The waiter delivered their food. Ruby didn’t touch her steak. She pushed the peas around her plate and munched on a sesame stick. She ordered a second shot of Jack.
Devon crushed a Saltine into her tomato soup and ate it slowly. She had never seen her mother like this. The progression had been rapid. During her divorce proceedings, Ruby had first clammed up and then assumed her professional persona: focused, straight-ahead, clear-eyed. Afterward, all of that changed. There was still a protective skin in place of the old armor, but it was invisible, flexible. Too flexible.
First, she began dressing differently. Gone were the dark, well-tailored pantsuits from Bergdorf. The sensible doctor’s pumps with rubber soles. The black hose. The button-up blouses in muted colors. Now it was a new look daily, everything up for grabs, the one constant an obsession with purple. Some item—shoes, belt, kerchief—had to be purple. Lately it had become more than one item, leading to the day, Devon imagined, when every garment and accessory would be purple, head to toe.
To begin their trip, Ruby had put on a purple silk T-shirt and tourmaline earrings, complemented by tight black jeans, bought at her new weight, and a red leather jacket with—Devon had counted them—fifteen zippered pockets. The zippers were purple. Her red boots matched the jacket, as did the skulls on the yellow bandanna she had borrowed from Devon that morning.
“I didn’t always dress like a doctor, you know,” Ruby had said cheerfully as she backed out of their driveway, burning rubber when she threw the Mercedes into drive.
She often borrowed now from Devon’s eclectic wardrobe: a purple jersey with a bull’s-eye on the back, a vintage lizard belt with turquoise studs, oversized sunglasses with mirrored lenses, and a purple suede vest. Devon had told her to keep all of it, including the vest, which unbeknownst to Ruby, Devon had shoplifted in Key West.
At a time when Devon was doing coke, she had stolen to support her habit. She shoplifted the easy stuff, scarves and belts at boutiques, cosmetics from drugstores, and whatever she could drop into her handbag off the wall racks at Radio Shack. Predictably, the more strung out she got, the more recklessly she stole, until her luck ran out. She met a skinny, fast-talking guy named Al Hanson at a Mexican restaurant. While doing lines of coke in a back booth he mapped out for her how they could steal three cases of cigarettes from a delivery truck outside a bowling alley in Miramar. At twenty cartons to a case, the haul would be worth five thousand dollars, split down the middle. Hanson told her he once worked at the bowling alley and knew its delivery schedules inside out. More valuable than beer, light enough to carry, cigarettes were a cinch to steal. Except that a cop in an unmarked car saw them approach the back of the truck furtively, grab the cases, and duck into a parking lot. Devon pleaded nolo contendere and paid her fine by auctioning a mint set of Fats Waller 78s and a vintage clarinet on eBay. But she had a criminal record now, which made the judge at her subsequent drug trial that much harder on her.
More disturbing was the fact that the urge to steal didn’t disappear after she got clean. Twice she acted on it, lifting things she could easily afford to buy. She was afraid that stealing had become, not just a tool of her drug addiction, but an addiction itself, lessening the anxiety of her withdrawal. But petty theft was a dangerous sedative for someone on probation who could be tossed into prison for the slightest infraction. She talked about her stealing at two meetings and felt better for it. But she wasn’t about to try to return the vest with an apology, as someone in the program suggested. Instead, she mailed $93.28 in cash, which included the 6 percent sales tax, to the owner of the Golden Starfish Boutique.
After the waiter took away her steak, untouched, Ruby ordered a piece of ice cream cake with mocha icing.
“This is the dessert you serve at an engagement party,” she instructed Devon. “But with a better presentation: say, a halo of raspberries and a sprig of mint.”
“Good to know,” Devon said dryly, sipping her coffee.
“Do you think you’ll ever get married, dear?”
“Excuse me?”
“I know you don’t share these things with me.”
“There’s nothing to share, Mom.”
“There was the guy in Chicago.”
“Josef? I mentioned him to you once—I’m surprised you remember.”
“I remember everything you tell me.”
“Really? Well, we broke up in January. I haven’t seen him since.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Ruby said, signaling the waiter for another shot of Jack.
For the last week, Devon had wondered whether her mother was playing with her or was genuinely spaced. She concluded that it was both. “You know, you haven’t exactly been waxing ecstatic about marriage yourself.”
“It’s not a black-and-white question.”
“No? What about ‘I Hate Myself for Loving You’?”
“That’s after the fact. Anyway, we’re not talking about me.”
Devon tapped a Camel on her palm.
“You know that’s loaded with asbestos,” Ruby said, nodding at the cigarette.
“I didn’t know.”
“Makes them burn slowly. Unfortunately, it also destroys the capillaries in your lungs.”
“Whiskey isn’t good for you, either.”
“This is sour mash. Fermented grains. No additives.”
“You make it sound like health food.”
Ruby picked up the cigarette pack and studied the palm trees and pyramids on the label. “Did you know the Chinese put formaldehyde into their beer as a preservative?”
“You’re exhausting me, Mom.”
“It’s inevitable. We have so much ground to make up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I feel like I’ve only known you one way, with blinders on.”
“That’s right. You’re my mother.”
“And I admit it: I haven’t been all I should be as a mother.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I should have protected you more from Marvin. I was a coward. I have to deal with that.”
Devon was stunned. Her mother had never said anything remotely like this to her.
“You think I don’t know?” Ruby went on. “Anyway, I got what was coming to me.”
“Betrayal? You didn’t deserve that.”
“No? I’m only sorry you had to pay a price, too.”
“Mom—”
“You have to let me say I’m sorry. Otherwise, where do we go from here?” She finished her whiskey and put the glass down with an air of finality. “To be continued.”
Devon nodded. “Okay.”
And Ruby shifted gears again. “Did I ever tell you one of my great fears when I was a kid, maybe thirteen years old? Cardiac arrest in my sleep. I’d read about it in a magazine. Some girl in Oklahoma my age. I remember her photograph, slightly fuzzy, the way they make the dead. Her heart just stopped and they found her in bed. Of course I didn’t know how rare it is in people that young.”
Devon waited to see what she was getting at.
“People think it’s better to die in your sleep. Quick, painless. Not true. You think the soul leaves the body without a fight?”
Devon had never heard her mother use the word “soul,” either.
Ruby leaned in closer. “At best it’s like a boat that snaps its mooring and is swept out to sea—in the dark.”
“I get it.” For the umpteenth time in their recent conversations, Devon was wary.
“I talked to my shrink about this fear.”
“You’re in therapy?”
“Was. A long time ago. But the talking cure didn’t work for me. If it had, I would have ditched your father. Saved us all a lot of grief.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t suited to be deputized.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that’s what it is: the shrink’s the detective and you’re the deputy, uncovering clues. And if you’re lucky, you solve the case. You save yourself, not just from other people, b
ut from the worst in yourself. Like in the movies. Except it doesn’t happen often enough.” She paused to take in what she’d just said, losing her train of thought. “As for my mother, she had no idea how to save herself. I doubt it crossed her mind. At a certain point, I knew I wasn’t going to try.”
“You always kept me away from her.”
“Why wouldn’t I keep you away?” Ruby said. “She was toxic. Anyway, she only came to Miami again this year, when she was desperate. For twenty-five years I didn’t have an address or phone number for her. Not in Kansas City, or Tulsa, or anywhere else. I doubt that Camille Broussard herself could remember all the places where she lived.” She patted Devon’s hand. “Thank you for coming when I called.”
“Please don’t thank me for that.”
“I can’t say sorry and I can’t say thanks.”
“Come on.”
“Okay, want to hear something funny? My mother was terrified of toxins. Except alcohol, of course. She worried about milk containers, hairspray, pesticides. She never did anything about it, she just worried. It got worse when she finally stopped drinking. No one dies naturally, she used to say: you get killed, you kill yourself, or it’s slow poisoning.”
“Are you going to eat that cake?” Devon sighed, signaling for the check.
“Of course.”
Ruby skimmed a forkful of icing, tasted it, and pushed the plate away. Ten minutes later they were back on the interstate and Devon was driving fast, thankful that Ruby had dozed off within minutes of buckling up. She could throw back shots without blinking, Devon thought, but after years of abstemiousness, her tolerance was low.
At forty-eight, Ruby was still a beautiful woman, her features supple and symmetrical, her skin clear. Devon had inherited her dark blue eyes and the curve of her lips. Her mother’s hands, too, the long fingers that had helped her as a pianist. That’s where the resemblance ended. And at five eight, she was three inches taller than her mother. Devon was a blonde, much fairer than Ruby. Her father’s mother and sisters were blondes, and Marvin Sheresky himself was sandy-haired, tall, lean and fit. Devon also had her father’s very straight teeth, with the same singular imperfection: extra molars crowding her lower jaw. Like her father, when Devon had her wisdom teeth extracted, the periodontist took out six teeth, not four.
The previous week, two days after Devon completed her community service, Ruby had phoned her in the predawn to say her mother had died. The news didn’t move her—her grandmother had long been a ghost to her—but Devon was shocked when Ruby asked her for help. They had been estranged for some time, and virtually incommunicado for four months, since Devon’s drug conviction. Ruby had emailed Devon when she filed divorce papers, and then again when the divorce was finalized. Devon hadn’t known what to say; twice she had dialed Ruby’s number and hung up before the phone could ring. Finally she emailed back: I’M SORRY. And that’s where things had stood until Ruby called about her mother.
“Come over as soon as you can,” Ruby had said hoarsely. “I’m alone.”
The two of them had been riding a roller coaster ever since.
Driving her old Thunderbird across Miami from her cramped apartment in Little Cuba, Devon arrived at her mother’s door weary and bedraggled. Her hair was unwashed, her eyes bloodshot. She had a toothache and an onset of the flu. During her final week of trash picking, in ninety-degree heat, she had nearly succumbed to sunstroke. It was about the worst she had looked since getting sober.
Devon always thought of her mother as having a steel spine and antifreeze in her veins. She had expected to find her sitting in the living room in prim physician mode, staring straight ahead, containing her feelings, heeding the Hippocratic oath and working overtime to heal herself. Instead, the curtains were drawn, scented candles were burning, and, wineglass in hand, Ruby was bobbing her head to Joan Jett, her long black hair loose and wild for once. She was wearing a scarlet robe and matching heels.
“What happened?” Devon said.
“A stroke,” Ruby replied, misunderstanding that the question was about her. “Massive. Quick. Blow out one of these candles—it was like that.”
“I’m really sorry, Mom.”
“My mother and I were on the outs for most of my life—and for all of yours. Only after I put her in the hospice last month did we have a connection again, even if it was just a thread.” Ruby turned down the music and took Devon’s hand. “I don’t want what happened to my mother and me to happen to us. It’s not too late.”
Devon was uncomfortable. The music, her mother’s mood shift since their phone conversation, the robe and heels—she was trying to take it all in.
Ruby didn’t wait for her to respond. “The funeral’s tomorrow,” she said. “Will you come?”
“Yes.”
“And will you stay here with me? I mean, for the week?”
This was the biggest surprise of all for Devon. “You’re sure that’s what you want?”
“I wouldn’t ask you otherwise.” Ruby finished her wine and refilled the glass. “First the divorce. Then your father’s marriage. Now this. My mother wanted to be cremated. No church, no ceremony. So it’s not going to take long.” She turned the music up again and stepped back, as if she were seeing Devon for the first time. “Devon, what’s happened to you?”
For the rest of the day, Ruby remained solicitous, concerned. She didn’t mention her mother again. She took Devon to her dentist. Sat with her in the steam room at her health club. Had her hairdresser make a house call. She started Devon on antibiotics and injected her with vitamin B12.
But Ruby couldn’t keep up that level of interest—she could barely focus on her own affairs, much less someone else’s—and soon enough Devon would find that to be a blessing.
NEW ORLEANS—JULY 7, 1904
In a steady rain Myron Guideau climbed the rickety outdoor stairway to the attic apartment at 429 Cherokee Street. Water was pouring off the slanted roof. The door rattled on its hinges when he knocked. It was opened a crack by a girl with jet hair and eyes to match. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. And she didn’t like what she saw: a skinny white man with a two-day beard, his hat dripping, his eyes darting. And there was whiskey on his breath at seven A.M.
The previous night, after giving up on finding the three johns who had been with Tina after him, Guideau returned to Mrs. Vance’s sporting house. He bribed Orson into telling him which of the girls might know where Philippa lived. Orson directed him to a girl named Faith. Guideau found her half naked in one of the rooms. She started to unbutton his shirt. Another time, he said, and after she had mulled it over, for a half dollar she gave him an address that supposedly was Philippa’s. It was the first of three addresses, each more run-down than the last, where she had lived in the previous four months. At the second one, above a butcher shop, the butcher who owned the building told him to try the address on Cherokee Street. Here she could barely make rent, he said. Down there’s a lot cheaper.
Are you Philippa Benoit? Guideau asked the girl who answered his knock.
You police?
No.
You don’t look like police.
I need to speak with her.
’Bout?
Are you Philippa?
No.
Can I come in?
She shook her head. You from the landlord?
No.
And you not police.
My name is Myron Guideau. I’m a recording engineer.
A what?
I’m not the police. I need to ask Philippa about a man she was with at Mrs. Vance’s on Friday night. Late.
I don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’Bout.
I think you do.
She shrugged, but he could see in her eyes she was interested. This was her, all right. There’s a reward, he said.
For what?
Guideau took a silver dollar from his pocket. Tell me about him and this is yours.
She thought about it for a moment, then opened the
door. The room felt like a closet. Walls that had once been painted green. An oilcloth over the window. Clothes hanging on nails. A mattress. Two chairs. The smell of sweat and kerosene.
The girl was wearing a torn shift. She was thin and flat-chested but had good legs. Guideau looked her up and down, which she was used to.
They sat in the two chairs. Guideau unbuttoned his wet coat and waited for her to speak.
Only man I was with Friday late was tall, good-looking. Wore a green suit. Young. Never seen him before.
How young?
Maybe nineteen.
What else?
She thought about it. He was smoking a cigar, she said, putting her hand out for the coin.
What was his name?
Never said.
You’re sure?
Uh-huh.
Guideau made as if to pocket the coin.
All right, she said. When he left, I heard one of the other girls call him Buck.
Buck?
They were down the hall, but it sounded like Buck.
Do you know who that girl was?
Could’ve been any girl. There’s a full shift on Fridays.
He put the silver dollar into her hand. Anything else you remember about him?
Like?
Anything unusual he said or did?
She cocked her head. S’what he didn’t do.
Oh?
He never done his business. Paid up front, but he never touched me, never lay down, nothin’. He hung up his jacket and sat down to take off his boots when he seen something under the bed. He went down on his knees and got it.
Guideau kept his voice level. A small bag?
She nodded. He asked me if it was mine, and I said no. He opened it and looked inside and put his hand in and looked some more. He asked me who left it and I said I didn’t know nothin’ about it, and that’s the truth.