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chair for her mother, a purple smudge seeping out from behind her pancake makeup. They’d eat breakfast like that; the clink of spoons against corn-flake bowls, her rueful daddy reaching out for anyone to hold his hand. When her mother actually took it, the gesture sent Ruby right out the door to swim before school. Her mother would put up with anything.
    Ruby sucked at her cigarette, hollowing her cheeks, making her head go light, then lifted her chin and exhaled into the night. Quiet like this brought her to the edge of a gaping hole. “We’re a couple of real bastards.” She looked over at her father. His eyes were closed and she thought he was asleep. “Hey,” she barked, poking his ribs.
    “We bought steaks,” he said.
    She pulled the truck right up onto the lawn and jumped from her seat. The front door was locked. She knocked lightly, calling out in a singsong voice, “Mother. Mother.” She kept knocking, gradually with more force. Her father’s door slammed behind her. “Mom,” she called, her voice an apology. She wanted her mother to open the door to her alone. Her mother had to see her without her father there, as if her being alone would make a difference. As if her being alone would invite forgiveness. “Mommy,” she pleaded.
    Her father pounded the door with his flat hand. “Sal. Your daughter’s home.”
    The lock clicked and the door swung open. Sally stood there, light spilling onto the stoop around her, showing through her nightgown, revealing her slight legs. Her hair was different. New bangs skimmed her forehead. Little gold flowers dotted her ears. Neither her coral lipstick nor her wan smile hid the disappointment lingering at the corners of her mouth. She must have finally given up, turned off Steve Allen, and decided to change for bed when they knocked on the door. Shame blossomed in Ruby’s chest.
    “Ruby, honey.” Her mother sighed, drawing her daughter into her arms. Ruby rested her cheek on her mother’s shoulder, breathed in the lily of the valley perfume, felt worry and relief—worry over how she must smell, relief for her mother’s stiff warmth.
    “You must be hungry, Mom. We brought steaks.”
    Teddy pushed past them. “I’ll light the coals.”
    Sally stepped back, examined her daughter. Ruby hastily smoothed her hair. She ran her tongue under her lips, around the inside of her mouth. She wanted a mirror, a comb, and a toothbrush.
    Sally’s smile sagged with reproach. “Your father knows where I keep the aspirin.”
    “In the cupboard, above the percolator,” Teddy hollered on his way out the back door.
     
    Her mother set the suitcase on the spare bed in Ruby’s room.
    “So, here I am, Mom.”
    Sally turned her back to Ruby, clicked open the suitcase, and began shaking out the clothing, separating it into three piles, dark, light, and white. Her arms dipped and retrieved, rising and falling, her naked arm flesh jiggling with the motion. Ruby leaned against the wall, waiting for her mother to ask a question. “I’m sorry to be late, Mom.” She hated that she kept saying Mom, as if it made her a better daughter. As if she should have to be a better daughter. She was in college now. Making her own decisions. “You don’t have to do that.” In the silence that followed, she picked up the alarm clock from the nightstand and slowly wound it. The room—with its seashell lamp, swim trophies, and magazines on the desk, the red pencils in a Hellmann’s jar, the stretched and puckered swimsuits hanging from the doorknob—was quaint, like an exhibit. Not one thing here seemed to be part of Ruby’s new life. Not her mother’s narrow stooped shoulders or her bony fingers checking over a paisley blouse as if she could discover something about Ruby’s new life in a missing white button. “Stop. I said I could do that.”
    Sally paused, and then dropped the blouse in the darks pile. “Your dad will be wanting steak sauce, I suppose.” Each word seemed to be