The Bluestockings: Chapter Fourteen
"The time for a confession was close at hand, a confession that Ruby had never before considered. "
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Ruby
The voices came to Ruby as if she were still underwater, elongated and muffled. She tried to open her eyes, but her lids were weighed down, heavy with exhaustion. Her limbs, too, did not want to cooperate with the signals from Ruby’s brain, which shouted at her to move, to swim, to fight. But she couldn’t do it. Her body had given up, just as Ruby herself had done before she entered the water.
Perhaps this was death, as dark as she had suspected but not exactly as quiet. The voices continued.
“Ruby?” one said in a warm, maternal tone. “Are you awake, honey?” She knew only one person who used that pet name.
Ruby still couldn’t open her eyes, but she parted her stiff, cracked lips and moved her tongue. Her mouth felt cotton thick and dry, but she managed to speak. “I don’t know, Marianne,” she said in a raspy voice. “Are you dead?”
A soft giggle came from down near Ruby’s feet. “There she is,” said a high voice.
Maggie. It all came flooding back into Ruby’s mind: the beach, her fight with Maggie, Eleanor—oh, God, Eleanor...Ruby felt a wave of nausea crest over her at the thought of what she’d almost done.
“No, you’re not dead,” said Marianne. “You’re in the hospital.”
With as much effort as she could force into her weak, exhausted body, Ruby flitted her eyes open and saw the hideous drop-ceiling of the hospital room above her head, smelled the antiseptic that couldn’t be masked by any amount of flowers, felt the freezing cold air from the vent by her bed.
Not heaven, then.
“Can someone push me up, please?” Ruby croaked out. “I seem to be having a bit of trouble moving.”
“Of course,” Marianne replied in a rush. The bed whined as the top of the mattress began to elevate, lifting Ruby into a seated position where she could see the entire room. She stiffened at the sight of young Eleanor Black perched on the edge of her seat. What the hell was she doing there? Ruby grew nauseous as she realized news of her “accident” would have reached the whole town of Hawthorn by now. Already, there were vases of flowers lining the window ledge and an absurd-looking bear with a heart in his paws that read “Well Wishes!” How long had she been here?
“You’ve been asleep for a good long while,” Marianne said as if she could read Ruby’s thoughts. Her housekeeper patted her hand with a trembling one of her own, and Ruby felt her heart sink into the pit of her stomach at the sight. She looked up at Maggie, whose small, sharp features were pulled down into a frown. Ruby turned her face away in shame.
“I’m exhausted.” Ruby tried to swallow, but her throat was sandpaper. Marianne reached over to hold a tumbler of water to her lips. The drink put some life back into Ruby’s veins, but the icy temperature of it sent her mind back to Tybee, to the slam of the frigid waves over her head, and a sob caught in Ruby’s throat. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, covering her mouth with the hand that wasn’t attached to an IV drip. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“No, Aunt Ruby. Stop,” Maggie said in a protective voice. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
Ruby let out a low, bitter laugh. “If only that were true,” she replied. She lowered her hand and pulled the blanket up close to her chest, still looking down and away from their compassionate gazes. “I’ve done so many things wrong.”
Maggie and Eleanor exchanged confused looks, but no one spoke again. A nurse came in to check on Ruby’s vitals and was pleased to see her awake and alert, if somber and in no mood for chit-chat. “When will I be able to go home?” Ruby demanded.
The nurse, a pregnant woman who looked to be in her late twenties, was unbothered by Ruby’s sharp tone. “I’ll let the doctor answer that. But we want to monitor you overnight to make sure your vitals are good. Hopefully, it’ll be sooner rather than later.”
“How diplomatic,” Ruby muttered as the nurse left the room to fetch her a lunch tray. “That woman should be a politician.”
The room settled into an uneasy silence, broken only by the sounds of various monitors at Ruby’s bedside. She could sense that everyone had questions they were desperate to ask, given their frequent at- tempts to communicate with each other via surreptitious glances, but Ruby had her own things to share.
She took another sip of water and cleared her throat. “Eleanor,” Ruby said, forcing out the name. It burned on her lips.
“Yeah?” Eleanor answered, shifting in her chair. The surprise on her face rendered Eleanor into a Margaret Keane portrait, all big eyes and wonder. Ruby schooled her expression into one of placid interest.
“I wonder if you and I might have a word alone,” she said. Her words were met with stunned silence. Maggie tilted her head at Ruby, eyes alight and wheels turning. No doubt she would assume good news about a visit to the bookstore. Ruby would get to her later.
Eleanor cleared her throat. “Um, sure. Okay.”
Marianne and Maggie made a swift exit, but not before Maggie made a face at Eleanor and closed the door with a soft click. Ruby took another sip of water, and the nurse returned then with a tray of chicken noodle soup, soft, warm bread, and a carton of apple juice. Ruby took in the spread. She felt very much like a child now, sick and needy, and her stomach rumbled in response to the surprisingly delicious aroma of the hospital’s version of comfort food. “Thank you,” she said to the nurse, who winked at Ruby and left the room.
As she sipped the soup, Ruby thought back to the night before. The time for a confession was close at hand, a confession that Ruby had never before considered. Now that she’d nearly drowned herself because of a lifetime of secrets chained to her ankles, it appeared that she had little choice in the matter. Ruby could keep her mouth shut tight for a few more years. She wasn’t long for this world anyhow. But what if she had been right all this time?
If she were, it changed everything.
If she were, it meant that her isolated existence could be very, very different. Even now.
Stepping into the water had earned Ruby some unexpected clarity about the trajectory of her life. She looked at the earnest girl across the room and remembered the women in her past: her mother, Alice, and her stepmother, Jean. Her little sister, Caroline. They had loved Ruby well, however imperfectly, and that mattered. It had mattered eighty years ago, and sixty years ago, and last year, and today. Until this moment, in this cold, stale hospital room, Ruby had never been able to see their love for what it was truly worth.
She could still hear her mother’s steady, tender voice, the same as she had heard it from beyond the icy waves. It called to her as if Alice needed Ruby to hear her now more than ever before. Her heart ached with sadness and regret. She had believed the worst about everyone in her life, especially the women.
No. Especially herself.
Ruby had lived lost and scared and grieved, but she had never made space for that to be okay. She thought hiding away would make it safe, but it was the hiding away that had finally broken her.
She took tiny bites of her bread and chewed. Swallowing was a painful experience after taking in so much seawater and having tubes shoved down her throat to pump her stomach, but the rumble in her belly grew mercifully quiet. Her mind, however, was a different monster. Ruby’s eyes filled as she wished, for the umpteenth time, to see her mother again. To feel her arms wrapped around her own, safe and protected. A woman is never too old to want or need her mother. She is a girl’s first tie to life, her first taste of this world—in both the literal and figurative sense—and her first experience of what it means to be loved. It’s an imprint that changes a woman’s chemistry. It instills within her the very essence of who she is, and it never leaves. It had never left Ruby. Not when her mother’s casket was lowered into the ground and not there, in a quiet bed and an old, achy body. Alice’s presence had been there from the first to the last, whether Ruby was aware of it or not. Women carry each other within themselves: the daughter within the mother, then, as she grows, the mother within the daughter. A gift and a curse.
But, most of all, the truth.
Ruby decided it was time for more of that in her life.
Eleanor sat with studied patience on the fold-out couch by the window, humming to herself as she perused the cards on Ruby’s flower deliveries.
“There are a lot of nice people in Hawthorn,” she said, flipping a card over to read the inscription. “They’re concerned about you.”
Ruby snorted. “They’ve never seemed very concerned about my well-being before. It’s the drama they love. The opportunity for gossip. I can’t say I blame them.”
Eleanor twisted on the couch and faced Ruby. “Once, when I was in fifth grade, a girl in my class told me you were a ghost and that your house had been empty for years. She said she saw you walking down the driveway in a long white gown one night, and it gave her night- mares for weeks.”
Ruby almost laughed at the girl’s unhinged confession. “That’s a first. I’m surprised, though, since I am given to long walks when I need to think.”
“In a white nightgown?” Eleanor pressed.
“What else?”
The girl snickered into her hand. “Doesn’t it get all twisted around while you’re sleeping? That would drive me crazy.”
Ruby held her arms out wide and looked about the room. “Some of us are already there.”
Eleanor choked on a laugh and then swallowed it with a sheepish grin. She picked at the chips in her dark purple nail polish. “I just found out that my parents bought our bookshop from you,” she said, uncharacteristically timid.
Awash with fatigue all of a sudden, Ruby said, “Yes, that’s true. I didn’t know then who your parents were. I didn’t care much, truth be told.”
“‘Then’?” Eleanor asked astutely.
“Well, I don’t know them now, either,” Ruby clarified. “Just of them. Marianne tells me your bookshop is quite a darling place.”
Eleanor’s countenance brightened. “Oh, it is,” she replied in an airy voice. “It’s my favorite place in the whole world.”
“I remember when it was my father’s office,” Ruby said. In her mind’s eye, she pictured the dark, heavy furniture that filled Hurst Publishing Co. back when she was a little girl when the office air was thick with cigarette smoke and the mechanical clatter of a dozen typewriters. Ruby spent hours at her father’s desk, scribbling on onion skin. A real writer, just like the authors her father had published, their books lining the shelf above his desk. She loved to hold up her stories in front of the window, where the sunlight shone through the translucent paper as though they were whispers of a forgotten past. There was a time when Ruby wanted to write a book, but the years had come and gone, and her stories stayed tucked away, just like she had. “I spent a lot of time there during my formative years. It was such a busy place, so alive.”
“I’m fascinated by that period,” Eleanor said. “The war. The fashion. The Roosevelts. Do you remember anything about Eleanor? My mom named me after her, you know.”
Ruby smiled at that. “She was First Lady when I was born. I was just an infant when FDR passed, but Eleanor Roosevelt was sometimes a topic of conversation among the more conservative gentlemen around here. There weren’t many in these parts who liked her—she was too intimidating, too outspoken—but my father did. He was never afraid of women using their voices.”
Eleanor nodded, still chipping away at her fingernails. “Women like Alma Gardyne?” she asked, suddenly tentative.
Ruby looked up sharply. The past and present converged in front of her eyes. “How do you know that name?”
Eleanor pressed her lips together in a line, clearly debating the wisdom of answering Ruby’s question. “I found a book of hers in the shop yesterday. Have you read her work before? Do you remember Alma at all?”
Ruby’s spine relaxed into the pillow. “No,” she replied with a purse of her lips. “I’ve never read her work, and I don’t remember her.”
“Seems like you do,” Eleanor volleyed back.
“Well, I don’t,” Ruby scoffed and crossed her arms. “I never even met the woman, if you must know. All I was told was that she abused the trust of my father, used him for his publishing connections, and then made off with his heart.”
Eleanor frowned. “Your dad was in love with her?”
“Yes,” Ruby replied. “She made him believe she loved him, too, but that was only so he would champion her work. After he made her a success, Alma left town without a word. She was a charlatan, through and through.”
“But what about your mother, Alice?” Eleanor pressed.
Ruby clenched her teeth. Digging through the past was going to be harder than she thought. “What about my mother?” she asked, schooling her expression into one of polite interest.
“Well,” Eleanor said, twisting the end of her shirt into knots, “didn’t your father love her?”
He must have. He had given Alice his last name when the papers reported her missing, refusing to have her identity be separated from their daughter. Ruby had always appreciated that small kindness. She couldn’t remember much physical affection between her parents, but she’d been so young at the time. It hadn’t mattered. Before that after- noon on the beach, Ruby had simply felt safe. That was enough.
“I think he did love her, yes,” Ruby replied.
“Did you spend a lot of time at your dad’s office?” Eleanor asked.
“Oh yes,” Ruby replied, eager for the change in topic. “It was exciting for a young girl like me. Most fathers at that time believed their children should be seen and not heard, but mine gave me freedom. He showed me how to set type and listened to my book ideas with gentle patience. He was a good man.”
“My dad is like that, too,” Eleanor added. Her spine lengthened as she spoke, pride pulling Eleanor almost out of her chair. “He lets me shelve books and work the register. I even decorated the store for the holidays this year. I spend most of my time there after school and on the weekends. It confuses most of the kids at my school because they’d rather be staring at their phones all day, but I don’t care. My parents loved that place, and so do I. ”
“Which explains why you and Margaret are trying to save it,” Ruby noted, earning a stunned look from Eleanor, who merely bit her lip and nodded. “I understand the need for a haven,” Ruby said. “During my formative years, many of my peers were unkind to me. After my mother...” she trailed off, “well, after that, you’d have thought they’d pity me at worst. Unfortunately, I found that neither my youth nor my father’s standing in the community protected me from the taunts of my classmates. I represented a fear they didn’t want to face, and it was easier to ostracize me for it instead of attempting to be my friend.”
“Yeah,” Eleanor agreed glumly, “kids think lost mothers are catching.”
A lump formed in Ruby’s throat as she peered at the girl. “Don’t let it harden you, child,” she croaked.
It was obvious to Ruby that Eleanor Black was made of sturdy stuff, careful to put forth a smiling countenance for the benefit of oth- ers, even parental in how she viewed her family’s business, but deeply grieved underneath her bright-eyed optimism. When Ruby looked at Eleanor, she saw herself once upon a time. It made her pulse race so hard that she grew lightheaded. The monitor at Ruby’s bedside began to beep at a frantic pace, surprising her young visitor, who jumped out of her chair and froze.
“Are you okay?” Eleanor cried as Ruby began to gasp, clutching at her gown. The room became a blur of colors, and the breath in her lungs seized, sending black spots into Ruby’s vision. Her chest muscles contracted, squeezed through a vice until she felt sure her heart would burst. “Don’t—” she choked, and the words froze in her throat. There were no more voices, only sensations, and terrible, terrible pain. An alarm shrilled, the blare of it as sharp in Ruby’s ears as the tightness in her chest. Eleanor reached out for Ruby’s hand just as the door to the hospital room burst open.
When the girl’s soft, warm fingers enclosed her own, Ruby fell back against the pillows and into the dark once more.
