Page 7 of The Fadeaway

“We spoke while she was staying with you,” Ellen says now as they sit there in her kitchen in Seattle. “And she sent me letters from Shipwreck Key.”

“I guess I just want to know more about your relationship with her. Whatever you can tell me. Whatever you’re willing to share,” Ruby adds quickly, understanding that women of their generation may not be completely open about their sexuality with people they’ve just met.

A soft, knowing smile crosses Ellen’s face, and she looks out the window at the rain that’s falling on the trees outside. She is lost in thought. Ruby waits.

“Your mother…” Ellen begins. She stops, holds up one hand, clears her throat, and then goes on. “Patricia was one-of-a-kind. We became friends in elementary school, and we were thick as thieves from that point on. It wasn’t until high school that I realized how I really felt.”

Ruby braces herself, knotting her hands together in her lap as the rain begins to pelt the windows in earnest. “About my mom?” she asks gravely.

Ellen tips her head to one side, watching Ruby’s face. “About her sister.”

“My aunt Olivia?” Ruby frowns.

Ellen nods. “Mmm, yes. Olivia. She was a year older than us, and like something out of a 1940s movie. Thick, wavy hair, glossy red nails and lips, and eyebrows penciled in so that she always looked amused. Smart as a whip, too.” Ellen turns her head to watch the rain streaming down the glass, and then she looks back at Ruby and leans forward, resting her elbows on the table. “Olivia and I fell in love. It wasn’t acceptable at that time, and we never told a soul, but your mother knew.”

Ruby is puzzled by this. The letters had definitely felt to her as though Ellen had been in love with her mother, and there had been no mention whatsoever of Aunt Olivia.

“But…Aunt Olivia was married to my Uncle Jim.”

Ellen shrugs and then wraps her hands around her coffee mug again. “What can I say? There are many, many people our age in marriages that were meant to cover up the fact that we were in love with someone of our own gender. I myself never married, but I respect what Olivia felt she needed to do.”

“So,” Ruby says, shaking her head as she tries to come to terms with this revelation. “You two were in love?”

“We were.” Ellen nods. “And then your mother and I were in an accident, and it changed everything.”

“Wait. You got into an accident? I don’t know anything about this.”

Ellen takes a long, deep breath and then starts to talk. “One rainy night in November 1966, your mom and I went out driving around town, as young women did when they were looking for trouble.” She laughs here, giving a single, disbelieving shake of her head as she recalls that night. Her eyes are faraway, and she taps her short fingernails against her ceramic mug. “We were in the Capitol Hill area, and we’d been drinking. Your mom was driving.”

Ruby is on the edge of her seat here; for her entire life, Patty had hounded her ceaselessly about never drinking and driving, and about never getting into the car with anyone who had. She has a feeling that this story is at the heart of Patty’s obsession with drunk drivers.

“Anyhow, she was driving and the rain was coming down in sheets, and somehow we missed a stop sign. Ran right through it. The next thing I knew we were facing the wrong way on that street, and headlights were coming at us. I don’t know why, but I told your mother to get out and go for help. I could feel that something was wrong with my leg, and I knew that if your mom left me there, I could slide over behind the wheel, which is exactly what I did.”

“You got in the driver’s seat?”

“I did. I dragged myself over there, and when the ambulance and the cops came, I acted like I’d been driving. Your mother came back and she saw me there, but we didn’t discuss it.”

“But why did you do that? Didn’t you worry you’d get in trouble?”

“I didn’t think at all, I just knew that something was really wrong with my leg, and that if your mother was behind the wheelafter drinking more than I’d drunk, that she’d get in trouble for the accident. I didn’t want that.”

Ruby listened, imagining the scene: a young Patty, running through the rainy night and sobering up quickly as she got back to the scene of the accident and realized that her best friend had slid behind the wheel to cover for her.

“I lost my right leg below the knee, Ruby,” Ellen says gently, leaning away from the table and extending her leg. She tugs at the leg of her pants, pulling it up so that Ruby can see the titanium lower leg of her artificial limb. The foot is encased in a shoe that matches the one on her other foot. “And because everyone thought I was driving, it was just deemed an ‘unfortunate accident.’ I wasn’t even drunk enough to make the cops question my sobriety.”

“So you two got away with it? That doesn’t sound like my mom,” Ruby argues, still not able to fully envision that this had happened, and that Patty would have agreed to go along with it. “Why did she stay quiet?”

“I told her that if she let it play out that way, it would be better for both of us. That she could leave and go to college, and that we wouldn’t get into trouble that way. And I only asked one thing of her in return.”

“What was that?”

“I asked her to tell Olivia that I didn’t love her anymore.”

Ruby waits, thinking that there might be more. When nothing else comes, she takes a sip of her coffee and then sets the mug on the table again. “Was it true?”

“It most definitely was not true.” Ellen avoids Ruby’s gaze. “I told your mother to make sure Olivia believed I’d moved on, and that she should do the same. I wanted her to marry, to have children, to have a life. I knew that—in those days—being with me would mean that she’d never truly be happy.Wewould never truly be happy.”

“Even if you were together?”

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