Audrey Hepburn's Pearls: Part I

Chapter 104.1: 1995, Ruiz

Chapter 104.1: 1995, Ruiz

On Monday evening, I was sitting at the kitchen table eating a muffin with the New York Times spread across before me. The Sunday comics section was filling it up. I was happily sitting there, reading the rest of me and Ambrose's favorite comics.

Ambrose had called at seven like he had before our disagreement. If you could call it that. He'd still sounded grateful, and I had to admit I was grateful, too. We'd spoken happily to each other, and when I mentioned I had the Sunday paper in the brown paper bag ready to go out to the recycling outside, he'd gotten all excited and asked if we could read the comics together like we used to.

My heart had filled at that moment, something like honey and warm cheese. Those two strange tastes together, beautifully sweet and good at the same time.

I'd said yes just as eagerly as he did, and I'd pulled those papers out of the trash for him. We'd spent a good five minutes reading comics. I told him what was going on in each panel, what the characters said. I even described the colors for him, from those limited colors the newspapers use.

He'd been so happy. He'd started talking to me about how we used to read those when we were little at my Nana's. We were talking about how even though there were no cartoons on Sunday mornings, those comics were like the cartoons. How they were even better than the cartoons on Saturday. When he got a warning that he was a minute over his call time by the same nurse as always, we'd laughed at her and hung up so kindly. But not before he reminded me that tomorrow I had to come in. He'd assured me it wouldn't be scary. That he'd be okay.

I believed him. I promised myself I'd be okay, too, even though some things are not so easy to hear. I had to be, for him. I had to remember his feelings, too. He was going through a lot. I was going through a lot, but. We were both going through a lot.

I was reading what some bumbling dog was up to, drinking some orange tea. It was still warm, and I'd put a sprinkle of cinnamon in there. I'd noticed Georgina liked her's with cinnamon, with Miss Cha Cha putting cinnamon in there all the time. So I put cinnamon in mine. Something in me was satisfied, warm and gentle.

I picked up my tea cup, sipping slowly. My eyes closed and I breathed out, Ambrose's smiling face appearing. He was smiling in the hallway of the rehab, cradling the black pay phone-like phone, talking to me and-

Ring, ring, ring

My head snapped up from my tea. I set it on the yellow table cloth with a small thud, porcelain meeting cotton. On the third ring, I was up and going towards the phone. The clock on the wall was telling me it was almost seven-thirty, so the only people who could be calling would be a parent from Miss Cha Cha's dance school, calling to cancel for a session tomorrow. Some child was maybe sick, maybe in trouble and couldn't come to dance class as punishment.

A strange calm swirled and danced in my heart, warm like the cinnamon in my tea as I picked up that phone. A content calm, telling me it was my job now to take down such cancellations. I was her secretary now, after all.

I was smiling so much when I picked up that phone.

But the voice on the other end after my professional greeting made my smile drop a million miles away.

"Ruiz? Oh, so you're at Ambrose's? I see."

No "hello". No "how are you doing?" My lips went into a thin line immediately, but not from anger. From a wobbly feeling in my heart, like I was going to fall down inside of myself, as if my heart were weak knees instead of my legs.