Page 41 of The Fadeaway

“What did you do instead?”

Athena closes the front door after waving at Banks, who is headed to the guest house to unpack his own belongings. She turns to face Ruby and Harlow. “We made tacos, we both took our laptops to the bookstore and to the coffee shop because we had work to do, and we pretty much watchedSex and the Cityin its entirety.”

Ruby flops on the couch in the middle of the living space and sighs deeply, relaxing into the pillows. She’s so happy to be home.

“That sounds amazing,” she says to her girls, smiling up at them.

“Hey, why don’t you catch a few winks here, Mom?” Harlow says, holding her towel in place as she reaches for a soft chenille blanket that’s tossed over the back of the couch.

Athena slips Ruby’s shoes off her feet and lifts her mother’s ankles gently, swinging them around so that she’s now lying flat on the couch. Harlow spreads the blanket over Ruby and she’s instantly transported to a weightless, happy place.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Ruby says as her eyes close. “Wake me up in a little bit and I’ll make you girls some lunch…”

In the end Ruby does not wake up to make lunch—or dinner. When she finally opens her eyes, she finds that her daughters have worked around her all afternoon and evening, taking her suitcase upstairs, fixing a pot of soup and some grilled cheese sandwiches, and that they’ve let Sunday in. Ruby sits up on the couch with bleary eyes as she looks around and finds her best friend curled up on a chair across from her, sipping a glass of iced tea and holding a book on her lap.

“Morning, sunshine,” Sunday says with a big smile. “How do you feel?”

Ruby pushes the blanket off her body and swings her legs around so that her feet are on the floor. Harlow brings her a glass of iced tea and sets it on a coaster on the coffee table.

“Thanks, honey,” she says to Harlow. “Um, I feel better, I think.” Ruby drinks the cold tea gratefully. “I just got hit by this wave of exhaustion. It feels so good to be home.”

“Dinner!” Athena calls from the kitchen. The women traipse in to the dining room table and sit in front of hearty bowls of tomato soup with large soup spoons laid out on Ruby’s favorite autumn leaf patterned napkins.

She lifts one up and looks at it before spreading it on her lap. “These were your grandmother’s,” Ruby says to the girls with a sad smile. She’s still not fully with it yet after her five hour nap, and her spoon clinks against the side of her bowl. “No matter how late she came home, my mother and I always sat at the table together to eat, and she always used her good linens. Never once in my life did I eat off a paper plate in my mom’s house.”

“Tell us about the trip,” Sunday prompts, running her spoon through the tomato soup.

“Wait, does Banks want to join us?” Ruby interrupts. She’s just realized that Sunday is here instead of with her boyfriend, and she doesn’t want to leave Banks out. Plus he’s probably starving.

“I came over here because he fell asleep,” Sunday said. “Did somebody drug you two on the plane?”

Ruby shakes her head and takes her first bite of tangy tomato soup. “No, I think it was just a lot of human interaction and travel all packed into a week. But I’m so glad I went. I needed to meet these people in person, and I needed to know more about my mother’s life. I’m completely bowled over by the relationships she had that I knew nothing about.” Ruby goes quiet for a moment and the only sound is of the spoons touching ceramic bowls as the women eat their soup. “At first it left me feeling a little lonely. I thought maybe my mother was a stranger to me, or that she’d somehow replaced the relationship sheshouldhave had with me by bringing all these other peopleinto her life. But that wasn’t true at all. She and Ellen go all the way back to childhood, Carmen simply happened to be a kindred spirit, and she’s known Lyle for decades, though I don’t think I’ll ever fully comprehend what that relationship looked like.”

“Maybe you don’t need all the answers,” Sunday says.

“I know now that I truly don’t.” Ruby reaches for one of the triangles of grilled cheese sandwich on her plate. It’s gooey and warm, and she dips a corner of it into her soup. “But I think the biggest mystery to me will always be why she never told me about Trixie. That’s a huge piece of her life and something that undoubtedly changed her. Why would she have kept it from me?”

Unbidden tears come to Ruby’s eyes for what must be the millionth time since she and her mother sat at this very table while Patty told her about the cancer. That was just over two months ago, but it feels like a lifetime has passed since she realized that she was about to lose her mom.

"Listen, I can speak to secrets of that magnitude," Sunday says, setting her spoon in her bowl and placing both elbows on the table as she levels her gaze at her best friend. Sunday herself had given birth to a baby at a young age and had chosen to put him up for adoption, and she knows the heartache of being a young mother without her child. "When it comes to being an unwed mother--especially at that time--there is a shame that follows you wherever you go, even if you reject that feeling. Even if you yourself aren't ashamed. Not to mention the pain that you feel every time you think of the baby who is not in your arms. I'm sure your mother felt a bit of both of those things, as well as many other emotions that might have simply been easier for her to bury and put behind her."

"That's true." Ruby nods thoughtfully. "You're right."

"Why are people always so hard on the women?" Harlow asks. She looks annoyed, and Ruby almost wants to chuckle ather youthful indignation. There was a time in her life when she, too, couldn't wrap her head around the injustices that women faced. She'd believed that some of it must simply be a misunderstanding, that if men only understood how their actions affected women, they might change. But then she'd grown up. She'd matured and realized that women sometimes get blamed and put into boxes and held back by all the things that men can't bear to stomach or take on themselves. She’d discovered that women usually carry far more on their backs than they get credit for, and that they are almost always their own harshest critics.

"Well, babe," Ruby says, looking at her daughters' faces. She's tempted to tell them everything that's in her head, but as she takes in their unlined, hopeful, sweet faces, she knows that life will teach them what they need to know about womanhood, and that what life doesn't teach them, they'll make up for themselves.That's the beauty about being a young woman these days, Ruby thinks.Some of the rules are just waiting to be rewritten.

Sunday jumps in and offers her own answer, which Ruby is grateful for: "Listen, girls. We get to do the good stuff: we get to birth babies, if we're blessed with them and if we choose to be mothers. We get to soothe and nurture everyone around us, if we have those inclinations. And we get to have soft curves and tender hearts. Everywhere you go you'll find someone who tells you that something about you isn't okay, or that you've done something wrong, but all you have to do is shut out that negativity. Be you. Accept that life is hard for everyone, and be kind to people no matter what--especially yourself."

"Good advice," Ruby says with a firm nod.

"Now, as for your mother." Sunday turns to Ruby. "Patty was a tough lady who did amazing things everywhere she went, but maybe a part of her toughness was the fact that she tucked herown soft spots away from everyone--including you. So I think you have to respect that."

"I do," Ruby says sincerely. "She had every right, I just wish she'd felt like she could have told me."

Athena, the older and wiser of her daughters, shrugs and reaches for the carafe of iced tea to refill her glass. "She knew she could have, Mom. You're totally the kind of person that people tell their secrets to. It was just that she wanted you to live your own life without having to carry the weight of hers on your back."

Ruby and Sunday look at one another, eyes wide.

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