Mothers and Other Liars (21 page)

The elastic panel of the lavender skirt is stretched tight across Ruby’s belly. Her second-day court outfit hangs like different clothing from how it did in Texas last month. She digs a mascara tube from the back of the bathroom drawer organizer. When she unscrews it, the wand is clogged with dried gunk. She tosses it back in the drawer, onto the pile of old lipsticks in shades that shouldn’t have seemed like a good idea even at the time.

Antoinette squeezes in beside Ruby at the small counter, digs her own makeup bag out of her crammed-full purse.

“Thank you,” Ruby says. “For spending the night, for going with me today.”

“I wouldn’t let you walk in there alone.” Antoinette empties the contents of her zippered bag onto the counter. “He’ll always be a part of you.”

“I know.”

Antoinette holds up an eye shadow case. Ruby shakes her head.

“At least a little blush,” Antoinette says.

Ruby takes the small brush from her friend, swabs a slash of color across each cheek.

“More,” Antoinette says.

Ruby startles. Then sighs, weary from all that has transpired in such a short time.

During those hours sitting vigil beside Chaz’s bed, Ruby kept thinking how much she needed him. She might as well take a sledgehammer to her attempts at salvaging her own life if she lost him in the process. She was half-dozing in the chair beside him when the noise made her jerk alert.

“More,” Chaz repeated, his voice raspy and raw. “And stop biting your lip.”

In the few days he was hospitalized, he sailed through the mental facilities examination and surgery to repair his leg, and even when he was crotchety, restless, and in pain, Ruby was just too relieved that he was
there
to think about anything else.

As the fear-pumped adrenaline subsided, though, Ruby could again distinguish individual particles in the complicated swirl of her emotions, like sediment in roiling water. The silty flakes of missing Lark, pervading every molecule. The coarser grains of wanting Chaz, poking at delicate membranes.
Both
, Ruby thought.
I want—I need—them both.
And in those first days, when the shock of his accident made Ruby and Chaz more tender, even tentative, toward each other, she thought they would find a way to work it out.

But even sediment in the roilingest water will eventually begin to separate. And as the water cleared, Ruby and Chaz were right back to their old stalemate. That tenderness didn’t stick around long.

Their fights were bitter. Maybe it was a side effect of painkillers, but postcrash Chaz exhibited a cruel streak Ruby had never seen before. He was appalled that Ruby would still even consider her plan. “After I almost
died
?” His warnings about her pushing him away intensified into threats that she was
driving
him away.

And when he lashed out at her, when he dug in his own heels, Ruby could easily curb her own guilt about his wreck and hold her side of the rope steady. Once she even lashed back at him, “Thank
God
I didn’t make some stupid bargain with God when I worried you might die!”

Chaz spent several hours a day in physical therapy, stretching and strengthening his healing leg. And if, when evening rolled around, he told her he was tired, was turning in early, she didn’t push him, relieved to have a break from the arguing, from him. She was tired, too.

Ruby’s own doctor’s appointment had been six or so weeks into Chaz’s recovery. Afterward, she had driven straight to the physical therapy center. She needed to talk with Chaz; she hadn’t yet been able to process what the news might mean for any of them.

She walked into a suite of several small rooms with examination tables and followed a hall to a large area with a few stationary bicycles and treadmills. With all of the colorful balls, mats, long bands, and other “toys,” the place looked like a day care center at first glance.

Ruby spotted Chaz across the room, lying on his back on a floor mat, a trim, ponytailed therapist on her knees beside him. Ruby couldn’t see his face, only his clasped hands pressed into the back of his head, elbows winged out to his sides. One knee was bent, the other leg extended, lifting and lowering in a steady rhythm. Ruby passed an older woman slowly riding a bicycle, her feet strapped to the pedals.
Stroke,
Ruby thought. The half-face sag and the struggle were unmistakable from her visits to the nursing home.

And then she didn’t
think
anything at all. She
knew.

She stood at the edge of the mat, watching them, and she knew. It was nothing so obvious as the woman on the bike, nothing blatant at all. But it was just as unmistakable: the therapist’s hand a little too high on Chaz’s thigh, a fleeting look crossing her pretty, young face, a crackle of electricity in the air.

Ruby sounded like a clogged vacuum cleaner as she swallowed her gasp. Then she turned and walked away as fast as her belly would allow.

“Ruby. Ruby!” His sneakers squeaked behind Ruby in an uneven gait.

He caught up with her in the parking lot, grabbed her arm, and spun her around, pinning her to the Jeep. “It’s not what you think.”

Ruby stared at him, willing her lips not to tremble.

“It’s not what you think.”

But just from his denial, Ruby knew it was exactly what she thought. Chaz had cheated on her. “Let. Go. Of. Me.”

He took a step back. His face looked stricken, as if the vehemence in her voice were a slap, the pale yellow of the last fading bruise suddenly mauve again.

Ruby opened her car door, climbed into the seat.

“Ruby. Ruby, please.”

She closed the door, started the engine, and backed out of the space. In the rearview mirror, she watched him, standing in the lot. His haircut still looked like a crazy person had taken scissors to it, the patch of scalp that had been shaved now a bristly burr. A brace stretched from thigh to ankle over one leg of his sweatpants.

She was almost home before she remembered that she hadn’t even told Chaz the news.

By the time she got into the house, her answering machine was clogged with entreaties from him. For the first day or so, the messages were pleading.
It just happened. It didn’t mean anything. Please
. Then they mutated from contrition to demands.
Pick up the phone. You have to understand
. Later, his voice seethed with anger and transferred guilt, as if she were to blame that he and his physical therapist had screwed.
Maybe if you hadn’t been so unavailable, so stubborn about this whole Lark thing
.

“The Lark thing?” Ruby screamed at the machine. “My daughter is a
thing
?”

A few days after she witnessed his “physical therapy session,” Clyde barked Chaz’s arrival before the doorbell rang. By the time she reached the door, Clyde had pushed it open and stood on the porch, sniffing at Chaz’s legs. For a moment, Ruby wondered if betrayal had a scent, but the dog was more likely reacting to the strange odors of the brace and doctors’ offices.

“I can’t do this anymore.” Chaz thrust a sheaf of papers toward Ruby. “They’re all signed.”

She took the adoption forms and consents from him, riffled through the pages, keeping her eyes on Chaz’s face. The anger that had creased his brow was gone. All she saw was weariness and something that she hoped was self-reproach or regret but might have been simple chagrin that he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“Louie’ll be happy.” Chaz pointed to the bat hanging at the top of the wall.

He started to walk away, then paused and turned back to her. “What was it, why did you stop by PT that day?”

Ruby clasped the papers against her chest. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I just wanted to say…to tell you that the baby, he’s a boy.”

Chaz looked up into the sky then back at Ruby. “You’re right. That never mattered to me.” He continued down the driveway before pausing once again. “I’m sorry.”

“More,” Ruby said softly as Clyde whined at her side.

Now Ruby watches Chaz’s sister, who unwittingly mirrored that final “more.”

Antoinette’s hair crackles with static as she brushes it. “Thank you for still being my friend. After everything.”

Ruby sits on the closed toilet lid, fiddling with the toilet paper roll. “Like any of this is your fault.”

“Well, I did push you into meeting my brother.” Antoinette twists her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck.

“I don’t regret that. Just…how it ended is all.” Ruby folds the toilet paper into a hotel triangle. What she doesn’t say is that she didn’t know it would be this brutal, even with the excitement of knowing Lark will be coming home.

Antoinette stabs a bobby pin into her bun. She talks through another pin that she holds in her lips. “Well, this could have been awkward. Between you and me. Friendships have ended over less.”

“But we were friends before.”

Antoinette finishes her hair, holds out a tube of mascara. Ruby shakes her head, and Antoinette leans over the counter toward the mirror, applying the wand to her own lashes, little-boy long like Chaz’s. Her mouth opens into the
that seems to be a reflex in all women. After she sets aside the mascara, she combs her lashes, then starts in on her brows. “You know you don’t have to go today. This is just a preliminary approval of the motion. And just…just for the baby.” Antoinette wields more tools at her eyes and brows than Ruby uses in an entire pedicure. “You’ll have to go to Texas, for the final hearing on Lark’s adoption next year.”

“I know.” Ruby plays with the knot Antoinette tied in the shawl she insisted Ruby wear. “I just feel like I owe it”—she dips her chin toward her belly—“to him. To be
present
, you know.”

“He’ll always be a part of you.” Antoinette pulls Ruby to her feet. “This is the right thing. You’re doing what’s best.”

The curl of son inside Ruby’s belly is still too fragile to survive outside her womb. Yet that is what she is doing today, really, tossing him from that watery, safe house into the mean, broken world beyond. “I’m sorry,” she whispers to him. She doesn’t know whether his soccer kick is in protest or benediction. “I’m doing what I have to do.”

Antoinette’s elbow in Ruby’s side is softer than the tiny foot to her kidney. “Come on, girl. This is one step closer to Lark coming home.”

“Yeah, it is.” Ruby smiles at her friend.

“What did Darla say?” Antoinette tucks her rosy blouse into the waistband of her tweed skirt, slips on the matching jacket.

“I…” Ruby plays with the fringe of her shawl. “I haven’t told her yet.”

“
What?
The hearing is
today
.”

“I know that.” Ruby shrugs, shakes her head. “But what if after all this…what if they don’t want to go through with it? They wanted a baby
girl,
to replace the one they lost. I told them I would give them that.”

Antoinette stuffs her makeup bag into her purse, tosses the purse over her shoulder. “Then, girl, you better find out. Before this goes any further.” She leads Ruby like she’s a recalcitrant child, out of the bathroom, down the short hall, and into the kitchen. “Call. Now.”

“Hi, baby.”

The snuffle travels the distance from Lark’s nose to Ruby’s heart in an instant. It is a stoic snuffle; her daughter is trying as hard not to cry as Ruby is. “I know Darla’s standing right there, so I’ll just ask questions, okay?”

“’Kay.”

“Are they being nice to you?” Ruby leans against the kitchen counter.

“Uh-huh.”

Ruby glances at the bananas hanging by a hook over her fruit bowl. “Are you eating?”

“Yeah.”

Ruby pauses to think about what else she can ask. She wants to be careful about what she says. From the beginning, Ruby asked Darla not to say anything to Lark about the plan. Darla is probably not the most reliable secret-keeper, but Ruby would rather risk Darla slipping than the devastation that would rain down on Lark if Ruby told her and then something were to happen, a legal snag, or if the baby…if something happened to the baby.

“How’s Clyde?”

The dog at Ruby’s feet pricks up his ears. “He misses you. He’s not eating very much, either. I tell you what, if you promise to eat more, then I’ll make Clyde promise to eat more, too.”

“Okay.”

“Have you been reading, or painting?” Darla told Ruby her mother-in-law was “way into” art and had given Lark some canvases and paints.

“Um, some.”

“Do you know how much I love you?”

Lark’s voice sheds a handful of years. “To the moon.”

“And back,” Ruby says. “And back, baby bird.” Before she starts crying herself, she asks Lark to put Darla back on, hears Darla telling Lark to go play in her room.

“I’ve got some other news.” Ruby puts a hand to her throat, not sure of how the words she is about to speak will be received. “The baby…it’s, he’s…”

“He?” Darla says. “It’s a boy?”

“A boy.”

“A boy,” Darla squeals. “A boy, oh boy.” The rest of what she says gushes out with an almost-manic laughter. “Philip is going to flip. In a good way, I mean. Philip…and he’ll be not much younger than my nephew. It’s,
he’s
a boy! I have to call Philip right now.”