Mothers and Other Liars (23 page)

Lark tugs Ruby to her feet, pats her belly. “Ho-ly moly. That was some watermelon seed you swallowed.”

Ruby chuckles through her sobs, but she can tell her daughter’s joking is forced. Lark was so stiff when Ruby hugged her, like a Barbie-Lark, with hard plastic skin and limbs that don’t quite bend. Then Lark smiles, a real smile, an imp smile. Her daughter is undoubtedly damaged, yet a Lark is still stirring underneath that shell.

Watching Lark walk down the stairs in front of her makes Ruby practically giddy. She still has to fly to Dallas for the sentencing hearing in a couple of weeks, but the presentencing report has been filed with the recommendation of the minimum fine and no jail time, and John is confident the judge will rubber-stamp the prosecutor’s terms. Ruby has been so caught up in fighting the Monteros and the public outcry that she hasn’t even noticed that a prison gate is no longer looming over her head like a guillotine.

Funny how the Monteros’ tactic of going to the press was actually the impetus for the Tinsdales to send Lark home. “It will quiet things down, take the press heat off her,” Darla said on the telephone. Off
you,
Ruby thought.

Yesterday, John had called with a trifecta of news: as expected, the New Mexico court ruled that the Monteros had no standing to stop the baby’s adoption and denied their motion; the Texas court signed the preliminary order for Lark’s adoption; and John and the Tinsdales’ lawyer had finalized the release of all civil claims. “The Monteros still could seek visitation rights through the Texas courts, but precedent is against them,” John added.

Darla’s call came this morning. “It’s not like we need to keep trying to bond with her after all.”

Ruby looks up at the big clock above the stairway. The conversation with Darla took place only seven hours ago.

“There really is no reason to wait,” Darla said. She would put Lark on a plane that afternoon. She would pack Lark’s things, ship them to Santa Fe. Ruby could taste the woman’s relief through the telephone. If Ruby hadn’t been so relieved herself, she might have been offended at Darla’s eagerness to rid herself of Lark. “I know you’re anxious to get your daughter home.”

Her daughter. Home.
These are more words Ruby wants to roll around in her head, savor.

As they cross the passenger pickup lane on the way to the parking lot, Ruby takes Lark’s hand out of habit. Lark doesn’t pull her arm away, protest that she is not a baby anymore. Instead, she squeezes Ruby’s hand and holds it all the way to the car, as if she, too, is afraid that this moment will vaporize into a dream if she lets go.

Ruby maneuvers the car out of the airport exit and onto the interstate. Traffic through town is heavy; the exit lane to I-40 is backed up with workers heading home to the suburbs. As the Jeep passes under the freeway interchange, she thinks about that day almost ten years ago, when her car was new and she got mixed up at this intersection, before the swooping Big I, as the locals call it, was complete. Ruby looks over at Lark and sees the infant who rode backward in her carrier as well as the nine-year-old with gangly legs almost reaching the floor. That was a wrong turn that turned out right.

“Is it really over?” Lark’s voice is laced with anxiety, and some healthy anger.

“I think so, baby bird. I pray so.” Or, over but for a few minor details. For Lark, all is over but the healing. Ruby still must attend her sentencing, deal with any fallout from the Monteros’ antics, give birth, give away her other child.

The drive toward Santa Fe passes in a haze. Lark is quiet, almost shy, as Ruby tells her little things, lighthearted salon and flea-market stories from the weeks she was away. Ruby restrains herself from asking questions about the time in Texas. Lark will talk when she’s ready.

They each get lost in their own thoughts as the New Mexico sky melts into one of its trademark sunsets. Then, as the old Jeep wheezes up that last big hill, Lark points out the sign for Las Vegas. “Let’s go,” she says.

Ruby grips the steering wheel, closes her eyes for a second.
Thank you
, she says in her head. Thank you for this moment. Thank you that Lark’s scars can soften enough, even temporarily, to make the old family joke about Ruby thinking she was headed toward Las Vegas, Nevada, that day long ago. Thank you that her daughter is here to make the joke—Ruby glances at her belly wedged against the steering wheel—even if her son is going away.

They have just exited the highway onto Old Pecos Trail when Lark asks about Chaz.

“He had a bad accident, but he’s okay now.” Ruby tells Lark about the car wreck, Chaz’s injuries.

“It’s my fault.” Lark tugs at her neckline, lifts out Chaz’s Saint Christopher medal.

Ruby pulls over at the entrance to the Elks Lodge. “It is so not your fault. And he’s fine, he’s fine now. But…” Ruby tells her that he moved to Phoenix for a new job. She doesn’t go into details; she’s still trying to sort out the best way for Lark to hear that her mother is swapping the baby in her belly for her own return. “We decided not to be together anymore.”

“It’s my fault.” Lark fingers the small medallion as she begins to cry. “It’s all my fault.”

“Oh, baby.” Ruby slides Lark over the console and onto what remains of her lap. In a way, she’s relieved at her daughter’s tears; emotion, even raw emotion, is so much better than that stony resignation. And as she tries to convince Lark that neither Chaz’s accident nor the breakup was her fault, Ruby’s voice echoes in her own head and starts to chisel away at the frozen block of her own guilt.

Lark wearing a piece of metal was not to blame for the wreck, and neither was Ruby trying to get Chaz to agree to her plan. Someday, maybe both of them will be able to embrace the hard truth that they can’t control random events, instead of the more consoling idea of vindictive gods and bad karma.

As Lark’s own tears subside, she lays a soft hand against Ruby’s cheek. “Oh, Mama. Your heart must have been attacking you really bad.”

Molly, she’ll cry at anything. Movies, music, dog food commercials. But Ruby has never seen Margaret cry until today. Which may be because Margaret is not a pretty crier. Southern belle Molly just opens her eyes wide, and the dainty waterworks trickle out. Her tears wouldn’t even smudge mascara, if Molly wore any, that is. Margaret, though, is a blubberer. Swollen face and snorts and snot.

The house was quiet when the Jeep crunched up the driveway; the covered windows glowed opaque and muted. No decorations outside this time—the Ms were careful not to tip off reporters or even neighbors. But walking into the house was like climbing into the netted play area at McDonald’s. Untethered balloons, bright green, orange, pink, and Lark’s favorite, purple, dotted the living area. Some filled with helium slithered across the ceiling; the ones with plain air bounced around the floor.

Clyde was so excited that he peed on the rug when Lark came into the house. Ruby figured that was his own way of crying at her return. Then he went on a tear, doing figure eights around the kitchen table, around the coffee table, around and around, pausing to head-butt balloons along his path. Lark’s giggle sounded as if it had been shredded in a blender.

The Ms brought pizza and bright-colored cupcakes and bubbly drinks. Ruby drank half a glass of champagne for the toasts—to Lark, to Home, to Forever—then switched to sparkling cider. Antoinette called not long after the toasts. Ruby invited her over, but her friend demurred, telling Ruby that Lark needed a night just with family.

And Antoinette was right. After Lark’s crying spell in the Jeep, the shy-stranger persona returned. She isn’t quite tiptoeing around like Darla said she did, but she’s not acting all home-sweet-home, either. She sits now in the center of the sofa, sandwiched between the Ms. Poor Lark is going to shed a layer of skin after all the hugging and rubbing from both of them. Clyde, exhausted from his seal act, is sprawled across their laps while the Ms make plans for the next century or so.

“You can come to the opening of my show at the gallery.” Molly wiggles with happiness.

Margaret has abandoned her champagne flute, clasps the bottle by its throat. “Let’s go on a trip.” She pauses to take a swig as if the Moët were a longneck beer. “All of us together.”

“You’re drunk.” Molly speaks in a Minnie Mouse voice.

Margaret tucks the champagne bottle between her knees, reaches across Lark to grab the balloon from Molly, sucks helium from its snout. “I’m verklempt. Ver-klempt.”

Lark just sits there between them, a swipe of lime green icing on her cheek. She exudes more relief than happiness. Ruby remembers reading about POWs, how the army put them through a multistep reintegration after their release from war camps. And they weren’t sent to prison by their mothers, weren’t mad at their mothers before they even left. Ruby has some heavy-duty reintegration to undertake.

Long after the celebration has ended, after the Ms have cleaned up the mess and left, after Lark and Clyde have tumbled into an exhausted slumber, Ruby sits on the edge of Lark’s bed. The moon is a bright orb outside the window. Ruby worries about photographers, night lenses, but just for tonight, she has opened Lark’s shade, needing the affirmation in the splash of yellow moonlight on Lark’s serene face, as if God, too, is saying, “Yes, this is our beloved child. Here is where she belongs.”

The moon was full the night before Lark left, too. Ruby can’t quite believe that all of it, Lark leaving, Lark returning, and everything in between, has transpired during a scant few lunar cycles. “To the moon and back,” Lark said tonight before she drifted off.
I love you, too
, Ruby thinks now,
to the moon and back
.

She sits and watches. Clyde lifts his head, nods at Ruby, nuzzles back into Lark’s neck. He and Lark have fallen right back into their old tangle of limbs and sheets. Ruby remembers a cat that used to sleep with her like that, cheek to cheek, a paw thrown over her chest and the rest of her nestled in her armpit. Her grandmother had a firm rule about cats in the house; “They’re called
barn
cats for a reason,” Nana would say. But this particular feline attached himself to Ruby from the time he was an itty bitty kitty. Determined and curious, the cat learned how to squeeze around the loose screen on Ruby’s open bedroom window and leap onto her bed.

Ruby’s grandfather knew. He would spot the cat in Ruby’s bed when he peeked in on her as he was heading out the door, after bringing Nana’s morning coffee to her bedside, as he did every morning of their marriage. He would whistle softly, and the cat would jump down, follow him out to the yard. Ruby isn’t sure why this particular memory surfaces now, but it makes her smile.

Lark stirs, settles back against Clyde. Ruby wonders what her daughter is dreaming this night. How much will her ordeal change already cautious Lark? Will little pieces of the horror cling to her mind like smoke to clothing, surfacing at random moments, like tonight with Ruby’s cat memory, only without the smile?

Ruby hums the daffy song to the dark room. She thought she might crumble when Lark asked to be tucked in tonight with her baby lullaby. But tonight Lark needed to be a baby, to be cocooned in mother love.

Ruby never has been much of a singer, and her repertoire is limited. In those first few sleepless nights with Lark in the apartment above the salon, though, this was the song that popped into Ruby’s head. She sang it over and over while she paced that small room with the bundle of miracle on her shoulder.

The song became a tradition with them. During her toddler years, Lark would start chanting “The daffy song, the daffy song” before she hit her bed. She would change the words up every now and then, but Lark would give a sleepy giggle and say, “No, Mama, it goes like this.”

Daffodil, daffodil, daffodil-dilly.

Sleep baby, sleep; the moon’s in the sky.

Daffodil, daffodil, daffodil-dilly.

Sleep sweet one, sleep, for morning draws nigh.

Dream, baby dream, of flowers and sunshine.

Dream, sweet one, dream, oh, daughter of mine.

The moon’s in the sky, love. The moon’s in the sky.

Close your eyes to today, love. Morning draws nigh.

Sleep sweet one, sleep baby, sleep daffodil-dilly.

We’ll share tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, you and I.

Ruby isn’t even sure where she learned the song. It certainly wasn’t something her grandmother passed on to her; Nana wasn’t the sentimental, bed-singing type. Ruby’s grandfather sang constantly, while busy at his workbench, while out in the fields, even at the supper table until Nana would give him a look. But he didn’t sing this one. No, Ruby likes to think that maybe, just maybe, her own mother sang it when she held Ruby in her arms.

After the moonlight shifts from Lark’s face to the edge of the bed, Ruby heaves her swollen torso to standing, shakes the creaks out her knees. She gives Clyde a pat on the head, brushes a strand of hair off Lark’s cheek. “A million tomorrows,” she whispers. “We have a million tomorrows, you and I.”

Lark sits at the kitchen table, Clyde at her feet. The avocado pit has sprouted long tendrils of roots while she’s been gone; Lark caresses it, talks to it, then places it in a clay pot. “Do you think he will grow, here I mean?” She sprinkles more potting soil into the container.

Ruby sets down her water glass—she’s trying to follow doctor’s orders to drink extra liquids; in the high desert, hydration is imperative. “I don’t know. Santa Fe is not exactly California, but you’re giving him every chance.”

In the week or so that Lark has been home, she has traipsed over every square inch of the house, running her hands over walls and furniture and doodads. She acts like a cat sniffing out new territory in every nook and cranny. Ruby understands the impulse. When she touches Lark, any skin-to-skin contact at all, she can feel a thousand coils unwinding in a sacred serpent dance along her spine. She tries not to hover, but she breathes better when Lark is in her sight.

Lark climbs onto the kitchen counter next to the stove top, opens the cabinet where the spices are stored. “You expecting an extra big visit from the Easter Bunny this year?”

Ruby looks past Lark at the shelf, and the stack of food coloring boxes from the pie-safe project, each missing a red squeeze bottle at one end.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Smarty-Pants is back in the building.” Antoinette steps through the side door.

“Wonnie!” Lark yelps, jumps from the counter, and bounds across the room. These days, she reminds Ruby of some of the dementia patients at the nursing home, greeting everyone like a long-lost relative with the same exuberance, even if she sees them several times in a day.

“Whatcha cooking there?” Antoinette asks.

Lark untangles herself from Antoinette and holds up a spice jar. “I’m burying Brad. I’m gonna put some garlic in the dirt to make sure he grows into some go-ood guacamole.”

“Brad?” Antoinette asks.

Ruby shrugs. “Wait for it…wait for it.”

Lark skips over to the table, opens her arms with the flair of a magician’s assistant. “Pit. Brad Pit, my avocado.”

Antoinette’s laugh bubbles up from her toes. Lark holds her position with a satisfied smirk for a beat or two before dissolving into giggles herself.

“Oh, little girl, I’m gonna want me some of
that
guacamole,” Antoinette says.

Ruby holds her belly with one hand, pinches her side with the other. Their laughter is out of proportion to the joke, but at least the tone of Lark’s giggle has descended from dog-whistle range. “You two are going to make me pee my pants.”

“She’s a peeing machine,” Lark says.

Antoinette nods. “Yep. And that gas. Whoo-ie.”

“Make fun of the fat person, why don’t ya. I’ll be right back.” Ruby waddles across the room to the hall, listening to the laughter, music that has been missing from this house for too long. She and her daughter, they’re both going to be okay. She wipes her eyes with her hand, wondering what that African language would call tears of joy.

When Ruby steps out of the bathroom, Lark is in front of her, heading out of her bedroom. Ruby pauses at the doorway to the living area, takes in the scene.

Lark and Antoinette stand facing each other, Antoinette’s hands wrapped around Lark’s. Clyde, as usual, has his nose in the middle of the action.

“Tell him.” Lark speaks quietly; Ruby can barely hear the words. “Tell him I’m sorry. That he had his wreck.” Lark pulls her hand away, and a thin gold chain dribbles from Antoinette’s palm, dangling between her fingers.

“I’ll give it back to him if you want, Larklette,” Antoinette says. “But he gave it to you; he wanted you to have it.”

Ah,
now Ruby understands what’s going on. The Saint Christopher medal.
Chaz’s
medal.

Lark drapes an arm around the dog’s neck. “I’m safe now. And he’ll need it in his new job, because he doesn’t have his gold shield anymore.” She glances over her shoulder, spots Ruby. A sheepish shadow falls across her face.

“It’s okay.” Ruby walks into the room. “You can talk about him in front of me.” Since their conversation in the car, Lark hasn’t asked any questions about Chaz. Ruby didn’t doubt that Lark sensed there was more to the story than she was told, yet she seemed to accept that he was gone. She also must have sensed Ruby’s sadness. His absence lurks around the house—jumping out to slap Ruby across the face at odd moments—and the rest of the time simply lingering, like a scent of aftershave in the air, as she moves through the days. “You don’t have to pretend he doesn’t exist.”