“No,” she said, though she did oblige, one haughty half turn, like she was spinning on a dime, before she entered the store.
Bev Richardson stood behind the cash register, her lime-green uniform stretched tight across her bust, fluorescent lighting gleaming off her bottle-red hair.
“Hey, Ruby,” Bev called.
“Beverly, you are looking mighty-mighty today.” Her father grinned at Bev.
When she smiled back, she trapped a little piece of tongue, like an earlobe, between her teeth. Ruby didn’t need to look at her to see the knob of flesh; she knew Bev well enough from all the phony afternoons Bev had stirred canned milk and sugar into her Yuban across the table from Sally, Ruby’s mother. Pretending to be a friend, leaving behind an ashtray full of lipsticked filters. Ruby swung her pocketbook over her shoulder, glad she’d dressed up for the train ride, glad to show Bev how well her life was going.
“How’s Gainesville?” Bev asked.
“Marvelous,” Ruby said, allowing her father to steer her toward the meat coolers. His hands, both rough and tender, rested on her shoulders like they used to when she was a child and he wanted to show her a snowy egret alighted by their clothesline, or when he pointed out the pile of rocks she must paint white and set around the perimeter of their crabgrass yard before she could go swimming. Her father’s unpredictable touch unbalanced her now as much as it had when she was young.
Rows of chicken wings, pork butt, and beef ribs glistened beneath the cellophane, blood pooled in the corners of the trays. He selected three thick rib eyes. “Maybe you can get your mother to make some of her famous steak sauce.”
Ruby pointed to a fourth steak. “Maybe you’d like to invite the cashier?”
He sucked air through his teeth as if he already had a piece of meat stuck there. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He told Ruby to pick up two six-packs of Pabst and a newspaper and then he made a big show of sliding the steaks on the counter in front of Bev, as if he’d chased down and killed the cow with his bare hands. He dug deep into his pocket to fish out his Florida State money clip and flash through the bills. Payday. Ruby tossed a package of Dentyne on the counter. Boys at her school carried around wads of cash. They spent it on girls. John Douglas had spent money on her lots of times, buying rum and corsages, filling his car with gas for a long drive with the top down. He carried a blanket.
“You buying a gal a cup of coffee with all that cash?” Bev asked.
It used to be “a drink” before Bev joined AA. Ruby wasn’t certain how she knew Bev had joined AA, whether her mother had told her in a letter or someone had seen her at a meeting and told her. It was another bit of information that Ruby had collected, piecing together her parents’ reality.
“Remember, I am a married man.”
“Oh, I remember,” Bev said, stroking her finger down the entire row of cash register keys before she punched the 4, 9, and 8 for the steaks.
Steaks were incidental to the stop at Winn-Dixie and Ruby made no move to carry the sack. Teddy held it against his chest, winked at Bev, and then pushed through the door, leaving twenty-five Green Stamps behind.
Clamshells crunched beneath the tires when he turned the Dodge into the lot at the Avenue.
“I thought we were going home.”
“You wouldn’t deny your daddy the pleasure of one drink, would you?”
Ruby leaned back, prepared to wait as she had so many nights of her childhood when she’d been sent along by her mother so her father would come right home. She’d wait in the truck through twilight until he’d stumble out in the dark, bowing and sweeping his arms in a royal gesture as he held the Avenue door open wide for his little girl to join him. Inside the shadowy bar Ruby would play “Down in the Valley” on the upright piano. When patrons whistled and patted her father on the back, she’d play another, “Frosty the Snowman” or “Greensleeves,” her feet beginning to sway back and forth over the sawdust-covered floor. After, her father would pat a barstool for her to come hop up beside him. He’d ruffle her hair, pinch her lightly on the nose while his ruddy-cheeked comrades congratulated him on his fine little girl, and Mr. Goddard, the bartender, popped open a cold grape Nehi, the treat he claimed that he kept in the cooler just for her. With Ruby by her daddy’s side, they’d all listen while Teddy recited some poem he’d composed that very morning.
The hours dance on dusky feet,
I learn your lips are soft and sweet.
The hours fly on silken wings,
I learn the rapture your arms bring.
The hours deepen into dawn,
The dream remains but you are gone.
had printed it. He’d thought it was a foot in the door to his own byline and for about a week after it came out he was certain he’d be getting a call. Whenever the phone rang, he made her run to answer it: “Hargrove residence. Whom may I say is calling?” “Souvenir,” he’d named it and her mother had taped it to the icebox. Each time Ruby fetched him a beer or grabbed a banana, she read it. The way he’d recited the poem, his voice scraping over the final words, made her fall in love with her mysterious father. He was a man capable of rapturous thoughts.
Her mother ripped it off one day, then wiped away the tape residue with nail polish remover so all that remained was a dull spot on the icebox she pointed to and called the truth. Ruby hadn’t understood what she meant.
Teddy slipped his pipe from between his teeth, and his lips quivered, as if they didn’t know what to do with their new freedom. “Come on, Jewel. You’re a college girl. You earned a seat at the bar right next to your daddy.” With his brows raised in invitation and that trembling smile, his face seemed earnest, eagerly inviting. The face her mother must have fallen in love with. If Ruby had stayed in Gainesville, John Douglas’s arm might be hitched around her waist right now as they toasted the start of the weekend with a Cuba libre, everyone’s drink of choice. Surely she could have a drink before going home to her mother. No harm in one. She opened her own door and stepped from the truck, smoothing creases from her skirt, hooking her pocketbook over her arm.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. The jukebox was still there, same as the upright piano. A couple of men hunched over beers at the long L of the bar. The far end held a wheel of cheddar with a wire cheese cutter and a jar of soda crackers. Three or four lazy flies hung over the food. The Avenue smelled of soggy bar rags, stale peanuts, and men.
“Everyone,” her father called out. “Look at my Ruby, my jewel.” Again he tried to get her to turn around, but she pulled away and bent to wipe the sawdust off her shoes.
Milton Goddard pretended not to believe it was her. He looked up from her leather pumps, past the paisley skirt and peasant blouse. Finally he whistled through his teeth. “Fan-cy.”
Ruby smiled, slid onto a barstool. “Hi, Mr. Goddard.”
Her father dropped the afternoon edition onto the bar. “Paper delivery.” He nudged Ruby. “I consider it my civic duty to edify Milton.”
“With the oldest paperboy in the world for a daddy, you must be past drinking grape soda.”
“Why, yes, I believe I am. My friends and I enjoy Cuba libres.” She tipped her voice up at the end, wondering if Milton knew how to make them.
“
Why, yes? Cuba what?
What kind of horseshit is that?” Her father, hiding a smile at the corners of his mouth, thunked his pipe against his palm.
“Looks like
you
need edification, Teddy.” Milton grinned at Ruby.
“We’re having shots and a beer. I’ll buy you a beer too.” Teddy gestured at Milton with his thumb, its nail black and split up the middle from when he’d caught it in the press. “Hell, I’ll buy everyone a beer.” He threw his arms out expansively toward the two men.
Milton set two shots on the bar and then pulled the drafts. Her father held a glass out to Ruby. She took it, smelled the whiskey, and asked for a cocktail straw.
“Uh-uh. Pour it back, like this.” He threw his head back. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Your turn.”
She lifted her chin, exposing her neck to the two men, and poured the liquor down her throat. She held back a cough as the whiskey burned its way into her stomach. To hide her watering eyes, she stared at the bar top. A two-dollar bill and a sprinkling of change had been laminated there. She remembered digging at the coins with her fingernail as a child, totaling up the two dollars and forty-three cents in her head every time her father brought her in. It had seemed a tremendous waste. Her legs began to tingle, her eyes cleared, and she smiled.
“How about a roll of nickels?” Teddy peeled a twenty off his money clip and slapped it down. Once Milton complied, he stripped the wrapper from the nickels in one long piece, stacked them in two piles like poker chips, and passed one stack to Ruby. “Let’s spin for shots.”
“We play word games at school,” Ruby said.
Teddy snapped a nickel between his finger and the thumb. The coin caught the light, flickered as it spun. “Of course you do,” he said. “I’d expect word games at college.”
“I mean tongue twisters. One-red-hen. Two-cute-ducks. You know. I-slit-six-sheets. Seven-sexy-Siamese-sailors. Eight-enormous-elephants. Nine-cunning-runts. When you mess up, you have to drink.”
Her father raised his eyebrows and expertly spun a second nickel without taking his gaze off Ruby. “This is how we play down here.”
She nodded and pinched her own coin. It wobbled, never hit its rim, then fell flat.
“Drink up, Jewel.”
Again she gulped. Again her legs and the back of her eyes were flooded with heat. Milton set the bottle in front of them. The tongue twisters were easy. Seated on the sprung couch on the back porch of the fraternity house, her legs bare in her sundress, her friends charmed and laughing beside her, she’d roll them out, crisp and correct every time, then drink anyway.
“You can learn this,” her father told her. He pressed his hand around her fingers, showed her how to position the nickel and then snap, as if she were calling over Milton.
She snapped the coin free and it careened in a wide arc on the bar. When it came to rest her father shook his head. “You got me that time.” He slapped her on the back, slammed down his second. They were matched, shot for shot.
“What’re you learning at that college of yours?” Milton wiped the bar in front of her.
“I’m studying education.”
“Here’s to elevating the young.” Milton raised his beer.
“I keep telling her to elevate higher.” Her father dug his fingers into his tobacco pouch and then filled his pipe. He offered to roll her a cigarette.
“No, thanks, Daddy.” She took a pack from her pocketbook and tapped it on the inside of her wrist three times. “I’ve got my own.” She wrapped her lips around a single filter in the pack, extracted it slowly. She’d perfected the gesture, always taking enough time for a boy to retrieve a match or lighter before she held the cigarette expectantly.
“Menthols?” her father asked.
She offered one to Milton and he took it and lit a match for both of them. “Sweet. She’s got taste.”
Teddy scoffed. “Fancy-ass cigarettes do not equal taste. You ever hear what she named her pets? Queenie. Snowball. No imagination.”
“Mom liked them.”
“Thank God I was there to mix things up.”
She laughed. “Mix things up? You renamed every one of those strays Sufchick.”
Teddy nodded at Milton. It was true. “Hell if I know what it means.”
“They loved you too,” Ruby said. “They’d always come.”
“I have that effect on puppies and women.” He tried to ruffle Ruby’s hair and she dodged his reach.
“Damn if it isn’t true.” Milton laughed, nodding his head.
Ruby rolled her eyes and propped her chin in her palm. It was good to rest. She was surprised by how very, very heavy her head had become. The mailman came into the bar and Milton excused himself, calling out a hello.
“He’s a bastard.” Her father gestured with his chin toward the mailman. “A sanctimonious, one-drink-a-day bastard with a perfect lawn, the worst kind.” Teddy called out, “Drinking on my dime, Phil? Aren’t you still on the taxpayers’ clock?”
“Nice to see you too, Teddy. Give my best to Sally.”
Her father huffed. Ruby smoked. “You have something on everyone,” she said.
“That’s because I pay attention. Just like you.”
She watched in the mirror over the bar as her father plucked a crumb of tobacco from his tongue, then flicked it away. He rubbed his palms over the top of his thighs, stole glances at the men, and let loose a loud sigh, as if drinking and noticing was hard labor. And she supposed it was when a person paid attention to get even, to discover just the right detail to hold against another person. Teddy felt he needed to get a leg up on the world. Ruby paid attention to differentiate herself from her father and her mother. Paying attention would set her free. A long ash balanced on the end of her cigarette. Milton returned, offering a tuna-can ashtray. “So, what’d I miss?”
“I pledged a sorority.”
Her father widened his eyes. “Sorority?”
“What do you all do?” Milton asked.
“We meet. The fraternity next door keeps a chicken they can hypnotize.” She crossed her legs and twirled her finger in her empty shot glass. “She’s a pet and rides around on John Douglas’s shoulder. He calls her Meredith. Feeds her Bacardi rum at parties.”
“Who is this John Douglas?”
“A friend, Daddy. Meredith’s got steel-blue feathers on her neck and one beady eye that gets real mean-looking when she drinks. She’s their mascot. A girl I know wears a feather in her ponytail.” Without turning her head, she measured her father’s interest. He drummed his fingers on the bar expectantly, his eyes sparkled, and she knew to draw the story out slow, just the way he did with his stories.
“What happened to the other eye?”
“Shriveled up like a raisin.”