“Like a crazy person. Now she’s talking about getting an eye tuck.”
“Really?” Ruby said. “That is so cool. Like fucked up and cool, you know? I heard that Cher even had ribs removed. I don’t know if I’ll do it when I’m old. Are you going to?”
Olivia glanced at Ruby. Her face was open, her eyes shiny with excitement. And Olivia sighed with relief; she’d gotten her back again.
When they got back from the clinic, Ruby announced she was going for a walk.
“I have been poked and prodded and measured too much,” she said, cranky. Her face was too pink from the heat, and she’d put her hair up in a messy knot that revealed one ear pierced from lobe to tip, each hole filled with a cheap stud: turquoise, rhinestone, silver butterfly, something baby blue and something yellow, a silver heart, a silver star—an array of bad earrings.
Olivia tried to convince Ruby to stay. She offered lemonade, iced tea, Popsicles. But Ruby refused.
“I need air,” she mumbled.
From the kitchen window, Olivia watched her walk away, head bent, her pocketbook bouncing against her hip. She walked toward the water, where the large houses sat perched above rocks, each with a shaky wooden stairway leading to a small stretch of private beach. What if the girl hurt herself? The thought made Olivia shiver. Those rocks. And the way Ruby waddled so awkwardly. What if she wanted to hurt herself? Olivia rubbed her arms, the flesh there covered with goose bumps at the thought. That doctor had been cold, harsh. He had shaken his head in disgust more than once. He had insisted on giving Ruby an AIDS test, tests for gonorrhea and syphilis. Embarrassed, Ruby had closed her eyes and given herself over to him. Was it what she had done with other men, closed her eyes tight and let them do what they wanted?
“Ruby!” Olivia called as she ran out the door. The girl is capable of anything, Olivia thought. And why not?
“Ruby!”
She tripped slightly as she scrambled over some rocks, imagining how difficult it had been for Ruby in her cheap flip-flops and big belly. Olivia thought of her splayed on one of those small beaches. She thought of her looking the way David had, the sheet pulled up to his chin, his expression one of confusion rather than peace. She had imagined his last thought to be something like What the hell is happening here?
Panting, Olivia was just about to call the girl again, when she caught sight of her. She was sitting on the edge of one of the dirt paths that led to the rocky cliffs, staring at the large house across the path, writing in her blue notebook. When she heard Olivia approaching, she looked up sharply.
“I said I needed air,” she said.
Olivia had to catch her breath. She inhaled once, then again, erasing that image of David. For months after he died, she would wake up from a dream in which he was alive, but his face was bluish and confused. She had to get rid of that, think of him another way, how he had looked that first time in the doorway of her shop. Olivia did that now, fixed that David in her mind before she turned her attention to Ruby.
She flopped down beside her and said, “What do you write in that thing?”
Ruby considered for a moment, then sighed and pointed to the house. It was enormous, a rambling house with weathered shingles, dark green shutters, and on one side almost all the windows faced the ocean. From here, they could see all the way to Block Island.
“A doctor lives there. Not like the doctor today, a different one. This one is a pediatrician and he loves kids, and he loves his wife, too. Marjorie. She was a debutante. Southern, you know? They have five kids and some of them already are in college, and the oldest daughter is going to get married right here, on the lawn. Under a tent.”
The house stared blankly at Olivia. “I don’t get it,” she said.
Ruby sighed. “They’re a family. At Christmas, they only put up white lights and fresh boughs of fir and these big red velvet bows. That’s it. She lay down and looked not at the house but up at the sky. “When the kids were young, the father had to leave and go take care of an emergency for one of his patients, but now the younger associates get to do that and the father stays home and makes his special eggnog and carves the turkey and everything.”
“Oh,” Olivia said softly, as she saw that what Ruby did when she watched houses was to make up families. And maybe to wish herself a spot in each one that she invented.
“They’re a nice family,” Ruby added. “Good people.”