The Bluestockings: Chapter Twelve
"Ruby knew what she had witnessed that day, on that very beach, and it wasn’t a drowning. It was a leaving."
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Catch Up On Previous Chapters: Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
Ruby
Last night had been a certifiable disaster. Even Ruby could admit when she was in the wrong, even if she only admitted it to herself. But she didn’t regret what she had done. Maggie, with her wide-eyed idealism and knowing looks, had gotten too close to Ruby’s center where the truth lay dormant, quiet. Almost forgotten.
Rumors about Ruby and her family had always persisted—growing and shrinking around whatever half-lie interested people most that decade. Rumors only hovered around the story of her mother’s death but never fully touched it.
Death. It was such a strange idea. Ruby wasn’t afraid of dying, nor was she exceptionally interested in where she’d go after this charade of a life was all said and done, but she still thought it a curious concept. Her life had been somewhat consumed by it. Most people believed death was just the start of another, happier life, a perfect world in which the entirety of the human population—save ruthless dicta- tors and pedophiles and war criminals and serial killers—lived in harmony with each other for all eternity. For some, death was one stop on an endless cycle of rebirth toward individual perfection. For others, death was just darkness and silence. Ruby quite liked that option. The world had always been too loud for her to feel at home here.
Until her father’s death, Ruby had wondered if—for some—death was a whole other notion altogether, a paradise where the best and kindest of people would go as soon as it was their time, whatever that meant. Perhaps they didn’t die. Perhaps they simply decided, or were told, they had to leave. Then they departed the moment the realization occurred, body and soul.
But William had been the kindest man Ruby had ever known. The best man. His death had shattered that silly, childish notion. Ruby had watched him waste away as the cancer stole him, piece by piece, until his body, shriveled and wasted to half the man Ruby had called father, gave up. It was a gruesome death, and Ruby hated whatever god had allowed William to suffer like that.
She walked out to the back garden, a woolen shawl wrapped tight around her frail shoulders and paced the pathway through the dormant flower beds. Come spring, the garden would be an explosion of color and scent, the south Georgia heat pulling heavy perfumes from the flowers until the air was weighed down with both. It was the perfect recipe for a nap on the hammock, lulled to sleep by the gentle sway and the coolness of the shade. Ruby took a deep breath of the cold winter air and wished for spring. The barren, silent earth, which Ruby took as much comfort from as she could each year, suddenly felt dark and depressing.
She turned to the east, where the garden wall hid behind a curtain of ivy, and pictured the crashing waves on Tybee Island, carving their memories into the sand, tempting people like Ruby to try and claim them, only to wash them all away in the next moment. The ocean was a jealous mistress, never content to share what she possessed. Ruby knew that better than anyone. How many times had she gone back to that beach, searching for answers, only to come home deeper in her grief than before? But that was years ago now. Ruby hadn’t been back since the men who were supposed to love her betrayed her with their good intentions.
She was tempted to go now after Maggie had found her unguarded and vulnerable, looking for hope. The seventy-fifth anniversary of Alice’s death was in a few days, and after her argument with Maggie the night before, Ruby had wrestled hard with skepticism and bitterness, her longtime companions. Whatever hope had planted itself in her heart had been torn up by the familiar thrum of disappointment. Ruby shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. And that made it all the more painful.
“Marianne,” Ruby called as she walked back into the kitchen through the garden door.
Her housekeeper was wiping down the counters from breakfast. A fresh pot of coffee brewed on the counter, the aroma of Agatha’s specialty blend of coffee beans leading Ruby across the room like a sailor to a siren. “I have a rather unusual request if you don’t mind,” she said as she poured herself a cup and stirred in sugar and cream.
“If I don’t mind?” Marianne asked, a smirk playing on her thin lips. “How kind of you to consider me.”
Ruby cast Marianne a glare over the rim of her cup. “I’d like to go to Tybee this afternoon.”
Marianne dropped her rag on the counter and stared at Ruby. “You want to go to Tybee?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You seem to be struggling with your hearing, is all,” Ruby replied dryly. Marianne paused, waiting for an explanation. “I don’t know how long I’ll be,” is all Ruby offered.
“Okay.” Marianne still gaped at her.
“Is that a problem?”
Her housekeeper pressed her lips into a firm line and shook her head. “Not at all. I can make us a packed lunch if you want.”
“No picnics,” Ruby answered sharply. “Just a visit.”
“Of course,” Marianne said, her tone softening. “I’ll just bring a book and wait in the car if you’d like.” “Thank you.”
They left for Tybee in Ruby’s luxury sedan, which she allowed Marianne to drive once a week to run errands and keep it in good shape. The seats were a soft, buttery leather, heated against the winter chill, but Ruby sat in the front passenger seat as if she were going to open the door and leap from the car at any moment. As they crossed onto Wilmington Island and then over the Lazaretto Bridge to Tybee, Ruby forced herself to look out the window. The marshes were beautiful. The sun sparkled on the water in the high afternoon sun, but boats were generally docked this time of year. Great egrets stood in the tall grasses, the tide low and muddy, searching for food, while various waterfowl swam in deeper streams that connected the tangle of marshes to the ocean.
Ruby appreciated how life persisted in the winter. Wasn’t that what she had done? Every December, she would think of her mother and, somehow, keep breathing. Despite her father’s dismissal of her testimony, and regardless of her peers’ crude remarks and her disbelief about what she had seen that day in 1949, Ruby hunkered down in the winter and made it through in one piece. She had even managed to love what it represented: the promise of new life on the other side of a frozen, quiet season. Each day, she nestled into a well-loved wing- back chair in the library, cozy and safe within its walls of stories, and passed the darker, shorter months by living a hundred different lives in a thousand different places.
Warmth flooded through Ruby at the thought. Of all the gifts her father had given her, books had been the most precious, for they had been her refuge in every storm. If a body was too broken and tired to take one somewhere wonderful, a book would always do the job. Maggie and Eleanor were two of the few people Ruby had met in her long life who seemed to innately understand that truth.
Ruby crossed her arms and sighed. Marianne glanced over at her from the driver’s seat but said nothing. The drive continued in silence, Ruby at perpetual war with herself. Soon, they parked in a lot on the north end of the island near the lighthouse, which was blessedly quiet at this time of year. Ruby tidied her scarf and coat and paused with her hand on the door handle.
She could already hear the sound of the waves pounding the sand, the way they pounded her memories, the swell and crush of them unyielding. She wanted to ask for Marianne’s company. The fear of the ocean—of all it had already taken from her and could still take—was a physical presence in the car with them. But Ruby gritted her teeth and opened the door on her own, leaving Marianne behind with her book and a portable mug of tea, concern writ large on the woman’s face as she watched her employer walk slowly away.
As she traversed the beach, each step in the powder-soft sand a monumental effort, Ruby was taken back to that December day when she was five years old. She’d been so happy toting their blanket across the sand, her mother a few steps behind her as they searched for a spot to lay their picnic. Ruby had called out every wren and sandpiper to her mother, delighted by their small, abrupt movements down the beach as they searched for tiny crabs hidden beneath their feet.
“Let’s sit closer to the water,” Alice had told her daughter, their fingers intertwined as they walked along the beach. “The sand is not so messy where the tide has been.”
“But it’s wet, Mama,” Ruby replied, her nose scrunched.
“That’s alright. Our blanket is thick enough to keep us dry.”
After a picnic of tomato soup in tin cups with hot, fresh bread from the kitchen, Alice showed Ruby how to find shark teeth hidden in the detritus of shell pieces along the surf.
Hunched over, holding onto their hats, Ruby and her mother followed the trail of shells on constant alert for the tiny but conspicuous y shape of a fossilized shark tooth, black and shiny like obsidian rock.
“Ruby, look!” Alice exclaimed, her fiery curls peeking out from under the brim of her hat. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement and cold alike. “I found two teeth right next to each other!”
Ruby gasped with delight and cradled the teeth in her chubby palm, stunned at their good fortune. “Look how one is bigger than the other. Like me and you!”
Alice threw her head back and laughed. “That’s right, Ruby, my girl. Like me and you.”
As she stood alone on the beach now, Ruby looked out at the horizon and felt the crisp ocean breeze sting her eyes. Tears pricked, but she blinked them back. Now was not the time to break down. Now was the time to remember.
She closed her eyes and called to mind the joy of that day before it all went so very, very wrong. Ruby and Alice had sat on their blanket just south of the lighthouse. From a stack of books her mother had packed—Girl of the Limberlost, Anne of Green Gables, some volumes of Dickens—Ruby had plucked Alice’s coveted copy of The Secret Garden. Ruby felt kindred to Mary Lennox, with her loneliness and independent spirit. Ruby’s house was a lovely place, but it was too big. Too quiet. She sometimes wondered if the quiet was caused by her mother’s sadness, which could permeate a room like a hot summer’s day. Ruby understood later how her mother missed her husband, even though she rarely spoke of him. Alice having been married before was a difficult concept for a five-year-old to grasp when she also saw how much her mother and father cared for each other. But there it was. Mothers were girls once, too, and grief did not end just because new love entered the picture.
Ruby had snuggled up next to Alice for warmth, basking in the soft, soothing sound of her mother’s voice as she told the story of Mary’s first adventure in the garden.
“Mama?” Ruby interrupted sleepily. “Does magic exist?”
Alice peered at her daughter. “Hmm,” she breathed. “That’s a good question.”
“Do you know the answer?”
Alice exhaled slowly. “I only know what I believe, what I’ve experienced for myself. I know that being a mother is a sort of magic. Carrying a child inside your body, feeling her grow and kick and change, is certainly magical. A lot of the world is, too, even if it seems ordinary at first glance.”
Ruby bit the inside of her cheek and considered her mother’s words. “I think books are magic,” she proclaimed with a wide, bright grin.
“Oh, I believe you’re right,” Alice agreed. She pulled Ruby closer to her body. “More than you can imagine.”
They continued to read The Secret Garden until Ruby fell asleep against her mother’s side, warm from the heat of her body despite the weak winter sun moving lower in the sky. When she woke up, Alice was still holding her close, a sad smile playing on her lips.
“I fell asleep,” Ruby mumbled with a yawn.
Alice kissed the top of Ruby’s head. “Yes, you did.”
“I liked the garden book. Would you read some more to me?”
“How about we look for more shark teeth before we have to head back?” Alice said, standing up and reaching for Ruby’s hand.
“Oh, yes!” Ruby clamored to her feet and fixed her dress.
The two of them walked to the surf once more. The tide was coming in, and the waves had grown larger, their crashes stronger. Ruby dared the waves and put her boots in the surf. Alice followed suit. They laughed as the sand sucked their feet down with the pull of the tide and quickly moved away, only to step back into the water once it came close again.
“Our stockings are going to get wet, Ruby,” Alice warned with a wink.
“We can change when we get home, Mama,” Ruby replied, smiling. “I’m not worried.”
Ruby snapped her eyes open as it all came tumbling back into her mind. Her knees began to shake, and she collapsed onto the sand. A sob tore up her throat, and Ruby choked on it, angry and afraid. Oh, how she hated this place. She hated how the waves kept on coming, charging at her, and how the sounds had remained the same for seventy-five years. She could be in 1949 or 2024; it didn’t matter. The ocean remained. The terror remained. Her body, though changed, knew what this place had done to her, and it shouted at Ruby to flee.
But where could she go that grief would not find her? Where could Ruby run so that fear would not creep into her soul and tear into all that was once so good and true? Her mother’s last moments mocked Ruby here, on this godforsaken island where she had been left all alone, the warmth of her mother’s hand still alive on her skin.
Ruby sobbed on her hands and knees. The water rushed up over her fingers, biting into her flesh, but she barely noticed. God, what she wouldn’t give to be free of this torment.
A sudden thought pierced her mind with fresh sharpness, horrible in its violent simplicity.
She could just go, too, couldn’t she? Step into the waves, one foot after another, and keep walking until she was swallowed up and the world went dark and quiet for good. At least there would be no daughter left behind, terrorized, forever clinging to some notion of unreality that would cost her every opportunity of lasting companionship.
Maybe Ruby was some version of what people had always believed her to be: Wrong in the head. Mentally ill. Incapable of living a normal life. But she knew what she had witnessed that day, on that very beach, and it wasn’t a drowning.
It was a leaving.
People could believe what they wanted to about Ruby Hurst. They could believe what they wanted about her entire family. She knew the truth, and she was so tired now. Ruby could make her own choice right here on this same beach. The folks in Hawthorn would have their rumors confirmed, and wouldn’t that make everyone happy?
Ruby sat back on her knees and took a deep breath, tears dried by the wind on her cheeks. Her head was throbbing, but her mind was suddenly clear with purpose. Slowly, she made her way to her feet and brushed the wet sand from her hands. The ring Elliott had given to Ruby when he proposed, which she had worn for sixty years as a reminder of why it was better not to trust anyone, sparkled in the sun. Ruby twisted it from her finger. Before she could reconsider, she pulled back and flung it as far as her arthritic bones would allow into the crashing waves.
Her first step into the water, which rushed over her feet and into her shoes, was a shock to the system. But Ruby continued to her knees, her thighs, her waist. At that, she gasped and turned, breathing in huge gulps of air as the rush of the frigid water consumed her other senses. She shivered violently, and an unseen wave crashed over Ruby’s back, knocking her forward until she was submerged in the dark, icy water. Her entire body seized in protest, the cold so intense it was as though Ruby had been pierced by searing hot knives on every inch of her flesh. She twisted and turned, unable to find purchase on the seabed, and panic lurched into her ever-tightening throat. Her lungs burned with the need for oxygen, and instinct screamed at her to push to the surface. But she didn’t know where that was. Another wave crested over Ruby’s head as she stuck her foot down straight, hoping to hit bottom, but she simply flailed in the water.
Finally, after seconds as long as days, Ruby’s toe bumped the sand, and she pushed down. Her head broke the surface, and she gasped, choking on the salty water as she tried to capture sufficient amounts of air. Black spots appeared in Ruby’s vision, and the world spun. In the distance, a woman’s voice—her mother?—called out her name.
“I’m coming, Mama,” Ruby coughed, her voice weak. “I’m coming.”
With those words, the world went dark.
