Seasons of Her Life (65 page)

While Andy was paying the driver, Ruby walked around to the back of the house. She stopped when she heard the sounds of laughter coming through the kitchen window. Her mother must have company.

“Dixie! Dixie, my God, is it you,” Ruby cried. “Oh, Dixie, I'm so glad you're here. How . . . when . . . ?” Tears streamed down Ruby's cheeks as Dixie gathered her in her arms.

“Andy called earlier this morning. How did I get here . . . well, let me tell you how I got here. I chartered a plane. I felt so ... wicked. Money is a powerful thing.”

“Tell me about money,” Ruby said bitterly.

“Your mother and I have had a very nice visit. I cleaned the vegetables and she stuffed the turkey. It should be ready soon.”

“I think I'll leave you young people and get ready for this evening. I'm not wearing a black dress,” Irma said, a stubborn note in her voice.

“I'm wearing a red one.” Ruby smiled.

“I brought a yellow one.” Dixie giggled.

When they heard the water gurgling in the pipes overhead, Dixie said, “Tell me. I heard your mother's . . .”

“Did she make sense?” Ruby asked anxiously.

Dixie nodded. “Enough so I got the drift of what was going on. I guess I just need to know what it's done to you.”

“It's whittled down my bank account, but that doesn't matter. What matters is I was able to buy off my sisters. They didn't say thank you, go to hell, and they didn't look back. Jesus, Dix, we had such a fight. We were actually bloody. I had a whole fistful of someone's hair. If Andy hadn't doused us with ice water, we'd have killed one another. My daughter . . . she said terrible things. I swear I could feel my heart break.”

“It's done. You'll go on. It's their loss.”

“Marty . . .”

“Marty is a big girl. She made an impulsive decision. She's been trying to blame you for years for the breakup of your marriage. She needs to get rid of her anger, and this is how she's doing it. She'll come around if you give her some space.”

“It hurt so bad, Dixie. I saw Amber in her all over again. And I saw Pop in Opal. Boy, is she screwed up. Boy, am I screwed up.”

“A hundred years from now it won't make a bit of difference,” Dixie said cheerfully.

Ruby snorted. “We'll be dead in a hundred years!”

“Exactly.” Dixie slapped her leg and doubled over laughing. “You know what else?” Dixie continued to laugh. “I told the pilot of that private charter to
wait
for us!”

“No!”

“Yep, I did. A fortune, Ruby. It cost a fortune. It's the single most wicked, most outrageous thing I've ever done in my life. I loved every minute of it. You will, too. Isn't it wonderful we have the money to do it.”

Ruby nodded. Her world was right side up. Dixie was here. Andy was here and so was her mother. Now she could get through the coming hours and keep her sanity.

 

George Connors's funeral was uneventful. It was attended by four people, none of whom shed a tear.

On the way back to the house, Irma turned to Ruby. “Do you think your father is in hell?”

“Wouldn't surprise me a bit,” Ruby said.

“That's pretty much what I thought,” Irma said cheerfully.

Dixie looked at Ruby. Ruby shrugged. Andy put his arms around his grandmother.

“Let's have some coffee,” Ruby said when they all trooped into the kitchen. “I'll make it. Mom, you go sit on the patio, and Dixie and I will wait on you, just like in a restaurant.”

“I'll join you, Grandma, as soon as I get out of this suit,” Andy said.

“All right,” Irma said agreeably. “Put some cinnamon in it, Ruby.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Real cream, too.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Use a tray.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Put some cookies on a plate for Andy.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Irma sat in the aluminum rocker. It was a pretty garden, she thought. She didn't much care for the spiky grass they had here in Florida, though. She rocked contentedly. Once she looked upward and shook her head. When she did it a second time, her lips started to move. “No, I don't think so. Stop being so impatient, George, you just got there. Give me one good reason why I should?” Irma sighed. “
All right
, George, but I'm going straight up, not down.”

Andy barreled into the kitchen. “What time is liftoff, Aunt Dixie?”

“Whenever,” she said airily. “Today, tomorrow, whenever.”

“Here, let me carry that,” Andy said, reaching for the tray. “You guys bring the coffeepot.”

Andy's shrill cry was not of this earth. Dixie and Ruby sprinted for the door when they heard the tray he'd been carrying clatter on the concrete patio.

Ruby's hand flew to her mouth to stifle her own screams. Dixie's face drained white. Andy was shaking his head from side to side, his face as white as Dixie's.

 

Irma Connors's funeral was simple and attended by three people, all of whom cried tears of genuine grief.

 

“It should be more. A person's life should never be this tidy,” Ruby said as she looked down at the cardboard box at her feet. It had taken her only forty minutes to pack her mother's belongings in the carton. Her eyes brimmed when she looked at the box. Her mother's things and the tin tea set. That's all there was to carry away.

Andy nodded to the steward to take the box and their luggage onto the plane.

Before she stepped into the plane, Ruby stared off into the distance. “I'm glad there's a place. I'll be back, Mom. As often as I can.”

Dixie looked across the kitchen at the wall calendar. Five years
since Hugo's death. How was that possible? she wondered. Where had the years gone? Why was she sitting here, waiting for the dawn to arrive? Because, she answered herself, it's what you've been doing since Hugo died, and old habits are hard to break. Please help me, God, she prayed.

The kitchen was dark, but she didn't care. Right now she wouldn't care if the house blew up with her in it. Dixie raised her head to stare across the kitchen at the small night-light over the kitchen stove. The bulb had wavered, flickered, and then gone out. She had no idea of the time, since she couldn't see the clock on the stove.

Dixie leaned back on the kitchen chair. In front of her was a cup of cold tea. She really didn't care for tea, especially the flavored kind, but Ruby said tea always made things better. This time Ruby was wrong. Her hands reached toward the table. They didn't fumble, they slid right to the terrible piece of paper she'd gotten earlier in the afternoon. An admitting slip to the hospital. She hated the word
biopsy
. Hated the meaning that went with it. God, why was she being punished like this? All those years of being a cripple. Then the miraculous operation, and now this. She knew, no matter what they said, when she woke from the operation, one of her breasts would be gone.

This period in time was supposed to be the best of their lives; Ruby had said so. Actually what she'd said was “We're going to march right into the winter of our lives and start to live. It's our time, Dix. We can do what we want. We have no worries. That's what the winter of your life is all about. You start to embrace life, you slow down, you smell the roses, you travel, you don't catch any more colds, and for some strange reason your feet stop hurting.” She'd laughed herself silly when Ruby said that.

Ruby was set. She had two wonderful children—Martha soon would come around and make things right between her and her mother. Ruby had Calvin—although Dixie had watched the recent election returns and wondered where Ruby would fit into Calvin's new life.

A slash of pale pink invaded the dark kitchen. I've sat here all night, Dixie thought. Where was Ruby? She'd willed her to come, in her mind, all through the long night. She'd willed her to come the night Hugo slipped into his coma, and she had. She'd willed her to figure out that she was at the Mayo Clinic, and she had. Now, when she needed her more than she'd ever needed anyone, she wasn't there. Pick up the phone and call her. Ask, Dixie. That was the problem. She couldn't ask. Pride, her other self said, is a deadly sin. You need her now. Ruby will understand what you're going through. Yes, maybe, but Ruby was ... things had never been quite the same after . . . after she . . . after Hugo. They had both put so much effort into their friendship it had become a chore. She was the one who backed away, not going to the office, not answering the phone or the doorbell when it rang. She'd hurt Ruby and she could never, ever make what happened right again. She was too weary, too heartsick to try anymore.

Now that it was full light, Dixie looked at the piles of papers on her kitchen table, at the brown accordion folder with its sturdy thick rubber band. Her fortune, thanks to Ruby. Her hand drew a thick stack of government bonds toward her. A memo under the rubber band said there were five hundred ten-thousand-dollar bonds in the stack. She had four stacks. Two thousand all together. Ten million dollars. Twenty million when they matured. She could fit them all into her purse if she wanted to. Such flimsy paper. They should be thick and maybe make a crackly sound or something, she thought. The CD certificates were on thin paper, too, a kind of onion skin. Even if she folded the stack in half, she could fit them into her purse, too. The memo under the paper clip said she had over five million dollars tied up in CDs, at over fifty banks, that she just kept rolling over when they came due. She had accounts in four brokerage houses. She hadn't wanted to do that, but Ruby had insisted and in the end she'd gone along with it. She looked at the totals on the front page of each account. So much money, thirteen million dollars. An unlucky-sounding number. Then there was Hugo's insurance, the insurance she'd taken out on herself after her operation. Again at Ruby's insistence. It was all in a trust to pay the inheritance tax if and when she . . . died. There was also a five-million-dollar partnership policy that both of them had taken out on each other's lives.

She could see the clock on the stove now. Where was Ruby? She stared at the yellow wall phone. If she called her, Ruby would be there in less than seven minutes. “Not this time,” Dixie whispered. “Not this time.”

How swiftly they'd secured a bed for her at the hospital.
That's because ... they think I'm going to die
. First the operation, chemotherapy, maybe radiation. It will depend, the doctor said, but he hadn't said depend on what, and she hadn't asked. She was supposed to check in at ten o'clock, they'd run a few last-minute tests, she'd be prepped, and be operated on at seven
A.M.
She looked at the clock again. In exactly twenty-four hours she'd be under the knife.

You died in the winter of your life. Well, she was on schedule, she thought sadly. “Don't even think about not having this operation, Dixie,” her doctor had said. She recalled that moment so well. It had been such a shock, and she'd started to babble about the seasons of life. The doctor had looked at her as if she'd suddenly sprouted a second head. Then she'd repeated one of Ruby's favorite expressions: “Is this one of those operations where my chances are slim to none?” He'd replied that there were no guarantees in life, and a bunch of other stuff Ruby would have called pure doctorish crap.

Slim to none. The winter of my life. Ruby, where are you? We're so attuned, how can you not know what I'm going through? Call her. Do it now. You need her. Call her. “No, not this time.” If Ruby hadn't come, then perhaps she wasn't
meant
to come this time. “Maybe I've used up all my credit with her. Maybe I've been a burden to her once too often.” Ruby deserved to go through the winter of her own life without shouldering her, Dixie's, problems one more time.

But to face an operation—to face death—alt alone was something she couldn't do. Ruby always said, “When you don't know what to do, do nothing.” And to Dixie, doing nothing meant only one thing: run. Run away as fast and as hard as she could.

Dixie raced down to the first floor and then to the cellar, where she kept her strongbox. Inside was sixty thousand dollars in cash. She took all the bundles to the kitchen and stuffed them in her new bag. She ran back to the cellar with the accordion file and stuffed it behind the cushions of an old rocking chair. Back in the kitchen, she stared at the admitting slip to the hospital. She looked at the clock. Two hours before she was to check into the hospital. She tore the admitting slip into little pieces and put it through the garbage disposal. She emptied out the refrigerator and threw sheets over the furniture. She called the airline and the telephone company and the post office.

 

Ruby knew what she was feeling was grief, she'd felt it once before, after her mother died. This time, though, there was nothing to bury, no one place to go where she could say something profound like here lies . . . forever more . . . no more . . . over, end . . .
fini
.

It was so cozy by the fire. She'd deliberately lighted the fire even though the temperature outside was only down to forty-four degrees. She liked to watch the flames from the cherry logs dance and sway. Without any lights on in the living room the jiggling flames created all kinds of wonderful patterns on the walls. Not that she was really noticing them. She was
really
sitting there because she couldn't sleep. For months now she hadn't been sleeping well.

The list of things she hadn't been doing these past months was endless. She hadn't been going to the office. There was no need. She hadn't been in touch with Dixie for . . . she didn't know how long. She didn't even know where Dixie was right now. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember when she'd spoken to her last. At least a month. She'd called once recently and left a message, but Dixie hadn't returned the call. Ruby hadn't bothered to call back. How long ago was that? She couldn't remember.

Ruby's eye fell on the scratch pad on the end table. She always kept it near the phone in case she wanted to write something out in detail. Seeing something in black and white always made it clearer somehow. Maybe that's what she should do, write everything down that she was thinking, and then maybe this awful feeling would go away. She'd look at it in the morning, shrug her shoulders, and tell herself none of it was important.

Ruby huddled into her thick robe, her legs curled under her. Tears brimmed in her eyes. From the smoke, she told herself. A log crackled, split, and fell against the fire screen, making a shower of sparks that reminded her of shooting stars. She smiled sadly as she remembered another time—in her ski lodge in the Poconos with Calvin. They'd spent two whole hours lugging in logs for the fire because Calvin said they weren't going to move for three full, wonderful days. They had, though. They'd played in the snow like kids, rode Andy and Martha's snowmobiles over the vast acreage, chasing one another until both machines ran out of gas and they had to walk back, giggling and laughing all the way. They feasted on lamb chops three times a day because they were Calvin's favorite. When they weren't cooking, eating, or romping in the snow, they made slow, lazy love on a pile of soft yellow blankets.

It was a beautiful memory she wouldn't trade for anything.

Their five-year affair was something she wouldn't change, either. She'd seen the world with Calvin: the Holy Land, Egypt, Greece, most of Asia. They skied in Austria, drove the autobahn—to their horror—and she'd pointed out two banks in Zurich where she had numbered bank accounts. When Calvin had wanted to see how it worked, Ruby had entered the bank and taken out money. They'd spent it immediately. He'd been so impressed, it was all he talked about for days.

They'd gone to Paris and did all the things lovers do. He'd bought her flowers, shasta daisies, from a sidewalk vendor who smiled at them because they were in love. She still had one of the flowers pressed inside her passport.

They'd made love in New Orleans, San Francisco, and on Maui under the stars.

At the end of five years she thought she knew everything there was to know about Calvin Santos.

Ruby squirmed inside the warm robe when she remembered how it had all been possible. Mrs. Sugar, with Dixie's approval, had hired Calvin as a consultant, a traveling consultant. Off the books, of course. She'd never allowed the word
gigolo
to enter her mind except for times like now, when things were all wrong. She had always managed to justify the situation to Dixie and herself by saying she could not, would not, take anything from Calvin's family. She could take him, his love and passion, because his wife didn't want those things.

Ruby added a huge log to the fire. It would last till morning. She threw in an empty orange juice carton to give the sparking log impetus.

She was back on the sofa, her thoughts again on Calvin. He had made an unsuccessful bid for the United States Senate, unsuccessful because he hadn't been prepared, mentally or financially. She'd hardly seen him that year, surrounded as he was by advisers who didn't seem to know what to do with him. Calvin had refused to listen to them anyway. At first he'd called Ruby often to tell her how things were going and ask for her input, which he ignored. At the end, when things grew black, he stopped calling. She'd watched the election returns and cried for his loss.

Now he was making a second try, and this time she thought he'd make it. She tried to be an asset to him by contributing handsomely to his campaign fund. Beyond that, she lent him huge sums of money. Still, she knew without being told that his new advisers had her down on their books as a liability.

He still called once in a while, but his voice was always full of shame. He promised they would get together as soon as he had a free moment. She felt like calling him now, this minute, and telling him ... what? You broke my heart? I believed in you? I trusted you? She snorted. She'd done all that in a letter, and he hadn't answered. He was probably too damn busy even to go to the post office box to pick up his mail. Out of sight, out of mind. She hadn't written for three weeks now. Up to that time she'd written twice a week, sometimes three times, but for months there had been no response.

“Fuck you, Calvin Santos,” Ruby whispered.

She cried then, huge, gulping sobs that shook her shoulders. Once she'd told herself she had no regrets about anything in her life. It wasn't true now, though. There was plenty to cry about.

All her old friends were gone. Grace and Paul were dead. She'd gone to their separate funerals just months apart. Paul had gone first with a heart attack. Lost without her love, Grace had managed to hang on for several months and then took an overdose of sleeping pills.

Then there was Mabel McIntyre. On a bright October day with the leaves all bronze and golden she'd called the number in her address book and was told the number was disconnected. She'd known what that meant and hadn't tried it again. Mabel was gone. So, too, were the Quantrells. God, so many times she'd wanted to go to Michigan to see them, but she hadn't. The year the Christmas gifts came back was one of the hardest things to bear. She'd made them part of her life. Now they were gone.

And Rena and Bruno. Rena had called a year before and said they were liquidating all their assets and going back to Egypt. She'd written again six months later from her homeland and said Bruno had passed away. The letter was long and rambling, but only in the bottom line did she finally get around to saying that she, too, was dying and had perhaps three months to live. It had taken that long for the letter to reach her. She'd called right away, but she was told Rena had already passed away. She'd truly grieved for Rena and Bruno.