Page 19

19

RUBY

The flight back to Chicago is nothing like the flights with Harry.

I take the window seat, and Mom doesn’t object. Instead, she flicks through the magazines in the pouch attached to the back of the seat in front of her, keeping up a steady stream of chatter about perfume and makeup and exotic vacations.

“I always wanted to go to Fiji. Sounds so … I don’t know—” she peers up from the glossy pages on her lap “—glamorously tropical, doesn’t it? Your dad and I went to Puerto Vallarta once, before you were born. It was so colorful and vibrant and loud, but it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as Fiji.”

I don’t even know how she can concentrate on the pictures in the magazine, let alone think about going on vacation. Is she so hardened by Dad’s first stroke that news of the second one has barely registered with her? Or is this all a facade, her brain incapable of dealing with the consequences of Dad getting sick again, incapable of considering our new reality?

She hasn’t even asked me about our trip to Scotland. It’s almost as if she has convinced herself that I’ve left Harry behind, and now she can keep it that way.

I study her profile, her eyelids fluttering across the pages of the magazine, her glossy lips smiling whenever she spots something that my future husband’s money will buy for her. She smiles sweetly at the stewardess, orders a gin and tonic, and pops the can with a soft hiss.

“Don’t look at me like that, Ruby,” she says, tipping the soda into a plastic cup. “It’ll calm my nerves.”

I turn back to the window and press my forehead against the cool glass. I watch the land below us fading in and out of view through the dense clouds and remember sleeping with my head on Harry’s chest when we flew to the UK.

We were humming with anticipation and excitement, riding high on the buzz of what we’d done, leaving the country without telling anyone, just the two of us. We were trying to figure out what the word ‘us’ would mean. How we would slot into each other’s lives, like two puzzle pieces finally coming together.

But more than anything, we were just enjoying that first-date feeling. I smile to myself, my breath creating a steamy donut on the window. Has there ever been a first date quite like ours in the history of time? What would Emily Bront? have to say about it?

My mom leans across me with a waft of Chanel No. 5 and peers out the window. “There wasn’t much to see on the way here. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d be flying back so soon.”

Because she thought she would have a fight on her hands to get me away from Harry?

I would give anything not to be traveling back home because of my dad. Maybe this is why I can’t look at her right now. She seems smug, like she won the fight and now she can sit back and reap the rewards of cutting short my little escapade.

When I think of Harry, I feel numb.

I believe him, I think. He couldn’t have faked the shock of finding out what his dad did to my dad, he’s not that good an actor. But I don’t know how we can ever make this relationship work, not when our families have such awful connections.

Why did it have to be Karl Weiss? Why couldn’t it have been someone else? Anyone else. Seven million people live in New York City, and our fathers had to go and find each other. Worse than that, they had to go and do fucking business together. I wish I knew what had happened between them, but wishing isn’t going to make it better.

“Stop grinding your teeth, it’s not a good look.” My mom shoots me a sideways glance and digs into a packet of peanuts with her scarlet talons.

My mom and Karl Weiss are never going to sit together at our wedding rehearsal dinner. They’re never going to join us in our first dance, or throw confetti, or smile at the camera for the obligatory wedding photos. Or if they do, they’re literally going to be stabbing each other with their pointed looks and jutting chins.

A sudden thought pops into my head, and I groan out loud, masking the sound with a fake cough so that I don’t disturb my mom’s enjoyment of her second gin and tonic, mostly gin.

I already know the extreme lengths my mom will go to in her misguided attempts to keep me away from Harry. I admit that I know nothing about Karl Weiss—Harry has barely spoken about him in the short time I’ve known him—but what if… And here is where my pulse gathers speed like a snowball rolling down a hill. What if they join forces to keep us apart?

I swallow hard, stare at my mom as if I can read what’s going on inside her head, until she turns to me with her perfectly manicured brows furrowed. “What is it? Do you want me to move?”

“No. It’s nothing.” I turn back to the window.

My mom wouldn’t do that, would she? From the way she spoke Karl Weiss’s name out loud, she hates the man. Losing the business affected her too, not just my dad, and I have to believe that she wouldn’t stoop that low.

I steer my thoughts back to my dad. I don’t know how serious this stroke has been or what side effects he might have to live with after, but guilt floods my chest in icy waves: what if this was all my fault? He told me to go with Harry, but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t worried about me, and I wonder how much of my mom’s rage he had to deal with while we were gone.

Guilt doesn’t seem to be affecting her though. She’s now sniffing perfume samples and discussing the merits of YSL’s Obsession and Estee Lauder’s Beautiful with the passenger across the aisle.

I stare at the window without seeing anything beyond the glass. How can I tell my dad who Harry is now? What if he finds out and has another—potentially fatal—stroke? How could I ever live with myself?

By the time we disembark the aircraft, the stewardess aiming her wide well-practiced smile our way, I feel as if I left my future behind in New York City. Perhaps it was never my future to snatch hold of. Perhaps my time spent with Harry was nothing more than a pleasant interlude, something for me to look back on when I’m older with a wistful smile and a sad shake of my head.

I take a deep breath and try to arm myself to see my dad again.

Dad smiles at us with half his face, the other half drooping lazily like plastic warmed too long in the sun. He is sitting up in the hospital bed, looking frail and vulnerable in the cotton hospital gown.

“Hello, Dad.” I deliberately refuse to acknowledge the wires attaching him to the monitors beside the bed.

Last time I was here, I was playing cards with Harry and Ronnie, the imprint of Harry’s lips lingering on mine. Now… Now, I’m worried that my dad will not be my dad anymore, that we won’t sit in the den in the evenings chatting about our favorite sitcoms, The Cosby Show and Cheers , dunking cookies in hot chocolate while he talks about the birds he spotted in the backyard during the day.

I lean across the bed and kiss his cheek. It feels cold and clammy, not like my dad’s cheek at all as if the hospital has given him a mask to wear and told him not to remove it until they send him home.

“How are you feeling?” I keep my smile in place, just like the airline stewardess, and remind myself not to judge them next time I fly. They’re only doing their job.

“Never better.” The words sneak out of the corner of his mouth, sounding clumsy, strained.

“Glad to hear it.” I perch on the edge of the bed—just like I did in Harry’s room—while my mom air-kisses his other cheek.

“We came as soon as I got the call.” She sits on the visitor’s seat and crosses her legs neatly at the ankle. “You gave us quite a scare. Terrible timing.”

Like there’s ever a good time to suffer a stroke.

“Harry wanted to come,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “But he had work issues to resolve, so I told him to stay.”

The atmosphere has altered with the mention of Harry, like my mom has sucked all the goodness out of it and replaced it with something stiff and toxic, and I feel like I need to get it back on track.

“Sokay.” Dad smiles at me with one eye. “Don’t wanna … cause trouble.” His words don’t sound right, slurring into one another as if he’s drunk.

“Oh, Dad, you could never cause us any trouble.”

I throw my arms around him, telling myself that he won’t be wired up to these machines like a laboratory experiment forever. He’ll get better. He will.

He rubs my back, clings to me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear again if he lets me go, and another wave of guilt explodes inside me.

“Where have you … been?” he asks when he pulls away.

“We don’t need to talk about that right now, Graham.” Mom’s voice reaches us from the plastic seat. “She’s back now. That’s all that matters.”

She says it like she knows she’s the one at the steering wheel again, telling me what to do, where to go, how to be.

“I want to know.” Dad’s eyes are on me, and I see a glimmer of the man who has always spent hours talking to me about his favorite books and movies and food. He’s still there. He hasn’t gone away and left me behind and the rush of love in my chest goes partway to easing the guilt.

I tell him about Edinburgh. “It was like we’d traveled back in time, Dad, the streets were so old and narrow and winding. We saw someone playing bagpipes on the sidewalk wearing a kilt, and we explored the underground city, and climbed Arthur’s Seat.”

The more I talk, the deeper the barrier between us and my mom seems to grow. It’s as if the room is expanding, her seat sliding away from us, while the bond between Dad and I strengthens, solidifies, knots my heart to his, excluding her from this part of my life in which she has no interest. She hasn’t even asked where we’ve been, like she can pretend it didn’t happen if she knows nothing about it.

“Sounds … great.” Dad’s half-smile is back, trying so desperately to lift the side of his face that’s still functioning as it should.

“It was, Dad.” I instinctively rub my fingers across the diamond on my left hand.

“Ruby!” The word snaps me back to reality like a firecracker being set off. My mom is trying to close the distance, trying to rein me in before I slip so far away from her that she can’t reach me. “Do we have to do this now?”

Dad’s eyebrow rises and drops again like the movement has sapped the last of his strength. He doesn’t react, but I know that he’s waiting to hear from me whether we should do this now or not.

I know my mom thinks that she has won but, for me at least, this isn’t over. I could hide the ring, say no more about it, call Harry when I get home and tell him that it’s over. Or I could show my dad the diamond, tell him that Harry chose it himself, that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me, and hear what he has to say.

There’s no contest. My dad’s opinion means the world to me.

I raise my hand so that he doesn’t have to move. His eyes flicker between me and the engagement ring, back and forth, like he has no control over them until finally, his smile shines from them, lighting up his sickly gray face.

“You-you’re getting married.”

What do I say? I would be getting married if my future father-in-law didn’t destroy you thirteen years ago, and my mom hadn’t already made it perfectly clear that she isn’t happy about it?

“She doesn’t have to go through with it.” I bristle at my mom’s words, my spine stiffening. “They’ll realize what a huge mistake it would be now that they’ve come back to reality.”

Dad’s eyes twitch. “Let Ruby speak.”

My shoulders slump. When I think about being alone with Harry on our trip, my entire body comes alive, tingling with desire, like a hunger that has to be satiated now that I’ve tasted it. But more than that, far more than the physical attraction, I yearn to be with him. I miss him. Without him, I feel incomplete.

Hot stinging tears fill my eyes. I can’t even blink them away because my dad has already spotted them. Is this love or am I still caught up in the whirlwind trip like a sixteen-year-old experiencing a vacation romance and convincing herself that it’s real?

“Ruby?” Dad prompts. “Do you … love him?”

“How can she possibly be in love when she barely knows him?” Mom gets up and stands on the other side of the bed. “It’s a recipe for disaster. Long distance relationships never work and?—”

“Celia.” Dad trembles, but it’s enough to cut her off, her voice skittering through the cracks in the room like a frightened mouse. “This is Ruby’s life. She must … make up her own mind.”

I hadn’t thought about our relationship being long distance. Until Mom said the words out loud, I’d assumed that Harry and I would live in New York when we were married because of his business and because … well … I don’t exactly have a career to cling onto. But now, I realize that I can’t go to New York, not while my dad is sick. I’d never forgive myself if he needed me, and I wasn’t there.

“It’s okay, Dad. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You-you’re not staying here because of me.” Dad’s face crumples, his mouth contorting as if he’s about to cry.

“No. It’s not that.” I chew my bottom lip. I can’t lie to him, but I’m not going to tell him who Harry is, not like this.

“What then? I… Did I do … something wrong?”

Tears spill down my cheeks and I wipe them with my fingertips. The ache in my chest feels like it is here to stay. I can keep Harry’s secret if it means my dad will be okay.

But my mom has no such qualms. “His name is Harry Weiss. He is Karl Weiss’s son, Graham. That’s why she can’t marry him.”

Dad’s eyes drift shut, and he is perfectly motionless for so long that my heart races, afraid that he is slipping away. Then, he opens his eyes and looks at me through fat tears. “Marry him, Ruby. Marry this Harry … and be happy.”