Doug leaves the Airbnb in Sandwich first. Before he goes, he lets Ruby know that she’s welcome to bunk in with him if she has no other plans. Ruby likes his turn of phrase. No other plans. She could go back to the Dew Drop, or back to Bull’s, or, as she thinks she should, just get on the road and simply go. Drive until she gets free of this sticky sense of belonging. South is appealing. But she’d have to go through Providence to go south. Fifteen minutes on I-95 and she’d be through it. She can point her van and her nose toward Connecticut and not look left or right, not look for an exit sign that announces, “This Way to Celestine Fox’s House.” Yes, she’s looked it up.
Or she can take Doug up on his offer. Spend a little time being domestic. Catch up on her laundry and exercise her cooking skills. She could even take a quick trip farther northwest and visit her family in Moose River Junction. Ruby recognizes stasis when she sees it. For so many years of her life she’s practiced the art of cut and run, pick up and go, blow this pop stand. Never looked back, never let the dust of one place adhere to her feet. Until now. Now she can’t seem to work up the energy. Maybe energy isn’t the right word; it’s more the imperative.
Ruby suddenly is weak in the knees. The imperative. She no longer feels the urge, the need, to move. Whatever has been pressing down on her all her life has all but vanished.
We are on the move again. I was happy while the direction in which we were going was toward the place I like, the place I feel we are at home. It’s not a particular den, more like a territory. Doug’s house is in it and Boy’s yard. The little room we den in every few days where Ravi has good treats. The street where we stop and chat with humans and dogs we know; the park where Ruby touches other people and other dogs to understand what they need. This mobile den. That’s our territory. Not where we are going now; now we are headed in the completely wrong direction and nothing smells right. Ruby is exuding her worry scent, her nervous scent, and that makes me nervous too. If she is apprehensive, then so am I.
It doesn’t take but one wrong turn before Ruby finds the neighborhood where Lily visited Celestine. Celeste as she is now. The house is much like every other house around it, a tiny Cape style, faded green aluminum siding, a sentry box entryway with a cement walk leading to it. Scraggy grass, foundation plantings that have become overgrown and reach to the lip of the picture window, itself framed unevenly by heavy draw drapes, the left side far wider than the right, making the window look off-kilter. The plot is tiny, and the driveway abuts the neighbor’s driveway, the pair divided only by a strip of dirt. There is no car on either side.
Ruby pulls up in front of the house, shuts off the Westfalia, and sits. The dog climbs from her seat to Ruby’s lap, licks Ruby’s chin. Asks loudly what is going on. Ruby rests her chin on the dog’s head. “I’m going to visit an old friend.”
“Doesn’t feel like that.”
“No. I suppose not. We were close once but had a falling out.”
“You fell out of what.”
“Affection, I suppose.”
“I smell hurt. Did she bite you?”
“Sort of.”
Suddenly the Hitchhiker stands on Ruby’s lap, growls. “I will protect you.”
“You will stay in the car.”
A flicker in Ruby’s rearview mirror catches her eye as a car lumbers into the driveway on Celeste’s side. A beat-up landau-roofed copper-tone Oldsmobile very well suited to an old woman. As Ruby watches, the driver’s door opens, but no one emerges. After a moment, a leg comes out, the foot shod in a camo green Croc, followed by a barrel-shaped torso. A thin gray T-shirt rides up and grimy chinos ride down. The driver yanks at the pants, then reaches in and pulls out a brown paper bag. There is absolutely no resemblance between the hulk that makes his unsteady way to the side door of the tiny house and the God’s gift to women that Buck once was. There is every resemblance to the image she conjured of him on that long-ago day when she cursed him into wreckage. He has become the monster she shrieked into existence. Troll-like he leans heavily against the railing, hauling himself up the steps. As he gains the landing, Ruby sees his face. She has been holding her breath, and now can release it. There is nothing of Sabine in those bruised-looking eyes, those sallow, withered cheeks. To her he looks haunted, defeated. And then Celestine comes to the door and opens it for him, and Ruby sees a softening, a flicker of a smile and a vestige of humanity.
Cars must park on this street all the time because no one has so much as noticed her distinctive white Westfalia sitting in front of their house. Buck has gone in and straightened the crooked curtains. Ruby puts her hand on her ignition key, but neither turns it nor pulls it out. Now or never. The dog, back in her own seat, has her eyes on Ruby, her little eyebrows expressing a near perfect perplexity. Reflecting Ruby’s own mixed feelings.
A surge of an old combative spirit rises. The same spirit that allowed a teenage girl to stay out of reach of authorities who would take away her child; the same spirit that enabled her to raise that child, to provide for her.
What Buck did changed the course of Ruby’s life. But she cannot imagine it any other way. Forty years ago, this man inflicted himself upon her, violated her. But she has gotten the better of him. She has Sabine. She has Molly and Tom and, yes, Dan, her son-in-law. If evil was done, she has received a greater good. She stepped out of Madame Celestine’s RV and made her own way, made her own life.
“What do I do?” Ruby presses her hands on the dog’s head.
For once there is no response, no connection. The dog is just a dog, her thoughts inscrutable.
Ruby jerks the key out of the ignition, pops open her door and slams it behind her. It bounces, the latch not clicking, but she doesn’t notice. She slips the key into her jeans pocket as she stands on the sidewalk, facing the house. Now she’s been noticed. The newly straightened drapes move slightly; clearly, they think she might be some Jehovah’s Witness going solo. She wonders if neither Celestine nor Buck will recognize her. Is she someone so far in their past that they may need her driver’s license to believe that this avenging angel is who she will tell them that she is?
At her knock, Buck swings the windowless front door open, keeping the screen door between them. He studies her face. She doesn’t like the look now any more than she did back then, when his predator eyes felt like they were scraping the skin right off. “Can I help you?”
“Buck.”
If he is surprised at her using his name, he doesn’t show it.
She waits a beat, maybe two, long enough to see if he will recall her, remember the fourteen-year-old star boarder in his mother’s RV who he violated.
From behind Buck, “Who is it?”
“It’s Ruby Heartwood, Madame Celestine,” Ruby calls through the closed screen door.
She hears, “Who?”
It is hard to imagine that two people who had such a profound effect on her life would have forgotten her so completely, as if she did not have an effect on their lives. At least, not yet.
Ruby puts her hand on the latch. “May I come in?”
“What do you want?” Buck keeps his hand on the other side of the latch, holding the door closed as if she is an invader.
“To tell you something.” Ruby is not shaking; she is not trembling with nerves or with righteous anger. She is calm and knows exactly what she must do. She is no longer a child, a foundling, a runaway. She is a grown woman who has followed her own path and made a life. “I can do it through this door.” Ruby lets go of the latch. “But I’d like to talk to both of you.”
“Let her in, Buck.”
Buck stands aside, lets Ruby pull the squeaky door open for herself. There is a fist-sized tear in the screen. A fillip of trepidation lights in her belly. Is this really such a good idea? Maybe she should have looked him up, Buck, to see if he has a criminal record, a rap sheet, a prison record. She wrangles her momentary doubts into submission, walks into the house.
Madame Celestine is exactly as Lily Parmenter had described her. A widow’s hump has pressed her posture into a gnomish crescent. Just the sight of it makes Ruby stand up straighter. Celeste has to twist her head sideways and look up to see Ruby’s face. There is a hint of recollection in her wrinkled face. It’s like watching a thought blossom, the way she begins to nod, a faint smile developing, quickly replaced by the full memory of Ruby’s ignominious departure and, of course, what she took with her.
“You stole my teapot.”
“I did. Actually, let’s be clear, I took it as payment for services rendered.”
“You also took my money.”
“Again, payment.”
“I can’t stand here trying to see your face. Sit down.” Celeste has reverted to Celestine. “There.” She points to a lonely dining room chair separated from its partners still grouped around a maple table jammed into an alcove. Sitting, Ruby is now eye to eye with Celestine, who stands in front of her. Close up, the formidable fortune-teller’s age falls away and Ruby can see the woman as she remembers her. It’s a bit of a shock to think that she herself is now older than Celestine was when they first met. She’d seemed so old to those very young eyes, a right and proper age for a crone. In fact, Celestine could only have been in her midforties. Now Ruby looks into faded blue eyes surrounded by a lacework of wrinkles, and the image of the woman Celestine was is subsumed by the woman she is now, Celeste Fox.
Would her own mother be more like this, an old woman, rather than the ethereal dream woman who inhabits Ruby’s mother dreams?
“Why are you here? Are you going to give me back my teapot?”
“I wish I could. I would, in fact, if it hadn’t recently met with disaster.” Ruby is speaking the truth, as suddenly as the idea has come upon her. She would have given the old woman her teapot back. Maybe she should have saved the shards and handed them over, a fine metaphor for the smashing of her youth. “It served me well, Madame Celestine; it helped me to support my daughter.”
“Well, fine. It was a good teapot. I got it from—”
Ruby wonders what kind of seer this old woman is if she doesn’t put two and two together. She interrupts, “My daughter, who is forty now.” Come on, do the math.
Buck has left the room.
“Why are you here? Do you want me to give you a reading? You should know that I don’t do that sort of thing anymore. I sold my tarot cards.”
“I know. Lily told me. It’s how I found you.” As easily as that, she found the woman she had no intention of ever seeing again. She cannot find the one she wants, but she has effortlessly found this woman for whom she has harbored nothing but hate for forty years. A hatred predicated on Celestine’s brutal rejection, a hatred born of hurt. She looks the old woman in the face and is shocked by the fact that she has no feeling toward her at all. The simmering, decades-long anger hasn’t boiled to the surface; it’s gone lukewarm.
“What do you want to know? You seem to have everything in order. You don’t have a confused aura.”
That seems unlikely. All Ruby feels at this moment is confused and betrayed by her own sudden inability to tell Celestine what she needs to say, what she came to say. As unlikely as this reunion had seemed just days ago, Ruby has envisioned shattering this old woman’s world with a life-changing announcement that … that what? That Buck’s evil action means that Celestine has Sabine to call her own? Of all the scenarios that have floated through her imagination, Ruby hasn’t given thought to the idea that Celestine might want to claim a relationship with Sabine and her family. Ruby really should have run all this by her daughter before this impulsive visit.
“Let me help you, Ruby.” Celestine reaches behind herself to find the edge of the couch. Sits down. “You have come to tell me that my Bucky violated you and left you with child.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not the first. You’ll get nothing from me.”
Ruby almost laughs. “What would I possibly want from you? It’s far too late for reparations.”
“An abortion, of course. It’s what all the others demanded.”
“Celeste, this was forty years ago.”
“Ruby, leave her alone. She gets confused this time of day.” Buck is standing in the archway between the living room and the dining alcove. “And, just for the record, there have never been any others. You were it. My only…”
“Victim?”
“If you insist.”
Ruby takes a good look at Buck now. He looks almost as aged as his mother, but he can only be in his sixties. He has the pallor of a man who has endured ill health. “I would like to know if there is some illness that I should let my daughter know about. Diabetes? Cancer?”
“Chronic pain. No known cause.”
“For how long?”
“Since the day you cursed me.”
The screen door squeaks. All of a sudden Ruby feels the wet nose of the Hitchhiker thrust into her palm. The dog has nosed herself in through the unlatched screen door. Ruby scoops her up into her arms.
The dog’s thoughts are clear. “She is no threat. The man is no threat. You are done here.”
Ruby starts the van, pulls away from the curb and tries to remember how to get back to the highway entrance. She sees the sign for Interstate 95 South. The Hitchhiker issues a low rumble in her throat, not quite a growl. Ruby remembers the cards she dealt to herself weeks ago, which pointed her in the direction of north. At the time she thought it meant go to northern New England, join the fair circuit. Now she understands. Her destiny lies north of this moment.
Ruby gains the highway, merges into northbound traffic. She is heading back to Harmony Farms.
Content that we are heading back to our territory, I jump onto the backseat, circle three times, and tuck myself into a little package, nose under hind leg. I need to sleep. My person has more to accomplish today, and I will need to be helpful. It is very hard work listening to a human. They are never as clear as they could be, their thoughts are so full of noise and words. They never just let things be. All you really need is a nice place to curl up. A bowl of decent kibble. Fresh water. Toys, of course. Play is good work. But humans prefer to gnaw at their thoughts instead of bones. If only they would nap more. My person has the extra problem of worrying for other people. Like some dogs take on their person’s fears. It makes her weary.
It would be easy to keep going a little farther, knock on Doug’s door. It would be just a little farther than that to go all the way to Sabine’s. But Ruby is weighed down with an exhaustion that limits her to getting only as far as the Dew Drop Inn, where she throws herself on Ravi’s mercy and gets her familiar room key. All she wants to do is sleep. Every muscle hurts, and for a moment, she wonders if she is actually physically ill.
When she plugs her phone charger into the wall outlet, Ruby sees that she’s missed a call from Sabine. She doesn’t have the energy to talk to anyone, much less her daughter, so Ruby turns off her phone and climbs into bed. It is only five o’clock. She’ll nap and then see how she feels about revealing all that has happened. Maybe she’ll be fresher. Maybe she’ll be braver. The Hitchhiker tucks herself into the bend of Ruby’s legs, gives her left ear a good scratching, then sighs. Settles. Sleeps.
Three women are sitting at a table. Their hands touch the table, and the scene resembles a séance. They are talking animatedly, but Ruby cannot understand anything that is being said even though she is, in the way of dreams, one of the women. A nimbus surrounds the woman opposite Ruby, as if the sun is rising behind her, and Ruby squints. The woman to her right is in shadow. She cannot see their faces, but she knows who they are. They have appeared in her dreams all her life. Sometimes they came as angels when she was under the influence of the convent’s teachings. Sometimes they came as clients, seeking her advice. Sometimes they were random figures standing in a line waiting for something to happen. Today, in this dream, they seem particularly corporeal. She can see the threads of DNA dancing around them like multicolored atoms around a nucleus. She can feel their touch as the women reach and clasp hands around the table. The one to her right side speaks clearly now: Mom, for goodness sake. The voice is so clear, the dreaming Ruby wonders if Sabine has arrived in her room. Ruby resists waking to the sound of that voice. She is waiting for the other woman to say something. The features are obscured by the light, but Ruby can see that the woman is opening her mouth to speak. Nothing comes out and the woman places a hand over her own mouth, then reaches across the table to touch a finger to Ruby’s, as if to shush her. Finally, frustrated and impatient, Ruby says: Talk to me, for goodness sake.
The sound of her own voice wakes Ruby up. She is filled with the sense that she has woken up too soon, that the woman, her dream mother, was finally about to speak. To tell her what she wants to know.
Although she’s only been asleep for less than an hour, Ruby is refreshed. Maybe it’s the lingering sense of the dream that buoys her spirits. There is an implied optimism in the idea that her dream mother was on the verge of revelation. Equally, Ruby has awakened with the notion that Celestine and Buck are truly in her rearview mirror and will no longer be a factor in her life. And, on the basis of that, she decides not to mention the visit to Sabine when she returns her call.
But first, a bowl of kibble for the dog and a microwave burrito for herself.
“How was your trip to Rhode Island?”
Damn that Find Friends app. Ruby chides herself for not shutting it off. “Fine.”
“What made you turn around?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were heading south, and now you’re back in Harmony Farms.”
“Are you spending your entire day following me around? What about your kids, your husband, your life?” Ruby is reduced to an adolescent kvetching.
“They’re just fine, thank you. It’s you I’m concerned about.” Sabine drops her voice. “I’m getting a sense.” Sabine doesn’t admit this often. “You have been up to something that has been difficult, yet, I don’t know, rewarding? Is that the word?”
“No. Relieving. That’s the word.” And Ruby breaks down and tells her that she has confronted Sabine’s father. Her grandmother. That they are now mere cobwebs to be dusted away.
Sabine takes in the information without giving away her own feelings about the matter of her biological father’s proximity. She will have to digest it, and in some later conversation she and Ruby will discuss it. This is how they operate. “That doesn’t explain why you turned around. With the Renaissance Faire not working out, why not shoot toward warmer weather?”
It’s a fair question. It’s always been Ruby’s pattern that, as soon as it gets uncomfortable to live in a poorly heated van, she goes where the “weather suits her clothes.” “I wish I knew.”
“Is it Doug?”
“I’m not settling down, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Heaven forfend, of course not.” But there is a teasing note in her voice.
“I’m not done here. That’s what keeps me here, and what won’t let me go. There is some business near at hand that I must take care of first.”
“And you have no idea what it is?”
“Not for sure. But, Beenie, I think it has something to do with finding my mother at last.” There, she’s said it. “She may have been here. A very long time ago.”
“So, you’re on the scent?”
“In a manner of speaking. I am intuiting that if I am to finally find out who she was, or is, I need to be in this area for a little while longer.”
“Works for me. Would you consider bringing your friend Doug to our place for dinner next Saturday? I promise not to make you stay.”
“I would like that very much.”
After her conversation with Sabine, Ruby gives herself an hour before calling Doug and letting him know that she’d done exactly what he felt she needed to do with Buck and Celestine. She needs the time between conversations to regroup, to sort the story out so that it is suitable for who Doug is in her life, occupying the territory of being neither fish nor fowl. Not family, but something.
It was easier than she’d imagined it might be; he listened, made a comforting remark, and then let her decide if the subject was now closed. Which, she was surprised to find, it was. Then she asked him about having dinner with Sabine and her family and he didn’t hesitate to say yes. “You bet. I’d like nothing better. Can I bring dessert? I’ve got my mother’s recipe for Death by Chocolate cake.” Clearly Doug viewed this dinner as a step forward in their relationship. After she hung up, Ruby spent a little time probing herself for how she felt about this next step. She simply couldn’t find anything to fear in it. She didn’t feel entanglement; she didn’t feel the threatening web of connection. She just liked the idea.