Teddy.
âInedible?â
âNo! Incredible,â Ruby said, laughing. âIs there grated ginger in it?â
âGood guess, but no,â said Teddy, looking pointedly at Ralph, who was eating slowly and offhandedly, without noticing a single flavor, she would have bet. He struck her as a man made more of spirit and mind than of flesh, someone for whom bodily pleasure was a sometimes guilty and generally abstracted afterthought. It had long been Teddyâs theory that you could tell how someone was in bed by the way he or she ate; she was sure that Ralph would be ethereal and self-abnegating.
âA tiny bit of mace?â asked Ruby.
âNope,â said Teddy again. âYouâre way out on a limb.â It was a game sheâd taught her daughters to play as children: guess the ingredients. Sheâd always put one secret thing into a dish to test them. Whoever guessed it got the satisfaction of her motherâs approbation.
The telephone rang. Ruby put her hand on Teddyâs to keep her from getting up, then answered it herself in the front hall.
âItâs me,â her twin sister said. Ruby heard squalling in the background. âBusterâs having a meltdown. I canât make it to Momâs. Can you tell her for me?â
âThis is important,â said Ruby. âDadâs biographer is here. Canât Ivan take the kids for a couple of hours?â
âIvan had to go into the lab today. Please tell Mom Iâm sorry.â
âSo bring the kids.â
âIvanâs got the car,â said Samantha.
âSo Iâll treat you to a cab.â
âThe car seats are in the car; Ivan would kill me if I went anywhere with the kids without them. And I wouldnât wish Buster on anyone right now. No one would get a word in.â
Ruby happened to know that Buster, a three-year-old boy whose given name was Peter, behaved with admirable civility in the care of his aunt and grandmother. She suspected that Samantha exacerbated rather than soothed Busterâs tantrums, and that, in fact, he threw these tantrums to distract Samanthaâs attention from her husband, then kept them up when he figured out that as long as he acted horribly, he had her undivided attention. If Samantha hadnât been so vapor-locked on Ivan, their son might have been calmer and better adjusted. But no one could tell Samantha anything: She often acted, Ruby thought, as if she were the first person on the planet to give birth to a human child, as if mothering were so sacred and rarefied, anyone who wasnât a mother couldnât possibly understand how profoundly it changed you. But Ruby guessed she had to act this way in order to make herself feel better about being in the thrall of a two-foot-tall manipulative, punitive tyrant and a small screaming bag of stinking humors who sucked her dry. Whenever Samantha described the amazingness of breast-feeding or the miracle of watching her child take his first shit on a potty, Ruby would think of the quiet little apartment sheâd lived in alone for fifteen years. There was no greater joy she knew than going home alone to find everything as sheâd left it, her bed, her books, her computer, her refrigerator, her bathtub, her solitary self.
âSam,â she said, âcome on. It wonât kill them to take a cab ride without car seats this one time.â
âBuster,â Samantha replied in a deadly, cold, even voice. âI think you need a time-out. Sorry, Rube, I gotta go. This little ape child needs to take some deep breaths.â
Ruby returned to the dining room. âSamantha has bagged out,â she said. âPeterâs apparently being a monster.â
âPeter,â said Teddy, âis never a monster. Iâm very disappointed she wonât come.â
âShe apologized,â said Ruby in a tone that conveyed what she thought of her sisterâs apology. âI think