by Larry Buhl
I had more to get off my chest. “Carl keeps saying, ‘a family does this,’ and ‘a family does that.’ Real families don’t keep big secrets.” I wasn’t sure that was true. Maybe real families did keep big secrets. But it sounded right. I didn’t take it back.
The cab driver opened a rear door and glared at her. Janet turned away from both of us. She put her hands to her face. I could tell she was crying. She was like this for about a minute. The driver raised his arms and looked at me as if he expected an explanation. I held up my index finger to let him know it would be a minute.
“We don’t know what we’re doing with you,” she said with a phlegm-y voice. “We didn’t know what we were doing with Scott. We were shitty parents and now we’re shitty foster parents.” She wiped the tears from her face and turned back to me. “But we’re keeping this house. You can stay in this shitty house because it is not being sold and we are not giving it up. We’re going to do one thing right.”
I didn’t feel like saying any more and, frankly, I was surprised I had said so much. I was starting to forget why I was angry with her.
It was the tears. They threw me off. It bothered me to see people cry. I never wanted to cry in front of another person, or cry alone, and I definitely didn’t want to witness anyone else’s tears.
She turned to me and scowled, as if I had farted loudly. I hadn’t. “You said you were suspended?”
“Lady,” the furry driver groaned.
“All right,” she snapped. “We will discuss this later,” she said to me.
She didn’t hug me goodbye, which was good, I suppose, because I’d never been a hugger. She did wave when the cab pulled away. Next door, the curtains in Hansens’ living room window shimmied and shut.
TWENTY-THREE
November 29. Thanksgiving. Age one: don’t remember. Age two: don’t remember. Age three: don’t remember. Age four: don’t remember. Age five: don’t remember. Age six: don’t remember. Age seven: don’t remember. Age eight: BiMo made a turkey and was very happy about it. Age nine: BiMo was depressed. I read a book about insects. Age ten: BiMo was in a manic phase. She and her boyfriend drove me out to the country for a picnic. They didn’t accidentally leave me there, and I was grateful. Age eleven: don’t remember. Age twelve: BiMo was depressed after breaking up with another boyfriend. Age thirteen: BiMo had just died. Not happy. Age fourteen: not happy. Age fifteen: not happy. Age sixteen: thoroughly miserable. Age seventeen: alone with Carl, not unhappy.
**
Thanksgiving day was dry and warm. I was sluggish because I was down to five yellow jackets and I was trying to ration them. Carl bought most of the food. He allowed me to pay for ingredients for the pumpkin bread. He initially refused to let me help in the kitchen. After I stood in the doorway for a few minutes, he began giving me little tasks, such as handing him a bowl that he could have reached. Pretty soon I was taking over, grating carrots and mashing potatoes. Cooking was preferable to doing research or watching TV or listening to Carl’s moribund acoustic guitar music. Carl eventually decided he was no help. He went to his office to do some “power yoga.”
As I minced garlic, the landline rang. I answered, because it was close to me and I didn’t want to shout for Carl. It was Janet. She seemed shockingly chipper. She wished me a happy Thanksgiving. Fiona butted in and wished me the same.
“You’re staying out of trouble?” Fiona said.
I told her I was trying to.
“Don’t try too hard. You need to have some fun.”
“Is Carl there?” Janet was talking now.
“He’s in the other room. Do you want me to get him?”
“I want to talk about your suspension first.”
It had been weeks since the suspension, and several days since I let the cat out of the bag. I thought there might be a statute of limitations on scolding, but apparently not. She demanded an explanation. I said the German club party got out of hand and it was no big deal. I gave her the abridged story and emphasized that I didn’t drink anything at the party.
“And you think this kind of behavior is acceptable?”
“I don’t.”
“You thought you could get away with it?”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“You used a fake I.D.”
“Levi gave me the I.D.”
“And that makes it all right?”
“No.” It went on this way for a while. I thought she would run out of serious accusations and start reprimanding me for innocuous things. And you ate cereal that day, didn’t you? And wore… khaki pants? In the back of my mind was a question. Why do you care, if you’re not coming back? Finally, she said I could not drive Carl’s car for a month. This was excellent punishment, because I had no desire to drive Carl’s car.
Janet was winding down her censure when Carl entered. I handed him the phone and left him alone to reconcile, or not, with Janet.
I thought dinner would be a fast, glum affair. But the phone conversation with Janet had perked Carl up. He didn’t say what they discussed, except for the fact she was angry that we hadn’t told her about the suspension. “That’s a good sign,” he said. “Don’t you think?”
“A good sign of what?”
“She wants to come back. She’s concerned about you. She’s worried.”
We ate in silence for ten minutes. Then, I blurted out, “I’m sorry about Scott.” I had been waiting for the right time to say that. There was no right time.
I didn’t expect Carl to go into the whole story, but he did. He explained how Scott had “slipped away” from them. They were busy with their careers, both working sixteen hour days. Carl was starting a company. Janet was a rising star at a bank. Scott had become addicted to drugs, and they hadn’t seen the signs until there was little they could do. First it was speed, and then it was heroin. He died choking on his own vomit. They were living in California at the time and Scott was in New York.
“We had given up on him. It was exhausting, chasing after him, putting him in rehab. We felt helpless. We convinced ourselves after his last relapse that the best thing was to let him get clean on his own. We cut him off. We’ve been reconsidering that decision…” He paused long enough to finish his yams. “But, you can only chew over mistakes for so long.”
Then Carl answered something that was on my mind. “It’s not about you, our break up. You just brought up issues that would have stayed buried. We’ll work it out. Janet can’t stand her mother. By Christmas, she’ll be back. And don’t worry about her punishment. You can drive the Sentra if you really have to. But you can’t touch her Lexus, I’m afraid. She would have a conniption.”
During dessert the landline rang. Again, I was the closest person, so I answered.
“What’s up?” It was Levi. I hadn’t heard from him since we returned from Pasadena. He wasn’t calling from a Mormon indoctrination camp, unless the camp had slot machines. The dinging and electro-deedling almost drowned out his voice. I informed him he was way behind in geometry.
“Can’t afford tutoring,” he shouted over the din. “I have sixty dollars and it has to last.”
“Until when?”
“Until I move back home.”
“You moved out?”
“Chased out.”
“Where are you now?”
“Paris.”
“Ha.”
“The Paris Hotel. On the Strip.”
“You can afford that?”
“The garage is free.”
I coaxed out the basic facts and demanded that he come to the point. There had been no mysterious van waiting to snatch him in the middle of the night. But there had been a confrontation with his family. He told the truth about the deer. That made his camping story more plausible. The problems started when the emergency clinic sent the bill to Levi’s house. His dad became suspicious. He checked the Lincoln’s odometer, which led to more questions. Instead of coming up with a plausible lie, Levi confessed to driving to Pasadena and seeing a tu
tor—me. He told them he was questioning his faith. They proclaimed him unwelcome in their house. He ran out with a change of clothes and two hundred dollars in his pocket.
If he had that much money on hand, why was he always short when it came to paying me for tutoring?
“I’m using this guy’s cell phone and he wants it back now. I’ll find a pay phone and call you back.”
“No,” I said. “Stay there. I’ll meet you at the front entrance.”
“Wait.”
I cut him off by ending the call. I always wanted to do that to him.
I put on my winter vest and told Carl I was meeting Levi. He offered the Sentra, but I declined. I reminded him I had to work and would see him in the morning.
“I can drive you to work.”
“It’s not necessary.”
“Janet will be upset if I don’t.” A grin crossed his face. “That’s another good sign. Means she’ll be back.”
I should have waited for Levi to finish what he was saying on the phone. He might have informed me about the many possible front entrances to the Paris hotel. After bouncing between the middle-aged, glassy-eyed, drink-in-hand tourists for fifteen minutes, I ran into Levi by a craps table near the Arch de Triumph. He had lost weight, quite a feat for someone already so skinny. He told me he had spent the last two weeks sleeping in his car and wandering hotel casinos. He had an acquaintance who worked at the UNLV student gym and let him shower there for free.
“Did you eat today?” I said.
“Of course.”
I assumed that was a lie. I told him I was buying dinner.
We zigzagged through indoor fake-Parisian streets, past gambling tables and roulette wheels, drinkers, coughers and women in skimpy outfits handing out drinks. Most people had a look of pressured amusement, as if someone were forcing them to act wildly happy. Some people stepped out of the way, probably because I was wearing my work scrubs under my winter vest. They may have assumed I was there to resuscitate someone.
We stopped at an indoor sidewalk crepe vender. I ordered two crepes for Levi—a ratatouille and a Nutella—and sodas for both of us.
“Cola has caffeine. My religion doesn’t allow it.”
I turned to him and attempted my best you’ve got to be kidding look.
“Cancel the sodas, please,” I said to the clerk. “Two coffees. Black.”
We sat at a café table where the din of the slot machines was nearly tolerable. Levi put a positive spin on his situation by insisting he was getting the culture fix he had been missing. “Paris is the best so far,” he said. “It’s like a whole city here. Security hasn’t hassled me for sleeping in my car for two whole nights.”
I asked him about his plans. He gave me a vacant-happy look, just as he had when I asked him, months ago, what he was going to do with his life. Now the situation was dire.
“I’ve lived my whole life in Las Vegas, except for that time in Utah. And, oh, we were in Idaho for a year, but I was too young to remember. Anyway, I’d never seen the inside of a casino. You always said I need to get out of my rut and see things.”
“I’m not sure that’s what I meant.”
“But you were right, whatever you said. Here I get to eat stuff my mom never thought to make. Crepes! Just about every day she makes chicken. For real. Chicken and potatoes, chicken casserole, chicken tacos, chicken at Easter, Chicken at Christmas, Chicken on Memorial Day—”
“You can’t wander around casinos forever,” I said.
“Chicken for birthdays, chicken for lunch, chick-en for dinner—”
“I get it.” The Ch-Ck sound grated on me.
“CHICK-en, CHICK-en, CHICK-en—”
“Okay!” I swiped my hand across the table, causing my coffee to topple onto the floor. I mopped up the spill with my stack of napkins while Levi kept talking. He said he was running out of money and needed to get the dents in his Lincoln fixed. It was bewildering how he could be more concerned about fixing the scheizen car than about securing shelter or food. He never fully understood that he might never be able to depend on his family’s beneficence. It was a lesson I had learned earlier than most. This guy, this awkward tower of gawkiness, had no survival skills. His job at Covenant Catering hadn’t taught him much, except to not use his iPod around a vat of gravy. He was without a home.
Levi was where I was supposed to be.
How many teens were dragging around Las Vegas, homeless and looking for a place to land at that very minute? I didn’t know, but it was probably many. If the stories I heard were accurate, some of them were turning tricks. Some were on drugs. Some were pregnant. At least I learned how to be an adult while I had a BiMo. For the last two years of her life, I was her parent. I cooked for her, cleaned, and made sure she paid the bills and got to work on time. It was quite an achievement for a nine-year-old to balance a checkbook. My BiMo would have never kicked me out of the house. She couldn’t. She needed me.
Levi tried to cut through his ratatouille crepe, but the plastic knife was too dull, and the sawing motion kept splattering sauce and mushrooms. I grabbed more napkins and announced that I would assist him, free of charge, in hunting for a job. I would take him around to look at apartment rentals. I told him I would help him find bargains in the store and pinch pennies. I would also help him prepare for the SAT—at deferred payment, because that was a lot of work. To cap off my offer, I said he could live with Carl and me for a few days until he got on his feet. I was fairly certain Carl would allow this.
“You have to forget your parents and learn to take care of yourself,” I said.
Levi looked down and opened his mouth wide, like he was going to swallow the whole crepe. Then he made a sound like the faraway shriek of a man falling off a cliff. This was followed by heaving shoulders and waterworks.
I offered him the last dry napkin, but his eyes were closed and spewing tears. I had to physically shove the napkin into his hand. I wanted to give him some advice, some statistic, some fact he could use. I could have told him I had spent the last four years on my own, even when I wasn’t technically living alone. I could have told him living without a biological family was just fine. I could have told him all that and more. But it didn’t seem right.
Suddenly, Levi’s crying turned off as if a timer had gone ding. He blew his nose in the napkin. “I’ll be all right. They’ll come around any day now. Holidays are coming up. I’m the one who always trims the tree.”
Fine. He could hold onto that fantasy if he wanted. I reiterated the offer to stay with me. He considered this, until he was distracted by two women walking past in revealing dresses. They were teetering on dangerous heels and sipping something from huge containers shaped like the Eiffel Tower.
“I think I’ll stay here,” Levi said. “And if I get kicked out, there’s other casinos I haven’t tried yet.” His eyes opened wide, with a new thought. “I’ve never even been to the Bellagio! It’s like a vacation in my own home town.” He smiled. “Yeah, that’s what this is.”
Sure. Whatever.
Levi couldn’t be helped, at least not by me. My shift started in forty-five minutes. We walked to one of the entrances, the one near a bar where a band played covers of old rock songs. The lead singer, a plump, youngish woman in a red shimmering dress punched up the lyrics to “Daydream Believer.” She was almost as good as my BiMo. She put a final flourish on the end of the song. The band stopped and she bowed, even though only two people were clapping, me and Levi. She put on a fake smile, pretending that there was a crowd who came only to see her. I wondered whether my BiMo experienced that kind of demoralization when she sang. She had performed at the old Frontier hotel for a while. Or maybe she sang just for her own enjoyment. I had no way of knowing. She never told me. But she did make it clear that her life had turned out to be a huge disappointment.
I locked eyes with the red dress singer. She smiled at me and blew a kiss. I was still clapping.
“He-loooooo?” Levi was waving his long arms in front
of my face. “So, um, come see me sometime.”
I stopped clapping. “See you sometime? Where? In the parking garage of the Paris Hotel?”
“Or Bellagio. Or camping. I still have my camping gear.”
“Okay. I’ll look for you somewhere.” I was being sarcastic. He didn’t get it. I informed him that he had no phone.
“Yeah,” he said, as if he’d never thought of it.
Just then, I realized what I could do for him. I pulled my cell phone out of my vest pocket and told him to keep it. Janet would be pissed. She would have to get over it. I took off my vest and told him to wear it. I didn’t think to remove the saline solution, tissues, gum, Sudafed, and the last yellow jackets from the pockets before he took possession of it.
“Thanks man,” he said, stroking the fabric.
“One more thing,” I said. “Dine eltern sind arschlocher.”
“What does it mean?”
“I’ll tell you at our next lesson.” I thought this would make him more likely to see me again. It was like a cliffhanger at the end of a TV show. I’m not going to divulge what the phrase means, because it has a swear word. But I can say it combines your parents with an oft-maligned part of the anatomy.
I walked to Flamingo Road to catch a bus. As the dry wind scattered the noisy, dead leaves on the sidewalk, I momentarily regretted giving away my winter vest, even more so because my stuff was still in the pockets. A rumpled older guy got on after me and sat across the aisle. He leaned over. At first I was afraid he was going to cough or say something perverse. Instead, he showed me an iPod. “Found it in the trash and it works, too. God does miracles, and don’t you say he doesn’t.” I congratulated him.
Ten people were on the bus, none sitting together. Everyone around me except for the iPod guy appeared to be having a less than stellar holiday. By comparison, mine was great.
There weren’t any crazies on the bus this time. Just people going to and from work, with white shoes, smocks, hotel vests, and gloomy stares and slumped shoulders. Some were dozing. These were my people. I was thankful to be with all of them, on that bus, going somewhere. And I was thankful to have someplace to return at the end of my shift.
