“Your brother might make it for Christmas.”
“Oh, good. I’ll let Dad know. He might want to come down to see him.” This was Aly’s parting dig. She knew her mother would prefer Mark to herself.
“Maybe Mark could stop and see him on the way here.”
“We’ll see.” And Aly was out of the house, into the light, and free.
4
But Aly wasn’t free, was she? Linda’s disappointment in Aly was grating enough when she was wrong. It was exponentially worse when she was right. Aly was running out of time. The Gianni’s were moving to Boston to be close to Nick’s family and they were aiming to be there at the beginning of August to get Gemma and the kids ready to start school.
Gemma had hinted that Aly was welcome to go with them. She would certainly like her continued help with the children. They were in the chaotic, cluttered Gianni kitchen discussing this one morning late the previous Fall, before everyone was off for their day. Aly had seen Nick flinch at the hint. He was not comfortable with her. He was not ungrateful for her help, but he never took to Gemma’s family. He had come west when young because he felt suffocated by his large extended family back east, but he discovered he was clannish after all and very eastern seaboard in his views and values. Gemma’s family had been in the west for generations and, though they embraced all comers, he felt like a fish out of water among them. Older and with his own family, what felt suffocating to Nick when he was younger now seemed like a warm, safe blanket.
While Aly was a little hurt by his reaction to Gemma’s suggestion, she was happy to relieve him of any fear that she would join them. She didn’t want to move to Boston. She would have no connections there but Gemma and the kids. Except for her brother, who flew for UPS from Seattle, and her father, who was in Reno, all of her connections were in Las Vegas. And, anyway, it was time she moved on. She felt the first stirrings of hope in nearly three years, since her life hit the unseen iceberg and sank. She was even allowing in thoughts of dating, though her feelings had not yet gone beyond an occasional glimmer of possibility that someday she might consider dating again. If only she could get past her sense that her partner picker was horribly flawed with cosmic sized gullibility. Still, these glimmers were the first sights of land from her lifeboat.
Her back up plan was to move in with her mother and Dave and, now that she had some experience in medical billing, to either get a better job in that or to go freelance. Then, as soon as she could, she would find some really cheap apartment in some unsafe part of town. At least she’d be independent behind barred windows and multiple locks on her front door. A metaphor for the imprisonment of half of Toy’s gambling debt.
Debt managers had consolidated Aly’s half of the debt that Toy had acquired so that Aly could make just one payment a month. If she paid the minimum each month she would be out of debt in ten years, when she was forty five. Of course, if she could find the money to pay more a month she would be out of debt sooner. But Aly’s income over the years from mostly retail and call center jobs never grossed more than twenty five hundred a month. Toy was a Phys Ed teacher and soft ball coach for a public high school and Aly’s income had supplemented Toy’s to make a nice life for them. Her plan with the medical billing had been to work for a company for a while to gain experience and eventually freelance and have a family. But she had just finished school and barely started to work at it when she found out about Toy. Helping out the Giannis, she was doing medical billing for a company only part time from home. The Gianni’s provided her a room and food and she made enough merely to pay the minimum on the debt, for car insurance, gas, mobile phone, to save for her imminent move, and for sundry other expenses.
Contemplating what her life had become and her uncertain future, Aly’s mood slipped downward as she took surface streets to the Gianni’s in the center of the city. They lived off of Jones south of Spring Mountain in a neighborhood of custom made homes from the 70s. Their rented ranch style house was on a large lot surrounded by grass and leafy, well established mulberry trees. They could manage the rent and expenses because the house had not been updated since the mid-90s. Outside, it was peeling off white stucco and blistered and peeling brown wood siding. Inside, it was worn brown carpeting, cracked beige ceramic floor tiles, dirty white walls, and chipped porcelain fixtures.
The Giannis used the garage for storage and parked in the driveway. Gemma’s old, well used white Dodge SUV was there when Aly parked along the sidewalk out front and entered the house through the front door. The air conditioner was old and chugged without let up all summer, never seeming to adequately cool the house. But the contrast to the hot day outside was welcome when she first stepped in.
The house had three bedrooms. There were four Gianni children, two boys and two girls, so the rooms were easily divided by sex. Aly’s bedroom and office was a dining room converted for those uses. It was cut off from the living room by sliding shoji doors. The family ate at a large kitchen table squeezed between the kitchen’s white tile counter and the living room. So the kitchen, the dining area, and the living room were right outside Aly’s room. She only ever had quiet or a sense of privacy when everyone else was asleep.
She went to her room and tossed her tan leather sling bag on her bed. The room was long and narrow, larger than the kids’ bedrooms, but it had to accommodate her double bed, an end table, a dresser, and the desk, table, and file cabinets she needed to do her billing work. Since it was a dining room there was no closet and her clothes hung from a pole mounted on top of two filing cabinets. She used a step stool to reach the hangers and her shoes were lined between the file cabinets, beneath her hanging clothes. For the room to work for her she had to be very organized. As crowded as it was, it was the only orderly space in the whole house.
When Aly stepped out of her room meaning to head to the toilet she could see through the glass door off the living room that Gemma and the kids were out back. The kids were taking turns running and sliding through the sprinklers on a bright rainbow colored Slip ‘n Slide, their joyful shouts and screams filtering into the house. Just inside the glass door, on the carpet, were a couple of mounded, soaked beach towels. Aly picked them up and took them to the laundry room off the kitchen.
She often thought her contribution to the family was the equivalent of dialing back a hurricane from category five to category four. For the sake of the children she tried to impose structure and order, but the adults got in the way. Nick was not organized or disciplined. And Gemma had imposed some order when she was only working full time, but with nursing school added to work she mostly gave in to her own exhaustion and the children’s demands. So Aly took on not just child care but the upkeep of the house. She delegated to the children, but if their occupation with chores interfered with their parents’ plans to spend time with them, they were let off the hook. And, as children do, they had mastered ways to manipulate their parents to get off the hook as much as possible.
After using the toilet in the cluttered bathroom down the hall that she shared with the children, Aly found Gemma in the kitchen preparing snacks for the kids.
“Oh, hi, I didn’t know you were home.” Aly’s age and height, but heavier and rounder from carrying four kids, Gemma had a pretty face with dark brown eyes and wore her black hair long and softly curled. She was both gentle and fierce, which Aly thought a good combination for a nurse.
They were cousins through their fathers. But Gemma’s mother was full Chinese-American so, unlike with Aly and her brother, Mark, who were only an eighth Chinese, no one questioned Gemma's last name when they were growing up
“Just got here.” Aly went to a cupboard, got down a glass, and filled it with water from the reverse osmosis filter system at the sink
Aly and Gemma’s generation was the third generation of Wongs in Las Vegas and much of the extended family was still spread out in the valley. With a mother who did not like her, the Wong’s were Aly’s saving grace. Gemma’s mother, Gracie, and her father’s
sister, Paula, were the women who supported and encouraged Aly as she grew. Aly and Mark, and Gemma and her siblings, James and Bonnie, grew up near each other and went to school together. Mark and James were still best friends. But while Aly and Gemma were close within the family, they had not hung out in school. Aly hung with the jock girls and Gemma with a sub group of the popular kids.
As well as a room at her mother’s, there were Wongs and their offshoots that Aly could look to for a temporary home. She would always have shelter. But besides wanting her independence there were practical obstacles. She didn’t want to end up in another situation where she was unpaid child care or care giver for an older or disabled relative and didn’t have time to grow her billing clientele or take another job. While she was grateful to have had a safe place to land when she was desperate, she felt the imbalance at the Gianni’s. Her childcare and housekeeping more than paid for a room and food.
If Aly wanted to get on her feet financially, the likeliest situations in her family were simply not available. Uncle Rich and Aunt Gracie had downsized to a one bedroom condo because they planned on traveling now that they were retired. James already had his mother-in-law living with his family. Bonnie had married a Mormon who was not comfortable around a lesbian. Aly had a second cousin she was fond of and who was fond of her with a spare room in her townhouse, but she had three cats and Aly was allergic. Aly’s father would be happy to have her join him in Reno, but, just as with the prospect of moving to Boston with the Gianni’s, she’d be moving away from her whole life and starting over in a new place. So, as much as Aly hated the idea of living with her mother for even a short time, Linda and Dave were the best fall back she had.
“How did it go for your friend? Cam?” Gemma asked.
“Cass. Not well.” Aly explained the custody arrangement with the dogs.
Gemma, who was at the sink, glanced out the window overlooking the backyard. And in a sudden movement, she pushed away, hustled around the long counter, and headed for the glass door, which she flung open. “Troy! Get that hose out of your brother’s shorts! And someone put Zoe’s top back on. Her nipples will sunburn again. Turn the water off and go to the table. I’ve got snacks.” There was a collective hurrah and then a question Aly couldn’t make out. “No, no. Outside. You’re too wet.” She shut the door and turned back to the kitchen. “Oh, my god, these kids. I should have had dogs.”
Aly laughed. “Yeah, that would’ve made you happy.” She had intended to hole up in her room and take care of some of her billing work without interruption while Gemma had the kids for the day, but she found herself helping Gemma out with the snacks.
“Aly!” Zoe roared and came running to hug her legs.
“It’s been hours! How have we borne being apart?” Aly reached down, scooped her up, kissed her on the cheek and hugged her until she squirmed for her snack.
Zoe, almost three, was the youngest of the Gianni brood, all of them with black hair streaked reddish brown from the sun and glowing bronze with summer tans.
“So, you have a place to look at tonight?” Gemma asked after the kids had been settled in with their cheese sticks, grapes, and chopped apples.
“Yes. An older woman, it sounds like, with a room to rent in her home. At The Lakes, actually,” Aly said, referring to a sprawling, pleasant, comfortable development of pale stucco homes in west Las Vegas.
“Oh, that would be nice.”
Gemma, Aly knew, was anxious for Aly to find a good place to ease her conscience. But Aly didn’t blame the Giannis for moving on and she always tried to let Gemma know that, as much as she would miss them, she was grateful for the push to get on with her own life.
Aly left the chattering family and returned inside to get some work done in her room. And later that evening she went to The Lakes to look at the room to rent. It was a nice, neat, small house in a very orderly neighborhood. But her potential landlady was in her late seventies and struck Aly as lonely and needy. She was retired and would have been home all day as Aly tried to work. Aly didn’t want to dismiss the option outright, but she wasn’t sure it would be a situation any better than her mother’s. At least her mother and Dave wouldn’t hover.
5
A couple of days later Aly got a call that at first did not seem significant. Anita Quantrelle was considered a hub in a social circle in the lesbian community in Las Vegas. She had an extensive and varied acquaintanceship in the gay and lesbian community as well as in her former social group among the wives of casino executives. Now sixty two, Anita had grown up in the middle class in Las Vegas, earned a degree in English from the University of Nevada, and then promptly fell in love with and married an ambitious man who worked his way to the vice presidency of a casino brand. Outgoing and social, Anita had maintained a large social network for her own enjoyment and the promotion of her husband’s career, worked on charity boards, and raised their two children. Then, when she was only forty five, her husband died in a helicopter crash. Left with a comfortable income and an empty nest, she maintained her social life and charity work and increased her wealth through astute investments. And two years after Peter’s death she fell in love with a woman for the first time and had been with women ever since. “Pete was the fluke, who knew?” she would say.
Aly knew Anita through Cass. In fact, she knew Cass through Toy. Cass and Toy had dated long before Toy met Aly and they had remained friends. Aly and Cass were spending a lot of time together when Anita, whom Cass had known for a while, came to buy a dog from Cass. Aly was there when Anita picked out a puppy, went shopping with them for puppy supplies, and was often hanging around when Anita came for puppy training lessons with Cass. But she really got to know Anita when Anita had breast cancer and Cass had a sick dog and couldn’t keep a commitment to take Anita to chemotherapy. Aly had stepped in and that was how she became a friend to Anita and part of her social circle.
Anita maintained a casino-executive-wife circle of acquaintances, though it was significantly reduced to only the most liberal and tolerant. Above average in height, always wiry and hard bodied, as she grew into her lesbian self she wore her hair cut severely on the sides and only a little longer on top. Once red, her hair turned white early and she left it. Her wardrobe shifted to gender neutral. So she had become too radical looking for the nearly all white, wealthy, conservative world she once led socially. But her lesbian social circle was extensive and diverse in all ways. It even included a smattering of gay men who were let in if they had valid feminist credentials.
What Anita was known for was some form of social event twice a year called “Anita’s Things”. It was never certain what they would be or when they would be. They could be informal or formal, though the latter were rare because she limited them to those she considered first or second tier friends and that led to a lot of disappointment and hurt feelings. Her informal Things included all manner of acquaintances.
Cass was a first tier friend of Anita’s. Aly, a second tier friend. Besides seeing each other at one of Anita’s Things, Aly and Anita sometimes called the other for information or to gossip. So it wasn’t unusual for Aly to receive an unexpected call from her. This time Anita was checking in.
“I had lunch with Erika Milton the other day,” she said in her high voice after niceties. “She said you look, um, peaked I think is the word she used.”
"Well, gosh, that’s always nice to hear.” I can only imagine what someone like Erika thinks of someone like me.
Anita laughed. “I don’t mean it that way. I’m just concerned about you. Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping in touch.”
“Well, I haven’t exactly been reaching out either.”
“How are you really? Are you still at your cousin’s?”
Aly, though uncomfortable, explained her situation. Around women like Anita, like Erika, she felt her mother’s disappointment in her was justified. She was embarrassed to be, at thirty four, without a family, without a career, without a justification for not being somet
hing more. She was healthy, intelligent, and could apply herself when motivated. It was just that she had never figured out what she wanted to do. Nothing called to her. There was no interest that she burned to pursue. So she drifted.
But Anita didn’t judge, which is why Aly would speak openly with her. Anita only commiserated and asked about Toy, whom Aly did not hear from. “She’s honoring my request to be left alone. The last I heard she was in an apartment near her school and in a twelve step program.”
“I hope it takes,” Anita said. “Gambling is a tough addiction.”
They gossiped for a while longer and hung up
But, mysteriously, the next day Aly received a text from her. “Whats yr czns fll nme?”
Aly, who was trying to corral her little cousins to a check out at Wal-Mart at the time, was baffled, but texted back, “Gemma Wong Gianni. Why?” Anita didn’t answer and in the bustle of the day Aly forgot about it until she was getting into bed and it was too late to text again.
◆◆◆
“Do you know…” Gemma began, looking at a piece of paper with notes on it. “…an Anita Con something?”
It was three days after Aly received the cryptic text from Anita. She immediately made the connection. Why had Anita wanted to contact Gemma? “Quantrelle?”
“Something like that.” They were in the kitchen and Aly was preparing dinner. Gemma had been home only a half hour. She’d showered, changed, and had come to help. She was still consulting her notes. “And an Erika Milton?”
“Yes,” Aly frowned. “Why?”
“Well, she called me today. Erika did…” Gemma went on to explain that Erika’s nanny was leaving suddenly and she was looking for a new one. She had heard from Anita about Aly’s situation and she wanted to talk to Gemma about how Aly was with the kids. She asked Gemma to tell her honestly, in confidence - she knew they were cousins - how she felt about Aly’s child care skills. Would she recommend her?
A Good Woman Page 2