Free Ruby by Ann Hood Page B

people don’t eat red meat anymore. You know Carl, though. Steak, potatoes, and ranch dressing.” She rolled her eyes so that Olivia would know that she, Janice, was better than that.
    Olivia reached out and patted Janice’s arm, a gesture she meant as something kind but which came out wrong.
    Janice squinted and said, “Is the wine okay?”
    The wine was an expensive one. Too expensive, Olivia decided. Overhead, a ceiling fan churned the hot air around. Earlier, Carl had explained that the house never got hot because of all the ceiling fans. But Olivia was sweating and miserable, hungry for air and food.
    “ Bon Appetit recommended it,” Janice was explaining. “Carl wanted to get a jug of something horrible, but I wanted to splurge. Here you are, a New Yorker now. A city girl. I want you to know that not everybody here is such a hick. I want you to know that you’re not all alone.”
    Olivia decided she would drink too much tonight. She had let a stranger into her house; she was reckless.
    “When you were pregnant,” she blurted out, “did you have to take iron pills?”
    It occurred to Olivia that maybe she had done the absolute wrong thing giving Ruby iron tablets. Maybe she should race home this instant and be sure Ruby and that lovely kicking baby inside her were fine.
    Janice was back at the stove, frowning over a recipe. “Probably,” she said. “But I threw up everything, so eventually I stopped taking stuff. Even the prenatal vitamins. They say you really need that folic acid, but I didn’t take it, and my kids came out fine.”
    Olivia glanced over at the kids. Alex was banging his head against the side of the playpen; Kelsey was eating Play-Doh. She stopped when she discovered Olivia watching her.
    “It’s nontoxic,” Kelsey said.
    Three years old and she knew words like nontoxic. What other words did they know? Nuclear waste? SCUD missiles? Safe sex? Not my baby, Olivia thought, her hand jumping a little at the memory of those glorious kicks. She would go to some special school where they taught the ABCs and long division and none of the bad stuff.
    Kelsey was staring hard at Olivia. She had brown hair cut in a sort of pageboy—short, straight bangs and the rest in a bob. Her eyes were oddly big—not in a charming wide-eyed way, but in a way that reminded Olivia of Marty Feldman.
    “Is your husband still dead?” Kelsey asked.
    “Yes.”
    “You’re never ever going to see him again?”
    “No,” Olivia said.
    “Never never ever?
    Olivia decided she didn’t like this kid.
    “Never,” she said.
    “Not even in a million years?”
    “I’m not going to be alive in a million years myself. No one lives that long.”
    Kelsey considered this, then ate more Play-Doh, the blue.
    “Are we going to eat anytime soon?” Carl bellowed from the family room.
    He was a bellower, a backslapper, a man who used party as a verb. Whenever Olivia saw him, he said, “You still living in that shithole city?” Since David had died, he backed off a bit, but Olivia still didn’t like him very much. She studied Janice’s back at the stove—her ass was too big, her jeans were too tight, and she was making a bad dinner. Sadly, Olivia wasn’t even sure she still liked Janice.
    Janice was talking about babies. Should she have a third? she asked, not expecting an answer, and, silently, Olivia said, Hell no.
    Something was burning. Olivia got up and poured herself more wine. She was slightly drunk already. Good, she thought. She wondered if Ruby still had on the hat. There was something almost exciting about sharing her home with this girl she didn’t know, this stranger, for three days. Ruby thought David was away on a business trip, in New York. For a while at least, Olivia could pretend that her life was different, the way it was supposed to be.
    “Okay,” Janice said. “Carl?”
    Olivia sat at the table, but Kelsey shook her head no. “We’re eating in the dining room,” she whispered, pointing