The November Novel

NaNoWriMo Day: 27

Word Count: Yesterday: 46,457 Today: 47,456
Notes for the Day: Home stretch!

Disclaimer: This is a work in progress and an exercise in getting words on paper. It's probably confusing, disjointed, weird, and downright bad. Oh yes, and I'm not writing it in order, so new things will be popping up in the middle.

Nonetheless: Copyright Roxie Smith.

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Alexandria had grown tired of waiting for her mother’s call, and her own calls had gotten nothing but busy signals. It appeared that Marjoram had taken her phone off the hook.  More than a week had passed and it was clear that Marjoram had no intention of calling her back.

“I can’t wait any longer, Brian,” she said to her husband. “Ruby is the light of my life but she’s going to drive me to murder sitting around here all day while I try to work.”

“What do you propose we do?” he asked, looking up from his bowl of Cheerios, his spoon arrested half way to his mouth. Brian felt about his mother in law the way he felt about going to the dentist.  She was a necessary and unpleasant chore, but one that was not half as bad as the stereotypes made her out to be.  He had heard his friends’ horror stories of their own prying, manipulative mothers-in-law.  The worst he could say about his own was that she was awkward and uncomfortable to talk to, and that she drove his wife crazy.  But at least she was generally pleasant—in that she was not necessarily unpleasant, and she wasn’t around enough to be a nuisance. (Although it was the not-being-around part that made Alex rip out her hair and gnash her teeth.)

“I’m just going to send Ruby down there.”

“What if your mother doesn’t have a place for her?  What if your mother isn’t answering the phone because she’s dead? Do you want Ruby to walk into that situation all by herself? What if—” Brain punctuated his sentence with sharp jabs of his spoon, “what if she’s flown the coop with her latin lover! Gotten a job with the circus? Joined the Merchant Marines!”

“Brian! Don’t be awful. She’s probably just working on her book or, well, god knows what she’s doing, but I’m sure she’s there and I’m sure she’s fine.  And Ruby be will be fine too. But she’s got to get out of this apartment.”

So Ruby was informed of her imminent departure.  Being a New Yorker, she had no driver’s license and no car, and Marshall Beach had no airport, so her mother dropped her off at Grand Central Station with two large suitcases and a ticket that involved no less than three transfers, the last of which was onto a bus.  Because of the rambling nature of the train system, the journey, which would have taken about one full day by car, would take her approximately two.  

Alexandria did not usually make a habit of lying to her daughter, but she had intentionally failed to mention to her that Marjoram wouldn’t be at the bus station to pick her up. She had also failed to mention, of course, that the reason for this was that Marjoram had no idea her granddaughter was coming.  Alexandria and Ruby had an unusually trusting relationship, but Alex knew that her daughter was eighteen and flush with an envelope full of cash she had been told to pass on to her grandmother for food for the summer.  Most of all, Alex knew that she was free from school for the first time and had no plans for the coming August.  She was like a space shuttle that had just been launched outside of earth’s gravitational pull.  If she wasn’t pulled back in by the gravity of the moon, she might drift out into the vacuum and be lost forever.

This was the reasoning of the mother part of Alex’s mind.  A second, more rebellious part of her mind didn’t care that it was foolish to hand an envelope full of cash to a young woman and point her in the direction of… what? Someone who didn’t know she was coming? Someone who wouldn’t or couldn’t even keep their phone connected.  She knew she could have given Ruby a check to pass on to her grandmother.  But part of her hoped that she would stay on the train and just keep going. Part of her hoped that Ruby would send her a postcard from Nashville or New Orleans telling her she’d decided to try her hand at… anything.

For Ruby’s part she wasn’t ecstatic about the idea of spending her summer with her grandmother Marlo, but it solved the problem of what to do with herself.  Her friends were mostly busy discussing college.  They were shopping for new fixtures for their dorm rooms and speculating on what classes they would take and what subjects they would major in.  Some of her friends were involved in heated internal struggles over whether or not to stay with their high school sweethearts, or to throw the dice on finding someone better in the new pool of recruits come spring. Ruby had nothing to contribute to these discussions, but she was also bored with her group of friends who had decided to head straight for the job market.  It was only a few weeks out of school and many of them were already tired and disillusioned.  They sounded, well, they sounded like adults—which appealed to her sense of rebellion—but not the kind of adults that Ruby wanted to be around. 

Ruby’s best friend Eva was in the getting-ready-for-college group, and when she talked about her upcoming attendance at the University of Texas—a very un-New Yorker thing to do—she sounded as if she were already strolling along the streets of Austin, her hair blowing in the warm Texas wind.  Ruby missed her already.  She tried to participate in her excitement, and to wander around with her in her speculations about what it would be like, but she could only imagine what it would be like in New York without her.  Harder still, when Ruby had told Eva that she was going to Marshall Beach for the rest of the summer, Eva had sounded genuinely happy and supportive of her friend—something Ruby knew she had not been able to muster for Eva in return.

“God, you’re going to have such a great time on the beach! I wish I could go,” said Eva.

Ruby tried to conceal the fact that she wasn’t so sure.  She looked forward to tanning and reading some of the books she wanted to catch up on, but what was there other than that?

“You’ve never met my grandmother though,” she told Eva. “She’s kind of nuts.” 

“Oh she can’t be that bad.  Anyway I’d totally live with a whole house full of nuts if it meant I could spend the whole summer on the beach.  Man, I could show up on campus the first week of school with an amazing tan—“ Eva gazed off into the distance. “Hey, Ruby, isn’t that a college town? I mean, won’t there be, like, college guys there over the summer? Do you think?”

Ruby laughed. “God, I hope so.” In truth she wasn’t sure if she hoped so or not.  The few college-age boys she’d met in New York had seemed too smart for their own good. As if their extremely advanced knowledge was a gift they bestowed on you, in exchange for the right to touch your breasts.

The day before Ruby’s departure, Eva asked if she would be back in time to see her off to Texas and Ruby realized that she herself was not sure when she was supposed to return. She and her mother had discussed the leaving, but not the coming back. The two friends gave each other a long hug goodbye and promised that they would email everyday. Ruby knew she would try—they both would—but she suspected that Eva would be too overwhelmed with new experiences to keep it up for long.  Still, she was relieved that no one ever says, honestly, “I will try to keep in touch with you, but I probably won’t.” It would have been too hard for her to admit out loud that she was losing the closeness she’d spent years building with Eva.

Alexandria could easily have called Ruby a cab to Grand Central and let her go on her own, and Ruby was somewhat surprised when her mother helped her bring her baggage to the curb, then got in the cab with her.  Her mother’s presence struck as cloying and unnecessary—after all, wasn’t she trying to get rid of her by sending her off like this? While at the same time Ruby felt the softness of her mother’s sweater on her arm, listened to the decisive way she instructed the driver,  watched her brown eyes scan the city as it passed by the cab window, and felt an urgent rush of affection for her. A sudden well of longing sprang up in Ruby—to be held and comforted, to know that her mother approved of her. Not that she approved of Ruby as a person, which she knew her mother did.  But that she approved of her not knowing. Not knowing what she wanted. Not knowing what she was doing next.  She took her mother’s hand and felt Alexandria squeeze her fingers. Without looking away from the window, Alexandria smiled.

Alexandria left Ruby alone to board her train. For most of the train ride, Ruby was largely left alone with her thoughts.  It was a long ride that would take up most of the afternoon and all of the night, and then require her to board a bus in the morning.  Except for a period of about two hours after dinner when a small boy loudly and relentlessly begged his mother for a chocolate milk, her fellow passengers were tame and quiet. Her mind wandered aimlessly as the train headed steadily south. Toward Marshall Beach.  Toward Marjoram.  Her Grandmother.  Whom both Alexandria and Ruby knew as Marlo. The name Daniel had coined for her. Marshall Beach. Marlo. Marjoram. El Mar. She’s nothing like the sea, thought Ruby, staring out the window of the train, picturing beautiful, bright sunny beaches. But then again, she thought, like the sea, Marlo is unpredictable. One minute with her you thought you were fine and the next, she bowled you over. Sometimes she was only the kind of wave that bobbled you along the surface, but sometimes she completely sucked you under. Being around her you felt your face scrape against the sand while you tumbled, trying to find the surface.  Yes, Ruby decided, she is both abrasive and impossible to fathom.

Ruby had not visited the Bungalow for many years, and she didn’t think that her grandmother had made the trip to New York since Grandpa Daniel had passed away.  What she remembered most about the Bungalow was the sound of the ocean beating down on the white expanse of sand that stretched out in both directions.  There were places to visit the beach in New York if you really put some effort into it, but her family rarely did.  The first time she felt she really, truly, saw the ocean was as a very young child, visiting the Bungalow. The sight of its vast, loud emptiness had thrilled and terrified her.  She had experienced the crushing noise of Manhattan, but had never imagined that so much sound could come from an endless space filled with nothing. The sight of the water pawing at the shore made her think of a monster, chomping its white jaws, crunching them hungrily into the sand. She remembered with some embarrassment shrieking and hiding her face in her grandfather’s jacket.  Daniel picked her up, holding her to him.  She had wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in it, squealing, muffled in the fur collar of his coat.  He walked closer and closer to the edge of the sea, holding her in his arms, towards what she imagined was her certain death. She kicked and squirmed at him, protesting his advancement towards the possessed mass of water and sky but not resisting the security of his arms.

Somewhere, beyond the sea. Grandpa Dan began to sing.  Ruby could feel his voice vibrating through his chest and throat, against her her cheek. Somewhere, waiting for me. My lover stands on golden sands and watches the ships that go sailing.

Every time Ruby heard that song, she thought of her Grandpa Dan. She imagined him in a sleek black tuxedo, lit by a single dazzling spotlight on a stage surrounded by sophisticated men and women in bow ties and dangly diamond earrings. She was sure she had never seen him in a tuxedo.  In all of her photographs he was dressed in his security guard uniform, or in that brown corduroy jacket with the fur collar that he loved so much.  Her favorite photograph, which her mother kept in a frame on top of their piano, was of the two of them sitting in flower garden on the land side of the bungalow.  Ruby must have been 18 or so months old, wearing a pink jumper covered with red strawberries, and a pale green sun hat.  Grandpa Dan wears a white shirt, khaki shorts and a ridiculous, floppy straw hat.  They both stare grimly into a hole that he is digging with a trowel, while Ruby wields her own small red plastic gardening implement like a weapon.

It was as though the glue holding their family together had simply evaporated when Grandpa Dan died. If it was true that Marlo hadn’t come to visit New York since he had passed away, it was also true that Alexandria hadn’t made it out to the Bungalow. The accident happened while Alexandria was in Milan, at an important event.  She wasn’t scheduled to return for three weeks and even if she had been able to make arrangements to come back, “Marlo ferreted off with his ashes like a leprechaun, without even consulting anyone” in her words. When Alexandria had asked if Marlo planned to have a memorial service in Marshall Beach, Marlo explained that the school had planned to have one of its own and that anyone who wanted could go to that.  Alexandria made a point of noting that she had asked if Marlo wanted her to fly home and attend the service and Marlo had replied, “You can have one in New York, later, if you want.” Even though Ruby and Brian had been in the States and could have gone, neither Alexandria nor Marlo ever gave either of them the details about the memorial service held for Daniel by Randall University, and so they missed it too. Ruby was eleven at the time and had felt that her mother was punishing her for some unknown transgression in the cruelest possible fashion: by not letting her say goodbye. Later she came to understand that Alexandria was simply too involved with her own fury at her mother to consider that Ruby, or even Brian, might have needed closure after the awful circumstances surrounding Daniel’s death.  Frankly, Ruby thought, it was shocking that he mother had considered sending her to the Bungalow before sending her to some sort of astronaut training program on the moon.

Ruby drifted of to sleep thinking about her mother’s inscrutable motivations and awoke within thirty minutes of her own stop, where she would transfer to the bus and towards Marlo.  The bus ride was equally uneventful in all way except that the scenery had changed around her in the night and it further transform as she rolled east, towards the coast. The trees looked both brighter and deeper green, while the buildings were more often white, with swimming pools glistening coquettishly around corners or behind tall wrought iron gates. Around noon, just as Ruby’s stomach was beginning to whisper in protest, the bus unceremoniously stopped outside of one of Marshall Beach’s seedier all-night pancake houses and opened its door.

The bus driver leaned forward and spoke in to the small PA hand piece. “Thisismarshallbeach. Thisismarshallbeach.”

Three or four passengers began to collect their belongings and move towards the door. Ruby looked out the window confusedly; Marshall Beach was small but she had expected that it possessed some sort of bus depot. Or at least a proper bus stop with a bench.  She didn’t see Marlo waiting outside, but couldn’t remember what kind of car she drove, she drove one at all.  Before the first passenger had even set foot onto the curb, the drive mumbled into the PA, “lastcallformashallbeach. Nowdeparting.”

Ruby hurriedly gathered her things and scrambled to join the queue of passengers now clamoring to escape the bus before it departed with them still on board.  The bus driver stared  casually ahead with his hand on the gear stick and popped his gum.

Out on the curb, Ruby scanned the nearby faces for any sign of her grandmother. None. She dragged her bag to the parking lot and checked for occupied vehicles. None.  This was not a part of Marshall Beach she recognized.  There were, in fact, very few parts of Marshall Beach that she recognized. There was a chance, she figured, that her grandmother was running late, and an even smaller chance that she might have sent someone else to come retrieve her. It was best to remain visible in case of either of these two events. Ruby threw her duffel bag on the gravel and cigarette butte-encrusted ground that passed as the diner’s “landscaping” and tried to remember if there was anything in her suitcase that would explode or shatter if she sat on it. With another glance at the ashtray nouveau terrain she decided to cut her losses and have a seat.

By one o’clock she had developed a rude sunburn on her nose and forehead and her back hurt from sitting gingerly on her bag. The sun had only moved further into her line of vision, annihilating any chance that shade would develop on this side of the building. Despite the pounding heat Ruby was reluctant admit that Marlo wasn’t coming and leave her spot. She had no idea where to go besides, loosely, “towards the beach.”  And once she was at the beach, she was not looking forward to the prospect of walking its entire length dragging a rolling suitcase. To make matters worse, her hunger had become excruciating.  It may have been tolerable, if not for the constant scent of bacon, melted cheese, hot pancakes, and maple syrup permeating the air every time someone opened the door to the pancake house.  To add insult to injury, she had watched at least two families and three groups of stoned college students wander into pancake loudly discussing their gustatory options, and then wander out again, sated and complaining about how overly pleasing the experience had been. By one-thirty, Ruby began to reason with herself that perhaps Marlo was inside the restaurant and was nearly beside herself with worry as to her granddaughter’s whereabouts.  Surely, the best thing would be to go inside and check.

The air conditioning hit Ruby’s new sunburn like a painful arctic wind, but she forged on, undaunted, buoyed by the scent of sausage gravy. Peppery sausage gravy. Even brightly lit by florescent tube lights, the pancake house was blessedly dim on Ruby’s strained eyes after an hour of sitting in blazing sun.  She stood for a moment, basking in the bacon-scented dimness.

“Sit anywhere you like, Hon,” said a passing waitress, as she maneuvered two armfulls of scrambled egg platters.

Ruby remembered herself attempted to maintain the pretense that she was looking for her grandmother by enthusiastically peering into one or two tall booths for Marlo.  At the first fall booth, she dropped her act and gratefully sunk into the green vinyl, kicking her bags underneath the table. When the waitress approached with an excessively large green menu, Ruby ordered without looking at it.

“Steak and eggs please.  Hash browns.  Orange juice and coffee. And a piece of apple pie á la mode at the end. Uh. Please.” The waitress raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t had a good meal since New York.”

“You’re the boss.”

While she waited, Ruby began construction on a tower made of non-dairy creamer buckets in order to resist drinking them. Laughter erupted from the booth behind her.

“I still say you’re friggin’ crazy.”

“I wouldn’t mess with it at all if I were you.”

“I wouldn’t have built the thing out there in the first place, but since you’re a deadbeat and all…” There was more laughter.

“No I’m serious, listen you guys what if she’s a serial killer or something. What if she’s all upset because she doesn’t want customers around snooping around all over her like—dead bodies and stuff!”

“As a matter of fact, Burley, when we I was digging the whole for the foundation I found some heads and stuff but it as cool, I mean, I just just put them in the freezer with the other meat.”

“Whatever, Tashi, you’re an asshole.”

The waitress came and set a sweating iced tea on the table in front of Ruby’s castle of creamer. She drank nearly all of it in three large gulps which drown out the conversation from the other booth. When she stopped to breath, the subject had changed.

“Do you think I could crash at the beach house this weekend? My roommate’s obnoxious girlfriend is coming to visit from, like, Tampa, or wherever the hell she’s from.”

“Wasn’t she here two weeks ago too?”

“Yeah, dude she’s here all the time.”

“Ok, but here’s the deal I’m going to paint the mural this weekend and I could totally use a hand, so if you stay you paint.”

“Hey yeah, me too. Let’s have another bonfire and see if James-o will bring his guitar. Beach it up. Beach to the max.”

“Beach out.”

“Full beach ahead.”

“Turn this beach up to eleven!”

“I am not a beach,” the last voice was terrible impersonation of Richard Nixon, and Ruby could picture whoever it was raising two peace signs in the air.

“Ok, Man, too far.”

Ruby’s steak and eggs had disappeared from her plate.  She felt drunk on meat and certain that this was her moment, if any.  She took a deep breath and turned around in her seat, looking over the back of her booth, into the faces of four twenty-something guys around a table burdened with an impossible number of empty plates. She cleared her throat.

“Hi. Uh—“ Four faces stared at her blankly. “I couldn’t help overhearing part of your conversation. Maybe you can help me?”

“I can help you with whatever you want to be helped with,” said one of them.

“Shut it, Burley.” His neighbor elbowed him in the ribs. Ruby hesitated, reconsidering the wisdom of her choice.

“Go head. He’s dumb, but he doesn’t bite,” said the one with black hair and almond-shaped eyes. Ruby could tell from his voice that he was the one with the beach house.  And also the one with the possible serial killer problem. She had not been able to tell just from his voice that he had lovely smooth skin, the color of toffee. In his sleeveless t-shirt she could see his shoulder muscles and an intricate tattoo. She tried to remain composed—though she had consumed enough iced tea that the caffein made her heart flutter stupidly.

“Um, anyway. You guys know where the beach is? I’m looking for my grandmother’s beach house. I haven’t been there in about a billion years so I don’t know where it is—only the name.”

“All the beach houses have names, Kid,” said a tall brown-haired boy with glasses and a fedora. “We might know it though. At very least, we can get you to the beach itself.”

“Or you can come use my phone.  Does your grandmother know you’re coming?” This from the one that Ruby had begun calling “the hot one” in her mind.

“I thought so? I hope she’s ok.  Look, I’d really appreciate any help you can give me.”

Ruby’s pie came while she was talking and she asked the waitress to box it up. They paid their separate bills and went outside towards a rusted out Camero. Ruby hesitated.

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh Jesus, I can’t believe I’m about to get in a car with four, not just one or two but four strange dudes I just met in a pancake house.  This is like, the way every PSA and horror film ever begins.”

The hot one laughed. “Ok, I can’t really promise that we won’t kill you and bury your body in the woods, but I can give you my name. This is Flip, Burley, and Jared. My name is Tashi.”

Ruby looked at her bags laying on the ground, and at the goofy faces of the four guys.  “My name is Ruby.  I can’t promise I won’t kill you either.”

“Fair deal. Where to, Ruby?” Tashi began putting her bags in the back.

“Well—the name of my grandmother’s bungalow is La Huella.” Ruby climbed into the back seat between Flip and Jared, gesturing to Burley that he was not welcome in the back with polite company.

“Wait, La Huella?  Is it a little one-level place, all painted white?”

“Yeah! Yes! You know it?!”

“Oh shit.” The four boys all started laughing as the Camero pulled out of the parking lot.