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I think this weekend I’ll meet her mother for the first time, which is a big deal for any man in a relationship that he thinks could potentially go the distance, but Patty Dallarosa is well-known as a tough lawyer in this town, and she’s made enough of a name for herself that I’d actually heard of her before fallinghead over heels for her daughter. But Ruby has arranged for us to meet this weekend, and I want nothing more than to make a good impression on the woman who raised Ruby almost entirely on her own, following the death of her own husband.
Another thing I love about Ruby is the way she can laugh at herself. We were at an event this past weekend in Bakersfield, and within moments of stepping from the air-conditioned van, the desert heat had gotten to my fair beauty and she swooned, leaning into me as I guided her to the shade. Almost instantly, she’d sweated through the pretty yellow linen dress she was wearing, and instead of feeling self-conscious, Ruby had laughed at herself, taking a piece of cardboard and folding it into a fan to wave in front of her pinkened face as she took a few deep breaths.
“I guess I better behave myself from now on,” she said, smiling at me winningly. “Because apparently I’m not cut out for hell.”
I laughed loudly at this, imagining that this dainty, elegant young woman could have done anything—truly anything—to warrant being banished to the depths of hell. And I tell you, even in the short time that I’ve known her, I can assure you that Ruby Dallarosa has never done anything bad. Naughty, maybe…(this is me smirking at the memory of her doing things when no one else was watching), but “bad”? Never.
Ruby pauses here as another bolt of lightning hits the beach outside her house, filling the room with white light. She stands up to get her mug of tea and looks out the window, watching as the fingers of lightning dance over the water.
This particular entry of Jack’s has immediately pulled her back to that time of their lives together, and in a way, has superseded the later years for a moment, pulling an imageof them as young lovers to the forefront of her mind. Ruby remembers vividly that day in Bakersfield, the way her dress had clung to her body uncomfortably, and how a young, eager staffer had run around looking for a bottle of Gatorade for Ruby to sip so that she could replenish her electrolytes and not pass out right there in the middle of a political event.
Ruby had taken the bottle of red energy drink gratefully, twisting off the orange cap and sipping from it as she sat in a folding chair inside an air-conditioned school gym. She’d waited there as Jack, in his pressed slacks and rolled-up shirtsleeves and tie, conferred with someone about his upcoming speech, and she wondered whether or not she was truly cut out for this life. Being an accessory for a man as he traveled around the state that he represented, speaking about issues and making promises that even Ruby wasn’t sure he could keep, was a lot to ask of a woman in her twenties. Sure, she knew that being a part of a machine that was, essentially (hopefully) working for good was a positive thing, but on a Saturday like this one, she thought, sipping more Gatorade, she could be at the beach with her friends, enjoying the cool ocean breeze and talking about which commercials they were all auditioning for in the coming weeks.
“Hey, gorgeous,” Jack said to her then, striding across the gym purposefully.
Ruby had recapped the bottle and looked up at him with wonder.This man sees something in me, she’d thought then, feeling the need to almost pinch herself as she realized that a grown man in his thirties looked at her and thought that she was a worthy mate.I can be what he needs me to be, she’d said to herself, standing up. A wave of heat-induced nausea passed through her, but she’d stood her ground, smoothing out the front of her yellow dress as Jack got closer.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. She loved the way he swooped right in, putting an arm around her waist or a hand on her lower back protectively. “Can I get you anything?”
“Just your heart,” Ruby had said, feeling the words cross her lips before she’d had a chance to vet them.
A slow smile spread across Jack’s face. “Well, you’ve already got that, baby,” he’d said, leaning in to put a small, chaste kiss on her lips. There were people in the gym with them, after all. “I was thinking more like a cookie or something to boost your blood sugar.”
“Sure,” Ruby said, giving him a firm nod. “Yes. A cookie would be great.”
And so she’d taken the chocolate chip cookie, nibbling at it while the man she’d so quickly grown besotted with went back to his political duties.
“I can be what he needs me to be,” Ruby whispered to herself, out loud this time as she watched him. And from that point forward, even if she hadn’t always felt like rising to the occasion, she’d reminded herself that Jack Hudson had chosen her. He’d seen her as a potential First Lady long before Ruby had seen herself as anything but a girl with a solid college education and some attractive headshots in her acting portfolio.
With her mug of tea in hand, Ruby sits back down at her kitchen table now, listening as the thunder moves away in the distance. She opens the diary again and flips to another date that same year.
December 3, 1997
I’ve asked Ruby’s mother if she will support me marrying her daughter. Yes, it’s old-fashioned, and no, I don’t believe that Ruby would turn me down had I not spoken to Patty first, but Iwanted to show my respect—and I do respect her mother—so I honored tradition and took Patty out for seafood last night.
Over spicy shrimp and several sweet and tangy Sidecars apiece, Patty told me stories about Ruby as a tiny girl (so impudent and curious! Millions of questions; no fear of heights or consequences; a great collector of books her entire life), and then she got serious and explained what life was like for Ruby after her father died suddenly of a heart attack. My sweet, eleven-year-old Ruby had cried herself to sleep for months, missing her father. Apparently they were thick as thieves, loved the same jokes, and would often skip out on responsibilities for a day (Reuben ignoring his work and Ruby ditching school) so that they could drive up the coast and stop for salt water taffy, visit aquariums, and take photos of each other on windy piers. All of this made Ruby even more human and lovable to me (though that wasn’t necessary for me to love her), and it also brought to light the importance of my role in her future.
No, my role is not to replace her beloved father in any way, nor is it to assuage any of her feelings of loss, but it is my job to understand that there’s a hole that’s been punched in her heart, and that no matter how old she gets, a piece of her trust in the universe is gone. For an eleven-year-old girl to come home one day to her idyllic life and find it forever changed…well, any idiot can see that it would change a person. So my job now is to always remember that, and to do my level best never to punch another hole in her heart. I can’t help it if I die unexpectedly (someday, some day wayyy out in the future when I’m old and gray and have lived a long, noble life), but for the immediate future, I can hold her close, promise her my heart and my fidelity, and then stand by those promises.
And that’s what I intend to do…if she says ‘yes.’
“Of course I was going to say yes,” Ruby mutters to herself in the quiet of the kitchen. The thunder has moved on, and in its place now is the steady thrum of a heavy rainstorm. So far as she can tell, Dexter still has not stirred upstairs. “Of course I wanted to marry you, you idiot,” she whispers as she picks up her mug of tea.
Jack had proposed just days later, getting down on one knee at the Santa Monica Pier as people milled around them, watching the sunset and the lights of the Ferris wheel that had only been there for about a year at that point. Ruby looked at the people fishing off the end of the pier, at the kids carrying oversized lollipops in rainbow swirls, at the way the sky looked like it had been dipped in Easter egg dye, spread across the horizon with yellows and pinks and periwinkles.
“Yes,” she’d said without reserve. Ruby stood over Jack, looking down at his earnest face as he held a ring box open. A clear diamond sparkled up at her and from the top of the Ferris wheel, people laughed and shouted, their voices echoing down the pier. “I want to be your wife, Jack Hudson,” she said softly, clasping both hands to her chest as her eyes filled with tears.
Jack stood up, pulling the ring from the box and holding it so that Ruby could slip her finger into it. She stood there, unblinking for a long minute as she looked at the way the gold band contrasted against her tanned skin.Mrs. Jack Hudson, she thought in her head then.Ruby Hudson. With eyes full of joy, she looked up at Jack, leaning into him and putting both hands against his chest as she kissed him fully, right there on the Santa Monica Pier.
The wedding had been big—far bigger than Ruby had imagined. In her mind, she’d envisioned the kind of lovely, tasteful beach ceremony she’d seen in the pages ofPeoplemagazine: the bride with a classic bouquet of pale and ivory flowers, a dress of satin cut so that it hung over her young, litheframe, and her hair swept back from a professionally made-up face. Perhaps there would be an arch on the beach fashioned from the same flowers that filled her bouquet. And after the ceremony, there would undoubtedly be a moist banana cream cake from the small bakery near her mother’s house.
Instead, the event had quickly snowballed and spiraled out of Ruby’s control. It had entertained her at first, and she’d laughed as Jack’s assistants called her to schedule fittings, cake tastings, and to go over menus and seating arrangements, but by the time the wedding arrived the next October, it had become this behemoth, gargantuan affair that nearly embarrassed Ruby in its ornateness.
“Well,” Patty had said, standing with Ruby in the dressing room at the Hotel Bel Air on her wedding day. “This is quite a doozy, isn’t it, sugar?” Patty had held a gin and tonic in one hand to calm her nerves as the team of hired beauty consultants buzzed around them both like bees, fluffing and spraying Patty’s shoulder-length hair, and sweeping soft, powdery brushes across Ruby’s smooth cheeks.
Ruby shook her head, looking at her wedding dress in the full-length mirror, her mother standing behind her. The dress—which had definitely been a beach wedding-appropriate satin sheath dress in her mind—was now a Grace Kelly-esque antique lace dress with a rhinestone clip at the waist. The skirt jutted out around her, and her hair was done in an elaborate upsweep with tiny rhinestone pins sprinkled throughout to catch the soft overhead lights of the cathedral. Yes,the cathedral.
“It’s more than a doozy,” Ruby said, turning around and reaching for her mother’s gin and tonic. She tossed back a long swig of it to fortify herself. “It’s a damn production number.”
