“That’s not such a little thing to me,” Olivia said.
“Come on,” Ruby said, laughing. “That pile of junk? I did you a favor, honest to God.” She sighed and got her dreamy look. “My grandma?” she said. “She was like the one person who made me think I really mattered, you know? I used to pack my stuff in a garbage bag and tell my mother I was moving to my grandma’s. She always used to keep animal crackers for me, in this big cookie jar she had that was shaped like an apple. But the thing is, I never ate them. I played with them. Sometimes I’d pretend I was a kid whose parents took her to the circus for her birthday and I’d march those stupid little cookies around the floor and I’d go, ‘Animals on parade’ in this fake announcer’s voice. The thing is, I never went to the circus, so I never really knew what a kid would see there.”
Impulsively, Olivia reached out and took Ruby’s hand, but the girl recoiled.
“Don’t,” she said sharply.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “I just—”
“No one feels sorry for me,” Ruby said, her tough-girl voice back again, all hard and edgy. “I mean, the fucking circus chains animals to cages and totally mistreats them, so who would want to go anyway? It was just a stupid little kid thing. I’m sorry I even brought it up.”
Olivia nodded. “I know,” she said, because she was sorry for trying to comfort the girl, for thinking about the one who had killed her husband; she was sorry for so much.
“My grandmother has lungs like Swiss cheese,” Ruby said, “honest to God. I saw the X rays and they blew my mind. Emphysema.” She pointed at Olivia. “But she says she has no regrets. She would smoke a cigarette in a flash if it wouldn’t blow up because of the oxygen she’s on. She says she loved every smoke she ever had. She doesn’t even believe smoking causes all this shit. She thinks that’s just propaganda. My grandma says regrets get you nowhere but feeling sorry for your own sorry ass.” Ruby smiled. “So I don’t regret being pregnant. I mean, I wish it was different and stuff, but you can’t imagine what it feels like. I mean, it sucks. Yeah. But on the other hand, it’s almost like a mystical experience. Like when you drop acid. Some people freak out, but I always liked it, you know. This other reality. That’s what this is. A baby rolling around inside your stomach. It blows my mind.” Ruby shook her head, amazed. “It can hear us,” she whispered. “It can see bright light.” Her hand moved to her stomach and hovered above it like a bee. “It blows my mind. It really does.”
“Good idea,” David had said when Olivia sent him off to his death. If only she had held him. If only she had opened her arms and her legs and let him in, she would not be sitting here with this pregnant teenager worrying. She would be with David. She would be talking to her own baby inside her stomach. Good idea.
“The thing is,” Ruby said, “giving away your baby can certainly be one of those things. Major regret factor, I’d say. You could walk around the rest of your life wondering if you would have been happy together. You could make yourself crazy imagining a future that can’t be, you know?”
For some time now, Olivia had considered writing to that girl and telling her to move on with her life. It was an accident, she wanted to tell her. She wanted the girl to feel absolved from what she’d done. But Olivia had been unable to write the letter. If she absolved the college girl, then it really was all her fault.
Still, she tried. She sat at the kitchen table and wrote, “Dear Amanda, I hope you remember me. …”
That was a foolish start. How many guys had Amanda killed, after all? How many widows were writing her letters?
“It has been almost a year since the accident and slowly I am moving on with things. I have started to make hats again. …”
More foolishness.
“Also, I am going to adopt a baby …”
She paused, then wrote: “You stupid idiot, why didn’t you look where you were going? Why didn’t you have on sunglasses if the sun was so fucking bright? Why didn’t you see a guy over six feet tall in bright orange running shorts—”
“Ooooh,” Ruby said, appearing out of nowhere and looking over Olivia’s shoulder. “Is that a poem? Ben’s a poet, you know. Did I tell you that? He writes these incredible poems. He won’t give up, either. No matter what it takes.”
Olivia folded the letter carefully, nodding at Ruby as if she, too, believed that Ben was a real poet, someone who would make it someday.
“We might go and live in Indonesia,” Ruby said. She stood by the sink and let the water run to get it cold. “It’s really cheap to live in Indonesia. You can get a house and cook and a maid and a nanny for next to nothing.”