Strip Poker

by Nancy Bartholomew

  Francis was working his way to Thomas Jefferson Hospital, talking and dodging traffic, his eyes focused on the road ahead, all emotion carefully sheltered by his dark aviator glasses.

  Expected? The pain was to be expected? Well, I hadn’t expected it. “Why the hell didn’t somebody tell me?” I yelled. “You sons of bitches!”

  I reached over and punched his arm so hard the car swerved.

  “Damn it, Sierra! Stop it! Ma wouldn’t let us tell you!”

  “So fucking what?” I yelled. “Don’t you know when to think for yourselves?”

  Francis stopped at a red light and looked over at me. “Our hands were a little full up here, Sierra. Ma was in trouble and Pa’s acting like a total asshole. He’s completely losing it, Sierra, so pardon me if we couldn’t quite get around to you.”

  It was the Lavotini way, scream, yell, beat on things, and then get rational. We weren’t at the rational point yet.

  “What do you mean Pa’s acting like an asshole?”

  Francis turned his attention back to driving. “He won’t go to the hospital. He’s sitting down in the basement, drinking. I never seen him like this. I tried to get him to go to her and he took a swing at me, Sierra. He’s a fucking loser.”

  “Ma’s up in the hospital going through this alone?”

  I was shrieking. I was wild inside. It scared Fluffy, because a high-pitched yowl escaped from the backseat, where she sat cowering in her crate.

  “Fluffy, babe, it’s all right,” I said, trying to calm down and failing miserably. “Francis, who’s with Ma?”

  “We all are, Sierra. Didn’t nobody leave her.”

  “And what about Pa?”

  We pulled into the parking deck of the hospital and Francis rolled down the window and reached out to take a ticket.

  “Didn’t nobody leave him either,” he said. “We’re taking turns. We got family coming over out the ying-yang, and Ma’s church ladies are practically haunting the place. You can’t move for the people wanting to do good.”

  “Then what’s with Pa?” But I knew. Pa loved Ma so bad he couldn’t deal with the threat to her. It was Pa’s job to make sure nothing ever happened to Ma or his family, but this time he couldn’t take care of Ma’s problem. He couldn’t fix Ma and he couldn’t handle that.

  “Pa is being an idiot,” Francis pronounced calmly. He pulled into a parking slot, shut off the engine, and got out of the car. I followed him, tossing Fluffy a doggie treat and a promise.

  “I’ll be right back, Fluff,” I said, but my voice broke as I tried to speak and the words came out in a whisper of tears.

  We rode the elevator to Ma’s room in silence. The whole time I was preparing myself. In all of our lives, nothing had ever gone wrong with Ma. It seemed to me she had never so much as had a cold. And the only injury I could remember was from the time she and Raydean played commando while Ma was visiting my place and feeling particularly powerful. What was Ma feeling now?

  Francis stopped outside a wide door and looked at me, mouthing the word “Ready?” I nodded and he pushed open the door.

  The room was the same color all hospital rooms are in my head, a pale shade of tan. They can dress them up any way they want to, throw a picture on a wall, pitch in a burgundy recliner, but still it’s not the room you remember, it’s the people in it. I stepped inside and the only thing I could focus on was my brothers and Ma.

  Joey, Al, and David were all sitting in chairs pulled up to the bed, looking subdued and strangely frightened. They glanced up at me, all at once, and their eyes were sunken and dark with fatigue. Ma lay on the bed, pale and silent, her face contorted with unexpressed suffering.

  I stepped up to the bed, silently slipping past my brothers to take her hand in mine.

  “You hurtin’, Ma?” I whispered.

  Her eyes slowly opened and she focused on me, tears spilling over her lashes and running down her ashen cheeks.

  “Oh, Sierra, honey,” she said, her voice cracking with thirst and pain, “it hurts bad.” She took a shaky breath, then whispered, “I’m sorry, honey. I wanted to be feeling better when you got here.”

  This was not Ma. I turned to my brothers and noticed how lost they seemed to be. They had the same look in their eyes that I’d seen in Dennis Watley’s little kids.

  “Okay, Ma,” I said, trying to sound like I was gonna lick the world. “Let me talk with your nurse and get you fixed up.”

  Joey spoke up. “She wouldn’t take nothin’.”

  I looked back at Ma. “Why not?”

  Ma’s eyes fluttered. “I was waiting. I didn’t want to be asleep when you and your father got here.”

  “Ma, when Pa gets here and sees you looking so bad, he’s gonna freak. Now let’s get you some medicine and a different nightgown, and you’ll be looking good when he comes.” She started to protest, but I leaned down and stroked the hair away from her forehead. “Ma, he’ll wait if you’re sleeping.”

  The tears started flowing again. “He ain’t coming, Sierra. He don’t want to see me like this. He don’t want to look at me no more.

  Al jumped up out of his chair and went to stand by the window, his back to us, but anger written all over the way he held himself, his fists at his sides.

  “Ma, it ain’t that, trust me. Pa’s never been good in hospitals. He can’t take not being able to help, and seeing you in pain makes him feel even worse. Let’s get you taken care of, and then I’ll go find Pa.” And when I did, I was figuring to give him a good piece of my mind.

  Seventeen

  When we got back to the car, things were not as they should’ve been. For one thing, Fluffy was a basketcase. When Francis unlocked the door, Fluffy snapped and barked like we were both strangers. Then when she heard my voice, she began whimpering.

  I figured she’d had enough emotional trauma for one day. While Francis went through the motions of getting us out of the parking deck and on our way home, I shifted my attentions to the poor dog. I turned around in my seat and reached back to undo the crate door. That’s when I found the slip of paper with my name on it sticking out from the bottom of the cage.

  I looked back at Francis, tempted to say something to him. He was talking to the garage attendant, paying his tab and collecting his receipt. I unfolded the paper slowly, trying to figure out when someone could’ve slipped a note under Fluffy’s crate. After all, the car had been locked. There was no sign that the locks had been tampered with, only Fluffy’s hysteria.

  “We will talk … soon,” the note read.

  I looked at Fluffy. She was trembling. I opened the door to her cage, pulled her out and brought her up into the front seat.

  “Hey, Fluff,” Francis said.

  “It’s all right, baby,” I crooned. Fluffy snuggled deeper into my arms, still shaking. I started to tell Francis about the note and then stopped. He and my other brothers had been through hell. Whoever was looking for me could wait. I had an assortment of past boyfriends and associates, any one of them very capable of breaking into a car and leaving a note. Maybe this was their idea of courting. I reviewed the list of men not currently serving time and realized that even among those losers it was a thin idea to think they’d be searching for me in this manner. Nope, this was trouble. I just wasn’t sure what kind of trouble.

  I glanced over at Francis. I had four strong brothers. No way was this bozo note-writer going to get through them to hurt me. Anyway, if he’d wanted to hurt me, he would’ve hurt Fluffy. Besides, how was I to know when the note arrived in Fluffy’s crate? Someone could’ve slipped it into the cage while we were at the airport in Florida. Nah, this wasn’t an immediate threat and Francis didn’t need any more stress. I tucked the note into the pocket of my pants and tried to put it out of my mind, but a little thrill of fear shot through my chest and settled in to kindle a low flame of anxiety that wouldn’t go away. Somebody was looking for me.

  Francis turned onto our street and began jockeying for position among the cars lining t
he curb. He slid into a spot between an ancient Cadillac and a beat-to-death Beamer.

  He shut off the engine and looked at me. “Sierra, when I told you I ain’t never seen Pa like this, I meant it. He’s drunk. I’ve never seen the man loaded. He can hold his Chianti, but he ain’t drinking Chianti. He’s drinking liquor.”

  I shrugged. “Francis, we’ve all got our ways. Nothing ever happened to Ma before. He’s taking it hard.”

  Francis shook his head like the Chief should always be on duty, always in control, just like Francis. Only Francis wasn’t any better than Pa at handling what was going on. He walked around like a powder keg, and sooner or later he was going to lose it every bit as bad as Pa. But Francis and I had covered this ground and it wasn’t going to get any better by me beating it into him. So I opened the door and started to step out of the car.

  “I’m just trying to tell you, Sierra,” he said.

  I looked back at him, cradling Fluffy and glaring at him. “I know what you’re trying to do, Francis. But what I’m trying to tell you is this: I understand Pa. I’m not saying I can do more or less than anybody else. I’m just saying maybe I can help him.”

  Francis snorted. “Pa don’t need help. He needs to sober up and be a man.”

  Before I could stop it, the words flew out of my mouth. “Oh, like when you and the ex split up? He should be a man like that?”

  Francis just stared at me, not believing what I was saying, not believing he heard me, the look of disbelief etched clearly across his face.

  “Francis,” I said, “I’m sorry. That was unfair and untrue.”

  He wouldn’t even meet my eye. He got out of the car, locking it slowly and carefully behind him, then brushed past me as he walked up the stairs to the row house. I followed, trying to find the words to undo the terrible wrong I’d done him. Losing his wife had been the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Losing her to his best friend had been almost more than he could bear. Now I had to bring it up, play off his weakness by returning to revisit it with scorn.

  Aunt Dolores undid the locks and pulled the heavy front door open before I had a chance to say anything more to Francis. Pa’s sister stood there pulling on her thick black wool overcoat and frowning out at us, disapproval written all over her pudgy face.

  “He ain’t come up,” she said to Francis. Then, “Hello, Sierra,” to me, and a cursory glance that seemed to say: “I knew it. You look just like a stripper.”

  Dolores made no bones about how she felt, ever. She was thickset, with bleached blond hair that always showed coarse black roots, and the thin line of a mustache that never seemed to vanish with bleach. Dolores was sensible in a way that made the rest of the world look foolish, no matter how responsible they were. A devout Catholic, she never missed mass. She never ate meat on Friday, despite any papal dispensation. Dolores confessed to Father Max for hours, it seemed. I always figured her confessions were about nothing, or else she wouldn’t have complained all the time that he fell asleep on her. Father Max has yet to fall asleep during one of my confessions.

  I walked by her as she made her way out of the house, past the little huddle of church ladies who bustled about in Ma’s kitchen, and down the steps to the basement. Fluffy, sensing a battle, jumped out of my arms and scampered back up the steps. Even the church ladies seemed safer, I figured.

  Pa was sitting on the worn gray sofa that Ma had long ago dismissed from aboveground duty. He was wearing a sleeveless white T-shirt, his thick arm muscles ropy with age. He held a bottle of whisky in one hand and a faded photograph of Ma in the other. He was crying, tears running down his cheeks and into the gray stubble of a three-day growth of beard. His hair was rumpled and pressed to the side of his head from where he’d slept on one arm of the couch. He was a mess, just as Francis had said.

  I stepped down off the last stair and walked over to him, sitting down beside him and slipping my arm around his shoulders.

  “Oh, Pa,” I whispered. “She’s gonna be all right.”

  I wasn’t even sure he’d heard me. He sat without moving for so long I became frightened and thought maybe he’d completely lost it. When he did speak, his voice was almost a whisper.

  “They cut her, Sierra,” he said. “And still it’s eating her. And it’s gonna keep on eatin’ her until she dies, just like it did her mother, and her mother before her.”

  This was something I didn’t know. “Grandma died of cancer?” Pa nodded. “And her mother too?”

  Pa looked over at me briefly, like it was nothing at all unusual for me to be sitting on his workshop sofa, even though he knew I hadn’t been home in a year.

  “Sierra, your mother’s been afraid of this all her life, and now look what’s happened.” A tear escaped and ran down his cheek. “And I can’t do a goddamn thing about it!” His voice rose and he brought the bottle to his lips, as if drowning out the words.

  “Pa,” I said, pulling the bottle down and gently taking it from him. “Ma is fine. She just needs you.”

  Pa wouldn’t look at me. “She ain’t fine. She’s got it in her body. They talk like they’re gonna save her, but what kind of talk is that? Experimental drugs, my ass!” He paused and I sat waiting. He twisted at an invisible thread on the sofa. He stared at Ma’s picture, and finally he said it. “I don’t know if I can handle it, Sierra. If I walk in that room and she looks at me, she’ll know.”

  “Know what, Pa?”

  He sighed. “Sierra, I don’t love your Ma for how she looks on the outside. She’s the most beautiful woman in the world, but what if I can’t make her see that?”

  “Well, Pa, you can’t make her see that by sitting here drinking, that’s for damn sure.”

  He moved a little on the sofa, restless. “What am I gonna say to her? She’s gonna look at me and know what I’m thinking. What if she says, ‘Am I gonna die?’ What do I say? How do I look at her and say no?”

  Fluffy picked this moment to walk down the steps and come up to the couch. She hopped up beside Pa and crawled into his lap.

  “Pa, she ain’t looking for you to lie to her. She’s looking to know you still love her. She’s looking to hear you’re still there, that no matter what, you’re the guy. You’re the man that has loved her forever and will go on loving her long after both of you are dead and buried. That’s all there is to it.” I took his hand and squeezed it until he looked up at me. “Pa, it’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to be petrified, but you gotta be that with Ma, not without her.”

  Pa’s gaze drifted to the steps like he was hoping maybe someone would walk downstairs and explain the entire situation to him in a way that made everything better. “Pa, listen to me. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. Ma’s coming home tomorrow. We’ve got work to do. You’ve gotta pull it together and give Ma a Christmas. You can’t let her come home and see we ain’t making it.” I patted his knee. “You know what I think, Pa?”

  “What do you think, Sierra?”

  “I’m thinking Francis and Joey should go get the tree and set it up. Then after you and I go to the hospital, you can get the decorations down from the attic and I’ll go to the store and get the groceries.”

  I sandwiched in the part about Pa going to see Ma like it was a given, but I was holding my breath. I heard Pa suck in a breath too, then hold it, considering.

  “Okay,” he said. “We go, but you leave me there. I want youse kids to go do all that Christmas shit. I’m staying with Evie.”

  I felt the tears of relief clogging my throat and forced them back. “Okay, if that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.”

  Pa stood and headed toward the stairs. “I gotta go get cleaned up,” he said. “Give me a half hour. Oh and, Sierra?”

  “Yeah, Pa?”

  “Welcome home, sweetie.”

  Eighteen

  When the phone rang, I was in Ma’s kitchen, where she should have been on Christmas Eve, whipping up the filling for our traditional angel cake. I cradled the receiver against my neck
and answered, the whole while focused on whipping the cream.

  “Sierra?” the voice said.

  It took me a moment to realize that I hadn’t given anyone but John Nailor my number. It took another second to figure out who was calling.

  “Frankie? How’d you get my number?”

  “It’s in the book, Sierra, along with a number of your finer relatives. It didn’t take a miracle. Now listen up. I got you hooked up to talk to this guy Dimitri the day after you get back. You’re meeting us at the Oyster Bar on Beck at eleven. You got that?”

  “No problem.”

  “Good, then I got something else to tell you. Izzy Rodriguez is looking to link up with your new boss. Word is he’s there every night and making himself useful by telling your fishing-boat captain what’s what with running a club.”

  That didn’t make sense. Why would a snake like Izzy suddenly turn humanitarian and help out a potential new rival?

  “I don’t work there anymore,” I said.

  “No shit,” Frankie laughed. “The House of Booty’s got a new headliner. Some blonde that looks like a Barbie doll and slithers like a snake. Girl might give you a run for your money. Bitch can dance.”

  I was having a bad feeling. “Would this powder puff be sporting a tattoo above her left boob?” I asked.

  “Yeah, just like her name, Angel.”

  I slapped the wire whisk against the side of the crockery bowl. “You got any more Christmas Eve cheer for me, Frankie?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah,” he said, “your boyfriend’s thinking with his little head. He let Gambuzzo out for Christmas dinner. I don’t know how you did it, but Gambuzzo’s sitting over at his girlfriend’s house, surrounded by unmarked police, enjoying a little holiday cheer.”

  Someone in the background called out, and Frankie’s attention was diverted. When he spoke again, his entire voice had changed. He sounded rushed and anxious.