Page 25 of The Fadeaway

"The First Lady, you dingdong," a boy says, reaching over and tugging on his sister's braid. "She's only eight," he says to Ruby, as if to explain.

Ruby smiles at them all and stands up. She knows enough about kids to understand that they want and deserve to be acknowledged just like any adult would. "I'm Ruby Hudson," she says, folding her hands in front of her.

"I'm Marcos," the boy who has spoken says, stepping forward. "And I'm twelve. Valeria is eight, and this is Felix. He's ten." Felix has said nothing and appears to be refusing to make eye contact with Ruby.

Undaunted, she looks at each of them in turn. "It's nice to meet you Marcos, Valeria, and Felix. I wanted to come and meet you all and talk to your mom for a bit, if that's okay."

"Of course it is," Carmela says quickly, standing up. She slips the straps of Felix's backpack from his shoulders and turns to Marcos. "Can you get the snacks I left in the fridge for you three and go do your homework in your room? Help your brother and sister, okay?"

Marcos nods and takes Felix by the arm, tugging him lightly towards the bedrooms.

"Felix is autistic," Carmela says quietly, sitting back on the couch. "He is nonverbal and I rely far too much on Marcos and Valeria to help me with him." She puts both hands up and shakes her head. "I know I do.”

"Your children are beautiful," Ruby says sincerely. "And you can see how much they love one another. That's a credit to your good mothering."

Tears spring into Carmela's eyes as she absorbs the words that every mother on the planet longs to hear: that she's a good mother. “Thank you,” she says, looking down at her hands in her lap.

“Is it just you and the kids?” Ruby prompts, trying a different angle to get Carmela to keep talking.

Carmela nods. “Yes. I was married once, but it didn’t work out. We had Valeria right before Felix started to show signs of autism, and I think having a four-year-old, a two-year-old with special needs, and a newborn was too much for him. He left.”

Ruby shakes her head; it never ceases to amaze her that some men can simply shed their responsibilities like an old layer of skin that they no longer need, while women are left holding the bag. Over and over and over. Wash, rinse, repeat.

“I’m so sorry,” Ruby says.

“I survived because of your mother.” Carmela stands then and walks over to a tall shelf that lines one wall. On it are a variety of books, from children’s picture books to paperback novels and hardcovers, and there are framed photos interspersed with knickknacks. Carmela leans one elbow on a shelf as she faces the windows, looking out at the Hudson River that winds past.

Once again, Ruby is amazed at the view and the location of this apartment. She cannot fathom how her mother acquiredthis many pieces of real estate that Ruby knew nothing about, but at the moment, she’s more interested to hear how Patty and Carmela crossed paths.

“We met at a fundraiser for single mothers here in New York,” Carmela says, sounding faraway. “I had taken a position with an event planning company, and it was my job to work with the committee to put together the luncheon. Patty was on the board of directors?—“

“She was?” Ruby frowns.

Carmela nods and goes on. “She was my contact person with whom to discuss table linens, place settings, and the timing of the event. We met for coffee at a little shop in Brooklyn, which is where I lived at the time, and we hit it off immediately.”

A half smile tugs at the corner of Ruby’s mouth. One of Patty’s charms had always been the way she could meet someone and instantly make them a friend—Ruby had seen her do it her entire life.

Carmela turns away from the window and walks back to the couch, sitting on it again with one knee pulled under her and the other foot flat on the floor. She rests her arm on the back of the couch so that she’s facing Ruby. “We talked for hours. She told me about becoming a single mother when your father died, and about how she’d been a single mother before that, when she had a baby with a man who was sent to Vietnam.”

Ruby’s blood runs cold and she can feel her face change. “She told you about that?”

Carmela, totally innocent, nods. There’s no way for this woman to know that she holds information about Patty that Ruby herself has only had for a few days. “She did. And we had a lot of common ground because of it. Raising small children alone can be a traumatic experience, but she said she had the help of the baby’s grandparents, which changed her life. I had no one at the time. My parents were both ill and in Puerto Rico, andmy ex-husband’s parents were never that involved with our kids. I have no siblings here. No one. I was working well over forty hours a week and paying for childcare, and some days I wasn’t sure I could get up and do it all again.”

Ruby is nodding and listening intently, but she does not interrupt.

“I think Patty could see on my face just how exhausted I was, so we quickly chose a bunch of things for the banquet,” Carmela stops here and laughs at the memory. “She said, ‘Hand me that binder,’ and I did. In less than five minutes, she’d chosen tablecloths, dishes, flatware, stemware, and laid out the timetable for the meal. Bing, bang, boom—done.”

Now Ruby laughs. “That was one of her signature phrases: ‘Bing, bang, boom—done.’ She’d say it whenever we needed to plow through something and move on.”

“Exactly. And she never second-guessed her decisions, which I admired. We chose everything, she closed the binder, and then she said, ‘Now, tell me about you.’ And we talked for three hours.” Carmela bites on her lower lip, and the sound of her children’s laughter floats out from a bedroom down the hall. Her face softens as she hears them. “I never felt like she saw me as a charity case, to be perfectly honest. It was just like I suddenly had the mother I’d always needed. Someone present, competent, and caring. Patty listened. Whenever she came to town she’d get a giant hotel suite, invite me and the kids, and we’d take them to the hotel pool and run around town like tourists. I’d get a bed to myself—which I did not have at the time, as I was sleeping with both Felix and a tiny baby—and she’d take care of the kids. It was amazing.”

Ruby is completely silenced by all of this. Stunned. She can’t even imagine it. And yet, she can totally imagine it. She’d done the very same thing with a newborn: fled into the arms of her mother, who was there and willing to help. When postpartumdepression had stung her like an angry nest of wasps, she’d fallen into Patty’s open arms and counted on her to act as a buffer between Ruby and the world—and she had.

“I believe that a part of her always wanted to be the kind of rock for someone else that her boyfriend’s parents were for her when she got pregnant and moved down to Jekyll Island,” Carmela says. She casts her eyes out the window at the late afternoon. The sun is quickly falling, and the crisp blue sky is fading to evening. “But she never did anything in a way that screamed ‘This is for charity!’ It was more like she had it in her heart to give back. To be there for people the way others had been there for her.”

Ruby nods; this sounds exactly like her mother, though she’d had no idea the extent to which Patty had been there for anyone other than her. Maybe that’s the curse of all children—even adult ones: to believe that you and you alone are the center of your mother’s universe. To think that she will always be there to make your life easier, and that the maternal love and care that she aims at you is only meant for you. Ruby can see now that her mother had far more to give than was needed by her only child, and that all of that love had been spread around to other people who’d needed it.

“I’m finding out a lot about her on this journey,” Ruby says. She swipes both hands over her cheeks, brushing away tears that have started to fall. “Things I had no idea about. I kind of feel like the loss of my mother has been compounded by the knowledge that she was far more than I ever knew her to be.”

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