Of course, after I met Mrs. Green, I asked her to tell Ruby instead. I called my lawyer the next day and told him this change of plan. And now, guess what?”
“What?”
“Now, I want you to be the one to tell her. I want you to be there when she goes through it.”
I swallowed back the strain of tears. “Wow. That’s the sweetest thing ever.”
“It’s in the barn of The Rafters underneath the granite stone in the left corner.”
“I’ll see to it that she finds it many, many years from now.” I winked.
He smiled. “I’m tired right now.”
“Get some rest.” I rose and smoothed his hair. “I’ll be back in a few days, and we’ll start on the next story.”
He closed his eyes, and I walked out of his apartment.
Chapter Nineteen
Ruby
I never took my grampa back to the pottery café.
I never read to him again.
I would never get to hear another one of his stories.
I would never get to watch the silly grin pop on his face as the wind brushed past his hand sticking out of the window on our weekly trips to The Rafters.
My grampa, my role model, my saving grace, fell asleep and never woke up again.
The moment I walked into his living room and spotted him in his recliner, my heart clenched. His chest didn’t rise or fall. His eyes didn’t flutter. His hands didn’t tremble.
A peaceful smile blanketed his face and wrapped me in comfort.
I sat down on the couch beside the recliner and cradled his hand with mine. I didn’t cry. I just rested in peace alongside of him for a while, knowing that’s exactly what he would’ve wanted from me.
* *
Later on that day, I returned to my condo with some of his photo albums and boxes of personal belongings. I sat on my bed and scanned over pictures of us through the years. He laughed and smiled in all of them. He never let on to the loneliness he carried. He loved me. He took me in his arms and led me through some of the strangest, funniest, and most memorable paths in life.
I pulled out the shoebox. It contained his expired driver’s license, some dental floss, a copy of his birth certificate, an old Time magazine with a model T Ford on the cover. Underneath all of this laid a picture of him and Nadia sitting on his couch. She swept her arm around his shoulders. He smiled like he was the king of the prom, proud to be showing off his pretty date. In the photo, the daily calendar on his recliner’s end table read just two months prior.
My heart swelled.
I stared at it for a long time. She adored my grampa. She hung onto his words the way a student hung onto a favorite teacher’s. She asked him questions, involving him in conversation that brought life to his eyes. I admired this most about Nadia.
They both wore relaxed, peaceful smiles on their faces.
She needed him just as much as he needed her.
A strange envy stirred. I witnessed the true reflection of freedom in the lift on their cheeks and in the sparkles that shined in their eyes. The true freedom for them was not the absence of needing each other, but rather in needing each other.
I’d never get to sit and take a photo like this one with him.
A lump formed in my throat.
Nadia was the only one who would know just what to say to me to ease my pain.
I needed her.
I wanted her there with me, hugging me, telling me all would be okay. I wanted her to nurture my broken heart. I wanted her there with me looking through his things, helping me to remember him in his greatest light.
I stared long and hard at the image of them smiling, then picked up the phone and called her.
When I heard her delicate, soothing, familiar voice call out my name, peace blanketed me and I fell into her virtual embrace.
“Nadia,” I whispered.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, her voice soft as a lullaby.
I folded over myself.
“Ruby?
I cried, whimpering in soft successions.
“Why are you crying?” Panic edged on her voice.
“Grampa died this morning.”
“Oh,” she moaned. “No.” Her cry caught on, and she wailed into the phone along with me. We just cried. We couldn’t stop. The cries grew louder and echoed each other. Her sorrow and pain comforted me in a way too deep for words.
* *
The procession from the funeral home to the church stretched for at least eighty cars. My heart swelled with pride as we drove past the library that he cherished so much. Outside the library, his friends—the children and their parents who shared his passion and love for stories—created an honor guard that spread across the front lawn and spanned down on either end of the sidewalk leading to the library’s parking lot entrance. Nadia and Shawna sat with me in the limousine and wept along with me.
We celebrated his life in a Christian funeral mass at our church. We sat in the front row in my grampa’s favorite spot. Nadia held my hand and offered me tissues and comforted me through his beloved church hymns.
Later, Shawna, Eloise, Rachel, and Marcy joined me for a catered lunch at the pottery café where his closest friends paid tribute to him by reading his stories aloud. Chuckles replaced tears as friends shared fond memories of a man who lived to tell stories and make people smile.
After the celebration of his life ended, Nadia walked with me around the park
across the street from the pottery café. The sun shone, and the birds chirped in the trees above. We passed a group of families picnicking on a series of checkered blankets, giggling and enjoying life. The air smelled sweet and caressed me in nostalgia.
“You were right about me, you know,” Nadia said, reaching for my hand. “I didn’t know I had it in me to stand up without someone by my side. Since I separated from Jessica, I’ve gotten to know myself so much better. Your grampa helped me a lot with that.”
I stopped walking and smoothed over the top of her hand, circling my fingers over her soft skin. “Do you miss her?”
“The old version of me misses the old version of her. It’s best that those girls are never coming back, because they didn’t live lives where they brought out the best in anyone, not even themselves.”
“And how is the ‘new you’? Are you happy?” I asked.
“This, right here,” she said tightening her hand in mine, “Is the happiest I’ve been in a long time. Just being around you makes me feel alive.”
I gazed into her loving eyes. “It’s as if the air is easier to breathe.”
We both inhaled.
“Where’s your pilot girlfriend?”
I winced. “That didn’t end well. She flew me to Block Island and refused to fly me back when I asked, because there was this party she wanted to attend. So, I hopped a ferry instead.”
Relief washed over Nadia’s smooth complexion. “I’m sorry that I called you incapable,” she whispered. “You’re far from that.”
“You were right, though. I’m afraid to get hurt. I don’t want to be anymore.”
“You don’t need to be.”
“I’m learning that.”
She swung our arms and cocked her head.
“I’m so glad you called me.”
“I’m so glad you could be here for me.”
“I love being there for you,” she said. She opened her sweet smile to me, and I shed all of my fears right there in that park when I leaned in and kissed her. Her lips sheltered me from all I resisted and opened up a brand new path that sparkled with hope and radiated love in its most rarest and precious of forms.
* *
My grampa left me with over one hundred thousand dollars from the sale of The Rafters all those years ago. He never spent it on himself. He left a note for me telling me to spoil myself with it. All of this time I worried about paying him back five hundred dollars. Even as an adult, he guided me to focus on what mattered in life, which had nothing to do with money and everything to do with love of life. If he had handed me the money earlier on in life, I never would’ve met Nadia or Shawna.
A reason existed for everything under the sun.
As Nadia and I drove out to The Rafters to pay one last homage to my grampa, I stared out at the trees whizzing past us and mulled over what I’d do with all of that money.
I could rent a trendy beach condo. I could open up my very own massage studio. Nadia and I could take a month long vacation to Hawaii if we wanted. I could hire a maid service to clean my new condo. I could buy a new car and rest my beloved Camaro so she stayed nice and pristine for many years to come. I had so many choices; I didn’t know which to choose.
“Thank you for coming with me, darling.” I laid my hand on her wrist.
She raised my hand up to her lips and kissed it. “I’m honored that you’d ask me to come with you. I know this is not going to be easy.”
“It’s what he would’ve wanted.”
A few hours later, we stood on top of the grassy field together. I held his ashes against my chest. “We used to race down this hill together, and just when we’d get to the bottom, he’d let me roll by him and win.”
Nadia wiped her eyes but the tears still rolled down.
“This is where he’d want to be. Right here.”
She braced her hand against my lower back. “Go ahead. Let him fly.”
I opened the urn. The breeze took him in her graces, giving him the air he needed to lift up and fly away.
We watched him dance in the air, twirling along with the whispers of the wild and free energy that brought life to the trees, to the hills, to the grass, to the butterflies, to the birds, to all who breathed in its majestic power. We stood together and watched as he blended with his favorite place on Earth. When he disappeared into the fields, and I gasped, Nadia mended my soul with her loving embrace.
She held me for a long time as the sun faded in and out behind the white, fluffy clouds. I felt at peace and as one with the universe on top of that hillside.
This was home.
We spent the afternoon snuggled together on top of that hill. Then, as the sun started to set over the tree line, Nadia feathered my cheek with her lips. “Ruby, your grampa told me a secret.”
“He doesn’t tell many people secrets.”
“He left something for you here, in the barn.”
I placed my hand on my heart. “He did?” Fresh tears stung my cheeks.
“He feared you wouldn’t trust me again, so he told me this secret in the hopes you would see he trusted me.”
I felt my grampa’s spirit all around us, enveloping us in a truth so clearly defined for us in this moment. “He always knew what was best for me.” I stared out over the backdrop of our hill, the hill that defined me, and now would forever define us.
She cradled my arms and looked me in the eye. “I love you, Ruby Clark.”
I kissed her with a new sense of freedom, opening myself up to her, and letting her in to feel my vulnerability, my tremble, and most of all, my love.
“Are you ready to see his secret?” she asked, kissing the tip of my nose.
I nuzzled up against her. “More ready than ever.”
She took my hand in hers and lifted me up to my feet and led me down the hill, towards the barn. She led me over to a granite piece and picked it up. Together we dropped to our knees and bowed our heads. We held hands at this point and steadied our breathing. We stared into each other’s eyes. Then, together, like a couple of mad women, we dug the earth with our fingertips, scratching and tossing dirt aside until we reached the plastic case.
I pulled it up and stared at it for a few long seconds.
“Open it.”
I unlatched the top and smiled when I saw the plastic horse. I pulled it out. “Oh my God. This was his favorite toy as a kid.” I handed it to Nadia. She cradled it in her hands.
A note sat on top of the rest of the items that read: Dear Ruby, I got you to come back here, didn’t I?! This place was magical and built us both into the people we’ve become. I am sad on this day because I am leaving The Rafters behind, but it is time to move on for me. This place just isn’t the same without you in it, my precious free bird. Never forget this place, okay? Never forget the happiness that we shared. The memories we created. The lives we affected through my (INGENIOUS) stories (HAHA) and your sweet smile. May these tokens from our past years here together bring you joy as you continue on to make this world a better place. Keep smiling and living life to its fullest. I will love you always, your Grampa. P.S. Thank you for filling my life with joy.
“Wow.” I stared at his messy handwriting. “This man sure had a way with words.” I handed Nadia the note and started pulling out the token items one by one.
I pulled out my favorite childhood doll that he gave to me on my tenth birthday. Her red lips had faded to a soft pink and her blonde hair still hung in its side ponytail. “He would sit this doll on his lap while he read stories to his guests, because I worried she’d miss out somehow if she wasn’t right next to him.”
Nadia took her and chuckled. “So cute.”
The box overflowed with things that brought back so many happy memories of dinners, walks, fishing trips, birthdays, Christmases, and story times. My entire childhood sat on the floor beside me, reminding me how great The Rafters was. It healed my broken childhood heart. It grew a trusting bond between Grampa and me. It taught me the value of friendship, of fr
eedom, and now of love.
At the bottom of the box sat a handmade book.
“He wrote me a story.”
“Read it.”
I read his story about a bird named Ruby who witnessed one too many of her family and friends falling mid-flight. So this little bird, despite sneaking longing peeks up to the sky, stayed grounded. She spent her days wandering around the ground pecking at droppings and looking up to the sky, wishing she could fly. As her friends all began their flight lessons, she hung back, pulled by a fear too big to tackle. She denied this fear and blamed a broken wing. Soon, everyone she knew flew by day and left her alone to wander the open hillsides alone. She longed to be a part of the sky, so she wandered to the mountain’s edge day after day just to feel the breeze rustle through the feathers on her wings. She dreamed of flying up to where the clouds danced above. But, the fear of falling weighed heavier. So, she sat alone on the mountainside day after day. Then one day, this beautiful yellow bird came to her side and nudged her off the edge of the mountain side. When she flapped her wings, and they failed, the yellow bird dove under her and guided her, giving her the support and confidence to flap her wings again and fly.
He ended with a personal note to me.
Fly, beautiful Ruby. Fly like the free bird you are. Never fear life, for you’ve got an angel watching over you.
My grampa stood right there with us, caressing us in his warm spirit. “Now I’ve got two angels.”
Nadia pulled me into her embrace. I curled up against her and wept. She smoothed my hair and rocked with me.
“I want to honor him and make him proud.”
“Of course you do,” she said kissing the top of my head.
Many months later
Nadia and I purchased The Rafters back from Mrs. Green. I asked her to stay on and help. She agreed without blinking, as Eloise was moving to Providence with Shawna.
I stood in the center of the naked room that used to be decorated in dark, rustic furniture. My heart fluttered with a joy I could only describe as the feeling of wings flapping against my inner walls. My soul snapped alive. I scanned the bare, green walls, the laminated floors, and the baseboards with their crackling paint, and the elation mounted to surreal levels. I spotted an ant crawling across the floor in a mad dash to clear the room and make it to the corner. It danced across the laminate, eager to meet up with its destiny under the baseboard. This beautiful ant lived in my house. My house. I spun, arms wide-open taking in this moment when I finally owned something other than a portable massage chair. And what a room the chair would embrace finally.