“Where does that leave everything?” Olivia asked.
She wondered if a part of her was still hoping for that baby? She paused, trying to find it. But no. Now that Ruby was back, Olivia realized that it was Ruby she had missed. She could see her own life before her: her apartment, the city in autumn, walking through the West Village, her local Chinese restaurant welcoming her home, the smell of the caffè latte she got each morning on Bleecker Street, her little shop on St. Mark’s, her hats. Olivia could see it as if she were already there.
“I couldn’t very well go home,” Ruby said. “On the way back here, I actually thought about it. About my room and stuff. It’s just a crappy little room, but I painted it lavender. Real pale. And my mom made me these pillowcases out of yellow velvet and on one she stitched DREAM and on the other one she stitched DO.” Ruby shook her head. “But she deserves a second chance, you know? We all deserve that, right?”
Dear Amanda, Olivia thought.
“And I kept thinking about you,” Ruby said. “How I used to sort of hate you. And how we became a family. You know?”
Olivia nodded.
“But we can’t stay that way. You’ve got your real life back in New York and everything. It felt good, though, to think we were one. My friend Betsy’s like me. Kind of free-floating. I mean, she’s got a mother who’s always in rehab herself and these uncles who come and live with them for a little while, except we’re old enough now to figure out they’re not exactly uncles, if you know what I mean. And Betsy and me used to sit around and get high and make up lives for ourselves. Like the kind of house we’d have and the kind of husband. So I went and found Betsy. You remember my friend Betsy?”
“Yes.”
“The funny thing is, she’s pregnant, too.”
“Not again,” Olivia said.
“She’s keeping this one, though,” Ruby said. “And she got a place—in Providence. It’s nothing special. But I figure I could stay with her, the baby and me. We’ll be like Kate and Allie. Betsy’s still in school. They have day care there, too, like in San Francisco. The thing is, I want to be something. I mean, like the way you are. So strong. And kindhearted. And sophisticated. That restaurant you took me to? I want to eat in places like that.”
Olivia nodded again. But she was thinking how Ruby had said she was strong. No one had said that to her since David died. Yet here she was, a year later, on her way to her life again. Surely Ruby was right; she saw the strength in Olivia when Olivia herself could not.
“The thing is,” Ruby said, “I’ve got to keep my baby. I mean, it’s right here inside me. I can’t give it away. But the thing is, I’ve got to keep you, too.”
Now Ruby was crying, and there was nothing more for Olivia to wait for. She rushed to the girl and took her into her arms.
“You’re stuck with me,” Olivia told her.
“We could visit you there, right?” Ruby said. “In New York? And you’ll still come here sometimes? And we’ll all go to the beach. Hey, you could even baby-sit.”
“Yes,” Olivia said. “Yes.”
Oh, she saw it, her life opening up still more. She saw Ruby and this baby a part of it. It was not the life she ever imagined for herself, but it was the one she got. It was a good one.
Ruby reached into her big macramé bag.
“I got this for you,” she said. “I couldn’t come back to see you until I found it.”
She held out something in the palm of her hand.
The cassette with David’s voice on it.
Olivia took it from her, folded her fingers around it.
“Thank you,” she said.
Ruby shrugged. “Yeah,” she said. “Well.” She looked around at all the boxes and suitcases. “It looks like you’re going, huh?”
“I bought all these baby things for you. Lots of black.”
“Cool,” Ruby said. “I saw the doctor. He says I’m still not dilated. What a drag, huh? Betsy says she’ll be my partner if I’ll be hers. Are you like really insulted?”
“A little,” Olivia said. “But I want to go home.”
“And get on with things, right?”
“Right.”
Ruby nodded. “But I’ll call you as soon as something happens.”
“You’d better,” Olivia said.
“What were you doing?” Ruby asked her. “When I walked in?
Olivia laughed. “The jitterbug.”
“My mom taught me that,” Ruby said. “There’s an old song, ‘Ruby, Ruby.’ Not the one by the Rolling Stones.”
“I know it,” Olivia said. She sang “‘I knew a girl and Ruby was her name. …”
“That’s the one,” Ruby said: “My mother actually told me my father wrote that. That he wrote it for me. What a dope I am, huh? I believed her.”