The Immortalists(69)

‘Shit,’ she says, pulling the headphones off. ‘You scared me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Daniel, holding a hand up. ‘I was just hoping to grab something. I can come back in the morning.’

‘That’s okay.’ She turns the book over. ‘I’m not doing anything.’

During the day, she wore makeup – eyeliner and some sort of sparkly goop on her lips – but now she’s barefaced and looks younger. Her skin is a shade lighter than Raj’s, and though her eyes are dark like his, she has Klara’s full cheeks. Klara’s smile, too, of course. Daniel crosses to the desk, finds Eddie’s card in the top drawer, and slips it in his pocket. He’s about to leave when Ruby speaks again.

‘Do you have any pictures of my mom?’

Daniel’s heart compresses. He pauses, facing the wall. My mom. He’s never heard anyone refer to Klara this way before.

‘I do.’ When he turns, Ruby has pulled her knees to her chest. She’s wearing the SpongeBob SquarePants pajama bottoms and a baggy sweatshirt, hair elastics stacked on her wrist like bracelets. ‘Would you like to see them?’

‘We have some, too,’ she says, quickly. ‘At home. But they’re all the same ones I’ve seen a million times. So yeah. I would.’

He walks to the living room to dig out the old albums. How strange it is, to have Ruby here. His niece. Daniel and Mira, of course, are not parents. When he asked Mira to marry him, she told him about her endometriosis – stage four. ‘I can’t have children,’ she said.

‘That’s okay,’ said Daniel. ‘There are other options. Adoption –’

But Mira explained that she didn’t want to adopt. She was diagnosed, unusually, at seventeen, so she’d had years to consider it. She would find other satisfaction in life, she’d decided; she didn’t need to be a parent. Daniel found he couldn’t say goodbye to her. Privately, though, he mourned. He had always imagined himself as a parent. When he watched a sleeping child being carried out of the restaurant by her father, her head limp against his neck, Daniel thought of his own siblings. But fatherhood frightened him, too. He had only Saul – rigid, distant – for comparison. It was impossible to know how he’d fare. Back then, he thought he would do better than Saul, but perhaps that was a fallacy. It was equally possible that he would do worse.

He returns to the office with two photo albums. Ruby is sitting cross-legged on the bed now, her back against the wall. She pats the empty space beside her, and Daniel climbs up. He isn’t flexible enough to cross his legs, so they dangle off the edge of the futon as he opens the first album.

‘I haven’t looked at these in years,’ he says. He thought it would be painful, but what grips him, when he sees the first photo – all four of the Gold children on the steps of 72 Clinton Street, Varya a leggy adolescent, Simon a towheaded toddler – is joy. The way it floods him, warm: he could cry.

‘That’s Mom.’ Ruby points at Klara. She’s four or five, in a green plaid party dress.

‘It sure is.’ Daniel laughs. ‘She loved that dress; she’d scream when your grandmother washed it. She pretended to be Clara from the Nutcracker whenever she wore it. And we were Jewish! It drove my father nuts.’

Ruby smiled. ‘She was strong willed, wasn’t she?’

‘Very.’

‘I am, too. I think it’s one of my best qualities,’ Ruby says. Daniel is amused, but when he looks at her, he sees she’s serious. ‘Otherwise, people will push you around. Especially if you’re a woman. Especially if you’re in the entertainment business. Dad taught me that. But I think Mom would’ve agreed.’

Daniel is sobered – has Ruby been pushed around? How? – but she turns the page to reveal photos from the same day of the siblings in pairs.

‘That’s Aunt Varya and Uncle Simon. He died before I was born, of AIDS.’ She looks to Daniel for confirmation.

‘That’s right. He was very young. Much too young.’

Ruby nods. ‘There’s going to be a pill for that soon – Truvada. Did you know? It doesn’t cure HIV, but it prevents you from getting it. I read an article about it in the New York Times. I wish it’d been around back then. For Uncle Simon.’

‘I did hear that. It’s incredible.’

Miraculous, even, and unthinkable at the height of the epidemic, when tens of thousands were dying each year in the U.S. alone. In the nineties, when AIDS medications were introduced, patients had to take up to thirty-six pills per day, and in the early eighties, there were no options at all. Daniel pictures Simon, just twenty, dying of a disease unknown and unnamed. Had the hospital been able to do anything to make him more comfortable? He has the same feeling he did moments ago, in the bathroom – that unbearable empathy, so much more intrusive than resentment.

‘Look at Grandma,’ says Ruby, pointing. ‘She’s so happy.’

Grandma. Another word Daniel’s never heard, and he’s profoundly touched by it, by the fact that Ruby thinks of the Golds as her family. ‘She was happy. That’s her with your grandfather, Saul. They must have been in their twenties.’

‘He died before Uncle Simon, right? How old was he?’

‘Forty-five.’

Ruby crosses her legs. ‘What’s one thing about him?’