Page 136 of Vera Stein Is Fine
“I was never very good at comforting. Even with your mother. Lord, she had such a soft heart. I didn’t dote on you like I should have. But I did push you in the same way I wished someone had pushed me.”
“I’m not you, Ruby.” It was a phrase I’d said so often that it might as well have been carved into my forehead.
She chuckled. “You know, when your mother grew up, I thought that was it and I was done being a mom. I thought it was just something you could clock out of, but then you came along and your mother’s health... Well, I took on a role with you I’d never planned for.”
“You resent me for it,” I said softly. “It’s more obvious than you think.”
She blinked a few times, holding her eyes shut for a moment, before saying, “There was a time when that was true. Vera, I clawed my way through life. Through this business. No one wanted to see women succeed back then, especially not one who was a single mother. I was as much of a set piece as the goddamned trees.”
“I know it wasn’t easy for you back then. And I know you think I’m throwing a perfectly good opportunity away by not taking the offer. But I’ve waited all this time to see my words come to life. And now that it doesn’t feel so impossible, I want to know that I’m doing this on purpose.The Wunderkinddoes not give me that feeling. It’s a thing I never knew how to let go of until it was forcibly taken from me. And if I hadn’t driven off with my laptop on my car that day, I don’t think I ever would have moved on to the next thing.”
“The next thing?” she asked, one brow arched, her interest very clearly piqued.
“It’s in the baby stages, so don’t get too excited.” Just talking about it out loud made me feel claustrophobic. “I shouldn’t have even said anything.” Whatever this project was that I’d started in Leonard’s workshop, it was still only mine and I wanted to be greedy with that feeling. “But I also really like my job at Starlight Palms. More than I ever expected to, honestly. Being outside of... this place and this business... it’s nice. It feels like I’m pulling inspiration right from the source instead of eating prechewed food and spitting it back up again.”
“How poetic,” she said with a snort before sighing and reaching over to place a hand on my thigh. “Vera, I need you to understand. I always wanted more for you. Better. We try to raise children using the same rules we succeeded by, but by the time they need those rules, they’re obsolete. As much as it pains me to say it, maybe the roads have changed and my map is out of date.”
I glanced over at her, doing a poor job at hiding my surprise to her admitting that she might not always be right.
“Just because something is offered doesn’t mean it’s worth taking.”
I hadn’t expected that from Ruby at all. Her voice was this constantpresence in my head telling me to take a leap. Jump first. Look later. But for the first time in my life, my grandmother was telling me to trust myself.
She swiped her finger along the sugared rim of her glass and licked it clean. “I sure as hell signed on for way too many duds with far too many skeevy men calling the shots and not a single one of them made me the big star they promised I’d be. I don’t know what the whole history behind you and Brody is, but it’s clear that there is one.”
“He’s not skeevy,” I told her. “Well, not for the most part. He’s a man-child. And one that I don’t want to take care of anymore.”
The waitress brought Ruby her ramen and she ordered a vodka tonic. She sipped the broth and indeed did so without slurping.
“Your turn,” I told her. “What has you looking for a quiet place to think?”
“Hollis asked me to marry her.” She took another sip of the broth as though she’d told me she’d just gone to the grocery store.
“So you said yes and promptly came here to celebrate by yourself?”
“That’s not all.”
“Okay...”
“Leonard’s lawyer called.” She placed her spoon on her place mat and smoothed the napkin over her lap. “Leonard asked that I be in charge of the posthumous management of his works... his scripts. And the nonfiction book he wrote decades ago about crafting dialogue.”
“What about his nephew?” I asked.
“Any profits will go to the family, except for a small management fee. But his nephew is a dentist who lives in Utah. He was more than happy to hear that the responsibility did not fall to him.”
“Wow. I... um, found a whole filing cabinet full of unfinished projects in his apartment.”
She laughed. “I’m surprised he didn’t request that they be burned.”
“Technically, they were marked as trash, but I... I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Well, that’s good, I suppose. Since you’ll be hearing from his attorney soon as well. The second piece to Leonard’s wishes was that when I’m nolonger around, he would like for you to take over the job.” She rolled her eyes and laughed to herself. “At my age, it seems silly to even pass the torch to me, if I’m being honest.”
“He did it for a reason,” I said. And if he had included me in his end-of-life planning, his will was very much up to date. He could have easily revised his wishes regarding Ruby and the management of his works at any time. But he hadn’t. After the years of scorn and vitriol between him and Ruby, Leonard had still chosen her. “Are you going to finally tell me why the two of you stopped talking all those years ago?”
She took a long sip of her drink before turning to me. “Take this as a lesson,” she said, “that the longer you let something sit, the bigger it becomes. Because what I’m about to say out loud is just... well, it’s embarrassing how long we let this keep us apart. I caught him with his mouth full,” she said, “of my date at an awards show in the eighties.”
“Oh.” I wanted to laugh, honestly.
