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Ruby blinks and pulls her head back in surprise. “Oh,” she says, still running her palm over the hem of her shorts. “Uhhhh, no?” Ruby wrinkles her nose. “I don’t think so. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t even thought that far. I truly never believed that I’d be with a man other than Jack Hudson after the day we married, so to have found a person I enjoy spending time with is, in itself, kind of a big deal.”
“Do you think it’s because of the age difference?” Tilly, Ruby’s other shop assistant, asks. Tilly is a nineteen-year-old girl with dyed jet-black hair, black nail polish, and meticulously applied red lipstick and winged eyeliner. Her general demeanoris that of a persnickety cat. “Like, do you think he’s too young to marry?”
Ruby laughs now, feeling like she’s being interrogated by her friends, though not in an aggressive or unkind way. These women care about her, just as she cares about them, and their curiosity is natural.
“Not at all,” Ruby says, shaking her head. “Our age difference has nothing to do with it, I just haven’t given marriage any thought.”
Sunday clears her throat and holds up a hand. “Okay, women. We’ve grilled Ruby here enough for one day,” she says, glancing at her best friend. “I think we should talk about the book.”
Marigold reaches into her vintage pink quilted Chanel bag, a remnant of her days in the fashion world, and pulls out a paperback copy ofA Man Called Ove. “I bawled,” she says. “If I’m being honest.”
“The book is so much better than the movie,” Vanessa gushes. “I loved this one so much.”
“Meh,” Tilly says, cracking open her can of root beer and taking a long swig. “It was pretty over-the-top for me. But I did love how grumpy the old guy was.”
“I think,” Ruby says, holding her own hardcover copy on her lap, “that there’s so much we can learn from Ove. It’s so difficult to start over when you lose someone, and the idea of having to find a way to fit in, to understand the world through a different lens, it’s relatable. Who are we when the person we thought we’d have by our side forever is gone?”
Molly nods, understanding. “It gives us the opportunity to be ourselves, but a different version of ourselves than we would have been had they lived.”
“So true.” Marigold nods as she opens to a page she’s marked and highlighted. “And my favorite quote was, ‘Death is a strangething. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it’s one of the great motivations for living.’” Marigold pauses. “Isn’t that gorgeous?”
The women all nod and let the words sink in.
“‘One of the great motivations for living,’” Ruby repeats. “It is, truly.”
“I wouldn’t have sailed the world on my own if Rodney had lived,” Molly says wistfully.
“And I wouldn’t have moved down here and opened this shop if Jack were still here,” Ruby says, looking at each of her friends in turn.
They each know that a huge void would exist in their lives if they didn’t have each other, this book club, this spot to gather, and without thinking, each of them puts down their drink, lays their copy of the book in their lap, and reaches out and takes the hands of the women on either side of them until they’re all connected as a circle.
“No matter what, girls,” Ruby says, her eyes watery. “Let’s promise that we’ll always be each other’s motivations for living—reallyliving.”
“Deal,” Sunday says, squeezing Ruby’s hand.
“Deal,” all of the other women echo, smiling at one other.
February 20th, 2007
She's pregnant. She's having my baby. I only ever thought those words would cross my lips or my mind with regards to Ruby. Ruby has given me two beautiful daughters, her trust, and her help in any way that I need it. And yet, and yet, and yet...here I am, saying these words again, but about another woman.
Perhaps I should back up: I've been clear in my writings thus far about my growing feelings for Etienne. This woman, known to me for most her life as not just Yannick's kid sister, but as Petit Chou--Little Cabbage--or even just as Chou, is now the woman whose womb surrounds the little cabbage that I've planted there. Forgive me that, if you will, because it was said inelegantly, I'm just trying to wrap my head around the fact that Etienne will soon have my child. That another bit of me will exist far into the future, doing and seeing and accomplishing things that I never will. And this person will be largely unknown to me, because how could he or she be otherwise? How can I be both there and here at once, known to all my children in exactly the same way? How can I be to Ruby and to America all the things I have promised to be (oh, my poor Ruby, lumped in here in this scenario with all of America!), and also be to Etienne what she needs me to be--what my heart wants to be?
Knowing Etienne for her entire life has been like watching a garden grow. I've seen her turn from a daisy into a lush patch of wildflowers, and while the eye lands appreciatively on a sweet, innocent-looking daisy, it seeks and absorbs the riot of colors, of fragrances, of shapes that make up a garden of wildflowers. It's untamable, and yet one wants to gather these mismatched beauties into a bouquet; one wants to learn each name, tie them up together, and admire the ways that the variations of bloom complement one another.
But now I've gone too far with the flower analogy! I've called my unborn child a cabbage, and I've made Etienne into a bunch of untamed fauna and flora, but neither is quite right.
I think that in order to make sense, I need to be more clear about things: I need to give my two lives (as I find that I increasingly travel two diverging paths) their own flavors and color. Here is my attempt to do so.
My life with Ruby: a comfortable path with many well-lit turnouts to rest. The day I met her she was young and lovely (and she is still both of those things, so please do not make my words out to say otherwise), it was just that she was particularly young and lovely. A headband held back her blonde hair, for God's sake! She was warm and wanted to melt into my side, which I loved. She laid in bed with me on the weekends, sharing theNew York Timesand laughing with me as our bare feet tangled beneath the covers. She read the kind of fiction where it felt like nothing ever happens, and yet by the end of the book she'd be in tears because the entire story was resolved by one person saying something simple and profound to another. I was so charmed by that.
In the years since our weekends in bed with books and newspapers, Ruby has become the box of Christmas ornaments that comes out every year, its flaps worn and soft, its tissue paper cradling the homemade family ornaments that, hung every year, create tradition. Values. Home.
Ruby is a thick cashmere sweater and pearl earrings. She is Chanel No. 5 and chocolate cake with a cup of coffee at our favorite cafe. Ruby is the sturdy green of a park in summer, the soft bobbing of a boat on the lake in May, the hand-addressed holiday cards that always go out on time.
My wife is someone who rubs lotion into her hands each night, folding her reading glasses and setting them carefully atop whichever book she's currently reading. Ruby is satin robes and slippers that never touch the ground outside of our private residence. She is braided little girls' hair, millions of questions asked at the dinner table to keep the children talking (Keep them talking! she'd say, encouraging me to ask questions and then listen--really listen--so that they would always know they had an audience with their parents). Ruby is consistency, family, deep sleep, a good bottle of burgundy by a cracklingfire, she is the woman who asks the right questions and has the right advice.
If all of those things sound lovely to you, well, then you must know that they are. They are the things that make up the dreams of so many men, and I have them all, in one beautiful woman. In the mother of my children. In my chosen life partner.
