by Julia Kent
Outdoors?
“What’s this?”
“Isn’t it the damnedest thing? Escalators outside. Must not rain much out here.”
“It’s desert, Dad.”
“It sure isn’t New England.”
The sky is so clear and blue, with puffs of clouds that run lower than you’d think, as if they just want to try a chance at a slot machine, or to put twenty bucks on red, and if they dip their cotton goodness down low enough, they’ll get a shot. Behind the escalator, the Strip rolls on like someone created a Richard Scarry Busy Town, only a very naughty version of it.
The Caesar’s Palace sign caps a building so ostentatiously imitating a Greek building, and Linq, across the street, has some sort of wrap spray painting on the entire side of the building, guest room windows and all, advertising a singer who I thought died before I was born.
Maybe cloning has actually happened and the entertainment industry is keeping it a secret.
In order to continue straight down the road, we have to enter a building—which we immediately realize is a mall, replete with a Chanel clothing store, two jewelers, a gelateria and a coffee bar.
That serves Kahlua-spiked lattes.
Where was this place when I was in college?
It’s dizzying, though, figuring out how to find our way back to the simple sidewalk outside.
“They make you go through the malls. You have no choice.” Dad’s observation is so tinged with bitterness I look up in surprise, thinking the voice is some other man.
It’s not.
“More consumer value extraction,” I surmise.
“More fakery. Is this supposed to be luxury? I don’t understand.”
We find ourselves at an impasse, realizing we have to go back and to the right to find a walkway that will then lead to an escalator going down.
“Should we just get gelato here?”
Dad’s eyes fill with panic. “Here? In this mall? No. I found a better place.” He slings an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go over the land bridge and fight our way through the people selling sex on a card.”
“On a card?” I laugh.
“On a credit card,” he says with a sigh.
We walk through a revolving door, onto the land bridge, and face nipples.
Big, uncovered, live nipples.
Painted like a Minion from Despicable Me.
“Never saw that in the movie theater when I took Jeffrey and Tyler to see that flick,” Dad says.
“Please don’t say ‘flick,’” I beg.
“Wanna picture?” The woman is painted yellow from top(less) to bottom, breasts decorated like a Minion wearing goggles, and she’s dressed in a string bikini bottom that is supposed to mimic jeans, but just looks like a blue ribbon chafing device.
“No thanks,” Dad says, making eye contact with the woman and smiling.
No, Daddy. No....
Eye contact in environments like this is akin to a war cry. A challenge. A promise.
A dare.
She reaches for Dad, bending at the waist, which makes all the men (and two women) standing behind her give an ovation.
“C’mon. Twenty bucks for a sweet pic is all I need. I gotta buy my toddler some diapers,” the Minion says in a voice that is just earnest enough to crack wallets open.
Wallets like Dad’s.
“How old?” Dad asks.
“Twenty-one,” the woman says. “I’m legal.”
“I meant your child.” His weary smile makes something in me tear, just a tiny bit.
“She’s two. Wanna see a picture?”
And right then and there, in the middle of a land bridge on the strip in Las Vegas, Jason Jacoby oooohs and aaaahs over a half-naked woman’s pictures of her little daughter while prying a twenty out of his wallet and giving it to her.
“Can your wife take our pic?” she asks him, giving me a grateful smile.
“Wife? No, no. That’s my daughter,” he explains with a chuckle.
The woman winks. “Right. That’s what you all say.”
“EWWWWWWW!” I groan. Her face falls.
“Oh, hell, you’re not kidding!” She gives Dad a helpless look, grabbing him, her nipple brushing against his bare forearm. “I’m so sorry.”
Dad looks down at the stripe of yellow paint left on his skin.
And turns a furious red so fast I fear he’s having a heart attack.
“How about I take a picture of you two?” Daddy says in a low, thick voice.
She grabs me, throwing her arm around my shoulders, jutting her boobs out so the goggles look like a wide-eyed Minion.
“Say cheese, Shannon! Declan’s going to love this!” Dad calls out as he takes a series of pics.
Minion Chick grabs a phone from somewhere in her hair and asks Dad, “Could you snap one of us for me to keep?” Her eyes dart from me to Dad, and something feels off suddenly. “She’s so cute!”
And with that, Dad takes the pic.
She grabs the phone and looks me full in the face. “You’re the runaway bride, aren’t you?”
Oh, no.
She sprints, Minion eyes like googly-eyes on springs. By the time I can even think to run after her, the crowd has swallowed her up.
“What just happened?” Dad asks, confused and red, tracking her through the revolving doors, just staring. We’re in the middle of the land bridge and people begin walking around us, streaming out of the hotel mall.
“I think that picture is about to be all over the internet,” I say with a sigh. I look down at the lovely outfit Evie selected for me after she came to. The yellow paint on my side definitely does not go well with royal blue linen.
‘What? Why? You’re not a celebrity...oh, no.” Daddy gets it.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, no. Shannon, I’m sorry.”
“Declan’s going to be furious.”
“Nah. Men don’t care if their women are with other topless women. In fact, your mom kind of likes it when I—”
“STOP!” I shout. “It’s bad enough that Mom is inappropriate, but not you too, Dad.”
He winces, his nose wrinkling. It’s adorable.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not, but I’ll explain it all to Declan,” Dad says, deftly changing the subject as we make our way quickly across the land bridge. Two Chewbaccas, one Wonder Woman, and a priest holding a “JESUS SAVES” sign stand at the edge of the bridge.
That’s not the opening line of a joke, but it should be.
All these characters in costume mingle with the crowd, hoping to get tourists to cough up a five or a ten (or even a twenty) for a picture. Declan warned me not to go outside—that I’d be “accosted” by unsavory creatures, and he was right.
It’s just that I didn’t suspect a topless Minion would be my downfall.
We get to a “down” escalator and wend our way through the Caesar’s Palace resort, which has an enormous open-air courtyard, like a replica of the Forum, only instead of philosophers applying the Socratic Method to help enlighten the masses, there’s a smoothie bar with vodka shots for sale.
Same thing, right?
Dad seems to know the way, leading me to a stoplight that mercifully involves a good old-fashioned crosswalk to get across six lanes of traffic. More cards are shoved our way, advertising strip clubs, nightclub performances, and shows from stars who peaked before I was born.
We make it across the way, a giant pelican on the side of a pirate ship in front of another resort, advertising a singer’s chain restaurant, and then—
It’s like we’ve found an oasis of peace in the middle of chaos.
This side street is designed to mimic a middle-America small town, with lampposts that look like gaslights, and old brick facades. The energy is different here, too, like we broke off from a raging river into a tiny trickle of a stream, the transition jarring but welcome.
“What is this?” I ask. A spectacularly huge Ferris wheel presents itself at
the end of the long alley, its cars like a ski tram, little bubbles. The alley is lined with gift shops, bars, restaurants, specialty clothing stores, and—
Ice cream.
“I found it this morning when I was walking around. After I shook off the nice young lady who chatted me up. Friendly, but a bit persistent.” Dad’s face looks troubled. “I asked her for the nearest sweet shop and she kept saying she could give me a ‘strawberry shortcake’ for an extra fifty. Why would she want a little girl’s doll toy? Or did she mean the dessert? Do you know what that means?”
“No.” I shudder. “And I don’t want to know.”
He laughs and points to a restaurant down the alley. “How about a hot dog first?”
My stomach grumbles. Aside from lunch and a latte made for humans without teeth, I haven’t had much to eat all day.
“A hot dog and ice cream? It’s like we’re at a Paw Sox game.”
The grin he gives me makes the bridge of my nose tingle with tenderness. “You girls loved going to minor league games.”
“I still do, Dad,” I say softly. “We need to do that again sometime.”
“Jeffrey and Tyler like it,” he says, not quite picking up on my emotional storm. “But not like you and Amy always did.”
“It’s a date. We’ll go to a game when we get home.”
“Would Declan enjoy going?”
I start to say that Declan would just take us to the Anterdec suite at Fenway Park to catch a major league Red Sox game, but I stop myself.
“I think he would.” A brewing conflict inside me pings, as if it’s all a mist inside, obscuring a beacon that delivers me to a place where I can find the answer. Declan’s world is so different from my family’s, as divergent as can be. For Dad, those minor league games were a fun treat, a place to bring us and share experiences he never even had as a kid.
For Declan, going to a baseball game means something qualitatively different. The imprint of how you define that experience—go to a live baseball game—is a different socio-economic language. I can understand that language when it’s spoken to me, but ask me to speak back and my tongue ties itself in knots and I stare, mute and anxious, choosing inaction because action is too unbearably confusing.
Dad and I order hot dogs and sodas and have a seat, munching happily until we’re done.
“Only one?” I tease, knowing how much he loves them.
He pats his stomach. “Saving room for burnt caramel ice cream.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I thought you just found this place this morning?”
He shrugs. “Had to sample it to make sure it was good enough for Marie and you.”
“You’re such a sacrificer, Dad.”
His laughter is love in auditory form.
The ice cream shop is so trendy they have a schedule for which ice creams are offered on which days. When I order the chocolate mint I’m admonished that I must do a taste test because the flavor is so bold it will pull every hair out of my head by the follicle while blasting the 1812 Overture in my ear.
Or something like that.
The clerk is sweet and peppy, and gives me a description of the various flavors like a sommelier. She’s an ice cream steward, and in the end I pick a peanut butter concoction with a cupcake on top, while Dad gets his burnt caramel.
We go outside and find a quiet table under a large umbrella, the shade and ice cream making the mid-day heat bearable.
“How are you?” he asks, just after I’ve shoved a giant spoonful of gratitude in my mouth.
“Mmmup,” I answer.
He acts like he understood that. “No, honey. I mean really. How are you? That was quite a stunt you and Declan pulled two days ago.” I can’t read his eyes. He’s gone blank. Not the same way Declan turns into a statue, though.
Daddy’s not judging. Just asking. And trying to decide how to respond along the way.
I finish my mouthful of ice cream and realize I’m in safe territory here. I can actually tell the truth.
“I’m a mess.”
“I figured.”
“I know Mom and I need to have it out,” I say with a sigh.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“No. I mean—I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not stepping in sooner and reining her in. She can be...monomaniacal at times.”
“Ya think?”
“But she means well.”
“A thousand-person wedding with my nemesis as an invited guest and a cat as flower girl doesn’t exactly translate into ‘means well,’ Dad.”
He tilts his head and breathes slowly. In Declan, this is a form of control, a calculated gesture designed to make you think he’s unflappable. In Dad, it’s just how he is.
“Did we ever tell you the story of our wedding?”
“Mom said you guys eloped.” A prickly feeling makes my neck tingle. Or maybe it’s just sweat. Vegas in July is a miserable sheet of reflective heat.
“Sounds like you don’t know the whole story.”
“I guess not.” Why didn’t I pry? Mom’s so free with information. She overshares all the time, but as Dad looks like he’s fighting with himself to figure out how to say what he needs to say, I run through my memory. Mom’s never told a story about their wedding.
“You remember your grandma, Celeste?”
“Sure. We didn’t really see her much, but yeah.” She died a few years ago from a heart attack.
“Ever wonder why?” He blinks a lot. Declan’s told me that’s a tell in people, a sign that they’re struggling to recall a negative memory, and their brain can’t process it fast enough to manage the emotional reaction.
That tingling in my neck spreads.
“Um, I guess?” Some part of this conversation makes me feel like an introverted twelve year old.
“She and Marie had a strained relationship. Your mom spent most of her younger years trying desperately to please her. She was a hard woman.” Dad’s face goes tight. He stabs the spoon in his ice cream and pushes it away.
“Marie never stopped trying, though. When we met, your mother thought that becoming a famous artist would finally please Celeste. But Celeste only cared about herself. You know she kicked your mom out at seventeen when she remarried and the new husband hit on your mom?”
“What?”
“Like I said—Celeste was a hard woman. She divorced him about two years later. I can’t remember his name. Celeste called your mom out of the blue one day, pretending the previous two years had been nothing. Meanwhile, the kindness of friends was the only reason Marie graduated high school. She couch-surfed and finished her senior year a semester early. Then she turned bohemian and lived as a squatter off Congress Street, long before that neighborhood was trendy. That’s when we met.”
“I just know you were a vet tech and Mom brought some dog in that had been bit by a rat.”
“Yup.” He gets a faraway look in his eyes and stares over my shoulder. “You can thank James McCormick for that. Indirectly.” Rueful and dreamy, tense and pensive, Dad just sits with his feelings, leaving me to process all of this, knowing that if I interrupt too much the moment will dissolve.
“I knew. I knew the moment I met your mother that I was destined to spend the rest of my life with her. I think she knew, too, but it took a little longer for her to wise up.”
I laugh.
He grins. “We got married fast. Part of it was love. Part was necessity. Your mom was living a life that put her in danger, and I wanted her to move in with me. So she insisted I come and meet Celeste.”
His face turns to stone.
I jump. He looks so much like Declan.
“Shannon, I have never spent a more uncomfortable ninety minutes in my life than in the presence of that woman. For the next twenty-five years or so, until she died—God rest her black, shriveled soul—every time I saw her I gritted my teeth and tolerated her for Marie’s sake, but it took a lot of alcohol afterwards to help shake off the gloom.”
The
tingling covers my entire body.
“What—what was it about her?”
“Do you ever pick up vibes from people? Not the way your mother talks about it, with crystals and energy auras.” He frowns. “More like a tuning fork. Someone whose frequency is off just enough that it begins to clash with normal frequency, until you realize something is very, very off.”
“Yes,” I whisper, sitting up in amazement.
“I don’t know how your mother did it. How she came out of a family where she was raised by a woman who had no self.”
“No self?”
“The best description for Celeste that I’ve ever seen came to me a few years ago, in some pop culture magazine. ‘Emotional vampire.’” His sad eyes catch mine. “Do you know what that is?”
I nod.
“She couldn’t stand for anyone else to be happy. As long as she was happy, it was okay. As long as she was the center of attention, all was well. The moment attention was pulled from her, woe be unto you.” Kneading his hands, Dad makes a series of faces that indicate he’s caught in that fragile space between past and present, between old events that trigger current emotions.
“That first time I met her, I just wanted to crawl out of my skin. She fawned over me, Shannon. Acted like Marie and me getting together was the greatest thing since sliced bread. She ate up every detail I gave about myself and somehow paired it with some experience of hers. And her story was always just a little bit more.”
I sigh. “I know the type.”
“When we told her Marie and I were engaged, her eyes lit up. Not with happiness. With a kind of frantic panic that I wish I’d understood back then. It would have saved poor Marie a lot of grief.”
The tingling pierces my heart.
“What happened?”
“Celeste pretended to be so happy for us. Promised to pay for a big wedding. Insisted we hold it at a grand estate just north of Boston. She and Marie’s father came from modest families, and Marie’s dad died when she was in third grade in a bad construction accident, but he was union. The union took care of them. Celeste had a good survivor’s pension. She volunteered around town and had enough connections to feel important.”
“Why do I have a bad feeling about this? Did she make a big scene at the wedding?”
He gets a wry smile on his face, a sickly look that makes the ice cream pool in my stomach like battery acid.