When the kitchen was clean and the boys were in bed, Ruby and Gabe said goodbye to Sarah （Eli had already gone up to bed） and took the subway back to Queens. In their new apartment, they’d made love, and then they’d lain awake, legs entwined. Ruby pillowed her cheek on Gabe’s chest.
“Tell me about your mom.” She said it sweetly, as if she hadn’t spent months of their relationship asking and cajoling and finally demanding that Gabe tell her something—anything—about his life in California. He knew all about her—how her mom had left when she was a baby; how, when she was little, she used to wish that her mother would come back and take Ruby away with her. How she’d been so awful when Sarah had tried so hard.
Gabe knew Ruby’s whole story, but she knew very little of his. Now that they were engaged, Ruby felt that he’d forfeited the option of silence. “I need to know about your mother. She’s going to be my mother-in-law,” Ruby said. The thought gave her an odd twinge.
She felt Gabe’s body tense. “She’s…” He paused, and sighed, and didn’t continue. Ruby held her breath, prepared to wait, for as long as she had to, until she got some answers.
“She’s what?”
“She’s proud,” Gabe finally said.
“Proud of you?” asked Ruby.
“Proud in general,” said Gabe. “And a little prickly about things. And…” Another long pause. “I’m not sure my mom and your stepmom are going to have much in common,” he finally said, his voice low.
“That’s okay,” said Ruby. “They don’t have to be besties.”
“No,” said Gabe, “but…” He rolled onto his side, so he was facing the wall, turning his back to Ruby as he spoke. “Your parents have that beautiful place. My mom and I lived in my grandparents’ house until I was in fourth grade, because my mom couldn’t afford a place of her own. She’d sleep on the pullout couch so I could have the bed.”
Ruby nodded. This was one of the handful of facts Gabe had shared. “So you think that Sarah…” Ruby groped, sensing what he meant, not quite sure how to say it. “You think she’s going to be, like, snotty to your mother? You think that she’ll look down on her?”
“I know she won’t,” Gabe said bleakly. “She’ll be nice. She’ll be kind. And that,” he said, “is going to be worse. Worse than if she acted like my mom wasn’t good enough for her; like I’m not good enough for you. Because my mom will think she’s faking. Even if she isn’t.”
“But Sarah doesn’t think that!” Ruby said to Gabe’s back. “And she’s not just going to pretend to be nice. She loves you! Both of my parents do! And they’re both excited to meet your mother. That’s not fake!”
“I know.” Gabe’s voice was mournful. “I know it’s not, because I know your parents. But my mom doesn’t.”
“So what can we do?” Ruby asked.
He finally rolled back toward her, and pulled her against him, holding her tight. “We’ll just have to give it time. You can be patient, right? I know you’re great at waiting.”
At that, Ruby smiled, because, as Gabe knew, Ruby was famously impatient, or infamously impulsive, depending on who was doing the telling. According to her dad, her very first sentence had been Want that one, uttered as she’d pointed, imperiously, to a teddy bear in a toy store window. Ruby had always known what she’d desired, whether it was a pattern for a new duvet cover （blue polka dots, not pink flowers） or what she wanted for her seventh birthday dinner （sushi and dumplings and a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting） or where she wanted to go to college and what she wanted to study while she was there. She made up her mind and never second-guessed herself, or deviated from her decisions. Ruby For Sure, her dad used to call her. Once, when she was thirteen, and absolutely settled on the theme and the location of her bat mitzvah party, she’d overheard him talking to Sarah. “Losing your mom the way she did has to be the worst kind of uncertainty,” her dad had said. “I think that’s why she’s got to be so certain about everything else.” Sarah had murmured something Ruby couldn’t hear, and Eli had laughed, and had said, “Right now, all she can see is black and white. When she grows up, she’ll start to see shades of gray.” If it was true, Ruby thought, it hadn’t happened yet. Right was right; wrong was wrong. Her father and Sarah were good, or at least they tried to be, which amounted to the same thing, and her mother was bad, or at least selfish, which, again, was the same. Thinking of Annette made Ruby remember that she hadn’t called her yet. For a moment she imagined telling her mother the news. I’m in love. I’m getting married. And, unlike you, I will never leave. Except that thought gave her an odd pang, too: But what if I wanted to leave? she thought, and then, immediately, made herself stop thinking.