by Amy Bourret
The “but” swings through the air like a wrecking ball. There is always a “but” Ruby just doesn’t know which part of her this one will crush.
“You understand what it will mean. We could try to fight for custody, prove the biological parents are somehow unfit, or argue best interests of the child.”
Here it comes, Ruby thinks. Here comes the soul-obliterating “but.”
“I think we have a good shot at avoiding jail time for you, but…you understand that if you come forward, you undoubtedly will lose custody of your daughter?”
There. The words are spoken. Sometimes a person has to hear them out loud to make them real. And the surprising thing is that they don’t change the resolve that has come almost like a sense of peace. Ruby still knows, all the way down to her obliterated soul, that even if Lark hadn’t found the article, she has to do what is right. And at least he called Lark her daughter.
She can’t manage words, answers him with just a nod.
TWENTY-THREE
“Let’s go for a walk,” Ruby says to Lark.
“But…” Lark has been bristling against Ruby’s need to keep her close, keep her indoors, these past few days.
“It’s okay. Fresh air…”
“Fresh perspective,” Lark says, finishing Nana’s saying.
They head out on one of their favorite loops, up Artist Road, across Gonzalez, down Palace and back over to Artist Road. Clyde nudges between them, bounds off to investigate odors and chase critters, circles back and shoves between them again. The air is cool, God-washed, after a spectacular afternoon storm.
Neither of them speaks as they walk through this older neighborhood. Lines of scarred adobe walls tease them with glimpses here and there, of gardens choked with poppies, colorful bottles on blue-trimmed windowsills, religious statuary. Ruby reaches out, squeezes Lark’s shoulder. She is answered with a flash of worried, scared eyes. Ruby forms practice sentences in her head as Lark scuffs her sneakers along the roadside, kicks at rocks. What words does a mother use to break her daughter’s heart?
As the sun dips below the mountains, leaving a smear of rainbow sherbet in its wake, they reach the foot of Palace Avenue. They cross over to a little park beneath the rustic wooden cross planted on a hillside—Santa Fe’s version of the Hollywood sign. They sit in the grass, lean against the trunk of an ancient tree, Clyde blanketing their feet.
Ruby pulls a dented tin bowl and a couple of bottles of water from her backpack, fills the bowl for Clyde, tosses the other bottle to Lark. She peels a juice-heavy orange, pries the segments apart with her fingers, hands Lark the little bites of sunshine from the center. Angel kisses, her grandmother called them, and Lark needs all the kisses and angels she can get.
“We need to talk about what happens next.”
“Nothing is going to happen.” Lark takes a swig of water as if she were swallowing an antidote. “You said no one else knows.”
“But now we know. And those people, your other parents, they deserve to know, too.”
Lark studies the tiny moue of orange in her palm. “You could write them a letter, tell them I’m okay. Then we could go somewhere and hide.”
Mexico, Ruby thinks again. Could she possibly subject this child, and her other one, to a life on the run? She holds out another segment of orange. Lark shakes her head, but Clyde noses in and gulps it down. “Do you really want to live like that, always having to lie about who you really are?”
“But if you tell…what happens?”
Ruby sits up taller, crosses her legs. “I’ve already told.” She watches Lark’s eyes flash from milk chocolate to fancy dark Swiss. “I talked to a lawyer. And he’s talking with another lawyer down in Albuquerque, trying to work things out. But I might be in a lot of trouble.”
“No.” Lark tosses the last of the angel kisses aside. “Tell him you made a mistake, made it up.” Her face darkens in shadow. “I’m sorry I looked in your purse. I promise, I promise I’ll keep the secret.”
Ruby scootches Lark over to her, pulls her into a stiff embrace. “Oh, baby bird. No. This is so not about you knowing the secret. It’s just, before, I didn’t know. And now that I do, I have to do what’s right.”
When Ruby pauses to take a breath, Lark turns her head away, presses her chin into Ruby’s ribs. “The charges are pretty serious, baby. The judge could make me go to jail.”
Lark flings out an arm, wraps it around Clyde. “But you saved me. You loved me.” Her voice catches on her anxiety. “You didn’t know….”
“Love.” Ruby cups Lark’s chin in her palm, raises her head until Lark’s eyes meet hers. “I love you. That won’t ever change. But what I did, it was still wrong.”
The ramifications sink into Lark’s face like water on a thirsty garden. “If you go to jail? Will I, and my sister, will we live with the Ms? Or with Chaz?”
The baby. Ruby can’t even think about what will happen to her right now. First she has to do this, the hard part. She would climb into the trunk of this noble tree and pull Lark in with her if she could, and stay there, protected, forever. She looks up at the cross, which memorializes some priests who were slaughtered in a pueblo revolt four hundred years ago, prays for the strength to massacre her daughter’s heart. Again. “Your other parents, they will want you to go live with them.”
Lark crosses her arms, hugs her chest. “I won’t go.” Ruby can feel Lark’s voice digging its heels into the ground. “I’ll just say no.”
“It’s not that easy,” Ruby says. “I wish, I so wish it were.” She holds Lark tightly beside her. “The judge, he can make you go.”
“It’s not fair,” Lark wails. “I didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t let them take me away.” She crumples like a tissue into Ruby’s lap, her tears washing over Ruby’s bare legs. Ruby’s own tears soak her collar as Clyde stands, moans, licks and licks and licks at his humans.
Lark’s body feels boneless, a puddle of hurt in Ruby’s lap. The fissure in her own heart is jagged, like a lightning scar in an old-growth tree.
TWENTY-FOUR
Antoinette looks like an old-church Madonna painting when she cries. All she needs is a fat Baby Jesus in her lap.
“I’m sorry,” Ruby says. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t tell you Saturday. I had to tell Lark first, if I was going to tell anyone at all.”
Antoinette swipes her nose with her sleeve in a very un-Madonnalike move. “I’m not crying because you lied to me. I understand that. I’m crying because the whole thing is so…so royally fucked-up.”
Well, that totally blows the Madonna thing, Ruby thinks. She’s heard her friend use the naughty F word, as Antoinette calls it, only a handful of times, usually occasions involving extreme bodily pain. Ruby walks past Lark’s closed bedroom door to the bathroom, returns with a box of tissues. “Here. I thought I saw a booger, but it’s snot, as Lark would say.”
“How can you joke. How can you even…” Antoinette pauses to blow her nose.
“Talk? Walk?”
“Breathe. How can you even breathe?”
Ruby sits down on the sofa beside her. “I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m going to do any of it. But in a weird way, I’m breathing easier now, now that I made up my mind, now that I’ve told all of you.”
“He’s good, your lawyer.” Antoinette combs back her hair with both hands, loops it into a knot. “I asked around. But it’s not too late to pull the plug.”
Ruby shakes her head. “What kind of example would that be, for Lark? What kind of life?”
“These people, they’ll be reasonable. They’ll want what’s best for Lark.”
Again Ruby shakes her head. “My lawyer says—”
“I know. I know they’ll get custody. But surely they’ll want to go slow. Surely they’ll let you visit.”
“That, my friend,” Ruby says. “Is the thought that keeps me breathing. But do stop calling me Shirley.”
TWENTY-FIVE
“Go. Be with your daughter,” Margar
et says. “I had Zara cancel your appointments for the next couple of days.”
Ruby nods. She knows she hasn’t been able to focus, that she’s doing her clients a disservice. Fortunately, this last client needs only a polish change. Ruby wouldn’t trust herself with cuticle trimmers another time today.
As the client curls her hands into careful Cs in front of the small fan clipped to the edge of the manicure table, Ruby folds and stacks the thin white towels, places the pink finger bowls on top of the pile, as if she can make order out of her messed-up life through a tidy workstation. Out of sight in the back room, she tosses the towels in the hamper, places the bowls in the sink. And wipes the hot tears from her cheeks as she walks out the door.
She sits there in her Jeep, waiting for her brain to command her arm muscles to drive. It is all too much; everything is too much. She wants—no, needs—to spend every moment with Lark. She also needs to make money to pay for lawyers and court costs and potential fines. And the legal fees are just a slice of the ugly pie. The money that remained from the sale of her grandparents’ house after Ruby bought the Jeep ran out years ago, but she has the small fund that Mrs. Levy left her to pay property taxes and maintain the house. She can work overtime at the salon, make more furniture. But all of that will be a drop in the rusted bucket of what Ruby will owe. And she’s not going to be doing nails or making furniture in jail.
Money isn’t the only thing driving her, though. Even if she had all the cash in the world, Ruby is afraid that if she doesn’t keep doing these regular things, if she doesn’t keep putting one foot in front of the other through the dailiness, she’ll never move again.
Finally, she manages to engage her brain and put the car in gear.
At the house, Molly greets her with a shrug. “Come on, Daisy,” she says to her black Labrador. “Playdate’s over. Let’s go spring Dudley from the doggy salon.” Clyde follows them outside, to re-mark his territory around the porch, no doubt.
Her daughter’s eyes bore into Ruby before she crosses the room. “Why did you have to tell?” Lark sits stonily on the sofa. “Why couldn’t you just pretend you didn’t see the article? Why did you do this to me?”
Ruby knows that Lark isn’t really looking for answers; her daughter just needs to vent. Still Ruby tries to comfort her. “Oh, baby bird. I didn’t do this to you, to hurt you….” She sits on the sofa next to Lark.
Lark flinches when Ruby reaches toward her. “Why didn’t you just tell someone back then? Why didn’t you give me to the police?”
Ruby lays her arm across Lark’s shoulders anyway. “That was my plan, at first. But then, then the way you looked at me…” She tells her how infant Lark puckered her satiny mouth into a little pink heart and made a pitiful kitten mewl, how Ruby reached over to brush a tress of duck-down hair across that velvety forehead, how Lark grabbed her wrist, wiggled her fingers into Ruby’s palm, and didn’t let go.
“I looked into your precious baby face and I saw…”
“What? What did you see?”
Ruby can’t speak this part, especially not to Lark, how at that moment, a flash of memory from many years before pulsed at her from a cobwebby corner of her mind. With that memory searing her scalp and baby fingers gripping her hand, only one thought was possible: save this child, protect her.
Now Ruby rubs her eyebrows with her knuckles, as if she can manually push those unwanted pictures back into that dark corner. And she feels the same steely resolve.
Somehow, she’s got to protect this child.
TWENTY-SIX
That evening, Ruby kneels in the garden. She’s always been able to find solace wrist-deep in soil; this time she finds only dirt. The weeds bear the brunt of her emotions.
Inside, Lark is making beaded bracelets with Numi. Ruby didn’t hesitate when Numi’s mother called to ask if she could drop off Numi while she ran some errands in town. Lark needs a friend right now.
Ruby is not deliberately eavesdropping; Lark knows she is weeding below the open bedroom window. So Ruby supposes that what Lark tells Numi with a pinkie swear is what she wants to tell her mother instead.
It’s like my whole life ’til now has been a ginormous game of pretend. And now I go live with people I don’t even know. A whole different house with whole different parents. In a whole ’nother state. That’s not really my bed. This isn’t really my room. My mom’s not really my mom. I’m not even really me. I don’t know who I am.
The bird clock tweets 7:00 p.m. shortly after Numi leaves. “I think I’ll just go to bed,” Lark says.
She hasn’t gone to bed this early since she was a toddler. With a sigh as heavy as her sorrow, Ruby follows her into Lark’s bedroom, trying to think of how to tell a child that you have to do what is right, even if you hurt her in the process.
Lark flings off her clothes, yanks on her pajamas. She slams shut the drawer, stomps down the hall, carrying around her own little cloud of anger like Pigpen carried his stink. Anger again, Ruby thinks. Now if I can just get Lark through the other—what, five, seven?—stages of grief before—She chokes off the rest of her thought.
The rush of water against porcelain drowns out Ruby’s soft sob. Lark manages to make even tooth brushing an act of anger, bristles scraping gums with vigor.
“Baby.” Ruby tries again as Lark trudges back to her bedroom. As Ruby reaches out to give Clyde a good night pat on the head, Lark turns toward the wall like a sulking spouse. “Am I just a manicurist or a woodworker? No, what I do isn’t who I am. And where you live isn’t who you are, either.”
Ruby sits on the edge of the bed and waits, for questions, maybe tears. All she hears, though, is Lark’s breath slowing, deepening, in rhythm with Clyde’s mucousy snores. “Good night, sweet dreams, I love you…” Ruby pauses, finishes Lark’s part of their nighttime send-off herself. “To the moon and back.”
When Ruby stands and moves toward the bedroom door, Lark finally speaks. “I wish you had never found me. Why couldn’t you just leave me there to die?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Later, Chaz arrives. Ruby checks to see that Lark is sleeping soundly, then fills him in on the events of the evening and reports from her lawyer. John checked out the story from the magazine. The police did follow up with the girl, but no charges were filed against her because she was fourteen at the time and was just along for the ride, so to speak. They also tracked down the boyfriend—to a cemetery in East Texas.
That means if anyone is going to pay for the crime, it will be Ruby. John contacted his friend, the federal prosecutor, and they have “begun a dialogue.” She’s reasonable, he said, has no ax to grind.
As for Lark, Texas’s Child Protective Services will have the ultimate say, but John and the prosecutor both agree that gradual turnover would be best, to give Lark time to adjust. “Turnover” they call it, negotiating details as if Lark were a pretty necklace being returned to its rightful owner. Nothing is right about any of this.
Chaz seems to hear her thoughts. “She’ll be all right.” Next to her on the sofa, he rubs his chin against Ruby’s neck. She bristles as much from the comment as his stubble.
The problem is Chaz really believes everything is going to be all right. Yes, Lark is going away, but she’s going to her real parents after all, so everything will be all right. Ruby won’t go to jail; his family has been lighting candles and making novenas to make sure about that. Law-and-order Chaz, emphasis on the order. He wants the order back in his life; he wants this part to be over. And Chaz and Ruby will just tootle along as if none of this ever happened.
“I know it’s hard.” He wraps an arm around her, pulls her to his chest.
His impatience is thick between them as she slips out of his embrace. Chaz isn’t one of those guys who thinks that buying a girl a meal is a green light to play in her pants, but he does like his alone-time with Ruby.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Even Chaz’s skin tightens as irritation replaces impatience. “I’m tryin
g here.” He stands, strides to the refrigerator, returns with another beer. “It’s hard for me, to get past it.”
“Get past what?” Ruby looks in the direction of Lark’s bedroom. She struggles to keep her voice low. “The disruption to your life? The fact that I saved, loved, who I thought was an abandoned child?” She tugs at her hair in frustration. “How is that so different from what you do, saving kids from the streets?” She pauses, points to her belly. “Or can’t you get past the idea that your pregnant girlfriend may go to jail?”
“No.” He collapses onto the sofa as if the burden of Ruby’s deed is too much for even his sturdy legs. “I don’t know how I can get past you not telling me. Before now.”
The sour mood stinks up the room as much as the reek of days’ old Chinese food that followed Chaz back from the kitchen. “I never told anyone.”
“I’m not just anyone. Or at least I didn’t think so.”
“I thought about it, going to the authorities.” Every now and then she would read about some child being abused and worry that the monster who tossed away Lark might be mistreating another child. With DNA testing, they might find that mother, protect her other babies. They might take Lark away, too, though, put her in “the system.”
And then that other memory, from Ruby’s own childhood, would burble to the surface like oil from summer asphalt, and the risk of coming forward would become untenable. If she had known that someone loved Lark, was out there looking…
Chaz points his beer at her. “I’m not talking about authorities. I’m talking about me. You never told me.”
Ruby’s anger dissipates like mist in a breeze, replaced by weary sorrow. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.” She takes a breath, tries to swallow the emotion. “I can’t even forgive myself.”
