Chapter Fifteen #2
She worked the rope, twined the triple strands into a new, stronger whole and began building the eye. “Nora isn’t quite what I expected,” she said, trying to sound casual.
“That’s hardly surprising.”
Ruby experienced a momentary lapse in courage. Shut up, she thought, don’t ask. She drew in a deep breath and looked at her father. “What happened between you two?”
He looked up sharply, eyeing her, then he got to his feet and walked past her to the stern.
Every footfall upset the balance and made a soft, creaking sound.
All at once, he turned back to face her, but she had the weird sensation that he wasn’t really seeing her.
He seemed . . . frozen, or trapped maybe, and she wondered what images were running through his mind. “Dad?”
Now she felt as if he were seeing too much of her. Beyond the skin and the hair, to the very bones. Maybe even deeper. “Are you in for the long haul this time, Ruby?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ah, Rube . . .” He sighed. “You have a way of moving on. I’ve never seen anyone who could shut herself off so easily from the people around her.”
“It isn’t easy.”
He smiled grimly. “You made it look easy. You went off to California and started a new life without any of us . . . but after a while, it was our fault, Caroline’s and mine.
We didn’t call enough . . . or not on the right days .
. . or we didn’t say the right things when we did call.
And you moved farther and farther away. You didn’t come to my wedding or even call when your brother was born or come to see Caroline when she suffered through that terrible labor.
But somehow that was our fault, too. We abandoned you.
Now, you want to stir up an old pot. Will you be here tomorrow or next month or next Christmas to see what comes of it? ”
Ruby wanted to say he was wrong. But she couldn’t. “I don’t know, Dad.” It was all she could manage now; a quiet, simple honesty.
He stared down at her for a long minute, then dropped the rope. “Follow me,” he said at the same time he jumped off the boat and headed up the rickety dock.
He was walking so fast that Ruby had to run to catch up. They hurried down the docks and up the hill. He pushed through the screen door so fast it almost banged Ruby in the face. He didn’t seem to notice.
Ruby stumbled over the threshold. “Jesus, Dad—”
When she looked up, she lost the sentence.
Her father was standing at the kitchen table with a bottle of tequila. He thumped it down hard, then yanked out a chair and sat down.
It was a move that brought back way too many memories. She was surprised by the depth of her reaction. The sight of him holding a bottle of booze shook her to the core. She grabbed the ladderback of the chair. “I thought you’d quit drinking.”
“I did.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Honey, I haven’t begun to scare you. Sit down, snap on your seat belt, and lock your seat in the upright position.”
Ruby pulled the chair out and perched nervously on its edge. Her foot started tapping so hard it sounded like gunfire.
Her dad looked . . . different. She couldn’t have put her finger on exactly how, but the man sitting across from her, with the graying hair and well-worn sweater with its threadbare elbows, wasn’t the man she’d expected.
This man, hunched over, staring at a full bottle of Cuervo Gold, looked as if he hadn’t smiled in years. He looked up suddenly. “I love you. I want you to remember that.”
She heard the tender underbelly of his voice, saw the emotion in his eyes, and it reminded her of exactly how far apart they’d drifted. “I could never forget that.”
“I don’t know. You’re good at forgetting the people who love you.
The story starts in nineteen sixty-seven, just a few years before the whole damn world exploded.
I was at the University of Washington; I’d just finished my senior year, and I was certain I’d get drafted into the NFL.
So certain I never bothered to get a degree.
I barely studied. Hell, they paid someone to take tests for me.
Things were crazy back then. The world was off its axis.
Everyone I knew had been bent or mangled by it.
“And then I met Nora. She was scrawny and scared and looked like she hadn’t slept in a week.
Still, she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.
She believed absolutely that I’d play pro football .
. .” Dad slumped forward a little, thumped his elbows on the table.
“But it didn’t happen. No one called. I walked around in a daze; I couldn’t believe it.
I had no backup plan, no second choice. Then my draft number came up.
I probably could have gotten out of it—said they needed me to run the farm—but I hated this island and I couldn’t imagine how I’d survive here.
” He sighed and leaned back. “But I wanted someone to wait for me, to write me letters. So I went back to Nora, my pretty little waitress at Beth’s Diner in Greenlake, and I asked her to marry me. ”
Ruby frowned. She’d heard this story a thousand times in her childhood and this was definitely not the way it went. “You didn’t love her?”
“Not when I married her. No, that’s not true.
I’d just loved other women more. Anyway, we got married, spent a wonderful honeymoon at Lake Quinalt Lodge, and I shipped out.
Your mom moved into this house with my folks.
By the end of the first week, they were both in love with her.
She was the daughter my parents never had, and she loved this land in a way I never could.
“Her letters kept me alive over there. It’s funny.
I fell in love with your mother when she wasn’t even on the same continent.
I meant to stay in love with her, but I didn’t come home the same cocky, confident kid who’d left.
Vietnam . . . war . . . it did something to us.
” He smiled sadly. “Or maybe not. Maybe the bad seeds were always in me, and war gave them a dark place in which to grow. Anyway, I turned . . . cynical and hard. Your mom tried so hard to put me back together, and for a few years, we were happy. Caroline was born, then you . . .”
Ruby had this bizarre sensation that her whole existence had turned into sand and was streaming through her fingers.
“When I came home, your mom and I moved into the house on Summer. I went to work at the feed store on Orcas. Everyone thought I was a failure. ‘So much promise wasted,’ they whispered to my dad over drinks at Herb’s Tavern.
God, I hated my life.” He looked up suddenly. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
Ruby swallowed convulsively, as if something bitter was backing up in her throat. “Don’t say—”
“I slept with other women.”
“No.”
“Your mom didn’t know at first. I was careful—at least as careful as a drowning man can be. I was drinking a lot by then—God knows that didn’t help—and I knew when she started to suspect. But she always gave me the benefit of the doubt.”
“Oh, God,” Ruby whispered.
“Finally, that summer, someone told her the truth. She confronted me. Unfortunately, I was drunk at the time. I said . . . things . . . it was ugly. The next day, she left.”
Ruby felt as if she were drowning, or falling, and she was desperate for something to cling to. “Oh, my God,” she said again. It was too much; she felt as if she might explode from trying to hold it all inside her.
He leaned toward her, reached for her across the table.
She got up so fast her chair skidded out from underneath her.
He pulled back and slowly got to his feet.
“We’ve all been carrying this baggage for too long.
Some of us have tried to go on.” He looked at her.
“And some of us have refused to. But all of us are hurting. I’m your father; she’s your mother—whatever she’s done or hasn’t done, or said or hasn’t said—she’s a part of you and you’re a part of her.
Don’t you see that you can’t be whole without her? ”
Ruby’s past seemed to be crumbling around her. There was nothing solid to hold on to, no single thing to point to and say There, that’s my truth. “I’m leaving.”
He smiled sadly. “Of course you are.”
“Call Nora. Tell her I’m going to Caroline’s. I’ll be home . . . whenever.”
“I love you, Ruby,” he said. “Please don’t forget that.”
She knew he was waiting for her to say the words back to him, but she couldn’t do it.