Welcome to the Slipstream

by Natalka Burian

  I knew the answer to this one.

  “Italy.” Italy was one place I’d never been.

  “Are you sure? We could go to France or Egypt?”

  “Definitely Italy,” I said.

  • • •

  There was music in the car, but so soft I could barely hear it. Alex was a slow driver. He didn’t chatter like Ida or get distracted and swerve around like Mom. It was barely noon, but the heat in the air filled the car quickly through the rolled-down windows. The dry dustiness of it made my throat and eyes itch, but the scent in that air was mysterious and powerful. It smelled ancient and metallic, but hauntingly organic at the same time, like you were breathing in the crushed bones of some lost civilization. I could see the strip in the distance, a dark smudge in the stretch of earth, mountain, and sky. As we got closer, I could see the strip start to bleed out; there were more cars, more roads, more low-rise motels, and garish gentlemen’s clubs.

  When we were inside of the buzzing wound, the buildings started to get taller and shinier. Even the sun seemed brighter. There were ads everywhere, mostly for table games with low buy-ins and strip club drink specials. Alex was focused, though, wary of gawking motorists who slowed down and sped up erratically as they took in the increasingly bizarre sights. We drove down the highway, along the outside edge of the casino skyline. I saw all of the landmarks I’d heard about: the long, bony giant’s finger of the Stratosphere, Caesar’s Palace, a squat, white wedding cake, and the faux statue of liberty watching over New York, New York. Alex looped around, driving up Las Vegas Boulevard, the main street that split the strip in two.

  Even in the early afternoon, the streets were crowded with sweaty throngs of people. Girls in bachelorette sashes and penis-bedecked tiaras sagged against one another and posed for pictures. Stoic dark-skinned men handed out flyers, flicking them out quickly, viciously, like reptilian tongues.

  “We made it,” Alex said. He looked over at me and then his face crumpled. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” I shook my head a little. “You’re right. I really haven’t been out in a while.”

  “Do you want to go back?” Alex’s eyes narrowed as he took in the way I had slumped down in the passenger seat.

  It was my turn to laugh, but I don’t know how convincing it was. “Definitely not,” I said.

  The Venetian’s façade towered over the car. I could barely see where the bleached stone pillars of the hotel stopped. I peeked through a complex of swooping archways and saw a miniature courtyard rimmed with faux cloisters. An artificial river the color of aqua Listerine flowed through the center of it. Ornamental footbridges, coated with pedestrians, crossed the radioactive-looking water. A few gondolas floated listlessly by the bridges, manned by sweaty hotel employees festooned in polyester Italian outfits.

  We parked about a million miles away in the garage.

  “Ready?” Alex said, and led me toward a pair of heavy double doors.

  • • •

  The smell inside of the Venetian was not much better than the fume-riddled parking garage. Scented, violently conditioned air swirled around us. I imagined it smelled the way the radioactive, ersatz canal water might.

  The floor of the lobby gleamed, polished to an Olympic ice-rink shine. Alex gave me a little nod, telling me to look up. I tilted my head back and scanned the array of cherubs and anonymous robed figures relaxing among enormous clouds.

  “Pretty ridiculous, huh?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “It gets worse. Come on.” Alex pulled at my elbow again, this time letting his hand slide down my forearm, holding lightly onto my wrist. I tried to keep my breathing calm and even. It’s not like we’re holding hands exactly, is it? Be cool, Van.

  I gave the ceiling one more look and slid along the shining floor, trying not to smile too much.

  “This is nothing like the Silver Saddle,” I said.

  “I know, this is so much worse.”

  “That’s hilarious,” I said.

  “No, I mean it. Our hotel is something special. Not soulless, like this dump.” Alex moved his arm like a weatherman demonstrating the movement of a storm system. I liked how he’d called it our hotel. “These big operations are all the same. If you’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all. So, Van,” he said, nodding at me as he stepped on to the escalator, “now that you’ve been to every casino in Las Vegas, we should probably eat lunch.”

  A wide courtyard opened around us. The bright blue river that I’d seen outside swirled through the center of the square. Gondoliers ferried sweatshirt-clad tourists along its curves, past rows of shops and restaurants. There was music, too. The gondoliers sang different songs—“O Sole Mio,” “My Way,” “That’s Amore”—all competing against one another and against the piped-in top forty thrumming through the speakers.

  Alex and I, and all of the people around us, moved slowly. We stared into the windows of the shops selling porcelain figurines and signed baseball memorabilia, and gawked at the menus on display in the artificial cobblestone street.

  “If you were wondering what to get me for my birthday next week, look no further,” Alex said, tapping the glass over a throw pillow shaped like a slot machine.

  “Is it really your birthday next week?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “How old are you turning?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Well, you definitely have sophisticated taste,” I said, tapping the glass where Alex had, in the same da-da-da rhythm. “Are you doing anything special?”

  Alex shrugged. “I don’t know yet. All plans hinge on my acquisition of this souvenir pillow, so, I’m still deciding.”

  I smiled into the glass, at the lumpy stuffed slot machine.

  “Do you want to get pizza, since we’re in Italy and all?”

  “You have no idea. All I’ve been eating is room service,” I said.

  “Really?” Alex gave me that crumpled face again. “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and put my hands on my hips, just to do something with them. I didn’t want him feeling sorry for me, so I said, “It’s all been pretty glamorous, but I’ve definitely missed the lowbrow cuisine your kind seems to enjoy.”

  “My kind?” Alex said.

  “Interns,” I said, and then tried to smile, even though the joke hadn’t covered over what I wanted it to. Or been funny.

  “I’m just surprised by what’s ordinary for you,” Alex said, more to himself than to me, I thought.

  “Nothing is ordinary to me.” I said it harshly, and the funny thing was, I hadn’t meant to say it at all. I’d only meant to think it.

  Alex looked at me with his head tilted a little. “Well, something should be. Pizza? That’s pretty ordinary.”

  • • •

  I got home late, after-dinner late. Mom and Ida were both back in the suite, but Mom was on her phone in the little office off of her bedroom. Ida sat on the sofa with her feet up on the coffee table. Mom had laid out an array of tile samples there, and Ida’s feet had pushed some to the floor.

  “Look who decided to come home,” she said, waving the remote at me like a sword. “It would have been nice if you told someone you wouldn’t be back for dinner. Your mother and I were worried sick. And me, slaving over a hot stove for nothing!”

  It was always hard to tell with Ida just how upset she was. She kept her real distress buried under a sarcastic, jokey layer. Her affection was the same way.

  “There’s a plate for you in the oven,” Ida said as she crossed her arms in front of her chest and let her feet thud to the floor. I knew she wasn’t really mad, then. There was no oven in our little kitchen.

  “I just hope it’s not lobsters again,” I said, picking up the dropped tiles before plopping down beside her. “Anyway, I’m not hungry.” It felt good to joke around with Ida, especially after my mangled attempt at humor in the faux Italian marketplace.

  “Aha!” Ida said as she clicked the remote,
stilling the screen. “I knew it! You were out to dinner with Antonio Banderas!”

  “I was,” I shrugged, “but not out-out. We didn’t go for prime rib or anything.”

  “Oh no?”

  “No, we had pizza.”

  “Pizza! You traitor. You could have brought me some.”

  “What? Ovid doesn’t like going out for pizza?”

  Ida smiled to herself and took my hand. “Van, honey,” she began. “There comes a time in a young woman’s life when she needs to learn when to say no and when to say yes. And I’m a little surprised that you didn’t say yes to some take-out for poor Ida.”

  “Jesus, Ida!” I said as I pulled my hand away and smacked her on the shoulder.

  “And now you’re attacking old women. What’s gotten into you, really? I’ll just have to speak to your mother about this,” she sniffed.

  “About what?” Mom said, from right behind us.

  “Jesus, Mom! You scared me,” I managed to get out, mid-laugh.

  “What have you two been doing out here?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all,” Ida said as she smoothed down the front of her appliquéd sweater.

  “Did you just get home?”

  “Yeah,” I said, taking a few deep breaths and smoothing down the front of my T-shirt, too.

  “Well, I’d like for you to be home for dinner tomorrow night,” Mom said. “Both of you.” She looked over at Ida. “We’ll have a guest,” she told us, biting her nails.

  “I can’t,” I said, remembering Joanna’s band practice, realizing that I really wanted to go.

  “What do you mean, you can’t?” Mom said, all stern and clipped.

  “I have plans,” I told her.

  “Plans? Again? With Antonio?” Ida leaned over to me and waggled her eyebrows.

  “No!” I looked down at my hands and could feel my face getting red. “Well, sort of.”

  “Why are my samples out of order?” Mom frowned down at the coffee table. “And who is Antonio?” she asked from around her fingers.

  Ida and I both looked at her other hand, its fingertips bloodied, hanging by her side.

  “He’s a little friend of Van’s,” Ida said. “Nothing to worry about, Sof.” She stood up and fished around in her purse.

  “I don’t really have plans with him, anyway. He’s just taking me to band practice.”

  “Band practice? What?” Mom squinted a little and Ida froze where she stood, bandaging the wounds on Mom’s hands. “Was this your idea, Ida?”

  “My idea?” Ida let Mom’s partially Band-Aid–covered hand flop back down to her side. “What band is this?” she asked.

  “This girl, Joanna’s.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. They just need a guitarist, is all.”

  “Well, I need you here. Tomorrow,” Mom said firmly. “And I don’t like this band stuff. I want you to be thinking about the SATs.”

  “Oh my God, Mom, not again with this.”

  “Not again with what? You’re not wasting this opportunity, Van,” she said.

  “It’s just a band, Sof. Maybe it’s not so bad—” Ida began.

  “Well I don’t like it. Besides,” she pointed at me, blood welling from the bitten-down finger she pointed, “you already have plans with your family tomorrow.”

  I sunk back into the sofa cushions and concentrated on the knot of anger in my gut.

  “The family and a guest,” Ida said, with that forced lightness she used when she was tiptoeing around Mom.

  “That’s right,” Mom said, like it was her and Ida against me.

  “What kind of guest?” Ida asked softly as she looked at me.

  Mom thought for a minute, opened her mouth, and then closed it again. “The good kind.” She turned and went back to her room, closing the door with a heavy click.

  Understanding Mom was never easy, even at the best of times. Watching her, I felt like the person who makes predictions for the Farmer’s Almanac—like my interpretations and expectations might be right but they might not. The way I counted on Mom, too, was the same way a person who works the earth counts on the weather; I was scared and grateful, all at the same time. I didn’t expect her to be thrilled about my trying something new, but what else was I supposed to do?

  Chapter Six

  Mom was still there the next morning when I was getting ready to leave for class with Erica. She’d spread a stack of folders across the glass-topped dining table and was tapping a pen against its surface. Plink-plink-plink-plink, the exact sound you hear before someone makes a toast. Her eyes looked a little puffy, and her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  Ida stumbled around the abbreviated kitchen counter, making coffee. “Sof, honey,” she called. “You feeling all right today?”

  Mom gave her shoulders a little shake, as if some invisible person had grabbed hold of her in a get-yourself-together-woman kind of way.

  “I’m fine,” she said, just shaking her head now. “I’m going to hang around here, for most of the day, anyway.” Mom’s accent was faint and ambiguous. She loved American figures of speech and throwaway words, like “anyway.” I know she used them because they put people off of the scent of her accent. Sometimes, people thought she was from New Zealand; sometimes, they thought she was from Canada. They never suspected that she came from Belarus. I think her near-absence of accent came from her refusal to speak her own language. She’d never spoken to me in anything but English, and when I’d complained about it, she told me it was for my own good.

  “Don’t forget, you two. Family dinner tonight. With a special guest.” She tapped her pen steadily and pointed back and forth, between Ida and me.

  “Of course, how could we forget? So mysterious!” Ida teased as she set a ceramic mug of coffee in front of Mom’s computer.

  “Oh, Van,” Mom began. “I want to schedule some of those college tours we discussed.”

  “Can we talk about it later? It’s not like there’s any rush.” I couldn’t even think about college. If I could barely carry on a single conversation with Alex, there was no way I’d be able to navigate hordes of other students. Anyway, I couldn’t just abandon Mom and Ida.

  “I don’t want you to sell yourself short. Do you think everybody in the world gets to do this? I would have killed for this opportunity at your age. Ida, tell her I’m right,” Mom said.

  I looked over at Ida, but she was carefully studying the coffee can.

  “Well, maybe you should take a couple of tours for yourself, Mom. It’s not too late for you.”

  Mom snorted.

  Ida handed me a cup of coffee. “Maybe just a visit, honey,” she said.

  “A visit would be totally unnecessary. How am I the only person who remembers that I’m taking a year off?” Maybe two years, or five, I thought.

  I scooped a short pyramid of books into my arms.

  “What, so you can be in this band? I won’t let you waste this chance to better yourself,” Mom said, her voice sharp.

  “I’m not wasting anything. I don’t even know what I want to do. It would be a waste to go now.”

  “We’re going to talk about this later.” Then, Mom’s brow smoothed and she practically chirped, “Maybe we can even discuss it with our special guest. Be back on time tonight, Van,” Mom said. Her flash from angry to cheerful made me a little queasy.

  “Sure. See you later, guys,” I said, and let the door close behind me. I wondered if our special guest was Ovid. Maybe Mom thought it was time for us to get to know him better.

  I thought about Mom’s sentences. I replayed each one in my mind, counting every word. When Mom started to get wild, she lost control of her English. First she would drop her articles. Go wait in car. Mom was usually so careful with her second language. Even when she was losing control, it was the last thing to go—the point of no return. Ida and I had seen enough of Mom’s cycles to recognize when she started to come apart. Ida would sneak Ambiens into Mom’s drinks if she’d been awake too long. It almost always w
orked. Almost.

  I preferred Mom’s wildness to her expansive flats. Even though she was hard to subdue, there was a thrill, a kind of participation. Ida and I could get through to her at least. The flats, though, they were unbearable. There was nothing we could do then, just sit with her wherever she landed and wait for her medicine to work.

  Low periods were easier to hide from Mom’s clients. Ida usually just lied and told them that Mom had come down with mono, or something equally contagious. If they ever got curious or impatient and decided to come around and check up on her, all the Chantal-types would see that she couldn’t get out of bed. Sometimes they were sympathetic, sometimes Mom came back enough to go back to work, but sometimes she got fired.

  When it was just me and Mom, when I was really little—too little to help—things got bad. I remember, in some of my earliest memories, a flash of institutional lighting. An ambulance ride, Mom drooling in a hospital bed. A foster family, very religious. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, spoken of so often and so casually it was like he was a member of the family, too. I didn’t stay there too long. Just long enough to know what eating three meals a day and an afternoon snack felt like. After that, Mom was a lot more careful. She started to make a little money. She started to make connections, was what she called it. Even then, I understood that our life wasn’t normal. I wasn’t a complete idiot.

  When she married William and hired Ida, everything got better, and we both tried not to look back.

  When I got to the Bill Pickett Room, I found Alex loitering just outside.

  “Are you ready for your big audition later?” He smiled out at me.

  “Oh, I’m ready,” I lied. “What time do we need to be there?” Maybe I could practice with Joanna’s band and be home before dinner.

  “Five. When Erica lets you go, meet me outside, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, because how long could band practice be, really? Also Mom seemed kind of out of it, and maybe she wouldn’t really care if I met the mystery guest or not.

  “Great. Hey,” Alex said, looking half at me and half at the god-awful wallpaper. “What are you doing next Friday? One of my friends is having a birthday party for me.”