by Amy Bourret
Both girls wear black leggings and shirts. Ruby is wistful, thinking of the days of pink tights and tutus, strands of Lark’s hair escaping the bun no matter how many bobby pins, how much gel. But the wistfulness is quickly replaced by sheer gratitude that she has these days about which to grow wistful in the future.
Ruby glances in the rearview mirror. “I like your shirt, Numi.”
“Thanks, I, uh, put it on backward.”
Over her leotard, Numi wears her green T-shirt from Girls Inc. camp, indeed backward. Laddering down from the “I am,” oversized, polka-dotted capital letters spell NUMI in the middle of other words:
I am
daNcer
fUnny
toMboy
kInd
“Tomboy,” Ruby says. “There should be a word for girls who like to play outdoors that lets them still be girls.” Her gender-image musing receives no response from the backseat. When she looks in the mirror, Numi is rummaging in her backpack, and Lark is staring out the window, all her layers of reserve tucked up tight under her chin.
Ruby knew she was whacking at a hornet’s nest when she mentioned the shirt. The last time she checked, Lark’s own “I am” shirt was shoved to the back of the dresser drawer. At least it was in the drawer; that is progress.
Lark will never be the same person she was before she went to Texas. Yet, while Ruby thinks of each distinct segment of her own years as a separate “life,” she hopes that someday Lark will be able to knit her ordeal into all the ways she defined herself before. Like a mended bone, stronger after a fall from a tree.
ONE HUNDRED TEN
The art gallery teems with an opening-night crowd. The boldface types are factions from the arts councils, Chamber Music Festival, opera, ballet and local charities, and of course artists and art lovers and art sellers. Ruby recognizes many faces from the salon and from Molly’s previous shows.
Ruby clasps both hands around her plastic cup of wine—white only; no gallery would risk a stumble and splash of cabernet on the works. Tonight’s opening is a big deal for Molly here in the third-largest art market in the country. Molly’s pieces are showcased in the front room; glossy white walls and precision lighting make her large collages shine. In the next room, stark sepia prints by a young American Indian photographer expose the third-world conditions of the sparsely populated pueblos just north of the excess and abundance of the city.
“Girl, you are looking fine.” Antoinette steps around a cluster of patrons. “How is it fair that my stomach balloons out after a big plate of pasta, and yours is flat after giving birth?”
“Cheers.” Ruby taps her cup against Antoinette’s. “And thank you, for the confidence boost.”
“De nada.” Antoinette studies the artwork behind Ruby, a background of thickly painted fragments of a plantation house, a column here, a crumbling cornice there. “That would look so good in my bedroom.”
Ruby shakes her head. “Horrors. Don’t talk about matching artwork to your bedspread around here. Artists have killed for less.” She pauses to look at the piece again. Over and around the architectural components, Molly has layered strips of paper with typed text, like they have been torn from oversized pages of Gone with the Wind, and antique fabrics cut into the shapes of icons of her Southern upbringing. A drapery-brocade tree drips with Spanish moss that is tea-stained lace. “And you’re too late; this one is sold.” Ruby points to the red dot beside the collage.
Through the throng of people, Ruby catches glimpses of Molly, like patches of barn flashing through a field of grain. Her red top is a rebellion against the black that is de rigueur at these events, black turtlenecks or sports coats over jeans for the men, sophisticated black pantsuits or dresses for the women. No loud-print broomstick skirts or squash-blossom necklaces in this crowd; those are reserved for tourists and the storeclerks who cater to them.
Margaret breaks away from a group of her clients and joins Ruby and Antoinette. “Lark’s over at the buffet table with some Olivia kid from her school. Have you eaten anything? The crab cakes are good.”
Margaret and Antoinette make small talk, pointing out people here and there, tossing Ruby morsels of their lives. The whole scene seems a bit surreal; Molly’s opening is Ruby’s first real outing in months. She feels as if she should be draped in one of Molly’s debutante-gown fabrics instead of her good jeans and dressiest top.
“Don’t look,” Antoinette says. “Over my shoulder, nine o’clock. The guy is checking you out, girl.” She whisper-squeals, “I said don’t look!” when Ruby and Margaret, of course, both snap their heads.
“The granola-cruncher?” Margaret asks. “Looks like he lives in a cave with a bear?”
Antoinette smacks at Margaret’s shoulder. “The other nine o’clock.”
Ruby swallows the last of her too-warm, too-ripe wine, trying to be discreet as she gazes across the room over the top of her glass. “I’m sure he just recognizes me. From, you know. Or else it’s you he’s checking out.”
“No,” Antoinette insists. She leans closer to Margaret and whispers, “Does he play for our team?”
Margaret rolls her eyes. “Darn. I left my gaydar at home.”
Ruby risks another glance in the direction of the man—tall, fortyish, silver-strewn hair. She feels her face sizzle when she meets his eyes.
“No wedding ring,” Antoinette says.
Ruby shakes her head. “No matter. I am so not ready to even think about it. He’s all yours.”
“If you insist.”
As Antoinette slinks off like a bad-movie spy on a winding route toward the man and his friends, Margaret raises an eyebrow at Ruby. “Soon.”
“Right,” Ruby says with sarcasm. “When Lark’s in college, maybe then.”
ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN
Clyde’s head bobs up and down, and a silly grin erupts on his face in between barks. Ruby would like to think that he’s keeping time to the music, but she knows he is just trying to shake off the party hat strapped to his head. For Lark’s last birthday, she wanted a bowling party. For her sixth, they threw a grown-up beauty party at the salon, complete with hairdos, makeup, and, of course, manicures. This birthday, though, called for nothing but silliness.
Lark, Numi, Olivia, and a handful of other kids dance around Jay’s friend Brigham as if he were a Maypole. They shake tambourines and maracas and castanets, all with ribbons flailing, while Brigham does his one-man-band thing in the center of the circle. Antoinette, the Ms, and Jay contribute clapping and laughter and mostly out-of-tune singing from the sidelines.
Ruby leans against the kitchen island, shoves a streamer out of the way. She didn’t dare risk balloons after her meltdown behind that gallery, but the banners and confetti are festive enough. She refills her glass of champagne; the chains of bubbles race one another, burst at the surface, like upside-down fireworks. She takes in the scene, absorbs it through every pore in her skin, and her heart hums. What a marvel that this much silliness, this much joy, can exist in a room, in a world, that was shrouded in so many different shades of darkness, such a short time ago.
Lark’s old inquisitive, imaginative self is back, but tinged with a sad worldliness, like a shadow of a stain on cloth. Although they now know her actual birth date—Ruby was off by sixteen days—Lark was insistent that they continue to celebrate on December 6. Ten years old; Ruby’s baby bird isn’t a baby anymore.
As for Ruby, her postnatal hormones finally have leveled out. Her pain for her son is a jagged hole ripped in the crazy quilt that she pictures as the stitching together of her lives. Yet she is learning that she can let happiness share the space, live this fourth life, without feeling as if she is betraying her love for him. This is her new-normal.
Brigham finishes a song with a toot toot toot of his air horn. Ruby grips a glass drawer knob on the gloriously barn-red pie safe. The drawer slides open smoothly on its new wooden bottom. Behind the screen doors, blue willow plates stand out against the whitewashed back panel. R
uby takes out a book of matches and calls for everyone to gather around the table for cake.
Ruby is a decent cook, but she has never been a particularly adept baker, which makes the result of this particular effort fit perfectly with the party’s theme. The three lopsided layers of gloppy chocolate icing and confetti candies look like a mud sculpture gone awry. The icing is extra thick in the spot where the top layer caved in, and toothpicks hold a broken chunk of the second layer in place. This is truly a cake of love and joy and silliness, and thankfully the burning candles, ten plus one to grow on, distract from the chaos below.
After a raucous round of “Happy Birthday,” complete with “cha-cha-chas,” Lark blows out the candles with a single billowy breath and just a little spit. Ruby doesn’t know what Lark wishes for, her nose scrunched up to her squeezed-tight eyes, but Ruby makes her own wish on those candles, for many normal, quiet, even boring, days in the year to come.
Margaret carves the cake like she is parting hair to apply highlights. Molly scoops ice cream, and Antoinette distributes the garish paper plates to eager hands. Brigham declines dessert. “This place needs more ambience,” he jokes as he picks up his harmonica.
Once again, Ruby steps back toward the living room and just enjoys the scene. A now-hatless Clyde steals a plate off the corner of the table, scoots it across the kitchen floor as he licks it clean of ice cream. Margaret and Molly lean into each other, exchange a look of sheer comfort that reminds Ruby of her grandparents. The kids snicker and point at each other with purple plastic forks flecked with frosting and drippy with melted ice cream. They chatter in grade-school shorthand, telling tales on each other over the honks and rattles of Brigham’s rendition of “Hey Jude.” Ruby can’t imagine that any place on earth is better than this home at this moment.
The sudden silence breaks her reverie first. Then she sees Lark’s bleach-white face. The Heimlich, Ruby thinks; Lark must be choking on the chalky cake.
“I’m not going back.” Lark’s voice sounds tiny, scared. “I won’t. I’ll take Clyde and run away.” The next few seconds pass in clicks of slow motion: Molly flashing to Lark’s side, wrapping a protective arm around her; Clyde whimpering, whining; Ruby following Lark’s stricken eyes to the glass-paned front door.
Ruby’s first reaction is confusion, seeing someone out of context, out of place. Then the primal instinct to protect Lark from an intruder pulses in her veins. What follows is a worse thought, that something awful has happened to her other child. Finally she commands her body to move to the door.
ONE HUNDRED TWELVE
“I forgot why I was driving around that night in the first place.” Darla’s face is streaked with tears. “In all the commotion after, I forgot.” Her tongue stumbles over too many words gushing from her mouth all at once. She is sorry; she tried to call from Albuquerque, but no one answered. She is sorry; she forgot what it was like, what Philip was like, with a fussy baby. She looks down at her feet.
Ruby’s head follows Darla’s, and there he is. Ruby’s whole body tingles with the disorienting sense of déjà vu. A carrier. A baby, in footed onesie pajamas—blue this time.
Then Ruby bends down, picks up her other child, carrier and all, and brings him inside.
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN
Everything seems to happen in an instant. Parents arrive to collect children—thankfully, the cake was the finale of the party. Molly takes a quaking Lark to the safety of the Ms’ home. Brigham and Jay pack up the percussion instruments into a big wicker basket, haul it away. Margaret and Antoinette make quick work of kitchen cleanup and disappear.
Ruby holds herself ramrod stiff in a chair beside the sofa, where Darla sits like a two-year-old in time-out, the baby sleeping in the carrier on the floor below her.
“It’s just so hard.” Darla’s words come in awkward, embarrassed bursts. Philip is uneasy around babies, children at all really. He worked his way through his first marriage, long hours at the office, business trips, late-night meetings. The frailest of threads link him to his adult children. When he married Darla, and Tyler came along, he said he wanted to be a real parent with his second family.
Darla’s words are almost drowned out by the questions pounding in Ruby’s head. She stares across the room, keeps her eyes away from the baby—her baby—sleeping at Darla’s feet.
“Philip wanted to be a father. But his work was so demanding. He needed his rest.” The night of the carjacking, Darla had been driving around and around, not as much to lull a teething baby to sleep as to keep the shrieks away from Philip, to keep the peace. She drove around until her gas tank hit empty, then she stopped to fill it up. “He blamed me. But looking back, I think he was relieved at the same time.”
Darla doesn’t say it, but the rest of the sentence hangs in the air between them: And Darla was relieved, too. Ruby can picture her, the beleaguered wife trying to keep her fussy baby from flaring her husband’s temper. Then, overnight, she turns into a poster child for mothers of lost children. Not that anyone sane would ever choose the role, but a power, prestige even, exists in victimhood, the identity that Darla has owned for more than nine years.
Ruby squeezes shut her eyes, opens them. She forces her ears to suck in the woman’s words, an attempt to crowd out the hope prickling at the edge of her brain.
“The truth is…Philip is miserable around babies, the mess, the noise, the disruptions to his routine.” Darla’s face reddens, with chagrin at confessing her perfect husband’s imperfections, or at the fact that she is talking about her own inadequacies, resentments, as much as his. “It’s awkward, him suddenly having an infant when all his golf buddies have empty nests.”
Why did he even take Lark back in the first place, or go along with the plan to adopt the baby? Ruby wonders. She wants to believe he acted out of love for his wife, knowing how badly Darla wanted a child, but more likely his motivation was about vengeance, to punish Ruby for taking what was his. When Darla pauses, clenching and unclenching her hands, Ruby decides that she must voice one of those pulsing thoughts, get it out of her head before her skull explodes.
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEEN
“I’m so sorry that you are having such a hard time, but, well, we’re not trading back.”
From the doorway to the hall, where he guards Lark’s turf from this intruder, Clyde lifts his head, growls softly, more from his tail than throat, a mild warning that he, too, won’t let Darla take away Lark again.
“No, no,” Darla sputters. “I wouldn’t dream…is that why Lark ran? You thought…no, no, I don’t want her back.”
Ruby bristles at Darla’s words, not “I didn’t come to take her away,” but “I don’t want her.” Thankfully, Lark is not in earshot.
“Then what do you want?” There. Ruby breathes easier after she lets the question barge into the room.
“I…” Darla slouches down farther; the deep cushion envelops her in a down-feather embrace. She sobs like, well, a baby. A baby who makes rather unfortunate belches when she cries. The noise wakes the real infant in the room, who joins Darla’s chorus.
Ruby averts her eyes from the carrier. She doesn’t want to see recrimination, or Chaz, staring back at her. She waits. Darla does nothing. Finally, Ruby rummages through the diaper bag beside Darla, finds a bottle filled with water, a spice jar with a dollop of powdered formula. She dumps the formula into the bottle, shakes. Scoops up the baby and plugs the bottle into his pursing mouth.
The baby settles down immediately in the crook of Ruby’s arm. She repeats her whispered “There, there,” like a mantra. She can’t bear to call this child by the name the Tinsdales gave him, the name Ruby put on his birth certificate as they instructed. Thinking of Lark as Tyler was impossible enough, but naming this second child after the daughter they lost that night at the gas station seems to burden his tiny shoulders with huge expectations before he can even stand.
Ruby coos, and the baby squirms his way closer to Ruby, as if he remembers her voice and wants to crawl
back into the womb. That other thought shrieks for attention inside Ruby’s head as she watches him suck down the bottle, sigh, and go limp with sleep. She sets the bottle aside, lifts the baby to her shoulder, burps him, brings him back down to her lap without him stirring a bit.
“I…” Darla clears her throat of clogging tears. “I want you to take him.”
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN
Ruby leans back in her chair, too stunned to speak. The thought that she didn’t even dare to think solidifies from a vapor of hope to real possibility.
“I want you to have him.” Darla bounces herself out of her sinkhole, balances on the edge of the sofa, wraps her arms around her chest. Philip wants to travel, she says. He wants to be a doting grandfather, not a parent. “And I want Philip.”
The fireflies shooting around Ruby’s head amazingly don’t disturb the slumbering infant in her arms. She walks with the baby to the kitchen phone, calls John. She catches him at his office as he is walking out the door after Saturday preparation for a Monday trial.
John is at her door in minutes, a thick file in hand. He looks back and forth between Ruby and Darla, shakes his head. He sits in the chair opposite Ruby, sets the file on the old cedar chest that serves as a coffee table. “Does your husband know you are here?”
Darla nods with vigor. She is older than Ruby, yet she seems like such a child. “You can call him.” She pulls a cell phone out of her pocket, holds it out to John. Ruby isn’t sure what kind of Darla-child she is, a smarty-pants daring him to make the call or a suck-up trying to be helpful.
