Mom drew Marine into a hug while Marine awkwardly kept one hand on my arm.
“We know what you want to say,” Mom told her.
What? I thought. I don’t. But there was no time, and I really didn’t care. We had to hurry—I promised Alex.
“Have you seen Ida?” I asked Marine.
She nodded.
“Well?”
“We should leave right now. You both get changed and we’ll go.” Marine plucked up one of the bags by her feet and handed it over. In the bathroom, I pulled on gray sweatpants and some kind of sweatshirt with a dog on it. I made a last attempt to dry my hair with the damp towel but ended up just throwing it on the floor. The brand new sweatsuit made my skin itch. I looked in the large, chipped mirror, just to see if my hair looked any more dry. I was surprised that I didn’t look the way I remembered.
I felt a hot, molten shame in my gut at the thought. So selfish, Who cares about how you look? I told myself. You need to leave now. Ida could be dying. I kicked the limp towel under the sink and swept out to an empty room. I found Mom and Marine downstairs in the tiny lobby, speaking to a confused clerk.
“But you’re not staying?” he asked, his forehead a landscape of creases.
“Something’s come up,” Mom said. “An emergency. But thanks very much for loaning your charger. Bill my card for the full night, won’t you?”
“Are you sure, ma’am?”
“Oh yes, thanks again!”
Mom and Marine gathered me up by the door and the three of us sped out to Marine’s dusty red car. The back seat was cluttered with crumpled paper and empty paper cups. I swept all of the debris to the floor and stretched out flat on my back.
• • •
When I woke up, the sky had darkened. I knew I’d been dreaming. I could still catch the scraps of vision and sounds, a booming, gold confetti. I sat up and tried to brush it off, even though I knew it wasn’t really there.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Almost seven,” Marine answered.
Mom’s head lolled against the window.
“How long has she been asleep?” I asked, and coughed a little, trying to clear the sandy feeling out of my throat.
“A while. Here, we stopped on the way.” Marine handed back a plastic bag with a bottle of soda and a waxy-looking donut inside.
“Are we almost there?”
“Yes.” Marine kept her voice soft.
“Did my phone ring?”
“Yes.” Marine’s voice was even softer.
“Did something happen?” Fury and fear washed through me.
“We’re almost there now, it’s okay.”
I wanted to ask Marine if “it’s okay” meant Ida was okay, but I couldn’t. I think I already knew, somewhere, what had happened. I opened the soda and gulped down nearly the whole bottle and shoved the sickly-looking donut down my throat. My blood boiled with sugar as well as terror, and I bounced and shifted in the back seat, urging Marine to drive faster. The darkness broke up around the car—lights by the side of the road and flashing signs advertising all of Vegas’s lewd wares flooded the sky.
I felt my heartbeat thrumming under my breastplate. It’s all the sugar, I tried to tell myself. I’m sure everything is fine. I knew it was a lie. I knew. It was like some cord had attached Ida and me, and that hot churning deep in my stomach was what happened when the cord snapped away. Where did you go, Ida? Where are you? I pleaded, out at the fluorescent red XXXs and wind-bent cardboard cutouts of curvaceous silhouettes.
I recognized the prelude to the hospital parking lot—a McDonald’s, a Burger King, and a Hardee’s—a heart-rending ellipsis. Marine stopped the car so gently, I could barely tell we weren’t still moving. I stepped out of the car as Marine shook Mom awake. I didn’t run—I could only manage the slowest and most sedate pace because my heart beat so violently. Inside, the hospital was glaring white. I walked past the chairs Alex and I had once waited in, past clumps of tired people waiting to be seen. I pushed the elevator button, like I knew exactly where I was going.
When the doors opened, I saw Alex, or the shape of him at least. My vision was blurred and overbright.
“Alex,” I whispered.
He didn’t see me, though. No one did. There were others there, too. Ovid and Chantal. Their heads hung like heavy globes of large fruit. Fresh heads, I thought, hysterically.
“Guys!” I shouted at them, wrestling a histrionic cheer into the word.
They all turned to look up at me at the same time, like a group of Broadway dancers. Alex trotted over to me, halfheartedly, though—there was no real urgency in his movements.
“Van, you’re here.” He sounded weak, like he’d been the patient this whole time, stuck through with tubes and needles.
“Where is she? Can I see her?”
“Um,” Alex began and looked up at Chantal. Chantal moved over to me and put a hand on my back between my shoulder blades.
“I’m so sorry, Van,” she said.
I didn’t remember much after that: dropping to the floor, the crack of my knees against linoleum, bright light and faces swirling overhead, the ding of the elevator bell, a rattle of wheels rolling by my head. Then Mom, beside me, holding me. Alex on the other side, practically squeezing the bones out of my hand. I tried to push them away, but they were like walls of water, swelling back every time I struck out at them. I hated them all so much. I hated Mom for being so difficult, and I hated Alex for not insisting I go back with him and Marine. Why didn’t he just carry me out of that camp? I thought. I hated Ovid for keeping Ida up so late, for pushing her beyond her physical limits. I hated Marine for so many things. The only person I didn’t hate right then, funnily, was Chantal.
“Chantal?” I called. I could hear the snot and tears in my voice.
I felt the softness of Chantal’s body as she lifted me off of the floor and pulled me against her shoulder, smoothing my hair. She didn’t say anything. She just kept smoothing my hair and let me cry.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Later, in a small office in the bowels of the hospital, Mom and I sat side by side, still in our matching dog sweatshirts. My newly bandaged hand rested in my lap. The man behind the desk seemed frightened of us and cowered down in his chair. I knew the way I was looking at him was not kind. I was angry and cold from all of the crying. Mom was limp all around—she was still weak. If the circumstances had been different, I’d probably have tried to convince her to get checked out, but there wasn’t room for any of that, because we sat in the cowering man’s office to discuss Ida’s remains.
“I understand our patient didn’t have any additional family in the state.”
“That’s correct,” Mom said. Her hands were folded in her lap and her legs were crossed at the ankle. The juxtaposition of her classic chairwoman position and the droopy-eyed canine emblazoned on her chest surely wasn’t lost on the hospital administrator. He cleared his throat and looked up at the ceiling.
“That’s unfortunate, since we usually require a next of kin to claim the remains. Although, as her employer, Mrs. Lowell, it’s possible we can make an exception for you. If no next of kin is available. You’re sure there’s no one?”
“Quite sure.”
“I see. Well, I’ll speak to my supervisor, if you ladies will give me a moment.”
“Of course,” Mom said.
The administrator stepped out of the room, all paunch and wrinkled suit, leaving us alone.
“Is that true? Does she really not have anybody? I thought there was somebody in Canada she used to talk about.”
“No, it’s not true. I just don’t want to leave Ida here, alone in this—place.” Mom felt guilty, I could tell.
A rustle at the door made us turn at the same time, matching movements and expressions directed at the sagging administrator.
“Thank you so much for your patience, ladies. If you’ll sign these, Mrs. Lowell, you can be on your way. We’ll have the body shipped whereve
r you decide. There’s a list, just there, of reputable funeral directors.”
“Ida wanted to be cremated,” I said, and Mom nodded.
Ida had always said it was what she wanted. “When my time comes,” she’d start. Mom and I followed up her repeated cremation requests with oh-Ida-you’re-going-to-live-forevers. But here we were.
“Certainly, I’ll just make a note on that list, if you’ll give me a moment.” The administrator jotted down a line at the bottom of the page. His handwriting scribbled underneath the neatly printed list looked like a dead spider.
“Thank you.” Mom snapped the paper away from him and handed it over to me, where I rested it on my lap. “Where did you need me to sign?”
I unfocused my eyes and listened to Mom scrawl away.
“We’ll transport the remains to the . . . chosen facility . . . and you’ll be able to pick them up there. You’ll just need this information.” He swooped a pile of paper together and slid it into a somber navy blue folder. “I’m so very sorry for your loss,” he said, standing again.
“Thank you,” Mom clipped. “Would you mind giving us a moment?”
“Of course not,” he said, confusion stippling his forehead. Only Mom could make someone feel like their office was really hers.
The door closed, sealing us in. Mom looked down at her hands, not at me, which is how I knew it was going to be bad. I didn’t know if my body could feel any more angry.
“Van.” She said my name like it was half a question and half an answer. Mom looked around the room, her eyes finally settling on the wall beside my left ear. “I lied to that man.”
“What? Yeah, I know.” Maybe the exposure and coming down from wherever she’d been still clung to Mom. Maybe she was still shaking something off.
She shook her head, snapping her neck back and forth with a kind of self-flagellating violence.
“This should never have come from me,” she said. “But you need to know.” Mom looked down into her lap, at the two stacked palms she had composed there. “I lied to that man just now. Ida does have next of kin here.”
“What?” How had her cousins already arrived? I thought no one knew how to get in touch with them.
“She has only one next of kin.” She looked up at me. “And it’s you.”
What? Obviously Mom had gone back around the bend. Great. I started to stand up. “Mom, maybe we should get you checked out.”
“No, Van. No.” Mom pulled me back into my seat and tried to hold my hand this time. “Ida was Michael’s mother.”
“Michael? Who the fuck is Michael? Mom?” I yanked my hand out of Mom’s and stood up, retreating to one of the small room’s corners. I knew what Mom was going to say before she said it—I knew it. When I finally understood, I hurt with the thunder of it. Like I was clamped in the mouth of that giant stone face in the canyon, being crunched to smithereens. Like what was happening in the hospital administrator’s office and what had happened out in the canyon were consuming me, black-holing me into some other creature.
“Michael was your father.”
“What?” It was only a whisper, but I managed it. I was dizzy, struck. Like the air all around my head was filled with bees.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Mom said. “I’m so sorry it’s happening this way.” Mom shook her head. “Ida was just never ready to tell you.”
Mom dropped her head into her hands. Her cheeks were flushed, and I could see her trying to subdue her anger. At who? Ida? Michael? Herself?
“Then you tell me.” I wanted Mom to answer me, but in the same instant, I realized that I’d always been Ida’s. All of Ida’s affection and attention, all of her jokes and the secret language between our four eyes, that was not something that came from a stranger. “Oh my God,” I said. A rush of relief and anger—but not just at Mom this time, at Ida, too—pressed through me. “What the fuck, Ida?” I whispered into the sloppily patched wall I leaned against. “What the fuck?”
“She didn’t want you to know.”
I tilted my head to the side and could see Mom worrying the hem of her sweatshirt. “I didn’t want you to know. Ida wanted to get to know you. She didn’t want to force you to like her. And I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Ida found us, you were already big enough to make up your mind about things. She thought you would push her away if she told you.” A long pause. “She thought you would hate her for missing all of that time with you. She thought that you would hate her for not helping us when you were a baby.” Mom’s accent quivered out into the room, clotted with the hospital administrator’s lonely artifacts.
“What do you mean, when Ida found us? Why didn’t she help us?” My chest stung with a sharp, bright swirl of feeling. I remembered another time, far away, when Mom and I slept like tigers in the wild, curled around each other in the cold, on the grass, under the sky. Where had Ida been then?
The lights of the city twinkled through the room’s only window and Mom’s silence.
“Mom?”
“When I told you your dad was sick and died—”
“He overdosed, you mean.”
“Yes. I went to Ida for help. You were so little, I think she’d only met you once before that. Ida didn’t come around to our place much. She and Michael . . . they weren’t good with each other.”
I wasn’t used to Mom talking like this about anything, all open and afraid. Afraid of me.
“When he died, Ida was very angry.” I turned to watch Mom’s face, but I could only make out the shape of her body through my blurred vision. Was I crying? I didn’t even know.
“If you can believe it, she threatened me.”
“I believe it,” I said.
“Yes, well. She came to the apartment and threatened to have me deported, accusing me of murder, that kind of thing. She said she was going to take you.”
In a warm flash I formed a picture of what my life with Ida would have been, without Mom, without the adventures and travelling. I imagined my childhood, going to school, making friends, eating the lunches Ida packed, getting a learner’s permit, waking up every day in the same place. What would have happened to me?
“I was afraid, Van.” It was unusual for Mom to admit something like that. “And maybe I did the wrong thing—I don’t know.”
“We ran away,” I said.
“Yes. I ran away.” I saw Mom’s hands smooth down the front of her sweatpants. “We’re all she had, Van. We have to do the right thing for her.”
“Mom,” I said, soft and terrible, “why didn’t you want me to know?” I lurched toward her as I said it, wanting to push her off of her chair.
“I’m not as good as I want to be,” she whispered.
I’d never felt such a mixture of loathing and surprise. I think it was the first real thing Mom ever said to me.
“I’d like to bury her next to Michael, if you’re all right with that.”
Was I all right with that? Was I all right with anything? I did want to do the right thing for Ida—still, always. I turned so that my back was flat against the wall, so that the wall was holding me up. I nodded at Mom. She stood up and we left the hospital, sweeping past the hospital administrator pacing outside of his office.
• • •
Usually, on a Thursday night at the Silver Saddle, the staff crackled with the possibility of the weekend—so much money to be made, the disappointments of the last weekend forgotten. But that night, when we returned from the hospital with a slip of paper instead of Ida, the mood in the lobby was dour. Even the lights looked dimmer, like they hadn’t been turned up all of the way. The Silver Saddle knew we were coming, and everyone who had a free minute waited for us: in clusters outside, and in hushed conversations at reception.
Each person or group we passed spoke out softly, or pressed our arms and shoulders. I knew it was nice of them to be sorry, but every time I tried to look one of those people in the eye, all I could think wa
s, You have no idea. You have no idea what she meant to me; you have no idea who she was; you have no idea what a gaping shithole my life will be without her.
Mom held me in the elevator, and I let her, our sweatshirts pressing their doggie faces against one another. It didn’t feel any better. Mom knew I was angry. I think that she knew, before I knew, that I would never look at her the same way again. I wanted to really hate Mom, but she was all I had left, and I didn’t want to hate my only person.
Our suite looked exactly the same as I’d left it. The little things I’d knocked askew getting my backpack together for the bus trip to Sedona, those things were still crooked: a vase scooted too close to a shelf edge, a chair pulled out when Ida would have pushed it back in. Ida was everywhere, even her old-lady smell. Every time I blinked I thought Ida. It was crazy and messed up and I needed to stop it. The inside of my head was like a swamp, all soggy and dismal.
I got down on the sofa and drew up the blanket Ida had slept under. I lay there and pretended that I was a mummy in ancient Egypt, entombed in the casino’s night sounds. All of the darkness and fear that rasped at the pyramid wall wouldn’t get in to where I rested, not then at least.
I knew that I cried, and I knew that I slept, but I didn’t know how much. I thought back to the massive golden face that knew my name. I had these little flashes of wanting to be dead myself, but then equal and opposite flashes of desperately taking it back.
All I knew was that Mom left me alone. Everyone left me alone until late-late, when Alex knocked. I knew it was him. I didn’t know what time it was or if I would let him in, but I knew, with that knock, that it was definitely him. The door to Mom’s room was closed, and I was sure she was asleep.
I walked over to the door and I almost opened it. I realized, before I touched the handle, that this was no place for Alex. I was in some other dimension, some other fold of space-time that wasn’t safe for people like him. I stood by the door for a long time, listening. Maybe he’s still waiting out there for me, I thought. But I never checked. I couldn’t bear to check. Some raw, dark thing lumbered in me, and it needed to stay where it was. Alex, if he was still waiting, was safe on the other side of the door.
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