Mothers and Other Liars (18 page)

Mrs. Levy’s kitchen wall clock looks like the ones in every classroom of Ruby’s life, except for the birds that circle its face. The minute hand takes its own sweet time, inching up up up on the long hard climb to twelve. The second half of the hour is passing so much more slowly than the first, perhaps a mere function of gravity rather than nerves.

Ruby watches the clock, having given up all pretense of keeping busy. Since dawn, she has done three loads of laundry, trimmed and watered the herb pots, washed windows with newspaper and vinegar, ironed to crispness the pile of limp linens that has lived in the bottom of the spare laundry basket for months if not years. Not even Clyde escaped her mania; he scowls at her through the porch door, his almost-dry red coat shiny and clean.

Finally the oriole chirps nine o’clock. Ruby waits another agonizing six minutes, so that it doesn’t look like she was waiting until exactly nine. She doesn’t know Mr. Tinsdale’s schedule, but she figures that, with the time change, he is sure to be out of the house by ten, even if he is not a morning person. Finally, she picks up the phone and dials the number that has been reeling through her head like the news bits that crawl across the bottom of the television screen.

Darla Tinsdale answers on the third ring. Her voice is breathy, still seems detached from her body. Ruby introduces herself, apologizes for calling out of the blue.

“No, no,” Darla says. “This is like one of those psychic things…. I was going to call you this morning.”

They both speak at once, laugh awkwardly.

“You first,” Darla says.

“No, you,” Ruby responds.

Darla tells Ruby that she would like to get a list from her, of Lark’s favorite foods, her interests. “The counselor said…I just want to help her settle in.”

Ruby prods Darla for a report, but Darla doesn’t need much prodding. She seems eager to talk, to vent even, as if she doesn’t have close friends of her own. She tells Ruby that Lark is still sad, that she prefers to stay in her bedroom and read, that she acts like a guest, tiptoes around. “She won’t even open the refrigerator and help herself to a snack.”

“Of course I’ll send a list. I’ll do what ever I can.” Ruby’s voice catches as she tells Darla that all that matters is making this better for Lark. “Could I speak with her, would you mind?”

“Oh. Philip dropped her off at his mother’s on his way to work, to meet some of her friends from the club. Sort of a sip-and-see.” Darla giggles like a sorority girl. “Without the bassinet and cute baby.”

The thought of her daughter on display makes Ruby cringe. Lark has always related well to older people; she begs to go along when Ruby makes her monthly rounds offering manicures at the nursing home. But this sounds stuffy, awkward. It reeks of crinoline and smocking and dainty teacups. Lark will be itchy, worried about using the right spoon.

“It’s just so different from what I expected, what I hoped for all those years.” Darla’s voice is slick with tears, whiny even. “It’s so hard.” She starts to say something else, something about her husband, then swallows her own words in an audible gulp. “Maybe it’s easier when you have time, when you grow with the child instead of having a nine-year-old drop from the sky.” She tells Ruby that they haven’t been around kids this age, that of course some of their friends have children, but they don’t
socialize
with them. Her sister, who lives in East Texas, has a two-year-old son; she wishes that he and Lark were closer in age.

This slender opening is all Ruby needs to wedge in a shoulder, wrest it into a gaping maw, a door big enough for her enormous plan. She charges through while Darla is vulnerable, and alone. “I want to give you back that baby girl, the one you missed out on all those years.”

Darla is silent for a moment. Ruby imagines she can hear the pert blond brain processing the idea. When she does respond, she does so with giddiness. “We talked about adopting, after I mean. But some of the agencies didn’t like our age difference. And the wait for an infant, a healthy…well, a baby that matched our backgrounds…”

Ruby is disgusted at Darla’s words, thinks that if Chaz’s skin weren’t as light as an early-season golf tan, Darla probably would not even consider the plan. But then, Ruby thinks, don’t most people want their children to look like them?

“…Of course I’ll have to talk to Philip. But, oh, this could be…oh!”

Ruby hangs up the phone and drops to her knees. Clyde noses open the screen door and bounds over to her, rubs his head against her chin, a poignant waft of Lark’s kiwi shampoo pricking her nose.

John grabs a file off his desk, eases his tall frame into the chair beside her.

“Well, it’s unusual to say the least.” He flips through the papers in the file while Ruby holds her breath. “But I can’t find anything in case law or in state procedure—or in ethics for that matter—that would prevent it.”

Ruby expels her breath in a slow, steady stream. Her body melts, molds itself into the contours of the low-slung chair as John explains the intricacies that would be required to carry out her plan. Two separate adoption proceedings in two separate states. Two separate waiting periods. Two sets of social workers.

“But it can be done?” Ruby asks. “What about my criminal record?”

“It can be done.” He explains about the standard of “best interests of the child” and tells her that the Texas court is likely to appoint an attorney or advocate who will represent Lark. Lark probably would need to state on the record her preference, which can be hard on a kid, having to choose openly between parents. In New Mexico the process will be less cumbersome, because an infant rather than an older child is involved, but Ruby will still have to jump through plenty of hoops.

“I’ll get my circus-poodle costume ready,” Ruby says.

“I talked to the Tinsdales’ lawyer. He confirmed that they are dropping the civil suit. I’ll make sure they sign a broad release. And they are sending a letter, asking for leniency in your sentencing. That should carry a lot of weight. We just have to make sure that it doesn’t look like all this is part of the adoption deal, that a child is being bought.”

Ruby tries to focus, but her head feels overstuffed with legalese. She is thankful that she trusts John to lead her through the legal labyrinth, and that she can have Antoinette translate some of this for her later. Although if pushed, Antoinette will surely side with family, with Chaz.

“And the father?” John asks, as if reading her mind. “Chaz is on board?”

“He will be.”

John closes the file, leans forward, hands clasped between his knees. “This is big, Ruby. If those media whores catch on, even friends and family…You’re going to get crucified for choosing one child over another.”

Ruby stands. “I know.”

“Just make sure you are ready, really ready, to make that choice.”

“I don’t see it as a
choice
,” Ruby says as John’s new receptionist steps in to announce his next appointment. “I’m not choosing; I’m doing what has to be done.”

The plaza is a beehive in the center of Santa Fe, abuzz with summer tourists and locals, khaki-pantsed government workers and broom-skirted retail clerks on their lunch breaks. The open green center is cut into four pie pieces by sidewalks leading to the center pavilion and is boxed in by historic buildings that house shops and restaurants and galleries. The shops used to be run by local vendors, but like everywhere else on earth, even the City Different hive has been invaded by killer-bee franchises.

Along the sidewalk beneath the Palace of the Governors, Native Americans spread their silver bracelets and woven dream catchers, laid out on colorful blankets. Only the “certified authentic” Indians are allowed in the cool of the blue overhang; others set up shop on folding tables that line the edge of the green across the narrow street.

Tourists fly, drive, and bus their way to this adobe paradise, said by the woo-woos to be one of the handful of portals to some great beyond. For Ruby, the central core is a half-mile walk down the hill, past the formidable pink Scottish Rite Temple.

Antoinette waves from a wrought-iron table when Ruby walks through the arched entryway of the restaurant’s patio. Ruby weaves her way around the umbrellas that shade tables, filled with a mix of summer tourists and upper-crust locals, to join her friend. This patio is a secret garden. Adobe walls shield it from the street on two sides, and the indoor part of the restaurant completes the square. Ruby doesn’t lunch here often—smack in the middle of the plaza, it is inconvenient to reach from the salon out on Cerillos Road, not to mention pricey. Yet each time she does, her blood burbles with anticipation, as if she herself were prettier, smarter, chicer just for sitting in these stunning surroundings.

The two hug while a waiter pulls out a chair for Ruby. Antoinette looks like she belongs on this beautiful-people patio; her hair is pulled back into a sleek chignon, and her work dress is liquid silk flowing over her curvy figure. No dowdy secretary clothes for her.

Antoinette is a waterfall of small talk, barely pausing to offer a flirty smile when the model-pretty waiter offers them menus. She regales Ruby with stories of her latest bad dates—the letch with Listerine breath, the Aramis cloud who turned out to be married, the self-loather. She pauses again while the waiter takes their orders, then continues with a tale of a guy who took her out to the Camel Rock casino, asked her for money, then left the casino, stranding her at the slot machines.

Ruby laughs. “For an attractive, confident, accomplished woman, you are the world’s biggest magnet for the dregs of the male species.” She points out a few good-looking men at other tables. “Why not him, or him, or him?”

“The blond over there sleeps with his sister, the dark brooder is obviously a serial killer, and the other dark brooder, well, let’s just say that he has a teeny-weeny weenie.”

Antoinette and Ruby exchange mirthful looks as a shy young busboy tries not to look at Ruby’s stomach or Antoinette’s breasts while he refills their water glasses. They survey the lunch crowd, create bawdy scenarios for various groups—the table of businessmen who are all wearing ladies’ pan ties, the trysts, the improbable threesomes. And for a moment, Ruby forgets the elephant of worry crushing her chest, the elephant squeezing her bladder, the elephant on this patio.

When the waiter arrives with their food, they are still giggling like schoolgirls. He sets a seafood salad that looks like a museum painting in front of Antoinette, the braised pork special—Midwestern comfort food—for Ruby. Antoinette deftly switches the topic to her job at the court house, how much she enjoys working for the judge, dissecting the guts of the system.

Ruby sinks her attention into her plate, trying to taste her way back to Iowa. When she was in high school, her classmate Joe, the one who took Ruby’s virginity in the backseat of a turquoise Caprice before dumping her for that cheerleader who wouldn’t put out, told her that when he graduated, when he left behind that stinky pig farm that they called a state, pork was never going to pass his lips again. But for Ruby, a crisp BLT or golden pork cutlet took her right back to her grandparents’ kitchen table and all the goodness there.

Antoinette interrupts Ruby’s reverie. “Chaz told us about your idea.”

Ruby leans back in her chair, braces herself.

“My dad, he’s all for it.” Antoinette spears a shrimp with her fork.

“Let the gringo give the kid away, you mean,” Ruby says. “Problem solved.” Ruby has known all along that Chunk is not her biggest fan. “Non-Catholic and knocked up…two strikes and counting.”

Antoinette’s chuckle comes from a place of years of pain. “Three. You’re out. You’re cooking a girl.”

Ah,
Ruby thinks. The Hispanic cultural thing, valuing boys more than girls. The Monteros’ ancestors were on this land before the
Mayflower
set sail, and sometimes they seem as Hispanic as Ruby seems German, yet the culture is strong in this region. Ruby has seen it in the street kids, the machismo, the sense of entitlement, the belittlement of the girls around them. And she has seen it in the way Chunk favors Chaz over his sisters.

That is one more thing she loves about Chaz; he couldn’t be more delighted to have a daughter. He would have been happy with a boy, but during the sonogram, his face radiated pure joy when the technician told them she couldn’t see a penis. “That’s my girl.” He stroked Ruby’s cheek. “I want her to look just like her mama.”

“He loves you, you know.” Antoinette takes a drink of her tea. “He was always such a player before. When you two started dating…I’ve never seen him stand up to my dad the way he stood up for you. He likes to think of himself as in de pen dent, the fifth generation breaking the mold. But breaking a mold is one thing, breaking up
family
…”

Ruby places her hand on Antoinette’s arm. “And you? How do you feel about it?”

“I can’t imagine,” Antoinette says. “I’m not a mother. I thought I was, pregnant I mean, once. But the wonder of actually growing a life, giving birth…” Antoinette tells Ruby about watching a litter of puppies being born when she was young. “They were just puppies. But all of a sudden I understood God. I believed in miracles. A
child
…I  can’t imagine.”

Antoinette is a good soul, cares deeply, but she is not shy about sharing her opinions. Ruby waits, but the diatribe doesn’t come. Instead Antoinette tells her that she has thought about Lark and the baby, that the closest she can come to an analogy is if she were given the choice between having a hysterectomy, of never having children, or never seeing her own mother again. “I’d dump the uterus in a heartbeat.”

Ruby surprises herself by playing her own devil’s advocate. “But that’s just giving up the possibility of maybe having a child somewhere down the road. This is actuality. This is your own flesh and blood.” Ruby points to her belly. “This is your niece. Are you really okay with me giving her away?”

Antoinette squeezes Ruby’s arm. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m okay with it. But Lark…Lark is my niece, too.”