Robin and Ruby (31 page)

T
he idea comes upon Robin suddenly. “Take this exit,” he tells George.

“This isn’t ours.”

“Just—please? I want to make a stop.” He hadn’t been planning on it, but now it seems like a must. Especially after seeing Ruby like that. He feels like he owes her this.

George decelerates through the toll plaza, aims a quarter into the basket, and then they’re swerving around the off-ramp and onto Route 4 in Paramus. One billboard after another clamors for attention: Visit the Burlington Coat Factory. Jennifer Convertibles: Do You Have One? Wendy’s, still pushing “Where’s the Beef?” This road is as dense as the Parkway was open: department stores ringed in parking lots; multicolored pennants flapping in the wind over car dealerships; the movie theater that used to be ten screens and now boasts fourteen:
A View to a Kill, Cocoon, The Goonies
. “Do you have any desire to see
St. Elmo’s Fire
?” George asks him.

From the front seat Ruby releases an inexplicable grunt.

“What?” Robin prompts.

“Nothing.”

“Where are we going?” George asks.

“Take the exit by the Fashion Center,” Robin says.

Ruby spins around, surprised. “Are we? Now?”

“I figured, while we’re over here…You still want to?”

She nods and faces front again. She seems to dip down in the seat, making herself small. He can’t quite read her body language. Has she for some reason changed her mind about this? For years, Ruby was the one member of the family who wanted to visit Jackson’s grave. It must have been something that Nana, the cross-bearing Catholic of the family, put in her mind.

After they left New Jersey, visiting the grave seemed to become more important to their mother. It became a task for holidays: on a day near Christmas, and again near Easter, and on Jackson’s birthday, too, Dorothy would drive them to the wooded cemetery off Route 4. He can’t remember any conversations they ever had about these cemetery visits, can’t remember voicing the feelings that got dredged up. He remembers that he would sometimes stare at his mother and feel something close to hatred, for dragging them to the gravesite. They were just going through the motions, but toward what end? It occurs to him that they still haven’t called Dorothy; he doesn’t know why he’s avoiding her, now that things have been resolved.

George steers into the cemetery, and they make their way along a curving drive to the newest section, where Jackson is buried. The three of them walk silently through rows of granite stones, new enough to reflect glints of sunlight dappling through the overhanging trees. In the background are the mausoleums and ostentatious monuments of the past: weeping angels, lions in repose, a larger-than-life crucifix featuring a Jesus whose agonized face is coated in years of soot. And then they come upon the simple rectangle that marks Jackson’s burial.

JACKSON LEOPOLD MACKENZIE

JUNE
16, 1967—
DECEMBER
15, 1978

SON
,
BROTHER
,
SLUGGER

“Leopold” for Dorothy’s father; “Jackson” for some whim of Dorothy’s, enforced from birth by the edict that he never be nicknamed “Jack,” as “Robin” was never to be called “Rob” or, heaven forbid, “Bobby.” “Slugger” was Clark’s touch. Robin remembers Dorothy in tears begging Clark not to include it, insisting it was undignified and sentimental, to which Clark, his eyes hardened, his jaw set, hissed out the words, “Deal with it, Dottie.” Arguing for an hour over their dead son’s tombstone. Dorothy: “Couldn’t we go with
athlete
?” Clark: “He was the Little League home run champ!”

George, at Robin’s side, says, “I forgot all about that: December 15th.”

“Yeah, well.”

December 15, Robin’s own birthday, the cosmic unfairness of it never lost on him. Even now he feels a clench in his gut, the way he’s been marked doubly, not just by loss but also by blame. And mixed in with it all, the residual resentment, as if the timing had been by design, as if Jackson
chose
to pass over from coma to death on that particular day so that Robin’s progress through life would be inextricably linked to Jackson’s erasure from it.

Ruby has kneeled down at the base of the grave, her hands raking stray leaves. She must be praying.

Robin lowers his head and tries to come up with something appropriate.
Dear God, please look over Jackson, wherever he is.
The thought can hardly take hold: Look over him, where? He doesn’t exist anywhere but right here at their feet. His body, damaged, withered and shrunken after all those weeks in the coma, and then buried in this spot, has rotted away to nothing. Food for worms. Nutrients for the cemetery lawn. Flesh into dust.

A residual terror starts his legs trembling. It’s not just the vision of Jackson there, buried in the earth, decomposing; it’s the understanding that this is what’s waiting for
him.
Death is hissing all the time from the shadows, and in those moments when he lets himself confront this darkness what he sees is a scene from a science fiction movie, a parade of once-handsome lovers gone blotchy and skeletal, like the survivors of an atomic bomb exploded in the air over Manhattan. Not dead but dying; ill;
infected
—that horrible, spiky word. It is the horror of this suffering that has struck him with such great force over the last few years, a suffering that it seems he might not be able to avoid, because he’s done the same things that all those men did, not knowing the consequences. But until now he has never let himself follow these cluttered, terrifying thoughts all the way to this final truth: the image of a grave with his own name on it, perhaps right here, next to his brother’s. Involuntarily, he gasps for air, so audibly that Ruby turns around to look at him. And then he wonders if perhaps she hadn’t been praying, because her attention seems elsewhere, her eyes are darting around, as if she’s on the lookout for something.

She says, “Did I ever tell you about the last time I was here?”

“You mentioned it, in Seaside.”

“Clark and I came here together, and there was a woman visiting another grave, just over there. She told us she saw a groundhog—I mean, she said it was a groundhog, but I don’t know. Could have been a mole, or some other rodent. So she went and told the workers, the groundskeeper guys. They went looking around for it, and they found it, not very far from here. And then one of them whacked it on the head with a shovel.” Then she says, “Whack-A-Mole,” and lets out a strange, bitter laugh. Her expression falls, and she begins twisting the toy ring on her finger.

“That happened right in front of you?” he asks.

“Yes. I’m not sure they realized that we were here, but I screamed, and they stopped. And then we could see the poor thing stumbling around half-dead. I didn’t see blood, but the guy had hit it really hard. Clark just started yelling at them. ‘Don’t let it suffer!’ And the guy went back over with the shovel. We watched them bash it to death.”

“What a nightmare.”

George asks, “What happened to that other woman?”

“She had already left. So we were the only witnesses.” Ruby glances at the tombstone. “I haven’t been back here since then. Nearly two years.”

Robin pictures his sister two years ago. It’s easy enough to strip away the black hair dye and the gothic wardrobe; it’s not so easy to remember her without the new attitude she wears, the toughness, her quick suspicion of things others take for granted. Two years ago she was so much less burdened. “Was that when you stopped going to church?” he asks.

She nods. “For a while I thought that God had shown us that mole getting killed as a sign—a sign that if Jackson hadn’t died, he would have gone on suffering, which would have been worse.”

“I think about that a lot, too,” he tells her.

“But then I thought, no, it’s not a sign. God doesn’t care about sending me
signs.
It was just an example of cruelty.” She is silent for a while. “That was also right around the time I was with that guy, Brandon, the one I had sex with? He was such an asshole. And I think I just started to feel bad about everything.”

“I never put all that together.”

“You were leaving for college.”

George takes his hand and squeezes tightly; it’s only then that Robin realizes that he has just shivered. Their fingers braid together. The sensation of it briefly sends Robin back to the night before (was it only last night?): the two of them holding hands in the bushes, amid the broken moonlight, waiting out the police, scared shitless. He had suggested “surrendering,” just another word for giving up. Such a cowardly thing to say.

He meets Ruby’s eyes, pale and blue and watery with grief, and something inside him splinters, and his eyes well up and overflow, too. Because he sees not the young woman who has frustrated him all day long but the little girl who stood in this very spot with him on a cold December day eight years ago, both of them trying to face the incomprehensible truth that their brother was gone forever, and that they were in some way a part of that, witnesses to the accident if not actually responsible for it. Both of them trying to face the truth of capital-D-death, of once-and-for-all finality, which even now, even still, is the greatest mystery. So here it is again, that eternal resemblance, the way her life will always reflect his, not only on her face, but beneath that, too, in the knowledge that they share.

And then Ruby steals a glimpse at where his hand is intertwined with George’s; she doesn’t appear to be surprised, and if anything, some sadness seems to clear from her face for a moment. This feels to Robin, in some small way, like a blessing.

At last he knows what he wants to convey here, in his thoughts.

Not a prayer for his brother, dead and gone, but a wish for himself and his sister, to find a way out of the past, once and for all.

To find forgiveness.

Greenlawn. The leafy elms and oaks that line Valley Road. The split-level homes and two-story colonials flying American flags from their porches. Pairs of joggers running in the road, skin varnished in light sweat.

Through the open backseat window, Robin takes in the humid breeze, carrying honeysuckle and cut grass and barbecue smoke. He knows every structure along this route, the configuration of every corner, so that when something new appears, he can’t help but comment out loud.

“The Continental House is now called the Tuscan Caffé?” he asks, as they pass the place once known for hiring all the local fifteen-year-olds for their first jobs bussing tables. “With two f’s?”

“My dad says that there are a lot of investment bankers and junk-bond types moving here from the city,” George replies.

“Greenlawn is getting fancy.”

From the passenger seat, Ruby mutters, “That’ll be the day.” Her first words since the cemetery. She clears her throat as if ready to say something more, then seems to think better of it.

He wonders if she’s saving her strength for whatever awaits at the house. He wonders, too, if he should be rehearsing his own speech for his father. How much scrutiny will he face for his actions? Will they say he waited too long to contact them? That he was irresponsible not to call the cops?

As George makes one turn and then another, bringing them closer to the house, the balmy summer sweetness splits apart like skin on ripe fruit, and beneath it Robin feels once again the pit of dread that is always part of coming back to Greenlawn. He moved away at fifteen; when he returns, he is fifteen again. Coma Boy’s Brother.

On Bergen Avenue, George slows down, clicks on the blinker as if to turn in to the driveway. But there’s a car already there: Dorothy’s Maxima.

“Mom’s here?” Ruby asks.

“I guess she’s in the house.”

Ruby groans. “I must be in major trouble, if she’s waiting
inside.
”

Robin looks at George. “Not sure you’re going to want to stay for this.”

“Your mom’ll be pissed if I don’t say hello.”

They wander up the driveway, which is a fresh, deep black; Clark had it repaved after the winter snow melted. Robin lags behind Ruby. It’s her day. Her mess. She can lead the parade. She lugs her bag as if it weighs a hundred pounds.

When they turn into the backyard, they meet the sight of their mother, atop the stoop, her arm holding the screen ajar. Such a familiar sight: all those times he came up the driveway to find her in this doorway, stopping him before he could enter so that she could say whatever absolutely had to be said, right away. But today, this strategic motherly ambush is not directed his way.

“Ruby Regina MacKenzie,” Dorothy says. “You scared me to death.”

Ruby for her part says only, “Where’s Dad?” The audacity of this strikes Robin as almost cruel. It’s Clark’s house now, she seems to imply. I answer to him.

“He’s in his office.”

“I need to clean up.” Ruby steps into the doorway, forcing Dorothy to make room for her and her bag, and passes into the kitchen.

“She got carsick,” Robin offers.

“Is she all right?”

“I think so,” Robin says gently, kissing his mother on the cheek and following his sister inside.

Dorothy says, “George, maybe you can enlighten me?”

“I’m just the driver,” he says.

“I promise, I won’t kill the messenger.”

“Everyone chill out,” Ruby calls from the kitchen, which strikes Robin as unnecessary, since Dorothy is maintaining a surprising level of composure. Ruby vanishes into the living room. A moment later he hears her footsteps heading upstairs, and then the sound of water moving through the pipes. The house, an eighty-year-old wooden structure, has always been a collection of creaks and groans, and the older it gets, the less it conceals.

Robin says, “Mom, you should try to get her to talk.”

“She just flew right past me!”

“She’s kinda stressed out.”

Dorothy narrows her eyes at him. “Of course you’re sticking up for her.”

He
is
, he realizes; he hadn’t actually made a decision to do so, but something about being back in the house, in this kitchen, the site of so many arguments in the past, brings out an urge to pacify. “I’ve already given her a hard time.”