WHEN I WOKE UP I was alone in bed. My head hurt, but not as bad as I thought it would. I went out into the living room. There was a porn movie playing on the flat-screen TV. That is bad, I thought. Why was that bad? It was registering an alarm in my head. Valka and Paul were asleep on the couch, arms and legs wrapped all around each other. They were mostly clothed. I did not think anything dirty had happened. It did not matter either way. It was her night. The porn, though, that was bad. I could not deal with it then.
I went back to sleep for a few more hours. Then Valka crawled into bed with me and woke me up. She curled up next to me and whispered “Thank you” in my ear.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“You know what?” she said.
“What?” I said.
“I never wanted kids anyway. I don’t like babies.” She slipped my phone around the front of me. “It’s been ringing off the hook.” I took a look. Ten calls from my mother. It rang again, and it was her. Blinking and ringing.
But then Valka snuggled up next to me and said, “You should just tell her you’re alive.” Like everything that came out of Valka’s mouth, it was the truth. So I hit “talk” on the phone, and let my mother do just that. She had been saving up all her words for a whole week since I’d been gone so they came out in one long line at once, with a little bit of slur around the edges. It’s a little early to be drunk, Mom, I thought.
“I do not have to tell anyone anything,” I said. I rolled over onto my stomach and put my head in the pillow. Valka rubbed my back for me. “I am a single, independent lady,” I said.
“Right, a single, independent lady burning up her husband’s credit cards at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas,” she snapped.
Christ almighty, I thought. The porn. It had triggered my credit card. I covered the phone with my hand. “The jig is up,” I said to Valka.
“What jig?” said Valka.
Another call was coming in on my phone. It was Thomas. Finally.
8.
Been waiting for you to fuck up, little girl,” said Thomas straightaway. “And now you done it.”
“You are the fuckup,” I whispered.
“Having fun?” said Thomas. “Spending my money?”
“Oh, the money,” I said. “It is going to be about that. Huh.”
“One hundred and seventy-eight thousand dollars is a lot to run off with, Moonie,” he said. Moonie, oh. I had not heard that in so long. It was so nice to hear it. I hoped he said it some more.
“You got a lot more than that,” I said. “Or are you going to hide it under your mattress like your dad did?”
We had never fought very much but we knew how to wind each other up when we did. We were getting ready for something fierce.
“Don’t bring my dead father into this.”
I apologized, my voice cracking. It was mean. He was dead after all.
“I would have given you money for the rest of your life,” he said.
He still loved me. I knew it. I knew he could not let me go.
“But you can’t clean me out like that. That is not happening. Not on my watch.”
I sank down to the ground. Underneath me someone was getting lucky at a slot machine. Underneath me someone was losing it all at a poker table. Underneath me the casino breathed fake air.
“You’re watching porn in Las Vegas, Nevada, for Chrissakes. You don’t even like porn. Moonie Madison, have you lost your mind?”
I could not argue with him. But I felt the hate burning in me that he was saying it.
“I don’t know what you’re planning to do but you better stop now. Everyone knows you’re crazy. The whole town is talking about you. Stop right now and turn around and come back here with my money and I won’t call the cops. It might even be a federal case, Moonie.”
I bet he would enjoy that. Men in dark suits driving down dirty back roads to the farm. Maybe they would stop and ask for directions. More tongues wagging. Bet he had been saying “the feds” over and over to anyone who would listen.
He was rambling now, pissed off and out of control. “Just after Christmas, and the bank’s calling me all freaked out. I’m just trying to relax with my fiancée during the holidays and now I got this to worry about.”
Fiancée. What a joke. He was telling a joke.
I had only been gone a few months. How could he be getting married again? A girlfriend, sure. He did not know how to be alone. He cried when he got lonely. My crybaby husband.
“Everyone knows about you,” he said. “Everyone knows you’re nutballs. And I am just trying to live my life. Moving on. Like you should be, Moonie.”
There is not a single person on the planet who can drive me nuts like my husband. I was hating him and loving him at the same time. We had clawed at each other that last day. The blood and the cruelty, those were the only things left.
“You’re getting married?” I said.
“That was fast,” said Valka. She sat up.