“Oh, one of the stagehands, probably,” he’d said after Ruby recounted, what had happened, how disaster had been so narrowly and gracefully averted, and had asked about the man who’d come running. “It takes a whole lot of people to make a show like that happen, and we never even see most of them.”
Ruby had been enthralled at the idea of backstage; the notion that there were people the audience would never see, people who didn’t sing or dance or act who still were a part of the performance, invisible but indispensable as they helped the story unfold. As soon as she’d figured out that those were jobs and that when she grew up, she could have one, that was what she’d wanted to do with her life, and she’d never wavered. She’d never wavered about anything big, until this. Until now.
With her face buried in her hands, her eyes squeezed shut, Ruby felt like she was pretending to be a little kid again; a kid who thought that if she couldn’t see anyone, no one could see her. She whispered, again, “I can’t do this,” and started to cry, a great, scalding flood of tears that made her throat ache.
Still crying, Ruby stood up, on legs that felt as heavy and immobile as the pillars of Stonehenge, and found a pen and a pad in the kitchen. “Gabe. I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I thought I was ready but I’m not. It isn’t you, I promise.” she wrote, knowing that she couldn’t begin to encompass all the ways that Gabe was wonderful, how he was sweet and considerate, how he’d filled their apartment with plants and made them grow and bloom; how he’d made her feel cherished and cared for. Somehow, still, that wasn’t enough. Or it was enough, only it wasn’t what she wanted right now. For one of the few times in her life, Ruby was unsure, and that sensation of not knowing her own mind was terrifying. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.” More inadequate words, lying there limply on the page, but what else was there?
She signed her name. And then, because she was a gutless coward, she folded the piece of paper, wrote Gabe’s name on top, left it on his pillow, and walked out the door.
She planned to take a bicycle out of the garage, to ride it, by the light of the moon, out to Route 6, and make her mind up there. There were buses that ran from Truro to Hyannis, there were planes that went from Hyannis to New York City, and from New York she would return home, to Brooklyn, or go anywhere in the world. She hurried down the steps and over to the side door that led to the garage, but when she pulled the handle, the door refused to budge. Frowning, Ruby worked the doorknob back and forth. She could feel it turn, but when she pulled again, the door was unyielding.
“Shit,” she muttered.
Ha! thought the house.
Ruby walked through the courtyard to try to open the big garage doors and found that all of them were locked. Or maybe they’d only respond to electronic clickers and not hands. Fine, thought Ruby. If she couldn’t ride, then she’d walk.
She took off, head down, moving quickly, down the steps, up the driveway, and out to the road that led to the beach, and Route 6. Provincetown was one way; Boston was the other. Her heart was beating too hard, her eyes stinging. She didn’t see the car as it slowed and pulled up beside her; didn’t notice the window roll down or feel the driver’s gaze upon her. Then she heard a woman’s voice call her name.
Ruby turned. And there, as if she had conjured her out of the ether with the force of her own longing, was her mother, the mother she hadn’t seen since before COVID. Ruby wiped her eyes, then squinted to confirm that it was, indeed, Annette, sitting behind the wheel of a rental car, wearing a white peasant top with flowers embroidered on its bodice and an incongruous straw sun hat on her head.
“Ruby?” asked Annette. “Is everything okay?”
Ruby armed tears off her face. “Oh, Mom,” she said, and couldn’t go on.
Annette pulled onto the shoulder and put the car in Park. She got out and wrapped her arms around her daughter, pulling her close. They stood together, for a long moment, mother and daughter on the side of the road. When another car’s headlights swept the pavement, Annette led Ruby around the back of her car and opened the passenger’s-side door.
“Hop in.”
Ruby looked at her mother, wide-eyed, tears trembling on the tips of her eyelashes. “Where are we going?”
“Wherever you need to be right now.” Annette put the car in gear and pulled smoothly out onto the road. “We can go get fried seafood, or we can Thelma and Louise it.”
Ruby wiped her eyes. “I don’t want to drive over a cliff.”