Rubs

Stella watched her son sleep. He was peaceful in a way she had never allowed herself to remember; not from the record he had set as a noisy and restless baby, then toddler, then teenager. That she was proud of him was unquestionable. She thought about his many accolades. He was amazing. In Kindergarten they had said he was a natural leader. Everything he did set the trend for the other children to follow. Even the one time he wore his shoes wrong, nobody thought anything less of it than just another way to be cool. Or different. That was Reuben; a name impossible to truncate but as a teenager and from his way with the ladies he had been called Rubs. Stella smiled at this memory because she had had to become nothing short of a raging bitch to stem the flow of girls that came calling for his attention. She knew they hated her and that alone left her confident that she was doing her protective job well.

“Reuben, I need you to focus. This cannot go on. Not like this.”

“You are right, Mom” he had sided with her in his husky, yet barely-there adolescent voice. And so had his concessions with his mother gone for the better part of that phase of his life. His father had chosen another family and tried ceaselessly to fuse them into one big family. Stella had decided very early on that she would be just fine with Reuben. The divorce had hardened something in Reuben, and his transformation into Rubs had come full circle.

Stella had been a mother to the groom, watching him with proud tears in her eyes the first time; with somewhat shattered confidence the second time just two years later and then with heavily restrained disgust the third time three years after that. A serial husband, they had called him.

“But,” Stella sighed, “thank God he doesn’t take alcohol.” That had to be his saving social grace. At work he was an enviable professional, rising to the top with dizzying speed and equally stunning determination. He had featured in every magazine he would grant an interview. One Sunday over lunch he had grinned boyishly, pointing to an article that had listed him at number 3 on their Top 40 under 40. “Look Mom, see what they are saying about me.” Stella’s laugh had come from deep inside her chest, pure joy at watching a grown man relish in his success in a way he only could in his mother’s presence.

Reuben was still sleeping when she stood up from the velvet couch in the corner of the purple room. She would not wake him. She could not wake him. It was time for his funeral service and somewhere in the pit of her stomach, she felt like this was a failure on her part. Her years of self-sacrifice would soon be buried with Rubs, the fatal stab wounds caused by his third wife. She had taught him everything except how to be a faithful man.