It seemed to Ruby all she did all day was yell at the delivery men, “Be careful, don't scratch the floors.” The rest of the time she was running up and down the steps, checking on her bedroom and the placement of the second-floor furniture.
At three-thirty, when the last delivery truck drove away, Ruby smacked her hands in glee. Now the house was hers, fully furnished, complete with several radios and televisions. Her dinner, a stew made with chicken was cooking. The radio was playing. The table was set for one on a bright green place mat with her new dishes and silverware. And she was warm.
Now that everything was done, what
was
she going to do with her time? The days were long, the nights longer. Her eye fell on the wicker basket near the fireplace. There was one in every room of the house, filled with all the books she hadn't had time to read over the past years.
Sleep, eat, exercise, and read. It sounded like a prison sentence. Maybe she could do some kind of volunteer work. In the spring she could garden; she'd always loved digging in the soft earth. She knew how to prune. Maybe she'd plant some rosebushes. She'd do a garden, a real one, with all kinds of vegetables, since that seemed like all she could eat these days.
She thought then about the dressing room off her bedroom, which she'd carpeted but not furnished. Maybe she would go to town and order some exercise equipment, a treadmill and an Exercycle to start. She'd take care of that tomorrow.
She could look into joining the church. Looking into it wasn't the same as joining. That would need a lot of careful thought.
Ruby felt like an old lady when she sat down on the rocker. “This is just temporary, this rocking,” she mumbled. “Just until I get myself together. I'm not going to turn into a recluse. What I'm going to do is live quietly for a while, get well, and then I'll jump back into the mainstream of things.”
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But that wasn't what she did at all. She bought a huge freezer and installed it in the pantry. She stocked it with fish and chicken and frozen vegetables. The first year she froze her own fruit and vegetables and felt like a true farmer. The freezer, along with a pantry full of every kind of staple known to man, eliminated the need to drive into town.
The only thing she joined were three book clubs; she would order a dozen or so books each month from each of them. For hours on end she watched the home shopper's channel on her television, buying everything they flashed on the screen. When she wasn't watching and dialing the 800 number to order everything from cubic zirconias to cordless screwdrivers, she read until her eyes gave out. And she slept.
She also used her exercise room on awakening, walking three miles and pedaling five every day. Occasionally she walked over her property, but two sprained ankles from gopher holes convinced her the treadmill was the way to go.
The doctor to whom Nick Palomo had referred her was pleased with her lab tests but cautioned her that she wasn't out of the woods. Convinced that she wasn't going to die ... yet, she started to experiment with recipes to make them more tasty, less unappealing.
Ruby Blue was neither happy nor miserable: She was existing.
On the day of her fifty-fourth birthday, when she burst into tears for no apparent reason, Ruby knew she had to do something.
The word
depression
bounced through her head like a basketball shot out of bounds. She had no responsibility. Nothing to strive for. God, how had she allowed this to happen? A year was gone out of her life, and now, when she looked back, all she had to show for it was hundreds of books and a cellar full of merchandise she hadn't unpacked. She also had a stack of mail on her dining room table that she hadn't looked at for six or seven months.
She would be celebrating her birthday alone this year. Andy was off on a jaunt somewhere, and Marty, well, Marty was still upset with her. Andrew might call to wish her a happy birthday, if he remembered.
Ruby swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I'll make myself a cake and go into town and buy myself a present. What the hell, why not?”
Ruby burst into tears. They continued to overflow all day long.
She was angry now. With herself.
In the middle of the living room, her hands on her hips, she screamed at the top of her lungs, “Happy birthday, Ruby!” She cried again, sniffling into a tissue.
Ruby was about to walk out the door in the middle of the afternoon, when the phone rang. She debated about answering for so long, it stopped ringing just as she picked it up. She shrugged. The best thing she'd ever done was to disconnect her answering machine.
In Port Jervis she stopped at a bakery and bought the richest, creamiest cake she could find. At the drugstore she purchased two boxes of candles. Because there was a shoestore next to the drugstore, she bought herself a pair of Reebok sneakersâher present to herself. She ignored the strange look on the salesman's face when she asked to have the box gift-wrapped.
The last stop was the local bookstore, where she bought seventy-two dollars' worth of books.
On the ride home in the Range Rover she'd bought months ago, she decided it was time to call on the Semolina brothers to have her outbuildings done. If she was lucky, she might be able to entice them, or maybe
cajole
would be a better word, to build her some bookshelves in one of the downstairs rooms. She now had a library, something she always wanted, and more than enough books to fill it.
As she bounced over the field, Ruby started to feel sorry for herself. Her eyes filled. It was true she'd said at first she wanted to be left alone. But now, a year later, she longed for someone to talk to. She needed a friend, a confidant.
It was all her own doing. She'd allowed herself to turn into a recluse, to become depressed. Half the time she walked around in a fog. She relied on Valium to take the edge off her misery.
Always, the fear that she was going to die loomed on her horizon.
That
was hard to deal with. She could have died at any time here in the woods and no one would know.
Ruby slammed the car into gear as she rocketed across the back end of the field. She hated what she'd become, hated herself for her lack of initiative. Once she'd had guts. Where did they go? Her back stiffened as she bounced along.
Well, by God, she was going to come up for air. She was tired of wallowing in her own self-pity. Enough was enough.
Ruby pulled up so short, the cake on the seat beside her slid to the floor. “Oh, shit!” She wasn't going to eat it anyway so what the hell difference did it make? None, none at all.
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She might have sat there until it got dark if the phone hadn't rung at that precise minute.
“Yeah,” she bellowed into the mouthpiece.
“For Christ's sake, Ruby, is that any way to answer the phone?” Andrew complained.
“What do
you
want?” Ruby snarled.
“You got a bee in your undies or did the squirrels finally get to you? You want me to call back? I just called to wish you a happy birthday.”
“That's it, happy birthday?”
“Okay, I'll bite, what else? How are you? Have you heard from the kids? You do get mail out there in the wilds, don't you? Listen, you told me not to call, so I didn't call. Is that what you're pissed about, or are you upset that you're a year older?”
“Shut up, Andrew. I'm having a real hard time today.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Andrew asked more sympathetically. “You always told me it's better when you talk it out.”
“No. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know. It's crazy. Here I am, a very rich woman, living alone in a farmhouse, miles from anywhere. All I do is eat, sleep, order crap from the shopper's channel, and read. I exercise, too. I lost thirty pounds. I'm kind of scrawny now. I pop Valium like aspirin. I have no friends. I fucked up, Andrew. Bigtime.”
“Then do something about it. Why in the goddamn hell don't you practice what you preach? It bothers me that the mother of my kids is a loser, Ruby. How'd that happen?”
“You bastard! How dare you say something like that to me!” Ruby shrilled.
“So take a Valium and it won't matter that I said it,” Andrew challenged.
“Shut up, Andrew!”
“Sounds to me like you have an acute case of cabin fever.” Andrew laughed. “Jesus, Ruby, what's the good of having money if you don't spend it? Spend it on something that will make you happy. Go out on the town, buy some new duds, go back to the office. Jesus Christ, do something! You probably need to get laid,” he said tritely.
“That's it, Andrew! I don't need any more of your advice!”
Andrew pressed his advantage. “That gook shaft you? I tried to tell you, but would you listen? Oh, no, you had all the answers.”
“I don't know what to do,” Ruby sobbed. “You're right about everything. I hate you for being right, Andrew,” Ruby blubbered.
Andrew's voice changed. It was soft now, even worried when he said, “Sometimes, Ruby, you have to stand up and say fuck it all! Then you go on. You were always such an expert at ... at picking up the pieces and forging ahead. Do it now. Pull up your socks, get it in gear, and go on. Other people are losers, Ruby. Not you. Never you. Listen, have a wonderful birthday! Bye, sweetie.”
Sweetie
. In his life Andrew had never called her sweetie. Now, when she was in her own private pit of hell and when she was fifty-four years old, he called her sweetie. She felt like calling him back to tell him to go to hell.
Ruby ate her dinner, her body rigid, her mouth grim as she chewed her way through a filet of sole and brussels sprouts. Then she turned to the mail, which by now had filled the dining room table.
She'd lived in a vacuum for months. How could she not have looked at her mail? She was nuts; there was no doubt about it. Soon she had put the first class mail in one pile and the junk on the floor. It reminded Ruby of a flea market at the end of a busy day.
The house in Rumson had been sold, but then she knew that. What she hadn't known was that a check for two hundred seventy-five thousand dollars was in the mail and had been on her dining room table for over six months.
There were seven notices from American Express threatening to sue her for nonpayment. Her eyes started to water when she saw she'd bought sixteen thousand dollars' worth from the shopper's channel. She riffled through the other credit card bills, sorting them into pilesâfirst notices, second, third, collection agencies, finally lawyers. All the final notices said she now had a bad credit rating. All nineteen of the credit companies wanted their cards cut up and returned by certified mail.
“Ha!” Ruby snorted.
Deposits from the utility companies were in other envelopes. She'd forgotten about that, too. Enough there to buy books for at least a year. Six appeal letters from Greenpeace, three from the Sierra Club, and two from an animal activist organization. Ruby's eyebrows shot upward at a gilt-edged invitation to a private Nola Quantrell showing in New York. Ruby looked at the date. A week from tomorrow. She flipped over the invitation. On the back was a handwritten note from Nola.
I'd like it very much if you could attend, Ruby. I want toâactually I
need
to apologize to you. If you can make it, I'd like us to have dinner so we can talk. I think I had a nervous breakdown this past year. I had something that knocked me out of the game for seven months or so. I'm not really on my feet yet, but the show goes on. I'd really like to see a friendly face in the audience. And for whatever it's worth, I'm sorry about that phone call. I'd like to explain and make it up to you. I live at the Dakota in Manhattan. Either way, will you give me a call?
Nola
The word
friend
ricocheted around and through Ruby's head. Nola was sorry. She looked at the phone number. Did she dare stick her neck out again? She slid the invitation to the side in the “must answer” pile.
Ruby slit the envelope from Saipan with her nail. It was written by Nangi and was more an invitation than a letter.
Dear Ruby,
Amber and I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to Saipan to share in our upcoming anniversary. All our children will be here, and we'd like it if you, Andy, and Martha can see your way clear to joining us.
Calvin and Eve will be here. They more or less invited themselves. Amber and I will understand if this is a problem for you. I want to take this opportunity to tell you how badly I feel about the way Calvin treated you. I told him I could never forgive that sort of shabbiness. I think the reason he's coming here is because Eve knows about you, and she won't let him out of her sight. I no longer write to him, and when he calls, our conversations are strained and bitter. He's not a happy man. He asks about you each time he calls. I won't give him the time of day anymore. It hurts me that I was wrong about Calvin.
Stay well, Ruby, and keep in touch. Amber sends her love.
Nangi
Ruby snorted, a very unladylike sound. She looked at the date on the envelope. Scratch one anniversary party; the letter was four months old. “Fuck you, Calvin,” she muttered as she went on with her mail.
Ruby held her breath when she got down to the last two pieces. She crossed her fingers. Please, let one of them be from Dixie or Calvin. Of course it wasn't. One of the letters was from the Rumson Volunteer Fire Department and the last piece was a personal note from her secretary wishing her a happy birthday.
Ruby spent the next hour writing out checks, filling out deposit slips and writing a short note to Nangi. She left the invitation from Nola till last. Should she or shouldn't she?