by Susan Wilson
Ravi stands beside her. He has taken a slightly filial tone with her, consoling and at the ready to help her find alternate transportation. “I have the number of our local taxicab company. I would be more than happy to make a call for you.”
“My daughter would tell me to download the Uber app.” Ruby has on her Skechers and is planning on a walk to town. Once she gets past the sidewalk-less industrial area, it’s only a mile or so into Harmony Farms proper. Besides, the Hitchhiker is up for a nice walk. The day is seasonably warm, the sky a tad overcast.
It’s amazing how different things look on a casual walk; Ruby notices things otherwise invisible as they are sped past in a car. An otherwise nondescript white vinyl-sided house has a charming picket fence against which old-fashioned roses climb; a stone cherub appears to bless the blooms. A black and white cat sits on a porch step, eyeing their progress with disdain. The Hitchhiker stares but makes no hostile move. Ruby pauses long enough to see if the cat says anything to her, but without the tactile element, she gets nothing more than what anybody would expect a cat to think, and she moves on.
The proletarian outskirts of Harmony Farms quickly become patrician as the houses go from shabby mid-century to historic antiques restored to within an inch of their lives. Gardens are designed and driveways paved with smooth blacktop, delineated in granite blocks. Most are Federal style; all are white. Probably some arcane rule against individual style, Ruby thinks. Another block and she’s downtown.
“Is that you, Ruby?” a female voice calls out from a white truck. It’s Polly Schaeffer on her rounds.
Ruby feels like a townie as she leans an elbow on the open truck window. “Catch anything?”
“Actually, I’m on the hunt for a missing dog.” Polly chews the inside of her cheek for a moment. Ruby can tell that she’s debating whether or not to ask Ruby for help. Weighing the outlandish novelty of recruiting the help of an animal communicator versus what her boss might think. Her boss, being, of course, the Town of Harmony Farms and, by extension, Cynthia Mann, selectperson.
Ruby helps her out. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Got time now?”
“Sure.”
“Hop in.”
As they pull away from the curb, Ruby reminds Polly that she has only ever communicated with dogs through touch. She’s not sure she can pinpoint a missing dog via telepathy, but she’s willing to try. Other pet psychics do and with professed success. “I’ll need to start where it was last seen.”
As they pass Bull Harrison’s unkempt house, Ruby has a genuine flash. “This isn’t that poor Great Dane, is it? The Turcotts’ dog?”
“Ruby, you really are a wonder. Yes. What told you that?”
“I read him the other day and the poor animal is miserable. I’m glad he got away.”
“Well, I can’t not look for him. It’s my job.”
Yes, Ruby thinks, and that Selectperson Cynthia, buddy of Mrs. Turcott, would not take kindly to such a failure.
As if she’s fallen into a dream, Ruby gets an absolutely clear image of the animal’s whereabouts. He’s found a family, near the lake. Probably vacationers. Probably won’t keep him but will turn him in when they leave. She startles out of the vivid vision. “Let him be. You’ll be getting a call in a day or two and he’ll be turned in. For right now, he’s having a good time. He’s being loved. Don’t take that away from him.”
Polly gives Ruby a slight nod of agreement, of compliance.
After a stop for a quick cup of tea, Polly drops Ruby and the Hitchhiker off at the Dew Drop Inn with a wave and a thank-you for Ruby’s help. Ruby waves back, smiling, thinking that it has been a long time since she felt a kinship with another person beyond Sabine and her family. Rootlessness has a cost, and even when they spent a school year in one place, Ruby wasn’t inclined to develop friendships, knowing that friends have to share histories or forever remain at arm’s length. She has left behind a whole host of arms-length acquaintances. Only fellow carnies ever came close to becoming friends, and that relied on a tacit agreement to keep personal histories vague. The other problem with friends is that they expect that they can persuade change in you. See a flaw—transience, for example—and they have a solution. Even Sabine, with her firm offer of a garage apartment, thought that she, of all people, could affect a change in her mother.
Polly is different. She’s a bit like a dog herself, very much living in the present. She speaks of what’s in front of her, not behind. Ruby likes that, and it’s easy to lose an hour chatting about town doings and pet owners following best practices. Polly’s aura is warm and caring, but there is a definite haze of something underlying it. It’s an unusual shade of lilac, suggesting that Polly fights every day to avoid something she really wants.
When Ruby lived in the convent orphanage, she and her friends all had one desire in common. Each of them told a version of her own history, some more accurate than others, but they all had a common hope for their future: to be embraced by a family. The girls who had arrived at an early age, under two, had no words for this desire. This convent life was all they knew. But a day would come when their imaginations flickered into life. A Sister might read them a story featuring an intact and loving family and a little girl would feel that longing take hold of her heart, growing like an unrelieved pain. Another might catch sight of a friend leaving the building with an aunt and uncle or with a childless couple whose life was now fulfilled with the addition of a little girl. It wasn’t an empty desire but a solid burden on the heart. Not being wanted.
The older girls made up stories about inevitably being reclaimed by parents who were on the stage, or spies, or traveling through Europe; surely, they were misplaced princesses. No one made up stories of death or illness or despondency or carnal mistakes. Someone, somewhere, they all said, loved and remembered them and would be back. “When my parents come…” Words whispered in the gloaming of the dormitory.
Everyone made these claims, except the girl who would become Ruby Heartwood.
The seasonably warm, slightly overcast morning, has settled into a thick humid summer day. Ruby sits down at the small business desk squeezed in between the dresser and the mini-fridge. The window air conditioner hums with an occasional rumble of protest as Ruby pulls out her tarot cards and shuffles them. It was, perhaps, cowardice, seeking guidance from a well-used set of cards. Procrastination certainly. Even as she shuffles, Ruby knows that she will not get an answer to a question she is having a hard time forming.
The Hitchhiker jumps down off the bed and sits beside Ruby. She puts both forepaws on Ruby’s leg, sets her black-tipped nose between them. She has little spots on her eyebrows, just the color of a woolly bear caterpillar’s brown parts. They give her face with its bandit’s mask of black a curiously human expression. Ruby doesn’t need to touch the dog to know that the Hitchhiker is thinking she should just put down the cards and … and what?
The dog drops back to the floor, then rises on her hind legs to touch the edge of the motel desk with her forepaws. With utter conviction, the Hitchhiker sniffs the closed laptop that Ruby has shoved aside to give herself room for the cards. Ruby’s mind is filled with the odor of earth, of molecules rising and leading. She sees a trail, but it isn’t a path, more like the cartoon wafting of the scent of apple pie. “Follow the scent. Seek.” The dog drops to the floor again, shakes herself vigorously, and jumps back onto the bed where she curls herself up into a tight ball. She opens one eye, blinks, and settles into an instant nap, satisfied that her instructions will be followed.
Ruby gently taps the deck of tarot cards back into shape, slides them into their wooden box. Snaps the closure. Opens her laptop and recovers the Sacred Heart website. Contact info. Ask the question, Ruby.
“Dear Mother Superior.…” Now what? If they knew nothing about her origins back then, what could possibly have changed in the intervening forty years? Should she be apologizing for running away?
“I was an infant placed in the ca
re of Sacred Heart…”
“I was an orphan placed…”
“I was an inmate … resident … student … child…”
“I wonder if you know where my mother is? Who my mother is? Was?”
Ruby closes the lid of the laptop gently. Pushes the computer aside. Reaches for her cards. Sets them aside. The Hitchhiker, fresh from her nap, nudges Ruby, asking to get into her lap. She buries her nose in the dog’s neck, letting go of her tension. “Why am I suddenly thinking about these things?”
“You want to remember. You want to know what makes you.” None of this in words, only the stimuli of scent and grayscale images. The look on the dog’s face.
Vividly, Ruby remembers the moment she knew that she needed to leave, to run away. The feel of the wooden heart beneath her hand, the certainty that remaining would lead to a most difficult consequence, although Ruby couldn’t imagine what the Monsignor might do to her. Something more than rap her knuckles, that was for sure. Isolation was just going to be the beginning. What next? Exorcism? Hanging? “Go,” the Sacred Heart had said, and go she had. And forty years later she is still moving.
Her heart was pumping hard as Ruby emptied her book bag of school materials and loaded it with underwear and socks, her toothbrush, and her only cardigan. She took her almost-too-small coat from its hook in the coatroom. She ate the dinner that was brought to her in the sickroom. A slice of boiled ham, a baked potato, and a helping of canned peaches. The nun, a novitiate, handed her the tray as if she was afraid that Ruby would cast a spell on her. Backed out the door, closed it gently. Other girls had run off. Some had returned, others vanished forever. Sometimes Ruby thought that it was divine inspiration to name herself Ruby Heartwood, taking her first name from the color of the garish red paint on the statue, and her last from the statue itself. In the middle of the night, Ruby slung her book bag over her shoulder and unlocked the window of the sickroom. If the intention was to punish her by putting her in this room, the Monsignor had inadvertently given her a gift. A fire escape.
All of this feels as fresh to Ruby at this moment as it did forty years ago. She tastes the fear on her tongue, she feels her heart rate go up; she tastes the peaches. The Hitchhiker reaches up and licks Ruby’s nose. “That’s done with. Be present. Be with me.”
Where do you go when there is no place to go? Into the presence of strangers. Moving away from Sacred Heart as fast as she could, Ruby hitched her way south toward the U.S. border into New York State, her instincts—or her second sight—keeping her out of danger, as she knew when to accept a ride and when to refuse one after reading the negative aura of the driver. Once over the border, she found shelter in the company of other transients, learning from them how to find the local soup kitchens and Salvation Army shelters. For a week or so, she might join a pair of teenage runaway girls. Inevitably one or the other would find an easy way of making money and Ruby would split, wanting no part of prostitution, even if it meant a warm bed and a meal. Most often she’d befriend an older woman, one willing to act as if Ruby was with her, keeping the authorities from recognizing that she was a solitary runaway. She begged for coins. She lied to everyone: She was waiting for her dad, or her mother. She just needed the change to make a phone call, let them know where she was. They’d be here in a moment. No, she wasn’t a minor, she’d just left her purse at home so she couldn’t prove it. She was on a school trip. The transit police saw right through her, and more than once Ruby had to slip out of the grip of a well-meaning officer’s hand.
Maggie Dean spotted Ruby huddling in an alcove, warming herself over a vent. “You need to eat?”
Ruby nodded. “I can’t pay.”
“No need. They don’t ask for anything but a contribution, and if you ain’t got one, they don’t make a fuss.” Maggie, hobbled by arthritic feet, asked Ruby to take her arm and led the way to a church basement. In the past six months Ruby had gotten over avoiding churches. It wasn’t like there was an ecclesiastical network of orphan chasers. Ruby had come to believe that, on this side of the border, no one was looking for her. Likely no one was on the other side either. It should have made her feel free, but it just made a lonely existence lonelier.
The room was warm and funky with the gathering of the unwashed and unwanted. Mostly men. Mostly bearing the damage of their lives on their faces. Maggie pointed out a few of the regulars, muttered “Served in ’Nam” or “Alcky” under her breath. “What do you call yourself, girl?”
“Ruby.”
They stood in line, each with a plastic tray. The scent of soup and bread teased at the hunger deep in her belly. Ruby couldn’t remember what she’d had to eat since arriving a day ago in this town. An apple picked out of the trash? Water from a dripping spigot? The server gave Ruby extra bread. “Come back if you want more,” she said.
Ruby smiled and thanked her. “Your daughter will be fine.” It came out, and the woman behind the counter tilted her head.
“Maggie, what did you tell this kid?”
“Nothing. What would I tell?”
“How does she know?” The server looked from Maggie to Ruby. “What do you know about my daughter?”
Ruby felt herself break out in a sweat, chilling her beneath her thin sweater. “I’m sorry. I just got the sense that your daughter is in trouble and I wanted to tell you that things will be all right.” Ruby knew that, once again, her second sight was calling attention to her, and it would probably end poorly. She set her tray down, grabbed the bread, and made a dash for the door. Except that, for a crippled-up old woman, Maggie Dean was pretty strong and the grip on Ruby’s donation bin jacket relentless.
“Sit down and eat.”
“You were a teacher? Weren’t you? And then you couldn’t be anymore.” Ruby could see the old woman’s past as if it was her own. A scandal. A child. A rejection so painful that it altered her physical self.
“And you’ve got a gift. I can help you make the most of it.”
Ruby set down her tray of soup and bread. “I don’t. It’s not true.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It can maybe save your life.” Maggie Dean took Ruby’s hand, tugged it until the girl sat. “You’re right about her daughter; she’s running with a bad crowd.” Maggie sniffed at the soup on her spoon. “Uck. Vegetable soup again.”
“And you? I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Close enough. I was a teacher and that’s all I’ll say.”
Those with secrets are the best at keeping them. The currency of trust between outcasts.
9
On this third Saturday of the Farmers’ Market and Makers Faire, it’s hot in the tent, the air decidedly summer-like, so Ruby moves her table under a small canopy she’s rigged up so that the breeze keeps her cool, that plus not wearing anything beneath her caftan but undies. It’s too hot to knit so she just keeps shuffling her cards, fanning them out, fanning herself and then reshuffling the cards. By eleven-thirty, the crowds have thinned out, the flower vendors are making bouquets out of the leftover stems, the pie bakers have sold out, and the guy selling the artisanal coffee is dozing in his camp chair, hardly a good advertisement for strong coffee. These things are sometimes better in lousy weather. Best if the morning starts out iffy and plans for the outdoors are put off till afternoon. Stragglers pass her booth, barely giving her neatly chalked board a look. Palm Readings, Tea Leaves, Tarot. Animal Communication. Some people, Ruby has noticed over the years, won’t look her in the eye, as if she can read their minds and seduce them into sitting down, learning something about themselves that they don’t want to know. Others scoff. Those are the ones most likely to circle back if they can ditch the husband or the kids. One teen tried to drag her girlfriend into speaking range, but the other girl balked with such actual terror that Ruby waved her away. “I don’t read anyone under eighteen.” Not exactly true, but not a bad policy. She watches the pair of teens slope off toward the scented candle tent. With adolescent girls it is like trying to catch sunbeams to get a
read on their auras. Clearly the girl has some serious trepidations. Probably religious. While with carnivals, lo those many years ago, she’d had Bible thumpers praying over her immortal soul while she was in the middle of a reading. According to some, Ruby is in league with the Devil. After fleeing from the convent school, Ruby almost believed it of herself. Almost. Until the perfection of her imperfectly conceived child.
As hard as it was being a teenage mother, Ruby never once felt that Sabine had been a punishment. Motherless, Ruby had poured all her heart into making sure that her baby would never feel the lack that she herself had grown up with, even if it meant slipping away in the night to avoid child welfare services, even if it meant pretending to be her daughter’s babysitter to avoid scrutiny.
As if she senses Ruby’s thoughts, the Hitchhiker gets up from her little bed, stretches fore and aft, and shakes. She noses Ruby’s clenched fist. Ruby strokes the Hitchhiker’s silky head, presses a thumb in the declivity between the dog’s black eyes. Finds a quietness.
“You should look.”
“I should introduce you to my daughter.”
“You have her. You need the other.”
These interior conversations are becoming almost routine. Like thinking about men landing on the moon, suddenly a new normal flattens out the magic. Of course men had once been on the moon; of course the Hitchhiker has an opinion.
The Westfalia is still in the shop, a hard-to-get part keeping Ruby stuck in Harmony Farms for at least another few days. When the mechanic had said that, yes, it was the starter, not a big problem, Ruby had a flash of hope, until he went on to say that he’d subsequently diagnosed six other problems for the geriatric foreign car. Ka-ching. Ka-ching. Ruby has had three other calls for canine interpretation, but she only charged one of them her top rate. The second one was just a little kid with a puppy. She accepted his two dollars for advice with grace. The last one, she actually gave away for free. The elderly dog asked ever so clearly to be allowed to die. Everyone cried.