“I don’t care,” Aida mumbles. She feels the weight of loss heavy on her chest. The boy will never love her. He will think her foolish and ugly and unlovable. His car sits neglected in front of her. Aida imagines all the snow that fell that day her father died. When her mother found him, she screamed so loud that Aida ran to the upstairs window to see what was wrong. Far beneath her, her father lay in the snow, his rubber boots black against it and her mother kneeling beside him in her pale-pink rubber curlers and green chenille bathrobe. They looked small from where Aida stood, like dolls.
Slowly, Aida gets up and walks over to the boy’s car. She opens the door and gets in the passenger’s side. The car smells like sweat and something else. She inhales. Marijuana. The whole world is stoned, Aida thinks, that weight pressing on her even harder.
Crickets sing in the evening air. Soon, people start filing out of the house, a flurry of bright colors under the streetlight. The boy gets in the car and looks at her.
“Uh,” he says. “I’ve got to wait here for the guy with the jumper cables.”
Aida nods.
“Your mother said it’s okay,” he adds.
Her name pierces the still air: “Aida!” her mother yells. “Aida!”
The boy leans across her and goose bumps rise on her arms and legs and neck. He opens the door and without a word, speechless, dumb, Aida climbs out and follows the sound of her mother’s voice.
SHE LIVED THROUGH IT. The rehearsal at the church, walking down the aisle on the arm of Eddie’s stringy-haired brother Billy, again and again; the dinner afterward with Eddie’s family not eating her family’s food and her family not eating theirs; the wedding itself, the church so hot Mama Jo had to be taken out for air; Phyllis Cardi singing “Sunrise, Sunset” slowly and off-key; her sister stumbling when she climbed the three steps to the altar; the suffocating smells of flowers and wax and perfume; the boring priest; the boring ceremony; the flurry of joy when Eddie and Terry emerged from the church and everyone threw rice at them and snapped photographs. She lived through it all in her yellow chiana gown and dyed-to-match sandals.
Somehow, by the time they get to Club 400 for the reception, Aida feels let down, as if she had expected more, or at least expected something. Whiskey sours flow from a fountain and platters of greasy hors d’oeuvres swirl around her. The banquet hall, with its heavy maroon drapes and chairs is funereal, Aida thinks. The pale-yellow tablecloths and napkins against the dark maroon make her seasick and she steps outside.
In the parking lot a woman gets out of a red convertible and teeters toward Aida on turquoise high heels.
Aida steps into the sunlight and squints. “Cammie?” she says.
Her cousin’s hair is so big and platinum blond that Aida can only think of Jayne Mansfield. When Cammie left she had wavy brown hair. Now she is a person under a big bubble of blond hair.
“Cammie?” Aida says again, softer this time.
The face under the hair might be Cammie’s, but the breasts beneath the head are not. These are like bubbles too, big and round, about to burst from her low-cut turquoise dress. Aida has never seen breasts like these. Not in person, anyway. After the breasts, past the wiggling hips, are legs—miles of them. Tanned and endless legs.
Men are stopping. Men are fanning themselves with wedding invitations or handkerchiefs. Men cannot do anything but stare at Cammie.
“Doll,” she says when she finally reaches Aida, “I need a drink.”
Up close, there is still not much left of Cammie. The nose is smaller. The face is tanned. The pouty lips are wet and red.
“There’s a whiskey-sour fountain inside,” Aida manages to say.
Cammie throws her head back and laughs. “Maybe I’ll jump in it later,” she says, “but for now I need a real drink.”
Aida follows her cousin inside. Busboys clutch their bins of dirty dishes to watch Cammie sashay by. Aida is embarrassed and proud to be walking behind such a creature. She supposes everyone in Las Vegas is this unbelievable. They must all be tall and tanned and busty. If she goes there with Cammie, perhaps she will return reborn into something like this. The idea thrills her. The idea terrifies her.
In the dark lounge, Cammie leans across the bar and orders a scotch and soda. The bartender openly stares at her breasts, which lay on top of the bar like an offering.
“Doll,” Cammie says to Aida, “you want a Fresca or something?”
“A Shirley Temple?” Aida says, her voice small and soft.
“And a Shirley Temple,” Cammie says to the bartender. “Extra cherries.”
A slow smile crosses his face and a flush of red rises from his cheeks to the scalp beneath his thinning hair.
“You bet,” he says.
When he places the drinks on the bar, he says, “These are on the house.”
Cammie stands up tall, her hair and breasts making a bubbly silhouette. “Why! Really! Thank you so much.” She glances at the little black name tag above his shirt pocket. “Fred,” she adds.
She opens her gold purse and takes out a prescription bottle of pills, downing a few with her drink.
“Are you sick?” Aida says.
“Oh, no. These help me stay awake. After that long drive.”
Cammie takes Aida’s hand and wiggles her way out of the lounge. Even without turning around, Aida knows the bartender is watching. His eyes are like lasers, shooting into them.
“What a creep, huh?” Cammie says.