Mothers and Other Liars

by Amy Bourret

  “You’re asking me to choose between you and my child.”

  “Our child. And, yeah, I am.” Then Chaz stormed away.

  She has been crafting a wedding gift for a young Jewish couple, commissioned by another sentimental fool. Turning a family armoire into a canopy bed that will first be used as a chuppah. The shed wasn’t big enough to hold the armoire; Ruby had to disassemble it in the yard. The head-and footboards poked out of the shed door while she crafted them; days ago Chaz helped her wrestle them into the house and out of the way.

  Tonight she works on the posts, carving acanthus leaves to give them an organic sensibility. Her grandfather’s woodworking bible lies open on the workbench beside her. Hollows are chamfers which have been curved with a gouge. First plane the chamfer, and then chisel the hollow with the gouge. Ruby could swear she can smell her grandfather’s pipe smoke on the well-thumbed pages, but she knows that the pungent fragrance of his favorite tobacco emanates from her memory rather than the musty old book.

  As she strips away thin curls of wood with the gouge, she thinks that she may never have this, the wedding, or the marriage like her grandparents had. Maybe the price is too dear. But then she thinks of Lark, her ghostly pallor, gaunt face. Chaz might not be able to live with Ruby if she goes through with her plan. She can’t live with herself, though, if she doesn’t. Somehow, she’s got to make him understand. For all of their sakes.

  Clyde lies curled in a comma at the door while she works. His reddish coat gleams with gold in the wan moonlight. He seems less mournful, is eating his kibble, these past few weeks, but is hardly his old self. He lifts his head, eyes bore into her, as if to say that her plan wouldn’t be make-believe if she believed in him, as if he knows that everything is going to work out.

  “I’m trying to believe, Clyde,” Ruby says. “I’m trying.”

  The moon is only halfway up its arc to the top of the dome when Antoinette steps over Clyde and into the shed. Her face is a melted candle of grief. Clyde whines, nuzzles Antoinette’s jeans. Time freezes in this little snow-globe world of Ruby’s.

  “It’s Chaz.” Antoinette’s voice is raspy, raw.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Ruby’s hand drops to her pregnant belly, a gesture of shock as much as if she were covering a gasping mouth. Oh, God. No. Breath is impossible. Thought is intolerable. She sets down the gouge, lines it up with the chisels, filled with an overwhelming need to make her space Chaz-tidy. She reaches over, turns off the radio. Then she pushes past Antoinette, rushes out of the shed, vomits in the flower bed.

  No. No. No. She feels herself crumpling into Antoinette’s embrace, a two-headed being lurching across the yard to the porch steps. Clyde is there, wedged between them, whining, licking her knees.

  Antoinette starts to speak.

  “No.” Ruby covers her friend’s mouth, stanching the words, the unbearable words, as if keeping them from being spoken will make them less true for just a moment more. Then she removes her hand, pulls Clyde against her side. Waits.

  “Krueger came to Mama’s. A car accident. Chaz…” Antoinette takes Ruby’s arm. “Come on. Come with me.”

  SEVENTY-NINE

  As Antoinette’s little car speeds through the Santa Fe streets, Ruby finally manages to speak. “How bad? How bad is it?”

  Antoinette looks over at Ruby. “Bad.”

  When they rush through the emergency room entrance, the waiting area is teeming with Monteros and cops. Celeste motions to Ruby and Antoinette. “They needed room to work.”

  “Kicked us out.” Aunt Tia’s voice comes from over Celeste’s shoulder.

  Celeste grasps Ruby’s elbow. “But you, go.” She points to a pair of metal doors.

  A security guard nods and presses a red button as Ruby walks over. The doors snap closed behind her.

  The St. Vincent’s emergency room is one big square with a workstation in the center and curtained bays lining the three outer walls. Only a handful of the curtains are pulled; the vacant narrow beds look like lounge chairs around a pool. Wheeled IV trees cluster around the nurse’s station like gossiping workers. Ruby recognizes the unique scent blend of bleach and pain from a couple of visits with Lark, a broken arm, a gash in the shin.

  A petite nurse in blue scrubs directs Ruby toward a closed curtain on the left side of the room. Ruby keeps her eyes on the middle area of the curtain. Please, she thinks, please let there be feet, lots of feet, below the hem. Please don’t let them have given up.

  She feels all the color drain from her face at her first glimpse of Chaz through a break in the curtain. Blinking and bleating equipment and colorful scrubs swirl into an abstract painting on the white wall. The nurse holds Ruby upright with one arm and opens the curtain with the other in well-honed efficiency.

  Chaz lies still, too still against the bustle around him. His clothes are a puddle under the gurney. A folded sheet covers his midsection, while doctors and nurses work at both ends. One leg is sandwiched into a splint, bound in bands of tape. Chaz’s toes protrude, rouged in several shades of purple. He hates for his long skinny toes to show, Ruby thinks. She resists the urge to cover them with the sheet bunched between his legs.

  Finally Ruby forces her eyes to focus on the face above the cervical collar. For a brief second, she wants to laugh at the features distorted to fun-house proportions. In the next second, she feels relief—that is not Chaz after all. That could not possibly be Chaz.

  Lips swollen like a bad collagen job. Nose crusted with blood. One eye bulges so that the lids do not quite meet, a sliver of dark iris peering out beyond the crimson and violet skin. A doctor is stitching a seam that extends from the eyebrow to just above his ear, a black-and-blood crescent running through a pale swath of shaved skin. A nurse presses gauze to the wound as the doctor works.

  “Touch him,” the petite nurse says. “Talk to him.”

  Before Ruby can make herself step closer, the doctor at Chaz’s head stands tall. “I’m done here. Move him on up.”

  Metal rails are locked into place on each side of the bed, yellow plastic gowns are shed, and the whole parade rolls past Ruby as she reaches out her hand.

  EIGHTY

  Ruby hesitates at this next set of double doors. The black-and-white sign is stark, forbidding, against the shiny metal. ICU. NO ADMITTANCE. IMMEDIATE FAMILY ONLY. VISITORS STRICTLY LIMITED TO TWO PER PATIENT. ICU. I see you. She feels exposed, looks down at her hands, twists her right fingers around her left ring finger.

  Antoinette pushes the red button. “It’s okay,” she says as the doors flip open. “Mom told them you were family. They have a broad definition of spouses anyway, I guess because of all the gays in town.”

  Beyond the entrance, three large windows and three open doorways line each side of the short corridor, bridged at the opposite end by a nurse’s station. A man in scrubs at the counter motions toward the first door on the left. Ruby places her palm on the shuttered window beside the doorway, whether to steady or steel herself she’s not sure. Then she takes a deep breath, follows Antoinette into the small room.

  In the pale, blue-tinged light, Chaz looks outlandish, dark hollow cheeks, gray lips. Tubes, in his nose, in his mouth, sprouting from beneath the ski hat of bandages on his head. The edge of the sheet is folded neatly over a thin blanket and tucked in along Chaz’s side. Wires snake out from under the covers at his chest. As Ruby approaches, a blood pressure cuff inflates on his arm, and the panel behind his head bleats as its lights flash.

  On one side of the bed, Celeste sits in a chair, her body curled into itself beside Chaz. She looks up when they enter, nods.

  Antoinette pushes Ruby toward a rolling stool on the other side of the bed, then steps behind her mother. Ruby balances her butt on the vinyl cushion. She’s stiff and worn out from sitting and worrying in the waiting room while Chaz was in surgery and recovery.

  Chaz’s arm looks waxy against the blanket. Ruby has a flash of memory—small-town funeral parlor, open casket banked by velv
et curtains stiff with dust. She lays a palm on his wrist, relieved to feel the throb of veins under skin that feels warmer than her own hand.

  Across the bed, Celeste strokes Chaz’s swollen cheek. “They’re always your babies. Always.”

  The man from the nurse’s station steps in beside Ruby, switches out bags of clear fluid on the IV stand. Ruby gasps when he lifts a catheter bag from a hook on the bed rail. “It’s common, some blood in the urine from the bruising,” he says. “Just a few drops can look like a whole lot in the bag.”

  The exact opposite from dye in milk paint, Ruby thinks. And then thinks how once again, she’s having absurd thoughts at inappropriate moments.

  “I’m Walter, by the way.” The man points to a small whiteboard hung on the wall behind Antoinette. Several lines in permanent black lettering. today is. your nurse is. your aide is. “Walter” is written in blocky green print as the attending nurse. “I’ll be with ya’ll ’til six.”

  Ruby jerks her hand off Chaz’s arm as if she’s a naughty child when she hears Chunk’s voice in the hall. She spins on her stool toward the door just as Chaz’s father, aunt, and other sister crowd into the tiny room. Apparently, this hospital is lax about a lot of its rules.

  A fortyish woman, red hair cut pixie-short, stands at the foot of the bed. “Dr. Jarveras” is embroidered in blue script on the white coat that hangs over a floral-print blouse and dark slacks. She sounds like she’s reading a bad soap opera script. “We removed a small hematoma to reduce the pressure on his brain. We really won’t know the extent of any permanent damage until he regains consciousness, so we’re hoping we can control the swelling without further sedation. If, when, he does regain consciousness, then we can do a full evaluation. We’ll hold off on the orthopedic surgery until we have that prognosis.”

  In other words, Ruby thinks, if my boyfriend lives, if he’s not a vegetable, then they’ll worry about whether he’ll walk again.

  EIGHTY-ONE

  After the fifth or fiftieth attempt to budge Ruby from her stool, the Montero family settles into a routine of taking turns on the other side of the bed. Chunk paces. Antoinette and her grandmother knit their rosaries, beads sliding through arthritic fingers as smoothly as young, supple ones. Linda fidgets. Celeste strokes and pats. Tia; other auntsunclescousins; Father Paul, the family priest whom Ruby recognizes from her times at Mass with Chaz; lots of people dressed in scrubs. The tiny room holds an ever-shifting crowd.

  And Ruby sits, her own breathing keeping rhythm with the metronomic hoosh-hiss of the respirator. Dee Dee replaces Valeria; Emily replaces Walter. And still Ruby sits. Trays of hospital food and sacks of takeout appear and disappear at her side. During Celeste’s rotations, she shoves a handled plastic cup at Ruby’s face, demands that Ruby swallow a few gulps of water. Mothering Ruby in ways that she can’t mother Chaz. If Ruby could convince a nurse to give her a catheter, she wouldn’t have to get up at all.

  At some point Dr. Jarveras stops in, with another doctor in tow. “This is Dr. Feinberg. He’ll be taking over while I go home and get some sleep.” She pauses, points to Ruby. “Which I suggest you do, for your baby if not for yourself.”

  Ruby listens as the woman brings her colleague up to speed.

  “Shouldn’t he be awake by now?” Across the bed, Chunk places his hands on Celeste’s shoulders.

  Dr. Jarveras looks up from her chart. “The anesthesia from the surgery has been metabolized, so yes, we would have hoped to see some level of consciousness by now. Sometimes this is just the body’s way, hibernating as a path to healing. Sometimes…it’s just too soon to know.”

  The spaces between the doctor’s words speak louder than the words themselves. No. This is not possible. It has to be a mistake, Ruby thinks. In her nightmares, it was always a gangbanger’s knife slicing a jack-o’-lantern smile across Chaz’s gut, a bullet whistling through the air. Not a car wreck, not a tree. Not Chaz. Earlier tonight, Ruby thought she was losing him, but not losing him, losing him. Such an inadequate word, to define both misplaced car keys and life.

  The baby inside her punches her ribs. She should have known better. She loses everyone she loves, her parents, her grandparents, Lark. She should have known better.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  “Here, drink this.” Antoinette hands Ruby a paper cup, the string of a tea bag dangling off the lip. “It’s herbal. Tia carries around her own supply in her purse.”

  Ruby cradles the cup in her hands. The heat barely penetrates her skin. “We had a fight. If I hadn’t…”

  The chair across the bed squeaks against the floor as Antoinette scoots it closer to Chaz’s side. “It’s not your fault. It was an accident, Ruby.”

  Ruby sets the cup on the metal hospital tray, which has been pushed against the wall beside her. She wads up a corner of the bedsheet, places Chaz’s hand over the mound, willing his fingers to grasp the linen. “He stormed out. We didn’t even say good-bye.”

  “He still does that? Sleeps holding the sheet in his hand? I haven’t thought about that in years. I can remember…” Antoinette’s voice goes little-girl soft as she recounts the story, a thunderstorm, crawling into Chaz’s bed.

  Ruby half-listens as her own mind reels with thought, with memory. We didn’t even say good-bye.

  She was nineteen, had just parked the rust bucket Ford next to the shed at her grandparents’ house, returning with a box of Tide and a Hershey bar—Nana’s favorite—for each of them. At first Ruby didn’t notice that anything was wrong. And then she saw her grandmother, sprawled out in her chore-day clothes, a bedsheet flapping in the breeze above her, the same overwashed color as the sky.

  Ruby ran across the yard and fell to her knees, pulled her grandmother’s head into her lap. Her face was gray and pinched; her lips looked like wax. Nana had wet herself—an orange splotch darkened her ratty peach trousers. And she wasn’t breathing.

  Ruby was still doing the CPR she had learned in sophomore health class when the mailman came running over.

  “Enid,” he said. “Oh, God.” Frank clasped Ruby’s hands in his, lifted them off Nana’s chest, and pulled Ruby to her feet.

  Later, after Dr. Weiner and the nicer of the town’s two rival cousin-morticians had come and taken her grandmother away, Ruby stored the casseroles and Jell-O molds in the fridge and piled the cookies and brownies and pies on the counter. Then she carried the box of detergent down the basement steps. And there, right between the harvest gold Sears dryer and the newer white Maytag washer—a testament to her grandmother’s zeal for breeze-dried linens—sat another bright orange box of Tide, almost half full.

  For the second time that day, Ruby sank to her knees, this time on the clammy concrete floor. This time Ruby cried, like the first nasty winter storm—wailing wind, pelting sleet—like she hadn’t cried since she was three. Why had her grandmother sent her into town when she had plenty of detergent? If she had some premonition that her heart was about to give out, why had she sent Ruby away, to die alone in a patch of grass? Why hadn’t Nana said good-bye?

  Antoinette’s voice pulls Ruby back into the room. “It wasn’t your fault, Ruby.”

  Ruby picks up the cup of now-tepid tea off the tray. She tugs on the string, watches the darker amber liquid nearest the bag swirl into the rest of the water. “I should have known better. I lose everyone I love.”

  EIGHTY-THREE

  The Ms lead Ruby to a bench outside the hospital. She shifts the blanket draped over her shoulders, surprised to find it there until a vague memory surfaces, of enveloping warmth, of an aide telling her she was shivering.

  “What do you need?” Margaret asks.

  Lark. I need Lark, Ruby thinks. I need Chaz to be okay.

  “Lark should be here,” Molly says, as if reading Ruby’s thoughts.

  Ruby can only nod. For the first time since Antoinette came to the shed, she allows herself to sink below the flood line of grief. She tries to catch her breath between sobs. Her head pounds. Bile burns her throa
t. Her intestines feel as if they are turning inside out as she dry heaves. And the Ms hold her until the tide recedes.

  Margaret’s voice slices through the cool evening air. “You. Go away.”

  Ruby lifts her head from Molly’s shoulder, recognizes the reporter. Little Miss Red Suit. Only tonight she is dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, her blond hair not exactly unkempt, but far from the perfect helmet that has shadowed Ruby throughout her ordeal.

  “I’m sorry.” The reporter looks down at her feet. “I just had to come. To say I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” Ruby’s own voice sounds as husky as the reporter’s.

  The story comes out like Little Miss Red Suit is reading a teleprompter. “We followed him. To that restaurant with all the piñatas. I just wanted some color, some B-roll footage for a follow-up piece.” Her cameraman, Benny, waited in the van. She took the barstool next to Chaz, sipped a margarita while he slammed several beers. She chatted him up, flirted a little, spun a tale about boyfriend troubles. He flirted back, bought her a drink.

  “And then, I don’t know, he must have realized who I was or that he was nearing a line he didn’t want to cross.” A single tear digs a trench through the reporter’s makeup. “It was just flirting. He taught me how to dip chips Christmas-style, in both red and green chili sauce. Nothing happened between us, I swear.”

  “You,” Margaret says. “You chased him. You caused the accident.”