And when she leaned closer, a figure appeared, moved in front of the hydrangeas, came down the path.
Sunburned and crying and pregnant and young: Ruby walked back to Olivia.
Olivia had to take Ruby to Amy’s party. The girl had cried on and off nonstop ever since Ben left. “Can’t you just say I’m a neighbor’s kid? I promise I won’t say a word or eat any food or anything. I just don’t want to be home alone with my thoughts.” She blew her nose loudly for emphasis.
On the ride to Amy’s, while Olivia’s stomach knotted tighter and tighter—she really had gone mad, taking Ruby along to a family party—Ruby asked, “Which neighbor?” She looked terrible. Her nose was running and her eyes were puffy and her fingers and ankles were swollen.
“They won’t ask,” Olivia said. “Don’t worry.”
“You need details to convince them,” Ruby mumbled, wiping her nose on the shred of tissue she’d been clutching.
But by the time they pulled into the parking lot at Amy’s condo, Ruby was staring sadly out the window and humming an old familiar song softly. “Baby, baby, don’t get hooked on me.”
She almost smiled when she saw Olivia glancing over at her, frowning.
“B. J. Thomas,” Ruby said. “I know so many unimportant things.”
For some reason, this started her crying again, and they sat in the car, Olivia ineffectively patting Ruby’s arm to console her, when really her mind was trying to sort out if the baby Ruby was setting free was Ben or the real baby. Impulsively, Olivia reached across the stick shift and rested her head lightly on Ruby’s stomach. They sat like that, each listening for something different. Ruby’s hand settled on Olivia’s head, and gently, she stroked her hair, the way a mother would.
It was a small party because everyone had to fit on Amy’s terrace overlooking the scenic route and the grill took up quite a bit of space. Even though Amy kept the condo in her divorce settlement, she took a lot of furniture and household items that worked better in the Victorian in Providence that her ex-husband and his girlfriend still lived in. Like the grill, a gas one with fold-down countertops and areas for warming and smoking.
“This is where I’m staying,” Ruby announced, and she flopped into a wing-back chair. “Cool at last.”
Olivia’s mother came toward them immediately, wearing the frowning, worried expression she had worn since David died. Olivia wondered if her mother ever relaxed her face into its normal shape, or if this was it now: mother of a daughter with a dead husband.
“Honey,” she said, taking Olivia’s hands and pressing them into her own. “How are you?”
Olivia’s mother was small and delicate, with a sweet voice that Amy and Olivia used to love to imitate.
“I’m fine,” Olivia said, pulling her hands away.
“Are you?” her mother asked again, her expression deepening.
“Mom,” Olivia said too sharply, “David is still dead. This is the best it gets for me. I’m up. I’m here. Now drop it.”
She felt dizzy, not from the heat or her mother’s strong, sweet lily-scented perfume, but from what she had said. In her mind, Olivia had turned her husband’s name over and over. She had felt it on her tongue. But she had not ever said it out loud like that: David is dead.
Her mother fluttered around her now, mumbling the weak words of hope and encouragement that she’d been mumbling for ten months. In fact, Olivia realized, they were the same words she’d been hearing from her mother her whole life: “Everything happens for the best. Que sera sera. One door closes and another opens. …” There was no end to the platitudes of reassurance her mother offered. They were not a family that discussed feelings too closely; they kept emotion at arm’s length. Olivia’s mother often looked almost frightened at Olivia’s mourning—the sobs and screams and waning that she did at first, the more recent outbursts, which seemed to come without any provocation.
There had been times when her mother’s cold comfort actually helped, like a good slap in the face. Other times, the suffocating sympathy from strangers was better for Olivia. People did not know what to give her; they asked again and again: “What can I do? What do you need?” But the truth was, Olivia didn’t know, either.
Her mother’s fluttering brought her right at Ruby’s chair.
“Oh, dear,” she said, and looked around nervously.
Olivia came up behind her mother and placed a hand on her small shoulder, causing her mother to jump slightly. Olivia stood a good six inches above her mother, and she could see her pink scalp—Like a baby’s, Olivia thought—through her thin hair.
“Mom,” Olivia said, “this is the neighbor’s daughter. Ruby.”