AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ruby
“Ruby, we’ve got this. I promise you. Leeza’s team has assured me a number of times that she won’t ask youanyof the questions on the list. Everyone is in agreement that she’ll stick to what we discussed, and that the whole interview will be soft and easy.”
The backstage hubbub on America’s most popular morning show is distracting, but Ruby wants to make sure she knows what she’s getting into. She folds her arms across her chest and watches as a man in overalls wheels a giant light smoothly across the concrete floor of the studio. There’s a tame comedian onstage just beyond the tangerine-colored curtain, making easy jokes and warming up the crowd; the audience is laughing appreciatively.
“You’re sure Leeza is on board with this?” Ruby is standing behind the curtain, waiting to go out and appear publicly for the first time since her husband’s untimely death. Kate, who has been Ruby’s assistant only for the past month, is glancing at her phone. Ruby is a bundle of nerves, but this is definitely not her first rodeo.
“I’m positive.” Kate taps at her phone as she talks, pauses, looks at Ruby, and glances back down at the screen. “We made it crystal clear that you would not be answering any questions about Jack, about the accident, or about—“
“I want to stick to talking about the future,” Ruby says, holding up one hand so that Kate won’t say anything else. “I think looking forward is going to be my main goal from now on, and I am definitelynotinterested in digging through my past in front of every stay-at-home mom and retired grandmother in America.”
A makeup artist wearing a tool belt full of fluffy makeup and hair brushes is orbiting around Ruby, assessing her as she pulls a palette of powder from one of her pockets. She silently approaches with a brush in one hand and pauses, waiting for an opportunity to powder Ruby’s forehead and nose one more time.
Ruby knows the drill here; she turns her face to the makeup artist, but keeps her ears on Kate.
“Definitely, definitely,” Kate assures her. “This has all been prearranged, so you just go out there and kill it, alright?”
Ruby feels the slightest buzz of unease inside of her as she listens to the floor directors and camera people murmuring and talking around her. Maybe it’s that she isn’t the current First Lady and therefore feels irrelevant to a young assistant with a whole career ahead of her, but Ruby is getting the distinct impression that Kate is already imagining herself working for someone far more important than a washed-up widow rather than focusing entirely on the task at hand.
The show’s coordinator approaches Ruby with a clipboard held in her hand, which is bedecked with a floral tattoo and several silver rings, and a headset covering one of her ears. Ruby smoothes her emerald green skirt and the white silk blouse that's covered in polka dots in the same shade of green. The shirt is sleeveless and was chosen intentionally to show off Ruby's famously toned arms, and the tulip cut of the skirt does the same thing for her legs, revealing calves shaped by miles and miles of running--both before and after her husband's death.
“Ready, Mrs. Hudson?” the coordinator asks, giving Ruby a smile. She covers her mouthpiece with one hand and looks Ruby up and down. “You look fabulous,” she whispers, then turns her attention to whatever is going on in her ear. She nods at Ruby and then points to the curtain. “Andddd,” she says to Ruby, holding up a finger. “Go!”
Ruby takes a deep breath and walks through the long, heavy curtain that hangs from ceiling to floor, taking each step carefully so that she doesn’t slip or trip in her high heels. She puts a practiced smile on her face as she waves both hands at the audience, trying to infuse every step and every motion with as much excitement as she can muster.
"Today on our show, we are beyond thrilled to welcome a woman you all know well. She's smart, funny, accomplished, and most of allresilient. Please help me give a warm welcome to our former First Lady, Ruby Hudson!” Leeza says with a shout, standing up on the set and clapping along with the audience. Her eyes are dancing as she holds out her hands for Ruby to join her.
The audience breaks into wild applause as the woman who lived in the White House for four years walks across the studio, smiling as she approaches Leeza, the tanned, toned, Botoxed host of the morning talk show.
The expectant energy of the audience hits Ruby with full force and she nearly hesitates; this is her first step back into the limelight since losing her husband. This is the first time the public has seen her emerge from behind the curtain--both literally and figuratively--to present herself as Jack Hudson's widow. As a woman wronged. As a person whose future is still unwritten. And the only thing she wants to talk about at all is what life has in store for her now.
Ruby is terrified and she tries not to blink or look like a deer in headlights as the cameras follow her across the studio and up onto the platform where Leeza is waiting.
Leeza takes both of Ruby's hands in hers, grinning from ear-to-ear like a starstruck super fan. But her smile falters as they sit on their respective black chairs, facing one another at an angle so that they're both turned slightly towards the audience.
"I'm so nervous," Leeza admits, straightening her skirt and then patting her glossy brown hair. "And I don't even know what to call you--Madame First Lady? Mrs. Hudson?"
"Oh, Leeza," Ruby says, reaching over and touching Leeza’s wrist lightly to set her at ease. Her fingertips are so cold that she's surprised when the host doesn't visibly recoil. "Please, call me Ruby. That's the only thing I want to be called from now on. If I'm going to be me on my own terms, then that's my very first term: I'm just Ruby."
Leeza laughs, her excited smile returning to her pretty face. "Whew!" she says, brushing a hand past her forehead like she's broken a sweat. "Okay. Got that taken care of!”
The lights overhead are bright and hot, and Ruby's eyes skim the crowd seated in the stadium-style seats, with each row raised just slightly higher than the one in front of it. Most of the audience is made up of middle-aged mom-types with a few grandmothers sprinkled in for good measure; this is the usual demographic forGood Day With Leeza. It is also the main demographic for every public appearance that Ruby makes, and most of her fan mail comes from women just like these ones--women who see her as open, kind, and relatable.
"So, Ruby," Leeza says now, turning to the audience theatrically and making an "I can't believe I'm doing this!" face so that they know what a surreal moment she's having. "Tell us what you've been up to in the past year, and what the future has in store for our favorite First Lady."
Ruby folds her hands in her lap and looks right at Leeza, her gaze direct and firm. "Well, as you all know, I've been through some things." She says this and then pauses ever so briefly; just long enough for the crowd to acknowledge the events of the past year, but not so long that Leeza feels obligated to say anything or to offer her condolences. That would throw off the momentum of the show, and because Ruby knows herself so well, she knows that it might also bring tears to her own eyes. She wants to avoid that at all costs, because this show is meant to be her comeback, not a setback.
Ruby waits for Leeza to ask the first straightforward, leading question. The things she’d agreed to discuss were all laid out for everyone on the show beforehand: Ruby is happy to discuss her daughters, her plans for the future, and anything about her own upbringing or her mother, who she looks up to and admires. She is willing to discuss—in broad terms—living in the White House, decorating it for the holidays, and what her favorite perks of living there were (never having to grocery shop or cook are at the top of her list, and she knows these things will garner laughter from the audience, because most of them will be able to relate).
But as Ruby looks straight into Leeza’s eyes, she sees a shift, and it’s one she recognizes well, because she’s dealt with journalists and done interviews for so many years now that she could do them in her sleep. The new look in Leeza’s eyes is one of hunger. She sees her chance, and she’s going to take it.
“Ruby,” Leeza says slowly, and Ruby can feel her stomach turn. “A year out of the spotlight is quite a long time. We’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed all of you,” Ruby says firmly, turning just her upper body in the chair so that she’s gazing out at the audience in the studio, as well as at the audience beyond the cameras.
“It’s understandable why you might have wanted to take some time away, given the circumstances.”
Ruby steels herself; she needs to handle this with kid gloves so as not to lose control of the interview. “Yes, losing my husband was a huge blow to my entire family,” she says, folding her hands in her lap and shooting Leeza a warning look.
