Dixie laughed. “Jeez, I’m almost frozen. I’ve been sitting out here since midnight. I thought you might need me. Hugo is dead to the world and I couldn’t sleep. Are you okay?”
“Yes, no, oh, hell, Dixie, I don’t know . . .” Ruby began to sob.
“You sit right there and don’t move. I’m going to turn the heat up, it’s freezing in here. You didn’t eat, did you? I’ll make some eggs and coffee. I’m staying right here till I talk some sense into you. While I’m doing all this, you tell me everything he said and what happened. Exactly as it happened,” Dixie ordered.
When the sun crept over the horizon, neither woman seemed to notice. All night Ruby had talked and Dixie had listened.
Now Ruby eyed the shopping bag Andrew had left. She gave it a kick with her foot and then bent down to pull it closer to her. “I have to go through this. I have a feeling things are worse than Andrew let on. You’d better go home, or Hugo will take a hissy fit. Come back after he goes to work. I’m going to take a shower and go through this stuff. I can’t make any decisions until I know how deeply in debt Andrew’s put us.”
“Okay,” Dixie said sadly. “But remember to do what your son said. Be tough. You’ll make it, I’ll be here for you. Together we’ll work it out.”
Ruby cried all the way through her shower and while she dressed. She was still crying when she walked downstairs. She managed to fight her tears while she made her phone calls and scribbled notes. Then she made plans.
The very first thing she was going to do when she had money to spare was make a sizable donation to St. Andrew’s in Hawaii. She was going to go back there, too, maybe take Martha, if she wanted to go. She’d go to Chapel Hill, too, to see Mrs. Query. She would do all the things Andrew objected to. All the things that were important to her. She’d track down Mabel MacIntyre from the Navy Annex and do something nice for her, too.
Ruby raised the blind at the kitchen window. January was always so cold, and it looked bitter outside. She wondered where Andrew had spent the night.
“Look out world, it’s my turn now,” Ruby whispered.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It took the entire month of January and part of February for Ruby to get her emotions under control and begin her new life. She hunkered down and refused to leave the house for days at a time. She used the bitter cold as an excuse. When the January snows came, she said she was afraid to drive in hazardous conditions. Dixie did her shopping and ran her errands.
The day before Valentine’s Day, when most of the snow was gone and the roads were clear, Dixie stormed into Ruby’s kitchen with a beribboned box of chocolates and announced in no uncertain terms that six weeks was long enough to be in a funk.
“Either you get your shit together or I’m leaving and not coming back,” she thundered at a dumbstruck Ruby. “I’ll give you time to open your mail before you make your decision.”
In that one heart-stopping moment, Ruby knew Dixie was more serious than she’d ever been. It was time to get on with her life. She’d come to the same conclusion on waking when she realized it was the middle of February. “I’ve got it under control, Dix. I woke up this morning and realized that all I accomplished in a month and a half was to run up an enormous fuel bill. It’ll take me till August to pay it off.”
The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” Dixie said, rising half off the chair. “On second thought, answer your own phone. I’ll just sit here and eat this wonderful candy I was thoughtful enough to buy for you.”
When Ruby came back, she announced, “I’ve just had an offer on the house in Georgetown from a Brazilian diplomat. The real estate agent said he’s so hot for the house, he wants it right away. Rena said not to sell right now, so we hiked the rent and gave him an option to buy. I have cash flow now. My God, I can breathe again,” Ruby said, popping a chocolate-covered caramel into her mouth. “I feel like a ton of weight has been taken off my shoulders.”
“Does this mean we’re ready to sit down and make some concrete plans in regard to this business venture we were dumb enough to promise ourselves we would undertake?”
“Damn right,” Ruby said, reaching behind her for a fat notebook stuffed with scribbled notes.
“The first thing we have to realize is that we don’t know diddly-squat about going into any kind of business. We don’t even have a product to sell and we don’t have any customers. We have limited, and I do mean limited, working capital. I don’t think a bank will lend us money, since we don’t have paying jobs or a means to repay the loan. The only definite is we need money. I need seventy-five dollars a week to live on and so do you, so whatever we sell has. to give us a one-hundred-fifty-dollar return. That comes to six hundred a month every month of the year. Maybe we should try and get by on less,” Ruby said, her brow furrowing with worry.
“I need only twenty-eight dollars a week. Hugo is satisfied with what I was earning at the gift shop. If I take only twenty-eight dollars, what does that come to?” Dixie asked anxiously.
“If I cut back to sixty dollars and you take twenty-eight, that’s—Ruby’s pencil flew over the paper in front of her—“three hundred fifty-two dollars a month. That sounds a lot better.”
Dixie finished the last of the chocolates. She patted her lips and groaned. “I wish I hadn’t eaten so much, but they were so good. Sweets are my downfall,” she said happily.
“This business,” Ruby said, throwing the empty candy box into the trash basket, “whatever it turns out to be, will have no overhead. We can operate it here in the kitchen or use the garage. The only problem, as I see it, is that we don’t know how to do anything.” She threw her hands in the air. “It’s true, Dixie. We’ve been wives and mothers all these years. Working part-time in a gift shop hardly qualifies us to go into business. Obviously, we have to sell something we make ourselves, but we’re not craft people, and even if we were, homemade things take so much time to make, and people don’t want to pay for labor. Where does that leave us?”
Dixie shrugged. “The same place we were before you threw away the candy box. We don’t know how to do anything, and we have nothing to sell.”
“We can’t be negative, Dixie. If we’re negative, we’re beaten before we start. Think.”
“You think. I have to go to the bathroom. Your phone’s ringing.”
Ruby grinned as she looked at the calendar. “I’ll bet that’s Andy. He calls every Monday morning. He’s in need of another Care package. Want to bet?”
“Not me. You know your son better than I do.”
“I’m mailing it out today,” Ruby said before her son had a chance to announce himself.
“That’s what I like about you, Ma. You anticipate me. Listen, this cafeteria food is so bad, I’ve been thinking of asking you to send me double batches of your great cookies so I can sell them and use the profits to buy my meals on the outside. Want to go into business?”
Ruby’s heart thumped, pumped, and almost leapt out of her chest. “Say that again, Andy,” she said in a strangled voice.
“What? The part about sending me more cookies or the part about me eating on the outside?”
Ruby laughed, a sound of pure delight. “Andy, could you really sell the cookies?”
“Well, yeah. Actually, I did sell a few last week, that’s why I’m all out. I sold them for ten cents each. It was enough for a slice of pizza and a Coke. I ate the rest. Some girl asked me to ask you to make her some peanut butter cookies. I told her your speciality is oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip. Next time send some peanut butter ones. Her father is a doctor, and she has a huge allowance. Go for it, Ma. I think it’s a great idea. Have to run. Don’t want to be late for class. Love you.”
“Oh, Andy, I love you, too. I mean I really love you. I’ll call you tonight, honey. Bye.”
“Dixieeeee! We’re going into the cookie business!” She repeated her phone conversation with her son. Dixie’s eyes sparkled.
“I love to make cookies. I love to eat cookies. Your grandmoth
er’s recipes, right?” Ruby nodded.
“Let’s figure it out. Cookie sheets, baking supplies, another stove, maybe two. Sears. Andrew will get us a discount. A whole garage full of stoves. Not right away of course. Mixing bowls, all from Sears. A relatively small investment. We can bake the cookies early in the morning or late at night and deliver them before noon. Andy can sell them for us until we get established. Kids love homemade cookies. Reasonably priced. This is it, Dix, I can feel it in my bones. That kid is so smart. If he hadn’t called, we’d still be sitting here, sucking our thumbs. You know what, his best friend, Jeff Larsen, goes to Princeton. I’m going to call his mother, Jeannine, and ask her if she’ll ask him to do the same. Princeton isn’t far from Rutgers. We can deliver to him after we hit Rutgers. And Monmouth College isn’t far from here, either.”
Dixie clapped her hands in delight. “We’ll put them in paper sacks, brown for now, with a ribbon. Packaging is as important as the product. When we start to show a profit, we can have our name printed on the sacks. Except that we don’t have a name,” she said in dismay.
“Sure we do. Back in Barstow there was this lady named Constance Sugar, and she made the best brownies. Her daughter used to bring them to school on her birthday, and the teacher gave one to each of us and put a candle in it. We always called them Mrs. Sugar’s brownies. How about Mrs. Sugar’s Cookies?”
“It’s going to work, isn’t it, Ruby? I mean really work.”
“Show me a kid that doesn’t like fresh, homemade cookies. There is no such kid. We are going to make a fortune.”
“Let’s start now, to get the feel of it. We’ll bake all day and drive up to Rutgers tomorrow with our first delivery. We’ll get an idea of the cost for one day.
“I can go home and bake in my kitchen and bring what I’ve done over here before Hugo gets home. I have six trays and two oven racks, same as you. It’s going to take us a long time. We have to go to the store, too.” She looked down, as if embarrassed. “I hate to bring this up, but I need money. All I have is three dollars, and it has to last me till Thursday, when Hugo gets paid. I have to buy milk and bread.”
“I don’t have much, either, but I do have some put aside for my electric bill. I’ll hold off paying it. I’ll have to write you a check, though.”
“How many cookies do you think we can bake between now and tomorrow morning?”
“Hundreds. Maybe a thousand.”
“God. We’re entrepreneurs!”
The two women looked at each other for a moment. There didn’t seem to be any need for words. Ruby reached out and hugged her friend. “That’s just for being you, Dix.”
Dixie dabbed her eyes. “I think it’ll help your baking if you turn on the oven first.” She was out the door before Ruby could throw the dishtowel at her.
Dixie was back two hours later, her nose wrinkling in delight at the fragrant-smelling kitchen. “Tantalizing,” she groaned. “How many have you made?”
“I tripled the recipe and made the cookies a little bigger because we’re selling to kids and we want to give them their money’s worth. I think I made about ten dozen so far. The last batch is in the oven. Deduct five or six. I ate three and you’re on your third one. What’ja get?”
“Lots of stuff and some information. The manager of the A&P told me where to buy ingredients wholesale. I knew Mrs. Harris at the gift shop wouldn’t tell me what time it was, much less where she buys her sacks and ribbons, so I asked the cashier and she said she’ll go through Mrs. Harris’s records when she leaves to go home for supper. She’ll call us tonight with names and phone numbers. Did I do good, Ruby?”
“You did just great. Oooohhh, you got colored bags. And matching ribbon. A class operation, Dix.”
“She was out of the plain brown ones, and these shiny little bags were so pretty. They look like little satchels. Girls will love them. The guys won’t care.” Dixie gurgled as she stuffed another cookie in her mouth. “There is a down side to this,” she grumbled. “We’re going to get fat.”
“Who cares, as long as we make money. Anyway, three days from now neither one of us will be able to eat one of these cookies. Trust me.”
When Dixie left the house on Ribbonmaker Lane with her triple batch of oatmeal raisin cookie mix, Ruby was in such high spirits, nothing, not even a visit from Andrew, could have soured her outlook. Over and over she kept whispering to herself, “Oh, Bubba, you did it for me again. If it wasn’t for these old country recipes of yours, I wouldn’t be doing this. You must be watching over me.” She stopped what she was doing, her hands frozen in the air. “It’s true,” she whispered. “Every time I trip and fall, when things get so bad there seems no way out, somehow, because of you, it’s made right. You get, you give. That’s it, isn’t it?” She raised her eyes upward, fully expecting to see a sudden burst of white light shower down on her kitchen. “Okay, so you aren’t giving off clues or signs, but I know. Andy’s call today, the cookie conversation . . . that didn’t come out of thin air. There’s a reason for everything.” Her voice dropped lower still. “It’s nice to know, to feel there’s someone watching over me. Don’t stop, please, don’t stop.”
She didn’t feel silly at all when, as she went on with her cookie baking, from time to time she patted her shoulder. Everyone knew guardian angels perched on your shoulder.
It was almost midnight when Ruby and Dixie dried the last mixing bowl and tidied up the kitchen. “We’re done.” Ruby sighed. “Lord, it’s been an exhausting day, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt better in my life. Doesn’t it look beautiful, Dix?” Ruby pointed to the neatly beribboned cookie bags lined up all over the kitchen floor and counter. Dixie nodded wearily.
“Everything is taken care of. If we leave at six-thirty, we should make Rutgers, even with commuter traffic on Route 1, by seven-thirty. Andy has a class at eight o’clock. We’ll drop the cookies off at his dorm and head for Princeton. Andy said he’d sell them between classes. He said he had an idea but wanted to check it out before he gets us all worked up, whatever that means. Now, for the paperwork. We have to stay on top of it no matter how tired we are. You work behind me in case I make a mistake.”
At one-thirty the two bleary-eyed women looked at each other over their spiral-bound notebooks. “If we sell all the cookies, we should show a profit of . . . Lord, this can’t be right.” Ruby dithered. “All this work for fourteen dollars, and we have to deliver the cookies ourselves! Using our time and our gas. If we sell cookies every day for a week, we’ll make only seventy dollars and we’ll be killing ourselves.” Ruby groaned.
“It’s the bags and ribbon. They’re pretty, but we paid retail prices for them. We won’t bake tomorrow . . . I mean today. We’ll go to all these wholesale places and get prices. We’ll have to buy in bulk. That will drive the cost down and our profits up,” Dixie said wearily. “You were right, Ruby, I don’t want to look at another cookie.”
“I can’t believe the trimmings cost more than the ingredients. And that’s not the only problem we have to correct real fast. We also need to get in touch with a chicken farmer in Freehold and buy our eggs direct. Obviously, we jumped into this a little too quickly. My fault, Dix, and I’m sorry. I’m not usually this impulsive. If you’re half as tired as I am, you must be upset with me.”
“Nah, I didn’t have anything else to do.”
Ruby grinned. “We’re learning. The real test is going to be seeing if these cookies sell. You should go home, Dix, and get some sleep. By the way, how are you going to get out of the house tomorrow? Hugo is going to wonder why you’re leaving at six o’clock. You have to help me load the car.”
“I pretty much covered that at dinnertime. Hugo wanted to know why I was making so many cookies. I lied and said they were for the church and they were made with donated ingredients. I said I had to have them over at the rectory for a breakfast cake and cookie sale. Since he doesn’t go to church, he had no reason not to believe me. I’ll be here. ‘Night, Ruby.”’
“I know. See you in the morning.”
Ruby stared at the colorful bags of cookies for a long time after Dixie left. So much work. And where, she wondered, was she going to get the money to buy the next load of supplies? Ruby looked at the clock. It was midnight in California. She dialed Opal’s number. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until Opal’s cheery voice came over the wire. Ruby straightened her back, her shoulders hurting with the effort. She’d never asked anyone for anything before. “Opal, I need a favor. A big one.”
“Whatever it is, you got it. Listen, I was sorry to hear about you and Andrew, but when something doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Now you can go on the prowl and find a new man. Hey, listen, I can fix you up with some buddies of Mac’s. Great guys, they love a good time. Real jolly guys. What’s the favor?”
“I need money. A loan. Just for a little while. I got an offer on the house in Georgetown today, and I’m taking it. I should close on it real soon, before the end of March. I can pay you back then. I need three hundred dollars.”
Opal’s voice changed. “That’s a lot of bread, Ruby. Mac and I are only one step ahead of the bill collectors now. The most I could come up with is a hundred dollars. When did you say you could pay it back? I don’t know how Mac . . .”
“Never mind,” Ruby said quietly. “Look, I’m sorry I bothered you so late.”
Opal’s voice was cheery again. “No problem. Sorry, Ruby, I guess I better start to save, huh?”
Seasons of Her Life Page 40
