“Fine,” Eli weighs in. Finally! “I’ll put Raffi in the safe.”
“He’s changed his name,” says Daisy. “To Moses.”
“Why ‘Moses’?” Charlotte says.
“Because,” Daisy says.
“Because he was found in the bulrushes?”
Daisy looks up at her mother: coolly, dead-eyed, appraising.
“Moses it is.” Eli breaks their mini-standoff. “Moses is going to jail.”
“Not jail,” Daisy says. “We’re protecting him, Daddy.”
“He’ll be safe in the safe,” Eli says. “That’s why they call it that.”
WHEN THE INTERCOM buzzes, Daisy runs to push the button. She likes to be in control. Eli and Charlotte converge at the door.
Rocco has never gone out with a woman who wasn’t pretty, which may be part of the problem. This one (Ruth? Ruby?) has stylishly streaked red-blond hair and the startled expression of someone who has cultivated a perpetual air of surprise: intelligent, but still girlishly sweet and attentive. She’s graceful, and looks even more slight beside Charlotte’s tall, solid brother. But there’s a tensile strength about her; she could defend herself if she had to. There’s something doll-like about how her eyes blink: too fast and then too slowly—Charlotte finds it unsettling. Please, she prays. Not another lunatic. What exactly is she praying to? The god of her brother’s love life?
There’s no reason to think this one’s crazy just because the others were. And her smile is friendly and (even Charlotte has to admit) genuine.
She wears a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, cropped white cotton pants. A large straw tote bag completes the look of an early-autumn weekend guest.
“This is Ruth,” says Rocco. “My friend Ruth Seagram. My sister, Charlotte; my brother-in-law, mi hermano, Eli. Where’s Daisy?” Rocco pretends not to see Daisy pressed against the back of Eli’s legs.
“I don’t know,” says Eli. “She was here a second ago. Daisy?”
Silence. Silence. A braver child would have giggled, would have wanted to give herself away. It’s likely that Daisy won’t say a word to Ruth all evening. Charlotte hopes that Rocco has warned her: It’s not personal.
When Charlotte hugs Rocco, he pats her back, a little too hard, but he means it as love. She hopes. Then she leans over to give Ruth the full-on big-sister open-hearted, open-armed welcome.
Ruth’s embrace is light and relaxed. She neither freezes nor hangs on as if to keep from drowning, like some of Rocco’s girlfriends had. Charlotte finds that reassuring.
For some reason no one seems capable of moving out of the doorway. Either Charlotte or Eli should step back and make some welcoming gesture, but neither does.
Ruth reaches into her tote bag and thrusts a package at Charlotte. Thinking of Mae-Lynn and her organic broccoli crowns, Charlotte flinches, even as she reminds herself that it’s normal—polite!—to bring a hostess gift.
“Sticky buns,” Ruth says. “Caramel butter walnut. My grandma baked them this afternoon. They’re practically warm from the oven. They’re delicious. Try one.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte says. “I will. We can have them with dessert—”
“I mean . . . try one now.” Ruth means now.
Charlotte waves vaguely back into the loft, toward the kitchen, as if calling as her witness the delicious smell of frying potatoes. Potato pasta—pasta with tiny, deliciously browned potato cubes—is her fallback dish when someone (let’s say her brother) is bringing a guest and doesn’t tell her, or doesn’t know, if the person is vegetarian.
“Smells delish,” Ruth says.
Charlotte dislikes that word, delish—it sets her teeth on edge. And now she gets to dislike herself: her petty snobbishness about language.
“Potato pasta?” says Rocco.
“Duh.” Charlotte regrets her impatience. Her poor brother! He was only trying to show . . . what? Belonging, familiarity. He knows what foods they eat. Around him, Charlotte often wants a do-over. It’s not her fault if her life seems—is—easier than his. Maybe she has better luck.
Growing up in the country with a crazy mother, they were in a class of their own. But after Charlotte married Eli, it got harder to pretend that the differences between her life and Rocco’s life don’t matter. Charlotte wants to hug Rocco again, but doesn’t want Ruth to think she’s being possessive.
“Go ahead. Try them.” Ruth brandishes the paper bag at Charlotte.
Insisting? Imploring? Both.
Charlotte can’t help feeling annoyed. Extremely annoyed. Day after day, she struggles to keep her daughter from eating excessive amounts of sugar, and now their guest has brought a sugary dessert.
Charlotte looks at Rocco. From the corner of her eye she sees Eli silently asking his brother-in-law, hermano, Who have you brought us now?
Rocco smiles a dopey grin that Charlotte can’t remember seeing before. A new expression. That must mean something, or maybe not. Maybe it’s just new.
Eli says, “Why are we standing in the doorway? Please, come in.” But he can’t move without pushing Daisy, who’s still behind him, clinging to his legs, taking baby steps backwards when he does.
Charlotte can’t move, either. It’s as if Ruth’s parcel is casting a spell. Doing the wrong thing could ruin the entire evening. Their whole relationship with Ruth.
Ruth says, “I know this is crazy, but I really want you guys to try these.” Crazy? Now she has their attention. She sets the bag down on the bare wooden floor.
There will be a grease spot! How can Ruth not know? How can Rocco not say anything? Charlotte almost moans. Rocco is watching Ruth. His gaze is approving, or at least not disapproving. In the past Charlotte and Eli noticed he hardly looked at his girlfriends. He didn’t seem to see them. Okay, Charlotte can live with Ruth bullying them into trying her grandma’s sticky buns if Rocco looks at her. If making them eat sweets before dinner is the worst thing she ever does. If Daisy tries a tiny piece and no more.
Ruth repeats, “I know this is crazy.” She’s talking to Charlotte now, the judgmental sister she needs to win over. Maybe she also intuits that Charlotte distrusts women who are overly friendly to Eli, her handsome husband.
“You know how they say that when you pick fresh corn, even if you bring it straight to the table, the sugar starts converting to starch? Well, that’s how it is with my grandma’s baking. They’re best right out of the oven, and then they’re still great but . . . less. Taste them. Every minute that passes, they’re less perfect. Though they’re still pretty good.”
“Fine,” Charlotte says, if only to make Ruth pick the bag up off the floor.
It would never occur to Charlotte to eat a sticky bun standing in the front hall. But Ruth makes it seem as if it would be hostile to refuse or even insist they wait for later. Ruth pries the gooey pastry from a corrugated plastic tray.
“Here. Take a whole one,” says Ruth. “You need to see how my grandma does the icing. It takes her hours and a lifetime of practice to get it right. She says she puts the sun on each one because she wants to bring light and warmth to everyone who eats them. She has this mystical spiritual thing about suns having eight rays. It’s the number of infinity, or balance. I never remember. She knows magical stuff like that.”