Ruby by Ann Hood Page B

everything.” Asking for the baby was harder than she’d imagined. How do you ask someone for something like that?
    Ruby leaned against the wall. Olivia thought, If it wasn’t for her stomach being so big, she’d look cocky standing there like that—head tilted up, shoulders pushed back, legs apart.
    “Okay,” Ruby said. “You go first.”
    It’s best to just say it, Olivia decided, and did. “My husband,” she began. The words were scratchy in her throat, like broken glass, like threads of fiberglass. “He’s not away,” she said. “He’s dead. He died.”
    “So your husband is dead,” Ruby said flatly, “and you want my baby.”
    This startled Olivia. It was true; she did want that baby. But wouldn’t a person who thought David was in New York on business say something else? Wouldn’t a person be surprised he was, in fact, dead?
    Ruby’s eyes flickered, just for an instant, toward the wall covered with fragments of Olivia’s life. How long has she known? Olivia wondered. And she realized that she could not toy with this girl. Ruby was too smart. Maybe smarter than Olivia.
    “Yes. I want your baby,” Olivia said. “Yes.”
    Ruby waited, expressionless.
    “You don’t want it,” Olivia said. “You said so yourself.” She tried not to sound too desperate.
    “Sometimes I do,” Ruby said.
    “But you always say—”
    “I say I’m scared. I say I wish I wasn’t knocked up. But I mean, this baby moves around inside me. You know what happened this morning? He got the hiccups. I felt them, little gasps of air.”
    Now it was Olivia who waited.
    “I think I could make this kid something really great. Like my mother had all these opportunities to make a real family for me, but she couldn’t get her act together.” Ruby’s hands rested for an instant on her stomach. “I’m different from her. I could do so much.”
    Olivia’s heart was pounding hard enough to send blood pulsing in her temples. Ruby is just a kid, she thought. She shouldn’t have this baby. I should. I need someone to love more than Ruby does. Ruby will have other chances. She couldn’t say the same for herself.
    “On the other hand,” Ruby said, slumping into a chair, “sometimes I don’t. Most of the time. In Home Ec, they made us carry around an egg for like three days. We always had to watch this egg. We couldn’t put it down. We couldn’t break it. We had to take care of it. Like a baby.”
    No wonder this kid’s pregnant, Olivia thought. What kind of teaching is that? An egg. Jesus.
    “I hated that stupid egg,” Ruby said.
    And when she said it, Olivia felt, for the first time in months, hope.
    “Why don’t you stay and we’ll see how you feel when the time comes,” Olivia said, forcing her voice into steadiness. There were counselors and professional people who would urge Ruby to give this baby to Olivia. She thought of Ellen, the faceless lawyer whom she’d spoken with on the phone yesterday. Ellen would be on her side. Things were stacked in her favor.
    “If I stay here and you take me to that doctor and feed me and stuff like that and then I keep the baby, you can’t do anything about it,” Ruby said.
    “Right,” Olivia told her. But what she knew was that Ruby would never keep this baby. “I hated that stupid egg,” she’d said.
    Pete Lancelotta was balder than balding, heavier than big, with a beard. Olivia never liked facial hair much, except for the scratchy feel of David’s face on weekends when he didn’t shave. She used to like how he would rub his cheek on the inside of her thigh. That was the only facial hair Olivia liked. Also, Pete smoked. He’ll be dead in twenty years, Olivia thought. Once a widow was plenty for her, thank you.
    But the paella was good, overflowing with fish and lobster and clams and sausage and chicken. It was as if Olivia hadn’t eaten seafood in years; the salty taste almost excited her.
    “Jeez,” Pete said, watching her. “You can really eat.”
    Time