Before You Knew My Name, Jacqueline Bublitz [best book club books for discussion txt] 📗

neighbourhood in the West 90s. Today, she starts on Broadway and just keeps walking. Past blocks that look similar enough to her own, taking note of cafes she might come back to next week and consignment stores with last winter’s designer jackets in the window. When she gets to the unmistakable expanse of Columbia, Ruby pushes open a metal gate and steps into the university grounds. It is familiar in the way so much of New York is familiar, the sprawling steps and imposing buildings having appeared in so many films and TV shows she has seen. She crosses the main courtyard, heading east, smiling at the small groups of students sitting alone or in clusters, wondering what they are studying today, thinking she too might like to start classes here in the fall. If she decides to stay. Exiting the university, she turns toward home, following the western boundary of Morningside Park, marvelling at the space this city makes for its people. Knowing there is still so much for her to discover about New York.

As Ruby makes her way over to Amsterdam, the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine rises up before her, impossibly ornate amongst the low-rise buildings of modern, residential New York. She has no time for God, but the church itself is so beautiful, so compelling, that curiosity leads her up the wide stairs, through the thick double doors. Inside, the cavernous cathedral echoes with sunlight, a kaleidoscopic flower beckoning her forward, and Ruby finds herself stunned at the vista. She scrambles for a five-dollar bill to put in the donation box at the entrance to the nave, and she shifts her weight to her toes, not wanting to clomp her feet against the floor. Perhaps it would be different if the church were filled with worshippers, but here, on this mid-week afternoon, she is one of only twenty or so people moving slowly amongst the thick columns and arches. She feels a serenity she had not expected, a peacefulness, despite the obvious grandeur of the church.

And she remembers to look up.

Quietly exploring the cathedral, a lump grows in Ruby’s throat, expands until it feels painful to swallow. A wall of names, of dates and dashes, too many to speak out loud, makes her feel faint, and she considers sitting down, trying out a version of prayer to steady herself, but there’s another woman standing here before this wall, before these names, and she is already praying, head bowed, tears streaming down her face. Ruby blinks back her own tears and moves on.

When she arrives at the Cathedral’s Poets Corner, the lump in Ruby’s throat finally dislodges, hot tears spilling over, causing the words etched across the stone tablets of the floor and walls to blur. She is standing before a memorial to the wordsmiths of this country, the ones who have painstakingly translated the human experience into tiny, perfect sentences. Writers who mapped the world and its sorrows with their words.

Alone, she reads aloud quotes from those poets whose names she knows best.

There’s Millay with her songs and epitaphs. Dickinson describing captivity and consciousness. Emerson and Hemingway asking only for truth, and Hughes with his soul deep as a river. Baldwin, talking about disturbing the peace.

And this.

Walt Whitman. A man, a poet, who so loved New York, and was loved by New York in return.

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

It is others who move away now, leaving the sobbing woman alone with her poets and her sorrow. Generations of writers reaching down to wrap their arms around her, gently pressing their means of survival into her bones.

She invites Josh over as soon as she gets home. Says she has something to tell him, but there are no words when he walks into that tiny studio, fills it up, and she rushes at him, pours herself over his skin before he has the chance to say hello.

When they make love this very first time, they are clumsy, careful. Learning their way around the new body before them, this new tangle of nerves. They laugh against each other’s mouths and close their eyes when they should keep them open, but there is no embarrassment or hesitation in these hours of exploration. They teach each other, welcoming the lessons, and when Ruby comes against Josh’s hand she feels as if she is expanding into the vast, empty corners of her body, the hollow finally filled.

I’ve been stopped here, waiting for you, she whispers, but he is electric now, the blue light humming all through him drowning out her admission. No matter. They will try this again and again. And they will get better at finding each other, each and every time.

Noah pays for my funeral. He does not attend the service itself, staying true to his claim that he will never visit Wisconsin. But he pays for the flowers and the casket, and the sandwiches served after. The burning of my body, too. Asking only whether they might consider doing something special with my ashes. He talks of nebulae, of bright night skies and dying stars, and nobody understands.

‘Ruby,’ he says. ‘We will have to do something ourselves. For her.’

On the day of the funeral, media reports say the little chapel on the corner of Pearson and Flushing is packed with mourners, with people spilling out onto the gravel driveway, craning to hear the service inside. There are kids from my high school, and gawkers from out of town, and Tammy and her mother sit in the front row, next to Gloria. Mother and daughter and guardian united, enjoying their brief moment in the spotlight. They have meetings with crime show producers already booked, and last week they gave an interview for one of those weekly tabloid magazines. I don’t mind. I’d like to give them something outside of this town, outside of these people. Tammy was always good to me. Perhaps this is a chance for her mother and Gloria to do