Page 35 of The Fadeaway

“We’re so, so sorry about Patty’s passing,” Theodore says, slinging an arm around his sister’s shoulders. It’s a move that makes them look much younger than they are; like two teenage kids bonded together in the face of adversity.

“Thank you,” Ruby says. She picks up her purse off the chair. “I’d love to hear more about how well you knew my mother, and…I guess more about how she and your father fit together.”

Zoey tips her head to one side. “How about if we go and meet Dad?”

Ruby nods. This is what she’s been waiting for, though they are currently in a memory care facility, so she doesn’t hold out much hope for an interaction with Lyle Westover that will shed a lot of light on his relationship with her mother.

Banks stays in the small meeting room with a stack of outdated, well-thumbed magazines and the cup of coffee he’d gotten from Tonya the nurse/greeter, and Ruby follows Zoey and Theodore through the shiny floored, clean hallways. They stop at a door that says Lyle W. on a sign and Zoey knocks lightly.

“Dad?” she calls out, knocking again. “Can we come in?”

There is no answer, so she cracks the door slightly and peers into the room. Over her head, Ruby can see that the windows are large and let in a flood of light. Beyond the windows, Fair SkiesVillage stretches out in the distance: rich green lawn, stout palm trees, and a few cacti for good measure. A man driving a golf cart lifts a hand at a gardener in greeting and then drives out of view.

Zoey has stepped into the room so Ruby follows, standing off to one side. Lyle Westover is in a hospital bed, gray hair combed to one side, reading glasses perched on his nose. He has a newspaper open on his lap.

“Hi, Dad,” Zoey says, approaching him carefully. In Zoey’s cautious moves, Ruby intuits that there have been times when perhaps Lyle Westover hadn’t recognized his own children. “How are you?” Zoey asks, putting her hands on the guardrail of the bed and leaning slightly towards him. There is a reading lamp turned on next to Lyle.

“Hi, Zo,” he says, looking up at her with surprise and wonder. It’s as if he’d forgotten that his daughter lived within driving distance, or even that he’d seen her recently. He takes off his reading glasses and looks at the door. “Theo, you’re here too?”

“Hey, Pops,” Theodore says, waving at his dad the same way he’d waved at Ruby in the meeting room. He looks slightly ill-at-ease, but again, sort of young and as if he’d rather be somewhere else.

Lyle’s eyes land on Ruby. “Do my eyes deceive me, or is my newest nurse actually the First Lady?” He frowns and smiles at the same time. “What a lucky man I am.”

Ruby steps forward. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Westover.” She offers him her hand. “I’m Ruby Hudson.”

“Of course you are,” he says, taking her hand in both of his and holding it. “Your mother and I go back years. Decades. A lifetime.”

Ruby leaves her hand in his as she smiles at him. So far Lyle Westover seems to be totally lucid and able to discern both his surroundings and who is in the room. This gives her hope that maybe he’ll be able to tell her more about Patty.

“I’ve heard that,” Ruby says with a smile. “I’ve come to meet you, and to find out more about your friendship with my mother.”

Lyle laughs heartily. “Friendship,” he scoffs. “It was so much more than that.”

So it’s exactly what Ruby had imagined. She works to keep the smile on her face, worried that Zoey or Theodore might see her falter and think that she disapproves of her mother having loved their father. In truth, it’s really none of her business what these two adults chose to do nearly forty years ago, but she does feel some small blush of shame on her mother’s part if she’s about to find out that Patty had carried on a torrid affair with a married father of two.

Without being asked, Ruby sinks into the chair next to Lyle’s bed.

“We could step out if you like,” Zoey offers, hooking a thumb towards the door. Theodore looks thrilled at having been offered an escape from this potentially awkward scenario. “Theo and I can go grab a cup of coffee while you two talk.”

“Off you go,” Lyle says, waving a large, square hand dismissively. His fingers are slightly knotted from arthritis, and there are visible veins running from his knuckles to his elbows. “Go get your coffee, kids.”

Ruby smothers a smile at the indulgent way that Lyle speaks to his fully grown children, and she settles into the seat, slipping off her coat and hanging it over the arm of her chair.

“So,” Ruby says, smiling at Lyle as she clasps her hands in her lap. Once again, Patty has made her intentions clear in her will and it would be expensive and difficult to try to argue against them, but Ruby gets the same feeling she had upon meeting Carmela that there is some sense of her needing to approve of the financial support Patty is giving. “I have a photo of you and my mother, and I’d love to show it to you.” She reaches into herpurse and pulls out the photograph, which she sets on top of Lyle’s blanket so that he can pick it up and examine it.

“Oh,” he says, his eyes looking faraway. “I remember this day like it was yesterday. There was live music—some unknown group was playing ‘Abracadabra’ by the Steve Miller Band—and a huge pot of lobster cooking on an open fire. Patty wore this long,” he pauses, trying to simulate something with his hands, “wrap dress thing. It opened over one thigh, and she drank Prosecco all night.”

This level of detail is amazing to Ruby, and although Zoey has warned her in a long email that Lyle is suffering from Parkinson’s, he is completely laser-focused at the moment, and he’s even speaking clearly, which Zoey warned her might not happen.

“Was this a work function, or…a date?”

Lyle lets the hand holding the picture fall to his lap and he looks over at her. “A date? Me and Patty?” He frowns, confused. “No. No. It wasn’t.”

Mr. Westover turns his head to the giant windows and looks out at the blue afternoon sky, watching with interest as the gardener digs a hole. He turns back to Ruby, still frowning. “What happened to that other nurse?” he asks.

Ruby scans his face, and there it is: the disconnect. She’s spent enough time in nursing homes over the years, shaking hands, taking photos, and greeting elderly people with dementia to know that something has shifted. A door has closed.

“Do you need the nurse, Mr. Westover?” she asks patiently, reaching over and touching his arm gently. The photo of him and her mother standing in a vineyard as a band played “Abracadabra” in the background is still in his hand. “I can get one.”

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