Love, Ruby Lavender Page 9
Melba sent me an "I'm sorry" note yesterday, but I tore it up. Sorry isn't good enough, nothing is good enough.
Chickens grow fast. Rosebud outgrew her box already, and she doesn't fit in my pocket anymore, either. She follows me everywhere, like a little shadow. She waits outside Miss Mattie's store while I sweep.
Yesterday I told Miss Mattie she really wasn't such a crab. She said, "Whoever said that I was?" and I said, "Why ... I don't know, Miss Mattie, but I know I heard it somewhere..."
Love,
your (thoughtful) granddaughter,
Ruby L.
Pee Ess: Dove has been wearing your muumuus. You sure have a lot of them. I hope you don't mind. She doesn't match as well as she used to, but she is excited about wearing "Polynesian outfits." She wears a muumuu and that hard brown hat and those boots and white socks. She wants to interview you when you come home.
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July 11
Dear Ruby,
I'm glad you think Leilani is cute—she is! And you are beautiful. Of COURSE I've told her all about you! She said, "I can't wait to meet my fabulous cousin." Well, she said, "Thhhwwaaaaagh!" but that's what she meant.
You know, I have been thinking. I am wondering how you are going to avoid Melba Jane when school starts. Or when you are 10. Or when you are 25. Or when you are my age! That's a long time to never see somebody. Lots can happen in 50 or 60 years ... or in a day. At least go to the operetta for me, won't you? I need someone reliable to give me a good review. I hate that I'm going to miss it.
And don't worry about a remembrance for your grandpa; it was just a thought. There's a right time for everything, and when the time is right—if ever it is—you'll know it.
Love,
your (a bit homesick) grandmother,
Miss Eula
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July 12
Dear Miss You Are Missing It,
Good garden of peas! Bemmie has laid an egg!!! I'm not kidding!
She and Herman have been sneaking out to meet each other at night. They are having what Miss Mattie calls "a clandestine romance." What's that? We should have a chick on August 1! Or maybe August 2. Either day is lucky, right? Bemmie squawks all the time. She is LOUD and proud of herself! Bess is such a lazybones, she just eats through all the noise, and even eats some for Bemmie. Ivy says she's happy for Bemmie and can give her some pointers.
For your information, I played catch with Cleebo Wilson yesterday. He had a bat, so we hit some pop flies to each other. He's a good batter. I'm a better catcher.
Love,
your (going to be a mother again)
granddaughter,
Ruby L.
Pee Ess: Mama is cooking with Dove's aunt Tot. She says it is exhausting.
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July 17
Dear Ruby,
Of course Dove can wear my muumuus!—tell her its my pleasure—just don't let her out in any high winds—she might get picked up and carried off, like a kite.
Now I'm about to have my picture taken with a bunch of bananas on Johnson's porch—a HUGE bunch of bananas. I bet there's a hundred bananas in this bunch, it's almost as tall as I am! I am going to sing "Yes, We Have No Bananas" when the shutter clicks.
Love,
your (missing you) grandmother,
Miss Eula
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July 22
Dear Miss Banana Split,
Today I visited Aunt Tot and Mr. Ishee. Aunt Tot was painting on her porch. She paints the ugliest pictures in the world. Mr. Ishee tells her they are, "Lovely, darling Tot!" and Aunt Tot says, "What would I do without you, Tater?" and he kisses her and says, "I hope we never have to find out."
You must miss Grandpa Garnet worse than anybody.
For your information, Aunt Tot wants to hang the painting she did today in the new baby's room. "Wonderful idea, Tot!" said Mr. Ishee. I think he needs glasses.
Dove and I are wallpapering the baby's room. Aunt Tot has lots of choices papered to the wall already, and she can't make up her mind, so we are supposed to put all of them up, here and there, you would like Aunt Tot.
I miss you worse than anybody.
Love,
your (sticky) granddaughter,
Ruby L.
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July 23
Dear Ruby,
I am flabbergasted! I am stupefied with joy! Bemmie has laid an EGG?? Oh joy and happy day! How lovely that Bemmie and Herman are sweet on each other—Bemmie is a woman after my own heart (of course, Herman seems to be sweet on just about anybody. Somebody's going to have to talk to that man. He has no decorum.)
Love,
your (so happy I could go surfing—I think
I will!) grandmother.
Miss Eula
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July 25
Dear Miss Lots Can Happen in 60 Years,
I just got your letter about Melba Jane. Miss Eula, I don't want to see Melba. I don't want to go to the operetta. I don't want to do a remembrance for Grandpa Garnet, you don't know what it's like, you live there now, and I live here, and I know what it's like.
I don't have waterfalls and hula dancing and big bananas. I don't have Grandpa Garnet, and I don't have you. But I have the chickens and I have Mama and I have Dove and I even have Miss Mattie and Mr. Ishee and Aunt Tot and Miss Phoebe and Mr. Harvey and whole bunches of other people in Halleluia. And I don't have to have Melba if I don't want to. So I don't.
I want you to come home, if you don't want to, you don't have to. But that's what I want, you said you wanted to live away from reminders of Grandpa Garnet for a while. I live with them every day, and I'm all right.
Love,
your (a lot happens in a day and you
don't see it) granddaughter,
Ruby L.
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20
August 1
"I miss you at the schoolhouse." Dove bit into a mayonnaise sandwich and washed it down with root beer. She sat on the back-porch step, wearing a fuchsia muumuu and her brown boots.
"You've got Melba." Ruby lay in the porch swing, swinging herself by sticking one bare foot on the porch and pushing off sideways whenever she slowed to a stop. "I might melt, it's so hot."
Ivy, Bess, and Rosebud scratched the dirt in the chicken yard, looking for bugs. Bemmie nested and cackled from inside the greenhouse. The broken window was open to the sky. Ruby's mother had put a screen in the window frame.
Dove's mind was on the operetta. "You should come tonight and watch. Everybody's coming! It's going to be good. Melba has a solo."
Ruby rolled her eyes. "I bet you've filled up ten of those astropology tapes listening to her yap."
"Anthropology." Dove drank the last of her root beer. "She talks about her daddy a lot."
Ruby sat up. "What does she tell you?"
"She tells stories. She told a story about how he used to take her out all by herself, just the two of them, to stargaze in the summers. He taught her all the constellations. She can spot Orion's belt, and Scorpio's tail and the twins..."
A tiny shiver skittered up Ruby's spine. She closed her eyes and pulled a vision of Grandpa Garnet to mind, their firefly poem, and their nights with Miss Eula in the back meadow, under the stars.
"She showed me where the car went off the bridge."
Ruby's eyes flew open. "She did? Well, I never go there."
"Is that why you always take the long way to town?"
Ruby pushed off with her toes and the swing began its back-and-forth again. "Yes," she said, quietly. "That's why I go the long way." She stared at a muddauber nest on the porch ceiling, and as she tried not to think about them, memories of last summer began to lay on her like a blanket of hot air. She covered her face with her hands and breathed between her fingers. She saw her grandfather, standing on the Lake Jasper bridge, waving to her. She rub
bed her face and shook her head to clear it, and saw Dove looking at her. She gave a little laugh. "I don't even know where the car went off the bridge."
Dove spoke carefully. "I can show you."
Ruby studied the hair on her arms. "I don't want to know."
There was silence then, except for the cackles from the greenhouse. Ruby watched her chickens. She looked at the mass of black-eyed Susans growing next to the chicken-yard gate. Miss Eula's words came to her, floating on the breeze and pushing the hot air away. Just a remembrance to mark the fact that Garnet was in this world, and that the world was a good place because he was here.
"Maybe I do want to know," Ruby murmured.
Dove stood and brushed sandwich crumbs off the front of her muumuu. "Come on, then."
Ruby looked at her bare feet. She spread her toes out as far as they would go. They looked like little fans.
"I'll go with you," said Dove.
Ruby's eyes met Dove's. She gave a determined boost and pushed herself off the swing. The chain jingled. She took two hats from the hat pegs by the door and gave one to Dove. "Just a minute," she said. "There's something I need." She went inside the Pink Palace and came back with some scissors. She clipped a bunch of black-eyed Susans and tied them with a piece of twine from her pocket. Then she said to Dove, "Okay. Let's go."
"Who are the flowers for?"
"They're for me," said Ruby.
The girls set off, turning left onto the road toward town.
21
The cicadas shrilled from the trees. "It's too hot to spit," said Ruby. She spit anyway.
"It sure is a lot shorter to town this way than the way you go," said Dove. Orange dust kicked up on the road where the girls walked, past fat goldenrod blooming like feathery yellow clouds. They reached the end of the road and saw the bridge on their right, across the paved road that turned into Main Street and town. Ruby stood a long time, looking at it.
"My grandpa Garnet never got to this side of the bridge." Her voice was flat, without feeling. Her stomach hurt. She pushed her hair out of her face. If Melba could come to this bridge, so could she. So could she. It was a wooden bridge that clattered whenever a car crossed it, and there were roomy walkways on either side, made just for people traffic, or bicycle traffic, or—as Grandpa Garnet used to say—for dog, raccoon, and fox traffic. Soon Ruby was standing with Dove on the Lake Jasper bridge in the middle of the afternoon. The sun was almost straight overhead. It blinked on and off through the clouds, shining on the bridgework.
"Right there." Dove pointed to a spot almost halfway across the bridge. Ruby could see where it had been repaired. She walked to the railing and touched the spot. She made herself look down into the lake. Ruby had been swimming in it a thousand times. The water had felt so good on her skin. But she would never, never swim in Lake Jasper again. Her fist was hot and sweaty where she held the black-eyed Susans. She stuck them in the side pocket of her overalls, where they stuck out like a black-and-yellow flag.
A feeling of weariness took over, and Ruby leaned against the bridge, her stomach folding into itself along the rail. She looked at her wavy reflection in the water below. "It was my fault," she said. A tingle started in her chest and spread to her throat.
"What was?"
"The accident."
Dove frowned. "Why do you say that?"
Ruby took a deep breath and let it out. "Sheriff Varnado said Grandpa Garnet fell asleep at the wheel. That's all they could figure. But I know more, and so does Melba."
Dove's face colored. "What happened?" A tractor rumbled over the bridge. The driver waved at them.
Ruby kept going. "Remember how, the day we had root-beer floats at your house, Melba said that my grandpa and her daddy were supposed to stay in Raleigh, but they didn't?"
Dove nodded.
"It was my fault, because they were going to stay over in Raleigh that night, but I didn't want them to; I wanted Grandpa Garnet to come home because he had promised me a special fishing day—just him and me—and I had begged him to come back so we could go early and have a whole entire day, from sunup to sundown, breakfast, dinner, and supper. We were standing by the car, just me and Melba and her daddy and my grandpa, and Melba heard me asking Grandpa Garnet to please, please, please come back that night. And Melba's daddy was saying, 'I don't know. It's a long drive late at night, Ruby. I expect we'll stay over,' and Grandpa Garnet was saying, 'Don't you worry about a thing, Ruby. We'll have our day,' and we didn't. And if he had stayed in Raleigh, we would have had it, we would have had our day! Now I don't have a grandpa, Melba doesn't have a daddy, we don't have any days left!"
Ruby wrapped her arms around herself and held her elbows. She didn't want to cry. Her head hurt. She closed her eyes and listened to a catbird call from somewhere in the trees.
Dove took off her hat and ran her fingers through her white hair. She leaned against the bridge with her elbows on the railing. "Ruby..."
Ruby's voice choked. "Melba holds it over me; she knows I'm afraid she'll tell everybody. And maybe she did—maybe they know it already! Maybe they all think it was my fault."
"Ruby, that's not right—"
Ruby barreled ahead. "Melba told me that her daddy always stayed over when the Grange met in Raleigh, and my grandpa would have stayed for him, if I hadn't asked him to come home." Her heart hurt, it cramped in her chest, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
Grasshoppers called from the tall grass, and another car rattled over the bridge. Ruby dropped her head and gave Dove a weary smile. "Too bad you don't have your equipment with you now, huh?" Dove blinked and Ruby explained. "Here's a first hand interview, Dove. Here's a tragedy. Here's the whole story."
It took Dove only a moment to find her voice. "There's some things you don't report on. I bet Margaret Mead didn't tape everything. Some things are ... personal."
Ruby rested her elbows on the bridge railing next to Dove and put her face into her hands for a long minute. Dove turned around to face the opposite side of the bridge. She scratched the side of her face.
"I know something you don't," she said.
"What?" Ruby spoke from inside her hands.
Dove thought for a minute, then spoke. "Remember when I told you that I met Miss Mattie at the mercantile and she told Aunt Tot and me all about the accident?"
"Ummmm."
"Aunt Tot asked Miss Mattie why ever didn't your grandpa and Melba's daddy stay in Raleigh like they were supposed to. Miss Mattie stopped mixing the paint and said she knew her brother and that he had never for a minute entertained the notion of staying in Raleigh overnight, that he had never spent a night away from Miss Eula and he wasn't about to start that night."
Ruby lifted her face out of her hands and stared at Dove.
Dove knit her eyebrows together with a pained look. "I thought you knew that!"
Ruby opened her mouth, then shut it.
Dove scratched her head. "Well, I did. I just thought you knew ... I mean, if I knew you thought it was your fault and I knew it wasn't, I would have told you lots earlier, but I didn't know it. I never for a minute thought it was your fault, and I didn't think you thought it was your fault..." Dove's voice trailed off, and she cocked her head and peered at Ruby.
Ruby frowned. "I didn't know that...," she said in a soft voice. Her pulse began a ping-ping-ping sound in her ears and her heart beat faster. "Or maybe I did and I forgot. I don't know if that's true or not." She pushed her hair away from her face with both hands. Then slowly a new thought crept into Ruby's head. She looked at Dove with earnest eyes. She could hardly get her breath. "Miss Mattie says she knows, but she doesn't. She doesn't know what Grandpa Garnet was thinking!"
Ruby began pacing on the bridge, back and forth, back and forth. "That's what Miss Mattie believes, but she doesn't know—nobody knows—why he decided what he did..." She stopped pacing and willed her heart to quiet itself. She felt dizzy. She gazed at a spot in the distance, not seeing anything. "I don't know what he was thinki
ng..."
Dove's eyes lit up. "Or what Melba's daddy was thinking."
Ruby grabbed tight to this new thought. She knit her hands together and then pulled them apart. She knew something important. "Thing is," she said, lifting her head and breathing in the sweet smell of discovery, "thing is, Grandpa Garnet would have come home anyway. He always came home, always." A lightness slipped into Ruby's voice and a tingle ran from her shoulders right down to her toes. "He would have come home ... no matter what."
Dove smiled.
Ruby's tingles turned into pinpricks of amazement. She tried to take it in, this new knowledge. She studied a spiderweb on the bridgework. It shimmered in the sunshine.
"I'll ask Miss Eula about it," said Ruby. "But I bet that's right. He would have come home." She watched a pair of dragonflies dancing on the water. She almost felt like dancing herself.
Dove tapped her hat back onto her head. "I've got to go soon. We're supposed to show up early so we have time to put on costumes and makeup and figure out what to do with Aunt Tot's ... scenery. But I can stay a little bit longer if you want."
Ruby's heart felt light; it fluttered. "Go. You'll make Miss Mattie crazy if you're late."
"Come with me. It'll be fun."
Ruby shook her head. "I don't want to. I'll sit with Bemmie. Plus, I'm closing up for Miss Mattie at the mercantile. She forgets to turn out the lights and lock up on operetta night."
Dove took two steps toward the road and then stopped. "Can I sit up with you after the operetta and wait for Bemmie's egg to hatch?"
Ruby nodded. "Come over when you're done. Bring your equipment."
"Okay."
Ruby pulled on her earlobe. "Maybe I'll give you an interview."