Chapter 19 Ruby

19

Ruby

Holding the page up to the light from her desk lamp, Ruby surveyed her work.

The lettering appeared uniform, all capital letters. She had used a Sharpie, the thick line less likely to show any personalization in her handwriting. She had practiced for a few hours on cheap copy paper, making sure to work out any kinks in her lettering. After fifty or so pages, she had the paragraph locked down, and could reproduce it as if it had come out of a Xerox machine.

She lifted a pad of paper from her desk drawer, spying the clock on the desk in her bedroom. It was almost eight in the evening and her hand was beginning to cramp. Mom would be growing impatient around now. It might be a good time to take a break, but she was in the zone. Now was the time to finalize her letters.

‘ Ruby! Ruby! Is there any soup? '

The voice came from the living room of her small apartment.

‘I'll be there shortly, Mom!' called Ruby.

‘ Thank you, sweetheart. '

She looked around her bedroom. A single bed, tight against the left-hand corner of the room. The bed didn't fit on this side, and the door could only open a couple of feet before it hit the mattress and base. But Ruby needed her desk on the right side, where the sockets were and the light from the window. No family pictures. The walls painted white to maximize the light. A bookcase beside the desk. There were only a handful of books on those shelves. Mostly non-fiction. Cookery. Home maintenance. Mindfulness. And a selection of self-help books that proved to be no help at all. A single poster above her bed.

She had seen the poster in a second-hand record store. They also sold old pieces of memorabilia – classic Americana to go with the rockabilly records – their specialty. The poster was faded on one side, as if it had long been exposed to a bright sun. Ruby didn't mind; it meant someone else had loved it enough to display it. And Ruby loved this poster. She gazed at it for hours at a time. She wasn't sure, but she guessed it was from the eighties advertising a convertible Cadillac Eldorado. The car looked nice, but that wasn't what made the poster special. Behind the wheel was a woman, her blond hair blowing in the wind as the car sped along an arrow-straight road through the desert.

That lady looked like she had the perfect life. No one around her. No whispering from the red priest, no family, no responsibilities. And no problems.

Total freedom.

Ruby desperately wanted to be that lady. And she knew one day she would be. Everything she was working for was to get onto that road, with nowhere to go, forever.

She finished the first letter for Todd Ellis. She would need another for Brett Bale.

Knowledge is power.

Maggs was a talker. Ruby had spent many afternoons with Maggs, talking while she cleaned, and sitting for a coffee afterwards. It wasn't just out of politeness, or loneliness, it was kinship. Two outsiders. Ruby told her about her father, and mother, and that she envied Maggs, in a way.

‘Trust me – you wouldn't want my life,' said Maggs.

‘But you have money. And freedom. You can go anywhere and do anything,' said Ruby.

‘Money can take care of a lot of things in life, but it can't fill your heart. And it sure as hell can't mend it when it breaks.'

Ruby thought that if the other residents knew Maggs like she did, they would accept her. They would see her kindness, and the emptiness in her life, and they would want to make her feel better. That's what Maggs did – she wanted everyone to feel good. Out of all the wealthy clients in the street, Maggs was the only one who gave Ruby a bonus at Christmas, as well as the only person to give her something even more precious – her time and her care and attention.

People in the street were still talking about Maggs, thought Ruby.

She had two men, desperate to hide their relationship with Margaret Blakemore, for very good reasons. Bale already had suspicion on him from the death of his last wife. And if Ellis's wife found out he'd been seeing Maggs it would cost him at least half his fortune. Ruby had seen one of them kill her friend, Maggs. And the other man was perhaps just as dangerous. Provoking a killer was something not to be taken lightly. But Ruby had no choice.

Ruby needed money. Her mom was getting sicker and needed care.

And Ruby wanted freedom.

‘ Ruby ,' came the voice again.

‘I'm coming, Mom,' said Ruby as she made her way to the small kitchenette. She opened a can of soup, poured it into a pot and heated it on the stove.

As the soup bubbled, Ruby thought about the Jacksons.

Today was a bad day for them. Tomorrow would be much worse.

As she moved away from the stove to fetch two bowls, she heard a crunch. Lifting her right sneaker, she saw the remains of a huge cockroach crushed beneath it. The damn roaches were getting so bad she didn't even have to go looking for them any more. She could just walk around the kitchen, killing them casually.

She poured the soup into two bowls, giving most of it to her mother. She set the bowls on the little table and sat down to eat.

‘Soup is ready,' she hollered.

‘ I'll be right there ,' said her mom.

Ruby picked up her spoon and began to eat. The soup was hot and salty, but the beef was still tough. For a moment, she wondered if Mom could eat it. She hadn't been swallowing very well lately.

She heard the thock of the cane first, the noise resounding within the small apartment, followed by the soft shuffling of slippers across the wooden laminate floor.

Ava Johnson sat down at the little table across from Ruby. She thought her mother's eyes had aged even since this morning. It was as if they were swimming in milk. They were pale, and unmoving. Her limbs were so thin now. Ruby could close her hand completely over her mom's wrist. It was as if she was shrinking. Like her flesh was being sucked out of her while Ruby was away at work.

She didn't speak to Ruby, just stared into her soup with her creamy eyes.

Things would be different soon. Her mom needed more care than Ruby could manage on her own. Making sure Mom was somewhere safe was a top priority.

Even if things went according to plan, Ruby knew she would have to leave New York. Moving from city to city. Town to town. She would enter each new place bearing a new name, and a new story. And she could spend her days driving in the desert. Far away from West 74 th Street. Far away from her old life.

Far away from the red priest.

But that also meant leaving Mom.

It was all coming together now. This was not just for Ruby.

It was for Mom, too.

‘Mom, did you manage to take a look at any of the brochures I left with you?' asked Ruby.

Her mom shook her head, then brought a trembling spoonful of soup to her mouth.

‘You know, some of them are really nice places. It's not a nursing home, you know. It's like a retirement complex, with nurses. For people like you. Nice folks.'

‘We don't have the money,' said her mom. ‘We can't afford any of those places.'

‘I've been saving,' said Ruby.

Her mother eyed her warily.

‘Where did you get the money?'

‘Working. For families on our street.'

‘That's not our street any more. They kicked us out. Remember? When your father took all our money. Now you're going to leave me too. Everybody leaves me,' said her mother as her shoulders shook and tears fell into her canned soup.

‘I'm not leaving you, Mom. This is for the best,' said Ruby. ‘It's better for you. There will be someone to take care of you twenty-four hours a day.'

But her mom didn't hear her. Or didn't want to. Her spoon fell from her thin, bent fingers and landed in her soup, splashing on her blouse, neck and face.

Getting up from her chair, Ruby grabbed a napkin and moved round the table. She knelt before her mother, turning her around to face her. She dipped the napkin in a glass of water and wiped the soup stains on her mother's clothes.

When they were clean, she carefully raised her mother's head, wet the napkin again and gently dabbed at her mom's face as a mother would wash a baby's face – slowly, so very gently and with great tenderness. Her skin was so thin it was almost translucent. She was afraid that if she was rough she might tear it.

Ruby wondered if she loved her mom. She thought that she did. That, whatever love was, this was the closest she could come to it.

‘It's going to be okay, Mom,' said Ruby.

‘You're a good girl, Ruby.'

Later, when her mother was asleep, Ruby slipped quietly out of the apartment. The elevator hadn't worked in weeks, so she made the descent down the four flights of stairs, past the rotting garbage bags outside the apartments. A short bus ride brought her to an old hardware store in East Harlem. They were just closing up for the night as Ruby entered the store. She promised the store owner she would be quick.

She paid cash for a bag of masonry nails, spray paint and a four-pound crack hammer with a forged-steel head and shock-resistant grip. She put all the items in her backpack and took the bus home.

In her bedroom, in their little apartment, Ruby held the hammer. It seemed very heavy at first, but after some practice swings she soon got used to the weight. The key was to swing it. Not to use force. Let the momentum, gravity and the weight of the head do the work.

The little pebbles that Ruby had been throwing down the hill were slowly eroding the slope, knocking into bigger stones, which rolled into even larger ones. The landslide was beginning.

All Ruby had to do was make sure that it buried the right people.

The letters she would deliver tomorrow morning, before sunrise, would be the first boulders rolling down that hill.