Page 40 of The Holiday

And after a pause: “She was really something, Ruby was. As much as I can spend the day faulting her for getting into Sunday’s head, I can also be honest with you and with myself about the impact she had. She was there beside Jack no matter what. Even after he died, she donated money on behalf of disease research in his name. And I understand that she found a way forward with that French woman he had a kid with, right?”

I didn’t want to say too much about that, so I just nodded. “She did.”

“Huh. She was remarkable, both as a woman and as a First Lady.” Peter moved his glass around on the mahogany tabletop. “There was a time when I walked into the private residence and caught Ruby—completely by accident, mind you—scolding a young woman in a maid’s uniform. As someone who has never had a problem putting a service worker in their place, I hung back to let her finish railing at this girl, and I have to admit it intrigued me to see her in this light.”

He had my full attention; never once had I seen Ruby talk down to anyone, no matter their station in life. Neither did she pity or pander, but rather she spoke to every person as if they had a lesson to teach her. So this story intrigued me.

“I flopped down on the couch as their voices came echoing out of the kitchen, and I was expecting her to shout at the girl about breaking a vase, or about snooping through her bedside drawers or something, but I quickly realized it wasn’t like that at all. Not even close.”

“This is all hard for me to even picture. I’m listening.”

Peter spread his hands widely, indicating that he was about to tell me something that would cause me great disbelief. “She wasn’t yelling at the girl for anything domestic. She was talking to her seriously about the fact that the girl had recently decided to drop out of college.” He paused here, looking at me like I was supposed to give a reaction. I waited. “Ruby, the First Lady of our country at that time, was standing in her kitchen with a young girl, whose name I would have never wasted the brain capacity to learn, talking to her the same way she’d talk to her own daughters.”

“Wow.” I was blown away by this. “Go on.”

“‘Claudia,’ she said—and I remember the girl’s name now, because I’ve never forgotten this story—‘Claudia, you need to keep at it. I’m telling you the truth here, so please believe me. You are a strong, smart, capable young woman, and this country needs you in a position to make decisions and to implement change.’”

“She said all this?”

“She did. I quickly came to understand that the girl had been going to community college at night, and that Ruby had been funding this experience. The girl wanted to become a lawyer, and when she spoke, I could hear that it wasn’t a far-fetched goal. She was well-spoken and whip-smart. She argued that her young son needed her to pick up extra shifts and to bring home money, and that maybe when he was grown, she could get back to her schooling. But Ruby wasn’t having it. She made points, threw out statistics—all of it in favor of the girl staying the course. Going to night school. Coming out on top.”

“But you can only do so much for a person who has their mind made up.”

It was Peter’s turn to hold his hands in the air in surrender. “Well, Ruby un-made up the girl’s mind. By the end of the conversation, she’d convinced her to accept a box of food directly from Ruby’s own kitchen each time she worked, and Ruby had offered for Harlow and Athena to babysit the little boy while the maid went to class two nights a week. It was a stunning compromise on all ends, and I sat there wondering how Ruby Hudson was in the position of First Lady and not President. I also wondered what the hell she was doing married to a heel like Jack Hudson. And believe me—I say that as a man who is and was quite a heel himself, so I know of what I speak.”

I sat there, stunned. By all of it. Ruby had negotiated for a maid—a single maid on her staff—to attend night school and to give her little boy a better life through her own education? I’d never heard a word about it.

“Where is she now? Claudia?” I asked, with really no hopes of an answer.

“Funny you should ask,” Peter said, smacking his lips together grandly as he finished his second whiskey. “I just read a piece about her in an online magazine about young people finding success in Washington. I’ve been mentoring a young man myself—nothing personal; strictly business—and I was looking for a blurb on him when I came across a picture of Claudia in her maid’s uniform next to a more recent photo of her in a business suit. Her son is now twenty-five and in law school himself, and she’s been a successful litigator for nearly two decades. The article gave Ruby full credit for everything.”

I was gobsmacked. Speechless. “Can you please send me the article—if you remember?” I asked him. I wanted to read it, and perhaps to even speak with Claudia. Everything about this story reminded me so much of Patty, Ruby’s mother, and I could feel her imprint all over Ruby’s encouragement of young Claudia. “This is a remarkable story.”

“It is.” Peter nodded. “And yes, I can send it. I think I still have it pulled up on my laptop at home. My grandkids love to poke fun at old granddad for never closing out the tabs, or whatever needs to be done.”

I would have laughed, but at my age I was beginning to understand how quickly things moved and changed, and how irrelevant technology became in a person’s daily life if one no longer worked for a living.

“This has been enlightening, Mr. Bond. Thank you for sharing that story. I may never have known about any of this if it wasn’t for you.”

Peter shrugged and looked like he was ready for a new subject and a third whiskey. “You in a big rush, Dexter? Because I’ve got a few more tales up my sleeve.”

As it turned out, the stories were not about Ruby and therefore not relevant to this book, but I can say that I passed what turned out to be a fairly entertaining evening with the former VP, and that the man did, indeed, live quite a wild life.

But that’s a story for an entirely different book, and so I’ll move along.

* * *

I woke up the next morning on the couch in the living room of Henry Banks and Sunday Bond’s Washington D.C. townhouse.

“Coffee?” Banks asked, passing through the living room in a black sweatsuit.

Banks, Ruby’s former Secret Service agent, had married Sunday in a small, private ceremony on the porch of Ruby’s beach house years ago, and they'd since moved back to D.C. so that Sunday could continue working closely with the National Council for Adoption.

“Dad?” a tall, lanky teenage boy appeared in the arched doorway of the room holding a hockey stick. “Are you taking me to practice?”

“Hey, bud,” Banks said, smiling at the sixteen-year-old boy. “Come say hi to your Uncle Dexter. He got in late last night after meeting up with Uncle Peter.”

It still caught me by surprise whenever I heard Sunday or Banks refer to Peter Bond as “Uncle Peter,” but they were absolutely committed to creating the healthiest relationships that they could for their kids, and Peter had, oddly, stepped up to the plate in this role as well as in his role as a grandfather. I had to give him credit for that.

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