The Melting Season

by Jami Attenberg

“There is nothing left for me there,” I said. “It is all ground up into shit.”

  “Sure there is,” said Valka.

  And then she said the one word that would make me turn right around and head back home.

  Part Three

  20.

  I had never been on a plane before. My life was all about firsts now. I was learning to accept that. There I was, circling Omaha, clutching the armrest on one side, and Valka’s wrist on the other. It had snowed every day since I had left my hometown, though the air was clear at the moment. The pilot told us the landing strip was iced over and we had not been cleared to land yet. That was an hour ago. They were talking about rerouting us to Iowa City. I did not mind the delay so much because I suddenly did not want to go home, but I did not want to die in a plane crash either. Either way, I could go up in flames. I pictured my head a singed mess, my blond hair dust in the air behind me.

  “I’m going to be sick,” I said. The air in the plane reminded me of the air in the casinos. I felt myself drying up inside.

  “Eat some nuts,” said Valka. She tossed a bag in my lap. She flipped a page of her magazine to the Fashion Don’ts, Rio DeCarlo front and center in a leopard-skin dress, her hands waving high toward someone far away in the distance. Maybe an imaginary friend. “The other thing that works is putting your head between your legs and counting to ten.” She pointed at the picture of Rio. “See, I think that would look good on me. She’s just wearing the wrong shoes. And makeup.” She peered closer. “And nose.”

  I looked out the window. All I could see was white everywhere, all over Omaha, all over Nebraska, all over America. We could run out of gas at any minute, I thought. Maybe we should turn around.

  “There’s nothing down there but snow,” I said.

  “It’s pretty,” said Valka.

  “It’s scary,” I said.

  “Don’t be a baby,” she said. “You’re just afraid to go home.”

  “I am not,” I said.

  How could I explain to her that I was still just a mess of parts of myself? She thought I was going to be brave and strong like her but I was not so sure I had it together yet. It was like I was a giant balloon and someone had stuck something sharp in me and I had just exploded everywhere. And what can you do with what is left behind? Throw it away? Put it back together? It will not work anything like it did before. Something new had to be made out of it. I just did not know what that something new was yet.

  “This is your reality.” She patted my hand and then scratched her fingernails along my arm. “But I know you can handle it.”

  The loudspeaker crackled and the pilot spoke. “Ladies and gentleman, I am happy to report that it looks like we’ve been cleared for landing.” All around the plane people applauded, and then laughed.

  This is my reality, I thought. It starts in the air, way up high. It starts right now.

  AFTER LANDING WE RACED through the airport. We were in a hurry to be saviors, I guess. I had nothing but a backpack full of dirty clothes and my suitcase full of money. Valka walked faster than everyone else. That woman shocked me with her energy. How she had been through so much and yet still had so much to give. Her legs pumped as she walked, like she was a stallion racing in the morning, and her arms swung, too, one fist clenching her carry-on bag. I picked up the pace. I did not want to face my hometown but I did not want to be left behind either.

  Valka gawked as we walked. Mostly there were businessmen, the ones from the big companies that had taken over downtown Omaha and turned it into something bigger and brighter than the rest of the state. She had no use for them. Businessmen she knew. But she loved the occasional farmer in the mix, those people who were really my people, and she did not hide her stares. The cowboy hats and the flannel shirts on the older men, packs of chewing tobacco in their pockets. They walked gingerly with their gray-haired wives. The bustle of their winter coats. I hoped they were returning from somewhere warm. Valka stared at the young bucks, too, in their tight jeans and flat, shiny hair.

  “Yee-haw,” she whispered to me, as we stood at the car rental counter.

  “You’re man-hungry,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “My heart belongs to a Beatle.”

  Jealousy struck me. Right behind it was old Mr. Misery. They both took turns slapping me upside the head.

  “My heart belongs to no one,” I said.

  “Your heart belongs to you,” she said.

  Valka rented the only BMW on the lot. It did not make much sense in the snow, but Valka said, “You have to go home in style. You show them before they show you.”

  And then we were on the road heading west, just like that. One day before we were sitting in our gigantic bathrobes in Las Vegas, Valka telling me that I had to return home, that my life there was not done and over and that things needed to get fixed, and that I was the only one who could fix them. Then she was on the phone with her travel agent getting us tickets to Omaha, and we were ditching my truck in long-term parking at the airport, Valka promising we would come back for it, me knowing I probably would never see it again. We rushed through security, Valka explaining away my suitcase full of cash to the airport guard—“She was a big winner, isn’t it fantastic?” We hustled and laughed and landed ourselves on an airplane headed straight for the heart of America. I held her hand then. I held her hand more than a few times. She said I could hold it until I did not need to anymore.

  On the road she fiddled with the radio, landing on a top-forty station. The DJ was counting down the hits. Something with a fast beat came on, and there was a woman’s voice singing through some sort of filter. She sounded like an alien, ready to invade.

  “Did you see there were seat warmers?” she said. She pressed some buttons on the dashboard and suddenly my behind was warm.

  “That is unnatural,” I said.

  Valka shrugged. She did not worry too much about things being natural or not, I had figured that much out by now. She pulled her seat back and stretched her feet out on the dash. Then she looked out the window and started to twirl her fingers in her wig. She was a brunette today, the same mod wig from New Year’s Eve.

  “So this is Nebraska,” she said. There was snow everywhere but the roads were clear. “Doesn’t look like there’s a hell of a lot going on around here.”

  “It’s not much but it’s home,” I said. I do not know why I said that. I did not need to make excuses for my home state. I loved it there. But things had shifted since I had left. I had seen so much already, been through three states, and I had been wrapped up in the thick air of the casinos for days. Just a half hour out of Omaha and already the land had flattened and the buildings were sparse. There were no levels to that part of Nebraska, it was just land and sky and space. And corn, even if you could not see it at that moment. But underneath it all was the aquifer, and it brewed energy and life. Nebraska was more than just nothing. You just had to know where to look.

  “Ah, it’s winter,” she said. “And we didn’t come to sightsee anyway.”

  The song ended and the announcer came on and said it was time for the entertainment news. Now this was my game. I turned up the volume.

  “The Los Angeles Police Department just announced that early this morning television and film actress Rio DeCarlo was in a car accident. She struck a car carrying three teenagers and one adult. We have no information about the passengers’ identities, but we do know all were hospitalized, and DeCarlo has been charged with driving under the influence. Several bottles of pills were found in the car along with an open bottle of vodka.”

  “Holy Jesus,” I said. “Rio DeCarlo!”

  Valka just shook her head. “I knew something like that would happen to her someday.”

  “But she never drives,” I said. “She has a driver. I read it in a magazine. His name is Miguel, and he used to be a professional wrestler in Mexico. He’s saving up to move his mother and two sisters across the border.”

  “Oh, she drives all right,” said Valk
a.

  “How do you know?” I said.

  “I know things,” she said.

  “What do you know?” I said. I could not believe she knew a real live celebrity and she had not told me. I was rethinking our entire friendship.

  “Listen, honey, everybody knows everything in Los Angeles. It’s no different than your hometown where everyone knows you took all of that money out of the bank.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me before when I mentioned her?” I said.

  “I didn’t want to interrupt you,” she said.

  “Ha-ha,” I said.

  “And also I didn’t think it was my place to tell her stories. I mean, they aren’t my stories.” She turned down the radio. “And obviously I’m in no position to judge.”

  I swatted her on her arm and the car swerved. “Valka, you had better tell me right now or I swear to God I will not drive a minute further.”

  “Hey, that hurt,” she said. She rubbed her shoulder.

  “I mean it,” I said.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “We go to the same guy,” she said. She motioned to her face. “The same doctor. He does my Botox and he did my boobs, too. He’s one of the best in L.A. I mean, look at me, not a line on this face.” She dropped the visor down and examined herself in the mirror. “Would you know I am thirty-eight years old? I don’t think so.”

  “You look great,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Anyway, I’ve seen Rio in the office a few times. She’s no delicate tulip, that one. I know I’m loud, too, but at the doctor’s office, you try to keep it cool. It’s sort of an unspoken agreement among us girls. We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of but we don’t want to advertise that we get work done either. We all keep our heads down in our magazines in the waiting room. Everyone wears big sunglasses. It’s all so dramatic! We look like a bunch of Italian movie stars from the fifties. I sort of love it.”

  She did not have me convinced that I would want to spend any sort of time in the waiting room of her plastic surgeon. I had already done enough time at the Helping Hands Center to know how I felt about it all.

  “But not Rio DeCarlo, she sashays around that office like she owns the joint. I mean, she’s a funny lady, and she’s always nice enough, but she’s just so over the top. She makes phone calls to her manager. She points out pictures of herself in magazines. Once I even saw her offer to give the receptionist her autograph. And she walks in without appointments all the time, which is totally against the rules. ‘See if he can fit me in,’ that’s what she says to the receptionist. Like we all weren’t sitting there waiting ourselves. But she always gets in. She must be in some sort of frequent flyer program.” Valka snorted. “I mean, sometimes it’s just too much. When your eyebrows are halfway up your forehead it’s time to take a good look at yourself. Eventually we all have to get old. Someday I’m just going to be old, Cathy.”

  “And you will still be beautiful,” I said.

  Valka waved me off with her hand. “Please. I’ll just be happy if I’m still alive. Anyway, one day I was in the office for a checkup on my boob job, and it was packed in there. It was right before Thanksgiving. Packed. Everyone wanted new lips for the holidays. And of course there’s Rio DeCarlo swooping in the door, moaning about how she had to do a screen test, an actress of her experience and stature, wasn’t it shocking, blah blah blah, and she had to have a little touch-up for the next day or she didn’t know what she was going to do. So the receptionist told her to have a seat, and there was only one seat left, next to me. Cathy, she sat down, and she stank, she stank to high heaven of booze. Booze and Chanel. I have to hand it to her, it ain’t easy being cheap and expensive at the same time. And of course she got to see the doctor before everyone else. Although—now that I think about it . . .” Valka scratched her jaw. “I wonder if that’s why they always let her cut in line, that they just wanted to get her out of there because . . . because she was so wasted and obnoxious.”

  “Nobody likes a drunk,” I said.

  “After my appointment I went to the parking garage to leave and who should I see sitting in her car but the old French whore herself, Rio DeCarlo. Just sitting there. Not starting the car, not moving, not nothing. Just sitting in her seat, her hands holding on to that steering wheel so tight I swear her knuckles were going to tear right through her skin. Staring straight forward, with these enormous sunglasses covering half her head, and this creepy grin. She looked like the Joker in a deck of cards. And every part of her was frozen, her lips, her cheeks, her hands, her body. She was like a creature from beyond.” Valka wiggled her fingers at me and made a ghost noise, and I laughed at her. “I just got the hell out of there and ran to my car. I burned rubber getting down to the exit. And when I was paying my ticket, just when I thought I had escaped, there was Rio DeCarlo, pulling up behind me. I tell you, I never hauled ass so fast through the streets of Los Angeles as I did that day.”

  “So she’s a terrible person,” I said.

  “No, she’s just a drunk,” she said. “Everyone has their vice.”

  I thought about the click-clack of Valka’s pill bottles in her purse.

  “That’s why I don’t tell other people’s stories that aren’t mine to tell,” she said. “But the cat’s already out of the bag with this one.”

  I was so depressed. I wanted to believe in Rio.

  “Don’t look so sad, kid,” she said.

  “It is just that I have always enjoyed her,” I said. “I would like her to be as brave as she is in the movies.” I felt my chest clutch as I said this.

  “She’s not bad, she’s just damaged,” said Valka. “Everyone’s a little damaged, honey.”

  We drove in silence for a while, quietly counting up our own damages. Up ahead the clouds closed in again, and soon we had driven into snow. I had been hoping for an easy return to my hometown but it was just as I had left it. Snow piled up high, snow coming down from the sky, rough roads, rough driving, a freezing, lonely Nebraska winter.

  “Where do we go?” said Valka. “Where do we start?”

  “We start with the best burger in the state,” I said. And I steered us toward the diner.

  21.

  We got off the expressway and pulled onto the frontage road that bordered my hometown. Everything felt different already, like it had been years since I had been there, and not just a handful of days. The houses seemed smaller than I remembered, and they appeared empty from the outside. All of the curtains were closed, the lights were out, and there were stacks of newspapers on front porches wherever I looked. And there were no cars on the road, and the streets had barely been cleared. I drove slowly, and tried not to swerve, but my heart was beating a deep, deep thrum. There had been a snowstorm, and that accounted for a lot. The townsfolk went sleepy during those times. But I could not help but think that the whole town had disappeared right along with me. No one was waiting for me to come back. Maybe I had forfeited my right to ever see these people again. All because I left town.

  “Ghost town,” said Valka.

  “Snowstorm,” I said. “They’re probably all sleeping right through it. There’s nothing to do but hide inside right about now.”

  At last a car passed us, a sheriff ’s car, from two towns over. I let out a big gasp of air from my lungs. I did not know I had been holding anything in. I had forgotten to breathe for a minute, I guess. It took me another minute to realize: I was scared out of my mind. I pulled the car over to rest in a snowbank.

  “Sweet Jesus, I am freaking out,” I said.

  “Drive,” said Valka.

  “I do not think I can do it,” I said.

  “We didn’t drag our asses all the way from Las Vegas so that you could lose your nerve now, right here in your hometown. Keep going. That burger sounded good and I’m hungry now. My doctor says I should eat more red meat anyway. I’m iron-deficient.” She paused and looked thoughtful for a minute. “On top of everything else.”

  Just even the tiniest reminder
of everything Valka had been through pushed me to keep going. That woman was going to be able to get me to do anything she wanted for the rest of our lives together.

  I steered back onto the road and headed toward the diner. A dirty farm dog hustled over snowbanks. Down near the McDonald’s, the one next to the bowling alley, the stoplight at the intersection was blinking like crazy. No one would know whether to stop or go. If anyone was out there.

  Finally we got to the diner, which was empty out front except for a big rig parked crookedly, like a snake that could not decide which way he wanted to slide next. Inside the diner was the rig’s driver, and Timber, who was wiping up the counter. I could not see Papi, who was probably cleaning something in the back. I opened the door and a cluster of bells attached to the inside handle jangled. The driver looked up and gave me a glance and then took a long look at Valka. He did not break his stare even as we passed him. Timber looked up, too, and he opened his mouth and let it hang there like a dog panting for water.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” he said finally. He came out from behind the counter. He reached his arms out toward me and I reached out toward him and then we were sunk in each other’s arms. “I am so happy to see you’re alive. And not in jail somewhere.” He pulled away from me and gave me a girlish little slap on my shoulder. He had done it to me a million times but I had never noticed how silly his slaps were before. “And what the hell, Moonie? What is going on with you?”

  “I’m fine,” I mumbled. It was nice to see him but I did not want this kind of attention.

  Valka, however, did not mind one bit. “I know, she’s a regular Calamity Jane, huh? Our crazy cowgirl.” Valka and Timber introduced themselves and they immediately got along. I was not surprised. Valka was the most interesting thing that had stepped foot into our town since Miss Nebraska had cut the ribbon on the new car dealership on South Lincoln two years back. They both started talking very loudly and I slid into a booth and let them gab away. Best friends forever, like how my classmates used to sign notes they passed to each other in class. Not that I had ever had one until now, and here Timber was trying to steal her in front of my eyes. But I knew she was mine.