She took her first step off the stone and into the shallows. The water couldn’t have been that deep, but it had gone opaque as the stone itself, hiding everything in its grasp, even her boot toes. She tried to bypass Jonah, but he wasn’t letting her through. He grabbed her by the arm and held her still.
It was like seeing a daring, darting bug’s glistening, shimmery wing get wedged flat and stuck in place by a pin. She wiggled, he held fast, and then she stopped wiggling, and he kept holding fast, and I couldn’t watch anymore. I had to look away.
“Ow,” I heard her say. “That’ll be a bruise.”
“It will not,” he said.
“Will so. Give it an hour, I’ll have an eggplant on my elbow. And I have two witnesses here to show how it got there.”
Jonah was mumbling—groveling probably, apologizing up and down and sideways—and then there was some fumbling around, and wet slurping sounds, like Ruby was making full use of the slimy muck at her feet. I peeked back and saw them standing together in front of the house. His hands were on her arm, lightly now, like he was afraid to keep touching her and equally afraid to let go. There was mud on his shirt.
“You can’t treat me like this, Ruby,” he said in a low voice. But I could hear. I had Ruby’s ears—the same shape and size, the same recessive earlobes. And Ruby could hear you chewing your fingernails from a floor away and would yell for you to cut it out, right now. She could hear the things you think if you thought them loud enough while resting your head on her shoulder. She could hear from across town.
I could hear Jonah plainly, and what he said next was the most pathetic thing a grown man could say to my sister, the four dreaded words: “But I love you.” And worse was how he paused after saying it, then added, “Don’t you love me?”
She didn’t answer right away. She didn’t answer for so long, I wondered if she’d forgotten they were having a conversation and that Pete and I were standing here witnessing. It was cruel how long she took to answer, awful and terrible and so very cool of her, something to aspire to.
She removed his fingers from her arm and rubbed her elbow. She had his hand in her hand and took the whole lot and placed it on his heart. Then she let go, so all he had was his hand all by itself on his heart. Her own hand was far away.
“What ever made you think I did?” she said.
She began splashing for the house, signaling to me that I should hold still a moment. That moment was long, with me trying not to fall off the stone, with Jonah withered by what she’d told him, and Pete buoyed up wondering if he had another shot now—but she splashed back to my side as quickly as she could. She carried a pair of galoshes and slipped them on my feet one by one. Then she gave a last glance at the dark and stormy sea behind the house, like they’d won this one, but she’d for sure win the next, and we sloshed up to the front door, opened it by the hole where the knob should be, and tracked mud inside, leaving a trail for someone else to clean up later.
I didn’t much care that she’d broken up with Jonah. Over the years, I’d witnessed many breakups, some quick and quickly forgotten, some slow and agonizing and needing restraining orders. Some breakups featured flying food products—or harder, more controllable objects like boots—lots had tears, and most, if not all, included the sight of Ruby being the one to walk away. Her turned back, her long, lingering trail of dark hair . . . That was her flourish of a signature, to remember her by, always.
But this time, she seemed all sniffly about it. She wiped at her eye, and I wasn’t sure if what she wiped off was a tear or a speck of muck. Maybe it was the house, as this was the closest we’d ever come to having one of our own. Maybe she was grieving her veranda.