We both started crying.
“I could feel him right here.” She clutched her hand to her chest. “He was my heart.”
I did not want to hear another word, but she could not stop. And I could not tell her to stop.
“We had the wedding date set. I had my dress. I looked perfect in it. We were going to start all over together. I went back to the doctor for a checkup. I was all clear, my breasts were healthy. But then it turned out there was another spot, but it wasn’t on my chest. It was down there.” She pointed toward her crotch. “Ovarian cancer. Just like that—” She snapped her fingers. “I had to have a hysterectomy and chemo and the whole works.”
I looked at her wig. I wondered how many colors she had.
“I’m all empty inside now,” she said.
“You’re not,” I said.
“And that’s what got him. After everything, it was the babies. He wanted his own children. ‘This isn’t what I signed up for,’ is what he told me. ‘It isn’t what I signed up for either!’ is what I told him. He tried to let me down gently, but I fell just like a rock.”
I hugged her, and she did not hug me back, and I said, “No, you hug me
now
.” I made her hug me. I think she felt better.
“Not his fault he’s a man,” she said into my shoulder. “That’s what they all want, is kids of their own. Men like that.”
I pulled apart from her and looked her in the eye. She was all glassy and drunk. I was, too, but I tried to concentrate. “It’s just wrong,” I said.
“Oh is it?” said Valka.
WHERE I CAME FROM, people did not drink much, and they sure did not drink till they were crazy. Where I came from, if people drank too much, they got quiet. Sure there were the high school kids running around the fields on a high after the football games. They liked to whoop it up, make a little noise. They were young: they needed to explode sometimes. But they would have been doing that whether or not there was a little nip of something in their thermos or not. Even those parties Jenny went to, the ones that got her in all the trouble, I knew those kids were just making each other warm at night.
And there was my mother, she drank until she got mean, but again, that was already in her. When I was little, she would drink herself so mean she would tell me awful bedtime stories. Jenny, too. It was a special kind of mean between a mother and her daughters. A whispered mean.
Mostly I thought about the farmers, who would drink themselves through the winter. That, or pray. Either way, they got quiet. We were a quiet town. One thing was possible: there was a lot of space between us, between our homes—there was so much land. Maybe if people got noisy I did not hear it. But I do not think so. I lived there my whole life and I think I would have known. If people were losing it, someone would have told me.
There in Las Vegas, though, all people wanted to do was drink until they were someone else. I could not believe all the hooting and hollering. It looked like their faces were melting. People were stumbling, running into walls. I was drunk, too, but I was my daddy’s girl when I was drunk: serious with an occasional case of the giggles. Las Vegas did not look like fun at 4 A.M. To me it looked like the end of the world. And Valka, I loved her like a sister already, but I thought maybe she had gone through to the other side. The other side of
what
I cannot rightly tell you, but if she was not already there, she had one foot in the door.
At first I would only have known it from talking to her. There was nothing out of place, not anywhere on her face, not a hair on that blond wig, not a sparkle on the beautiful blue dress. She had been checking her makeup all night. She knew she still looked good. And she did not slur her words either. Valka was making all her points, thinking in complete thoughts, finishing up her sentences. She used words I did not know a few times. The way she was sitting at the bar, back straight, palms flat on the bar, I never would have guessed she had had anything more than a few drinks.
But there was fire in her eyes, I could see it, shooting up toward the rafters of her mind. And even if she sounded like she was making sense, I knew she was going to places that would not be good for her. She was getting loud. It was loud in the casino. But she was getting louder.
The guys next to us at the bar heard Valka talking, and moved a little closer. I thought they were businessmen, with their shaved heads, dress shirts, and slacks, looking all suited up even though it was 4 A.M. Where was the meeting?
“How come you girls aren’t smiling?” said one. He wore a thick gold watch that dangled a little loose around his wrist. “Pretty girls like you, there should be some smiles on those faces.”
Valka’s face collapsed into a frown and then re-formed into a growl.
“You need a drink?” The other one tried to wave down a bartender. He had a hundred-dollar bill folded between a few fingers. “That’ll cheer you up.”
“Why don’t you worry about yourself,” said Valka. “About your own personal joy and happiness. Why don’t you look deep within and ask yourself, why do I need everyone around me to be smiling all the time? Is there something wrong with my life that I can’t deal with reality? Because reality is—”
“You got a fucked-up nose anyway,” said the first man, and he and his friend got up and left.
“Whatever, bald asshole,” she yelled over her shoulder at him. The bartender came over to our part of the bar and started wiping the counter with a rag and giving us looks like we were trouble. Which we were not.
“We’re fine,” Valka told the bartender. “Sheesh,” she said to me.
“Men. Always wanting you to be something you’re not,” I said. I could not believe I had fallen in with the man-hating. Las Vegas, sucking me in again. It is only for one night, I told myself.
We had another drink. Liquor was fifty percent of me by then. I swear it was replacing my blood. I felt darker than ever, and Valka was with me. She was right there. And the ghost of Peter Dingle hovered near us, too.
“It’s not bad luck, it’s good luck. It’s better to know now, you know?”
“That’s exactly right,” I said.
“What if I had spent the rest of my life with him?”
“Your life is just starting out now,” I said. “A new beginning.” I was talking about her, but I was the one who needed to hear it.
“What if I had spent the rest of my life with a man with a good job and a nice family and who gave me slow kisses in the morning? That would have been the worst thing
ever
.” She spit a little bit.
“He wasn’t the right one,” I said. “The right one would have stayed.”
“I’m going to be alone forever,” she said.
“You’re not.”
“I am.”
“I’m not and you’re not. Already we’ve found each other,” I said and I meant it.
“You’re like my sister,” she said. “You and I are like the same person.”
We were not the same person, I knew that. And I already had a sister. But there was something we had in common. Our men had left us wrongly. Sure, I had been the one walking out the door, but he had held it open and kicked me headfirst.
“He wasn’t that good, you know.” She practically yelled the next part. “In bed. Peter Dingle was not so good in bed.”
Two guys sitting next to us looked over at Valka when she said that. They had short haircuts, and were not much older than my sister. I thought they were military. I wondered if they had ever killed anyone. That was the way my mind was working. Seeing death in some places. Their gaze was steady on us both, and then one of them said, “Well, just let it out, then.”
Then she screamed it. “PETER DINGLE WAS A BAD LAY.”
And that was when the bartender asked us to leave.
“I’VE NEVER BEEN kicked out of a bar,” I said. We were laughing about it later in bed. “I haven’t even really been in that many bars.” We had decided Valka should move into my suite and stay with me for the next few nights, at least until I decided whether or not I was going to go with her back to Santa Monica. She said I could help her out with the flower business. She was always looking for someone she could trust. The high school girls robbed her blind all the time, or they were busy on the phone with their friends. The local mothers had to leave early to pick up their kids from school. She was looking for a woman just like her to help her out. Someone she could bring up in the business. Maybe I could be a partner someday, she told me. If I worked hard, took a few classes in business and floral design. There was nothing to it, working in her industry. You just had to have a good eye and be able to think on your feet, and she could see I had both of those qualities. She would teach me everything she knew and then some.
All of this she said to me on the cab ride home, and all of it I agreed to consider. Maybe it was what I needed. A fresh start, a real career, a friend to call my own. Maybe if I kept going, if I pushed west, I could leave the mess I had made back home behind me.
“I get into trouble sometimes,” said Valka. “I’m sorry. I shoot my mouth off and I can’t stop. That’s what you’ve got to put up with if you know me. Peter Dingle used to love it though. He thought I was the funniest woman he had ever met. Even now when I run into him back home I can make him laugh.” She sighed. “I’m just scared I’ll never find anyone. I’m too old to start over, and yet here I am, starting over. I was happy having a man to call my own. And now, I have nothing. I am sad.” She paused. “Now I am sad.”
I loved her so much in that moment. For being able to holler out her feelings. It made me feel better just knowing it was possible.
6.
T
he next morning Jenny sent me another video of herself. Valka and I were still in bed, laughing about those bald assholes from the night before. I rolled my eyes at Valka before I checked the phone and she said, “Well, if you feel that way about it, don’t answer it. There’s no pick-up-your-cell-phone law. Especially not in Vegas.” She was right, of course, but I could not stop myself from checking. In this video Jenny had her arm in a sling. She mouthed “Mom” at me.
I choked. Thinking again about Mom hovering over the bed when I was a kid. If I fell asleep during her story, she would pinch me to wake me up. Sometimes she would just let her fingers hang close to my arm. Or just move them slowly, so slowly, toward me, while she whispered. I never knew when she was going to strike. That was the worst part. No wonder I rushed into Thomas’s arms so quick. He was my steady. I remember seeing bruises on Jenny also, but she went the other way. She craved things out-of-sorts and hectic. Now she was getting it something good. But I was too far away to help.
“Aw, crap,” I said.
“What’s going on over there?” said Valka.
“Oh, nothing but my family’s white trash roots starting to show,” I said. I went to the bathroom, locked the door, and called Jenny.
“You would not believe the bathroom I’m in right now,” I said when she picked up. I was trying to make things light, to cheer her up. “There’s a phone. And a TV. And I think it’s made of gold.”
“I am so happy for you,” said Jenny, but of course she was not. She did not have time for bragging, or any games at all.
“Are you okay?” I said. “Can you handle this?”
“I can’t tell,” she said. “I can’t tell if it was just an accident because we were arguing and she grabbed me the wrong way or if it was for real, and Mom’s going crazy and is going to like, stab me in my sleep.”
I thought about it for a second. “No, she would not do it while you were sleeping. She would definitely want you to be awake for it.”
“That’s comforting,” she said.
“Well, how else would you get the point?”
We both started laughing, but it was a little moan of a laugh that drained out of our throats quick.
“Call someone,” I said. “Go somewhere. Go stay in my old apartment. Timber would let you in.”
“I feel like I can handle it,” said Jenny. “And anyway we’re all snowed in. Dad’s completely checked out at this point, and won’t dig us out of the driveway.”
“Will you just call Timber?”
“If I need to, I will. I’m not that worried though. I’m pretty sure I can take her. She’s so lit all the time I probably could knock her over quick.”
She laughed, and I strained my ear to see if she was faking it. Oh, I guess I wanted to believe her. I wanted to carry on with what I was doing at that moment. Sitting close to Valka in bed and giggling like real girlfriends. Breaking free from the cold Nebraska winter. On my way to the new me. So I wished her well and made her promise to call me the minute anything happened. But secretly I hoped that phone did not ring. Because I still wanted to have some fun.
Back in bed, Valka gave me her best impression of a worried look, considering her forehead did not move a lick.
“You want to talk about it, Cathy?”
“Nope,” I said. “I do not want to talk about anything ever.”
Valka took in a deep breath. “All rightie, then,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said. I instantly regretted it. But I was not ready to spill my soul to the world. I loved Valka but it was so tight inside me. It still hurt to breathe.
Then she said, “Oh well, new day, new year.” She paused. “That’s right, it is a new year! Tonight, oh tonight. I am taking you to see the best show on earth,
Hot Stars in the City.
Two lady friends out on the town again. And then at midnight, champagne cocktails!”
“I don’t know if my head can handle it.”
“You’ll be fine. Just take some more aspirin. Or I’ve got some Valium.”
“Valium!” I said.
“I have lots of drugs. I’m a regular old medicine cabinet. I AM A CANCER SURVIVOR.” She said it so seriously I could not argue with her.
Valka got up and went to the bathroom and said, “This is magnificent.” Then she started puking.