“India, you're upset. Come here. Sit down. Let's talk.”
“No, you don't get it. I'm pregnant and my twin sister is schizophrenic, which means this baby might very well be schizophrenic, but I was still sort of dreaming about it, anyway, you know. But now I don't even know who my natural father was, what his family was like, anything. She's lied to me all these years. Lied to my dad.” Overwhelmed with fury, I sink down on the bed and put my hands against my eyes. “Why did she have to tell me?”
He settles behind me, his legs and waist against my back, his hands on my shoulders. He doesn't speak, just rubs my shoulders.
The vision of that cottage in the west of Ireland, not a real place, but a symbol of what I want—Jack walking along the sea with the border collie he longs for, and our little girl between us—rises.
“It'll be all right, India.”
“No,” I say. Shattering that vision is my sister, wild-haired and wild-eyed. My mother, watching her lover's blood pour out of his body into her lap; my dear, dear father's blue eyes laughing as we made chocolate-covered cherries—his favorite and mine, and something my sister could not eat on a bet.
“Don's eyes are blue. How did I avoid putting that together? That my blue-eyed mother and blue-eyed father had brown-eyed daughters?”
“He's your father.” His accent is pronounced, lilting. I think now that this is how English should sound, that all English should be spoken in this accent. How can I ever stand to hear it another way? “He's the one who raised you, took care of you, loved you.”
I feel nauseous. “I guess.”
“India, I've been tryin' to give you the space you seemed to want, but I love you. I want to be with you, take our chances with our child, love each other. Would it be so hard?”
He doesn't understand. “Have you ever known anyone who was schizophrenic, Jack?”
“No.”
I nod, rub my arms.
“Did you hear me at all, India?”
“I can't do it, Jack. I want to, but I can't. My grandmother was schizophrenic, too. Did I tell you that?”
“No. It doesn't matter, India.”
“Yes, it does. You don't understand how awful it is, Jack. You've never seen Gypsy when she's been lost for a couple of months, delusional. I don't know what happens to her or how she survives, and it makes me sick to imagine it.” I raise my head. “I cannot do that to a child.”
“To yourself you mean.”
I bow my head. “Maybe.”
“So that's the way of it then.” He lets me go, heads for the door. “I can't live this way, never knowing when your walls will go up.”
I can't think of anything to say. Bite my lip. My stomach is upset and I don't know how long it's going to be until I have to run for the toilet.
“I love you, India,” he says, and I close my eyes. “I didn't intend to. I didn't want to take a chance, either, and risk the sorrow again. But it's good with us. It could be good always. You have to choose.”
He opens the door and pauses a moment, looking at me, and walks out.
I let him.
Feeling overheated and disoriented and sick, I run for the toilet and throw up. When I come out, washing my face with a cool cloth, I can't stand to think of anything else tonight. Not the lump in my heart, the loss of Jack, my sister, my mother, anything. I order two bottles of Pel-legrino from room service and when it's delivered, I sit on the bed in the dark, the curtains open and showing me the expanse of lights and movement below. Every color of light sparkles in the darkness. Cars move on the streets. Somewhere in the casinos, someone has just lost his life. Somewhere someone else has just won one. In the hotel rooms, people are making love and having fights and sleeping.
I sip my Pellegrino and stare into the darkness and feel dead. There's nothing in me at all.
At one point in the night, I awaken in a sweat, the sense of my sister so acute that I sit straight up in bed and call her name, “Gypsy?”
Of course she's not there, but I close my eyes, breathe in the sense of her, opening up a center that's her, and she speaks in my mind, Remember the code. Come get me. There is a sense of danger, of cold feet, a man with a silver tooth. I fight the sleep creeping in, knowing I'll lose her once I fall asleep all the way, but the lure is too strong and sucks me under. There's a tangle of dreams: Gypsy lying with the man with the silver tooth, and it gets mixed up with my mother and the bloody tale of her lost lover, and Jack, sailing away to Ireland, with me standing on the shore, weeping. It threads through my mind that the only time my mother wept this whole trip was when she spoke of my father, Don.
I awaken early, tangled in the sheets, exhausted but not sick to my stomach, finally. The dream reminds me to call the voice mail on my cell and house phone to see if Gypsy has called in person the way she called in my dreams, but the circuits are busy. I wonder, with a frown, if there's an earthquake or something. I'll call later, I think, and drift into sleep again.
My mother arrives at my door at ten A.M., looking a little swollen-eyed but none the worse for the wear. “I was up all night,” she says without preamble. “C'mon and let me buy you breakfast, little girl.”
“Mom, don't.”
Eldora raises an eyebrow. “You can't hide from it, baby.”
“You know what, Mom? I used to wish I had a normal mother. Somebody who baked brownies and wore polyester pantsuits instead of red dresses to school plays.”
She nods without rancor, taps her unlit cigarette against the back of her hand. “I know. Sorry.”
“Don't be. My father never regretted loving you for one single hour of his life. I have never known a man to love a woman the way he loved you. Do you know that?”
Eldora sighs. “Are you gonna spend your whole pregnancy being sentimental? Because I'll just fly to Florida until your eighth month.”
“I'm not keeping this baby.”
“Maybe not.” She links an arm through mine. “Let's go eat, sweetie.”
“No. I'm exhausted. I want to go to sleep for a year.”
She tucks her arm around mine again. Stubbornly. “Sorry. We're gonna have a talk, little girl. I'm still your mama, and you still have to listen.”
I glare at her. But I go.
In the hotel restaurant, there is, for once, no line. The waitress is a plump, graying woman in her early sixties who trundles over, coffeepot in hand, creamers coming out of her pockets with an expert hand. “You want a few minutes, girls?”
We order eggs Benedict. I'm impressed with the waitress, who winks at me, listens to our choices of potatoes and toast styles, and knows there are two tables coming into her section. She's probably been doing this a long time, and seems to still enjoy it. I watch her move away, wondering what that would be like, to be a waitress for forty years in Las Vegas.
Then my mother clears her throat. I look up at her.
“You, India Redding, are a control freak.”
I raise my eyebrows. “This is supposed to be a revelation?”
“You need to learn how to let go and let life carry you through whatever you're going to experience.”
“Like you?” I snap. “No, thanks.”
She simply gazes at me. It irks me to no end that she's not contrite or apologetic or anything like that. She's just my mother, as always. Herself. “God, Mother,” I say in a low voice. “Are you even a little bit ashamed of all the things you've done?”
She narrows her eyes, scans the ceiling as if for an answer, then looks back at my face. “Shame is the wrong word. I wish I could change a few things. I really wish I could undo a couple of them. But shame? What good would it do now?”
I sigh. “I don't know.” I am so tired I can't even hold up my head. I can't imagine going to have an abortion, but I can't imagine having a child, either. “I need Jack in my life,” I say in a broken voice. “And that's scaring me to death, Mama.” The word slips out. “I just don't know how to live with that risk.”
“What risk, India?”
<
br /> “I don't know … that he could fall out of love with me, leave me, die, change.”
“One of those things will likely happen, baby. Sooner or later.”
I don't want to cry and I bend my head and press my hands together very hard until I feel them go away. “When I lost Gypsy I felt like somebody took my lungs out of my body. I just didn't know how I'd live through it. And then, you were talking about when you have a baby and you have this hostage to fortune, I freaked, too. I'd love Jack and the baby and that would double my terror.”
“India, would you send Gypsy back?”
“What?”
“If you could go back to the time before she was born and be God and say whether or not she was born, what would you have told God? Yes or no?”
“Yes!”
“Even though loving her has caused you pain?”
“It has given me joy, too!” I cry. “It's not that I wouldn't want her born, it's that I'd want her born without the disease!”
“I know, honey,” my mother says patiently. “But that's not the choice you get to make. You get her as she is, or not at all.”
I bow my head. State the obvious. “As she is.”
The waitress, with impeccable timing, lays our breakfasts before us. “Anything else y'all need?”
“Looks terrific, thanks. Oh, but how about some vinegar pepper sauce for the eggs? Y'all have any? You know what I mean?”
“Sure, sweetie.” The waitress chuckles, pulls a pencil from behind her ear and heads off toward the wait station. In two seconds, she's back, carrying the vinegar, and puts it down.
When Eldora reaches for it, the waitress doesn't let go. “I'll be damned. It is you. I would have known sooner, but you look a lot younger than the rest of us, Eldora, damn you.”
My mother peers at the waitress, looks at her name tag. “Kitten?”
“Not quite as well-preserved as you, kiddo,” the woman says, “but yep. Give me a hug, woman!”
And my mother, who is not at all given to public displays of affection unless the receiver happens to be male, leaps out of the booth and throws her long arms around the round, graying waitress, and squeals. “Kitten! I can't believe it!”
I'm intrigued, but the eggs are finely arranged, the sauce steaming and lovely, and I pick up my fork, cut a delicate piece of egg and Canadian bacon and swirl it around the exquisitely smooth Hollandaise sauce. “Oh,” I exclaim softly. “That's good!”
Eldora laughs, turns her friend around. “Kitten, this is my daughter India. She drove me here.”
“Is that right?” Her eyes are twinkling brown and merry, and for a flash of a second, I can see the young woman she must have once been. “I'm real glad to meet you, sweetheart.”
I take her plump, worn hand, see the big diamonds on her left hand. “Nice to meet you, too.”
“Kitten, do you have some time later? What time do you get off? Maybe we could go get some supper somewhere, catch up?”
“I'm way out in Henderson, Eldora. How about in a couple of hours? We could get some coffee somewhere.”
“That'd be fine. Oh!” My mother bends down and hugs her friend again. “I am so happy to see you!”
Kitten is fierce. “Me, too. I've wondered about you every day of my life, just about.” She rubs my mom's arm and something about the gesture makes me hurt slightly. “Looks like it all turned out all right.”
“I'd say so,” my mother agreed. “You, too, huh?”
The food is lovely and I'm watching them like they're the floor show. They are so full of secrets and depth my nostrils quiver with the scent of it.
“I'm off about one-thirty. Come back here and we'll go find some coffee.”
My mother squeezes her hand. “Will do.”
“Wow,” I say as my mother scoots back into the booth. “Who was that?”
“She was my friend,” my mother says, smiling softly. “She was with me the night I met your father.”
A walnut of bitterness sticks in my throat, and I scowl, looking down at the plate. “Which one?” I spit out.
Eldora straightens, her nostrils flaring. “I deserve that. But I meant your daddy Don Redding.”
“Did you even love him at all, Mom?”
Her Elizabeth Taylor eyes darken to a deep violet. “I didn't know how much,” she says, “until he was gone.”
The heat of disappointment and anger fill my chest cavity once again, and I realize I cannot sit here with her. “Are there any other revelations you want to pile on me before I go? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
“India—”
“No. I don't want to hear it. I understand why you had to tell me about your mother. Maybe some of the other stuff. I'll never forgive you for taking away my daddy. That wasn't fair.”
She bows her head. “You're right.”
I stand, tossing down my napkin. “I'm going to find Jack and talk to him about all of this. We'll find you later on.”
Eldora nods. She doesn't say anything as I walk away.
Chapter Thirty-nine
India
I call Jack on his cell phone. He says he'll be there in a few minutes, which tells me he must not have ventured too far away this morning.
Not that it matters. A shard of headache sears the space above my right eyebrow and I punch in the numbers to my house phone voice mail. No messages. I'm dialing my cell number when Jack comes to my room with his coat on. His gray eyes are wary as he sits down in the chair opposite me. I hang up the phone, fold my hands, and look at him, and it sends a pain like a fist through my middle.
“I'm sorry I was a bitch last night,” I say.
He nods, still wary. The scar on his eye gives me a pang, and I want to lie down next to him, stroke his brow.
I look at my hands, see in the gesture my mother's way of readying herself for a confession. “The chances that this baby will be schizophrenic eventually are much higher than the normal population. I really need to know that you understand what that means, Jack.”
“I'll do my best, darlin'. That's all I can do.”
“No, I need you to feel this, on a gut level.”
He sighs, exasperated. “India, what does it matter? Do you want the child?”
The vision of my little girl, black-haired with Jack's mouth and blue eyes bolts through me and I almost feel her move inside of me. I can't look at him. Nod, very slightly. “But we can't,” I whisper. “You just don't know how terrible it can be.”
“What if she isn't sick?”
I raise my eyes. “What if she is?” I hold up a hand when he would have spoken. “Maybe I can show you.” I pick up the phone and dial my home number. I'll play him the messages from Gypsy the happy one where it sounds like she's on vacation, and the other one, that ends with her sobbing. “You can hear her messages.”
He gives me an exasperated sigh, and flips that heavy lock of hair from his forehead, slumping back with his feet in front of him, and I see a dozen other times he's done this with me.
Something in it shifts my world and I give him a grin. “You think I'm—”
I break off and bend my head to listen as the voice-mail robot says, “You have one new message. Two saved messages.” I press one to hear the message, my heart suddenly pounding very hard.
God please don't let it be the police the morgue the state anyone calling to say she is dead God please let her still be alive don't let me hear that I will never see her again
“Hello, Ms. Redding, this is Katie Piers at the Gallup Homeless Shelter. Your sister is here. It's about two A.M. Saturday morning. Give us a call. She's mildly injured but otherwise well. They gave her a sedative at the hospital and sent her over to us, and she's sleeping.”
Relief like a tsunami crashes through me. I drop the receiver and bend over, all the tears rushing through me, out of me. “It's Gypsy,” I manage to choke out. “She's okay.” I sink into myself and the tsunami crashes, over and over, on the shores of my heart.
Jack is be
side me, arms around me. “It's all right, India. We'll go get her.” He rocks me gently, my sobs shaking my entire body. “It's all right, love. It's all right.” He kisses my hair.
When I've pulled myself together, washed my face, I call the homeless shelter to get a status report on my sister. The same woman I spoke to in person says Gypsy was still sleeping and likely would be for a while.
“You said minor injuries?” I ask.
“Uh, yeah. It's nothing serious. Stitches in a couple of spots and a broken arm. Not sure what happened. She showed up and we got her to the emergency room. There were no beds available thanks to this flu outbreak, so we brought her back here.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. “We'll be there as soon as we can.” When I hang up the phone, I sigh. “It's a long drive. I think I need to rent a car. I can't stand to be in that Thunderbird one more minute.”
Jack gives me his best sideways grin. “I have a better idea. C'mon. We'll go get her right now.”
“You don't have to get all wrapped up in this. You're on vacation. Enjoy yourself.”
He rolls his eyes. “Don't be daft. Let's go.”
His idea is brilliant, actually. We call around to the various sightseeing helicopters listed in the yellow pages and find one who will fly us to Gallup. We're landing in early afternoon. I still haven't reached my mother by phone.
“Okay, this is the hard part,” I tell Jack, putting my hand on his chest before we go into the shelter. “You've only seen her when she's stable.”
“What do you think I am?”
I nod. “But you need to know what to expect. The drugs are hard on people. They cause a lot of weight gain, so she's sometimes kind of fat. And she's lost her teeth because the drugs dry out your mouth and then she's on the streets and—” I shrug.
He takes my hand. “I'm not going to judge her. I promise.”
The woman leads us into the shelter, to my sister.
At last.
She's sitting up, groggy and swollen-eyed, one eye ringed with green and purple bruises. Her left arm is in a green cast up to the elbow and it appears to be giving her some irritation, because just this minute, she's tugging at it, scowling, shaking her head and muttering. Her hair, yards of it, tumbles around her like a cloak, tangled and ratted, but I can see from long experience it's combable. Her fingernails are very long and dirty, but her hands are clean. Her shoes are missing, and her feet are wrapped in cloth, like a medieval beggar.
Lady Luck's Map of Vegas Page 25