“I’m sorry, but Ms. Mann has said I shouldn’t rent you space.” The essential oils purveyor’s brows are dragged south in an effort to communicate her Hippy Chick deep empathy for Ruby’s being thrown out of the Faire. “I really can’t…” She lets the thought drift.
“Is this private property?”
“Uh, no. Town property.”
“Public space?”
“I guess so.”
Ruby is making this up as she goes along, but Emily—the Hippy Chick’s actual name, although Ariel would suit her better—seems gullible enough to bite. “Then she can’t exclude me. I can set up my tent on the edge of the park and not pay a fee. I’d rather pay and do this the right way.”
“She’ll kill me.”
“Or not.”
On Monday morning, Ruby will see about getting a proper busker’s license from the town office. There is precedent; she’s dropped a buck into the open guitar case of the guy who busks in the library park. The other evening there was a string trio playing for tips in front of the post office. Ruby will use her aforesaid foresight to go to the town hall when Selectperson Mann will likely not be in the building. With that license in hand, she has the legal right to perform for tips. And if one thinks of palm reading as a performance—which, admittedly, it is most of the time—and the customary tip is twenty or twenty-five bucks, well, put that in your pipe and smoke it, Miz Select Mann.
As she heads back to her tent for the last two hours of the Faire, Ruby really has to ask herself why she is so determined to stay put when her whole life has been based on the determination to get away. What is it about Cynthia Mann that gets her back up? The Hitchhiker is truffling for spilled popcorn, dropped bits of doughnut. She’s sporting a new green collar with a matching leash so, at the very least, Cynthia can’t say anything about the dog. Back at the tent, Ruby closes the flap, eats her lunch, and then calls the dog over. With the Hitchhiker’s head in her lap, her hands cupping the small skull, Ruby asks: “What do you think about that angry lady?”
The scent of dark gray fills Ruby’s mind. Ruby lets the moment grow until she pictures an amalgam of guilt and sorrow with an overlay of ego.
“So, she’s carrying a lot of baggage, then?”
“I don’t know what that means. She bites because she needs to. No one likes her.”
It isn’t clear whether the dog means humans or canines. Both maybe. She lets go of the dog and clears the table, uses a wet wipe to clean her hands and then opens the flap of her tent. She takes up her knitting. Back in business.
Back in the day, in her carnival life, Ruby sometimes paid a roustabout to act as a shill, paying him a sawbuck to act like he was getting his fortune told, drawing the curious closer. Now she has the dog, who is a magnet, attracting oohing and aahing young and old, who just seem compelled to give the little dog a hug and a cuddle. It’s only a moment before the conversation turns to a reading.
By the time the last client takes the plunge, Ruby’s only managed a couple of rows on the sweater.
“Please, take a seat.” As always, Ruby directs her clients to the seat on the south side of the table. The north side is hers. She gives her client a professional scan, pulling what details she can from appearance, level of anxiety, and expression. Dressed in Saturday chic of skinny jeans and a drape-y T-shirt, the woman—maybe early thirties, maybe a tad over—has a massive handbag, the kind that eliminates the need for a suitcase on weekend getaways. She sets it down on the grass at her feet and immediately a tiny head pops out. Ruby’s first thought is that she had inadvertently attracted a Kardashian to her tent. It has a furry face, silvery fur blended with a color Ruby could only describe as a mauve-brown. Two brown button eyes gaze up at her from the bag with intention. It sneezes. Without thinking, Ruby bends down and pats the little critter gently on the dome of its skull. Instantly, she feels the tingle of connection.
“Your dog does not like being in that bag. She feels embarrassed. No, more like humiliated. She says that she doesn’t like being treated like a stuffed toy.”
“What?” The woman’s professionally designed eyebrows shoot up. “What?”
“Sorry, let me pour the tea.”
“No, go on, tell me more.” The woman fishes the tiny dog, a Chihuahua perhaps, out of her bag. “What’s she thinking?” She looks both avid and a little relieved. “She’s been grumpy lately. Maybe you can help.”
Twenty minutes later, the woman is smiling broadly, and the dog is wagging her tail. As her client hands a twenty-dollar bill to Ruby, she says, “I have loads of friends who would be interested in getting their dogs read. Would you be interested?”
Ruby has never been one to avoid the signs. A sure sign that she’s meant to stay where she is for the moment.
“Yes.” She takes the woman’s twenty. “Let me give you my card.”
Mary Jones has been called to see the Monsignor in his office. There are only two reasons for a girl to be summoned. The first, rarest, is because a relative willing to take her has been found, or a willing set of adoptive parents has chosen her. The second, most common, is that the girl in question is to be punished for something beyond the jurisdiction of the nuns. Back talk, cheating, even theft are dealt with at the lower levels. By the women. To be sent to the man in charge, a girl has to have done something egregious, vile. Sinful.
At the end of the hallway, opposite the Monsignor’s office, is a statue of Christ. It stands nearly life-size and was a gift from the family of a former Mother Superior on her elevation. Carved of wood, more cigar store Indian than work of art, it’s been at the school since the end of the last century, and the paint of its sandaled foot has been worn off by generations of girls touching it for luck or hope or even faith. Mary—Ruby—notices only the drops of thick red paint that signify the bleeding Sacred Heart. If this man could be so mistreated, what hope does she have? He, at least, had a father, God.
Real fear dries her mouth, her tongue sticks to the roof of it. She can hear her own heart, its percussive thumps growing louder and almost painful. The hallway telescopes out, then retracts, and her feet in their donation bin Keds squeak as she makes her slow way to the opposite end of the corridor. The smell of Butcher’s Wax and snuffed candles. Her intestines cramp. Mary Jones pauses, leans a hand against the wall. Yesterday she had told Sister Gertrude that she was sorry for her loss. The old nun exuded the aura of one in mourning, and as Mary has always been fond of the old woman, it seemed wrong not to acknowledge her grief. “What are you talking about?”
“Your brother.”
“What about him? What do you know?”
Mary Jones turned and fled. Afraid both of the power of her vision and how dangerous it was.
In the second before Sister Gertrude could snatch Mary Jones’s braid and haul her back to explain herself, the nun was called to the Mother’s office.
Mary was in the stairwell when she looked out to see the street door open and Sister Gertrude leave the convent, getting into a car. As if sensing that Mary was looking down, the nun, face crumpled with true grief, raised her eyes to seek out Mary’s. With slow deliberation, Sister Gertrude made the Sign of the Cross and kissed her crucifix.