Jennifer Anne Kogler

Ruby Tuesday | Fun Facts | Read An Excerpt | Buy The Book

Chapter One

It began the day my father sliced off his index finger. I was thirteen, and that was the hottest fall of my life. Summer that year had refused to take its own scheduled vacation. As my older brother Jack’s October wedding approached, our conversations were mired in talk of the perfect honeymoon locale and multilayered carrot cake options.

I’ve never put much stock in the saying that all things have a beginning. After all, I can’t tell you exactly when I realized that my friends at Laguna Heights didn’t read as much as I did. I don’t know when I began to like the way my legs looked in a skirt, the smell of gas stations, or the company of my mother. And while I’m unable to locate the inaugural date of my adolescence, I guess, when I think back on it, I started to become a player in my own life on Jack’s wedding day.

My brother’s reception convinced me that weddings are a tricky business. If they go as planned, some people go home happy, some drunk; the luckiest teeter home both. But like anything that involves planning, there’s always the element of surprise, and Jack’s big day was no exception. There is no such thing as a pleasant surprise at a wedding.

Jack met Mae on a sunny day in June at Mission Beach. The waves were glassy barrels curling two feet overhead, and she liked the way he carved the surf with his board. A few Mai Tais at Woody’s Wharf and a salty kiss later, they were in love—at least, that’s how they told the story at the rehearsal dinner.

In keeping with my family’s tendency to avoid normalcy, Jack and Mae had decided early on to get married at the beach, scorning floral arrangements, stained-glass windows, bow ties, and frocked ministers.

“This ceremony isn’t progressive, it’s preposterous,” my Nana Sue began. “I should not have to wear SPF forty at my grandson’s wedding.” She huffed as she spoke, clutching the peeling paint railing, following my father and me down the earthen stairs toward Woods Cove, a well-hidden beach in Laguna. Nana Sue limped with both legs, but her odd march made her that much more intimidating. Around the weathered banister, a mat of phalecia, lupine, and bright golden poppies wallpapered the hill, swaying in the breeze—a dazzling backdrop to our steep descent.

“This is the only wedding I’ve seen where I have a better chance of catching melanoma than the bridal bouquet,” she wheezed. My grandmother laughed at her own joke with a gentle sucking of air that exploded into a cackle.

I had been told by most everyone who knew her that Nana Sue was beautiful when she was young—so beautiful, in fact, that I wondered if her now-cragged face made her bitter when she stared at it in the morning mirror. Whenever I looked at her, I thought of the faded photo perched atop our TV. In it she stood holding my infant father, Hollis, enveloped by a parched Reno desert, her face shaded with the unmistakable softness of youth. Now she looked jagged and cynical in pictures.

Nana Sue always smoked half a pack of Virginia Slims in the morning and drank at least four tumblers of Knob Creek, straight up, by the time she went to bed. The day of Jack’s wedding, she wore a collared ivory shirt with tiny anchors across it. Navy slacks hung loosely from a tan belt over the SAS deck shoes that women her age often wear. A visor shielded her face. Her hair was the smooth color of Xerox paper, and her face was a dehydrated version of Hollis’s. Still, she was spry for a seventy-four-year-old, and she’d made the five-hour trek in her black ’78 Mercedes from her home in Las Vegas without complaint.

When I had finally reached the roped-off section of the beach at the bottom of the cliff, it was half full with guests mingling in bikinis and swim trunks. Some of Jack’s friends were bumping a volleyball in a circle, killing time. Old beach chairs were strewn in uneven rows around the seaweed-draped podium. Rainbow-colored paper lanterns swung from poles like airy tetherballs in the coastal breeze. I lagged behind as Hollis and Nana Sue plodded toward the matrimonial sandlot.

“Why, that woman’s in a thong!” Nana Sue shouted, looking half amused and half appalled at the procession of scantily clad guests.

“I still can’t believe Jack scheduled this thing during game one of the Series,” my father grumbled. “The kid grew up bleeding Dodger blue.” It was true—the two things the entire Sweet family watched together were Dodger games and sunsets. I’d been initiated at an early age.

In fact, the Los Angeles Dodgers were as close to a religion as we Sweets had. While other girls were learning to crimp, tease, and braid, I was learning to recognize the topspin of a curveball from our field-level box seats at the stadium. A good portion of my life was spent staring out at nine players in Dodger uniforms. Sometimes my eyes would venture toward the faint lights of LA’s urban sprawl outlining the hills of Chavez Ravine. It was understood that Hollis, Jack, and I would be at each home night game. We’d sit side by side, content to spend three hours together fixated on Orel Hershiser’s pitch count. During the season before Jack’s wedding, Hershiser had wowed us, pitching fifty-nine consecutive scoreless innings to break Don Drysdale’s major league record. In between Dodger Dogs and seventh-inning stretches, I had discovered that watching baseball with my father was a way of surreptitiously peering into his past. My father had grown up on legends like Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Maury Wills, and he prided himself on his knowledge of even the most obscure Dodger trivia. He talked warmly of hot afternoons watching games with Nana Sue when they’d made the trip from their home in Reno to Los Angeles.

“I just wish the wedding wasn’t during the Series, that’s all,” my father said, tugging my ponytail.

Nana Sue stood fully upright as her arm shot toward the pocket of Hollis’s pants. She clenched a handful of his yellow linen trousers, searching for something.

“You don’t have a radio on you, do you, Hollis?” Nana scowled. “Because, I swear, honey, you’ll break Jack’s heart right open if he sees you listening to him say ‘I do’ in one ear and the broadcast of the bottom of the fifth in the other.”

Hollis stood silent.

“You aren’t in play? You don’t even have a double sawbuck on the game, right?” Hollis and Nana Sue’s conversations were often sprinkled with strange words like sawbuck that I rarely understood. Still, I could tell by Nana Sue’s venomous tone that she meant business. “Hollis, look at me: Couldn’t you spare a day? This is your only son’s wedding.” My father’s face gave him away—he grimaced like he was suffering from a migraine, and his expression read like a confession.

“Oh my word, Hollis . . . you do have money on the game!”

“It’s not what you think, Nana Sue,” Hollis said. I wondered if he’d ever called her Mom.

“I’m worried about you, Hollis—and this is coming from me—a railbird who split time between Reno and Vegas her whole life. This isn’t natural. Are you in the hole? Are you in trouble?” Nana Sue’s anger straightened her spine.

“No, of course not, Nana. It was last winter when I placed . . . I had no way of . . . it was a future on the World Series. Look, it’s a long shot that might pay off big.” Hollis glared sternly at Nana Sue and then at me. It was the kind of glare parents have been directing at children for generations—a signal that this discussion was not suitable for young listeners. My ears immediately pricked up.

“Don’t worry, Sue. I’ll watch the highlights later on Channel Seven like everyone else here. No radios. It’s just me, you, and Ruby here, enjoying Jack’s big day.”

Hollis shot me a knowing look—a look that I can still visualize. I was the only one privy to my father’s scheme for the evening, partly because it included me: Once the preacher introduced Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sweet and the party began, Hollis would switch on the transistor sleeping in his front pocket. Assuming I could avoid the pubescent table and jockey for a seat next to him, he’d slip me a side of his earphones and we could listen to the last innings of game one.

I hoped I was up to the task.

We continued down the beach in search of Jack—my father’s tall shadow stood against the twilight, my grandmother’s short silhouette lost in his, with my own trailing behind.

Hollis spotted Jack in the corner of the makeshift beach chapel. His green Hawaiian shirt and Dockers looked brand-new.

“Dad, Nana Sue . . . right on time.” Jack grinned, his bleached teeth shining in the orange rays of the setting sun.

“Are you going to pull this thing off before it gets pitch black, Jack?” my father asked.

“Or are we going to have to rely on the moonlight?”

“We have plenty of time. The sun won’t set for another fifteen minutes.”

“Should be charming,” Nana Sue added, putting on a saccharine smile. Her perfect dentures looked odd against the backdrop of her sagging, liver-spotted face.

“Where is Uncle Larry?” I asked, directing my question at Jack.

Nana Sue bristled. “You have the child calling him ‘uncle’ now, Hollis? For shame!”

“Larry is not your uncle, Ruby,” Jack said, his face lit with amusement.

“That greenie is your father’s bookie,” Nana Sue snapped.

“Dad’s what?” It was more of the same—words that mystified, phrases that loitered unexplained. I made a mental note to write any new words down when I got home.

“Never mind, Rube. I’ll explain later.” I knew he would do no such thing. The subject change had an immediate permanence.

“Speaking of unlikely guests, Jack,” Nana Sue began, “is Darlene expected?”

“I don’t know. But she does know about the wedding. I invited her.”

My father’s jaw dropped, and Nana Sue clicked her tongue at the news of Darlene’s invitation.

None of us, Nana Sue included, was on good terms with my mother. Whenever she popped in on Jack and me, she lugged in presents that defied the conventions of gift giving. Once it was a portrait of her made entirely of tree bark by an Amish artist, another time a gift-wrapped sack of jalapeño beef jerky from an Indian reservation near Tucson. Then there was a Jackson Browne album with the signature of Jackson himself on the cover. Like all things associated with my mother, the authenticity of these offerings was tainted with a maddening uncertainty.

The way we figured it, Darlene Sweet required three things: her independence, the Rolling Stones, and Johnnie Walker by the handle. Hollis had a standard response whenever her name was mentioned. He called her a social chameleon—she changed from hippie to hard rock in an instant, always the most stylish person in any room. She just didn’t take to children. “Can’t choose who you love,” he would say, but he never seemed to give up on her entirely.

To me, Darlene was like the Santa Ana wind. She blew in about twice a year, made my face contort into strange expressions of discomfort, and then disappeared. In her wake she left the debris she had dressed up in wrapping paper. Worse than a completely absent mother, she came around just often enough that I couldn’t forget her.

I turned my attention back to Jack’s handsome face and asked him if he was nervous. I thought this was a question I should ask—someone had done it in every movie I’d seen that involved a wedding.

“Nah. My part is simple. I just have to repeat what someone else says.” Jack patted my head in a fatherly fashion. He had taken to doing this in the month since he’d moved out of our house, and it only made me miss him more.

“Jack, I’m proud of you. You’re the luckiest guy here.” My father rarely spoke in superlatives, but today he was all parental pride. He gripped Jack’s shoulder with brawny affection in that way men do.

“I should get married more often,” Jack said. “I’m liable to drown in all these compliments.”

“I wouldn’t worry, Jack,” Nana Sue said, laughing. “You’re far too shallow to drown.”

This was the kind of nimble, harmless banter characteristic of every Sweet gathering.

And I loved it.

Jack turned to leave. “Well, I should probably go take my place.”

He stopped halfway between the podium and the spot where the chairs for the wedding party had been set up.

“I’ll see you after it’s official,” he said with a wink.

Of course, it wasn’t a matter of if my mother would arrive, but when. Darlene didn’t appear until a few minutes after Jack had taken his position by the podium at the end of the seashell-bordered aisle. She sauntered toward us from the flowered cliff, waving, her eyes shaded by Jackie O sunglasses. Most everyone on the beach, even the youngest guests, focused their gaze upward as she approached.

The last time I’d seen my mother, she was in town to catch Rod Stewart at the Coach House, and she called to say she wanted to spend the afternoon with me. I remember sneaking upstairs as she approached the house wearing purple leg warmers and a baggy tee. I didn’t want her to see that I’d been looking out the kitchen window for hours, waiting for her Thunderbird to motor up our hill. We spent the afternoon at the Salvation Army sifting through old clothes that smelled like wet pavement. She was convinced we were both minutes away from a “great find.” I came away with a hat that said “Sun Records” to complement her “Elvis Lives” rhinestone belt. She dropped me off in front of the house and told me to “send Hollis her love,” like always. It had been years since she’d stayed the night at our house, and I knew it would be months before I saw her again. Six months had passed between our shopping trip and the day of Jack’s wedding. I often wondered why she bothered coming at all.

Today Darlene’s hair was an unconvincing shade of blonde, and her tight red halter-top sundress clashed with her broiled skin. Huge iridescent sea horse earrings dangled to her shoulders like a pair of competing wind chimes.

Before any of us could manage an awkward greeting, the wedding march boomed out from enormous Bose speakers on the ocean side of the beach, and people began adjusting their beach chairs to view the windblown procession. The stately chorus struggled against an off-key orchestra of rusty hinges.

Five bars later, the sound of an approaching siren swallowed every other noise. Mae had arrived, chauffeured in a lifeguard jeep, red lights ablaze. As the jeep jitterbugged across the sand, she stood, gripping her lavender bouquet of El Moro Canyon wildflowers with one hand and the roll bar with the other.

I had met Mae a few times before at tense family dinners and decided she was pretty, but as I looked at her in her white appliquéd lace bikini, she became a gorgeous sea siren. Her short, shell-encrusted veil flapped in the wind behind her tall glistening frame as fountains of sand sprayed in her wake. The lifeguard killed the engine and rushed to the other side of the jeep, helping Mae down from the passenger side. She stared at Jack as she made her way to him from the parked jeep, and soon they stood hand in hand. They were a couple of glamorous beach bums, barefoot and squinting at each other through the orange dusk of a slouching sun.

“May you ride the perfect wave, catch the perfect tube, and forever be committed to the endless summer that is marriage,” the preacher-surfer hybrid concluded, smoothing his rumpled Hawaiian shirt. He ended by pointing to the location of the buffet, set near the rising tide. Scattered folding tables sank slowly in the white sand, alongside a wedding banquet offering a choice of fish taco especiales, pinto beans, guacamole, cheese wheels, crackers, and fresh sliced California-grown oranges and strawberries.

As we walked toward the food with the other sunscreened guests, I could feel my palms turn clammy and my stomach rumble with nervous hunger. It was easy to forget that Jack was now a married man in the excitement of my father’s and my World Series listening gambit.

“Alright, Ruby, as soon as we sit down with our plates, I’ll hand you your end of the earphones.” Hollis whispered to escape the attention of Nana Sue. “Slip the cord behind your earlobe and put the speaker in your ear.” Hollis viewed this game’s outcome as the best predictor of the Series. If the Dodgers won the first game, they’d win the whole thing. As always, the odds backed him up.

We both piled our paper plates with watermelon and corn tortillas stuffed with charbroiled ahi and green cabbage and sat down at the nearest sand-anchored table. We were soon flanked by brittle relatives: Nana Sue on one side and my mother Darlene on the other. The silence led me to believe that, at least for the moment, everyone had chosen his or her taco especiale over conversation. I was relieved.

As I grabbed for the earpiece under the table, I felt a naughty exhilaration. This was better than smoking a forbidden cigarette or shotgunning a warm beer with Jack behind the garage. Cupping the earpiece in my hand, I pretended to scratch my ear. Seamless. Contact had been established. I had performed as well as expected. The Dodgers, however, were losing to the Oakland Athletics, 4–2. As I looked at the mixed company around me, I remembered how quickly things could turn from silence to a searing argument at any Sweet gathering. Both Hollis and I tried to keep up with conversation between spoonfuls of pinto beans and earfuls of the Dodger game.

Darlene stared at my profile and leaned toward my father.

“Hollis, Ruby looks as pale as a ghost. You should send her outside more often. She reads too much.” She waited for Hollis’s answer. “Hollis? Hollis, are you listening to me? I’m trying to communicate with you here.”

Nothing.

“Hollis? Are you deaf? Are we going to spend our son’s wedding in silence?” There was a look of serene pleasure on Hollis’s face. He had not heard a word of Darlene’s umbrage—he was under the spell of longtime hall-of-fame Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully.

“Answer me! What in the world is wrong with you? Are you calculating over/unders on how long the party is going to last?

“Fine, ignore me. That’s mature. It’s worked for you in the past.” Sitting up slightly, she reached into her frayed yellow purse and produced a silver hip flask. She poured three seconds’ worth of brown liquid into her bottle of Dos Equis and then downed a significant portion. Nana Sue darted her hand across the table.

“Mind if I borrow a drop or two?” Nana Sue said, flashing her dentured smile.

“Sure, have four. We might as well try to drink Hollis’s misbehavior off our minds, right?” Darlene snickered to herself. My father snapped to attention.

“Let’s not turn this into one of our clashes. . . . And by the way, Darlene—Ruby is pale because the sun causes cancer. Maybe you haven’t heard the news. The statistics are quite compelling.” Nice save, Hollis.

Normally Darlene would have deferred to the line she used whenever Hollis’s penchant for sarcasm found its way into one of their divisive talks. Sarcasm destroys families, Hollis. This time she snapped back on topic.

“I’m not encouraging you to marinate her in the sun—but she looks like she’s dying. Her skin is translucent—I mean, I can practically see through her.” Being the ball in one of my parents’ games of verbal Ping-Pong had stopped bothering me long before that moment. I did what I used to do best: I kept silent and let the argument run its course.

“She is also going to live a long, cancer-free life. Darlene, you really should read. . . .” My father trailed off as a crack from the earpiece tickled my ear. It was the sound of a bat making contact, piped in through the earphone. The Dodgers had just scored another run, making the score A’s four, Dodgers three.

I nudged Hollis’s knee to remind him that Darlene expected him to finish his sentences. My heart was pounding, knowing full well the volatile table would erupt into all out verbal warfare if we were found out. The plan began to seem foolhardy, and I wondered if we’d even make it through an inning. Hollis was talking to me now, and not about the wedding but the World Series playing out in his ear.

“I know, Ruby. Four, three—it’s a real barn burner!” I put my face in my hands, frustrated, near tears. Nana Sue spoke next.

“What in the world are you talking about, Hollis? Four three what? Maybe you better lay off the hooch.” Nana Sue’s southern accent kicked in full force, as it always did when she was stern or angry. Hollis spoke again.

“Four three two one.” He offered up a dumb smile to the table.

“Lately Hollis has been countin’ when he’s excited,” I added, taking my father’s lead. “That’s what Dr. Toni Grant tells people to do.”

“Since when has Ruby Tuesday been calling you Hollis, Hollis?” Darlene demanded. This made me angry. My mother was now on the offensive. I looked at my father. He wasn’t with us—he was with Scioscia, at the plate with a three-two count in the bottom of the seventh. I tried to step up and save him.

“Well, that’s his name, right, Darlene?” It was the first time I had said my mother’s name out loud to her face, and it felt good. Everyone was staring at me. I continued. “Hollis says if I want to be treated like an adult, I need to start acting like one. You don’t call Hollis ‘husband,’ do ya?” I was really on a roll. Heck, Nana Sue had laughed. But Darlene’s glare was toxic.

“Now you see why I can’t live with her full-time. The child’s spoiled. She has no manners. Soon she’ll be swaggering like some Vegas cocktail waitress.” She marshaled her flask back from Nana Sue and took a swig. Then she closed her eyes and let out a burning alcoholic sigh.

“Oh, I don’t know if that’s so bad, Darlene,” Hollis began. “It’s what you were when I met you.” I heard my mother’s voice echo in my head. Sarcasm destroys families. Things were heating up. Darlene’s eyes got smaller.

“I don’t mean that, Hollis. I mean if she doesn’t have any discipline she’s going to end up like you or me or like the rest of this family!” Darlene raised her hands above her head.

“Even Jack—I thought he’d turn out all right; he’s got a good head—but look at this nonsense.” She waved her arms at the tables full of bathing suit–clad revelers with sunburned cheeks now mingling in the dusk. Hollis raised his arms toward the blackening sky.

“This is our son’s wedding. Why don’t you show some class.”

“Oh, yeah,” Darlene countered with a boozy leer. “Nothing says class like a bride in a bikini.”

“Why do you insist on being so critical of this family?” Hollis tried to muffle his anger.

“Ruby shouldn’t talk like she does. She’s only twelve.”

“I’m thirteen.” It was the first time I can remember interjecting my own opinion into one of their displays of marital unbliss.

It wasn’t long before Nana Sue weighed in too. She was good at playing the peacekeeper, able to keep the passion of my parents at bay with one well-timed utterance.

“Let’s keep things civil. Ruby, do not talk back to your mother,” Nana Sue scolded me.

Scioscia had grounded out to second base. The seventh inning had ended. And Darlene remounted her attack.

“You’ve got money on the game tonight, don’t you, Hollis?” Darlene was relentless.

“You’re always betting on something, aren’t you, you fool? In fact, I’m surprised you’re missing the game. Your whole life revolves around whether some round object is hit by some idiot over a stupid fence, or put in a hole, or through a basket.” The drunker Darlene got, the more insulting she became. “You are pa-thetic. Our only son’s wedding.” My mother’s face was glowing with an arrogant expression. Her garbled speech had quieted the table. I tried to block out everything else, concentrating on Vin Scully and the Dodgers in my ear. The Sweet family silence lasted through the break in between innings—a pitch for Farmer John Bacon, Union Oil, and season ticket packages. Nana Sue spoke first.

“Darlene, we haven’t yet asked what you have been up to. How rude of us all,” she said. I knew it was taking all of Nana Sue’s resolve to be courteous for Jack’s sake. Reluctantly Darlene set her grievances aside and answered the question.

“Actually, I just left the Sawdust Festival. You know that macramé planter that hangs from the porch eave? I sell—”

“Well, guys, how does it look?” Jack approached, flashing his silver screen smile and wiggling his ring finger. He had been making the compulsory rounds and had saved our table for the end. Mae had split off to mingle with a table full of her own adoring relatives.

“Look, the band’s about to start playing.” Jack seemed to sense that conversation hadn’t flowed in his absence. “Promise you won’t sit here for the rest of the night—dance a little. For me. Please.”

He turned away, and I envied him. Jack was married now. His escape had a permanence that I could only imagine. Now he would only have to sit at the Sweet table for weddings and funerals. Mae and Jack were a we now. I was jealous.

Men in white shirts and white pants moved about lighting the large Tiki torches that surrounded the tables and the dance floor. It had grown dark. Guests flocked toward the band as they began playing The Platters’ “Twilight Time.” The Dodger game had reached the ninth.

“This isn’t music with any beat to it,” Darlene slurred.

“Darlene, you’re drunk,” Hollis told her. She turned away from him and faced the cover band jamming in their matching OP shirts and shorts.

“I’ve heard better dance music in elevators—how about a little ‘Summer Romance’ or ‘Everybody Needs Somebody to Love’! ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ would be better than this garbage.” My mother’s heckling disturbed a few nearby guests, and once again Hollis played the diplomat for a drunk Darlene.

“Ruby, how would you feel about going over to the buffet for some more guacamole, then having a dance or two?”

Hollis didn’t wait for my answer. He grabbed my hand forcefully and walked us toward the food. We kept our backs to Darlene and Nana Sue, who were still discussing whether to dance, eat, or sulk. The small wire connecting Hollis’s right ear to my left kept us close. We tried to match our steps in the cold sand, like contestants in some kind of three-legged race, and I no longer worried that someone might see the slender cord that held us together. My father waited until a significant distance separated us from our disgruntled family group before he spoke.

“Bottom of the ninth, four to three, Dodgers trailing with two outs. Eckersley walked Davis. Lasorda’s bringing in Gibson to pinch-hit even though he can barely walk—the game’s on the line.” His face was flush with the thrill of a close contest. I squeezed his hand until he spoke again.

“Come on. Let’s go pillage the cheese and fruit and hear the end of the game in peace.”

The full moon shone like a flashlight in the sky directly behind Hollis, leaving what looked like a snail trail on the water. His eyes were dilated with excitement. His cheeks no longer sagged from the forced smiles and congratulations of the day. The reception line in front of us cast dancing shadows against the Woods Cove cliffs. The linen-covered buffet table was the closest thing to the water.

In my ear, narrating events thirty miles away, Vin Scully described the gimpy Gibson dragging his injured leg to home plate. It wasn’t long before Eckersley had Gibson down no balls, two strikes. Hollis stood to my left, mindlessly cutting thin slices of cheddar cheese. I shoved sesame crackers into my mouth, not chewing but soaking them with saliva instead. The crowd roared in my ear as Gibson fouled two away and took three pitches for balls. Eckersley was throwing nothing but fastballs. The count was now full: three balls, two strikes. I looked back at my family among the drunken revelers.

Nana Sue and Jack stood at arm’s length, moving in firelight dim enough to hide any trace of awkwardness. Darlene stood on the side of the dance floor, glowing with pride as she tried to catch the eye of her son waltzing. They all looked happy, their faces bright with a beaming mix of moon and twilight. But then Vin Scully’s excited voice piped in and brought my attention back to the roar of fifty-six thousand fans at Dodger Stadium.

Gibson had connected with a hanging slider.

“Way, way back, back to the track . . . it . . . is . . . gone.” The broadcaster’s voice was barely audible above the madness of the crowd. It was a noise so loud, for a moment I could hear nothing else. It was deafening and it was wonderful. “In a year of the improbable,” Vin Scully shouted into my ear, trying not to be drowned out, “the impossible has happened!” My father jumped three feet in the air, painfully yanking the left side of the earphones out of my ear.

The screaming delight of thousands of delirious Dodger fans gave way to the solitary, unnatural howl of my father. I looked at him. He was staring wide-eyed at the buffet table. His face had drained as his eyes turned over in their sockets like rolling marbles.

And there it was.

At what point during Vin Scully’s call of Gibson’s home run my father missed the cheddar cheese and, instead, sliced off the top of his index finger, is anyone’s guess. It was severed right above his knuckle. Resting there, the finger might have blended innocently with the edge of the cutting board if it hadn’t been for the shimmering pool of bright red blood spreading across the white tablecloth like an accelerated shadow at dusk. Transfixed by the detached portion of Hollis’s finger, I moved closer to it. It looked abandoned—a little white death adjacent to a half-eaten wheel of cheddar cheese.

Hollis stopped howling and covered one hand with the other, blood dripping from the wound through his clenched fist, spotting the white sand beneath us.

The band stopped abruptly and a crowd gathered around us, dozens of eyes bouncing in unison from my father’s gory hand to the loose earphones that dangled from his ear, to the cheese, to the knife, and finally to the bloodless tip of his index finger, now completely surrounded by a scarlet island of stained tablecloth. The woman closest to me let out a murderous shriek. A lady with graying braids dropped her plate of cantaloupe and keeled over backward like a falling domino in the sand.

Darlene and Hollis had never been silent when together in a confined space, but as my mother drove her mint-green, mint-condition Thunderbird through a maze of red lights and red stop signs on Pacific Coast Highway, an absolute stillness filled the car. Hollis’s finger rested between them, packed in a Ziploc full of ice from the caterer’s beer cooler. When we arrived at St. Joseph Hospital, Darlene gingerly carried the finger inside.

Mae and Jack arrived a few minutes after we did, perhaps slowed by the clanging tin cans attached to their bumper and the “Just Married” sign reflected in the rearview mirror of Jack’s jeep. The waiting room wasn’t as exhilarating or as dire as I expected. Small clusters of people just like us waited for news. We finally got word. Hollis’s finger could not be reattached. It would be a stump. And it would only be a matter of months before his loss was reduced to a punch line at family gatherings: Your finger just called, Hollis, and it wants you to know it misses you. Do you have any finger to go with the crackers? How ’bout a high-four, Hollis? Once word got out to the kids at Laguna Heights—which was a certainty considering much of Laguna had been at the wedding—the fingerless jokes would be flying at school too.

“You know Dad’s going to be just fine. No one dies from a fatal finger wound, Ruby.” Jack tried to comfort me, but all I could think about was the rubble of shaken guests and bloodied napkins that our family had left at his wedding. I wished the Sweets could do something—anything—in a normal fashion.

“Aren’t you mad that all this broke up your wedding?”

“Nah. I mean, I think I was about to be roped into dancing with Mae’s mother. And that, Ruby, wouldn’t have done anyone any good.” Jack’s happiness, usually as infectious as a winter cold, had no effect on me that night. My father was released in a little over three hours. His right hand was now a mound of gauze. His eyes were pools of dejection.

“How much did you have on the Dodgers, Hollis?” Darlene’s question came without a trace of humor once we were back in her car.

“What makes you say I bet money on the game?” He had never directly discussed his gambling in front of me before. I willed myself still.

“Oh, maybe because you snuck a radio into your son’s wedding. Maybe the fact that you’re an appendage short now because they won. You may bleed Dodger blue, but you don’t bleed for Dodger blue.” Hollis chuckled for the first time since he and his finger had parted ways.

“It was a future on the Series I placed at Caesars months ago. Forty to one odds.”

“How much did you lay down?”

“A lot.”

“Translate ‘a lot’ into dollars.”

“Enough.”

“It’s been a long night, Hollis. I’m tired. You’re tired. Our son got married. You chopped off your finger. Excuse me if I don’t want to dance around this with you. How much?”

Hollis whispered into Darlene’s ear, close enough to kiss it. They were telling secrets. They were married.

“Holy—I mean, Hollis! That’s a fortune. That’s an absolute fortune.”

“I know.” Hollis looked down at his bandaged hand. The white gauze was already bloodstained. They had all but forgotten me, silent in the backseat. So had I.

“Why, you could do anything with that. That’s a college fund. That’s a mortgage payoff. That’s a future.” Darlene was stunned, almost proud. Quiet flooded the car. She glanced at me in the rearview mirror. Hollis finally spoke.

“The Dodgers haven’t won the Series yet. Just game one. There’s no use even talking about it.”

“I wish that you weren’t so good at what you do.” Darlene paused. “I mean, you don’t have a job. I’m no example. I stopped trying long ago. But you could start with this. You could stop.”

“We’ve had this conversation before. You said it—we’re both tired.”

“You know it’s not real, right? Putting money down on a bunch of morons playing games—it isn’t a career. It isn’t even legal.” Darlene was never shy about voicing her opinion—to her, Hollis was a waste. The blinker ticked away like a metronome keeping the rhythm of our silence. We turned onto Bent Twig Road, and we were home.

Like most houses perched on the hills overlooking the beaches of Laguna, ours appeared as if one hiccup of the earth would loosen it from the hillside and send it tumbling into the sea. Darlene left the car running and opened my side door. She kneeled down and wrapped her arms around me. Then she pushed me an arm’s length away and gave me a purposeful stare.

“Ruby Tuesday—this is good-bye for a while. I’m going to miss you while I’m gone.” I couldn’t bring myself to do more than stare back at her.

“Look. You don’t have to listen to me, but I want you to do two things while I’m away. Do what Hollis says. You try to get as smart as you can, and you can get out of here.

Hollis will send you to college wherever you want. Do you understand, Ruby?” Darlene said it with the kind of tone that begged for my full attention. She wanted her words remembered, cherished, reflected upon. Maybe she did care. Maybe I cared. Both options bothered me.

I nodded and she pulled me back to her, squeezing tightly. As fast as I could get away, I slammed the car door and left my mother and her familiar good-bye behind me. Hollis opened our front door with his good hand, and I followed him inside.

We went straight to the kitchen and Hollis plopped on the first of three bar stools at the counter. Jack, Hollis, and I had spent countless nights on these cold, metallic stools, leaving them warm with body heat when we left to go to bed. Jack’s stool was empty now.

I grabbed two bowls, two spoons, and a box of Frosted Flakes from the cupboard and sat next to my father. When he finally spoke, his voice seemed distant and hollow.

“I bet we’re both starving. Cereal. I’ve always thought cereal was a large step for civilization. It has a simple elegance to it. The bowl. The spoon. The milk. The flakes.” Tired creases returned to his face. He began to look like himself again as he spooned flakes with his good hand.

“Hollis?”

“Yes?”

There were so many questions I wanted to ask. Like how the Dodgers winning the World Series was going to pay for a future. Like what my father did if he didn’t go to work. Like what life at the end of Bent Twig Road was going to be like without Jack. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t ask any of them. I would find out soon enough.