It was just before the sunset when I arrived. I moved with the traffic, slowly jerking forward. On the sidewalks all around people walked slowly, like it was summertime, and they were taking their evening stroll. A car behind me started honking and I covered my outside ear with one hand. I did not know where to stop. I opened the window and it was cool, but the sun felt nice on my skin. The air felt still and clean. This is one reason people came here to get away from it all, I thought. Sunshine in December, God Bless America.
My parents had come here once in the winter. It was one of Dad’s pharmaceutical conferences. They did not travel much. My father was like most everyone else in town, just like I was. Not much in a hurry to go anywhere. Simply content. My mother was mixed, and I was always confused by it. Sometimes she was herky-jerky all over the place, wishing she was anywhere but our town. She had had big dreams once. She had been to France once, she would have you know. That’s right. France. In Europe. But as I got older, and especially after Jenny was born, she pushed all of that down, deep down. The balance shifted somewhere along the way, and she just became our mother and not much more than that. She had her reasons, even if it was not always clear to us what they were. Whatever else she had imagined she would do with her life seemed to be gone forever, or at least hidden so far away none of us ever saw it.
Still she liked her trips when she got them, and Las Vegas was a knockout, as far as she was concerned. I was in high school, and they left me in charge of Jenny. I sat in the room while my mother packed, and she told me she was taking her “dancing shoes.” I remember listening to her, and being happy for her, but in the back of my mind I was happier for Thomas. I knew he would be glad they were going away. He wanted to sleep in my bed with me, like a real man. He could spend the night at last. We had tickled each other in the mornings and paid Jenny twenty bucks to keep her mouth shut. I made blueberry pancakes and sausage for everyone. My parents came back two days later tired but still hungry for each other’s kisses. My father stroked the back of my mother’s neck at dinner. It was one of the few times I can remember bliss in that house. Everyone was happy all at once. I prayed Las Vegas might have some healing powers for me, but I could not imagine sleeping in any one of these buildings.
My phone rang as I was stopped in front of a giant Statue of Liberty, so close you could almost walk right up to it. It was my mother. I sent it to voice mail. It rang again. It was my sister. I was sure my mother was somewhere nearby, but I picked it up anyway. I knew Jenny would never hand over the phone to my mother. She would rather dangle it in front of her that she was the only one who could get through to me. I decided to make her day.
“Where you at?” she said. She was always tough on the phone now. All of her friends were like that.
“I am driving,” I said. Across the street a pregnant woman posed for a picture in front of Lady Liberty with a set of twin toddler boys and a baby in a carriage. Her breasts were enormous. She licked the palms of her hands and smoothed down the hair of her sons, then arranged them on either side of the carriage.
“Duh. Where are you?” said Jenny.
“I cannot tell you. Where are you?”
“I’m in the garage.” I pictured her in there, huddling near my dad’s fishing poles, and the extra refrigerator my mom used to stash beer. She looked just like I did at her age, everyone said so. You could hold my yearbook photo up to her face and never tell the two apart. We were twins, only years apart. Of course I had just been that girl on Thomas’s arm, and she was something special.
“Where is Mom?” I said.
“Inside, having herself a shit fit. I think she’s kind of loving all of this though. At least something is happening in her life.”
I did not like that my mother was enjoying it, but there was nothing I could do about it. I could not turn around now.
“Will you come back?” said Jenny.
“I do not know,” I said, and that was the truth. Was it possible I would never see my hometown again?
“I need you.”
“When have you ever needed me?” I said. I laughed. Jenny did not laugh back.
I squinted for a second. I pictured her again. She was not wearing any makeup at all and her hair was all around her in a beautiful golden mess. She was squatting on the ground. Her knees were touching her chin. Her eyes were closed. She held the phone with one hand, with the other she traced the shape of a heart on the ground, like she was feeling her way toward love. Air came out of her mouth slowly. She inflated. She deflated.
“Does Mom know?” I said.
“No. Now will you tell me where you are?”
“No,” I said. I did not see how her knowing would help her any, even if she felt like she needed a little power right about then.
“Bitch,” she said.
“What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” I said. “And you got enough to worry about, sister.”
I heard wild laughter, two almost identical voices, high and girlie, and I turned my head. In the backseat of the cab next to me two red-eyed women wearing wigs—one pink and one blue—were laughing so hard they were crying. What was so funny? I wanted to know. They saw me look at them, and they laughed harder.
“Do you know who the dad is, Jenny?”