“So, how long ago was that?” Maye asked, careful to practice restraint. She had already seen what happened when Ruby was pushed too far, and she didn’t want a repeat performance. “How long has it been that you’ve had to use silly little eggs?”
“Ah, it’s been a long time,” the old woman said as she brushed some crumbs off her lap, then took another drag. “Twenty-some years, I bet.”
Maye tapped in the rest of the nail and then put the hammer down. “That’s a long time to be running things on your own,” she said.
Ruby nodded, not releasing any expression at all. She exhaled and took another bite of her sandwich. “I’ve got the dogs. My Royal Loyals. What else do I need? I’ve got Papa,” she said patting the biggest boxer on the head as he reached up and softly licked her hand. “I’ve got Mama there, and Lula—she’s the one with the pretty eyes. That’s Captain over there, the stocky one, and Junior, who has the one floppy ear. Next to him is Minty, the most handsome of all the Royals, I think. And then there’s Puppy, who just never got a name because I was always so sure someone was gonna come along and take him home, just like the rest of the puppies. I’ve got all I need and they’re always with me. Nobody is as loyal as a dog. Nobody. Do you have a dog?”
“I do,” Maye said as she positioned another nail on the step. “His name is Mickey, the singing Australian shepherd. We never knew Mickey could sing before he went to reform school for attacking the mailman, who he mistook for a menacing mythical beast. He’s a good dog. I know what you mean about being loyal—Mickey is my best friend. I would be lost without him, too.”
“That’s good, a dog is good,” Ruby said, taking a drag and positioning her sandwich for another bite. “So, who is ‘we’?”
“I’m sorry?” Maye said after she finished pounding in another nail. She leaned all of her weight onto the step and pushed as hard as she could. The step was now completely creakless and no longer had the characteristics of a teeter-totter.
“You said ‘WE,’” Ruby croaked louder, as if Maye was deaf or possibly foreign. “WHO IS ‘WE’?”
“Oh, I see. We. My husband, Charlie. I told you about him. He’s the one who works at the university. He teaches in Dean Spaulding’s department.” Maye finally took a seat on the porch and grabbed the bag that held the ham-and-cheese sandwich.
“Been married long?” Ruby asked as she inhaled.
“I don’t know,” Maye said with a laugh as she unwrapped her lunch. “Is ten years long?”
“Depends if they were good or bad,” the old woman answered. “It’s like being at a dance: if you’re on the floor, hopping to every song, it’s over before you know it; if you’re stuck by the punch bowl waiting for someone to notice, the punch can’t dry up fast enough.”
Maye nodded. “We’re lucky then, it’s gone by like that,” she said, snapping her fingers. “On the subject of dances, I know your dance card must have been always full. Did you ever—?”
“What? Get married?” Ruby cackled as she fed the remnants of her sandwich to Papa, Lula, and the other dogs. “To who? I’ve been holed up in this house for most of my life.”
“You must have had beaus, admirers, boyfriends,” Maye continued. “I saw the newspaper clippings—you were the prettiest girl in town.”
“And it did me so much good, didn’t it?” Ruby snapped. “Yes. I had a beau once. A nice fellow, very handsome, very kind. He was a good man, I was lucky. Everyone said so.”
The old woman scrambled to her feet and all of the dogs followed her lead, except for Puppy, who was too busy trying to catch a bothersome fly with his mouth.
“You’d better start on the bushes soon, Girl,” she said as she marched into the house. “You want to be done with that by sundown.”
Maye couldn’t say anything; Ruby had retreated inside and had slammed the door before she even realized what had happened. She sat there for a moment, then gave the remainder of her sandwich to Puppy, who followed Maye as she picked up the loppers and they both headed over to the bushes in the front of the house, side by side.
She had trimmed the laurel bush outside the living room window in a perfectly even line to the center when she looked up and gasped. There, she could barely make out through the nicotine-veneered windows, was Ruby in her recliner, pushed all the way back, her dirty, slippered feet twitching and a cigarette barely dangling from her lips that was millimeters and a dollop of drool away from singeing her chin.
Maye dropped the shears and ran up the now sturdy steps to the porch, threw open the front door, and ran to Ruby just as the still-lit butt tumbled from her mouth, slid off her chin like an Olympic skier, and dropped straight to the bib of her yellow sweat suit, where it began to create a dark-ringed hole in the synthetic, flammable material.
Before she could pluck the cinder from Ruby’s wheezing chest, Papa, in a heroic giant leap, hoisted his broad chest and positioned his two muscular legs on the arm of the chair, bent his head forward, and picked up the filter end with his teeth. He then promptly jumped back down and released the smoldering remnant into the almost empty cocktail tumbler that sat on the floor next to the chair and already had several bloated butts floating in it.
“Holy shit,” Maye said, astounded, thinking that Gwen at dog-training school was sort of wasting her time teaching dogs to sing when she could be training service dogs for alcoholics and other substance abusers. It was a gold mine waiting to be tapped. Dogs could not only extinguish fires, but they could bring buckets and pails over when their owners had the inclination to barf, and bring them the phone to call the liquor store that delivers.
“Good Papa,” Ruby croaked, rousing from her nap and haphazardly patting the dog on his gargantuan head. “That’s a good boy.”
“That’s incredible,” Maye said. “I’ve never seen any such thing before! Did you teach him that?”
“You could say it was a joint venture,” she answered. “He saves me from having a Viceroy burn a tunnel through to my rib cage, and he gets to live and eat breakfast in the morning. It’s an even trade.”
“By the looks of it, he’s done that trick a number of times,” Maye commented, pointing to a collection of blackened circles that dotted Ruby’s yellow collar like charred pearls.
“He’s a smart dog,” Ruby offered as she shrugged. “He’s easy to train. He wants to live.”
“I’m sorry to bother you about this again, but what do you think about the pageant training?” Maye asked carefully. “I’d like to get started with whatever we’ll need to do if you’ll agree to be my sponsor.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Ruby said as she tapped the newest ringed hole in her sweat suit top to extinguish any lingering embers. “I’m a little busy around here, but I think I could fit you into my schedule. We’ll talk about that tomorrow, after you’ve finished painting the fence. I was taking a nice nap before that cigarette tried to ignite me, so I’m going back to sleep.”
“Ruby, thank you so much,” Maye said gratefully. “This means so much to me, and I know I couldn’t do this without you. This is wonderful. This is really wonderful.”
“Yeah, yeah. One more thing,” Ruby said as she stretched out in her recliner, causing another pppppppppt! to shoot into the air. “I want a chicken salad sandwich for lunch tomorrow, too.”
The last thing Maye wanted to see the next morning was the thinning bald spot on the back of Rowena Spaulding’s jet-black head, but as she walked into Hopkins Market to fetch Ruby’s chicken salad sandwich, that’s exactly what she saw.
Crowded together at the deli counter in the typical lunch-hour crunch, the store patrons patiently waited for the numbers they pulled on their way in to be called. Maye migrated to the back of the crowd, hoping that Rowena would get her stuff and be gone before she had to move up to the counter.
“Twenty-two!” the deli man bellowed, scanning the crowd for the look of hope on the chosen number’s face, but no one stepped forward to claim the number.
“Twenty-two
!” he yelled again, to no avail.
“If twenty-two is missing, you can take me instead.” As Maye heard the familiar, nasaly voice that sent chills up her spine, she looked up to see Rowena stiffly waving her arm at the counterman as she brazenly stepped forward.
“What number are you, Mrs. Spaulding?” he asked with a sudden, convenient smile that only people in the service industry know how to produce without thinking.
“Uh,” Rowena scoffed with disgust. “What does it matter? If twenty-two is delinquent, then I’ll fill the spot.”
“Well, I just want to make sure that everyone has a fair turn,” the deli man explained. “That’s why we have numbers, to make sure that fair is fair.”
“I’m number twenty-nine,” Rowena snipped in a huff. “But that hardly matters. If twenty-two has abandoned the number, then I step forward to claim it. There. I am claiming it. I am now twenty-two.”
Sure you are, Maye thought. In dog years.
“Uh—I suppose,” the deli man stammered, clearly uncomfortable. “That is, if everyone else is all right with that.”
The deli suddenly turned into a feudal society as almost every customer waiting in line nodded and mumbled something to the effect of “Of course, Mrs. Spaulding,” “Naturally, Mrs. Spaulding,” and “Be my guest, Mrs. Spaulding.”
Maye’s mouth dropped. She was horrified. What is this, she wanted to scream, a scene from The Remains of the Day?
“Very well, then,” Rowena said as she stepped closer to the counter. “I need a pastrami sandwich. It’s my husband’s birthday, and it is the only thing he requests. So. Just one sandwich.”
“All right,” the counter guy said, nodding and smiling. “What kind of bread would you like that on?”
“Oh,” Rowena said, looking puzzled that there was more than one pastrami-compatible bread. “I have no idea. What kind do you usually put it on?”
“Rye?” he asked. “Does he like rye?”
“Certainly,” she said quickly. “Rye would be good.”
“And,” the counterman dared ask again, “mustard?”
“Of course,” Rowena shot back. “If that’s what you do.”
“Okay,” the man replied. “Sauerkraut?”
Rowena opened her mouth, though amazingly, nothing came out.
“Swiss?” the man continued. “Onions?”
“I—I don’t know,” she stumbled. “The housekeeper always does this, but she’s ill and I really have no idea. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“How about I give you pastrami on rye with mustard, I’ll put everything else on the side, and your husband can pick what he likes?” he suggested.
“Yes,” Rowena said. “That would be fine.”
The rest of the customers stood while the pastrami sandwich was being made, the entire deli shrouded in silence, exaggerating the whooshing sound of the slicer cutting the meat. It wasn’t until the deli man handed Rowena a paper bag and she paid for it that anyone dared make a sound.
As number twenty-three was being called, Rowena headed toward the back of the store for the door, and that was when Maye found herself in a very odd position—walking toward the door as well, pushing her way through the crowd and quickening her step to make sure that Rowena could absolutely not miss her. She was one step closer to the door than Rowena when the puckery shrew saw her.
“Why, Maye Roberts,” she said with a look of honest surprise on her face. “What a stunning pair of dirty overalls. What are you doing here?”
“Just getting lunch,” Maye said simply as she smiled. “For my sponsor.”
“Oh, that’s marvelous,” Rowena responded, forcing a smile. “I’m so glad you’ve come to terms with your affliction and have joined Alcoholics Anonymous. But I’m sure we’ll all miss the entertainment value you so dutifully provided. Honestly, I don’t see how you could have topped yourself, however—well, that’s a poor choice of words now, isn’t it?”
“My sponsor isn’t an alcoholic, Rowena,” Maye lied with a jolly little chuckle. “She’s my sponsor for the Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant.”
“Maye, Maye,” she replied, pressing her lips tightly together as she paused, revealing more furrows around her mouth than an earthquake fault. “That’s impossible. Release yourself from your reverie, my dear. No one in this town is sponsoring you.”
“That is true,” she replied, raising her eyebrows. “No Old Queen in this town is sponsoring me. But one Old Queen right outside of town is.”
Rowena scoffed and chuckled. “So you’re flying someone in? Oh, Maye, your desperation works against you. So, who exactly would that be?”
“That Old Queen,” Maye said directly, “would be Ruby Spicer.”
Rowena’s face dropped faster than an elevator with a cut cable. Then her eyes narrowed, boring straight into Maye.
“Is that so?” Rowena said. Her puckered mouth now stretched with fury, her jowls tense along her jaw. Maye was acutely aware that she hadn’t just hit a nerve, she’d hit a bone.
“It is so,” she replied without flinching, still retaining the smile on her face.
“You won’t win,” Rowena insisted through her yellow, stained teeth. “You won’t. She’s been sitting out on that farm for fifty years, drying up each year more brittle and bitter than the year before. What’s left of her soaks herself in whatever liquor is within arm’s reach. Her and those filthy dogs. It’s a wonder they haven’t eaten her yet. That wretch can’t even help herself, let alone help you win that pageant. Ruby Spicer! How does she plan to be able to step one foot in this place after what she did? That woman will be lucky if she doesn’t get lynched when she rolls back into town.”
And with that, Rowena Spaulding gave Maye one last dirty glare, turned, and stormed out of Hopkins Market like a rhino. Maye was dumbfounded as she vaguely heard her number being called in the background, because against all odds, she had done the impossible.
She had found the one person in the world that Rowena Spaulding hated more than she hated Maye.
The moment Maye set foot on the newly fixed step of Ruby’s dilapidated front porch, which was half draped in an old sheet, the boxer head swung back and there she was, in what might have been a freshly laundered green terrycloth tracksuit, with a fresh slather of red lipstick on that hadn’t yet run into the crevices that burrowed around her lips but had already veneered her teeth. Her dogs gathered around her knees.
“Have you seen the sun today?” she exclaimed excitedly as she looked upward at the sky. “Did ya see it? Look at that sun, so bright and warm! It’s just glorious!”
“It is,” Maye agreed, surprised—she had never seen the old woman this gregarious.
Ruby stepped forward, directly into the sun, and the light exposed her face. Maye almost gasped. The woman’s face was covered with bruises, especially around her eyes. The hues of hematomas surrounded them, and her skin reflected shades of green, fading into blue, then purple, drifting into black, and each side of her face had either been scraped raw or had suffered a sudden inflamed rash of some sort.
“Oh my God, Ruby!” Maye said as she gasped, covered her mouth, and stepped forward to see the extent of her injuries. Upon closer look, she saw that the damage was so severe she didn’t think Ruby should even be standing and was about to insist on an ice pack when she noticed a twinkle in the sun that bounced off Ruby’s cheek, almost like a minuscule shard of glass. Had she broken a window, Maye wondered, but with her head? Did she get that drunk last night that she put her face through glass—without getting cut? Then there was another glimmer, up higher on the same cheek, and as Ruby turned slightly to look at Maye quizzically, both of her eyelids began to glimmer and gleam.
“What?” Ruby finally asked, looking a bit annoyed.
“Your face!” Maye shrieked, taking another step closer only to comprehend that the glass dust on Ruby’s skin was not from a window or a door at all—it was eye shadow. And blush. It was makeup. Ruby had dolled herself up, only her rendition was m
uch like what a four-year-old would do if presented with the bounty of Mommy’s cosmetics drawer and an unsupervised hour.
Maye stumbled, aware that she had been a bit too dramatic for her own good, and now had to cover for the fact that she had mistakenly interpreted the results of Ruby’s Beauty Day for a face that had been jumped in a back alley by guys carrying pipes.
“What about my face?” Ruby said carefully, her eyes, or what Maye could see of them, narrowing.
“It’s so pretty!” Maye responded with an extra dose of enthusiasm, at which the old woman’s face relaxed.
“So what’d ya bring me, Girl?” Ruby asked with a wide smile, exposing all of her lipstick-streaked teeth. “Is it chicken salad?”
“Absolutely,” Maye said, then from behind her pulled out one of Charlie’s old lunch coolers. “And a chocolate malted.”
Ruby stopped in midreach for the bag and looked at her with soft, sinking eyes that Maye had never noticed before. “You brought me a malted?” she asked slowly, just about as shocked as Maye was to see her smiling. “I haven’t had one of those in years. In about fifty years. Do you think they’ll taste the same?”
“Give it a shot,” Maye said, handing over the cooler that had kept the malted from melting. “I bet it will be delicious. Straw is in the bag.”
“I thought we could eat outside like we did yesterday,” Ruby said, pointing to the sheet that covered the old, graying wood. “Kind of like a picnic. It’s such a nice day. Whaddya say we take the blanket and spread it out under that old redwood?”
Maye nodded and helped Ruby bring the sheet down the steps and under the only tree left alive in front of the house.
“There,” Ruby said, smoothing out the sheet. “This is such a good idea.”