17. Ruby
The memory care unit at Fair Skies Village is locked and guarded. Ruby stands at the counter with her ID in hand, ready to sign in and be searched.
“Ma’am,” the middle-aged woman behind the desk says to her, waving her over. The desk attendant leans on the counter conspiratorially, her ample breasts held tightly beneath a white nurse-like uniform. “You can come with me,” she whispers in the overly solicitous manner that Ruby was accustomed to hearing as First Lady.
The doors emit a loud buzz and click as they swing open, and Ruby and Banks meet the woman, who has come out of the office area that is the front desk.
“Are you here for a meeting? A tour?” The woman’s eyebrows lift as she lets her gaze trail over Banks’s tall, imposing, muscular figure. There is no question that he is Secret Service; there almost never is.
Ruby takes out her phone and glances at her calendar. “I’m supposed to meet Zoey and Theodore Westover here at ten o’clock,” she says. “We’re here to see Lyle Westover.”
“Ah, Mr. Westover,” the woman says, folding her hands over her rounded stomach. “Let me take you to a meeting room, and I’ll bring his kids back as soon as they arrive.”
Ruby and Banks are deposited in an oatmeal-colored room with plush chairs, and the woman—whose name tag says Tonya—brings them each a coffee with cream and sugar. “I’m sure they’ll be here in a jiff,” she says, smiling as she backs out of the room. “Just let me know if you need anything at all while you wait.”
Ruby thanks her and blows on the hot coffee. “So,” she says to Banks. “This place is nice.”
“Nicer than some facilities,” he agrees mildly. “Looks clean. Secure.”
It’s small talk, but Ruby is grateful for it as she sits there waiting for Zoey and Theodore to arrive.
“Sorry we’re late,” Zoey says, appearing in the doorway. She looks harried, and Theodore materializes behind his sister. “Hi,” he says, lifting a hand awkwardly.
Banks stands and steps out of the way, leaving Ruby to shake hands and make introductions with the newcomers.
“We had to make a trip across town to the facility where our mother lives,” Zoey explains, pushing a few stray hairs behind her ears. “She had a fall yesterday, and they were worried she might have hit her head.”
“Oh, no,” Ruby says. She puts a hand over her heart. “I hope she’s okay.” As she says this, she mentally does the math: the mother of Lyle Westover’s children, who are in their forties, is also in a facility. Could they or would they have been married when her mother and Lyle went to that vineyard together in 1988?
“She’s alright, thank you,” Theodore says. He has his hands stuffed into the pockets of his khaki pants, and he’s looking at the tile floor beneath their feet. “CT scan checked out, and she doesn’t appear to have a brain bleed.”
“It’s kind of like putting out one fire only to have another one crop up when you have two elderly parents in need of care,” Zoey says. “I’m sorry—you probably already know this from personal experience,” she adds. Ruby notices lines around Zoey’s eyes that make her look tired and stressed.
“Actually, my dad died when I was eleven,” Ruby says. “And my mother, as you know, just passed. And she never needed any type of care until the very end of her illness.”
“We’re so, so sorry about Patty’s passing,” Theodore says, slinging an arm around his sister’s shoulders. It’s a move that makes them look much younger than they are; like two teenage kids bonded together in the face of adversity.
“Thank you,” Ruby says. She picks up her purse off the chair. “I’d love to hear more about how well you knew my mother, and…I guess more about how she and your father fit together.”
Zoey tips her head to one side. “How about if we go and meet Dad?”
Ruby nods. This is what she’s been waiting for, though they are currently in a memory care facility, so she doesn’t hold out much hope for an interaction with Lyle Westover that will shed a lot of light on his relationship with her mother.
Banks stays in the small meeting room with a stack of outdated, well-thumbed magazines and the cup of coffee he’d gotten from Tonya the nurse/greeter, and Ruby follows Zoey and Theodore through the shiny floored, clean hallways. They stop at a door that says Lyle W. on a sign and Zoey knocks lightly.
“Dad?” she calls out, knocking again. “Can we come in?”
There is no answer, so she cracks the door slightly and peers into the room. Over her head, Ruby can see that the windows are large and let in a flood of light. Beyond the windows, Fair Skies Village stretches out in the distance: rich green lawn, stout palm trees, and a few cacti for good measure. A man driving a golf cart lifts a hand at a gardener in greeting and then drives out of view.
Zoey has stepped into the room so Ruby follows, standing off to one side. Lyle Westover is in a hospital bed, gray hair combed to one side, reading glasses perched on his nose. He has a newspaper open on his lap.
“Hi, Dad,” Zoey says, approaching him carefully. In Zoey’s cautious moves, Ruby intuits that there have been times when perhaps Lyle Westover hadn’t recognized his own children. “How are you?” Zoey asks, putting her hands on the guardrail of the bed and leaning slightly towards him. There is a reading lamp turned on next to Lyle.
“Hi, Zo,” he says, looking up at her with surprise and wonder. It’s as if he’d forgotten that his daughter lived within driving distance, or even that he’d seen her recently. He takes off his reading glasses and looks at the door. “Theo, you’re here too?”
“Hey, Pops,” Theodore says, waving at his dad the same way he’d waved at Ruby in the meeting room. He looks slightly ill-at-ease, but again, sort of young and as if he’d rather be somewhere else.
Lyle’s eyes land on Ruby. “Do my eyes deceive me, or is my newest nurse actually the First Lady?” He frowns and smiles at the same time. “What a lucky man I am.”
Ruby steps forward. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Westover.” She offers him her hand. “I’m Ruby Hudson.”
“Of course you are,” he says, taking her hand in both of his and holding it. “Your mother and I go back years. Decades. A lifetime.”
Ruby leaves her hand in his as she smiles at him. So far Lyle Westover seems to be totally lucid and able to discern both his surroundings and who is in the room. This gives her hope that maybe he’ll be able to tell her more about Patty.
“I’ve heard that,” Ruby says with a smile. “I’ve come to meet you, and to find out more about your friendship with my mother.”
Lyle laughs heartily. “Friendship,” he scoffs. “It was so much more than that.”
So it’s exactly what Ruby had imagined. She works to keep the smile on her face, worried that Zoey or Theodore might see her falter and think that she disapproves of her mother having loved their father. In truth, it’s really none of her business what these two adults chose to do nearly forty years ago, but she does feel some small blush of shame on her mother’s part if she’s about to find out that Patty had carried on a torrid affair with a married father of two.
Without being asked, Ruby sinks into the chair next to Lyle’s bed.
“We could step out if you like,” Zoey offers, hooking a thumb towards the door. Theodore looks thrilled at having been offered an escape from this potentially awkward scenario. “Theo and I can go grab a cup of coffee while you two talk.”
“Off you go,” Lyle says, waving a large, square hand dismissively. His fingers are slightly knotted from arthritis, and there are visible veins running from his knuckles to his elbows. “Go get your coffee, kids.”
Ruby smothers a smile at the indulgent way that Lyle speaks to his fully grown children, and she settles into the seat, slipping off her coat and hanging it over the arm of her chair.
“So,” Ruby says, smiling at Lyle as she clasps her hands in her lap. Once again, Patty has made her intentions clear in her will and it would be expensive and difficult to try to argue against them, but Ruby gets the same feeling she had upon meeting Carmela that there is some sense of her needing to approve of the financial support Patty is giving. “I have a photo of you and my mother, and I’d love to show it to you.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out the photograph, which she sets on top of Lyle’s blanket so that he can pick it up and examine it.
“Oh,” he says, his eyes looking faraway. “I remember this day like it was yesterday. There was live music—some unknown group was playing ‘Abracadabra’ by the Steve Miller Band—and a huge pot of lobster cooking on an open fire. Patty wore this long,” he pauses, trying to simulate something with his hands, “wrap dress thing. It opened over one thigh, and she drank Prosecco all night.”
This level of detail is amazing to Ruby, and although Zoey has warned her in a long email that Lyle is suffering from Parkinson’s, he is completely laser-focused at the moment, and he’s even speaking clearly, which Zoey warned her might not happen.
“Was this a work function, or…a date?”
Lyle lets the hand holding the picture fall to his lap and he looks over at her. “A date? Me and Patty?” He frowns, confused. “No. No. It wasn’t.”
Mr. Westover turns his head to the giant windows and looks out at the blue afternoon sky, watching with interest as the gardener digs a hole. He turns back to Ruby, still frowning. “What happened to that other nurse?” he asks.
Ruby scans his face, and there it is: the disconnect. She’s spent enough time in nursing homes over the years, shaking hands, taking photos, and greeting elderly people with dementia to know that something has shifted. A door has closed.
“Do you need the nurse, Mr. Westover?” she asks patiently, reaching over and touching his arm gently. The photo of him and her mother standing in a vineyard as a band played “Abracadabra” in the background is still in his hand. “I can get one.”
He looks at Ruby again and shakes his head; he is clearly trying to refocus, to come back to the present, to place her. He looks out the window again.
Ruby pats his arm. She waits.