There are services offered at the base. It’s important to be discreet, not to jeopardize Nate’s new job with the LVPD. It’s true. I actually convince myself that this is just a new normal; nothing that a modern family can’t manage.
And maybe there’s a hint of how wrong I am in Lauren’s face. In the time it takes before she answers Jim’s question.
“Lauren, has anything else happened? Are you feeling okay?”
She pauses. A long, quiet pause.
“Nate and I have talked a lot. I know Nate loves me.”
If you think about it, this doesn’t answer Jim’s question.
“Have you and Nate talked to a counselor yet? Have you contacted someone at the base?”
Nate takes over.
“Dad, Lauren and I have worked this out. I know the services that are available to me. I know you and Mom are worried, but I’m not a kid anymore, right? Lauren and I are fine. I love Lauren. I would never hurt her. You’ll have to trust me.”
Of course, we want to trust him.
We look to Lauren, and she smiles. She smiles at Nate.
And right then, when we have just been so happy together, when life has been so normal, it makes sense. They are deeply in love. Nate would never hurt Lauren.
15
* * *
Roberta
ONE THING ABOUT A desert: it accentuates certain distinctions. If you live in one of the master-planned communities shoved up against the red rock hills or set down in a natural basin with an artificial lake at the center, then you might spend the ordinary moments of your life with palm trees fringing your view of the sky, with green grass abutting tended walking paths, with flower beds that are unearthed and replaced monthly, with artfully lighted pools that appear to magically slip into the horizon. Such resort-like luxuries are everywhere in a town that has an abundance both of cheap labor and of people who know how fantasies are created.
But the desert is unforgiving to the indigent. It offers no relief from the harsh landscape of unplanted, dusty yards, of blowing trash, of peeling, sunburned wood siding, of cheap tilt-up concrete walls, of wires sagging between rough-hewn wooden poles, of potholes and graffiti and men curled in the foot-wide shadows cast by faded, abandoned campaign signs. Without water, there are no leaves, no trees, no bushes, no meadows, no fields, no loamy dirt rich with life to soften the barren ugliness of Las Vegas’s poorest communities.
The neighborhoods crouching along Washington and Carey, between Martin Luther King and D, are low and flat and desolate. Tiny dirt yards, occasionally pitted with curly dock or oxalis, are enclosed by battered-looking chain-link fences; a wide-shouldered pit bull might strain at the rope tied to a stake in the ground, or a scrawny mutt sidle head down, waiting to be kicked, along a broken curb. Plastic chairs line up near the front doors of multiresident complexes, every building identical to the one beside it: all one story, all the same gray-white shade of untended stucco, all rising starkly from the dusty earth, not a green shoot in sight. In some chairs, people sit, aimlessly watching what little goes on, or calling to a neighbor about the sounds heard in the middle of the night, or offering advice to the single mom fired from her job the day before. Twelve-year-old boys slide by, the laces of their enormous athletic shoes dragging on the sidewalk, and a younger boy plays soccer with a basketball against the side of a building.
A lot of people I know have never been to this part of Vegas, close as it is to town, and even more of them wouldn’t dream of stopping here. Too bad, because the Seven Seas has the best fried catfish in town, and Marty and I laughed our way through a lot of Saturday nights there, back when the electric slide was the dance we did, back when everybody had a crack about my flat ass or Marty’s ham-footed moves, back when somehow those cracks were proof that we were welcome anyway.
Today I’m meeting Teddi-Ann Mapes at the Seven Seas. I haven’t been here in a while, and although it’s a dilapidated-looking structure set on a desolate corner, and the thought crosses my mind that my car might be gone when I come out, I’m still looking forward to lunch. Teddi-Ann’s son, Emmitt, is in preschool at the Baptist church nearby. We can talk for an hour, and then I’ll walk over with her to pick him up before naptime starts. Emmitt doesn’t like naptime.
She’s there when I walk in.
“Robbie, hi. Is this table okay? Or do you like to sit in the bar?”
“No, this is great. “
We’re in a small room next to the take-out counter and the kitchen. It’s not as smokey as the main room.
“Teddi, you look good. Your hair’s long again.”
“Yeah, it’s easy at work because I can just clip it up, and it’s cheaper than getting it cut.”
“You doing all right?”
“Oh yeah. I make great tips. I just can’t stop buying stuff for Emmitt. He’s so cute, Robbie. He doesn’t look like anyone in my family, and he doesn’t look like George, so I guess I just got lucky.”
George was Teddi-Ann’s boyfriend for years. If you could call a drug addict that pimped a fifteen-year-old girl a boyfriend. I suppose Teddi-Ann would say that George was a step up from her father, a fanatic who believed in harsh discipline and the right of a sire to mount his own daughters.
Teddi-Ann was one of the first kids I ever worked with as a volunteer advocate. She was yanked out of her house when she was ten, after a school nurse reported a venereal disease, but all Teddi could think about was getting back home because she had a seven-year-old sister there. I’ll never forget the way her determination to go home rocked my world. We were all rushing in, trying to protect her, and she fought like a hellion for the right to save her sister.
Well, some lessons you never forget. Some people you never forget. Even if they’re only ten years old. In the end, the system I was part of, as a volunteer CASA advocate, as a lawyer, as a concerned citizen, didn’t do much for Teddi-Ann at all. We never got her permanently removed from her father. He did whatever a judge ordered him to do. Took classes, attended meetings, signed pledges, and got to the courtroom, wearing a tie, on time. He got those girls back. And then Teddi-Ann met George, and we lost her for a while, until she showed up, pregnant and alone, at the Shade Tree. But if Teddi-Ann inherited one thing from her father, it was his ability to figure out a system, and when she was finally old enough, she used that skill to set herself free.
She was chosen for a long-term transitional shelter program and left four months before her contract ran out, because she’d already made it. Teddi had a good job, day care for her baby; she was ready to manage her own life.
“How’s Emmitt doing?”
“He got into Agassi Prep! I got the letter last week. That’s why I moved here, Robbie. That’s why I’m living here, so he would have a chance to get in, and he did.”
Her grin’s a mile wide, and I can’t help it: my eyes water. A lot of times, I see that people don’t get what they deserve, one way or the other, and then sometimes someone does.
“Come on, Robbie. Are you crying?”
“No. I’m happy for you, Teddi. I’m happy for Emmitt. It just makes me happy.”
“Well, I mean I really thought he would get in. It’s a lottery, but you have a better chance if you’re in the neighborhood, and we meet the income preference too, but then I was waiting, and I just got so scared. When you called last week, I didn’t even want to tell you what I was waiting for. But it worked out. Everything works out, Robbie. It really does.”
“Well, it’s wonderful news. It’s going to be great. Is he excited about Christmas?”
The question was out of my mouth before I remembered about Teddi-Ann’s odd upbringing.
“Oh, yes. We have a tree up. I put lights on our patio too, and I even helped them make popcorn garlands at his school. It’s a Baptist school, so Emmitt sings ‘Jesus Loves Me’ every night. I took him to church on Christmas Eve last yea
r, and I’m going to do it again.”
“I like Christmas too.”
“But you’re Jewish.”
“Yeah. But I like Christmas.”
WHEN I WAS TEN, A
girl I knew from Hebrew school came over to my house. She’d been to my house other times, but I guess she’d never been there in December.
“What’s that?” she asked, as if she’d never seen a Christmas tree.
“It’s our tree. You don’t put one up in your house?”
“No. We’re Jewish. I thought you were.” Her voice dripped. I hadn’t known she’d care. Maybe I hadn’t even noticed that our Jewish friends didn’t put up a tree. Which sounds funny, but it was no big deal in our house. We went to Hebrew school, we belonged to Beth Shalom, and we put up a tree.
My dad loved Christmas. He’d stay up with my mom, smoking a cigar while she wrapped all our gifts in foil paper with red grosgrain ribbon. He didn’t wrap himself. He had fat fingers, and no patience for measuring or tape, but they’d stay up after we went to bed Christmas Eve. I could hear them laughing in their room, and I would imagine them pulling out gift after gift, my mom meticulously wrapping, my dad puffing away. The next morning, I could smell my dad’s cigar in the paper, in the ribbons. I’d put the gifts to my nose and sniff before opening them.
A few days after my friend’s comment about the tree, I got up the courage to talk to my dad.
“Dad, why do we put up a tree? Is it okay?”
“Okay? Of course it’s okay. It’s not big enough for you this year? You think we should have it bigger next year?”
“No, Daddy. I just, I don’t know, we’re Jewish.”
“Popkin, we’re Jewish. So we can’t have a tree? Is that some Talmud law? Jewish kids can’t have a tree? Where’s it say that in the Torah? Hmm?”
“Well . . .”
It was hard for me to get out, because I didn’t want to make my dad mad, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But I’d been thinking about it, and I was a little scared.
“It says no false idols. It says a Jew who has false idols is a non-Jew.”
My voice came out small, and for a while, my dad didn’t say anything. And then I heard his big laugh, and his arm slipped around my shoulders.
“So, Popkin, you’re trying to tell me you been praying to that tree?”
His eyes sparkled.
“No, Daddy.”
“Popkin, this is why we live in Vegas. When we came to Vegas, I said no more people looking at us, no more having to live one way and not another. No more being the Jew, not being the Jew, are you being a Jew. We’re Jewish. We couldn’t get away from that if we wanted to. Ask your friend Jackie if she wants to come over on Christmas Day. Tell her we have a present for her. See what she says.”
TEDDI-ANN LOOKS AT ME QUIZZICALLY.
“I’m sorry, Teddi. I was thinking about Christmas. When I was a kid.”
She smiles. I wonder if she has any memories of Christmas as a child. It’s not something her dad would have gotten right. But she’s smiling anyway.
“Emmitt loves the lights in people’s yards. There’s a house down on West Adams that’s incredible, and I told him we could drive by it every single night. I mean, he just loves all the reindeer.”
And that’s how it is with Teddi-Ann Mapes, who had some of the toughest breaks I’ve ever known a kid to get. She’s barely old enough to drink a beer in a bar, but she makes me feel like the world’s going to work out; like everything anyone ever does—no matter how small, no matter how inept—is worth it. Because one of these days, the person you help is Teddi.
16
* * *
Luis
I KNEW SHE WAS there before she spoke. It’s how she smells. Which I can’t describe because I don’t know the word for her smell. But my abuela’s skin has its own odor, and one of my earliest memories is of that smell, and how it meant that no matter what had been happening, everything would be okay now.
I lie there, as still as I can, and try to breathe her in without letting her know that I am awake. I want just to take a deep breath in, but I don’t want her to say anything, I don’t want to open my eyes, I don’t know what to say to her, so I lie there, still, and let just the hint of that odor in.
She is sitting in Dr. Ghosh’s chair. I hear her shift position once or twice. My abuela is short, with a round apple body, and I can almost see her perched on the edge of the chair so her feet will touch, and then shifting on the seat to rest her back, and her toes lifting off the ground. I smile slightly at this, and she notices immediately, because, of course, her attention has never wavered.
“Mi amor. Luis. I am here.”
I’ve been dreading this moment. Because of course I’ve been waiting for her, I need her, and I can’t bear for her to see me like this—to know what I have done, even if nobody has told her the whole story yet. Tears start to leak out of the sides of my closed eyes, which is exactly what I don’t want, and I keep lying there, perfectly still, concentrating on thinking about nothing, and feeling these hot tears sliding down my temples and pooling near my ears.
“Luis. Luis, Luis, Luis.”
She says my name over and over like it is a prayer, almost sung. This makes the tears come faster. I can’t help myself. I take a sort of ragged breath in, and then I stiffen, because it was hard enough to face Dr. Ghosh with everything I feel, and to face my abuela is impossible.
You can’t get away from anything in a hospital. You’re lying on a bed, and you can’t even get up to go to the bathroom by yourself, and if someone comes in and just foists something on you—some experience, some memory—you cannot get away. You are just there. Abuela is not going to go away, so my heart starts racing. I really can’t deal with this.
“Luis. You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to say one word. Later, maybe you can open your eyes, just for a moment, so I can see you. But you don’t even have to do that.”
I open my eyes.
Everything is blurry, because of the tears, but there she is, exactly the same. Everything that has happened to me, the way being in her home feels like someone else’s life, hasn’t changed her. She is the same.
She doesn’t lean in too close, and she doesn’t touch me. My abuela always knew that some pain requires space. When I was a little boy, she would wait until I crawled in her lap or reached up for a kiss. She didn’t lean in to me or pull me toward her. I still remember how safe that felt, and how much I hated that my mother, the few times she saw me, would rush in for a hug, pull on a curl, and say, “What, Luis, you aren’t going to give your mama a hug?” I should hug her, though I never knew that she was coming, though she never said good-bye. My mother would kiss me, my body taut, then set me down, and say, “Mama, he’s kind of uptight. Are you too hard on him? You know that doesn’t work. Look at me, right?” And laugh, her stretched laugh, as if we were supposed to believe she found this funny, when anyone could hear that she had lost the ability to find anything funny a long time ago.
“Thank you, Luis.”
That’s all Abuela says. And I close my eyes.
WHEN I WAKE UP, SHE’S
still there. Not in the chair, though. She’s by the window, and she’s fiddling with the string that controls the slats. Those blinds have been hanging at a slant, because the one string is pulled tighter than the other, for as long as I’ve been here. Of course, she’s fixing it.
“Abuela?”
My voice is stronger than I expect it to be. For some reason, I don’t feel as upset as I did. I feel rested, and I feel like she’s not going to make me tell her anything.
“Luis, you’re awake. Are you hungry?”
I smile. If I don’t have to tell her anything, then having her makes everything better.
“No. They feed me a lot here. It’s part of my therapy. Using a fork. So I don’t ever get
hungry.”
“How about some water? I just put ice in that pitcher.”
“Yes. I’ll have a drink. But let me do it.”
She watches me as I struggle to pull the tray over my bed and then to sip from the bent straw in the glass. When I was a kid, I liked the straws that bent, and that little strip of accordion pleating that allowed one to create just the right angle. Abuela didn’t buy straws, and if I’d asked for them, she would have bought the cheaper ones, made of paper, without any pleating.
There’s not enough water in the glass for me to get any, and I can’t manage the pitcher, so I sit back a little, and my abuela pauses, to see what I will do, and then pours me some water. I wonder if this is how all families are, if this is how it will be for me some day with a wife: that words are not necessary, that not using words is a kind of caress.
But I won’t have a wife. Why did that thought come in? All that’s gone for me. It’s impossible to imagine this future. And I shouldn’t have it.
Abuela adjusts the blankets near my feet and pulls the chair a little nearer my bed. She has found a pillow for the back, and I see that she can sit in it now with her feet on the ground. I wonder if a nurse brought her the pillow or if she simply went and found one. My abuela wouldn’t have bothered anyone with something she could do herself.
“I’m staying at Fisher House. It’s for the family of patients. They’re very nice.”
I want to nod, but these are the gestures I can’t always do when I think of them, so I’m not sure if my head moves or not.
“We were always going to go to DC, Luis. Now we are here.”
I smile.
“Abuela, you should go to the Smithsonian. You should see the monuments. I’m fine here. And you could tell me about them.”
We Are Called to Rise Page 12
