“Really?” Olivia said, swallowing hard. “In Indonesia?” She had not heard this fantasy before. The word nanny caught in her throat. “When did you decide all this?”
“It’s not decided. It’s just an idea. Something to think about. Like the Greek islands. Ben has been to these places. He’s been everywhere. And he says that’s the thing to do.” She put one hand under the faucet to test the water, deciding it still wasn’t cold enough.
“Go and live in Indonesia?”
“Or Greece or Costa Rica.” Ruby was measuring her words; Olivia could tell. “There’s so many better places.”
“When did you talk to Ben, anyway?” Olivia asked, trying to sound offhanded.
Ruby shrugged. “Oh. You know. Whenever.” Again, she tested the water.
“Either drink some of that or turn it off,” Olivia said angrily. “There’s a drought, you know. You don’t stand and let water run and run when people aren’t even flushing their toilets or taking baths in order to save it. Do you ever think of anyone other than yourself?”
Without even getting a glass, Ruby turned off the water.
“Have you done anything to get my stuff back, for instance?” Olivia said. The letter was just a piece of crushed paper now, wrinkled and moist in her hand.
“It’s gone,” Ruby said. “I told you that.”
Olivia nodded. “I know. But what about the stuff no one wanted?”
“Can you be more specific?” Ruby said.
“The jewelry box.”
Ruby held up both of her hands. She no longer wore the cheap rings, and seeing them plain like this reminded Olivia of a washerwoman’s hands: rough and red and swollen.
“I’m sorry I said anything about your stupid poem,” Ruby said. “I only saw like three words or something.”
“Forget it,” Olivia said. She pretended to clean up the kitchen just to have something to do.
“Like I saw the word baby. Was it a poem to the baby?”
Olivia concentrated on wiping the counters.
“Can I pick the name?” Ruby said. “I know it’s a big thing, but I wanted to put my two cents in.”
“What name?”
“The baby’s. Can I pick it out?”
Olivia didn’t want Ruby to name the baby. She felt uncertain again; Ruby might take this baby and go away somewhere. Somewhere far. Indonesia. Then she would have nothing. No baby, no minicassette of David’s voice.
“What names do you like?” Olivia asked.
“I just like one. Sage. For a boy or a girl.”
“Sage,” Olivia said, hating it, hating Ruby. “Interesting.”
“I’ve liked that name forever,” Ruby said. She gently rubbed her hand across her stomach in that circular motion. “That’s what I always wanted to name my baby. Even when I was little and I’d pretend I had a sister, I’d call her Sage. I mean, she was invisible and everything.”
“It’s a good name,” Olivia said. If you want to name your kid after an herb, she thought. Or a Simon and Garfunkel song.
“I can tell you don’t really like it. But would you consider it? I don’t want this baby saddled with Jennifer or Elizabeth or something.”
Reluctantly, Olivia said, “I think you should name the baby. Sage.”
The baby is mine, Olivia thought. She put her hand lightly on Ruby’s stomach, too. Beneath the tight drum of belly, the baby kicked back at them both.
Olivia tried not to leave Ruby alone too often, but sometimes she was happy to be away from the girl. Ruby liked to go off by herself, to the beach—“Not where anyone can see me like this!”—or to a movie, where it was air-conditioned and dark. That was where she was going tonight, the movies, while Olivia and Pete had dinner with Carl and Janice.
Olivia had gone out with Pete one other time, to the lobster fest in Point Judith, where they sat and drank beer and ate chowder and lobsters under a tent one Saturday afternoon. Their time together that day had been brief, and Olivia quickly put it out of her mind. This isn’t a date, she’d kept reminding herself. It’s just two people eating lobster and coleslaw under a hot tent. Thinking this, over and over, had helped her relax. She’d almost had fun.
But this dinner with him felt all wrong. Janice called, too often, all chatty and excited, as if they were back in high school and getting ready for a Saturday-night double date.
“This is just dinner,” Olivia told Janice. It was a good way to remind herself, too. “Not a date.”
“Whatever,” Janice said.
Olivia frowned. That was an answer Janice had used for as long as they had known each other. In high school, it had sounded sassy, even cool. Now it was simply irritating.
“Pete Lancelotta is not my type,” Olivia told Janice during one of the calls. “I would never date him, even under the best of circumstances.”
“Whatever,” Janice said, and launched into a one-sided discussion about what to wear that night.