7. Ruby
Jekyll island isn’t much different than Florida in terms of its topography. Ruby arrives there around three o’clock with Banks in tow, and as they settle into their rooms at the Jekyll Island Club Resort, she stands on a small balcony and looks out at the green lawn and trees beyond.
She’d felt pensive throughout the journey, uncertain what she’d find here. What ties could her mother have had to an island off the coast of Georgia? What might have driven her to buy a home here? Ruby leans forward onto the railing of her third floor room and scans the horizon. Autumn is in the air, and even an hour north of Jacksonville, she feels like she’s starting to leave the tropical humidity of Florida behind.
The phone rings in Ruby’s hotel room and she turns around to see the light blinking on the bedside table.
“Ruby?” Banks says when she answers. “You hungry?”
Ruby smiles as she cradles the receiver between her ear and shoulder. Banks, her Secret Service agent, has melted into daily life on Shipwreck Key, establishing his own routines and falling in love with Sunday, and since they’ve gotten the lay of the land down there, he’s essentially become more of a neighbor than a bodyguard, and Ruby prefers it like that. But there was no way Banks was going to sit out a trip where Ruby travels all around the country to meet up with unknown people and, potentially, unforeseen dangers.
“I could eat,” Ruby says, rubbing the soles of her bare feet across the vacuumed rug that covers most of the hardwood floors. She’s in a suite with a sitting room, two giant queen-sized beds covered in crisp white duvets, and white crown molding around the ceiling. The balcony faces a lush, beautiful reserve, and to be perfectly honest, she’d be just as happy ordering room service and staying in her cozy suite for the evening. But she and Banks have begun to forge a friendship of sorts—even more so now that he’s dating her best friend—and so she won’t turn down an invitation to dine together from a man who had, until fairly recently, kept their interactions to about ten words a day.
“Great,” Banks says. Ruby can hear the relief in his voice. No doubt he’d offered and then second-guessed the wisdom of them sitting in the hotel restaurant together as if they were on a date.
“Meet you in the lobby in twenty minutes?”
“I’ll be there.”
The grand dining room has white pillars running the length of it, and servers dressed in white aprons and black bowties. There are giant fans hanging from the ceiling, turning slowly to keep the air moving as well-dressed middle aged couples sip sidecars and martinis and look out at the green lawn. The women all look like ads for Chico’s and the men are tanned and dressed like they’ve just stumbled in off the golf course.
“So,” Banks says as they take the menus that their waiter offers. “What’s the game plan?”
Ruby orders a glass of champagne and Banks sticks with water, given the fact that he’s “on duty,” as he reminds her. Ruby sits back in the upholstered chair and surveys the room.
“I need to see this house. I have the address, and I know my mother owned it outright. Now I need to find out why. And decide what to do with it.”
“Maybe she just liked it here,” Banks offers.
“It’s pretty,” Ruby says with a shrug, her eyes trailing an elegant older woman in a chiffon dress as she swishes through the dining room like she’s on a Paris runway. “But I don’t understand why she wouldn’t have told me about it. In my entire life, I don’t remember her saying a word about Jekyll Island. Nothing.”
Banks takes a long drink of his water, which has a thin slice of lemon floating in it. The waiter sets Ruby’s champagne on the table and disappears without taking their order yet.
“Do you think she kept this place to meet with someone?” Banks suggests.
“Like a lover?” Ruby splutters. “No. A secret love nest? Definitely no.” She shakes her head. “The thing about Patty was that while she loved widely and prolifically, she did it all out in the open. I pretty much always knew who she was dating, as did everyone else.”
“I heard she dated Harrison Ford,” Banks says. It’s uncharacteristic of him to be talking this much and to be the one dishing the gossip.
“She did,” Ruby confirms. “And my friends and I were wildly impressed, because it was at the height of his Indiana Jones fame.”
“But no top secret Hollywood love affairs? Anyone she would have needed to keep under wraps?”
Ruby shakes her head slowly as she chews on the inside of one cheek. “No, that would shock me. Truly. She was clear about the fact that she never wanted to get married again after my dad died, but she never once pretended that she was living some solitary life or that she needed to be ashamed of her many suitors.”
“Okay, then maybe we can rule that one out,” Banks says.
“I’ll entertain anything in the brainstorming phase, but what I really want are the answers.”
“Then let’s eat and maybe take a trip over to the house and look at it this evening.”
Ruby’s eyes brighten. “Yeah? You’d be up for that?”
“I’m up for anything that you’re up for, boss.”
Ruby chuckles. “It’s been a while since we were in this formal position with one another. I almost forgot how to do it.”
Banks motions for their waiter. “You’ll get used to it again,” he says, his eyes skimming the room like the Secret Service agent that he is. “It’s like riding a bike.”
The house—a small, avocado green bungalow near the water—looks deserted. The grass is about six inches taller than it should be, and the windows are dark and blank. It’s clear that someone has neglected the little house, and also that no one has been there in a while.
Ruby picks her way across the cement pavers that are nearly covered by the tangle of grass. There are multiple flyers of various sizes and colors shoved in between the screen door and the front door, and when she pulls the handle, an avalanche of paper falls at her feet. Ruby bends forward and picks it all up. There are pamphlets offering pizza delivery, lawn care services, assistance with finding Jesus, and handwritten reminders that Kayla lives on this street and is available for babysitting jobs.
The key that Alan Berkshire had included in the envelope full of information he’d handed to Ruby on her way out of his office fit into the rusty lock. Ruby can feel the grit of the rust as she slips it in and turns it, pushing the door with her shoulder to open it. There’s a sticky feel to the way it fits into the doorjamb, but it opens with a whoosh, and Ruby nearly stumbles as she steps right into a linoleum tiled entryway.
“Here, let me,” Banks says gruffly, touching Ruby’s arm to let her know that he wants to do a first sweep of the house.
It’s stuffy inside, and Ruby stands there by the door, the cool autumn air at her back, and the musty smell of a house that’s been closed up for far too long in front of her.
“Three bedrooms,” Banks calls out from down the hallway. “Two baths. Everything looks like a time machine took us back to 1973.”
“Can I look around?” Ruby calls, though she’s already doing just that. The front room has a velvety couch in a bright gold color with teal blue throw pillows, and a large console television set sits on the floor across from it. There are beach scene paintings on the wall above the TV, and a lamp with a base made of sea glass sits on a dark wooden end table. A TV Guide dated January 1989 sits next to a coaster on the coffee table. “1989?” Ruby says to herself with a frown.
“Wow,” Banks says from the other room. “This kitchen. I feel like I’m in my childhood home. Ruby, you gotta see this.”
Ruby walks through a dining room with a long table and six matching chairs and then stops short. The kitchen is filled with appliances in the same avocado green as the house’s exterior, and the walls are papered in a floral pattern of orange, gold, and that same shade of green. A bright yellow phone is affixed to the wall, its cord long and coiled. Ruby picks it up, expecting to hear the familiar sound of a dial tone, but it’s just dead air. She hangs it up again.
“What is this place?” she mutters to herself. Banks stands at the sink, his back to a small window that looks out onto a sandy yard. He’s watching her. On the center of the round kitchen table is a bowl—ostensibly for fruit—but in it is a pile of unopened mail. Ruby picks up the first few envelopes and shuffles through them: Evelyn Huberman. Jacob Huberman. Patricia Dallarosa. “Who are these people, and why is my mother getting mail here?”
Ruby knows that mail meant for her mother can only legally be opened by the executor of the will, but at this point she figures no one is watching, so she sets down the envelopes addressed to the Hubermans and slides a finger under the flap of the one addressed to Patty. It’s a notice from the homeowners insurance company, letting her know that a recent hurricane has raised the annual rates for insurance on the island, and it’s dated three years ago.
Ruby drops the mail on the table and moves around the kitchen like a ghost, stopping to look at the photos affixed to the refrigerator with magnets. There is an older couple standing on the beach, pant legs rolled up to their knees, feet submerged in the water as they hold onto one another and grin at the camera. There is one of a little girl sitting in a high chair, her face covered in chocolate, two teeth visible as she smiles and holds up her small, chocolate-covered hands.
There are school photos of various kids that look like they’ve been attached to the front of the fridge since the 70s and 80s, and there’s a postcard from Seattle with the Space Needle on the front. Ruby pulls the magnet off and takes the postcard off the refrigerator, flipping it over.
Evelyn and Jacob?—
We’re thinking of you right now, just as we know you’re thinking of us. These are hard times, and our families have been brought together by both love and pain. We’re so grateful for all that you’ve done. Please visit soon?—
Margaret and Eugene
It’s postmarked June 11, 1971.
Ruby turns around slowly, holding the postcard by its edge like it’s a rare and valuable piece of art and her fingerprints might smudge it. “This is a postcard from my grandparents,” she says to Banks. “Who in the hell are these people?” She suddenly feels like she’s underwater and needs to sit down, but before she can find a chair, Banks crosses the small kitchen, puts one arm around Ruby’s waist and the other beneath her elbow, and sits her on a chair.
“Let’s open a few windows,” he says. As he leans over the sink and frees the latch that keeps the window locked, Ruby can see the patches of sweat in his armpits. It’s hot in the little house, and the ocean air immediately wafts in, cooling things off and reviving Ruby so that she can breathe again.
“Thank you,” she says, setting the postcard on the table gingerly. She stares at it like it might be radioactive. “I’m really confused.”
Banks leans against the counter and folds his arms over his chest. He’s frowning. “You alright?”
Ruby nods slowly. “I feel like I walked through a portal into another world.”
“One where Carol Brady might pop into the kitchen at any moment,” Banks says wryly, looking at the fake wood grain of an old-fashioned looking microwave with dials rather than buttons.
“The decor leaves something to be desired,” Ruby agrees, pushing herself up by placing both hands on the edge of the table. “But if this place truly belonged to my mother, then why didn’t she change any of it? This isn’t cool mid-century modern. It’s more like someone went to prison in the 70s and the house has been untouched for forty years.”
“Fifty,” Banks says.
“God, we’re old,” Ruby says, giving a long, slow blink as she shakes her head.
“We’re Formica counters old,” Banks says, glancing at the hideous gold and green swirl of the countertop.
“We’re fake plants in macramé hangers old,” Ruby says, tapping a fake jade plant that hangs over the sink.
Banks follows her as she walks into the dining room. “We’re plastic covers over furniture old,” he adds as they pause at a table that looks like it’s made from particle board and is surrounded by upholstered dining chairs slipcovered in clear plastic.
Ruby gives a shudder. “This house,” she says.
“Yeah.” Banks glances around at the curio cabinet filled with Precious Moments figurines and floral patterned china. “But I think that there might be more here than meets the eye.”
“I hope so. Because right now all I’m seeing is several loads of crap that needs to go to Goodwill.”
Banks trails Ruby at a distance as she pokes her head into each of the bedrooms, where she clocks the decor: floral bedspreads with matching curtains; thick shag carpets in jewel-toned colors like citron and peridot; cheap wood dressers with doilies on top and clocks whose arms stopped sweeping across their faces eons ago.
But the last bedroom door in the hallway opens into a nursery. It’s painted white and the carpet is a faded pink shag. The small toddler bed is pushed up against the wall and covered with a pink tufted spread, and there is a white shelf filled with teddy bears, dolls, and a Raggedy Ann whose red yarn head is tipped to one side quizzically.
Ruby says nothing, but takes a tentative step into the room. Banks stays in the hallway. Inside the small room that had clearly belonged to a little girl, Ruby runs a hand over the top of a dusty dresser. On it is a framed photo that she picks up cautiously, looking around the room as she does. The picture is of the same toddler from the photo on the fridge, only this time she’s not covered in chocolate and strapped into a high chair. In this image, she’s standing barefoot on the sand between two long female legs, holding the hands of a woman who is bent over and laughing. Ruby can tell from the trusting look on the toddler’s face that she’s being held by the loving hands of her mother.
She skims the image, trying to decipher the face of the woman that’s hidden behind a curtain of shiny auburn hair, but all she can make out is the length of the nose and the curve of the lips as the woman smiles down at her baby. In the end, it’s not the face that helps her understand the identity of this young mother, but the gold bracelet that hugs the woman’s wrist. It’s made of two gold ropes that are twisted together, and in the center of the bracelet is a gold anchor.
Ruby knows this bracelet. She knows as sure as she knows the sun will rise tomorrow that if she took a magnifying glass to the picture, she’d see a small Ruby sparkling at the center of the anchor.
She also knows that if she could sweep aside that long, hanging hair to reveal more of the face that this woman smiling down at the baby girl would be Patty—her own mother. Ruby also knows that the little towheaded girl in the photo is not her. She has no idea who the child is.
The room swims around her and the stuffiness of the house hits her like a wave of heat.
“Banks,” Ruby says, setting the framed photo back on top of the dusty dresser as she grips its edge, searching for her balance, which she seems to have misplaced. “Banks, I think I’m going to?—“
The room goes black.