5. Ruby
Ruby
"Iwork fourteen-hour days so you can sit on that porch in a house we built.”
How dare he say that!
I was angry then, but as the fight continued, I felt something in me change. The anger disappeared and was replaced with something even worse. A flatness. A calmness I didn’t have before. An emptiness. A feeling like all the color had drained from my world.
I put my mug down carefully in the sink and walked out of the kitchen and headed upstairs. I didn’t want to see him anymore. Not because I was mad, but because of how much I missed him. The old him.
I sat down in the chair in my dressing room and thought about all the times I tried to tell Oscar something only to watch it blow right past him. When did he stop listening to me? I wasn’t sure, but I was tired of not being heard.
And then there was Ocean City.
It wasn’t that he had a project I didn't know about. It was that Oscar usually told me everything. The deal that almost died, the contractor who walked off, the inspector he couldn't stand. Oscar loved talking, and I loved listening to him. So why didn’t he tell me about this one? And if he kept that from me, what else wasn’t he telling me?
I work fourteen-hour days so you can sit on that porch. The sentence repeated in my mind, getting worse each time. As if all I did all day was sit out on the porch. As if the house ran on its own. As if our son had raised himself while I admired the view of the yard.
Our son. Jeremy had no idea how much I missed him. We did so much together. The more I thought about the way things were between Oscar and me, the more I realized I leaned on being a mom to make up for the loss in my marriage.
I walked to the end of my dressing room, and out of habit, knocked on the door to Jeremy’s room before opening it. His room was still the same. He had only been gone a couple of months, and he was already talking about coming home during break.
His favorite sketches were still up on the walls. The ones that were a tribute to his favorite spaces, as well as the ones he created on his own. He already had a good eye, and his sketching was better than mine was at his age.
On his desk were a few framed photos. One of him with his grandparents, one of him with his friends at graduation, and a third, which was my favorite.
The photo was of the two of us at Taliesin West, taken in the spring of his junior year, when we were out west looking at schools. There was no way we were going to be that close to Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home without seeing it, so we made sure to get to Arizona.
We were standing in the desert, both of us grinning like idiots, with the long low lines of the Wright’s home and studio behind us.
I remembered the day as if it was yesterday.
Jeremy linked arms with me, the two of us talking over each other about the pitch of the roof and the way the windows allowed so much natural light.
I wasn’t anyone's accessory that day. I was a person who loved a thing, standing next to another person who loved it too.
The doorbell rang. I put the frame down and checked my watch. Right on time for lunch.
As I opened the front door, Adam held up a leather portfolio. "I brought the plans nobody wants. Figured you should see what they've rejected. It might help."
I made a couple of sandwiches, then we sat at the kitchen table, and he told me about the Ocean City project.
The land had been in one family for generations, but the man who owned it now was getting older, and wasn’t in the best of health.
The property was more than he could keep up.
A national builder had started calling, and they wanted to build a high-rise that would stand out like a sore thumb and block the neighborhood’s view of the ocean.
"The town panicked," Adam said. "Nobody down there wants some out-of-state outfit paving the place over.
So the owner gave them a way out. He'll sell to the town for well under what the big builder's offering, as long as they bring him plans for something they can both live with.
He doesn't want to be the man who sold Ocean City to the highest bidder. "
"And the town came to you."
"Yup, the town came to us. You know how it is, we’re still considered a local builder.
We’re boutique, niche, and our work is quality.
We did two presentations for them, both with slideshows and handouts.
We really thought we knew exactly what they wanted, but they turned them both down.
" He turned the portfolio to face me but left it closed. " I don’t have the design ideas to tell my team what to put there. You know I’m not an architect.
But I knew we hadn’t hit the mark Something was missing. ”
I opened the portfolio and saw the problem right away. There was nothing special about these designs. Even the streets were drawn in a grid pattern instead of having curved roads. I flipped through the sketches and stopped at a modern, open concept floor plan I designed twenty years ago.
“Really?” I said, with a laugh, pointing to it. “It’s not right at all for this.”
“I know, but that’s my point.” He pulled the portfolio to him and flipped to a colorful picture at the back.
“You’ve got to see this, Ruby. There's a carousel on the property.
Almost a hundred years old. Hand-carved horses, the original organ, you get it.
Half that town learned to walk in front of it, the other half got engaged on it.
You can't knock it down and drop in a clubhouse.
They'd be right to throw us out if we tried. "
I didn't answer. In my mind I was already sketching and imagining a quaint walkable village. A carousel that old wasn’t something to push off to the side or try to hide. The key was to build everything around it.
I was just about to get up and grab my sketch pad and share a few quick drawings with Adam, when Oscar came into the room.
"There," he said. "Are you happy now? I'm sure Adam's told you all about it. Can we move on with our day now?"
Adam ignored him. "I spoke to the mayor this morning," he said, continuing to talk to me about the project. "I told him about you, Ruby. I told him how you had nothing to do with the plans he’s seen so far, and that you’ll know what they want. I told him how talented you are and how you see things differently. He’s giving us one more shot, but we only have a month to prepare. "
"Then there's no point wasting any more time on this," Oscar said. "We don't have it, Adam. You see, we never did. Don’t drag her through this for nothing."
"I think she's the key," Adam said. "I think she's what we've been missing. I’m surprised you don’t see that."
Adam turned the portfolio so the picture of the carousel faced me.
“I know you, Ruby. I know as soon as I mentioned this project you were already designing. Don’t listen to him. He’s just being negative. This project needs you. Ocean City needs you.
I was overwhelmed by everything. Adam’s story about Ocean City, the undeveloped property, and Oscar scowling at me from the other end of the kitchen.
Can I do this?
I needed time to think. It was just too much all at once.
I glanced over in Oscar’s direction, and our eyes met, but I couldn’t read him like I used to be able to.
Why was he so against me being involved?
Whatever it was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with it, or him, if this was how he was going to be.
"I'll think about it," I said.
"It’s a waste of time," Oscar muttered, and opened the refrigerator like we were already finished.
Adam stood, gathered his portfolio, and placed it directly in front of me.
"Hold onto this for me. Olivia and I leave on vacation Tuesday.
We'll be gone a week, then I'm in Denver the week after.
" He pushed his chair in. "Do one thing for me while I'm gone, Ruby.
Drive down there. Don't bring a pad or a pencil, don't make it a project.
Just drive down there and look around. I know you'll see something the others didn't. You have the eye for this.”
He hugged me, shook Oscar's hand, and left.
* * *
Hours later, Oscar was acting as if nothing had happened.
It was just like him. He could say the most hurtful things to me and then, less than an hour later, act like everything was fine.
In the past, I let a lot of things slide because I didn’t want to upset anyone.
I never pushed back. I stuffed down my hurt, I ignored my pain, and I didn’t stand up for myself.
The evening was a blur. My mind was still on Ocean City as we arrived at the steakhouse. The waiter brought bread, my Coke, and a glass of pinot noir for Oscar. We sat across from each other in a small, intimate corner of the restaurant in silence.
I looked out at the nearby tables, each with its white tablecloth and curved grey upholstered chairs.
The din of the restaurant was nonstop, making the silence between us even louder.
I couldn’t escape it. Everywhere I looked, there was a happy couple.
A talking couple. A couple holding hands.
A couple leaning in close to each other.
And then there was us.
There was silence. There wasn’t affection. There was nothing. We might as well be two strangers sitting across from each other.
My eyes stung with tears, but I blinked them back.
I thought I was past this.
I sat across from my husband of almost twenty-three years and felt the weight of that silence. It wasn’t anything new, I had felt this way for years. But the past two days had made me see it even more clearly and led me to ask myself the questions I had been avoiding.
Am I happy? Is this what I want for the rest of my life?
No, it wasn’t.
That’s when the solution I had been avoiding popped into my head. No, not divorce. I wanted time. Distance. Space.
Just the thought of it affected me. Instead of all the stress and weight of everything I had been carrying, I felt lighter. Clearer. More in control of my life.
I was tired of the silence, so I decided to change that.
"I want a separation."