12. Ruby
The airplane circles JFK before landing two days later. Ruby has gotten a lot done on Jekyll Island: boxed up the personal items and FedExed them to Shipwreck Key; donated most of the furniture and houseware to charity shops (amidst much joking from Sunday via FaceTime that she should call a museum to see if they want the rotary phone, the console television, or the plastic-covered dining chairs); and had a realtor come by to do an initial walk-through. She feels good about closing the book on that chapter of her mother”s life on Jekyll, and someday--who knows when--she might feel like poring through more of the films and photo albums, or even reading the letters from Bradley to her mother.
She and Banks find their luggage and meet their car at the curb outside the busy airport. Ruby has on sunglasses and a hat, as she feels oddly more exposed in a giant city like New York than she does in a tiny enclave like Jekyll Island. Maybe it”s the crush of humanity or the chance that the paparazzi lurks around every corner, but something about a big city makes her want to hide herself away.
”I”m not wasting any time while I”m here,” Ruby says to Banks in the back of the Mercedes they”re riding in. ”I set up a meeting with Carmela Rivera at four o”clock, so that gives us just enough time to check into the hotel, shower, and meet back downstairs. Unless you”d rather sit this one out.” Ruby is looking through the emails on her iPhone distractedly.
Banks makes a hmph of disbelief. ”Not likely,” he says. ”I”ll be in the lobby waiting for you.”
Sure enough, when Ruby emerges from the hotel elevator into the lobby at three-thirty, Banks is sitting on a couch looking freshly shaven and wearing pressed pants and a long-sleeved shirt. He stands.
”Ready?”
Ruby isn”t sure that she is ready, to be perfectly honest, but she”s committed to unraveling the story of her mother”s life at this point. Frankly, after everything she learned from Ellen in Seattle about the car accident in the late 60s, and then all that she discovered on Jekyll Island, she feels fairly confident that there isn”t too much left that could shock her.
Carmela Rivera is clearly waiting for her when she arrives at the apartment on Riverside Drive. Ruby is gobsmacked by the opulence of the lobby, with its shiny marble floors and polished fixtures. A huge, crystal chandelier hangs over the center of the grand foyer, and three uniformed doormen bustle about with smiles on their faces.
Banks nods at a spot on a bench and Ruby understands that he’ll be there waiting for her while she meets with Carmela.
Carmela opens the door to apartment 12B almost the second that Ruby knocks, and it”s clear that she”s just as nervous as Ruby is feeling.
”Come in,” Carmela says, waving to a mostly cream and white colored living space that is lit by giant windows looking out onto the blue sky of a perfect autumn afternoon.
Ruby slips off her shoes without being asked and follows Carmela to a plush couch.
”Please, sit,” Carmela says unnecessarily. ”Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”
”Actually, water would be wonderful,” Ruby says. She”s had her fill of coffee on the airplane and in her hotel room as she showered and changed, and any more caffeine will only give her the jitters. She waits as Carmela walks over to an open concept kitchen area and pulls two plastic bottles of water from a stainless steel refrigerator.
Carmela returns with the bottle of water and a glass; she sets both on the coffee table before Ruby.
”Just the bottle is fine,” Ruby says with a smile, hoping to disarm her. ”No need to stand on ceremony.” She twists off the cap and takes a long, grateful pull from the water bottle.
”I hope your trip has been good so far,” Carmela says. She has the slightest accent to her words, and Ruby admires the silky way her dark hair falls over her shoulders. Carmela has honeyed skin and lightly applied makeup, and that, combined with her simple, refined style, makes her look like she”s just gotten home from a high-powered job and is ready to pour a glass of wine and put her feet up. But Ruby knows enough about people not to make assumptions.
”The trip has been interesting,” Ruby says. ”My mother owned a home on Jekyll Island in Georgia that I”d never seen, so I went there first to assess that property, then came directly to you.”
Carmela nods and pulls her feet up under her, spreading her loose skirt around her legs as she does. ”I”m glad you could make it, and I”m guessing you have a lot of questions.”
Ruby looks around the apartment. She doesn”t know a ton about the New York real estate market, but a large, light-filled, clean apartment on Riverside Drive with doormen and a fancy lobby could only mean one thing: a huge price tag.
”I have some questions, yes,” Ruby admits, nodding slowly as she recaps her water bottle. ”But I guess I”d rather just listen first. I have no idea how you and my mother even know each other, or--and forgive me for sounding blunt here--why on earth she would have left you a piece of real estate like this. So please, tell me how you met. I want to know anything you can tell me.”
Carmela smiles and looks like she”s about to start speaking when the door to the apartment flies open and three young kids spill into the front room.
”Mom! Mom!” a girl with two long braids says. ”You won”t believe what I--” She stops speaking as she realizes that her mother isn”t alone. ”Oh,” the girl says, her smile faltering slightly. ”Hi. Are you the lady?”
”The First Lady, you dingdong,” a boy says, reaching over and tugging on his sister”s braid. ”She”s only eight,” he says to Ruby, as if to explain.
Ruby smiles at them all and stands up. She knows enough about kids to understand that they want and deserve to be acknowledged just like any adult would. ”I”m Ruby Hudson,” she says, folding her hands in front of her.
”I”m Marcos,” the boy who has spoken says, stepping forward. ”And I”m twelve. Valeria is eight, and this is Felix. He”s ten.” Felix has said nothing and appears to be refusing to make eye contact with Ruby.
Undaunted, she looks at each of them in turn. ”It”s nice to meet you Marcos, Valeria, and Felix. I wanted to come and meet you all and talk to your mom for a bit, if that”s okay.”
”Of course it is,” Carmela says quickly, standing up. She slips the straps of Felix”s backpack from his shoulders and turns to Marcos. ”Can you get the snacks I left in the fridge for you three and go do your homework in your room? Help your brother and sister, okay?”
Marcos nods and takes Felix by the arm, tugging him lightly towards the bedrooms.
”Felix is autistic,” Carmela says quietly, sitting back on the couch. ”He is nonverbal and I rely far too much on Marcos and Valeria to help me with him.” She puts both hands up and shakes her head. ”I know I do.”
”Your children are beautiful,” Ruby says sincerely. ”And you can see how much they love one another. That”s a credit to your good mothering.”
Tears spring into Carmela”s eyes as she absorbs the words that every mother on the planet longs to hear: that she”s a good mother. “Thank you,” she says, looking down at her hands in her lap.
“Is it just you and the kids?” Ruby prompts, trying a different angle to get Carmela to keep talking.
Carmela nods. “Yes. I was married once, but it didn’t work out. We had Valeria right before Felix started to show signs of autism, and I think having a four-year-old, a two-year-old with special needs, and a newborn was too much for him. He left.”
Ruby shakes her head; it never ceases to amaze her that some men can simply shed their responsibilities like an old layer of skin that they no longer need, while women are left holding the bag. Over and over and over. Wash, rinse, repeat.
“I’m so sorry,” Ruby says.
“I survived because of your mother.” Carmela stands then and walks over to a tall shelf that lines one wall. On it are a variety of books, from children’s picture books to paperback novels and hardcovers, and there are framed photos interspersed with knickknacks. Carmela leans one elbow on a shelf as she faces the windows, looking out at the Hudson River that winds past.
Once again, Ruby is amazed at the view and the location of this apartment. She cannot fathom how her mother acquired this many pieces of real estate that Ruby knew nothing about, but at the moment, she’s more interested to hear how Patty and Carmela crossed paths.
“We met at a fundraiser for single mothers here in New York,” Carmela says, sounding faraway. “I had taken a position with an event planning company, and it was my job to work with the committee to put together the luncheon. Patty was on the board of directors?—“
“She was?” Ruby frowns.
Carmela nods and goes on. “She was my contact person with whom to discuss table linens, place settings, and the timing of the event. We met for coffee at a little shop in Brooklyn, which is where I lived at the time, and we hit it off immediately.”
A half smile tugs at the corner of Ruby’s mouth. One of Patty’s charms had always been the way she could meet someone and instantly make them a friend—Ruby had seen her do it her entire life.
Carmela turns away from the window and walks back to the couch, sitting on it again with one knee pulled under her and the other foot flat on the floor. She rests her arm on the back of the couch so that she’s facing Ruby. “We talked for hours. She told me about becoming a single mother when your father died, and about how she’d been a single mother before that, when she had a baby with a man who was sent to Vietnam.”
Ruby’s blood runs cold and she can feel her face change. “She told you about that?”
Carmela, totally innocent, nods. There’s no way for this woman to know that she holds information about Patty that Ruby herself has only had for a few days. “She did. And we had a lot of common ground because of it. Raising small children alone can be a traumatic experience, but she said she had the help of the baby’s grandparents, which changed her life. I had no one at the time. My parents were both ill and in Puerto Rico, and my ex-husband’s parents were never that involved with our kids. I have no siblings here. No one. I was working well over forty hours a week and paying for childcare, and some days I wasn’t sure I could get up and do it all again.”
Ruby is nodding and listening intently, but she does not interrupt.
“I think Patty could see on my face just how exhausted I was, so we quickly chose a bunch of things for the banquet,” Carmela stops here and laughs at the memory. “She said, ‘Hand me that binder,’ and I did. In less than five minutes, she’d chosen tablecloths, dishes, flatware, stemware, and laid out the timetable for the meal. Bing, bang, boom—done.”
Now Ruby laughs. “That was one of her signature phrases: ‘Bing, bang, boom—done.’ She’d say it whenever we needed to plow through something and move on.”
“Exactly. And she never second-guessed her decisions, which I admired. We chose everything, she closed the binder, and then she said, ‘Now, tell me about you.’ And we talked for three hours.” Carmela bites on her lower lip, and the sound of her children’s laughter floats out from a bedroom down the hall. Her face softens as she hears them. “I never felt like she saw me as a charity case, to be perfectly honest. It was just like I suddenly had the mother I’d always needed. Someone present, competent, and caring. Patty listened. Whenever she came to town she’d get a giant hotel suite, invite me and the kids, and we’d take them to the hotel pool and run around town like tourists. I’d get a bed to myself—which I did not have at the time, as I was sleeping with both Felix and a tiny baby—and she’d take care of the kids. It was amazing.”
Ruby is completely silenced by all of this. Stunned. She can’t even imagine it. And yet, she can totally imagine it. She’d done the very same thing with a newborn: fled into the arms of her mother, who was there and willing to help. When postpartum depression had stung her like an angry nest of wasps, she’d fallen into Patty’s open arms and counted on her to act as a buffer between Ruby and the world—and she had.
“I believe that a part of her always wanted to be the kind of rock for someone else that her boyfriend’s parents were for her when she got pregnant and moved down to Jekyll Island,” Carmela says. She casts her eyes out the window at the late afternoon. The sun is quickly falling, and the crisp blue sky is fading to evening. “But she never did anything in a way that screamed ‘This is for charity!’ It was more like she had it in her heart to give back. To be there for people the way others had been there for her.”
Ruby nods; this sounds exactly like her mother, though she’d had no idea the extent to which Patty had been there for anyone other than her. Maybe that’s the curse of all children—even adult ones: to believe that you and you alone are the center of your mother’s universe. To think that she will always be there to make your life easier, and that the maternal love and care that she aims at you is only meant for you. Ruby can see now that her mother had far more to give than was needed by her only child, and that all of that love had been spread around to other people who’d needed it.
“I’m finding out a lot about her on this journey,” Ruby says. She swipes both hands over her cheeks, brushing away tears that have started to fall. “Things I had no idea about. I kind of feel like the loss of my mother has been compounded by the knowledge that she was far more than I ever knew her to be.”
Carmela nods sagely. “I think everyone is far more than we know them to be.” She reaches over on the couch and pats Ruby’s knee as she smiles at her. “Even you.”
This gets Ruby’s attention and she lifts one eyebrow. “Even me?”
“Yeah,” Carmela says, pulling her hand away from Ruby’s leg. “I mean, forgive me for saying so, but you were the First Lady and we all felt like we had the right to watch you, judge what you wore and how you acted…and then after the President’s death, we realized that you were this whole person on your own.” Carmela makes a face at her own choice of words. “I’m sorry. That sounds bad and very anti-feminist.”
“No, not at all. I actually know what you mean.”
“I hope so. Because what I’m really trying to say is that we see people in one light, and then something happens and we realize that there’s more depth, more gravity, to them than we ever understood.”
Ruby chews on the inside of her cheek as she listens. This has been true for so many people she’s known, and of course the same holds true for her own mother—how could it not? “Right,” she says, tipping her head to one side. “Naturally. We never get the full view of people when they’re looking us in the eye. It’s only when they turn in profile or walk away that we see them for who they are, and we can observe them in every light.”
Carmela gives a nearly imperceptible shrug as she watches Ruby with sympathy. “I’m sorry that it’s only as your mother is walking away that you’re seeing her in this light, because it’s a good one. She was someone who did so much for others, and she was a godsend to me and my children.”
“I’m seeing that now,” Ruby says. She looks around the apartment again. “I just wish I’d known about it…about you.”
“Hey,” Carmela says. She smiles widely to break the mood. “How about if you and I meet tomorrow morning and I take you to the kids’ school. I want you to see how well they’re doing, and how much your mother has helped them. We can drop by my office, because that’s all thanks to your mother as well.”
Ruby takes a long, deep breath and nods. “Yes,” she says. “Absolutely. I want to see everything. I want to know all the things my mother touched, and to visit the school. One hundred percent.” It’s her turn to reach over and touch Carmela on the arm. “But if you’ll forgive me, I think I’m going to head back to my hotel for the evening and rest. Maybe process this a bit more. I’m excited to meet up tomorrow though.”
Carmela stands. “Of course,” she says. “I can imagine that every bit of this is overwhelming for you. Losing Patty has been hard for all of us, but you’re her daughter, Ruby. That’s a whole different relationship.”
Ruby follows her to the door and impulsively hugs her. “Thank you for inviting me into your home and introducing me to the kids.”
“You’ll see them again tomorrow,” Carmela assures her. “They loved your mom and called her abuelita,” she says. “The kids miss her terribly.”
“Thank you,” Ruby says. She’s fighting tears again, so she turns to go.
“I’ll text you a time and address, and I’ll see you in the morning,” Carmela says, watching Ruby walk to the elevator.
Downstairs, Ruby emerges to find Banks sitting on the same bench where she left him. His back is to a wall, and he looks like he’s observing people nonchalantly, though she knows him well enough to know that he’s taking in every single thing that happens in the lobby of the building.
“Ready?” he asks, standing as she crosses the marble floor.
Ruby nods. “On to the next order of business,” she says crisply. “And this part I can handle on my own.”
Banks looks at her quizzically. “You’re saying you don’t need me?”
But Ruby is already walking to the door, the heels of her boots clicking against the marble. “Not for this,” she says over one shoulder. “But you can drop me off.”
“Where?”
Ruby pauses as the doorman opens the glass door with great ceremony. She looks up at Banks and smiles tiredly. “Dexter’s apartment.”