Part II: Journeys (Chapter 32)
“Just grabbing a quick smoke,” Ruby says,
firing up yet another Virginia Slims. “I never know where I can smoke around
here.”
Pool side. We’re about to head
out for the reunion, but I can’t find my sandals and thought I might have left
them out here.
Instead, I find my sister
dragging on a cigarette.
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to
sound sympathetic, but, like Shel, I dislike secondhand smoke.
I’d rather die than admit this
to Ruby.
“Well, it doesn’t matter.” Ruby
draws in a deep drag. “We’re going home tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? I thought you were
staying until Tuesday.”
Three days from now.
“Ray’s got work piled up.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, he’s working on a diesel
engine. He needs to finish by Friday.”
“I see.” I might be dense, but
the fog eventually clears: my sister can’t wait to escape this family – what
has taken me years to figure out has taken Ruby just hours. She’s just trying
to be polite about it.
She’s telling this family to
kiss her skinny white Southern ass.
“Where’s your daughter?” Ruby
asks.
“Nicole?”
“I was looking forward to
meeting her.”
“She couldn’t come.”
“Why?”
I draw in a deep breath. I’m
tired of lying. Besides, Ruby already knows about Roger, the Circle of Love,
and Nicole’s pregnancy. “Because I told her not to.”
“I don’t understand.”
I confide to her my fears, how
Nicole’s condition might shock and kill Nana, blah, blah, blah.
In the retelling, my reasons
are beginning to sound and feel hollow.
“That’s it?”
“Well, I’d feel guilty if Nana
up and died because of Nicole’s outrageous behavior.”
Ruby shuffles around a bit. She
stubs out her cigarette in a cereal bowl, a makeshift ashtray.
“I dunno about that...”
“What’s not to know? Nana’s
very frail right now.”
“Maybe so,” Ruby says, pulling another cigarette out of her pack and tapping it on Sal’s redwood fence. She puts it between her lips but doesn’t light it. “But it seems to me she’s not going to get any less frail…” She pauses. “From what I hear, it’s only a matter of time...”
“But it doesn’t have to be
today.”
“What difference does it make?
I mean, if your Nana has a chance to see her granddaughter one last time and
die today or live a bit longer, what
choice do you think she’d make?”
Ruby should mind her own
business; she, an interloper, has no idea what she’s talking about, that she’s
a de facto outcast who will probably die young from lung cancer, that my
memories of her cute cherubic 22-month-old face will carry her only so far, and,
and, and…
I’m about to give her a serious
piece of my mind.
But I’m not about to do
anything that would open up our familial chasm even deeper.
I couldn’t bear that.
Besides, what she says strikes
a chord, perhaps just a soft, minor one – like in “Bolero,” one that is likely
to grow and intensify.
I say nothing.
“Y’all got to stop judging each
other so much,” Ruby says, finally lighting up her cigarette. She takes in a
long drag and blows smoke toward the sky.
“Samantha!” Sheldon’s distant
voice. “C’mon. Time to go. Everyone’s waiting!”
As I turn to leave, I find my
sandals nestled under some Bridal Wreath, next to a discarded Twin Bing
wrapper.
