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And then there is Etienne, the aforementioned daisy-turned-wildflower. Etienne is a cup of strong coffee at midnight. She is a cigarette shared on a footbridge on a cold night, breath, laughter, and smoke all mingling seductively between us. Etienne is two hours of sleep followed by a day's journey to a far-flung corner of France by car to see a tiny church simply because she read an article about the ancient priest who oversees it, and she wants to buy something in the gift shop to bring home and give to a neighbor.
Etienne is shoveling fistfuls of salty-sweet popcorn into our mouths as we lean into one another in the back row of a horror movie on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. She is standing on chairs at an Irish pub on St. Patrick's Day, shouting along with U2 songs and drinking pint after pint of beer. Etienne is not Christmas, she is something more random, more rare in my life: Bastille Day, perhaps, with crowds in the street and fireworks in the air. She is lilac soap and lipstick that smells oddly like tangerines or strawberries. She is the kind of messy hair that women have when they wake up after a night of lovemaking, tuck behind their ears, and adorn with sparkly earrings and one of your ironed button-up shirts.
If Ruby is the moon--stable, waxing, waning, constant--then Etienne is a meteor shower. You want to look away, but can't for fear of missing the next burst of light, the next bright star streaking across the sky that you might wish upon, cling to, mourn as it burns its way across your sky. If Ruby is Venus,our next-door neighbor, rotating nearby, making her own path around the sun, then Etienne is perhaps Pluto--maybe a planet? Maybe not? Part of our solar system, but perhaps not? That quirky neighbor that keeps her distance and isn't sure she even wants to be invited to your block parties or your cookie swaps. Ruby will take you to the doctor, wait for you, check up on you, and bring you soup if you're not feeling well, while Etienne will watch you go, forget you're gone, wave uninterestedly as you pass by on your way back, and blow smoke from the side of her mouth as she ponders whether or not you're looking unwell.
And guess which one I want? Can you? I am a fool like every other man who has ever lived, so instead of traditions at Christmas, moist cake and hot coffee across a table from a woman who smells like, feels like,ishome, I choose a woman who drinks wine from a coffee mug at ten o'clock in the morning while reading Kafka and wearing nothing but a bath towel. I am an idiot. I am divided. I am in love.
And now that this Petit Chou is carrying a petit chou of my own inside of her, I feel even more protective, more wild, more passionate about her. I am here in France now, watching her sleep as she dreams beside me, and I am writing of my wife. My life is destroyed, my heart torn in two.
Ruby sets down the journal and turns her head to look at Dexter. They're sitting together on the Adirondack chairs on her deck, facing the ocean.
He is about to say something, though his face is just as stricken as Ruby's.
Ruby bursts into tears and Dexter sits beside her quietly, letting her cry.
There are no words to make this journal entry easier, to cushion the blow.
It simply hurts.
Ruby
The water is placid and the boat rocks soothingly. Molly has taken Ruby and Dexter out on the water for the afternoon, and she's content to sit in the captain's chair, watching the horizon and keeping to herself as her passengers sit at the stern of the boat.
"How are you feeling today?" Dexter asks. They're facing the water and both wearing sunglasses, and this is his first attempt to broach Ruby's state of mind after the journal entry they'd read together on her porch the night before.
Ruby shrugs, looking listless. "I'm fine."
But she is not fine—anyone can see that. She knows that her silence is off-putting for Dexter, but she also believes him to be astute enough to understand that she's just processing what her late husband has written about her and about his mistress.
"Can I ask a question?" Dexter is sitting on the bench seat with his bare feet pulled up, arms wrapped around his knees. He's wearing a white baseball cap and is slightly hunched as the boat rocks on the waves.
"Shoot."
"What upset you more: the way Jack described you, or the way he described Etienne?"
Ruby lifts her eyebrows and her eyes glaze over behind her sunglasses. She feels like she might cry again, but she wills herself not to. More tears will not equal more healing in this situation.
"I feel like the way he described me was...flattering," Ruby allows. "But boring."
Dexter is wise enough not to comment, but he makes an encouraging sound and nods his head.
"And I think the way he described Etienne made her sound like a child. Like a selfish twit without any responsibilities."
"Mmm," Dexter says, sticking to non-words as responses.
"I mean," Ruby says, warming to the sensation of the rant that's building inside of her. "What kind of grown woman drinks wine from a coffee mug at ten in the morning? Or stands around on bridges smoking cigarettes in the freezing cold?"
As she says this, Ruby realizes that the kind of woman who does these things is an interesting, eclectic, non-boring woman. The wind leaves her sails as she pictures Etienne, with her dark pixie cut, singing U2 songs loudly in an Irish pub and dragging Jack across France for a day trip to a tiny church. Ruby is not this kind of woman.
"It's okay to embrace who you are," Dexter says as he watches her face. "I like the Ruby-ness of you."
This pulls a smile from Ruby--albeit a half-hearted one. "Thanks, Dex. But I think I can understand more now what the allure was for Jack. His whole life--wife, job, kids--were staid and pre-determined. And Etienne was...hispetit chou. A girl he'd known her whole life. Someone known and yet also unknown." Ruby leans her back against the side of the boat and stares out at the waves with glassy eyes. "By giving him the stability he needed to be successful in life, I turned into thesheetrock and plywood that held the whole operation together, and Etienne got to be the window dressings and art that decorated his life."
Dexter puts his feet up on the metal rail that runs along the side of the boat and he turns his face up to the sky. "I think you're shortchanging yourself, Ruby."
Ruby appreciates the sentiment, but it doesn't squelch her fury. She stands up and paces, glancing up at Molly in the captain's chair. Molly is sitting in the sun, flipping the pages of a book, and she's far enough away that she most likely can't hear their words.
"I don't know if I'm shortchanging myself. All I know is that I'm putting the pieces of my own life together like a puzzle long after my husband is dead. What I thought was fact was just my own fantasy."
