Mothers and Other Liars (11 page)

The doorbell rings soon after Ruby and the dog get home from an evening walk. She turns from the kitchen counter, and the earth shifts beneath her feet. Her heart hammers her ribs as she walks to the door.

“Lark…”

Ruby swallows the rest of her sentence when she sees the stricken eyes on the other side of the screen, tries to regain her composure. “…Is not here. She’s in Texas, Numi.” Numi stands there, holding a book in her brown arms. Numi’s build is more athletic, the body of a gymnast rather than a ballerina. She is taller than Lark. They couldn’t possibly be mistaken for each other, even in dim porch light, except by a parched soul desperate to believe.

“I know. My mom told me.” The young girl holds out the book. “This is hers. I didn’t get to give it back.”

Ruby takes the slender volume from Numi. “That’s okay, sweetie. I’m pretty sure she read this one already.” Ruby pauses, smiles. “A few hundred times anyway. Would you like to keep it?”

Numi forces her mouth into a class-photo grimace. “No, thanks.”

Ruby feels a surge of desire to keep this friend of Lark near. “Why don’t you come in?”

“My mom, she’s waiting in the car.” Numi stares at the porch floor, scuffs her shoe back and forth. Ruby leans out, waves to Numi’s mother at the curb, waits.

“I was just wondering.” Numi rakes her hand through Clyde’s coat. “She’s not going to come back, is she?”

Ruby hugs the young girl against her, her large hand a skullcap on the small head. Every time Ruby breaks a heart, hers breaks a little more, too. “Maybe you’d like to come walk Clyde sometime, keep him company.”

Numi buries her face at Ruby’s hip. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

“No, it won’t. But sometimes, in time, different turns out to be okay, too.” Somehow, Ruby thinks, if she can console this child, spread a balm atop her naked wound, then maybe the healing will reach Lark as well.

Numi pulls away, turns from Ruby, swiping an arm across her face. “
That
would take a very long time.” As the child slinks down the driveway, Ruby calls out to her. “I’ll tell her, when I see her. I’ll tell her you said hi.” Clyde licks Ruby’s arm while she waits until she hears the car door shut, watches Numi’s mother drive away.

In the corner of the ceiling, Lark’s bat, Louie, hangs undisturbed. Ruby remembers a summer evening a couple of years ago, soon after Lark discovered their front-porch friend. Chaz was grilling—corn on the cob, hot dogs for Lark and Numi, a big steak for him and Ruby to share.

“Louie.” Lark’s rosy tongue pushed through the gap of four missing front teeth. “Chaz says we should name him Louie.”

Ruby remembers Chaz grinning from the side-porch grill, teasing him about being a bad influence on her daughter. “That’s just so politically incorrect, naming a bat after Mr. Armstrong. You’ll have the antidefamation league after us for sure.”

And then the girls giggling. “He’s blind, mama. Bats are blind, not deaf.”

And Chaz at the same time protesting, “Not Armstrong. Slugger. Louisville Slugger, the
bat
.”

Then Ruby dissolving in laughter at the whole Abbott-and-Costelloish confusion, not even trying to explain to Lark and Numi the difference between “deaf” and “defamation.”

Tonight, she looks up at Louie and sighs. “This house needs some laughter.”

“Come on, girlfriend.” Antoinette pushes Ruby out the door. “You need to get out for a while.”

Ruby’s shoes scrape across the gravel driveway like one of the old men walking the halls at the nursing home where she volunteers. She climbs onto the side rail of Antoinette’s cousin’s pickup truck, heaves herself into the passenger seat.

“This’ll be good for you. We’ll find you an old chifforobe or something to punish.” Antoinette backs down the driveway, takes Old Pecos Trail, the more scenic route from the center of Santa Fe to the highway.

Ruby slides from side to side on the seat with each turn of the truck. She feels adrift somehow, tightens the seat belt that rests below her belly. She keeps looking over at Antoinette, way on the other side of the cabin, across the abyss that used to be Lark on these trips.

Antoinette tries to fill the void with small talk, about her work-week, how glad she is that the judge she works for decided to close the office while he is on vacation. She talks about her last bad date, her family’s latest antics. Then her speech sputters to an awkward stop in the first sentence of a story about her cousin’s six-year-old daughter.

“It’s okay,” Ruby says. “I know that other kids still exist.”

“Just remember, in only eight years, maybe seven if the courts agree, Lark will be able to decide for herself where to live.”

Ruby looks out the window, at the vast expanse of scrub brush and sand. Eight years is almost as much time as
she
had with Lark. “What if she ends up hating me for what I did? What if she likes being a little rich girl better?”

Antoinette looks down at the space between them. “The Lark I know wouldn’t do either of those things.”

“A lot can happen in eight years.”

Antoinette fiddles with the radio dial, tunes in an Albuquerque country station. “I’m not gonna tell you everything’ll turn out all right. But I will tell you I’ll be there with you, no matter what.”

“Will you come visit me in jail?”

Antoinette takes Ruby’s hand. “Oh, girlfriend. I’ll be bringing you the cake with a file.”

“With your cooking?” Ruby squeezes Antoinette’s hand then lets go. “I’d probably die from the cake before I could break out.”

“Pot.” Antoinette flicks Ruby’s shoulder with the back of her hand.

Ruby manages another grin. Her cheeks feel tight, muscles unused to the upward movement. “Kettle.”

A smattering of people work their way around the furniture crammed into the back room of the auction house. The owner, Ernesto, waves to Ruby as she and Antoinette enter. Four or five times a year, or whenever the stacks of chairs reach the rafters and any semblance of aisles disappears, he holds these last-chance sales of estate items that have not been sold.

Ruby never bothers attending the first-call monthly auctions; antique dealers and decorators and, especially, novice collectors drive the prices out of Ruby’s range at those events. But here, amid the chipped veneer and crap-wood pieces, she has found many treasures. Burled walnut buried under fourteen layers of paint, golden oak planks in furniture too banged up to be useful in its current incarnation.

“It’s like a giant furniture purgatory,” Antoinette says, as if she’s never been here before.

“No,” Ruby says, “purgatory is the county dump where the stuff goes from here. This is limbo, one last chance to get it right.”

Antoinette weaves between a row of dining tables stacked face-to-face, running her hands down legs in a variety of styles. “I always feel like I’m at the dog pound. I want to rescue them all.”

Ruby pauses in front of a tall piece, a sturdy cabineted base with a bookcase-like top, two wide screen doors opening to narrow shelves.

“What is that?” Antoinette asks.

Ruby picks at the faded blue paint. A thick chip breaks loose. Underneath are layers and layers of several colors, like the sandstone cliffs at the ancient Anasazi Indian pueblos. She tugs at two drawers. One has a rotting bottom; one won’t even open it is so warped. “A pie safe.” She tips open a tin-lined drawer below the shelves of the top. “This is where they stored the flour. And here”—Ruby yanks out a wooden cutting board hidden above the drawers of the base—“is where they rolled out the crust. Then, after the pies were baked, they cooled on the shelves.”

“Cool,” Antoinette says. “What are you thinking you’d make out of it?”

“Here, help me.” Ruby motions to Antoinette to tug at the heavy base while she slips a hand between the piece and the armoire it stands against. She knocks on the back of the pie safe; it is solid wood, not cheap plywood as on so many modern pieces. “I don’t know. I let them tell me. Sometimes a table stays a table, sometimes it becomes something else.”

“Oh, Ruby.” Ernesto—as always in shiny black cowboy boots, dark dress pants, and starched western-cut shirt—walks up to them. When he shakes his head, his trim beard scrapes against his collar, jiggling the strings of his bolo tie. “That one, she’s a lot of work for not so much wood. And Lord knows even what kind of wood is beneath all that paint.”

“Ah, but she speaks to me,” Ruby says. “We’re kindred spirits.”

Ernesto shakes his head again, his tie strings swaying. “You and your talking wood.” He opens one of the upper doors; its rusty screening sags forlornly. He reaches into the back corner, and two of his sausage fingers appear outside the top, waggling in the air like bunny ears. “Did she tell you she come with her own mouse hole?” Ernesto laughs as he extracts his hand. “I know you the furniture doctor, Ruby. But this, she need one heck of a salvage operation.”

Ruby scrapes her fingernail across the flaking paint. “Like I said, we’re kindred spirits.”

The biggest draw of the season, Indian Market, is still a month away, yet the flea market is crowded with fat tourists wearing bright T-shirts and fanny packs, and skinny locals wearing smug disdain. Anyone who doubts the reports of rampant obesity in America need only spend a Saturday morning in Adobe Disneyland. Of course this is an exaggeration—there are lots of skinny tourists and fat locals, too.

Fortunately, the media have lost interest. Another child goes missing, another wife is axed, and the storm is over as quickly as it started.
Lark who?
Their story, praise God, just didn’t have “legs.”

Several of Ruby’s clients stop in, each with a dog beside her. Two golden Labs, one regal Bouvier, and a snuffling pug in a sun hat. Everyone and his dog, literally, are at the market today.

All the humans have heard the news, offer their support. “Oh, Ruby,” they say. “Oh, dear.” All the dogs offer licks. Ruby keeps from drowning in sympathy by reminding herself that the visit with Lark is next week. Even though she knows no visit will ever be long enough, at least she’ll get to
see
Lark, see for herself how her daughter is doing in her new life.

Beer Barrel Pete sidles up to Ruby just after noon. His watery eyes dart over her shoulder, scanning the aisle. He looks like he’s jonesing for caffeine, or something more sixties. Pete has been wearing the same pair of jeans and woven hippie shirt for the past decade. His hair is a wilder, longer tangle of gray, and the road map of hard days is etched more deeply on his face. He, too, has heard, but he hasn’t come with words of support. “You didn’t get it from me,” he whispers. Ruby can taste the Winstons on his breath.

This man only looks like an addle-brained derelict; he remembers every single one of his customers and what he supplied each of them. And he wants assurance that Ruby won’t tell the authorities where she got Lark’s birth certificate all those years ago. Pete need not worry. John didn’t exactly advise her to burn evidence, but he did make sure she understood that the federal crime was for
possession
of a forged document.

“Get what?” Ruby says with theatrical confusion.

“That’s my girl.” Pete spins away from her and melts into the crowd.

Just before closing, as a nice couple from Minnesota arranges for the shipping of Ruby’s last pair of porch chairs to their lake house, John comes into the booth. “This stuff is gorgeous.” He wanders around the booth, running his hands along the surfaces of the few remaining pieces until Ruby finishes her paperwork. When the Minnesotans leave, he gestures behind him. “Let’s take a walk.”

He leads Ruby down the mostly deserted aisle, past the vendors packing up their wares in trailers and trucks, disassembling their tents. Her blood has stopped flowing altogether as she imagines all kinds of horrors. “Is it Lark?” Her voice sounds like it is coming from very far away, farther than even Lark is right now. “Tell me.”

“She’s okay.” John puts a hand on Ruby’s back. “They wouldn’t let me talk to her, but their lawyer assured me she’s okay.”

“But?”

“The prosecutor presented your case to a grand jury and got an indictment. That means there is no need for the probable cause hearing. And we have a trial setting, for six weeks from now.”

“That’s good, though, right?” Ruby asks. “I mean, you said we’d lose the probable cause hearing anyway. At least this moves it along. I want it to be over. And I can still go next week, for the visit with Lark.”

John’s shoulders sag. “They rescheduled the visitation for the day of the trial.”

The hubbub around Ruby becomes a blur.
Six weeks
. How can she possibly hold on that long? They loop their way around the perimeter of the market, past the concession stand reeking of popcorn and hot dogs cooked too long, and back down Ruby’s aisle, as she tries to absorb the reverberation of this latest blast.

Then John reaches into his pocket, pulls out a cell phone. The cell phone Ruby gave to Lark. “They sent it to my office. They don’t want Lark to call you.”

“At all?” Ruby takes the phone from him. “For
six weeks
?”

John explains that the Tinsdales got a court order barring Ruby from any contact with Lark. Phone calls, even letters, interfere with the reestablishment of their bond. And they’ll refuse delivery of any more packages from the Ms as well. “They want their child back, and they want her to themselves.”

“They lost
their
child that night at the gas station,” Ruby says. “Lark is not that same child. There is no bond to
re
establish.”

“Hey,” John says. “You’re preaching to the choir. I’m the good guy, remember?”

Ruby tries to take a deep breath, but a ball of air and dust catches at the back of her throat. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s more,” John says as they reach Ruby and Jay’s booth. “They will produce her for the visitation prior to your hearing, as CPS recommended.”

“But?”

“But the Tinsdales are ‘unreceptive,’ as their lawyer put it, to the idea of any form of visitation, beyond the one visit.”

Anguish rises like morning sickness in her throat. Ruby lied when she told herself she was preparing for this. She could never be prepared for this. “So that’s it? One visit and good-bye forever?”

She walks across the booth, sinks onto the little folding stool that she never seems to find time to use while the market is open, drops the phone in the dirt at her feet.
Not forever,
she tries to remind herself. Seven, maybe eight years before Lark is old enough to decide for herself. But what if the Tinsdales poison Lark’s memories of Ruby, turn Lark against her for keeping them apart? Her hands land on her belly, and the realization that this child may never know her sister spins around in the dust at Ruby’s feet.

Jay shoots her a worried look, then turns back to packing up the last of his serving pieces into the milk crates he “recycled” from behind the Albertson’s at the edge of town, with an ear cocked toward Ruby and John.

“We’re not giving up yet,” John says. “We can still file a petition for visitation in family court. A lot will depend on what happens at the trial.”

“You mean if I go to jail.”

“Let’s not even go there right now.”

Ruby puts her hands on her knees, drops her head between them, trying to make the ground and sky stop their dance. Jay gives up all pretense of not listening, gives her a bottle of water.

“Can I try?” She lifts her head up, looks at John. “Can I try to talk to them.”

“With the protective order, and the trial pending, that wouldn’t be appropriate.” John shakes his head. “Let’s just give this some time, see if it settles down a bit.”

“And if it doesn’t,” Ruby asks. “If it doesn’t
settle
?”

John shrugs, shakes his head.

The first thunderhead of an impending afternoon storm speeds across the sky, a solitary ship on a vast azure sea. Across the field, the imposing structure of the Santa Fe Opera is barely visible over the hill. That’s another thing Ruby didn’t get done this summer. Since Lark was five, they have gone to an opera each season, either in the nose-bleed cheap seats or with up-close tickets that a client happened to offer her. There just wasn’t enough time; there could never be enough time to spend with Lark.

Beer Barrel Pete galumphs past and gives Ruby a conspiring look. Maybe she
should
steal Lark back. Sometimes doing the wrong thing is the only way to make something right.