Biloxi

by Mary Miller

  Laurel came hurtling at me and got me around the leg. I touched her springy hair and she looked up at me with such joy as I passed her the bag. Craig shook my hand, Maxine kissed my cheek.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” I said. “I had some issues.”

  “We’re just glad you’re here now, Dad,” Maxine said.

  “You’re lucky you missed it,” Craig said. “One of the kids had an accident and we spent half the party disinfecting. It was a real mess.”

  “I had some trouble earlier, as well,” I said. “It’s why I was delayed.”

  “You probably used the bathroom, though,” he said, and I assured him I had.

  “I don’t know why you feel compelled to tell people things like that,” Ellen said. “It’s gross.” She gave me a haughty look as she moved about the room, picking up discarded plates and cups. “No one wants to hear about that.”

  “You’re not my wife anymore—”

  “It’s gross,” she repeated.

  “—so you can keep your opinions to yourself.” It was unfortunate that I’d spent so much time thinking about her in the early years of our marriage, and those biscuits—why had I been stuck on those damn biscuits?—when whatever good things we’d had were memories best forgotten.

  “Do you want ice cream with your cake?” Maxine asked.

  “Sure do,” I said, and she put a big scoop on a generous slice and I sat in what had to be Craig’s chair because it was the only comfortable one in the room while Laurel tried to decide between playing with Layla and opening my present. She sat and then stood, jumped up and down, took the dog’s face in her hands and planted a good one on her nose. She squealed. Plopped down on the floor. It was dizzying to watch but entertaining enough for a short time.

  “Take it easy, Laurie,” Craig said, sitting next to her. I noticed him holding one of his knees. Perhaps we might talk about our knees sometime.

  “Laurie,” I said, “now that’s a cute name.”

  “Dad,” Maxine said, and I shoved a piece of cake into my mouth as Craig helped Laurel dig through the bag. I hadn’t taken the price tags off or wrapped each of the individual items in tissue paper but she didn’t mind. I’d bought her one Glittering Garden, which was the right number of Glittering Gardens, and two of the eggs that you put in the garden to hatch. And there was also the jump rope. She pumped it above her head and sprang to her feet to try it out, but she wasn’t very good. On her third attempt to get the rope past her feet, she knocked Ellen’s drink out of her hand—what looked to be white wine—and it spilled all over her pants.

  “I didn’t consider the liability of a jump rope,” I said.

  Ellen looked more upset than she should’ve so they must have been new, and expensive, purchased via the generosity of my dead father. I hoped all her future pants got ketchup on them.

  Craig said he wished Laurel would go ahead and break everything, be done with it already. Laurel, it seemed, was a real klutz. And just when had Craig become so likeable? What a nice guy. I’d have to mention it to Maxine the next time I saw her, what a great guy he was, how much his personality had improved. What had I ever held against him? I realized it was as simple as he hadn’t seemed to like me enough, hadn’t gone out of his way to make me feel like he gave a shit when I had raised the woman who would become his wife, but I hadn’t gone out of my way, either. In fact, I had ignored him. Called him the wrong name. Why would he have extended me courtesies after such insults?

  Ellen left after that, didn’t look at me as she walked out the door and got into a car that was not a dark blue Buick Regal but a silver SUV, and then it was the four of us.

  “Do you want another piece of cake?” Maxine asked. “Or some pizza? It’s cold but I can heat it up.”

  “Another piece of cake might be nice, but a small one this time. And no ice cream. I’m gonna be like Frank and start watching my weight.”

  “Why would he be watching his weight?” she asked. “He’s not even fat.”

  “That’s what I said. Who knows with Frank, though, he’s a man of mystery.”

  She laughed and said Frank was the least mysterious man she’d ever known. I left it at that, didn’t want to out him. Laurel was getting the hang of the jump rope by that point, counting out Mississippis, which pleased me. Even in Mississippi the children counted Mississippis—we had the river and the measurement of seconds. We had a lot of other stuff, too, stuff that others would never know about because they only wanted to rehash the bad things.

  Craig excused himself while Maxine messed around in the kitchen, leaving Laurel and me alone. She climbed into my lap and I told her some things I knew: that she could get blue hair if she wanted, but she shouldn’t do it just to be ugly, that dogs were excellent company, much better than people, though they didn’t live all that long and were prone to running away. And they had poor gag reflexes, though that was maybe anecdotal. I told her that cakes were more delicious when other people made them, as was most everything else. I tried to think of other things I knew, advice she might find useful.

  “What are you telling her in there?” Maxine called.

  “I’m giving her life advice.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “Don’t do that! Don’t listen to him, Laurel!”

  “What? I give good advice. I’m a fount of wisdom.”

  Laurel scooted to the floor and I got down there with her, watched her set up the eggs and run back and forth to her room to grab other mechanical toys to show me how they worked. They didn’t seem any more advanced than the toys of fifty years ago; so far as I could tell, they just sped directly into walls and spun their wheels.

  “Rainbow eyes!” she yelled, and the eggs split: one and then the other, twins in each. One of them sang and the other danced. They shifted their heads and made strange sounds and Laurel clapped and squealed. It was every girl’s dream to have a twin, a replica of herself to admire, while also imagining herself better.

  “I have more presents for you,” I said. “I nearly forgot.” I went back out to my car and brought in the books and the dress.

  “This is too much, Dad,” Maxine said. “You didn’t have to get her all this stuff. It’s really too much.”

  “I spared you the oven. I considered it but decided to save you from buying all those mixes.”

  Another hour passed and I remained on the floor, unwilling to take the dog and return to the house. I imagined it there, how quiet and dark. Closed up. Craig had returned and Maxine was done in the kitchen so the three of us watched Laurel play. She was wearing the dress I’d bought for her over her other dress and was pleased to be wearing two of them. She yelled at her animals to be good, to stop being so bad, pausing every once in a while to pet Layla roughly or yank her ears. Layla was a good sport about it, seemed to enjoy it even.

  “I’ve been thinking about putting the house on the market—get out from under the house, as they say. What would you think about that?” I asked Maxine.

  “That would be fine with me. I never liked that house,” she said.

  “Because it has bad memories for you?”

  “No. It doesn’t have bad memories—I had a good childhood. The house is just dark and the ceilings are low. It feels cramped. It needs to be updated.”

  “You had a good childhood?”

  “Of course I had a good childhood, Dad. Y’all were great parents. You did your best.”

  These were different things, being great parents and having done our best but I decided to focus on the former.

  “Would you get out of Biloxi?” Craig asked.

  I told them the plan, which I now realized was the plan, and not a dream or an idea. The rest of my life, and who knew how long that was, would be mine: I would sell everything, all of which meant absolutely nothing, and buy a luxury RV—or at least a very nice one—and the dog and I would hit the road. I asked if they’d be interested in coming along on one of my trips, perhaps in the summer. We’d drive to the tip of Florida and see the Ev
erglades, over all of those bridges and that blue, blue water. Beaches would be much prettier than we were used to, the water clear and clean. We could drive to the Grand Canyon, across Nevada and Utah, Montana and Idaho and Wyoming. Craig nodded, seeming to like the idea of it. Probably he was thinking of his own escape. Maxine said that sounded nice in the way that people tell you future plans that are unlikely to happen sound nice.

  “I’m really going to do it,” I said, because I knew how to keep my word, or I’d known at one time and would find that man again. I felt the fear and excitement of an unknown life in which terrible and wonderful things would happen, knowing that there was no other way to spend my remaining years. Being terrified was far better than the nothingness of a life spent in a chair, surrounded by the to-go boxes from someone else’s leftovers.

  It was getting late and Craig told Laurel to give me a kiss. I expected her to yell that she wasn’t ready for bed, but she stood and walked over to me, kissed my cheek with her sticky lips.

  “I love you,” she said, though no one had told her to say that.

  “I love you, too.”

  Maxine and I smiled at each other as Craig took her to her room, leaving the two of us alone. It was easier to talk to her with Craig there, with Laurel yelling at her toys or reminding me how much she liked chicken nuggets. I wanted to ask my daughter about her childhood again, if we’d actually been good parents, had done a decent job of things. She had said it, though, and I would leave it at that. Parents probably always thought they’d messed it up, could have done better, done more. It was the struggle and worry of having brought another person into the world and then giving them the freedom to figure things out on their own. If nothing else, Ellen and I had done the second part well. Maxine was a good person, a good mother and wife. She had made a nice life for herself.

  “I almost got Laurel a dog, but thought you’d make me take it back,” I said. “And then I’d probably’ve kept it and Layla’s plenty for me. Plus y’all have all those cats—where are the cats?”

  “They hide when we have people over,” she said. “And there’s only two of them. We don’t have, like, a dozen cats.”

  “That’s right. Penny and Ginger,” I said, impressed with myself for recalling their names. “One of them was waking you up early to eat. Is it still doing that?”

  “Ginger’s an early riser. I can’t believe you remembered their names.”

  “I’m a good listener.”

  “No, you’re not, Dad.”

  “Okay, you’re right, but I’m trying to be a better listener.” Then I told her Layla and I were also early risers and I needed to get her home, take her for one last spin around the block.

  She walked me outside and we stood in the driveway.

  “Laurel sure does love her chicken nuggets,” I said.

  “I know! And I don’t even let her eat them that often. I have no idea why she insists on broadcasting it all over town.” She hugged me and said she hoped I’d come back soon, and it sounded like she meant it. I’d intended to say something nice to my daughter—about how happy they seemed or how proud I was of her. I could do it some other time, though. It wasn’t like it was the last time I’d ever see them.

  I sat in the car with the windows down, Layla patiently beside me as I watched the lights in their house go off and others turn on. I wanted to pause my life, remember everything about this moment. The chill in the air indicating the arrival of a new season at last, the feel of whatever substance Laurel had transferred to my cheek, and Maxine’s house, behind the doors and windows of which my daughter and her family prepared for bed. They were my family, too, and had been all along. Everything going forward was up to me. I could continue down the road I’d been on. I knew exactly what that road held. It wouldn’t offer me any surprises and I had never liked surprises, or this was the story I’d told myself all these years, but the story could change. It already had.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANKS TO the following:

  Melissa Ginsburg and Lee Durkee, faithful readers

  Katie Henderson Adams, Gina Iaquinta, and Liveright Publishing Company

  Sam Stoloff, Matt McGowan, and Frances Goldin Literary Agency

  The original team: Matt, Nick, Betsy, Mom and Dad + Lucky Tucker

  And the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where I spent an irrecoverable year of my life walking the beaches, cruising Hwy 90, waiting for alligators to move, cashing hail-damage checks, and eating all of the oysters. Shout-out to Vincent Scarpa for going miles and miles out of his way to eat burgers with me. That was nice.

  Also by Mary Miller

  Always Happy Hour: Stories

  The Last Days of California: A Novel

  Big World

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Mary Miller

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

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  Book design by Fearn Cutler de Vicq

  Production manager: Beth Steidle

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Names: Miller, Mary, 1977– author.

  Title: Biloxi : a novel / Mary Miller.

  Description: First edition. | New York ; London : Liveright Publishing

  Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, [2019]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018056974 | ISBN 9781631492167 (hardcover)

  Classification: LCC PS3613.I5446 B55 2019 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056974

  ISBN 9781631492174 (eBook)

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