Ifanything is left over on her dinner plate, even at the humblest restau-rant, she will ask the waiter to have it wrapped—a halfofa baked po-tato, thirty peas, a chicken wing.One ofthe reasons Daniel often asks her to wear those diamond earrings is sometimes he suspects she has soldthem.
Money money money.
Daniel’s phone rings and he lunges for the receiver.It’s only seventhirty.He has not had time to settle on a plausible narrative why some-one would call him this early, and there is a moment ofpure fear before he hears Kate’s voice, which for some reason settles his nerves.
“I’m not waking you, am I?”she says.This is a continuation ofan old relationship myth—because he sleeps less than Kate, she acts like he needs no sleep at all.
“What’s up?”he asks.He struggles to sit up in bed;as soon as he stirs, the shifting ofhis blood recalls the feel ofher kiss five hours ago.
“Ruby is freaking out here.She’s just desperate for you to take her toschool.”
“Really?”
“Can you manage it? It would mean the world to her.”
He suspects there is something less than the absolute truth in what Kate is saying.Ruby may have said she would like Daniel to bring her to day care, but it was most likely a matter ofKate asking her,Would you like Daniel to bring you to school today?and Ruby saying okay.After all, months have passed since Daniel moved out ofthe house and not once in that time has Ruby requested his chauffeuring services.It seems more than coincidence that Ruby would suddenly ask for him on a morning when Kate is in particular need ofa few hours more sleep, and after a night when she had kissed him.And Kate’s willingness to turn Ruby over to him is also a little suspect—she has been consistently grudging in allowing him to spend time with the little girl who was practically his stepdaughter.When permission is granted it is always qualified with the warning that he better not be taking her to Iris’s house, and that Iris and even Nelson not be included in whatever little plan might be in the offing.Nevertheless, Daniel is not about to turn down a chance to spend time with Ruby and he says he will be over to pick her up in twenty minutes.
He arrives, in fact, in less time than that.Although he comes here regularly to pick Ruby up for their sad little dates, and, in fact, was just here a few hours ago dropping offKate and Lorraine, he is taken some-what by surprise by the loveliness and tranquility ofthe house and its acres.The rosebushes, after two reluctant summers, seem to have found their confidence and now are in full red-and-white flower.The lawn is a particularly luxurious dark green.The shutters have been painted at last; concrete urns ablaze with geraniums sit on the porch.Has the place ever looked so relaxing?A nasty little stab ofenvy.He lives in a crummy rented house.Iris’s house, though certainly adequate, is also rented.Of the three ofthem, Kate is the one with roots—and how strange, since it seems to him she is the one with the least reason to be inWindsor County.Kate has left the door open, which he takes to mean that the alarm system has been deactivated and he is to simply let himself in, but he knocks and waits for her nevertheless.She comes to the door and her eyes peer out skeptically beneath furrowed brows, she seems to be im-plying he is being deliberately difficult by not waltzing right in.
“Is she ready?”Daniel asks.Ruby hears his voice and races in from the kitchen, in practically maniacal high spirits.He hasn’t seen her in a cou-ple ofweeks and the first thing he notices is she has gotten a little chubby.In fact, she has gone from stocky to rather fat.Noticing this makes him feel petty and ungenerous, and he picks her up and holds her tightly, as ifto make it up to her.“My God,”he says, without meaning to, “you’re getting so big!”
“It’s nice ofyou to do this,”Kate says.She looks surprisingly fresh and composed, considering she usually requires nine or ten hours ofsleep and is operating on four at the most.
“I’m so glad to have the chance.Is Lorraine still around?”He doesn’t even know why he’s asked, he’s simply lofting the ball back to Kate’s side ofthe net.
“She fled the countryside for the safety ofthe city.I looked out the window at six o’clock and there was a taxi in the driveway, and then I saw her running for it.I guess she was trying to make the six-twenty.”
She rakes her fingers through Ruby’s hair, untangling it, but keeps her eyes fixed on Daniel.
He gets Ruby out ofthere as quickly as decently possible—he cannot shake the idea that Kate has engineered this whole thing as a way offur-ther implicating him in the life ofhis old family, and since he cannot fathom that there is the slightest possibility ofhis being drawn back into the old domesticities, it seems more humane to be briefand even a lit-tle remote.He makes only minimal eye contact with Kate as she hands him Ruby’s insulated snack bag, made ofbright scarlet fabric with aVel-cro flap.Yet when he has Ruby strapped into the child seat in the back of his car—he has kept the clunky gray-and-beige thing there despite his changed circumstances—he feels an unexpected swoon ofloneliness and nostalgia.Buckling the straps ofthe seat recalls those mornings that now seem a lifetime ago when he began every day with Ruby, and the plea-sures ofthose drives to My LittleWooden Shoe, when her sweet physi-cal presence filled the car, and her little piping voice was like birdsong, and for ten minutes he could see the world through her unjaded eyes, ten minutes when the trees were goblins, the crows were looking directly at her, the sky was a zoo, and the grammar school a shining city on the hill.
“How’s everything going back there?”he asks.He reaches back to pat her but misjudges her position and touches nothing but air.
“Fine,”she says.She catches his fingers and squeezes them affectionately.
Oh I wish, I wish, I wish,he thinks, though he could not say for certain what he wishes for.To be back with Kate? He does not believe that is the case.To have Ruby somehow belong to him? It’s out ofthe question.Yet there is something he longs for, something he has lost, and then, in a lit-tle flare ofself-knowledge he knows what it is.The privilege ofhis own comfort.He has lost his easy life.He has lost Kate’s house, her conver-sation, her soft, beautiful hair—he can barely believe he is thinking this, but then:there it is.He has lost Ruby, he has lost sleep, he has lost his energy, he has lost his sense ofhumor, he has lost his sight in one eye, he has lost ifnot his mind then at the very least his untroubled mind.And he has given it all away for something that seems to be slipping through his fingers.
When they are close to My LittleWooden Shoe, the familiar feeling ofanticipation comes back to him, a pure and wild animal eagerness.Iris could very well be pulling into the parking lot at this very moment.It’s fifteen minutes past eight o’clock.He knows she has a nine o’clock sem-inar at the college.The nurse who helps look after Hampton on the morning shift sometimes brings Nelson to day care, but Iris tries to do it herselfwhenever possible, and now, beneath a low, soft, blue-and-gray early summer sky, Daniel speeds the last mile ofthe way.
Her car is there, its doors dappled with mud.Hurriedly, Daniel takes Ruby out ofthe car seat and carries her across the parking lot, the peb-bles crunching eagerly beneath his feet.