The Hitchhiker noses the fragments of china that Ruby has laid out on the table. A spout. A handle. This piece looks like the miniature masterpiece of a portrait of a violet. There’s the bulge of the teapot; there’s the finial from its cover. Ruby doesn’t know whether to feel sad, or maybe relieved. Has this object been the long lingering reminder of a most painful moment? Surely there have been times when she’s used it without thinking of Madame Celestine. Without thinking about the hurt inflicted when the woman she had come to think of as a mother betrayed that affection. Surely over forty years the teapot has become just a teapot. But looking at the shards of the thing, Ruby knows that a kind of spell has been broken. She collects the pieces. She has a square silk scarf she used to wear around her head, turban-style. She’s had it almost as long as she’s had the teapot. She places the pieces into the scarf and gathers the ends together to tie it. None of the shards will fall out. Done, Ruby folds back the table, climbs into the driver’s seat of the Westie. She knows just the place to ceremonially inter these remnants of her second oldest decision. If she was anywhere near the ocean, she’d given them a burial at sea where the porcelain shards would be smoothed into beach glass, eventually heaved up on the shore to be found by a delighted beachcomber. Lake Harmony will just have to do.
The morning sky is hazy with the promise of a good hot summer day. It is still early enough that the parking lot is empty except for a yellow-vested town worker stabbing litter with a stick, stuffing his booty into a plastic trash bag. Ruby doesn’t particularly want to be observed tossing her bundle into the lake, so she makes like she’s just there to walk her dog, ostentatiously dangling a ready poop bag from the hand not grasping the silken bundle. They are quickly away from the sandy beach, following a well-trodden trail up and through the skinny woods. On this, the public side of the lake, the trail will double back, respecting the boundary with the very much private side. Ruby has been along this path enough times with the Hitchhiker that she has figured out how to boldly trespass. Just look like you belong there.
They come to a low pier, a flotilla of tiny sailboats bobbing alongside. Ruby has seen these little craft out on the lake, children who look too young to be sailing alone piloting them in varying degrees of ability. The Harmony Farms Yacht Club learn to sail program. There is always a motorboat in the vicinity and she’s never actually witnessed a capsizing.
Ruby strides to the end of the pier, the dog right at her heels, her little brown eyes fixed on Ruby’s face, wondering what’s going to happen next. Before she launches her bundle into the drink, Ruby reconsiders losing the scarf. It is pure silk, a pale orange sherbet struck through with threads of emerald green. No reason to heave that out of her life too. She unties the knot and begins flinging the teapot shards one by one into Lake Harmony. The water here is deep enough, she hopes, that no kid, having fallen overboard, will step on the broken pieces. In time, perhaps even without the tidal wash of the sea, these broken bits, these remnants of her fractured life, will turn harmless.
The breeze has picked up so Ruby ties the scarf around her head to keep her hair out of her face. From her vantage point on the end of the pier Ruby sees that the town worker has left. In the distance, she hears the sound of children’s voices and she knows that she had better beat it out of there. But still she lingers. The dog presses herself against Ruby’s knees, so she scoops her up. The vibration is strong, clear, and Ruby allows herself to breathe in the scent of the dog’s thoughts.
“This is a good place. I like it here.”
“We can’t stay.”
“Stay. Yes. We are home here.”
And Ruby realizes the dog is thinking not about the pier upon which they are trespassing, but the place where they found each other, where they have become partners. And, Ruby thinks, it’s Friday and she is still nearly $1,000 shy of the $2,000 she needs to secure that partnership. Time to get to work.
Avoidance is a skill and Ruby is displaying that skill by leaving her phone on Do Not Disturb. If Mrs. Cross has tried to call her, she’s failed. Ruby is also displaying her resistance to temptation by not checking the damn thing anyway. What was that expression? Good news will keep, and bad news won’t go away? She’s set up her round table and two chairs under an oak tree in the park, not too far from where she sets her tent up at the Faire. She’s displaying her busker’s license prominently. If her profession is somewhat suspect, her legitimacy isn’t. She’s close enough to the foot traffic exploring the shops on Main Street, now in full August sale mode, to attract the random tourist who might not be around for the Makers Faire on Saturday. Lots of people pass through Harmony Farms on their way to the Berkshires, finding it a good stopping place for a lunch break. It’s been Cynthia’s mission to get them to stay long enough to spend some money in town.
As a final touch, Ruby unfolds the sandwich board with her menu of skills. Psychic readings: palm, tarot. She has taken a strip of masking tape and covered “tea leaves.” When she gets a chance, she’ll poke around in a thrift store and see if she can find a new teapot. But, for now, her most prominent offering is written in large letters: Animal Communicator. It is a sign of desperation that Ruby has also modified her fees, upping the palm and tarot readings to forty dollars from twenty and animal communicator to a flat sixty bucks. It will either work or she’ll do a fire sale at the end of the day.
The Hitchhiker is doing her bit, wagging and wriggling in joy at the approach of every stranger. She has this amazing ability to make you think that you are the most special person in her life. It would make Ruby jealous, but she knows that the dog is somewhat of an actor. True affection is the way she speaks to Ruby alone.
Two hours, four customers later and Ruby is doing mental calculations. This must be what it felt like during World War I when success on the battlefield was measured in inches, not yards.
I really enjoy being a hostess, greeting passersby and asking them to join us. It feels as though that is my purpose, at least as long as we enjoy the park and the lovely heat of the day. Ruby is very pleased with my unsubtle friendliness. I know others of my sort who distrust, but I have never been one of those. It is my feeling that all human beings deserve a chance to be befriended. Sometimes two chances. As I’ve said, I don’t dwell on the past, but I will say this, the night that I bolted from my former home, it wasn’t so much that I was running away, as toward. I knew that my purpose there had ended with my elderly companion’s life. I was also crazed to get out, to run, to stretch, to burn off the anxiety that had kept me company for however long it was before other human beings came to open that door. I was less hungry and thirsty than I was bored. I don’t know how long I kept moving, except that, at some point, I knew that I needed to keep going in the direction in which I was headed. Going back wasn’t possible.
The storm that came up had me seeking shelter under the porch of a building near the lake. As that white van pulled in, I was jolted by the certainty that it was now my new home. That inside of it I would find someone who would be mine. I knew, without knowing how, that the woman in there would be able to understand me, understand my language well beyond the common words a dog uses: eat, out, water, ball. I asked to be admitted and Ruby opened the door.
In the last few days there has been a darkness to my companion’s spirit. At first I thought that the object with the papers in it, pungent with the scent of a dark damp place, was the cause of her darkness. But now I wonder. I think it has something to do with me.
Ruby knows that her fallback position on raising the money to purchase the Hitchhiker is to ask Sabine for a loan. She just wants that loan to be as small as possible. A far better thing to owe your daughter $500 bucks than $1,000. Even better, to owe nothing at all. Sabine has already offered, and Ruby declined as quickly as she could. She really doesn’t want Sabine to have proof that her mother is living as close to the financial vest as she is. Sabine surely has few memories of the belt tightening Ruby inflicted on her during her earliest childhood. The thrift store shopping, the soup kitchens. No, Beenie was a little child, a toddler. She couldn’t possibly remember those horrible years. Living not in a Westfalia, but in shelters and motels far less clean than the Dew Drop. Ruby had been a child herself, so young, that she often pretended that she was the babysitter, not the baby’s mother. Did Sabine hold some vestigial memory of eating stolen baby food? Ruby remembers one day, a hot Florida day. She’d taken them down south so they didn’t have to worry about staying warm. There were only a few bucks left from the bus trip down. There they were, sitting on a beach, watching a woman throw perfectly good bread crusts to gulls. The urge to fight off the birds and give those spent crusts to her child horrified Ruby. Instead, she left Sabine sitting on the beach, playing with a shell, digging in the soft sand. “I’ll read your palm, ma’am. I’ll tell your fortune.”
The woman had looked at Ruby, looked at the baby playing on the sand. The annoyance quickly changed into worry. “No, thank you. But here.” She pulled five dollars out of a pocket. “Get your baby a meal.” She pulled her hand back before Ruby could take the money, reached into her other pocket, pulled out a ten. “And yourself.”
Ruby shakes the thoughts off. The dog has her paws on Ruby’s lap, her spaniel eyes downcast, the tip of her white tail fluttering in the hope that Ruby will snap out of it. At least she hasn’t had to steal dog food. Things are better. By the time Sabine was seven, Ruby had figured it out.
“Okay, enough for today.” Ruby folds up the sandwich board and the table, the two chairs. All in all, it hasn’t been a bad day; she’s got another $200 in her purse. Another inch of territory toward her goal. Best part, she hasn’t heard from Mrs. Cross. Maybe, if she’s able to eke out another week before the son shows up, she can make the goal and win the war. As Ruby gets into the van, she notices a yellow envelope under her windshield wiper. A parking ticket.
Polly Schaeffer is waiting for Ruby in Bull’s yard. She’s out of uniform, but she has an official expression on her face. A displeased expression. Out of uniform, Polly favors tent dresses, what might even be called caftans if they were less floral, espadrilles on her feet. As Ruby backs into her spot on the worn grass, Bull comes out of the house bearing a plate of uncooked hamburgers. The Hitchhiker licks her lips. The scent of charcoal fragrances the air and, like the dog, Ruby feels the urge to lick her lips. Her lunch of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is but a distant memory.
“Join us for a burger, Ruby?” Bull flourishes his spatula, gives Polly a fretful side glance.
Polly stands her ground. “I got a call from Mrs. Cross.”
“Yes,” Ruby says.
Bull takes it as yes to a burger. Polly takes it as yes, she knows she’s been avoiding the inevitable.