Pretty Things Don't Break

by Lauren Jayne

  “Shout, shout, let it all out, these are the things I can do without, come on…” The same Tears For Fears song was just playing on MTV at Carmen’s when we left her apartment. Carmen and I noticed at the same time and laughed.

  This was my first high school party, and I wondered whose house it was.

  “Mark Smith,” she said like she was saying the name of some nondescript loser who she was doing a favor just for showing up to his party three hours late.

  In actuality, he was a senior at our new school, and not just any senior; he was the best looking, captain-of-the-football-team senior at our soon-to-be high school. When we walked up the stairs, everyone greeted Carmen like she was their best friend.

  “Hi, you’re here, I’ve been looking for you!” someone said as they gave her a hug.

  It seemed every guy and girl at the party knew Carmen or wished they did by the way they stared at her. Everyone else looked like they were at a high school party with curled hair, makeup, and miniskirts. But not Carmen; she always looked effortlessly and unintentionally beautiful. She wore cut-off 501 shorts with a light yellow tank, spaghetti straps hanging from her perfectly pulled back shoulders. Her hair was in a messy, curly, high ponytail, a few pieces falling around her forehead and perfectly framing her newly tanned face, with just a swipe of pearly white lip gloss. She smelled like a mix of Noxzema, Loves Baby Soft, and whatever gum she was chewing at the time.

  Sitting on the counter in the kitchen, I stood by her side as she kicked her dangling feet around. Mark came in to check on her and handed her an open beer.

  “Thanks,” she said, and looked back to me, always leaving everyone wanting just one more minute of her time. Carmen asked the guy sitting next to her if she could bum a smoke. From the look on his face when she was talking to him, he would have been happy to give her the shirt off his back.

  She looked up at me as she took in a deep drag and said, “Gross, huh? Do you think I’m gross?”

  I just looked at her and smiled and said, “Never.”

  Carmen noticed I was dazing off and said, “What’s wrong, you don’t like the party? The people? You’re mad that I’m smoking? You want me to take you home?”

  “I’m just…”

  “What, what’s going on?” Carmen asked with a deep look of concern in her eyes.

  “I’m just on my island. I’m OK, I promise. I like it here.”

  Carmen grabbed my hand and we headed out the door. A few people yelled down to her as we ran down the steps, “We’ll see you later?” Carmen just laughed, and we jumped in her car.

  Back at her apartment, we got out of the car, and Carmen headed down to the lake. The moon was full and creamy white; the lake was glistening black and looked like a mirror. She stopped at the bench and patted the seat next to her.

  “Tell me about your island, Lor.”

  “I’ve been going there for as long as I can remember. I drift away, into the clouds, into the pattern on a rock or a leaf, into a song; I drift off to my island in my mind. Whenever things get crazy, scary, or I just feel a little uncomfortable or alone, I just float away. I can’t feel anything but God and whatever song or melody is swimming through my mind; it’s always there, no matter where, no matter what. If someone is screaming right into my ear and I’m on my island, I just hear a kind of “shhh.” Sometimes I’m there for a few minutes and sometimes I’m there for a few days.”

  I was just talking as I stared out at the glistening lake. I’d never told anyone about my island before, but telling Carmen felt as natural as telling her my name. She was the first person to notice I was gone. Looking over to her, I saw she had tears streaming down her face. She just grabbed my hand and held it.

  We sat in silence, staring at the moon before walking back to her apartment. Safe inside, Carmen flipped on MTV and plopped down on the couch.

  “I’ll make us something to eat, OK?” I offered, realizing that I hadn’t thought about food or not eating or missing all of my rituals in forever.

  “Perfect, Lor, I’m starved.”

  Going into Carmen’s tiny kitchen, I opened the cupboards to find two boxes of cereal and a few cans of soup. Then I opened the freezer and saw a pizza. “Perfect,” I thought. Unwrapping the plastic, I turned on the oven, then checked to make sure the rack was in the middle so the pizza would cook perfectly. Then I opened the oven.

  “Do you know what’s in your oven?” I called out to Carmen in the next room.

  She answered back with her half-laughing voice, “Do we have a stove?” Then Carmen hopped off the couch to see what I was talking about. Her oven was filled with beer and wine. “I guess my mom thought that was the safest place to keep that since she knows I don’t know how to cook.” She laughed and headed back to the couch. “She thinks I don’t know what’s in her coffee cups. It’s kind of hysterical.”

  After our pizza feast, we listened to MTV while we washed our faces side by side in the bathroom. We both pulled our massive hair into balls on top of our heads. She took a scoop of Noxzema and handed the jar to me. Then she grabbed a bottle of toner, passed it to me, and fumbled with a bottle of lotion as she squirted some in my hand. We brushed and flossed our teeth and jumped into her bed; it shook and squished underneath us. She reached up and grabbed the dirty cord and released the metal blinds and then twisted them closed.

  “Is your dad coming home tonight?” I asked.

  “Nope, it’s just us.”

  With Led Zeppelin lulling us to sleep, we drifted away.

  At about two the next afternoon, Carmen woke me up with a cup of coffee, sugar and cream mixed to perfection, and with my first sip I understood why people loved this stuff.

  “Sleep well, sleepy head?” she smiled.

  “I’ve never slept better or longer in my life,” I said.

  She probably thought it was a figure of speech, but, this was the first night I remember letting my body fall as deep as it could without feeling like I had one eye open, keeping guard. It was the first night I ever remember getting a deep sleep.

  “Me neither,” agreed Carmen.

  After a long day on the dock in front of her apartment, rolling off into the water every twenty minutes or so to cool down, we popped our heads up at the same time and said, “I’m starving.”

  We headed up to grab some fresh Diet Coke and a Pop Tart. Her front door was open which made me a little nervous, but Carmen bounded up the stairs, skipping one each time like she always did. She walked through the open door and there were three girls standing in the family room. I stopped behind Carmen and waited for her to say something. Holding her Diet Coke in her hand, she pointed to the two girls. They were dressed completely in white, like they had just come from a tennis match, their hair seemingly bouncing around their cheery faces even though they weren’t moving. One girl had a blonde bob and the other a brown bob with a yellow ribbon tied in it; they looked like teenagers, like high school girls.

  “Lor, these are my sisters, Tracy and Hildy,” Carmen said. They looked me up and down and then said, “Hi.”

  I assumed the third girl was another sister I had never heard about. She stood there with her long, wild, curly blonde hair springing out from a red bandana, wearing a tiny black bikini and spraying oil on her tan, fit body.

  “And this is my mom.”

  I started to laugh because I thought she had to be kidding. When people said my mom and I looked like sisters I knew it was just some perv trying to hit on my mom, but I was as serious as a heart attack. How could this gorgeous woman, with tight brown skin covering her perfectly curvy body, possibly have given birth to these three girls? It didn’t make sense, but I knew she would never lie to me.

  Carmen walked up to their stereo and turned up the music; her mom followed behind her and turned it down.

  “Carmen, that is unacceptable; you’re going to get us kicked out of here with that music.”

  Carmen grabbed a bag of Cheetos from the Formica-covered counter and a six-pack of
Diet Coke from the fridge and took my hand.

  Lying on the dock, it finally felt like the right time to ask Carmen what was going on. As we laid in our designated positions, heads next to each other and feet going out, I said, “So, those are your sisters and your mom?”

  “Yea, isn’t it crazy how different we look?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “You’re all beautiful, but they’re like Barbies, and you’re an exotic princess.”

  “Love you, Lor.”

  “Love you, Car. I’ve been here pretty much every day since school let out and it’s almost time to go back to school. Where do they live?” I said.

  “When my parents got divorced forever ago, my dad took my sisters and left me with my mom. Actually, I stayed; I didn’t want her to be here alone,” Carmen said like she was ordering a Coke at a restaurant.

  “Oh, so they live with your dad?” I said.

  “My dad and his new wife; she looks like another one of my sisters.”

  We laughed.

  “But, where has your Mom been?” I asked, making sure to just keep looking up at the sky; I didn’t want Carmen to think I was judging, just that I cared and was interested.

  “Oh, she blows in and out when she gets into a fight with her boyfriend or needs to do some laundry or gets worried about her plants. That’s why she gave me my car, so I could get around while she’s gone.” She lit a smoke and handed one over to me. “What about you? You never have to go home or check in; what’s the deal with your parents?” she asked in the same easy, non-judgmental, but caring voice.

  “They’re busy. My mom works pretty much around the clock to keep our family from sinking because my dad’s a lunatic. When she finally comes home she sinks into a weird hibernation-like depression; it’s like she has to save every breath for her ‘people’– that’s what she calls them, the people that are under her at work. She says she has to be ‘on’ for her people, but she’s pretty much always ‘off’ at home. Oh well, she’s amazing at what she does. She’s always made sure there’s a roof over our heads and something to eat in the house, so I can’t complain.”

  I’d never really told anyone about my mom before. I don’t know if it was because Carmen was the first person to ask or because I felt more comfortable around her than anyone else in the world.

  “Love you, Lor,” as she handed me some lip gloss.

  “Love you, Car,” as I handed her a freshly unwrapped piece of gum.

  Chapter 14

  What the Fuck?

  After their last visit to Washington, Booboo declared, after looking me up and down for what seemed to be ten minutes, “Well, you’ve finally blossomed; you’ll come to Vegas.”

  What I heard was, you’re finally not fat and ugly, so we can claim you as a relative now.

  With my suitcase and ticket in tow, Carmen took me to the airport. Inside, I was nervous about my first trip to Vegas to visit the infamous Booboo and Milton, who Hope had pretty much lived with most of my life.

  I’d heard stories through the years about Mom going on some of the junkets from Denver to Vegas with Milton and Booboo in the early days, when Vegas was still nothing more than a sandbox in the desert where the rich went to gamble, hob nob with celebrities, and be lavished with caviar and champagne. She’d say how they’d leave her by the pool, and she’d peek over and see them sitting with Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Steve, and Eydie. If you were on the A-list, you were in Vegas at that time, and if you were in Vegas, you knew of Milton. After school, looking through Booboo’s knitting bag for a piece of gum, she’d find that her bag was filled with wrapped bundles of hundred dollar bills under balls of green yarn. Booboo and Milton would run out to the airport or a coffee shop and return with bags of money. Mom had grown up with Milton since she was about eight, so the fact that one of his jobs for Mr. Lansky was to pick up money from the people who owed him never seemed weird.

  Now, I was on my way to this legendary place. Wearing a pair of white shorts, a tank top, and a soft pink button down, I waited at baggage claim as instructed by Booboo.

  She’d said, “You’ll come down to Air Alaska’s baggage claim with your bag and your Booboo will be waiting for you right outside. Don’t dilly dally; Booboo doesn’t wait.”

  With my parents’ brown tweed suitcase in my hand, I walked through the double doors. The hot, thick air sucked all of the breath from my lungs. Even though it was almost nine at night, it had to have been over ninety degrees out. I took off my button down and tied it around my waist. Just then I heard a screeching that hurt my ears. Turning my head, I saw Booboo riding the curb in her light blue Cadillac, head barely peeking over the steering wheel. Looking around, I noticed that everyone was staring at Booboo and the spectacle she was creating. She stopped right in front of me. Flinging open the big steel door, a waft of smoke billowed out like a plume.

  Booboo stepped her tiny, navy, velvet-covered shoe onto the sidewalk, and before saying hi to me, she pursed her lips at a uniformed man standing by the ashtray smoking and ordered, “Grab her bag and put it in the trunk.”

  Without waiting for a response, while he was still looking around making sure she was directing her words at him, he crushed out his cigarette, grabbed my bag, put it in the trunk, and closed it.

  As I jumped into the passenger seat, she looked at me and barked, “Put your shirt back on; Milton doesn’t like bare shoulders. And you’ll have to take those shorts off; he thinks only trumbaniks wear shorts. And your hair – do you have any barrettes? He won’t like your hair over your face.”

  Then she took the cigarette from her mouth and handed it to me with her perfectly manicured, red-tipped fingers. I was fifteen, and no one knew that I smoked but Carmen, so I wondered why she was jamming a wet cigarette in my mouth. But through the slobber, the Marlboro Light went down like nectar down a vine. Knowingly taking it from her and inhaling without coughing was my most redeeming quality so far.

  She looked at me and said, “Now, this is just between us girls. Milton won’t like you smoking.”

  She finally looked pleased with me.

  As we drove down the freeway, I held onto the door handle for dear life. If Booboo wanted to change lanes, she took her ring-covered fingers and flipped up the blinker – that was it. Not a turn of her head, not a peek in her mirror; the blinker was all she would do to let people know to move. As we came within one inch from the Yellow Cab next to us, I looked right into the whites of the driver’s terror-filled eyes and gave him my best “I’m so sorry” look. Booboo was oblivious. When we got off of the freeway, she told me we were in Crack City. I’d never heard of crack but, from the tone of her voice, it was bad.

  She said in her nasally, dry voice, “Half the people are on dope, the other half are drunk, and the other half are on drugs, but Booboo knows how to get around here, don’t you worry.”

  As she slowly and deliberately flipped that blinker up one more time, we rolled into her gated community. As soon as the man in the little house with mirrored windows saw our car pull around the corner, the gate flew up. Driving past the guardhouse, Booboo didn’t turn her head; she didn’t need permission to drive into her neighborhood.

  “This is Kirk Kerkorian’s home; he bought two lots for the house and another for a little space between him and the neighbor. Between him and Steve Wynn, they own Vegas. And this, this is the Greenspan’s, and don’t worry, they have more money than God; they can live anywhere in the world.” Now she was tapping her painted finger on the dash. “But they live here, because it is the finest neighborhood in all of Vegas and because they are smart, like Booboo. And Steve, well, Mr. Wynn is a momzer of the worst order; that’s why he doesn’t live here. You know Milton taught him everything he knows. From the day he showed up in Vegas, one of Milton’s big bosses told Steve, ‘If you listen to Milton you’ll know everything there is to know about this business.’ Sure enough, he followed Milton around since the days at the Dunes like a dog.”

  Steve Wynn was a hous
ehold name that even I knew. It sounded to me like he bought and ran most of the hotels that Milton worked in, in Vegas but Booboo said he followed Milton around like a dog and Mom’s stories when Steve flashed up on the TV, or the cover of a magazine echoed the same thing. Crushing out her cigarette, she named everyone that lived in the neighborhood along with their net worth.

  “Now, when we built this house, Jerry Lewis lived on this side and Steve and Eydie lived on that side. Don’t worry, Booboo made them each an afghan; they loved Booboo. Do you know that Booboo was here every day overseeing the building of my house? When I saw the fireplace I told them to rip it out immediately; what kind of an idiot needs a fireplace in Vegas?”

  When she hit the button for the garage, light streamed out as if the sun was hiding in there. Pulling into the completely white garage, floors too, it was cleaner than most kitchens. Booboo popped the trunk and told me to get my bag, “Carefully!”

  When I walked into the house, it smelled like bleach, Chanel No. 5, and cigarettes. Helen, her ‘girl,’ greeted us as we came in through the laundry room.

  “Hello, Mrs. Frank! How was the drive? Was the traffic bad?”

  Booboo walked right past her handing her, her coat.

  “When Helen started working for your Booboo twenty years ago, she had nothing. Booboo saved her. We bought her a car and helped her take care of her boy.” She talked about Helen as if she wasn’t standing one foot from her.

  When Helen saw me, she grabbed my hands and then hugged me tight and said, “I’ve heard so much about you from your sister. We are so happy that you are here. She’s in the shower, but she can’t wait to see you, honey. And wow, look at your eyes; they’re turquoise. I’d better get back to the sheets; if they sit in the dryer for more than ten minutes, Mrs. Frank likes me to rewash them before I iron them,” she winked.