Her bottom lip catches under the ridge of her front teeth. I wait patiently and avoid eye contact.
“Your dad’s been living in Oregon.”
“Oregon?”
“Yes. At least, until last week.” Her voice stays even and measured. “Apparently, he was a park ranger there.”
I look for an edge to these two puzzle pieces. Some kind of cheat to link park ranger and Oregon with what little I know about Jim. But they are blobs from somewhere in the hazy, undeveloped middle of What Happened. I have no idea where or how they belong. Or why I even care.
A few seconds pass before my breathing kick-starts. “A park ranger? In Oregon?”
She bites at her pinky nail.
“Mom.”
“Ruby.” She matches my tone exactly. Then her head dips back and rolls around her shoulders a full 360 degrees. “Okay, fine.” She sounds tired and annoyed. Not with the conversation. With me. I grip two fistfuls of my comforter and let her continue. “After you left, he sat down and asked if he could smoke.”
My nostrils flare. “You should have told him no.”
“I honestly didn’t know what to do. His hands were so shaky; it took him about half a book of broken matches before he got one lit. It was very awkward and very quiet, so I got the dustpan out and swept up your flowers. But I did ask him what he’s been doing these days. He said he’s been living in Oregon, working as a park ranger, but now he’s moving on to something new.” Her fluttering lashes mask her eyes. “And he said, ‘Tell Rubes I’m real sorry for ruining her party.’ Then he left.”
Cold sweat beads on my temples. “That’s it?” That can’t be it.
“Don’t look so surprised. You should know by now that your dad isn’t particularly good at apologies.” She couches it in a hollow chuckle, because she’s not being mean. Just honest.
I cram the million other questions I have back down my throat.
Mom shakes out her arm until a gold watch slides to her wrist. She checks the time and says matter-of-factly that she better get over to the hospital, as if our conversation needed an official ending. Leaning over, she takes a bite of the toast in my hand and plants a quick kiss on my cheek. Her gooey lipstick deposits sticky crumbs on my face.
“Sorry,” she says. And she wipes my face clean.
I don’t bother to clarify the intention of her apology.
On her way out of the room, she bends over to pick something up off my floor. “Oh, Ruby. This is beautiful!” She rubs my gray birthday scarf against the side of her face.
“Yeah. Beth made it for me.”
Her fingers trace the yellow ribbons. “She’s such a good friend.” Mom carefully folds the scarf up and lays it on top of my dresser, making me feel crappy that it was ever on the floor in the first place.
I roll away from the rest of my breakfast and fill my face with the pillow until her car scuttles down the driveway. Then our tiny house is quiet, except for the silence, which seems extraordinarily loud. There’s no sleeping through this kind of silence. So I get up and take a shower.
My fingers jerk hard and fast through soapy knots of hair. I squint my eyes so tight while I rinse that, when I open them again, the colored spots take forever to fade from the white bathroom tile. Not once but twice, the bar of Ivory flies out of my hands. Every movement feels clumsy and awkward. So I make the executive decision not to shave my legs, even though they’re pretty prickly.
It’s certainly no secret that I’ve got some serious emotional baggage. Make that a complete set of luggage with wheels for easy transportation, zippered sections for compartmentalizing, and ballistic nylon for an impenetrable shell. But I remind myself that there’s no need to worry. All my issues are packed nicely and neatly away. Just because Jim randomly showed up doesn’t mean I have to relive everything all over again. Once was more than enough.
The water turns icy and my skin is pruned. I run to my freezing room and slam the window shut. I squeegee myself with a towel and pull up my favorite Levi’s. They feel chalky and in desperate need of a wash, just the way I like them. I shiver into a white tank top and a Japanese Coca-Cola T-shirt I found at Revival, twist a pile of my thick wet hair on top of my head, and secure it with a rubber band. I take one more Advil and start a load of towels in the washing machine.
Then I crash onto our puffy floral couch. The late afternoon light makes everything in the living room look dusty. Traces of leftover cigar smoke burn through my nose.
I try not to think of Oregon. Oregon. Oregon.
Especially because it’s a very boring train of thought. I don’t know a thing about the state, other than its general Pacific Northwestness.
The Internet might enlighten me a bit, if not for our hulking paperweight of a computer. Wedged in the corner of the room, it’s covered in catalogs, credit card offers, and receipts. The sickly green monitor is practically bigger than our television set and the dial-up modem can barely handle a heated IM discussion. We can’t afford a new computer, but we might as well throw this one out. It’s completely useless.
Then I remember. My map.
It hung on my bedroom wall in our old house — a temporary cosmetic concealer for the garish metallic wallpaper Jim promised he’d strip and replace with something nicer when he had a chance. Each state was a different pastel color. I’m almost positive that Oregon was pale yellow. That’s a pretty weird thing to remember. But my post-shower chill is suddenly replaced by a shade of warmth.
I head up the creaky attic stairs, past the bulk toilet tissue and paper towels we buy from Costco. I throw all my weight into the door to get it open. Inside the main room, packed moving boxes are bricked tall like the Great Wall of China.
We used to live in the smallest of the Victorian homes on Rose Lane, but it was still enormous by anyone’s standards. My parents bought it cheap because it was classified as a Fixer-Upper — meaning it had been left vacant and uncared for after the bulk of the Akron rubber industry shifted overseas.
Tiny flecks of white house paint would flutter in the air like confetti whenever it got windy. Roof tiles wriggled loose and got lost in the tall grass of the front yard. The pipes leaked and made patches of ceiling turn rusty. Some of the rooms had exposed nails poking through the raw studs, which I was warned to be careful around. It was creaky, run-down, and pretty spooky, especially at night. But the house was also full of endearingly weird quirks, like false-bottom floorboards, sliding doors that would disappear into the wall, and a hidden back staircase that Beth and I filled with stuffed animals and made into a hideout.
I loved that house. I’d never forget that house.
Mom and Jim had planned to restore it together. A labor of love. But up until the time he left, most of their repair projects were in various states of half-ass. The perfect metaphor for their relationship, I guess. Mom pledged to finish the place herself, but that never happened. Partly because he took all his tools with him. Though I seriously doubt she could have done that kind of work alone anyhow.
Two years later, property taxes went up in our neighborhood. Mom and I moved to a tiny two-bedroom row house across Akron that
