Imaginary Girls(38)

Ruby was silent as we returned to the car. She didn’t want to lounge on the Green, and she didn’t want me to try on her aviators. “Everything is supposed to be perfect,” she said. “I don’t understand it. What’s up with today?”

“It is perfect,” I assured her. “Everything is.”

“Do you think I’m trying too hard?” she asked, dropping the aviators down over her eyes. “With these?”

They were gold-rimmed, polished up to searing in the sun—and too big for her head. But she was everything and more, even with those glasses marring her face. That was the magic of my sister.

“You can tell me,” she said.

“I . . .”

“You hate them,” she said, but she kept them on as if to punish herself, and clicked her blinkers, to merge the car into the lane. Then she clicked the blinkers back off, the car staying in park. “Do I look mean with these on? Sorta psychopath?”

I nodded, if reluctantly, since it wasn’t exactly the kind of compliment Ruby was used to hearing.

She gave a grin and said, “Then I’m going in.”

“In where?” With my new dark glasses on, I could barely see the sign across from the candy store for the Village Tavern. It could be that I was used to not-seeing it, used to imagining instead a sinkhole taking over that spot on the sidewalk.

“Yeah,” Ruby said. “In there.”

“But what if she’s, y’know . . . inside?”

“Oh, but she is,” Ruby said. “Don’t you recognize the heap of junk over there?” She waved a hand at the brown hatchback parked at the corner. One taillight was busted in, and I knew how it happened: Ruby’s foot and a single, well-aimed shot of her pointy black boot.

Inside me, something sunk. I’d been back in town for however many days since the bus ride, and I hadn’t run into my mother yet. She hadn’t called; it was possible she still assumed I was in Pennsylvania. All this time, Ruby had been shielding me from her. Now she was yanking off the curtain and shoving me in.

“But—” I started.

I didn’t have to say it. Ruby knew the patterns my thoughts made before the words left my mouth. She knew even before the first syllable. She shook her head and, softly, told me to stay put. Only one of us was going in.

She crossed the street and stepped inside the tavern, out of sight for a few minutes. I don’t know what she told our mother, how she broke the news that I was home, but she must have found some words for it. Maybe she said I was in the car and not coming inside to talk and, ha, how do you like that, woman-who-calls-herself-Sparrow? Ruby must have said something good, though, because when she hopped back into the driver’s seat, she had the most delicious smile on her face, like she’d witnessed a thing of beauty and would remember it forever and always. She didn’t explain it, though—sometimes a perfect memory can be ruined if put to words. Ruby taught me that.

As we drove away, the door to the tavern opened and a person stepped out. A warm, blinking sign for beer illuminated this person in patches, on and then off again, face aglow and then not. This person watching us go for a few seconds. Then this person giving up and heading inside. I felt so detached from this person who happened to be my mother.

Ruby didn’t tell me what she’d said in there. Instead she told a story, as usual.

“Did you know I used to walk around town saying you were my baby?”

“Yeah?” I didn’t stop her; I liked when she told it.

“What was I, seven? Eight?” she said as she sped the car down the street and made the usual turn toward the rec field, where we’d find the public pool. “All I know is I was small, and I’d wheel you in your stroller and people would stop me on the street. They’d say, ‘How cute!’ Or, ‘You two are soooo adorable!’ But then they’d always have to ask, ‘But where’s your mother, little girl?’ And the thing is, I didn’t want to say she was doing shots at the bar. Or, last I saw, she was in some-dude-we-never-met’s truck. I mean, I wanted to say our mother was right there, like in a store buying earrings, right? Our mother was at the library. Our mother was at the Laundromat. Someplace mothers go.” She sighed.

“But,” she continued, cutting around a slow car, “if I was going to lie, I figured I may as well make it fun. So I’d say, ‘What do you mean where’s her mother? I’m her mother.’ I’d tell them different things, depending on who asked. Like I married young and now I’m a widow. Or I got knocked up in Girl Scouts, when I was out selling cookies. Or, you know, if a church person was asking, that Jesus gave you to me. People get all weird when you talk about Jesus. Like unicorns can’t exist, but Jesus did—ridiculous.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I said you were mine. And sometimes when you say a lie enough times, it’s like it’s true. Then you’re not even lying.”