I cringed. That wasn’t the right thing to say right now. He hadn’t wanted me to do anything for the farm. He hadn’t wanted to let me shoulder any of the debts, make any of the payments, even though I had a few thousand dollars in my savings account. Maybe this wouldn’t ease him at all.
“I mean, I’m going to make things right,” I said. “One way or another.”
No, now that just sounded cryptic and worrisome. Why couldn’t I get this right? I gripped Dad’s hands and looked at his face, which had remained placid this entire time. Maybe he didn’t even hear me. I knew he was on enough medication to make him “comfortable,” whatever that entailed.
“Tell me what to say,” I begged him. “What do you need to know? Did you know that my mother and Sebastian are here? Two of your favorite people. I know. I’m sorry.”
I laid my head on the railing of the hospital bed, watching Dad’s chest rise and fall. Was there a right way to tell a parent goodbye? Were there magical words I was supposed to say?
“I just want to tell you that everything is going to be all right,” I tried again. “That I'm going to be all right. That you can go, if you want to. If it’s your time. I’m going to be just fine. I’ll follow my dreams, just like you told me you wanted me to do. And I don’t know if you’ll approve, but I think one of those dreams might be Sebastian.”
I lapsed into silence, thinking about that. I loved Sebastian. He loved me. It was a strange conclusion to come to, after everything Sebastian and I had been through, but it was the only one I had arrived at. Dad deserved to know that, even if I wasn’t sure just how many of my words were meaningful to him in his current state.
“Sebastian and I have fallen in love,” I said. “I know. Don’t freak out. I’m freaking out. I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You think he’s a jerk. I thought he was a jerk, too, and things a lot worse than that. But if you peel away all those layers, all those stinky layers, just like an onion, there’s something sweet at the heart of him. He wouldn’t be here otherwise. He’s here for me. I’m not going to be alone if you decide to go. When you decide to go.”
I wouldn’t be alone, but I wouldn’t know where I was supposed to go. Was I supposed to get the farm back on track, or was I supposed to leave? Did my dream exist in some other place? Did I need to leave to figure it out?
My mind stopped reeling for a moment, and I held my breath, afraid that I was missing something, some huge part of the equation that I hadn’t considered. Something had changed drastically, but what was it?
It was then that I realized that Dad’s chest had stilled.
He had died.
He was gone.
“I love you,” I said, my voice thickening, my vision blurring. “I love you, Dad.”
I sat there until the doctor came back in, disappeared, and reappeared with a funeral director. I wasn’t sure what I told her. I didn’t know what Dad had wanted, but cremation seemed easier, cleaner, somehow.
When the two of them left me, I looked at Dad, and it was like looking at a stranger. What life had been there was gone—truly gone. Even his face was difficult for me to recognize, and he was my own father.
I didn’t want to be there anymore. I didn’t want to be anywhere near there.
I knew that Sebastian would be waiting for me, waiting to give me support and love, the hugs he thought I would need, whatever I asked of him. But I didn’t want him. Not now. There was only one thing I wanted, something that drove me to take the stairs down to the lobby instead of the elevator, to carry me back to that stale courtyard, where my plastic, red-headed mother still lounged, smoking one of a long chain of cigarettes that were expressly forbidden by one of the many signs in that space, the rest of the butts resting in an empty coffee mug.
We quietly regarded each other for a few long moments, daughter to mother—or, perhaps more accurately, wary stranger to apathetic stranger. I didn’t know if my mother meant well. I wasn’t sure why she was here, but I did know what I wanted right now.
“Dad’s gone,” I said.
“I know,” she said, blowing smoke out of the side of her mouth. “I think I felt it.”
I didn’t know what she thought she felt, but I let it go. “I want to go to Vegas with you.”
If that surprised her, she didn’t show it. She’d probably had a lot more practice at developing a good poker face than I had.
“What about your ‘more than a friend’…Sebastian?” she asked. “What about the farm?”
“I want to go to Vegas now,” I said, not caring that I didn’t answer her questions.
“Fine,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette on the table she was sitting on, making a black burn mark. “Let’s go.”
She apparently didn’t care about the answers to those questions either.
Chapter 15
My mother and I didn’t even speak until the plane was well in the air, winging its way to Las Vegas. She’d hailed the cab, purchased the tickets, and gotten us through the airport, me trailing her, bobbing in her wake. She commanded a lot of attention wherever she went, and I bet we were a comical sight, two redheads charging through an airport to make a flight purchased last minute.
“You want a drink?” my mother asked, as the flight attendants shoved a heavy cart closer and closer to our seats.
“Yeah, whatever you’re having,” I croaked, not realizing until that moment that I was parched, probably dehydrated from all of those tears. I felt less suffocated now that I was out of that hospital room and far away from that devastation. The world didn’t seem like it was crashing down on me anymore, but all I had was my purse. That’s how quick my escape had been.
“Don’t worry about your things,” my mother said, as if she’d been mucking around inside my mind. “You’re going to Las Vegas, not the middle of nowhere. You can get the essentials, if you like, and borrow the rest from me. You’d fit into my clothes.”
“Thanks.” I blinked rapidly. Sharing clothes with my mother? It was a strange thing to consider. I had some vague memories of stumbling around in a too-big set of her heels, but that had been a long time ago.
“Two rum and cokes, please,” my mother told the flight attendant who leaned down to serve us.
“Oh, can I also have a water, please?” I asked, stunned that my mother’s definition of a drink had been an expensive airplane cocktail. I was dying of thirst, and I hadn’t eaten in too long. A cocktail would get me drunk, especially up in the air, especially since I didn’t drink at all while on the farm.
“We’ll be ready for another one of these in about ten minutes,” my mother informed the flight attendant with a wink. “Thanks, babe.” She stirred her cocktail with her finger before slurping the droplets off her red lacquered nail.
“How…how is it?” I said, faltering at the drink on my tray table.
“Oh, you know airplane drinks. Weak,” she assured me. “We won’t even have a buzz until the third one. Drink up.”
I took an experimental sip and gagged. Maybe my mother had the definition of “weak” wrong. All I tasted was the rum. I stirred the drink with my finger, like she had, suspicious that the rum had been floating at the top and took another sip. It was still strong, but it went down easier than the first.
“Is rum not your drink?” my mother asked, watching me struggle with poorly hidden amusement. “You could’ve said something. I can get you something different for the next round.”
“I…I don’t really drink,” I said.
Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “What? Are you sure you’re my daughter?”
“I’m the one who asked that question first,” I reminded her.
“My daughter’s a teetotaler,” my mother moaned.
“I’m not saying I’ve never touched a drop,” I said, defensive. “I liked it in college. I just don’t really have an inclination to on the farm.” On the farm I’d left, I should’ve said. I took another drink, tasting the rum even less.
“Oh, Rachel, the farm drove me to drink,” my mother said, gesturing extravagantly. “Is it too soon to tell you stories? I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl.”
“I don’t really want to talk about…”
“Okay, there was this one time when your father was pissed because I didn’t care about the flower garden—is that even still there? Oh, you don’t have to answer, it doesn’t matter to the story. But that flower garden was like a giant middle finger to him. Flowers are absolutely useless, and he was so devoted to making things that were useful to people. So I had that flower garden and just let it get out of control. It grew up the side of the house, all those vines and weeds—I never weeded it—you have to remember it, don’t you? The flower garden? Bees probably came from dozens of miles. Anyway, your father was pissed because not only did I have this thing, I neglected it. But flowers don’t need help to grow! No plant really does, unless I guess you count the crops in the fields, though I think if you left them to their own devices then that would really be organic farming. So the garden was so big it threatened to overtake the house, and your father…”
I took my second cocktail soundlessly from the flight attendant, drinking if only to drown out my mother. It was too soon to talk about the farm, to talk about Dad. I didn’t want her to do either. She’d left them both. She didn’t have a right to talk about them. And I’d left them both, too. I was no better than she was. And of course I remembered that stupid garden. That was where all the honeysuckle grew.
I thought of Sebastian, of the honeysuckle kisses. I thought of him still at the hospital, and my stomach lurched inside of me. I hadn’t even told him I was leaving, or where I was going. My heart ached at the idea that he was still there at the hospital, searching for me. I’d text him as soon as we landed. I owed him that much.
The truth was, I owed him much more. He had been there for me, and I’d left him behind as if it was nothing.
“Have you listened to a word I’ve said?” my mother asked crossly. “You are in a daze.”
“I was listening, and I remember the garden,” I said, turning to her and feeling my brain slow down from the two cocktails I’d finished in record time. “Honeysuckle. The flowers you can taste.”
“Lord, I just bought a bunch of seed packets, anything with flowers on the labels, and tossed them there in that grass,” she said, laughing. “But good for you, that you remember one of them. I was never meant to be on a farm. Just not my life.”
We had no less than four cocktails on that quick flight, and I was already feeling out of place before being dazzled by the dusky dessert and the glittering circus that was the Las Vegas strip. It was as if I’d landed on an entirely different planet.
“You’ve never been to Vegas, have you?” my mother asked, looking at me stare as we got into a cab.
“No, never.”
“Well, you’re going to see Vegas like no one gets to see Vegas,” she promised me. “Your mother just so happens to be a Vegas expert. I know everyone in this town, and everyone knows me.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I did have the presence of mind to get my phone out of my purse and snap a photo of the glitzy casinos we passed. I sent it to Sebastian, captioning the text “I’m in Vegas.” It was as helpful as I felt like being. The buzz had taken the edge off of my grief and my guilt.
He texted back immediately. “Are you okay?”
“I will be,” I replied, even if I wasn’t sure of it. “I’m with my mother.”
“Okay,” he sent. “Let me know if you need anything—and I mean anything.”
And that was it. I waited for him to call me, or to send me a text fussing at me for just leaving town like that, but it didn’t come. He either didn’t care what I did or decided that I deserved to have a little space right now. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Part of me wanted to be with Sebastian, and the other part wanted to forget about everything I associated with home. Dad was gone, the farm was dying, too, and my mother was as foreign to me as a vacation in a place I’d never been to. It was an escape.
“Here we are,” my mother announced. I wasn’t sure how long we’d been in the taxi, but we’d pulled up to a nondescript apartment building. “Home sweet home. Let’s grab a drink, get you changed, and I’ll show you what Vegas really is.”
The apartment was a little cheap on the inside, but comfortable. It was two bedrooms, two bathrooms…though I didn’t really see my mother having a lot of houseguests there. I wondered how often she slept there herself.
“Here, wear this dress,” she said, pulling something from her closet and holding it up to my chest. “This will look cute.”
“Just a shirt,” I said, taking a pull from the beer she’d given me the moment we’d crossed the threshold. “I’m wearing jeans.”
“Those jeans need a good washing,” she said, eyeing them critically. “Cowboy boots, too? We can take the girl off the farm, but we can’t take the farm out of the girl.”
I didn’t think that was how the saying went, but I accepted the sparkly shirt she gave me and went to the spare bedroom to change. It definitely wasn’t my style, but something in me stirred. The person I used to be, the girl interested in fashion and being pretty and a host of other things that had no business living on a farm, perked her head up in interest. This was fun. This could be fun. I was with my mother. She was family. I was going to have fun.
“Some makeup,” my mother recommended as I emerged to model the shirt. “I have heels if you want.”
“I’ll stay in the boots,” I said even as my eyes widened at the state of her shoe rack. “I’ll take some mascara, if you have it.”
“And then some.” I was unrecognizable by the time my mother finished with me, but she was pleased. We went out to first one bar, then another, my mother preening as she was recognized everywhere.
“I’m a big deal here,” she told me at least every ten minutes, and I stopped thinking and let myself get swept up.
A week passed as if it was nothing. There was something cloying about drinking all the time, about having a party to be at during all hours of the day and night. That was the life my mother was leading, and I followed her around. She had amassed a huge number of friends, and I couldn’t keep their faces or names straight. We never went to the same place, never put more than one bill in a slot machine, never flirted with the same bartender. Partying like this made time sort of seep away, like nothing existed except for the next drink, and perhaps the one after that, then the last drink, promise, and then one more as a nightcap or a breakfast cocktail or whatever time it was. My mother took me to dive bars and fancy clubs, teasing or curling my hair as warranted, and tossing dresses at me each night from her own closet, each more sparkly than the last. I sang karaoke and impressed people, beaming as my mother stood up from her seat and bellowed to anyone in hearing range that she’d given birth to me.
“You’re going to be a famous singer!” she would sob as I wove my way back to the table, not sure I’d been in tune or on time with the song, but proud that she was proud.
It was one of these nights—all of them melting into one memory of strobe lights and cocktails and all of the various men who followed my mother around the city fetching us drinks—that I happened to glance at my phone and notice that I missed a call from Sebastian.
Wondering what he could possibly want in the same kind of abstract wondering I did at what day of the week it could be, I called him back, stuffing a finger in the ear that didn’t have the phone pressed up against it. The band we’d been at the bar to see was taking a break, but it was still loud in the club, patrons firing up the jukebox.
“Hello!” I shouted.
“Rachel, hi,” Sebastian said. I turned the volume up on my phone as high as it would go. “Can you hear me? It’s loud there.”
“Yeah, it’s loud, but you’re good,” I said. “What’s up?”
“How are you doing?” he asked, his tone cautious.
�
��I’m fine,” I said, careless. “Partying. You know.”
“No, I don’t know. I’ve never seen you party before.”
“You haven’t seen me do a lot of things.”
“Okay, I guess that’s fair,” he said. “How much longer do you think you’re going to be in Vegas?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?” What mattered was where my next drink was. This one was almost done.
“Rachel, I hate to be the voice of reason here, but you have things that need attending to,” Sebastian told me, his voice sounding tinny and unimportant.
“I don’t have to attend to anything I don’t want to,” I informed him, vaguely aware that I was slurring my words. “I’m doing whatever I want now. And this is what I want.” I tried to enunciate better but gave up almost immediately. I just didn’t care enough. He’d understand me, or he wouldn’t.
“I can appreciate that,” he said. “But I’m here to tell you that you sometimes have to do things you don’t want to do, necessarily, because it’s the right thing to do.”
“I’ve been doing the right thing all my life,” I said. “I get to do the wrong thing for a little while.”
“It’s been a week.”
I accepted a shot even though I didn’t see who it came from and threw it back. Anything to fill the hole that was inside of me.
“I recognize that you’re dealing with a lot of grief right now,” Sebastian tried, “but you need to take a little break from what you’re doing to cope so that you can make some decisions.”
“The only decisions I’m making right now are on what to drink,” I slurred, knowing full and well that I wasn’t even making those decisions. I was just sucking down whatever people gave me. Drifting along in my misery. Only I wasn’t miserable. I was drunk. That was preferable. I preferred to be drunk over miserable.
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