Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

“Wait, that’s actually the best idea,” Ruby said.

“What is?” Harry asked. They were standing four feet inside the door. Rebecca clicked on her computer, and a drawing of a cat taking the SATs popped up on the projection screen.

Ruby folded over herself, her hands clutching her stomach. “Oh, no,” she said. “Rebecca, I really need to go home, I think I’m going to throw up.”

Thayer and Eliza turned around, their mouths open. Harry folded over in sympathy. “Are you okay?” he said, their faces both upside down. Ruby winked.

“Is it okay if I make sure she gets home?” Harry said, righting himself. Rebecca hustled over with some handouts. Ruby made a sound, dark and low and rumbling, that sounded like an approaching subway. No one wanted to see what was on that train.

“Of course,” Rebecca said, pulling the corners of her mouth down into a cartoon pout. “Feel better, okay!” She patted Harry on the back.

Ruby grabbed onto Harry’s wrist. “We have to get out of here right now, or else I am going to puke all over the dojo,” she said. “What belt would that get me?” Harry let her lead him out the door. Ruby kept moaning until they’d crossed Church Avenue and rounded the corner. Even though they were now out of sight, Ruby went over to a waiting mailbox and pretended to vomit into it, complete with sound effects. Then she stood straight up and took a deep, graceful bow. Harry looked at her with awe, and Ruby saw the rest of her summer in his face: he could be her project, her hobby, her doll.

“I’m hungry,” she said. “Do your parents have food?”

“Your parents own a restaurant,” Harry said.

“Which is exactly why they never have food. I can tell you right now what’s in the fridge: yogurt, three different kinds of fish sauce, and pâté.” Ruby had once searched online for a support group for children of those in the food-service industry, for kids like her who’d never been allowed to eat milk chocolate or Cheez Whiz or Marshmallow Fluff or the extra-sweet supermarket peanut butter, but she hadn’t found anything.

“I think we have some chips and salsa,” Harry said.

“That’ll do.”

• • •

The living room was empty when they walked in. Harry called out “Hello?” but his parents didn’t respond. It was nine forty a.m. “My mom’s got some open houses, I think,” Harry said. “I don’t know where my dad is.”

“Whatever,” Ruby said, and walked straight into the kitchen. “If he comes home, just tell him that I got sick, and that your house was closer, so we came here.”

“Like fifty feet closer.”

“If you’re barfing, fifty feet is a lot of feet.”

“I guess that’s true.”

Ruby loved being in other people’s kitchens. Her mothers were such total freaks — the salt had to be a special kind of salt, unless it was for baking, in which case it had to be some very particular kind of normal salt, that sort of thing. Elizabeth and Andrew were just regular. They had Diet Cokes and a giant block of orange cheddar cheese. Ruby took the jar of salsa and the bag of chips off the counter. “Want to go to your room?”

“S-sure,” Harry said. Iggy Pop slowly climbed down from his perch over the refrigerator, and Harry scooped him up and held him like a baby. Ruby walked past the two of them toward the staircase.

Ruby hadn’t been upstairs in the Marxes’ house since she was little, but not much had changed. The walls were still a very pale orange, like a melted Popsicle after a rainstorm, and the same pictures were on the walls. There was one painting hanging by the door to Harry’s bedroom that Ruby had always liked, a village scene, with a Japanese woman watering some flowers in one corner and some free-range chickens in another. The Marxes’ house was always neat. Everything had its place. Unlike Ruby’s mum, who came home from every trip with some colorful trinket to put on a shelf to gather dust forever and ever, Elizabeth and Andrew seemed to have no useless objects. Ruby wandered down the hallway, poking her head into rooms.

“My room’s over here,” Harry said, behind her.

“I know,” Ruby said, still walking. “What’s this?” She stopped in front of an open door — the smallest room in the house.

“It’s the guest room,” Harry said. “The couch folds out. Plus, it’s just, like, storage, I guess.”

Ruby walked in, and over to the metal shelving along the wall. There were big clear plastic bins, each of them labeled. She ran her finger along the bins. “Wow, your mom is kind of OCD, huh.” Harry shuffled in after her and sat down on the couch, his hands in his lap. Iggy Pop, who had darted up the stairs after them, jumped into his lap.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “She’s just organized.”

“Is this what that looks like?” Ruby asked. “Oh, shit, wow!”

Harry stood up quickly, sending Iggy back to the ground. “What? Is there a mouse?”

Ruby turned around to look at him, her purple hair flying. “Why would I say ‘wow’ if I saw a mouse, you weirdo? No, look, it’s all Kitty’s Mustache stuff.” She pulled one of the bins on the top shelf down to the floor and unlatched the lid. The box was filled with stuff — flyers and cassettes and seven-inches and posters and zines and college newspapers with reviews of their shows. Ruby leafed through the pile on top and pulled out a glossy photograph. “Check this shit,” she said.

From left to right, it was a picture of Lydia, Andrew, Zoe, and Elizabeth. None of them smiled or looked at the camera. Her mum was wearing a suede jacket with fringe and had a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, like a pissed-off movie star who’d just come back from a bender in the desert. Elizabeth was wearing a floor-length black skirt, with dark lipstick, her then-long blond hair tucked behind her ears, her body pointed toward the rest of the band. Andrew wore a white shirt and a flannel tied around his waist, his hair curling past his shoulders. Lydia was sitting cross-legged on the ground, holding her drumsticks in an X over her head.

“When is this from?” Harry said, taking the picture out of Ruby’s hands.

“Ninety-two,” Ruby said, pointing to the date in the corner, in Elizabeth’s handwriting. “OCD.”

“They’re so young,” Harry said. “It’s kind of horrifying. Look at my dad’s jeans. And his hair!”

“Look at my mum’s boobs!” Ruby pointed. Zoe wasn’t wearing a bra, and her nipples were clearly visible, even across time and space and this many years. Harry covered his eyes. “And look at Lydia.”

It was weird, knowing that your mother had had a life before you were born, but everyone had to deal with that eventually. Everyone’s mother had had sex at least once, and lots of people’s mothers had gotten drunk and been wild. Ruby knew she wasn’t alone. But it was extra weird to know that your mother had been drunk and wild with someone famous. And not someone famous for no reason, like the stars of a reality show, but someone actually famous and important because she was really good at what she did and people loved her. Ruby pretended that she didn’t care about Lydia because she knew that her mum would find it… annoying? Amusing? Her mum would have thought it was adorable. That was the worst fate of all, for your parents to look at you with their parent eyes and to call your inner turmoil cute. Zoe would have loved it if she knew that Ruby had Lydia’s two solo albums on her phone and that she listened to them when she walked down the street by herself, that they made her feel invincible and angry, but there was no way in hell that Ruby was ever going to tell her.

Ruby shuffled through the stack of posters and photos on top. There were a few more of the band, including one with Lydia standing in the middle with her mouth open in a scream, the rest of the band standing diagonally behind her. Unlike the others, this photo actually looked like Lydia, the real Lydia, the Lydia whose face would be taped on bedroom walls and printed on T-shirts.