by Jim Nelson
Piper approached Hanna with a raised chin. “I told Ruby to run away from you,” she said. “I told her to run and never contact you again. She wouldn’t do it, though. She told me she wanted to come back to you.”
“And you stopped her,” Hanna said. “You sent me those text messages.”
“The police are looking for her and me,” Piper said. “We can’t be too careful.”
Piper produced a pocket flashlight from her bag. She lit their way through the dark, across the clearing and up the uneven stone stairs. Hanna gathered the house to be a rental, a shabby single-room retreat for adventurous couples. California’s wine country was dotted with backwoods vacation rentals for professionals who yearned for a more authentic experience.
Piper knocked twice softly, then tried the knob. On the periphery of the flashlight’s illumination, Hanna spotted another Hagar’s urn. It was carved into the door lintel at shin-height, so low only a child might spot it. A layer of thick lemon-colored paint filled in the rounded gash and made it visible in the meager light.
Inside, the flashlight confirmed Hanna’s vacation rental hunch. Among the mismatched furniture was a ratty chintz couch, a rattan chair, and a glass coffee table with beat-up board games stacked beneath. A guestbook and a pen hung from twine beside the entry door. Piper’s erratic flashlight beam revealed a kitchenette on the far wall. A sliding glass door opposite led to a wood patio with a grill and a stacked washer-dryer combo.
“How did Ruby pay for this?” Hanna said.
“The owner is sympathetic,” Piper said. “She wouldn’t be happy if she knew you were here, though. You promise, right? Not to tell anyone?”
“I’m here for Ruby,” Hanna said. “I want to bring her home.”
A pair of tattered Japanese screens offered a bit of privacy in the corner of the room. The corner of a full-sized bed poked out where the screens did not quite meet. The duvet and sheets were ruffled and lumpy. Hanna walked briskly toward it.
“Ruby?”
“Mama?” came from the darkness.
“Oh, baby—”
Hanna rushed to the bed. In the dark, she squeezed between the screens.
“Will you get the lights?” Hanna called behind her.
Hanna felt around the bed. She found a leg and then an arm. She worked her way up toward the pillows.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” Ruby said in the dark. “I’m sleepy.”
“You have to get up,” Hanna said. “We’ll be home in a couple of hours.”
“Can I sleep in the car?”
“Of course you can,” Hanna said. “Will one of you get the lights?” she called out again. She failed to notice the flashlight’s beam was no longer dancing about the room.
“I can’t find the switch,” Cynthia said from behind the screens.
Hanna’s hands found Ruby’s face. She swirled her palms over Ruby’s round cheeks and pointed chin and mushroom nose. Ruby’s warm, moist forehead revealed a slight fever. Her bangs were damp with sweat. Her ears felt hot.
The lights came up. Momentarily blinded, Hanna blinked until the bright red dimmed. Ruby’s smiling, angelic face was settled in the center of a wide lemon-yellow pillow. The striped duvet was pulled up to Ruby’s neck.
“Oh—”
Hanna fell to her knees and hugged Ruby. She rocked Ruby back and forth, exhausted and relieved. Ruby’s hair smelled antiseptic, like rubbing alcohol. She kissed her on the forehead.
“What happened to you?” Hanna said.
“Do you still love me?” Ruby asked.
“Of course I love you,” Hanna said.
“You’re not mad?” Ruby said.
“I was so worried about you. You scared me to death.”
“Are you okay now?” Ruby asked.
“We’re all together now. That’s what matters.”
Cynthia appeared at the break between the Japanese screens. “Piper’s gone.”
Hanna separated from Ruby and stood. Piper had abandoned the burning flashlight on the coffee table to mask her exit.
“Let her run,” Hanna said, knowing the car’s keys were in her blazer pocket. “We came here for Ruby.” She pressed the back of her hand to Ruby’s forehead. “Are you hot?”
“I feel a little funny,” Ruby said. “My whole body hurts a little bit.”
Ruby nodded toward a nightstand beside the bed. Scattered about the stand were pharmacy bottles of pseudogefyridol, Pontephen, and, strangely, an antibiotic. The antibiotic was prescribed by a Dr. Stevenson of Portland, Oregon. The pseudogefyridol was not from Dr. Bellingham but a Chicago pharmacy.
“Did you find this in the bathroom?” Hanna shook a pill bottle. It rattled half-empty. “You should never take other people’s medicine.”
Cynthia peered down at Ruby with a smoldering glare. She ground her jaw and muttered.
“I can’t believe you,” Cynthia said. One hand on her overgrown belly, she snatched up the flashlight and went to the door. She bounded down the steps and into the cold night air. Hanna could hear Cynthia outside yelling Piper’s name and demanding she come back.
Hanna retreated a half-step from the bed. “Tell me you didn’t do anything to yourself.”
Ruby wrenched her face. She looked about ready to cry. One hand emerged from under the sheets. She took hold of the duvet’s corner and drew back the covers.
Ruby lay upon a stack of mismatched towels and cotton medical pads, a plastic sheet beneath it all. Spots of umber blood stained the towels and pads.
Hanna cried out and dropped to one knee. She reached for Ruby’s midsection. She was unable to make herself touch it. Ruby’s belly was reduced, a mild bump Hanna had not seen since the third month of pons anno.
Hanna forced herself to place a cupped hand on Ruby’s belly. In place of the firm, growing girl within her was a hard knotty lump.
—
Ruby had been on her back for twelve hours and was developing bedsores. With Hanna supporting her, Ruby walked a ginger circle about the room. She asked to use the bathroom. Her pad needed changing. Hanna unwrapped a fresh one from its medical packaging and disposed of the bloody one in a surgical waste box beside the bed. Hanna then helped Ruby to the kitchenette. Ruby asked for some water and something to nibble on. Cynthia made a plate of cheese squares while Hanna sat at the table with Ruby.
Hanna could not look Ruby in the eyes. She stared at Ruby’s midsection. The thin undershirt Ruby wore was soiled and crumpled and clung to her figure. When Ruby sat up straight, it revealed her flattened stomach.
“Piper told me you’d never understand,” Ruby said. “She said no mother in the history of the world ever accepted this.”
“Stop listening to Piper,” Hanna suggested.
Ruby nodded sheepishly. She pressed a hand to her belly. “It hurts.”
“I’m sure it does,” Hanna said.
“I have to leave here by morning,” Ruby said. “I’m supposed to put all the garbage in the bins out back.”
“What about the towels and sheets?” Cynthia asked.
“I’m supposed to put them in the washing machine,” Ruby said. “I have to be gone by nine no matter what.”
Cynthia set a plate of cheese squares and saltine crackers before Ruby. The diminutive kitchen table only offered two chairs, so Cynthia remained standing while Ruby ate.
“I had to do it,” Ruby pled. “I couldn’t do what you wanted me to do.”
“Stop.” Hanna closed her eyes. “I don’t want to discuss it right now.”
“You didn’t have to do this,” Cynthia said accusingly to Ruby. “No one made you get the procedure.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Hanna repeated. Then she did want to talk about it. “Did Piper talk you into this? Did she pressure you?”
“No.” Ruby slumped in her chair with her head lowered. “When I got out of Dad’s hotel room, I knew how to reach her. She helped me.”
“Helped you how?�
�
“Helped me get away.” Ruby shrugged. “I told her I didn’t want to die.”
“You said those words?”
“Yes. She arranged a ride here. She called the doctor and everything.” Ruby brightened. “Everyone’s been so nice to me.”
Hanna drew a glass of water from the tap. It was warm and had a mineral taste. A lump had formed in the back of her throat. She was queasy. She reached for a square of the processed Swiss cheese, but all food was unappetizing at the moment.
“I can raise little Barry now,” Ruby said. “Piper said it was a bad idea, but I told her you would understand. We can both be Barry’s mother.”
A bolt of anger shot through Hanna. The image of blood-guilty Ruby cradling her infant boy was revolting. She could, in an instant, visualize walking out the door, down the steps, and into the car, dragging Cynthia along. She would have a long talk with Cynthia on the drive home, explaining why they were abandoning Ruby. Cynthia’s reaction to Ruby’s state told Hanna she did not need much convincing. Ruby had made an adult decision, Hanna rationalized. It would be the first decision of her adult life. This was what she would tell Cynthia on the drive home. At that moment, simmering, it was not difficult for Hanna to visualize any of this.
There were the baby clothes she’d pulled down from the garage attic a few weeks earlier. The soft pinks and cream-whites Ruby and Cynthia wore as infants, when they were indistinguishable twins. When they needed constant attention and care and love. For Hanna, those needs were no burden to provide. She packed those baby clothes away twelve years ago in preparation for the arrival of two new infants. Baby Ruby and baby Barry were to grow up together, a second chance to raise two children. Now baby Ruby was gone—erased.
Hanna would send Cynthia to wait in the car. She would lay Ruby down in the bed, tuck her in, and place the bright yellow pillow over Ruby’s face. She would hold it there until Ruby’s weakened, damaged little body stopped resisting.
The lump in the back of her throat felt softball-sized. Lost in her head, the physical urgency dragged Hanna from her thoughts and into the moment. Gagging, she rushed for the bathroom and, in two arching heaves, evacuated all the weight within her.
—
Hanna unfurled a fresh plastic sheet and laid it across the backseat of the car. She helped Ruby inside, had her lie lengthwise across the bench seat, and covered her with the blanket Hanna kept in the trunk for long-trip naps. She pressed the back of her hand to Ruby’s forehead. The fever was slight; no emergency, but something to watch.
Back in the rental, Cynthia had already started cleaning the room. She gathered all the used towels from the bed and bathroom and dropped them into the washing machine on the rear porch. Hanna joined her in stripping the sheets from the bed. Blood spotted the duvet, so Hanna unsnapped the cover and added it to the pile of sheets. Together, they walked about the room, searching for any other fabrics requiring cleaning. Hanna put the sheets into the washer with the towels, poured in a generous scoop of powdered soap, and started the cycle.
Cynthia washed the dishes and set them in the drying rack. Hanna gathered the pill bottles from the nightstand and dropped them in her purse. The antibiotics and pseudogefyridol were obviously intended for Ruby. She could not tell if the over-the-counter Pontephen originated from the rental’s medicine cabinet. She added it to her purse anyway, in case Ruby complained of cramping while in the car.
Hanna gathered all the soiled disposables—medical pads, bandages, the plastic sheet on the bed—and put them in a cardboard medical waste box. She left the box beside the bed, assuming the rental owner disposed of it separately from the rest of the garbage.
When she joined Cynthia in the bathroom, she was scrubbing the toilet. Black streaks of caked blood and gray mucus ran down the shower tiles into the floor drain. Ruby must have rinsed off at some point.
Hanna had not been home since the custody hearing. Resigned and defeated, she removed her blazer, blouse, business skirt, and hose. On hands and knees and in her underwear, Hanna scrubbed the shower clean and rinsed the soapy disinfectant down the drain. Cynthia finished the toilet and scrubbed the sink, as Hanna did not reach the toilet in time earlier.
“Do we wait for the wash to finish?” Cynthia said. “To put them in the dryer?”
Hanna stepped into her skirt. Cynthia zipped up the back. Hanna wore her blouse out, not bothering to tuck it in.
“We’ve done enough,” Hanna said.
Hanna selected two twenty-dollar bills from her wallet. She placed them under the pepper grinder on the kitchenette’s countertop. Whomever this sympathizer may be, whatever ideology they professed, they had kept Ruby safe while she recovered and Hanna wanted to thank them. They probably didn’t need the money. No one gets poor renting vacation homes in wine country.
Cynthia stopped Hanna at the front door before they exited.
“Do you really forgive Ruby?” she said.
Hanna, red-eyed, said, “I have to. She’s my child.”
“Ruby Jo is your child too,” Cynthia said.
“What’s done is done.”
“That’s it?” Cynthia said. “That’s all you can say?”
She kissed Cynthia on the forehead. “Live in the past, honey, and it will devour you.”
They hugged. Cynthia’s muscular hands pressed deep into Hanna’s back. Eyes closed, Hanna felt she was hugging Vaughn again, but years ago, when he made her squishy-soft inside. The perspiration lingered in Cynthia’s hair from the housework. She even smelled like her father. Hanna pressed her cheek against Cynthia’s and recoiled. A pepper of stubble had developed on Cynthia’s jawline.
“I’m sorry,” Hanna said, afraid she’d hurt Cynthia’s feelings.
“Grandpa told me I needed to learn how to shave,” Cynthia said. “I guess it’s time.”
“Not all bridge daughters need to,” Hanna said. She caressed Cynthia’s rough jaw with a wistful smile. She so expected Cynthia to be embarrassed by it.
“You look tired,” Cynthia said.
Being told only made Hanna more exhausted. “Let’s get your sister home. The sun will be up soon.”
Twenty-nine
Ruby slept in late the next morning. She rose twice to use the bathroom, both times supported by Hanna to and from the lavatory. Ruby dismissed food when Cynthia offered, murmuring a groggy not hungry before slipping back to sleep.
After breakfast, Cynthia washed the dishes while Hanna used the computer in the entertainment room. Cynthia joined Hanna, drying her hands with a dishtowel.
“Come here,” Hanna told her, patting the cushion of a chair beside the desk. “I want to talk with you.”
“Aren’t the police still looking for Ruby?” Cynthia asked.
“They are,” Hanna said carefully. “We have to let them keep looking.”
“But you’re okay with what Ruby did.” Cynthia said it in a way suggesting she was not. “Why don’t you tell the police that?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Hanna said. “They’ll still take Ruby away from us.”
“Will they take her to jail?”
“They have houses for girls like Ruby.” Hanna added, “And if they find out I cooperated with Piper, they’ll take me away too.”
Cynthia sat hunched in the chair. She peered down at her hands in the dishtowel. The towel came from a set, a wedding gift from a spinster Wisconsin aunt Hanna had never met. Her father knew her name.
Cynthia’s large hands folded the dishtowel as Hanna had taught her, in thirds and then in half. “We should begin planning my finality,” Cynthia said, eyes on the towel. “There’s a few things I want to take care of before the last day.”
“Do you want to write a letter to yourself?” Hanna asked.
Like the baby doll wenschkinds, a bridge daughter writing letters to the child within her was an adult invention. The intention was to divert anxiety and ease the weight of the bridge’s situation.
“We could make a video,” H
anna said, nodding at the computer. It had become a trend over the past few years.
“No, I want to write a letter,” Cynthia said. She squeezed the folded towel. “And I want to see the ocean. I want to see Big Sur again.”
A warm flush rose within Hanna. “That would be nice,” she said.
“And I want to eat at The Spaghetti Factory one last time,” Cynthia said. “I want one more scoop of spumoni.”
“You can have all the spumoni you want.” Hanna wiped the corner of one eye.
Cynthia set the folded dishtowel across her lap and smoothed it down. “How much money do you have?”
“Oh, honey, you don’t need to worry about that.”
“Yes, I do,” Cynthia said. “You and Ruby will have a new mouth to feed. There’s diapers, and baby clothes, and toys.”
Hanna made a short, wet laugh. “That’s why I kept all your baby things in the garage,” she said. “I have two sets of everything.”
“Little Barry’s going to look silly wearing girls’ clothes,” Cynthia said.
“Mothers love dressing up their boys like girls,” Hanna said. “We love showing them those pictures when they’re grown men.”
“Really?” Cynthia said.
“There’s nothing better than making a man squirm,” Hanna said with a crinkled grin. It was all she could do to maintain herself. “Someday you’ll understand.” She said it without thinking, and she broke down.
Cynthia hushed her mother and patted her arm. Hanna took a deep breath to regain her composure.
“What are you reading?” Cynthia said, studying the computer monitor for the first time. “Are we going to Mexico?”
“Ruby wants to be at your finality,” Hanna said. “She wants to be Barry’s second mother.”
“She’ll be a good mother,” Cynthia said.
“We can’t do it here. People know about Ruby.” Hanna nodded toward the monitor. “In Mexico, we’ll be tourists who take their newborn back to California.” Mexican hospitals would only be worried about Cynthia’s relationship to Hanna, which Hanna could easily prove. They would overlook Ruby, who soon could pass for a normal teenage girl.
