Page 30 of The Holiday

"Excuse me, Mr. North?" Jacinda Rawlings--just as young and green as he'd imagined her to be during their email exchanges and phone calls--pokes her head out of the bar and into the hallway. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but we have people asking for you.”

“Of course, of course,” Dexter says. “I’ll be right there.”

He turns back to Theo. The two men know each other so well—have known each other for so long—that they really don’t even need to exchange words.

“Thank you for being here,” Dexter says, his voice thick with emotion. He puts a fist to his mouth and coughs into it to clear his throat. “For all these years, I mean.”

Theo’s eyes look full of feeling as he blinks a few times, staying focused on one of his oldest and very best friends. “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, Dex—any of it.”

“Me either,” Dexter says sadly. He turns and walks back into the room that’s full of people waiting for his return.

Introduction to My First Lady, My Last Love

This is unbearably hard to write. And yet, it is essential and vital that I do. I have just gone through the most major thing a human can go through: the loss of a person I love. I buried my beloved wife a year ago, and almost instantly I went into fight or flight mode; I realized that I would either begin to sink in her absence—and ultimately drown—or I would swim. I would point myself towards shore, take a deep breath, and begin those long, measured strokes that would take me to dry land again.

And here I am. One year later, waking up each day in a Ruby-free world, putting one foot in front of the other as I continue to survive. But am I enjoying it? Well, that’s a hard question, and anyone who has lived without their true love will know that it’s a complicated one. Are there days when I can find enjoyment in simple things like a walk through Central Park? A glass of aged whiskey? The sound of children laughing? Of course. I can read a particularly moving book, watch a gorgeous piece of cinematography, and even laugh (sometimes) at a joke that’s really hit home, but at the end of the day, I go to sleep alone. I wake up alone. All I have left of Ruby are photos and memories and personal belongings.

What I don’t have is her.

As many people know (she did not want it to be kept a secret, as she fully believed that a public figure such as herself could do more good than harm by sharing a diagnosis and encouraging better treatment and more research), Ruby Hudson died after an extremely valiant and tough battle with ovarian cancer. She had not yet reached her seventieth birthday, though she was looking forward to it and was already making jokes and plans about how she’d want to celebrate such a major milestone. It is a cruel trick played by the universe that a woman so vibrant, full of love, and so curious about the world should be taken from us all. However, it is inevitable: we will all leave at some point. We have to.

So I sat with her; I read to her; I bargained with whoever might be listening that I would be glad to go in her place, and all to no avail. When the body decides to succumb to illness, no amount of prayer or promises to the universe from a loved one will change the outcome. Once my beautiful wife was gone, I floundered for a bit, and then I did decide to swim for shore, and my life raft was made of words. These words.

I aim to capture the essence of Ruby in this very non-traditional biography. It is not a start-to-finish, chronological retelling of a First Lady’s life, but rather a love letter from a husband to a wife. I did not lose her and then embark on a journey to find myself; her death did not send me on a mission to travel the world and forget my own pain. What it did do was give me the opportunity to talk to everyone who knew her and loved her, and to put the pieces together like a puzzle. Some people came to me, and others I went to out of necessity. Some discussions were held by Zoom, FaceTime, email, phone call, text message…you name it, we did it. Others happened on the top deck of the Eiffel Tower; on snowy days in Manhattan; inside her bookstore on Shipwreck Key; beneath strings of holiday lights on Christmas Key; and sitting on people’s nondescript couches with warmed up cups of coffee as we cried and remembered her.

Again, I want you to understand that I did not travel the world seeking to numb my own pain, or to undertake a journey or complete a mission. I simply set out to write the most honest book I could write about the most honest person I’ve ever known, and in the process, I think that all of us who knew her and loved her were able to laugh, cry, reminisce, and share—maybe even get some closure.

And now I get to share all of it with you.

I hope you enjoy reading about Ruby—our former First Lady; my last love—as much as I’ve enjoyed writing about her. She is and will always be the most vibrant part of my life, and if I’ve done my job well, that will come through on these pages.

—Dexter North

Ruby Redux

In my observations, motherhood is a different kind of love. It supersedes all love of man, of romance, of country—even of self. To me, a mere man, a husband (and not a father), observing women and their children throughout the course of my life has been an exercise in wonder. There is a second-nature aspect to the way a mother can understand the needs of a child based on a whimper, a cry, a tone of voice. I know there were times when my own mother—the inimitable and late Deandra North—knew that I needed her before I even knew I needed her. And she would be there, calling on the phone, standing in front of me, offering to listen, to help, to make things better.

But having a front row view of Ruby and her adult daughters was an entirely different experience for me. Both Harlow and Athena were in their twenties when I met them, and already solidified into their adult forms. At that point, there was listening and guidance left to do, but Ruby had already put in the sleepless nights, the messy feedings, the tough teenage years, and most of the “firsts”—all I had left to do was be by her side as she loved and became true friends with her daughters in adulthood.

There is a story that Athena likes to tell about a time when her sister was dating a man Ruby did not appreciate (and truly, none of us did; he was, if you’ll excuse me for saying so, a jackass of the highest order), but Ruby was doing her best to give this man chance after chance to do right by Harlow.

One year at Thanksgiving, this man (who shall remain unnamed) joined all of us on Nantucket for a holiday that was meant to be cozy, filled with baking, fall weather, and family cheer. But all this guy did was complain: why had they left Manhattan for Thanksgiving when everything you could ever need or want existed on that tiny island? Because, Ruby had explained patiently, everything she needed existed on the tiny island they were currently on: her girls and her husband (which I’d become by that point).

They argued endlessly as the rain fell outside: which football team would win the Super Bowl; how many hours of sleep an adult needed each night; whether Yoko Ono truly broke up the Beatles; if Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone; whether Bert and Ernie were truly just roommates, or if there was something more going on there. Believe me—it was endless. Even good-natured Athena wanted to escape by the day before Thanksgiving, and we still had twenty-four more hours of cooking and preparing for a meal that would undoubtedly be marked by strife and unhealthy debate.

Now, why Ruby and this man got under one another’s skins so entirely is a bit of a mystery. Actually, if he’d been a better guy, he wouldn’t have bothered her much at all; of this I’m sure. But she observed and overheard him criticizing her daughter enough times that her protective maternal instincts had kicked in. Never mind that Harlow was a fully grown woman by that point, Ruby wasn’t putting up with any man who put her daughter down.

By the time Thanksgiving dinner was on the table, Ruby was fuming. She tossed a basket of bread on the table with such force that a few rolls bounced out and landed on the tablecloth.

“I’m so tired of this guy,” she hissed under her breath, wiping her hands on her apron. “What does Harlow see in him?”

I had no answer to this, nor did I think it was my place to jump in. What was my job was to support her, and to have her back. So I nodded dutifully and listened in agreeable silence.

“If I hear him say ONE more negative thing,” she muttered, rearranging a few plates and putting the tapered candles in their holders. “I swear.”

A storm was brewing both inside and outside the house, and I stared at the gray clouds through the dining room window of the house that we’d rented for the week.

And then, sure enough, over dinner: “Harlow,” this guy said smugly, watching his girlfriend as she poured gravy onto a pile of potatoes. “You’re just making more work for your trainer when we get back to the city, and we don’t pay him enough for this project already.” He waved a hand up and down to indicate her body—which was ludicrous, as Harlow has always been a fitness buff, and had even trained for a marathon once or twice. He looked at me, expecting some sort of guy code to kick in, perhaps hoping that I’d laugh, but first of all I never would have laughed because it wasn’t even remotely funny, and secondly, there was no way he could have said that and not known that he was signing his own death warrant.

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