9. Ruby
9
RUBY
“Harry Weiss was discharged yesterday.”
I stare at a patch on the hallway carpet and chew my bottom lip. “Thank you,” I mumble into the telephone handset before replacing it on the stand.
So, that’s it. Harry has gone back to New York, and I’ll never see him again. The blizzard of 1987 will fade into a distant memory, ragged around the edges like a worn photograph, and one day, I probably won’t even remember his name.
I wander back into the kitchen on numb legs, going through the motions of this thing called life without the one person in it who gave me a light to follow.
“Where are you going?” Mom eyes up my jeans, jersey sweater, and flannel shirt, like she’s measuring me for a costume.
I switch the kettle on to boil, spoon coffee into a mug, and find the cream in the refrigerator. “Work. You know that thing we both do when we’re out of the house.”
This is how it has been between us since that embarrassing episode in the hospital. I still can’t believe that she threatened Harry and Ronnie if they’d touched me, like I’m some sweet sixteen who has never been kissed. What was she thinking?
I’m not sure that she even knows what she was thinking. She has refused to explain why she behaved the way she did, putting it down to going stir crazy from being snowed in with Dad at home.
I don’t believe a word of it.
My mom can make her own entertainment with a few glossy magazines and lengthy telephone conversations with her friends. She’s the gossip queen—she thrives on gossip—and the only inconvenience the blizzard would’ve caused her was not being able to see her friends in person at the wine bar after work.
Her beef is with Harry Weiss.
He might have been friends with Alessandro Russo, but he doesn’t quite come with the same celebrity status, and my mom has set her sights high. It wouldn’t surprise me if her next target was the prince of some random European microstate—she’s always banging on about Grace Kelly, the actress who bagged herself a prince.
In the eyes of the media, Harry Weiss is an eligible bachelor, a rising star, an entrepreneur destined for greatness. But in the eyes of Celia Jackson, he’s a guy from New York City who has yet to prove himself. And my mom isn’t prepared to wait around.
“We’ve already spoken about this, Ruby.” She eyes up the amount of cream I add to my coffee—about a third of the mug—and purses her glossy red lips. “You can stay home until that man has left town. I’m not having him tracking you down at work.”
“ That man almost died in a car crash.” I add an extra spoonful of sugar. I need it. We’ve been going around in circles for days.
I never told her about the flowers that were delivered to the library. Mrs. Bates took some home and delivered the rest to a nearby nursing home to bring some joy to the residents. All except for some white tulips which are still in a vase in my bedroom; when they die, I’m going to press them and keep them forever. A reminder of Harry and the snow blizzard.
I didn’t tell her about the radio dedication either. Or the local author who came to the library while I was at home with Dad.
I wanted to visit Harry again. I wanted to perch on the edge of his bed and play cards while snacking on chocolate and potato chips. I wanted to laugh at Ronnie when he lied about cheating.
More than anything, though, I wanted to feel Harry’s hands on me. I wanted to kiss him and hear him whisper, “You’re so beautiful, Ruby,” and soak up his warmth beneath the hospital covers.
But I knew I couldn’t. If he found out about my mom’s grand designs to marry me off to someone wealthy, or famous, or preferably both, he’d never believe that I like him for who he is. That I like him because he’s funny, sweet, and kind. That I like him because he’s the only man I’ve ever met who listens to what I have to say.
And I couldn’t bear it if he accused me of being a gold digger.
So, I stayed away. I feel bad because I didn’t even thank him for the romantic gestures, but I told myself it was for the best. I called the hospital every day to check up on his progress and asked the nurse not to tell him that I’d called, and now… Now I’ve lost even that final connection to him.
So, I’m free again.
Only I feel like one of those birds Dad warned me about with their clipped wings. Because this kind of freedom comes with its own gilded cage.
“Oh, sweetie, we’ve already been over this a hundred times.”
More than a hundred, I think as she crosses the room and strokes my cheek.
“You can do so much better than Harry Weiss, and I’m not going to let you throw your life away on a guy you feel sorry for.”
“I don’t feel sorry for him.” I already know I’m wasting my breath. “And what if I don’t want to do better?”
“Trust me, Ruby. You’ll regret it when you’re older and your best days are behind you.”
Jeez, thanks for the advice, Mom.
“Don’t forget to stop off at the grocery store on your way home.” She air-kisses me before she leaves—heaven forbid she should go to work with smudged lipstick.
I go through to the den and sit with my dad, eating toast and strawberry jelly. It doesn’t taste the way it did in the hospital. Nothing will ever taste as good again, because nothing will ever live up to the surreal bubble we were stranded in for those few days.
“Back to work today?”
The left side of Dad’s face droops slightly since his stroke. He has very little appetite and has lost weight, which makes his face look gaunt and his neck scrawny, and he walks with the aid of a cane, but his voice hasn’t changed at all. The voice still belongs to my dad, the man who used to hoist me onto his shoulders when I was little and didn’t want to walk; the man who gave me a patch in the garden to grow my own vegetables; the man who took me to the library every couple of weeks for as long as I can remember and encouraged me to read whatever I wanted.
I wish this hadn’t happened to him. He has so much kindness in his heart, so much to give, and it seems that it wasn’t enough for the universe that swallowed it whole and spat it back in his face.
I flop into an armchair with my legs draped over the arm and try to swallow my toast which has suddenly lost its appeal. “He was discharged yesterday.”
My dad knows all about Harry’s romantic gestures. He doesn’t understand why I haven’t contacted him, and I can’t tell him that Mom has other ideas. He has enough shit going on in his life without discovering that his own wife is looking for a millionaire to pave her future path with golden cobblestones.
“Call him, Ruby. What have you got to lose, eh?”
Tears sting behind my eyes. How can I tell him that I feel as if I’ve already lost everything? I don’t want to sound so ungrateful and melodramatic when my dad can’t even work due to his medical condition.
He can’t even dance now for fuck’s sake. The one thing that made him happy, forever denied to him because his blood stopped flowing to his brain for a few moments one day.
“Long distance relationships are a recipe for disaster.” I turn away from him and wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.
“Sounds like the kind of comment your mom would come out with.” When I face him again, he’s looking at me with a wistful smile on his face. “Don’t ever let anyone else tell you what to think, Ruby. You’re too brilliant for that.”
My dad should’ve had lots of kids. He’s the kind of man who would sit in a rocking chair in front of a log fire when he’s old, reading books to all his grandkids, making them laugh with his funny voices.
Perhaps it’s because Harry’s discharge from the hospital has made it so final, but I blurt out, “He asked me to marry him.”
My dad blinks. “Harry did? What did you say?”
“He was on medication, Dad. He was drugged up to his eyeballs and in pain. He didn’t know what he was saying.”
But I can still hear Harry as clearly as if he is sitting right next to me, saying, “ If I forget… I want you to remind me. Promise me, Ruby .”
“You don’t ask a question like that without knowing exactly what you’re saying.” He pauses. “How did it make you feel?”
“Special?” I shrug. I don’t tell him that Harry proposed again on our last night together in the hospital. “Anyway, it wasn’t real life. He’ll go back to New York and he’ll have forgotten all about me this time next year.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Dad leans closer when I kiss his cheek goodbye, his eyes boring into mine as if he is trying to see right through to my soul.
Alessandro Russo’s funeral is a huge glittering affair—the young actor is as large in death as he was in life. There has been no news of Harry since he left Chicago and returned to New York, and I sit down in the den with my dad one afternoon between walking a Great Dane for a client and my shift at the ice rink, to watch the funeral coverage on TV.
I don’t feel any sense of morbid curiosity for the actor’s family. I can’t even begin to imagine the extent of their grief, and besides, it’s a private thing, even though they agreed to the funeral being televised. I’m simply hoping for a glimpse of Harry.
Kurt Russell is there with Goldie Hawn. I try to picture meeting him in the restaurant with Alessandro the night before he died, and the memory is hazy, like a pencil sketch splashed with water. So much has happened since then that it’s almost as if I pressed the reset button on my life when I walked into the hospital room to see Harry. Everything before is a blur.
“They make a handsome couple,” Dad says, pointing at Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. “That’s a match made in heaven if ever I saw one.”
“You say that about everyone, Dad.”
“Not everyone. See the way they look at each other?” He gestures for me to pay attention with a nod at the TV screen. “That’s the kind of love everyone wants.”
I laugh. “You’ve been watching too many Disney movies while I’m at work. Maybe I’ll start taking you out on dog walks with me. Just with the slow movers.”
“If you’re talking about Peggy the Dachshund, I’m in. I think even I can walk faster than she does.”
I return my attention to the TV. The Russo family arrive in a gauze of black, heads down, escorted directly into the church by bodyguards wearing black suits and black wraparound shades. I recognize Tom Cruise as he enters without stopping to pose for the cameras. It hits home that Alessandro Russo had a starry future ahead of him, cut short by an accident that should never have happened.
Then I spot Harry and Ronnie, both dressed in smart black suits, Harry’s arm in a sling. My pulse races, my heart performs somersaults, and I feel like I’m going to be sick.
What is wrong with me? This is the funeral of the last man I went on a date with, and here I am acting like the heroine from an old historical romance, going weak at the knees over the sight of his friend.
Harry isn’t striking in the way Alessandro was, but there is something about him that makes him stand out on TV as he follows the guests inside the church. Is it the way he carries himself with his head held high and his chin jutting? Or is it those clear blue eyes, even though he didn’t look directly at the camera?
“Was that him?” Dad asks.
I suck in a deep breath and try to hold it in my lungs. “Was it that obvious?”
“Only to me, sweetheart.” He watches me closely. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt to call him and ask how he’s feeling after the funeral.”
I stand up; I’ve seen enough. “Don’t ever apply for a job as a matchmaker, Dad. You’d be terrible at it.”
“Aw, shucks. Just when I thought I was winning.”
Laughing to myself, I go to the kitchen and make hot chocolate—it feels like it’s going to be a long winter even if the thaw is almost complete—and come back with a plate of cookies. Just in time to watch the footage cut to the funeral party leaving the church.
There’s Harry standing beside Ronnie and another guy I vaguely recall from the ice rink, staring straight at the cameras. I freeze, cup of hot chocolate in one hand and cookies in the other. It’s as if Harry can see me watching him, and I instinctively step backwards, trying to avoid his line of vision.
But I don’t move far enough. My eyes are still glued to the screen when a young woman in a short black coat, six-inch heels, and legs that would reach the moon, squashes herself in between him and Ronnie and kisses Harry full on the lips.