Then
Ruby woke up in the night to the deafening sound of crickets and felt a sudden, deep pang of alarm. She was in a room so dark that there was no discernible difference between opening and closing her eyes, and her neck was bent at an awkward angle, thanks to her head being held aloft by an enormous pile of scratchy pillows. Disorientated, she sat up in bed and blinked a few times, willing her eyes to adjust to the dark. After a few seconds she could make out the faint outline of the Letters to Cleo poster, and a photograph of Jared Leto.
Finally, the penny dropped: she was back home, in her old bedroom, in the middle of fucking nowhere.
How could a bunch of tiny bugs make such a racket, she wondered. The constant thrum of traffic and drunken people that used to float up to her apartment window in Boston had been soothing white noise compared to this cacophony of crickets chirping away at each other. The darkness was scary, too – who knew what was lurking out there in her father’s mammoth backyard? A few years ago, a perfectly normal-seeming, chino-wearing, Saturday morning soccer practice-type man had cut off his wife’s head and impaled it on a stick in their garden because she’d burned the spaghetti. These sorts of things didn’t happen in the city. You might get stabbed, but you’d get stabbed by the guy who was waving a knife around and cackling maniacally – not by the accountant standing quietly next to him. Ruby found that level of transparency comforting.
She glanced at the digital alarm clock that had been perched by her bedside since time immemorial: 4:12 a.m. She sighed and clicked on the light, squinting into the brightness as she felt around for the copy of Glamor she’d picked up at CVS on the way home. She stared at Jessica Simpson’s smiling face for a minute and flicked through a photo shoot featuring models in what appeared to be Romany-gypsy costume. She made a mental note to buy a peasant skirt and moved onto an article debating the various merits of self-tanner.
The next thing Ruby knew, she was being startled awake by the sound of an almighty crash. She peeled away the magazine that had glued itself to her face and blinked into the sun now streaming through the lace curtains. She looked at the clock: 6:33 a.m. There was another crash, followed by a stream of expletives. Her father was evidently awake.
She pulled on a sweatshirt and a pair of shorts and padded into the bathroom. The smell of freshly brewed coffee had wafted up from the kitchen downstairs and she paused on the landing to take in a deep breath of it. Being home did have a few perks.
She peered at herself in the mirror, realizing with slight despair that a pimple that had been threatening to emerge had finally unveiled itself during the night. She prodded it with the edge of her nail and sighed: she’d have to dig out her high-school stash of Clearasil. Twenty-one and still getting acne: how was this fair?
Ruby pulled her hair into a slightly neater version of a ponytail and trudged downstairs into the hall. She could hear her father’s voice echoing hollowly across the kitchen and reverberating through the house, but couldn’t see him. The kitchen was basically in another wing.
The scale of the house – bought by her father five years ago shortly after he had married her stepmother, Candace – never ceased to amaze her. She’d grown up in a three-bedroom bungalow across town with a cozy living room and a sweet little front porch, complete with swing, but as her father’s real estate business – and, concurrently, his bank balance – grew, it was deemed insufficient for a man of his stature. So he and Candace had bought a mini-mansion in one of his swanky new developments, and had decamped there. Ruby had only spent a year there before shipping off to college, so it had never fully felt like home. The development was called ‘Songs of the South’, and their house – the largest and perched at the top of the hill – was modeled after Tara from Gone with the Wind, the inappropriateness of which Ruby could never fully convey to Candace or her father. Candace had had a pair of forest-green velvet curtains custom-made for the living room, and it was one of her more well-worn party tricks to stand at the top of the curving staircase and say ‘Well, fiddle-dee-dee!’ before descending to greet her awaiting guests.
Ruby wandered through the living room, marveling at the enormous crystal chandelier that had appeared since the last time she’d been home, and into the kitchen. Her father was in workout gear – a high-tech-looking T-shirt that zipped at the throat and a pair of Lycra shorts. He was on his cell phone, talking to someone in plaintive tones about landscaping costs. He gave her a quick smile and gestured towards the coffee pot before walking into the laundry room to continue his phone call.
She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the breakfast bar, flicking through yesterday’s copy of the Beechfield Gazette. Local charity auction, small fire burns down shed, cats that look like their owners, summer practice for high-school football begins: standard. On the front page, there was a photograph of a small girl in pigtails with an enormous ice-cream cone. ‘Maisy Parker, four and a half, enjoys a raspberry ripple on a scorching afternoon.’ No doubt about it: she was back in the suburbs. She folded the paper and set it aside.
Her father, conversation finished and landscaper on the other end presumably duly admonished, walked in and started stretching his calves on the countertop. ‘About to go for a twenty-miler with Kevin,’ he said.
‘You’re going to run twenty miles?’ she asked in slight disbelief. She’d known he’d gone on a fitness kick recently – she’d noticed the bottles of spirulina lined up in the fridge and the large-scale jars of protein powder in the pantry – but hadn’t realized he’d turned into an ultra-runner.
‘On the bike,’ he said, looking slightly defensive. ‘We’re going to cycle around the lake. Great workout. Big cardio burst. My stomach is tighter than it has been for years. Feel that,’ he said, offering up his abdomen. She gave it a tentative poke and made vague approving noises. He beamed. ‘Candace says I look younger every day. Started calling me her wildcat.’ He did a funny little growl and pawed at the air.
‘Dad, please. I don’t want to hear about what Candace calls you.’
He laughed and slapped her on the back. ‘Well, kiddo, just thought you’d want to know there’s life in the old man yet!’
‘I definitely don’t!’ she said, shooing him away. ‘Gross.’
‘So, what are you doing today?’ he asked, tossing an apple in the air before taking a bite. He looked at her with an appraising eye. ‘You should try to get some sun,’ he said. ‘You’ve been locked away in a library for too long – you’re too pale. If you turn up at the club looking like that, they’ll think they’ve got a ghost. They’ll call in Bill Murray and the gang!’ He smiled and jabbed a finger towards her. ‘Who you gonna call?’
‘Ghostbusters,’ she muttered dutifully. ‘Anyway, they love pasty white people at the club. In fact, it’s you that needs to be careful,’ she said, assessing his deep mahogany tan. ‘If you get any darker, they’ll ban you.’
‘Now hey there, you know that rule was overturned a long time ago. That club is a prestigious part of this community, not to mention your sister’s employer, so I’d watch it before I went around saying that sort of stuff. People will get the wrong idea about this family.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to lead a march on the golf course or anything.’
He frowned. ‘There are some things that we don’t joke about in this house, Ruby. You’ll be meeting a lot of members when you start in the office, and I don’t want to catch you giving them any of that attitude.’ Ruby groaned inwardly at the mention of her upcoming job as receptionist at her dad’s real estate agency. She’d applied for internships, waitressing gigs, even for a job in which she would have had to dress up as a hot dog outside a car wash, but they had all turned her down. In the end, it was Atlas Realty or nothing.
‘Hey, you two early birds! Catch any worms yet?’ Candace sauntered into the kitchen wearing a black sports bra and matching leggings, a strip of toned, tanned abs on display in the middle. Ruby had to hand it to her, as much as Candace drove her nuts, she did look amazing for someone who was pushing forty.
Ruby’s father necked a shot of wheatgrass and pulled on his cycling shoes. ‘Morning, sweetheart! Just off to meet Kevin on the bike. Gotta keep myself in shape for my lady,’ he said, giving her ass a little slap.
She giggled and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You better,’ she said, slapping his ass back. Ruby wondered if he could feel it through his padded cycling shorts – his face remained suspiciously unmoved. ‘Is Piper up yet?’
‘Of course not,’ Ruby said. ‘She never surfaces before ten. Besides, she was complaining about allergies last night, so presumably it’ll be more like noon.’
Her father’s brow wrinkled. ‘I hope her nose doesn’t get red. She’s got her first day at the club tomorrow.’ Ruby took some consolation in the fact that her sister – whose idea of work up until that point was peeling the shellac off her fingernails – would soon be a hostess at the local country club, with a uniform and everything. The idea of Piper in polyester filled her with inestimable joy.
A horn honked outside and her father grabbed his backpack. ‘That’s Kevin. I’ll see you two ladies after work!’ He trotted out of the house, shoes clicking neatly on the tiles, and Candace poured Ruby another cup of coffee and herself a cup of green tea.
‘What’s up for today?’ she asked with a smile. ‘I’m heading to the mall later on if you want to come?’
‘No thanks,’ Ruby said. Even though she suspected that a shopping trip would result in free things, she couldn’t face trying on clothes with turbo-stepmom and her pneumatic breasts. It was her last day of official post-graduation freedom: tomorrow, she would start work and commence her summer of atrophying underneath the steady hum of an office air conditioner. She needed to make the most of today.
‘Okay, you just stay right here and work on your tan. I’m going to run to the grocery store on my way home – is there anything in particular you think your sister would want?’
‘I think she’s on Gwyneth’s macrobiotic diet,’ Ruby said, ‘so I guess just stock up on loads of beans and vegetables.’
Candace wrinkled her nose. ‘Poor thing. She’s going to be all kinds of gassy eating beans all day.’ She swept up her Chloe Paddington and the Longchamp tote she used as a gym bag and gave Ruby a quick wave. ‘Okay, I’m off to spin! Have a nice day by the pool and try to get some color on those little legs of yours, missy!’ She floated out of the door in a cloud of Clinique Happy.
Ruby slathered herself up with Hawaiian Tropic oil (SPF 4, safety ever the watchword) and spent the rest of the day dozing in and out of sleep and lazily flipping the pages of her novel. Piper appeared next to her at around noon and grunted at her before stealing her oil and drinking the last Diet Coke. The two of them bickered gently until Candace came back home and paraded her purchases in front of them, including a microscopic white denim miniskirt that the sisters were united in hating.
By the time Ruby’s father arrived home from work, all three women were irritable and suffering from mild cases of prickly heat. Oblivious, he rattled off his day’s triumphs to them: his new personal best on the cycle this morning, the three condos sold over lunch, the cut-down price he’s secured on lawn fertilizer, and a joke he’d told that had caused Buddy Cartwright to spit up his Mountain Dew. Candace and Ruby listened and took turns making appreciative murmurs over a dinner of grilled chicken salad (hold the dressing) while Piper munched sullenly on a plate of lentils. She made one last gallant attempt at getting out of work the next day (citing the beginnings of a trapped nerve in her finger) but her father shut it down quickly.
At nine o’clock, Ruby slid her plate into the dishwasher and gathered her bag. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, hoping to make a quick exit. ‘I’m meeting some people from high school down at Billy Jack’s.’
Her father’s eyebrows shot skyward. ‘Billy Jack’s! Why the hell do you want to go to a dump like that?’
‘Ruby thinks slumming it makes her seem sophisticated,’ Piper said, unhelpfully.
‘I do not.’ She did, a little bit.
‘Do too.’
‘Shut up!’
‘Girls,’ Candace said, smiling brightly, ‘try to get along, for your dad’s sake. You know what the doctor said about his blood pressure.’
Ruby swiveled to face him, suddenly panicked. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what the doctor said. What did the doctor say?’
‘It’s nothing,’ her father said, stretching his arms out above his head. ‘Just a little high, that’s all.’
‘He’s put your father on beta blockers. All the stress from work.’ Candace speared a piece of chicken and gave him a meaningful look.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Ruby said accusingly. ‘How could I not know about this?’
‘Uh, because you’re never home?’ Piper again, still unhelpful.
‘Sweetheart, it’s nothing. Honest. Now you go out and enjoy yourself. Do you need any money?’
‘I’m fine, Dad. Thanks.’
‘Probably for the best. You don’t want to be carrying much cash in a place like that. Now if anyone asks you to go outside with them, or into the bathroom, or anything like that, you just tell them no, okay?’
‘Okay, Dad.’ Ruby fought the urge to point out that, for the past four years, she’d lived in a corner of Boston best known for its colorful collection of prostitutes and meth-heads.
‘Why don’t you take your sister with you?’ Candace suggested. ‘It might be fun!’
‘Over my dead body,’ Piper said, reaching into the fridge and pulling out a miniature wine cooler. ‘Like I’d be seen in that place. Anyway, I’m going out with Kimberly tonight.’
‘Piper, I’m sure you’re used to drinking at college, but you’re under my roof now, and you know how I feel about underage drinking.’
Piper rolled her eyes. ‘Oh please – it’s a wine cooler, not Bacardi 151. It’s, like, juice.’
‘Piper . . .’
‘Please, Daddy?’ She flicked her eyelashes at him a few times and he assented with a shrug. She skipped out of the kitchen, but not before grabbing another little bottle from the fridge.
Ruby climbed into her car, cranked up Sheryl Crow, and sped off to Billy Jack’s, feeling like she was a senior in high school all over again. Only with a real ID this time.
When she got to Billy Jack’s, she pulled open the saloon-style doors, the opening strains of ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ welcoming her in. She saw a group of old classmates tucked away in a corner, all of them sipping nervously on their Buds and eyeing the townies warily. The bar was packed and muggy with people’s beery breath, and Ruby felt her shirt begin to stick to her shoulder blades. She ducked past two women in denim cut-offs and backless shirts dancing enthusiastically, and grabbed the edge of the bar to steady herself.
‘What can I get you?’ the bartender asked, bending his lean frame across the bar towards her.
She looked up, and there, cleaning up a swill of beer with a dirty rag, was the most handsome man she’d ever seen.
He had a swirl of black hair curling across a wide, smooth forehead. His eyebrows were thick and perfectly straight, and under them lay two enormous eyes fringed with long, dark lashes. A thin, almost girlish nose led to a full, wide mouth.
‘Um . . .’ She looked at him blankly for several beats.
‘A woman of few words,’ he said, ‘I like it. I’m Ethan.’ He stuck out a (perfect) hand and flashed a (perfectly) crooked grin.
She stared in stunned silence. Ethan, she thought, rolling the name around in her head like a smooth stone.
He gave her shoulder a little nudge. ‘You okay?’
She was startled back into the moment. ‘Ruby,’ she said, offering her hand in return. ‘I’m Ruby.’
‘Cool,’ he said. ‘Like the song.’
Ruby had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered were his green-gold eyes, and her reflection in them.