Chapter Twenty-four

Nora sat at the kitchen table, reading a fifteen-year-old newspaper that she’d found in the broom closet and sipping a cup of lukewarm coffee. The front-page story was an outraged report that Washington State officials had set off underwater firecrackers to scare away sea lions at the Ballard Locks. The sea lions were eating the salmon and the steelhead. Beside that story was a smaller column—complete with photograph. President Reagan’s dog had received a tonsillectomy.

Mostly, she was waiting for Ruby to come downstairs. Nora had tried to wait up for her daughter the previous night, but at about twelve-thirty, she’d given up. It had to be a good sign that Ruby hadn’t come home early.

At least, that’s what Nora told herself.

She was about to turn the page when the phone rang. Ignoring the crutches leaning against the wall, she hobbled to the counter and answered. “Hello?”

“It’s me. Dee.”

Nora sagged against the cold, pebbled surface of the refrigerator. “Hi, Dee. What excellent news do you have for me today?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“That’s hardly surprising.”

“I just got off the phone with Tom Adams. He called me at home. On Sunday, to tell me to tell you that if you didn’t get those blankety-blank columns on his blankety-blank desk by Wednesday morning, he was going to slap a ten-million-dollar lawsuit on you. He said the paperwork was already done on it, he was just giving you a last chance.” She made a little coughing sound. “He said he was going to sue everybody you’d ever worked with—including me.”

“He can’t do that,” Nora said, though, of course, she had no idea whether or not he could.

“Are you sure?” Dee sounded scared.

“I’ll talk to Tom myself,” Nora answered, before Dee could really get going.

“Oh, thank God.”

“What else is going on there? Is the brouhaha dying down?”

“No,” and to her credit, Dee sounded miserable about it. “Your housekeeper went on Larry King Live last night and said … terrible things about you.”

“Adele said bad things about me?”

“A woman named Barb Heinneman said you’d commissioned an expensive stained-glass window from her and never paid for it. And your hair lady—Carla—she said you were a lousy tipper.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, what does that have—”

“The Tattler reported that guy in the pictures wasn’t your first … affair. They’re saying that you and your husband had an ‘open’ marriage and you both slept with tons of other people. And sometimes …” Dee’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “You did it in groups. Like in that movie, Eyes Wide Shut. That’s what they wrote, anyway.”

Nora’s head was spinning. Honest to God, a part of her felt like laughing, it was that ridiculous. Eyes Wide Shut? Group sex? For the first time since this whole mess began, she started to get mad. She’d made mistakes—big ones, bad ones—but this …

This, she didn’t deserve. As she’d heard in a movie once—this shit she wouldn’t eat. They were trying to make her out to be some kind of whore. “Is that it? Or am I carrying some space alien’s mutant child, too?”

Dee laughed nervously. “That’s mostly it. Except …”

“Yes?” Nora drew the word out, gave it at least three syllables.

“There was a thing in Liz Smith’s column this week, one of those gossipy hints she loves to make—you know the ones. It sorta made it sound as if someone was writing a tell-all story about you. An ugly one.”

“That’s hardly—”

“It’s supposed to be by someone close to you.”

Nora released her breath in a sigh. She wasn’t surprised; she’d expected this, and yet still it hurt. “I see.”

“And your housekeeper said you ripped up parking tickets and threw away jury summonses. Some guy on the city council said they were going to launch an investigation.”

That was it. “Good-bye, Dee,” Nora said, uncertain as to whether her assistant was still talking or not. She hung up the phone and wrenched the cupboard doors open.

There they were: the cheap, yellow crockery plates she’d bought at a garage sale a lifetime ago. She picked one up, felt the heft of it in her hand. And hesitated. There was no point in making a mess—

Launch an investigation.

She wound her arm back and threw the plate. It went flying through the air and smacked the wall by the arch, shattering.

Like Eyes Wide Shut … group sex.

She threw another one. It hit with a satisfying smack.

Open marriage … lousy tipper.

Another plate flew.

There were bits and pieces of china everywhere now; dents in the walls, scratches in the paint. Nora was breathing heavily. And smiling.

She should have tried this years ago. It actually helped. She reached for another plate.

Ten-million-dollar lawsuit.

And sent it sailing across the room.

Just then, Ruby came running downstairs. “What in the he—” She ducked, flung a protective hand across her face. The plate brushed past her head and hit the wall. When the pieces clattered to the floor, she hesitantly looked up. “Jesus, Mom … if you don’t like the plates, buy a new set.”

Nora sank to her knees on the hard, cold floor. She laughed until tears leaked out of her eyes … and then she was crying.

She buried her face in her hands, ashamed to let her daughter see her like this, but she couldn’t seem to stop …

It was too much for her suddenly, all of it—Eric’s illness, her career, her ruined reputation.

She felt lonely, and old. A woman who’d traded everything in her life for a treasured gold coin, and found that in a heavy rain, the gold had washed off, leaving an ordinary bit of copper in her hand.

She looked up at Ruby, saw her daughter through a blurry curtain of tears.

“Mom?” Ruby knelt in front of her. “Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?”

“In that Courtney Love, presurgery, after-concert sort of way.” She reached out, pushed a damp strand of hair out of Nora’s eyes. “What happened?”

“A lady is suing me for fraudulent advice. And someone close to me—apparently a friend—is writing an ugly tell-all about my life. Oh, and don’t be surprised when you hear that your dad and I engaged in group sex.” She tried to smile; it was a dismal failure. “But don’t you worry, I can get through this. I’ve been through worse. It’s just a midlife tantrum. The only thing that matters is how much I love you.”

Ruby jerked back, let her hand drop into her lap. “Oh, man …” she whispered.

Nora climbed awkwardly to her feet and hobbled to the kitchen table. She slumped onto a chair, plopped her casted foot on another one.

It occurred to her then, as she watched her daughter, who still knelt on the floor with her head bowed, that there was no silence more cruel and empty than the one that followed that simple declaration: “I love you.”

She’d spent a childhood waiting to hear those words from her father, then an eternity waiting to hear them from her husband.

Now, it seemed, she was destined to wait again. And she’d thought things were going so well with Ruby …

“Would you like some coffee?” she said, pushing the newspaper aside. Her voice was calm and even, as if it were completely ordinary for them to be here together, amid a smattering of broken yellow china.

Ruby looked up at her. “Don’t.”

Nora saw that her daughter was crying; it confused her. “What is it, Rube?”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t say it. Please.”

Nora had no idea how to respond. Ruby got up, turned, and went upstairs.

Nora heard each footfall on the steps. She couldn’t seem to draw a steady breath. What in the world just happened?

Then she heard the steps again; Ruby was coming back downstairs. She walked into the kitchen, carrying a suitcase in one hand and a tablet of paper in the other.

Nora’s hand flew to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I thought we’d gotten to the point where I could say that to you.”

Ruby dropped the suitcase. It landed with a thunk that shook the thin windowpanes.

“Ruby, honey …” The endearment slipped out on a current of longing and regret.

“It was never about forgetting or forgiving,” Ruby said slowly. Tears welled in her dark eyes, bled down her cheeks. “It took me so long to figure that out. And now it’s too late.”

Nora frowned. “I don’t understand—”

“I love you.”

Ruby’s voice was so soft Nora thought at first she’d imagined the words, drawn them up from her own subconscious and given them the substance of sound.

“You love me?” Nora dared to whisper.

Ruby stood there, a little unsteady. “Just try … to remember that, okay?”

“How could I possibly—”

Ruby slapped a yellow pad of paper on the kitchen table. “I spent all of last night making you a copy of this.”

Nora barely glanced at it; she was too busy watching Ruby. “What is it?”

Ruby backed up, stepped alongside her suitcase. “Read it,” she said dully.

With a little shrug, Nora pulled the table close. “I might need my glasses …” She peered down at the paper, squinting.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that I was paid to write this article. Paid handsomely, as they say in the kind of restaurants where a person like me can’t afford to order a dinner salad. Enough so that I could trade in my beat-up Volkswagen Bug for a slightly less beat-up Porsche.

I should also tell you that I dislike my mother. No, that’s not true. I dislike the snotty salesclerk who works the night shift at my local video store.

I hate my mother.

Nora looked up sharply.

Ruby was crying now, so hard her cheeks were bright pink and her shoulders were trembling. “It’s an article for C-Caché magazine.”

Nora drew in a sharp, gasping breath. She knew it was all in her eyes—the stinging betrayal, the aching sadness … and yes, the anger. “How could you?”

Ruby clamped a hand over her mouth, grabbed the suitcase, and ran out of the house.

As if from a great, unbreachable distance, Nora heard the car start up and speed away, sputtering through loose gravel.

It was quiet once more.

Nora tried not to look at the yellow pages, with their scrawled blue words marching across the even lines, but she couldn’t help herself. Those horrible, hateful words leapt out at her.

I hate my mother.

She took a deep, deep breath, then looked down again. Her hands were shaking as she lifted the pad and began to read.

The story of us starts a dozen years ago, in a place few of you have ever seen: the San Juan Islands up in Washington State.

It was only a few sentences later that Nora began to cry.

Ruby made it all the way to the end of the driveway, then she slammed on the brakes.

She was running away again, but there was nowhere to hide on this one, no way past except through. She’d done a terrible, selfish thing, and she owed more to her mother than an empty house.

She put the minivan in reverse and backed down the driveway. Parking, she walked down the path, through the fragrant garden, and out to the edge of the bank. She would have gone to sit on her favorite rock, but her mother couldn’t get there on crutches.

She wanted to be seen. When Mom finished the article, she would undoubtedly head for the porch; it was her favorite place. Then she would see her daughter, sitting out on the edge of the property.

She sat down on the grass. It was a beautiful summer’s day. The islands were an endless mosaic of color—blue, blue sky, green forested land, silver, choppy sea.

She lay back on the grass and closed her eyes. The air smelled sweetly of grass and salt, of her childhood.

She knew she would remember this day for the rest of her life, and probably at the oddest times—when she was elbow-deep in sudsy water, washing the dinner dishes. In the shower, with the sweet, citrusy scent of her mother’s favorite shampoo all around her, or holding the babies she prayed someday to have. At times like that, she would remember this moment, and all the others that had led up to it. In a very real way, this would be the beginning of her adult life; everything that grew afterward would be planted in the soil of what she and her mother said to each other right here.

She wondered if she would ever get over her shame, or if she would carry it with her always, the way she’d once been weighed down by anger.

Now Ruby would be the one sending gifts across the miles, leaving phone messages on machines, waiting, forever waiting, for an answer …

“Hey, Rube.”

Ruby opened her eyes and saw her mother standing beside her. She was leaning awkwardly forward on her crutches. The sun haloed her auburn hair in brightness.

Ruby jackknifed up. “Mom,” she whispered, finding that her throat was too tight to say anything more.

“I’m glad you came back. You can’t get away from me so easily on an island, I guess.”

Mom tossed the crutches aside and knelt slowly onto the grass, then sort of fell sideways into a sitting position. She set the article on her lap and stared down at it. The curled edges fluttered in the soft breeze. “I read every word you wrote about me, and I have to admit, it broke my heart.”

Ruby wanted to curl up and die. She considered how far they’d come, she and her mom, the winding, shaded road that had taken them from then to now, and she ached for what her selfishness had wrought. If not for the article, Ruby would be laughing right now, telling her mother about the night before. Maybe they would have talked about ridiculous, girly things like wedding rings and bridesmaids and flower arrangements.

“I’m so ashamed,” she said. “I knew those words would hurt you. In the beginning, that’s what I wanted to do.”

“And now?”

“I would give anything to take it all back.”

Nora smiled sadly. “The truth always hurts, Ruby. It’s a law of nature, like gravity.” She glanced out at the Sound. “When I read your article, I saw myself. That doesn’t seem like much, but I’ve spent a lifetime running away from who I am and where I came from. I never trusted anyone enough to be myself. When I started my advice column, I knew people wouldn’t like me, so I made up Nora Bridge, a woman they could trust and admire, and then I tried to live up to that creation. But how could I? The mistakes I’d made—the woman I really was—kept me on the outside all the time, looking in at my own life.” She looked at Ruby again. “But I trusted you.”

Ruby squeezed her eyes shut. “I know.”

“I was right to trust you, Ruby. I knew it when I finished reading. You listened and you wrote, and when it was over, you’d revealed me. From the girl who hid under the stairs, to the woman who hid behind the metal bars of a mental institution, to the woman who hid behind a microphone.” She smiled. “To this woman, who isn’t hiding now. You made me see me.”

“I know I gave away all your secrets, but I’m not going to publish the article. I won’t do that to you.”

“Oh, yes you are.”

Ruby wasn’t surprised that her mother didn’t believe her. “I’m making you a promise. I won’t deliver it.”

Nora leaned forward, took Ruby’s hands in hers, and held them tightly. “I want you to publish this article. It’s a beautiful, powerful portrait of who we are, and it shows who we can be, both of us. It shows how love can go wrong, and how it can find its way back to the beginning if you believe in it. What you wrote … it isn’t a betrayal, Ruby. Maybe it started out that way, but why shouldn’t it have? We had a long, long road to walk. And at the end of it, what I saw was how much you love me.”

Ruby swallowed hard. “I do love you, Mom. And I’m so sor—”

“Sshh, no more of that. We’re family. We’re going to trample all over each other’s feelings now and again. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.” Nora’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. “And now, we’re going to go inside and call your agent. I’m appearing on Sarah Purcell with you.”

“No way. They’ll eat you alive.”

“Let ’em. I’ll be holding my daughter’s hand for strength. They can’t hurt me any more, Ruby. And I’m itching to fight back.”

Ruby stared at her mother in awe. She was doing it again, changing before Ruby’s eyes. She had a sudden glimpse of yet another woman altogether. “You’re amazing.”

Nora laughed. “It took you long enough to notice.”