by Kaela Coble
“Well, I couldn’t for many years, baby girl, and you know that more than anyone.”
I cringe at the term baby girl, which she calls me only when she wants to put me in my place. What right does she have to remind me of those years? Of course I know better than anyone. Dad gave up trying to save her from herself when I was too young to realize I couldn’t. And when he got really fed up, he left for a year while Nancy proved to him she could maintain sobriety after treatment.
After the three months she was in rehab and I was boarding at Ally’s, that left nine months on my own with Nancy, nine months of sheer terror that she would go back to her old ways. Nine months of lying awake at night with my bedroom door cracked so I could better discern if the clinking of a hidden vodka bottle was real or imagined. Was that the cap of a pill bottle I just heard, or was it just a tube of Chap Stick?
The answer was consistently benign, hence my father’s eventual return, but I didn’t relax until the very morning my father pulled his BMW into the driveway and casually lifted his small leather Samsonite out of the backseat, as if he had only been gone for one of his business trips. Welcome home, Daddy. Here’s your perfect family. All fixed, without any help from you.
“So when is Dad back from New York?” I ask.
Nancy sighs. “I think on Friday.”
“Hmm, well, I’ll just see him back in the city, then,” I say.
Her lips tense, but she doesn’t say anything. I know she’s annoyed that my father sees more of me than she does, although not by much. Twice a year she comes to the city with him. While he works, she goes to museums and wanders around window-shopping (never buying anything, because she has perfectly good clothes at home). She and I have lunch together in the same restaurant every time, and she always orders the exact same thing. Routine keeps her sane, she says, when I encourage her to try some other delicious-sounding item on the menu. Time has provided just enough healing for the two of us to sustain hour-long chunks of civil if not personal conversations over tea and sandwiches, but being back in my childhood home makes it much harder to ignore the ghosts of the past.
“Have you heard from Jamie lately?” Nancy asks, soft as an underhand pitch. I sigh. Jamie was my boyfriend when I lived in London. My mother is a treasure trove of topics I do not wish to discuss this morning. “Ruby, I’m just asking a question,” she continues. “I’m trying to have a conversation with my daughter. Is that such a crime?”
I guess not. “I got an email from him last week, actually. His first book is selling really well, and he’s working on the final draft of his second one, so that will come out next year. And,” I say, pretending to inspect and flick a speck of lint off my knee, “he sent flowers when he heard about Danny.” Despite me waking him up with my call, not an hour later a dozen pink roses were delivered to my desk with a note. Love always, J.
“Is he seeing anyone?” Nancy leans in closer as she says this in a conspiratorial tone, as if we are girlfriends out getting pedicures or something.
I can’t resist a smile so I turn my head and look out the window again. Danny’s face is replaced by a young couple who must be new to the neighborhood, walking their dog and pushing a stroller. A brand-new baby Chatwickian, not yet affected by the oppressive small-mindedness of this town.
“Oh fine, I give up,” Nancy says when she realizes I won’t say any more. “Get in the shower, and I’ll start breakfast. I picked up some fresh blueberries for your pancakes.” Blueberry pancakes were my favorite when I was five. I’m told for six months, that’s all I would eat. When my mother wasn’t in a black period, she was the type of mother who would actually cook breakfast for us every morning—eggs, bacon, pancakes—as opposed to my friends’ moms who worked and barely had time to shove a cereal box and a carton of milk at their kids as they ran around the house with one leg in a pair of pantyhose and one hand applying deodorant. I guess I would rather have eaten cold breakfast if I could have had a mother who wasn’t completely mental about a third of the time. My friends were jealous that mine was always around, at least when they were too young to realize there was something wrong with her. We always want the other kind of mother.
“Anything else I can get you?” Nancy chirps, her hands poised in the air like a waitress about to write down my order.
“Coffee, please.”
She perks up, glad to be doing something for me. “How do you take it?”
“Black.” She raises her eyebrows before she stands and leaves the room. I know she’s thinking I’m too much like my father. Living in New York, working too much, not bothering to sweeten my coffee. Next thing you know, I’ll be married to someone with bipolar who uses martinis as medication instead of lithium.
As I let the water bounce off my outstretched palm, my hope quickly dashed that she’s replaced the water heater that takes a full five minutes to kick in, I think about Jamie. Unlike with my connections here, even after Jamie and I broke up and I moved back to the States, we’ve managed to remain friends. He sort of insisted on it. I smile as I picture him sitting in his overstuffed armchair, his yellow-lined legal pad in hand, scratching out some prose before committing the words to his computer. It feels good to think about anything unrelated to Chatwick.
The smell of pancakes drifts up from the stairwell, and my stomach (that I realize has been empty for the better part of twenty-four hours) growls with anticipation. I hurry through my shower and shimmy into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from the bag of clothes Ally brought me, tying my hair in a knot at the base of my neck and racing downstairs. Nancy clucks her tongue at me. “Sweetheart, I wish you would keep your hair down. You know how pulling it back makes your ears stick out.”
Blueberry pancakes and criticism. A fine way to start the morning.
“Coffee?” I remind her, not responding to the feedback.
She pours me a cup from the pot she was given as a wedding gift thirty years ago and plops down a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s next to my plate. I’m surprised she can even find the stuff in this town. It’s blasphemy that she stocks this in the house when there are dozens of maple sugaring farms within a ten-mile radius, and gallons of Vermont pure in all varieties are available at any store in downtown Chatwick. My southern mother actually prefers this crap to the sweet nectar of the real thing. I used to hide it when my friends came over just so I wouldn’t have to hear about how weird we were as a family. I had plenty of other stuff that I couldn’t hide from them.
Nancy prattles on in her usual fashion, quickly graduating from the weather, her flowers, and this summer’s disappointing yield from the vegetable garden (too humid) to her sponsor (Harriett), her therapist (Louise), and my father’s workaholism. She works a few of my father’s worst qualities into every conversation we have. She’s so used to her family pointing out her flaws that it’s her passive-aggressive way of maintaining the balance. She needn’t bother; my anger is pretty fairly distributed between the two of them already.
Nancy’s in the middle of explaining why she thinks Louise is secretly working for Dad, and I am in the middle of mentally constructing my to-do list to make up some of the work I’ve missed, when the phone rings.
Nancy picks up the receiver, not bothering to pause her diatribe. “…and if he thinks I’m going to edit myself so I don’t hurt his feelings, he is crazier than I am. Hello, St. James residence.” Her voice goes from bitter and indignant to syrupy sweet in 0.3 seconds. “Why, Murphy Leblanc, is that you? How nice to hear your voice! How are you doing with, you know, this whole Danny business? What stage of grief would you say you’re in? I think it’s safe to say our Ruby is nestled stubbornly in anger. Surprise, surprise, right?”
She lets out a peal of laughter, and I can hear him do the same on the other end of the line. I wonder if there’s ever an age when you cease to feel embarrassed by your parents. I try to pluck the receiver from Nancy’s hand, but she blocks me as she tells Murp
hy it can take months or even years to get to acceptance.
“Hi,” I say when I finally win the wrestling match.
“Want to come over?”
“I…” What? Come over? I thought we had an understanding that last night was goodbye! “I can’t. I have to work. I’ve got at least eight hours to make up from yesterday.” It’s not just an excuse; I have a mental picture of my inbox, overflowing with estimate requests and billing issues. If the accounting people ever developed solid people skills, I would most certainly be out of a job. But admittedly, I don’t think being around Murphy is a very good idea.
“Okay. Later then. I live in the biggest of my parent’s rental properties, top floor. You know the one?”
He hangs up before I can nod a confused assent.
7
RUBY
BACK THEN—SENIOR YEAR
I scan the cafeteria, deciding against the freshmen and moving on to the sophomores. A fifteen- or sixteen-year-old would be a good fit for Murphy. Young and innocent enough to find him cool and charming, but not so young and innocent it would be gross. After all, Murphy just lost his virginity, so the ship has sailed on having a PG relationship.
Ally sneaks up on me. “What’s with you?” she asks as she plops her tray down beside me. Even though I’m the only one at the table, she sits beside me instead of across from me because that’s where she always sits. Emmett and Danny sit across from us, with an empty seat in the middle reserved for whoever’s girlfriend gets there first. Aaron sits on Ally’s other side. Ally is always in the middle; that way she can have one ear in any conversation. Murphy doesn’t have lunch this period, despite his valiant efforts to arrange his schedule to align with the rest of ours. For the last couple days, I’ve been endlessly grateful to Mrs. Clasky, the guidance counselor, for being one of the few people immune to Murphy’s charms. I used to be one of them too.
“Nothing is up with me,” I tell Ally.
“Why are you squinting over at the sophomores? Did one of them piss you off?” Her eyes gleam. She’s ready to slay anyone who’s done me wrong. To be fair, she also wants a good story. I have one too. Boy, do I. I just can’t tell it to her.
“No. I’m just trying to pick out a girl for Murphy.” I shouldn’t have even told her this much—if I open the door, she’ll kick it in—but I’m distracted. I don’t know any of these girls’ names, but I’ve seen them at parties sipping on peach schnapps and wine coolers and giggling like idiots. Murphy would do well with an idiot. Not that you’d have to be an idiot to like Murphy. That’s not what I’m saying. He just needs someone fun. Light.
Ally shakes her head. “You guys are so weird.”
“Weird how?” I ask.
Ally sidesteps the question with another question. “Can’t Murphy find his own girls?”
“Of course,” I say. “He’s just not as good at it as me.”
She smiles, but her lips are pursed. She doesn’t like it when I’m cocky, but when it’s at Murphy’s expense she allows it.
Nicki and Emmett sit down and immediately start making out, which puts me off my Tater Tots. Danny joins the table and asks what’s going on.
“Ruby is taking it upon herself to find Murphy a girlfriend,” Ally informs him, reaching across the table to swipe a chicken nugget from his tray. Usually Ally steals nuggets from Aaron’s tray, but he’s not here today. Lucky for her that Danny decided to stray from his regular cheeseburger.
“Hey, no fair. What about me?” Danny asks. “Murphy’s not the only one who could use some action.”
We all look at him. “What happened to Jenny?” Ally asks. Danny and Jenny have been on their longest stretch—a whole six months. I try to be supportive, but she doesn’t seem to make him especially happy. When Danny actually brings her around, she hardly even talks. Actually, she kind of just hovers and stares. Actually, she kind of scares the shit out of me. Those hawk eyes and all those piercings.
“I haven’t seen her much since she dropped out of school,” Danny mumbles.
“Hmm,” we all murmur. We’re all thinking the same thing—that Danny will be the next to drop out. Yesterday, since everyone else was at practice or at work, Danny and I had a Dark Children of Chatwick reading. He showed me a poem he wrote about yearning for freedom from dreams he can never realize. At first, I only heard what I wanted to hear. I hoped it meant that he was realizing that Jenny was never going to be the girl he wanted her to be. He and I have had our expectations set for us at a pretty low bar, but the more he read, the more it felt like he was giving up on the idea that he could be happy with anyone, doing anything. It felt like he was saying it wasn’t worth trying.
I wonder why anyone would drop out of high school, especially in Chatwick. I mean, what else is there to do in this town besides go to school? Hang out in Barnard Park? Work at the Quik Stop? If you’re lucky, I guess you could get a job at the Endless Power battery factory at the north edge of town and hang on long enough to collect your pension after forty years of standing on an assembly line.
Personally, I’m getting as far away from here as possible, as soon as possible. I want to experience things—art, music, culture, stores and restaurants that are open past 9:00 p.m. Closest thing you get to any of that in Chatwick is our high school’s Miss and Mister Bobcat talent competition, which I will not be taking part in, no matter how much Ally begs me to do a duet with her. She’s even got Nancy in on it, ganging up on me to discuss costumes. Since my dad’s been back, Nancy has been on her best behavior, and tailoring is her distraction of choice. Lucky me. The woman wants to sew my prom dress even though I’ve told her a million times I’m sticking with the one I ordered.
“So you got dumped?” Emmett says, coming up for air to tease poor Dan.
“Shut up, Emmett,” I say. I never miss a chance to tell him to shut up, but especially when he’s shitting on Danny. He sticks his tongue out at me. Danny reaches around Nicki to punch Emmett in the arm. Emmett tries to kick back under the table, but from the sound Nicki makes, I’m guessing he missed. “Cut the shit, guys!” she whines.
“So what’s this about you finding a chick for Murphy?” Emmett asks as if nothing had happened.
“It’s been like four months since he dated that last one,” I say. “What was her name?”
“Misty,” Ally says.
“Exactly. Misty,” I say, rolling my eyes. The girl who told me she liked my earrings but that the only accessory a girl really needed was cleavage. “That winner. And she only lasted a few weeks. He’s over it. It’s time he gets back on the bike. Or the horse, or whatever stupid expression that is.”
“It’s ‘back in the saddle,’” Ally says. We all look at her in amazement. Somehow, Ally and I have momentarily switched brains. I’m sticking my nose in someone else’s business, and Ally is correcting me on figures of speech.
“Are you sure he’s not already in the saddle, Tuesday?” Danny asks. One eyebrow is raised. My heart drops. Oh crap. He’s looking at me like he knows something. Does he know something? Did Murphy tell him something?
“I’m sure, Danny,” I say, raising my eyebrow back at him. His expression clears immediately. Maybe I was just imagining it.
Emmett looks back and forth between Danny and me. I hold my breath when he turns to me, but instead of pressing the issue, he says, “So can you believe this governor? How does she plan on paying for this jobs program of hers when we’ve got a fifty-million-dollar deficit?”
The crew groans and rolls their eyes.
• • •
I pull into my usual spot in the alley behind the Exchange, which shares a parking lot with Margie’s Pub, and open Blue’s rusty door. It’s late April, and the rain falling on my skin is still cold as ice, but I’ve abandoned my winter gear. A person can only wear puffy coats and hats and mittens for so long without going insane. The rain magnifies the smell of cig
arette butts and day-old beer from the bar side of the lot. It turns my stomach, making me think of the nights I’ve been forced to inhale that smell as I wait for Nancy to finish her last drink. It’s not like the smell isn’t also associated with my friends, but somehow it’s different when I’m with them. Maybe it’s because we’re at the age where you’re supposed to be stupid and messing around with that stuff. And maybe it’s because I know when to put the drink down. Well, except for those few times…
I lift my backpack and see the envelope. Inside contains my entire future, a.k.a. my deposit and commitment letter to New York University. I haven’t mailed it in yet. I don’t know what’s stopping me, considering it’s the key to all I’ve ever wanted.
None of my friends know I was accepted. I try to pinpoint why I haven’t told them as I slam closed the metal gate and pull down the wooden doors of the ancient elevator that takes me up to the shop. I’ve talked before about going out of state for college, but I don’t think any of them have taken me seriously. People who grow up in Chatwick generally don’t stray too far. For example, Ally is going to cosmetology school about ten minutes outside of town; Aaron will go to Vermont Technical College a few hours south; Emmett’s going to the University of Vermont in Burlington to study business; and Nicki will enroll in the nursing program at Norwich University in north-central Vermont.
They all have plans to come back to Chatwick on weekends. Danny is going to work at Borbeau’s, the mechanic shop where he already works/sells pot most days after school. The most disappointing is that Murphy will work for his dad. With his talent, he probably could have gotten at least a partial baseball scholarship somewhere. It’s amazing to watch him at bat. He could get out of here, but he won’t.
That’s why I have to find him a girlfriend. If he doesn’t have anything else to focus on, we’re going to end up sleeping together again, and then who knows what mess will be made of my plans.
