Mothers and Other Liars (8 page)

Her grandmother called Monday “holy day.” Laundry day, cleaning day, holy day. At the time, when Ruby was doing her own assigned chores, she didn’t get it, especially during summer break. Nana said that the whole cleanliness-is-next-to-godliness thing means exactly what it says, that a person can find God, find the sacred, in the mundane tasks of chore day. She said she felt like she was scouring her own soul clean as she scrubbed the linoleum floors. Ruby tried to tell her grandmother that she herself felt much closer to God sitting down by the river. But Nana would have none of that.

Even in the dark of night, this house is gleaming brighter than it has since Mrs. Levy’s thrice-a-week cleaning lady had her elbows in the suds. The wood floors have been mopped and buffed and conditioned. Every inch of kitchen—appliances, cabinet faces, that grimy seam around the stovetop—has been assaulted with toothbrush and toothpick. Ruby has beaten and vacuumed rugs and carpets, bundled newspapers for recycling. And she has cried.

She keeps waiting to feel some of Nana’s holiness. She can feel her raw fingers and elbows and knees. She can feel the itchy sweat on the back of her neck and down between her boobs. And she can feel tears carving deep ravines in her cheeks, eroding her face.

Ruby held her own tears until Lark went back to sleep. In part, she held them for Lark. Mostly, though, she held them for herself.

They’ve been there, every second since she found the article, pressing against her eyeballs like river water against a dam. Ruby has let a few drops squeeze through, but she’s been afraid that the dam would break and wash her away. Not even the mountains would be barrier enough to stop Ruby from washing off the edge of the world.

But she couldn’t hold them back anymore. The flood of tears burns her skin, clogs her nose, chokes her throat. She has cried and cried and cried and cleaned—a soggy twist on that spit-and-polish thing—and still there is no sign of the swollen waters receding. If God was here in this mess of dailiness, He washed away in the suds and the salt. If the human body is 98 percent water, Ruby is a wisp of her former self. Surely she’ll blow away in a gust of wind before she has to face saying good-bye to Lark.

Antoinette’s little blue convertible hugs the two-lane roads. From the driver’s seat, Ruby watches the road with one eye, and Lark and Clyde with the other. Child and dog hang their heads out the side of the car, cheek to muzzle in the rippling breeze.

Ruby still feels like a wet rag from her crying spree last night. Yet when Antoinette knocked on the door early this morning, offering her car for the day, Ruby accepted without hesitation, loaded up Lark and Clyde, and headed north under a blue-umbrella sky.

The Jeep is beloved, like a faithful pet all these years. But Antoinette’s little Mazda was made for days like this, on roads like these.
Canada,
Ruby thinks. She could just keep driving and driving and driving.

Instead Ruby drives the Land of Enchantment’s Chimayo loop. They took Old Taos Highway through Tesuque, stopped at the village market for the best sourdough French toast on earth. The waitresses were their usual small-town selves, all honey this and darlin’ that. The French toast looked as beautiful as ever, pale daffodil butter melting on sugar-dusted golden bread. The bacon was cooked crisp, almost carcinogenic, just the way Ruby always ordered it, and the coffee was creamy and hot. But the meal could have been cardboard for all Ruby tasted.

They stopped for a while beneath the towering walls of the Rio Grande Gorge to let Clyde romp around in the river, then they followed its banks farther north on the two-lane highway. Lark is quiet but not simmering. Ruby isn’t sure if her daughter has regressed to denial or if this is progress through the tunnel of grief. She’s just glad to have a break of sunshine from the anger cloud.

Just before Taos, they crossed over to the high road, followed the snaking asphalt through the rugged hills, past dust-bowl towns shadowed by red cliffs and towering pines, and into Chimayo. Adobe walls older than time bank both sides of the narrow streets of the town. Ruby parks in the lot across from the church, tells Clyde to stay in the car. Together she and Lark cross the open square and enter the little chapel.

After passing through the sanctuary, they walk into a tiny back room where wooden crutches and metal braces and yellowed testimonials are tacked to the walls, evidence of all the miracles that have come before them in this sacred dirt-floored space. Sometimes the town square is packed with tour buses, and a conga line of people squeezes through this room. Today, though, Lark and Ruby have the shrine to themselves, if only until the next belching bus arrives.

“Maybe you could come live in Texas, too.” Lark sifts her fingers through the dirt, to which people trek from afar for its purported healing properties. “Maybe you could live right next door.” She’s now trying out the bargaining phase, it seems.

Ruby plops down on the cool earth next to Lark, leans back against the clammy wall. She doesn’t tell Lark that she, too, has had the same thought, that holding on to the idea that theirs will not be a forever good-bye is the only way she’s made it this far.
Cell phones, e-mail, airplanes.
Like a mantra, Ruby repeats that trio every time she wants to scream.

She has moments when she worries about how Lark will handle it, straddling a chasm between two worlds. Her grandmother had some saying that Ruby can’t quite remember, about a person who tries to be two things ending up being no one at all. But Lark wouldn’t be all that different from children of divorce splitting their time between parents. Except that
this
is nothing like
that
at all. It’s odd, sending her kid off to live with someone she doesn’t know, when all these years Ruby has insisted on meeting a parent before even an afternoon playdate.

“Maybe they won’t like me. Maybe they’ll send me home.”

“You have to give them a chance.”

“But maybe…”

“Give them a chance, baby bird.” Ruby almost smiles as she imagines Lark being such a stinker that those other parents tuck tail and run.

When they return from Chimayo, a plastic grocery bag hangs on the front doorknob. A yellow sticky note stapled to the bag is labeled lark in black marker, and in smaller blue ink, a scribbled,
We missed you today, Mrs. G
.

“That was nice,” Ruby says. “Mrs. Graciella dropped off something from Girls Inc. camp.”

Lark snatches the bag out of Ruby’s hands and tucks it under her arm as they walk into the house.

“Well? Open it,” Ruby says.

Lark tosses a “no” over her shoulder as she heads for her bedroom.

Ruby gives her a few minutes then knocks at the half-open door. “Lark, is it your T-shirt? May I see?”

“It’s nothing.” Lark’s voice is choked with tears. “Just some stupid thing.”

Ruby held the bag; she could see below the knotted handle to the green fabric inside. But she doesn’t challenge Lark. Instead, she walks the few steps to the bathroom and strips off her clothes. As she stands under the shower, the road dust slides off her. Yet the worry and sadness cling to her skin like wood stain.

The galvanized tub radiates the warmth of the afternoon sun. Inside, Clyde shivers with the indignity of bath time.

Despite her best efforts at remaining morose, a tiny giggle burbles through Lark’s cherry-candy lips. “That’s what they call ‘hangdog.’” She lifts Clyde’s chin from his chest and nuzzles his soapy nose, water hose writhing beside her. “You’ll go with me, boy.
You’ll
be my friend.”

While Ruby combs burrs and mats from Clyde’s tail—the perfect henna color for which Margaret’s redhead wannabes would kill—she tells Lark more about that day nine years ago. Ruby talks about seeing the torn Clark wrapper on the seat beside the baby carrier, the
C
left behind in the rest stop trash bin, the remaining letters leaping out at her like a banner headline.
Lark Leander
, she had thought, now that sounded like the alliterated cheerleader she herself never was. Ruby closes the cap of the shampoo bottle, lays it beside Clyde’s brush.

Lark sprays the hose on the dog’s underbelly, eyes avoiding Ruby. “Is that what I was to you, a lark?”

Ruby cups Lark’s cheek with her palm. “Oh, baby bird. You were—are—everything to me.” An early reader and a precocious child, Lark was only six or seven when she pulled out the dictionary and looked up her name.
A bird. An escapade. Mischievous fun.
Impish Lark particularly liked that last one, and for months after, she would sum up any even slightly humorous event—a hunt for misplaced keys, a prank she pulled at the salon—with “Well, that was a Lark!”

Now she turns away from Ruby, busies herself fastening Clyde’s collar. “Okay, boy.” The dog jumps from the tub, runs circles around the humans, flinging strings of water from his soggy fur, yipping like a puppy. He gambols beside Lark, to the spigot and back.

Ruby pushes back from her knees, sits on her rear, stretches her legs out across the damp grass. So much has happened in such a few short days. John’s reports have been upbeat. The case is complicated with jurisdictional issues, but the prosecutor is amenable to a deal with no jail time, and a phased transfer of custody. As Lark coils the hose into a tidy green cobra, Ruby tries to fathom the unfathomable reality that this child could—will—be leaving her soon.

The tennis ball is a bright yellow sun arcing through the sky as Lark throws it across the yard, Clyde dashing after it. At least those other people, the Tinsdales, seem to be decent, John told Ruby. John and the prosecutor have been keeping everything to themselves; he doesn’t want the Tinsdales to know anything until every detail is verified and a deal is in place. The Tinsdales don’t have to prove anything to regain custody; under the law they are presumed fit until contrary evidence is presented. Yet John’s quiet checks into their background have turned up nothing except reports of good people, good citizens. At least there is that. Still, Ruby’s whole body feels swollen with grief, turgid even in the dry desert climate.

The shriek of the telephone startles Ruby to her feet. She crosses the yard to the screen door and grabs the receiver off the kitchen counter. The next few minutes happen both in an instant and in an eternity, John’s words pushing through her ear, racing through her bloodstream. “No,” Ruby says. “
No.”
The word reverberates against her skin.

“Mama?”

Ruby raises her head to find herself on the floor, Lark and Clyde standing in front of her. “
No,
” she whimpers as she curls up on the tile.

“Ruby.” Chaz’s voice penetrates the haze. His hand is firm against her shoulder. He lifts her to her feet, holds her steady as she takes wobbly steps to the living area. They have almost reached the sofa when the front door flies open and the Ms burst through. Lark has called in all the troops.

Across the room, her sweet daughter sits against a wall, grasping Clyde. Molly and Chaz bracket Ruby on the sofa while she tries to force her rib cage to expand enough to allow air into her lungs. She hears the ding of the micro wave, then Margaret stands in front of her, molding Ruby’s hands around a mug of hot tea. When Margaret takes her seat in the chair beside the sofa, Ruby stares into the amber liquid. And the words find their way from her gut to her mouth.

John was apologetic, apoplectic. He and his friend, the Albuquerque prosecutor, were keeping things quiet until Ruby’s plea bargain was finalized. But then an assistant in the Albuquerque office called down to Texas to verify certain details of the case, and the federal prosecutor for the Dallas district caught wind of what was going on. The Dallas prosecutor, in John’s words, is the worst sort of power-hungry political dog. And he is beholden to some wealthy campaign contributors, who just happen to be Lark’s biological family.

“So he’s out to make political hay
and
for your blood,” Molly interjects.

Ruby nods. “He ran to the court house to file the first charges. I don’t understand all the rules—jurisdictional garbage, John calls it—but he’s now in charge.”

“What about the deal John was negotiating?” Margaret asks. “What about the terms—”

Ruby waves her hand. “Out the window. The Albuquerque lawyer has no say.”

“The scumbag hijacked the case.” Chaz pounds his fist into the sofa beside him.

Punctuated by the four-letter words of the family she has made, Ruby tells the rest. “The Texas guy got a warrant for my arrest. Federal marshals are coming for me.” Ruby grabs Chaz’s hand, pulls it into her lap. “Tomorrow.”

From the other side of the room, Lark speaks up. “And me?”

Ruby swallows. Everyone, even the room itself it seems, holds his breath.

“And me?” Lark’s voice is soaked in panic, her eyes dark with fear.

Ruby stands, steps around the coffee table and across the room, slides down the wall beside her daughter. She pulls Lark into her lap, tries to curl every inch of her daughter’s body inside her own.

Ruby just sits there, enveloping Lark, Clyde tucked in beside them. Ruby thought she had time, that the cops would take statements, a DNA test. But the guy in Texas decided that the magazine article and Ruby’s own story were enough and bulldogged forward. She wants to hold this child forever. Not even the forever of forevers would be long enough. Not nearly long enough.

“You, too,” Ruby whispers, not wanting to let the words loose in the room.

Lark doesn’t wail, doesn’t even whimper. She crawls out from under Ruby, walks to the door, stares out across the porch. “No,” she says, “it’s not possible.” Her phrasing sounds so grown-up. Not a whiny “I dun wanna,” not from this kid, not today. Lark spins on her heels, yanks at Clyde’s collar, and they march together into her bedroom.

Ruby wants, needs, to go to Lark, but her muscles don’t seem to work. And all the while Mrs. Levy’s bird clock pecks pecks away at the minutes that remain.