Seasons of Her Life

by Fern Michaels

  Ruby didn’t bother to respond. She replaced the receiver in the cradle. She would not think about the money she’d given Opal for a house. Why drive herself crazy?

  Suddenly, Ruby didn’t care about the time. She flipped open her address book and called everyone she could possibly think of to ask for a loan, leaving Rena till last. She drew a big fat zero on a piece of paper when she dialed Rena’s number and a management service operator told her Rena was out of the country. She drew another fat zero. She felt like crying. So much for friends. She was about to close her address book when she saw the name and phone number on the last page.

  Grace Zachary. As she dialed the number, she was glad she’d always sent a Christmas and Easter card to the Zacharys. At least she’d kept in touch.

  Grace’s sleepy voice became alert the moment she heard Ruby identify herself. “Ruby, is that really you? Paul, wake up, it’s Ruby. I don’t care what time it is, get up. Go pick up the extension. Ruby honey, how are you? Something’s wrong, I can tell. Lord, child, Paul and I talk about you all the time. What is it, Ruby, how can I help you?”

  The dam inside Ruby burst. She babbled and prattled, wiping the tears trickling down her cheeks. She sobbed when she got to the part about Calvin. She could hear Grace cluck her tongue in sympathy. She heard Paul chuckle when she told them about the houses in Georgetown. When she asked for the loan in a shaky voice, both Grace and Paul said in unison, “How much?”

  “Three hundred, five if you can spare it. I’ll sign a note, whatever you want. I’ll pay whatever you think is fair in interest.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Paul said briskly. “We’ll send you out a check first thing in the morning. You pay us back when you can. No interest. Now, let me tell you where to go for your wholesale products. Don’t pay any attention to what that manager at your supermarket told you. I’m the eastern seaboard manager for the chain. You call this man and tell him I told you to call him, and this is what he’s to do for you. Get a pencil, honey, and copy all of this down. If you get this off the ground, we’ll buy from you. You can’t sell to college kids forever, and for Christ’s sake, fifty cents a dozen is not nearly enough to charge. A buck, Ruby. Trust me.” She did. They talked for an hour.

  “You listen to Paul, Ruby,” Grace said, “he knows what he’s talking about.”

  “I will, Grace. I’ll pay you back as soon as possible. Thank you both.”

  “That’s what friends are for. Go to bed and get some sleep. We’ll talk again, honey.”

  As Ruby was replacing the receiver, she fidgeted on the kitchen chair and raised her eyes upward. Always, when she was at the bottom, things like this happened. In a sudden flash of insight, she knew it wasn’t her grandmother at all. It was someone else. A Higher Being. She remembered the way she’d ditched her Bible on the train. It had been a long time since she’d gone to church.

  Instead of going to bed, Ruby climbed the stairs to the bathroom. She showered and washed her hair. She was never more awake than she was right now.

  Whoever would have thought the Zacharys would be the ones to come to her aid? If she hadn’t flipped the last page in her address book, she’d probably be giving up at this very moment. She laughed as she danced under the needle-sharp spray.

  She was smiling as she fried herself some bacon and eggs. She could hardly wait for Dixie to arrive. Wait till she found out they could get the ingredients for the cookies cheaper than wholesale. Paul had even given her a name of a firm that dealt in paper products. He’d said the man would make her bags to specifications as long as she told him Paul Zachary would consider doing business somewhere else if he didn’t give her the same kind of break he got for his stores. She would have to buy in the thousands, though. The thought didn’t bother her at all. It didn’t bother her that she was going to buy her flour in three-hundred-pound sacks and her shortening in fifty-pound cans. There would be no problem with picking up the supplies, since the wholesaler delivered. The same thing would apply to the egg farmer. Free delivery would save her time. The only hitch, and it was a big hitch, was the wholesaler had to be paid up front, by cash or check. No credit to a first-time customer, especially a woman, Paul said. Well, she could live with that, too.

  “Someday,” she said, sliding the eggs onto her plate, “they’ll beg me for my business.”

  As she ate, Ruby ran her conversation with Paul over again in her mind. “You’re dealing in a cash-and-carry business, Ruby. Don’t be tempted to skim off the top. It’s easy to do, but the Internal Revenue Service frowns on such things. Keep accurate records, down to the penny, and make sure you keep all your receipts. This is technically a cottage-type industry, where you’re going to be hiring people. Make it clear that you are reporting to the government what you pay them. As independent contractors, they pay their own taxes. You’re going to have a lot of headaches, but it will be your own business, and if I can help you, call me. Anytime.”

  She would, too. How wonderful it was to have caring friends.

  Dixie and Ruby talked all the way to Andy’s dorm at Rutgers in New Brunswick. A sleepy Andy walked out to the car, his hair tousled, his feet in slippers, his pajama legs sticking out from his jeans. Thick, muscular arms wrapped themselves around Ruby. He tried to whisper, but his voice carried across the street. “Good to see you, Ma. Let me carry those. You two carry those little shopping bags. One trip is all it will take.”

  “I swear that kid gets handsomer and handsomer every time I see him,” Dixie stage-whispered. “He gets bigger, too. He must be six-two by now.”

  “Three.” Ruby giggled. “His eyes are bluer than Paul Newman’s. He said he gets teased about it all the time. He’s such a good kid. And,” Ruby said proudly, “he’s doing well. He’s going to make a first-rate architect.”

  “Okay, Ma, just set them over there and I’ll unload them sometime today. How much should I charge?”

  “A dollar a bag,” Ruby blurted out, remembering Paul’s words. Dixie gasped and then closed her open mouth. “Send us a money order. I’ll call you when we’re ready to do this again. The little purple bags are peanut butter. Thanks a million, Andy.”

  “Ma, for you, anything. Drive carefully.”

  “Hey, Blue,” a voice down the hall roared, “can you lower the volume a little?” The voice was good-natured. Andy grinned. “They tolerate me.” He mouthed the words in a harsh-sounding whisper.

  Ruby.hugged him.

  “How many can I eat?” he whispered again.

  “The ones in the green bag are for you and your roommate. We have to get going, Andy. Call me.” Andy nodded.

  Back on Route 1, on their way to Princeton, Dixie chortled gleefully. “We quadrupled our profit. Whatever made you say a dollar a bag?”

  “Paul Zachary. Hey, if it doesn’t work, we’ll come down to seventy-five cents. Twenty-eight dollars for yesterday’s labor sounds a lot better than fourteen. I can live with twenty-eight. I just have such a positive feeling about all of this.”

  Jeff Larsen, Andy’s friend, was standing on the curb outside his dorm with two of his buddies. In the blink of an eye they whisked the cookie boxes from the backseat and had them over their shoulders. Like her son, he said, “Which ones are mine and how much?”

  Back on Route 1 South and headed for Route 202, the women sat back and relaxed. “By tonight we’ll know if our cookies are worth our asking price. I have a hunch the kids will sell them all.”

  “I think so, too. What time do you think we’ll get home, Ruby?” Dixie asked anxiously.

  “By three, if we don’t get held up. Are you going to have a problem?” she asked, concerned.

  Dixie shrugged. “Hugo has been acting very peculiar. For a while now he hasn’t really kicked up a fuss about anything. He still asks questions about what I’m doing, when I’m doing it, and why, but he’s acting so out of character in other ways. I don’t know how to react to it.”

  “And you’re complaining?” Ruby grinned. “This is what
you always said you wanted.”

  “I know, but he’s not doing it in the right way. It’s probably just my imagination.” Ruby nodded. She wasn’t going to let Hugo ruin her day or Dixie’s either, if she could help it.

  Abe Saltzer of H & R Wholesalers was a giant of a man. He was taller than Andrew and beefier, with a pot belly under a stained shirt that was missing two buttons. He had the reddest hair and beard she’d ever seen. The evil-smelling cigar clamped between his teeth made her eyes water. His hands, which were big as ham hocks, were directing huge semis to the loading docks as he tried to pay attention to the trucks and her at the same time. “You got business here or just taking up air other people need to breathe?”

  Ruby worked her tongue around the inside of her mouth. “I’m here to place an order. Paul Zachary said I should ask for Mr. Saltzer. Are you Mr. Saltzer?”

  “I was when I got up this morning. Paul, eh? You know Paul?”

  “He and Grace are friends of mine.”

  “My sister married Paul’s brother,” Abe said, rolling the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “Oh, that’s nice. I’m sure Paul’s brother is just as nice as he is.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why’d Paul send you to me?”

  “He said you’d give me a good deal. My friend here, Dixie Sinclaire, and myself, I’m Ruby Blue, are going into the cookie business, and we need to buy wholesale. Paul said you would deliver. See, I made notes. This is what he said. You can call him if you want,” Ruby said, handing over the slip of paper.

  “He said all of this about me?”

  He seemed pleased, Ruby thought.

  “Would you like a cookie?” Dixie offered. “I have some right here . . . somewhere ...” She reached into her oversize shoulder bag and drew out a little yellow bag full of assorted cookies. To Ruby she said, “I thought we might not have time to stop for lunch, so I took two of each.”

  “No credit,” Abe said with his mouth full of cookies. Ruby nodded. “Delivery is Tuesday where you live. We unload. You tip the driver, since this is all Paul’s idea. That okay with you?” Ruby nodded. “Where did you get this bag?” he demanded.

  Ruby blinked. She couldn’t even see the little lemon-colored bag in his hand. “In a gift store. They cost nineteen cents each.” “It’s worth only two cents. Three buildings down is the guy you want to see. Listen, if you have a mind to, you could slip the driver some of these cookies when he delivers. Tape the box. I’m partial to the peanut butter ones. Taste like my mother’s.”

  “Well, sure. It’s a deal. How many?”

  “Surprise me. Let’s go inside and I’ll give you an account number, and when you’re ready to order, you call, ask for me, and I’ll make sure you get the first delivery of the day. See this squiggly number at the end? That means you get preferential treatment. Thanks to my generous brother-in-law’s brother. You want to order now or wait?”

  “We don’t know how much to order and we need to ask some questions. Like how long will flour keep?”

  “Tightly closed you can keep it forever. The butter and shortening need refrigeration once the cans are opened. Get your eggs from a local farmer. I hate dealing with eggs. No money in eggs. Everybody bitches when they get cracked. Brown eggs are the best. Anything else, ladies? Oh, yeah, I need forty-eight hours’ notice for an order unless it’s an emergency. I been in this business a long time, and I only had one emergency and that was when the Red Cross needed food for disaster relief.”

  The honest, honorable streak in Ruby made her blurt out, “Mr. Saltzer, will you still make a profit selling to us at this price? We don’t want charity, even if Paul was good enough to ... to agree for you . . . what I mean is ...”

  Abe rocked back on his heels. He shook his head, the cigar wobbling in his mouth. “Ladies, you don’t ever ask a question like that. Now, what kind of businesswomen are you going to turn out to be if you go around asking dumb questions?”

  “Honest ones,” Ruby said forcefully.

  “Well, as one honest businessman to another, yeah. I’m still making a profit, but for Christ’s sake, don’t go blabbing this to anyone, okay?”

  “Okay. We’ll be in touch, Mr. Saltzer.”

  “Cash!” Saltzer called after her.

  “Cash,” Ruby called over her shoulder. “And the cookies.”

  “Yeah, don’t forget the cookies.”

  “He’s practically giving it to us, and he’s still making a profit,” Dixie said in awe. “We’re being robbed at the grocery store, you know that?”

  “I’ve known that for a long time,” Ruby muttered.

  After they had made a similar deal for their bags with a man named Petrocelli, they headed for home.

  When, forty-five minutes later, Ruby swerved into her driveway, she ran over the same rosebushes she’d mutilated in January. She didn’t care. All she wanted was to sleep. She made it into the house on her own. Dixie led her to the couch, turned up the heat, and covered her with an afghan. She turned the phone down to ring low before she let herself out of the house by way of the garage so Ruby would be locked in.

  The garage was huge, oversized. Dixie closed her eyes and tried to visualize the place filled with thousands of colored bags of cookies, waiting for delivery. It was such a pleasant picture that she smiled. Success. She was glad she was going to share in it. Her only misgiving was she had no money to put into the business and yet Ruby was willing to split everything fifty-fifty. Her own eyes closed wearily. What she couldn’t give in the way of money would have to be made up in work. That she knew how to do.

  The first thing she was going to do when she got some money was go to a doctor and see about getting some stronger pain pills. The arthritis the last doctor said was going to set in was already entrenched. Some mornings she could hardly get out of bed. A hot, steaming bath was the only thing that helped, along with four or five aspirin.

  Already, she could feel the beginnings of stress and strain. She’d been blithe about Hugo with Ruby, but she somehow suspected that he was working up to a nasty mood, one she would suffer from if she didn’t try to head it off. “If he would just die, I’d be so happy,” she whispered. She was filled with shame immediately. Hugo wasn’t going to die, and she wasn’t going to leave him because she was tied to him in a sick kind of way. She wished she had Ruby’s guts. Ruby always managed to land on her feet even when things were at their worst. This business venture, if it got off the ground, was proof. One minute she had nothing but an idea, and the next minute they were in business. It would get off the ground because Ruby said it would. Her last-minute decision to sell the cookies for a dollar a dozen instead of fifty cents had already netted them, providing they sold, twenty-eight dollars each. Just what she’d made working in the gift store. If she worked hard, right alongside Ruby, she could net one hundred forty dollars a week. Once she handed over twenty-eight dollars to Hugo, she would have one hundred twelve dollars to bank. In a month she’d have four hundred and forty-eight dollars. If Ruby agreed. She’d been stupid to say she’d settle for twenty-eight dollars. But Ruby was fair, she thought uneasily. If she worked hard, banked her profits, she might be able to shed her husband.

  Wearily, Dixie struggled to her feet. “I wonder what it’s like to live by yourself and not have to answer to anyone. It must be a kind of heaven.” She closed and locked the garage door.

  She hated going home, hated making dinner for Hugo, hated sitting across from him. She hated the silent meals and the silence in the house after meals, when Hugo read the paper. She wondered if Hugo would be the same married to someone else. Maybe she was the problem. Maybe she was too plain, not educated enough. Maybe, maybe, maybe. So many times she’d gone over the same things in her mind. She’d tried so hard, even harder after her accident, but there was no way she could camouflage her deformity. She knew he hated it. He’d called her a damn cripple so many times, she’d lost count. She could feel his eyes on her when she moved about the house, and she
’d read the disgust in his eyes. Her eyes sparked momentarily. He’d made her this way, and then had the gall to look disgusted. “Die already and make me a widow,” she muttered. This time she felt no shame. None.

  Hugo was waiting for her in the kitchen when she walked through the door. She cringed when she saw the look on his face.

  “Where were you?” he demanded.

  To lie or not to lie. Dixie felt like a cornered rat. Had he gone by the church or, worse yet, stopped by the gift store? She realized in the split second it took him to ask his question that she could turn around and walk out the door and go to Ruby’s house. Ruby would let her stay in one of the kids’ bedrooms. Ruby could make it right. Thank God for Ruby.

  “I was out,” she said curtly. “You could have started dinner,” she added, walking toward the refrigerator. She didn’t take off her coat. She removed a bowl of leftover spaghetti and set it on the counter. Vegetables for a salad were next. She reached for the salad bowl with one hand while the other picked out a knife from the knife holder, a sharp, pointed knife. She still made no move to take off her coat. She turned around, knife in hand. It’s coming, she thought. He’d going to tell me he knows I wasn’t at the church and that he knows I was fired. He’s going to tell me I can’t see Ruby anymore. Her grasp on the knife tightened as did her lips.

  “Is something wrong, Hugo?” she asked coldly. The strength in her own voice stunned her. Hugo, too, she could tell. It must be the knife, she decided.

  Hugo Sinclaire was a tall and intimidating man. Something he drew on every day of his life. He was attractive in a way, but getting jowly. The beard and mustache he was growing gave him a sinister look, something Dixie didn’t like even though he kept both well trimmed. He dressed nicely, much more so than she did. Right now, Dixie thought, he looks pitiful. She’d never seen him uncertain, never seen him back down. She was almost giddy with the pleasure of it.

  “You’re over an hour late. The church was closed and locked and so was the gift store. Where the hell were you? You know I like my supper on time.”