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Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Cast of Characters
  7. Part One
  8. One
  9. Two
  10. Three
  11. Four
  12. Five
  13. Six
  14. Seven
  15. Eight
  16. Nine
  17. Ten
  18. Eleven
  19. Twelve
  20. Thirteen
  21. Fourteen
  22. Fifteen
  23. Sixteen
  24. Seventeen
  25. Eighteen
  26. Nineteen
  27. Part Two
  28. Twenty
  29. Twenty-one
  30. Twenty-two
  31. Twenty-three
  32. Twenty-four
  33. Twenty-five
  34. Twenty-six
  35. Twenty-seven
  36. Twenty-eight
  37. Twenty-nine
  38. Thirty
  39. Thirty-one
  40. Thirty-two
  41. Thirty-three
  42. Thirty-four
  43. Thirty-five
  44. Thirty-six
  45. Thirty-seven
  46. Thirty-eight
  47. Thirty-nine
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-one
  50. Forty-two
  51. Forty-three
  52. Forty-four
  53. Forty-five
  54. Forty-six
  55. A note on the Author

“But ‘xoxo’ does not mean anything,” I fumed, hating Ruby more than ever before. “It’s so arbitrary: some random letters from a typewriter because there is no way to express what we really feel. It is an attempt to abbreviate emotion, to make it small and unthreatening. The x is a stamp of desire and the o, what is that anyway? A hug? A never-ending circle of insecurity and need?”

I suddenly felt sorry for her, grasping at a reason to write to him. I needed to know why this was so much lighter than the last time she wrote. I thought about her all the time. When Scott and I made love, not only was he imagining I was Ruby, but so was I, trying to remember what it was to be wanted.

This invisible girl-child, ripped Versace ghost-woman, had come to represent the focus of my life, of my work. My mother was dead. My father was long dead. I had no career. My marriage was in tatters. Ruby was all I had to live for.

Twenty-one

image
A ghost

I saw Ruby in the uptown Prada, the night before Christmas, but at first I didn’t believe it was her. I hid in the dressing room and peered out from between the curtains. Surely Ruby was thinner than that? Taller? Didn’t Ruby have famously beautiful skin and hazel eyes? This girl was sawn off at the knee, her eyes were dead and her skin was blotchy. Would I rather that was Ruby and she was uglier than I had thought, or that it was too ugly to be Ruby and wasn’t her at all? I had wanted to come face to face with her for so long, but not if she wasn’t beautiful. Not if she couldn’t give me something to stew over, an excuse to dawdle, daydream, and procrastinate. Now how was I going to waste the next six months?

I turned back to the mirror, willing her to vanish before I did something stupid. And just as I was zipping myself into a pencil skirt, trying not to concentrate on loftier things, like rowing machines and reading groups, the curtains were pulled apart and there she was. It was definitely her: blotchy, stocky, and luminous. Nothing was in place. Not her hair, not her body, not her ill-fitting clothes. Her parka was soaked and she was trailing snow all through the store. I grabbed at a shirt to cover my breasts.

“I’m sorry,” slurred Ruby, “I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

I stared at her transfixed, until Ruby giggled, “Do I know you?”

Still holding the blouse against my breasts, which I assessed, in a glance, to be smaller and firmer than Ruby’s, I whispered, “I’m Scott’s wife.”

Ruby was unruffled. “Oh yeah. Scott from L.A. How is he?”