Cafe Babanussa (19 page)

Ruby mumbled that she wasn't interested in making ceramic bowls or ashtrays. Dr. Heller said, “Well, we have music therapy. Why don't you try that?”

Ruby was too tired to put him off. “Okay, okay. I suppose I'll be able to sing my way out of here, then?”

Dr. Heller laughed and said, “That's the spirit.”

Lunch came and went. Nobody talked. But Ruby heard Irina mumble into her pillow, “He's not coming back, is he? Niko's not coming back.”

Ruby caught her breath. It was true. Niko hadn't come back since his first visit. Ruby got out of her bed, went over to Irina and knelt on the floor beside her bed. Her hand reached
up to touch Irina's head. She knelt there silently for half an hour, stroking her fingers through her hair.

Werner came that day with another bunch of blood-red roses. The sickly sweet scent filled the airless room. Ruby was overcome with nausea. Werner spoke to her softly, rubbing her curls, stroking her arm. His eyes smiled lovingly at her. She tried in vain to separate them from the eyes that stalked her at night. As Ruby gazed at him, she realized nothing would ever be the same.

She didn't love him anymore, and indeed, despite the fact that he done his best to care for her, she felt intimidated and frightened by him. This was the beginning of the end.

R
UBY SPENT SEVERAL MONTHS RECOVERING AFTER
her hospitalization. She managed to keep Werner at bay, much to his dismay, but remained sequestered inside her apartment most of the time. Werner would still come creeping around to her door, calling out for her insistently, but she had changed the lock and refused to open the door. He'd have to get the picture and stop sometime. She hoped that would be soon.

Her mood had fallen very low; she had decided that this must be the usual trajectory of mental illness—skyrocket, then crash and burn. What goes up must come down. She was still heavily medicated with Haldol, and was going once a month to the doctor's for a shot. She felt woozy a lot of the time and still suffered from stiffness in her joints, but “the Haldol shuffle”—slumped head, arms hanging like a gorilla, trudging pace—was gone. The language institute had been very generous and sympathetic and had given her another two months off work, so she needn't worry about that. In fact, there was scarcely any reason to go out at all. Ruby lay in bed all day toss
ing and turning and sighing. She would only come up from under the blankets when her lungs could no longer stand the closeness under the covers. A deep sadness lapped at her, like little waves pulling her away from her core, setting her adrift in a vast nothingness. Her mood was grim and she remained incommunicado, not wanting to reach out to anyone or have them reach out to her. She had lost her appetite, nibbling on crackers and cheese or a piece of fruit. Sleep was her best friend. She called out to death one day, wishing it would lay its blanket over her and extinguish the fire of life once and for all. But underneath all her blues she could hear her family calling out to her.
Be strong! Pull yourself up! Stand tall!
“I don't know how,” she would wail. But she couldn't drown out their voices as they tried to coax her on.

After three weeks her mood finally began to lift a little in the evening and she would sit up, maybe even stand and stretch for a moment or two. She managed to sit in the chair in her room, but couldn't summon the interest to read a book. One evening she tiptoed down the hall and put on a little music—the lilt of the jazz horn made her cry. Someone knocked at the door. She knew it wasn't Werner because he always gave three knocks followed by two quick knocks. It was Emma, who had been trying to reach her for ages. Her friend was stunned at the mess in the house: dishes left standing everywhere, clothes strewn across all the surfaces.

“Ruby, you can't go on this way. You have to get some help.”

“I have my doctor, that's all I need.”

“But you don't even have a therapist or psychiatrist.”

“I have my friends, like you. Why go to a stranger?”

“Oh Ruby, don't you see, I can only help so much. You're stuck inside your flat, and probably inside your head, too. How long have you been lying around day and night?”

“A while now. It's hard to get motivated. It's like I'm in the slow cycle of the wash, swishing back and forth in the darkness. Sleep brings relief.”

“You need just as much help as you did before. You let yourself be helped then. Why not now? Just because you're not having delusions doesn't mean it's not just as important.”

“I know, Emma, I know it's not right. I just can't bring myself to do anything about it. I'm like a rock stuck in a cave.”

“Do me a favour, Ruby—call your parents and let them know what's going on. Maybe they can come over again.”

Ruby mulled that over. She hadn't wanted to bother them again, but Emma was right. She should ask them if they'd be willing to visit again.

After Emma left, Ruby went back to her routine of wandering the apartment, lying down, wandering some more, jags of crying in between. She eventually picked up a book by de Maupassant. The coarse slang of the Normandy countryside reminded her of Quebec's
joual
, which had filled her ears in her university days. It was like comfort food, sustaining her for an evening. She played Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding and Solomon Burke on the stereo, alternating them with familiar jazz standards. Sometimes she cried while listening to the music, imagining herself to be the spurned lover in one of the
songs, feeling the splintered blueness of her situation. In a way it all reminded her of home. Especially the jazz.

When she called her parents the next night, her voice was shaky. “Dad, it's me. How are you?”

“Ruby! I'm thrilled to hear from you. We've been worried. We tried and tried but we couldn't reach you.”

“Dad, I'm calling to ask if you'd like to come over and visit again.”

“Of course we would, but I have to discuss it with your mother. She's been through a rough patch herself in the last few weeks. But she's coming out the other side now.”

“What happened to Mom?”

“Well, she got so busy worrying about you that she went off a little herself, got a little manic.”

“Is she all right? How is she now?”

“They adjusted her medication. But she's a trooper and she'll be fine. Just like you, Ruby. Are you okay?”

“I'm a little low, but I'm doing fine,” Ruby lied. “But I'd really like to see you soon.”

“Fine, my ass. I can hear your voice quaking as we speak. We'll arrange to come over as soon as we can. Are you still seeing a doctor?”

“I see my GP, but no psychiatrist.”

“Ruby, that's not good. Your mom's got a great shrink.”

“I don't know any shrinks here. My GP is just fine.”

“We'll talk about it more when we see you.”

In the one week it took for her parents to arrive, Ruby tried hard to pull herself together. She cleaned up the apartment
a little bit every day, but it was still rough around the edges. Which is exactly how she felt. One day Ruby put on her shoes and slipped out the door. She had decided to go to an animal shelter and look for a cat. There was an array of cute cats and dogs, kittens and puppies at the shelter. But Ruby saw one beautiful little kitten, white with swirls of grey, that hung back in the cage, shy and tentative. She bent down further and picked up the little thing by the scruff of its neck and pulled her out of the cage. It squirmed and cringed and tried to break free. But Ruby kept petting it and cooing at it until it sat still for a moment. She gestured to the staff that she wanted this kitten, and they prepared the papers for her. “I will call you Luna, which means ‘moon' in Spanish. You feel electric and full of emotion, just like when the moon comes out.”

Ruby took Luna home and set her on the living room floor. She folded up a blanket and made an indentation where Luna could nest. The kitten ran away and hid. Ruby looked for her for ages but couldn't find her and gave up the search. Finally at night the cat resurfaced. Ruby was lying in bed when there was a little thump. Luna came nudging her way along the bed to where Ruby lay. She reached out with her paw and gave Ruby's hand a pat. Ruby scratched and caressed the kitten and then lifted up the duvet so that it could crawl in. It wriggled up against her and promptly fell asleep. Luna would continue to hide much of the day and come to see her at night when it was quiet and dark. Ruby would make shadows on the walls with her hands and the kitten would lunge after the
shapes with comic ferocity and pluck. Ruby was gratified for this little bit of company and touch, and a deep smile penetrated her being.

It was the day her parents were to arrive. Standing at the window of her apartment, Ruby looked out over the courtyard, watching for them. She had to admit she was thrilled by the prospect of seeing them again, even though she knew that her father was a man on a mission, crossing an ocean to retrieve his wayward daughter.

As Ruby turned for the door, an image of her younger, more innocent Canadian self flashed before her eyes. As she stood there, her hand, the colour of cardamom, wandered like her mind and ruffled her dark curls. She looked forward to some sassy repartee with her father and her mother, some juicy updates on the latest family gossip. She thought of her mother and father and could see them wrapped in each other's arms dancing around the living room, while she first watched and then joined in.
Tight-knit
—that is how she thought of them, with so much love in the air.

Ruby had just turned six. The new dress lay on top of her bed, where her mother had laid it out carefully for her. Her small, pudgy fingers gingerly traced their way over the soft red velvet, then round and round the shiny black buttons, up to the lacy collar, and finally slid down plushy sleeves that ended in
smooth black cuffs. Oooh, wasn't it so pretty, pretty, pretty, she whispered to the collection of dolls and animals—a pink kitten, a spotted puppy, a cloth doll made by her grandmother, and a doll her father called Pocahontas, its head smashed in by her sister's baseball bat. Ruby had painstakingly coaxed what was left of the brown plastic head back onto the shoulders with a bit of adhesive tape. But it sat there lopsided, ready to fall at the slightest mishandling. They had snuggled up close together, and watched Ruby from their corner of the bed.

She slithered eagerly into the dress, then stood in front of the mirror admiring herself. Little brown-black freckles danced around her nose; chestnut eyes shone brightly. Two thick, black braids tumbled down behind her shoulders. She did a little twirl. And then again, round and round and round she went, arms flung high in the air. Breathless, she fell onto her bed and gathered up her furry friends in her arms. The voices of her mother and father wafted into the room.

“Aw, Louise, baby, I'm not sure it's a good idea to let her get up in front of people like that.”

“James, nobody's pushing her. It's just for fun. You know she loves to sing.”

Ruby flung her bedroom door open. “It's true, Daddy, it's true, I want to do it.”

Her mother and father stood in the hall, arms locked around each other's waists. Ruby eyed her father's hand as it slipped down to pat her mother's bottom.

“Eeew, yuck! You guys, don't do that stuff around me.”

Her mother brushed her father's hand away playfully. She
slanted her eyes down towards Ruby and said, “Darlin', it's called love. That's what people do.”

Stooping down, she caressed a few curly threads back from Ruby's face. She turned Ruby around to do up her dress. “Listen, sweetheart, are you sure . . . ?”

“But I am, Mommy. Daddy, puh-leeze!”

Her father grunted. “I can't fight against two of you. Okay, go ahead.”

Turning away from them triumphantly, her mother waved and said, “See you guys downstairs.”

Her father picked her up and looked her over approvingly. “Well, my, my, my. You look beeyoootiful,” he cooed, squeezing her in his grizzly-bear arms. The smell of his aftershave tickled her nose. He tossed her into the air. She squealed with delight, not wanting him to put her back down.

“Daddy, Daddy, tickle me.”

He poked thick fingers into her ribs, this side, now that side. She wriggled away, feeling as if she'd burst, then came back for more.

“You're getting too big for this now,” he said, catching his breath. He escorted her down the stairs, his hand wrapped tightly around hers. “Now be good. Company is here.”

Ruby's parents were surprised to see how large her flat was and more than a little unnerved by the messiness they found. Ruby had tried to tidy up, but dishes were still stacked high in the kitchen sink, though the counters had been cleared. Papers
and odds and ends were strewn over the coffee table, and a multitude of shoes lay piled up at the door. Most surfaces had something gathered upon them collecting dust.

“My dear, it looks like you're barely managing,” her mother said. “That's not like you, Ruby. Tell me what's going on.”

“I'm just a little out of sorts, Mom. It's been hard, breaking up with Werner. I don't feel like going out much these days. I guess my spirits are low.”

“Werner called us and was very upset. Are you sure you're doing the right thing by letting him go?”

“Mom, I couldn't carry on—he was so overbearing, he left me no room to move. If we argued, then he simply insisted that I was in the wrong all the time. There was no way to seek a compromise.”

Her father cleared his throat and mumbled something about young people today.

Ruby wheeled on him. “You had your time, too. Don't deny it, Dad.”

Her father responded by saying they would all go out to dinner the next night at the hotel on Kleiststrasse and have a family meeting of sorts.

As a young waiter cleared their plates from the table the following evening, her parents ordered coffee. Ruby sipped on a crisp Riesling, washing down the sharp, smoky taste of the fish she had eaten. Raindrops sprayed the window of the hotel restaurant, and she stared out through the glass. Ink-black clouds hurtled across the skies, and in a far corner of the
palette, rays of lemon-orange light burst through, dissolving the darkness around them.

“Honestly, Ruby, why don't you come back home?”

Her father's voice demanded her attention. She watched him defensively as he took another swig of his coffee.

“Damn, it's cold,” he sputtered. He stood up, snapping his fingers to get the waiter's attention.

Ruby was used to her father's restaurant antics. As a child, she had always cringed when he returned food, demanding that it be brought back piping hot. Now she took it for one of those immutable traits that you just lived with. As she watched him chastising the waiter, she noticed he had thinned down over the last few years, but there was still something impressive, almost majestic, about his frame. It wasn't that he was especially tall, yet he seemed to loom over you with an aura of authority in his bearing. His skin was smooth and toffee coloured, his head balding. His dark brown eyes danced in his face, but they could stop and pin you down in a moment.