“We can get some real food,” Olivia said. “We could go to the grocery.” She spoke as if the grocery was an exotic location, a special treat or a place requiring passports. “Or did you think any more about barbecue?”
“No, this is all right.”
“How’s Larry?”
“Oh, you know. He’s Larry.” Roberta shrugged.
Olivia knew. The brooding high school boy. The hasty and unhygienic lover. “You guys going out later?”
“I don’t know. We might.”
Olivia didn’t think her daughter was being deliberately uncommunicative as much as expressing genuine indifference to the prospect of more Larry. She watched the girl pour herself a glass from the pitcher, taste, and put the glass down again. “Whoa, Mom. This is way strong.”
“Sorry.” She guessed you started making drinks stiffer over time, the same way you did coffee. The taste buds turned crispy, the brain dull, and you wound up brewing potions that gagged a normal person. “You could add more mix.”
Roberta stuck the tip of her tongue into the glass again, like a swimmer testing a pool. “I guess it’s not bad once you get used to it.” Her makeup had smeared around her left eye, thick silvery Crayola lines that gave her the look of unbalanced headlights. “So, how was work?”
“It was work. On the way home I saw the Mexican Easter parade. The one with the Crucifixion.”
“Via Cruces. That’s what it’s called.”
“You are so smart,” Olivia marveled. Her daughter was always coming up with little nuggets of knowledge, things Olivia hadn’t known at that or any age.
“Not so much. Half the school’s Mexican.”
“Sure you are. You have a first-rate mind. You get that from me. I’ve never seen it from that close up before. The parade. It’s a big deal. Costumes, and all the, well, costumes, mostly.”
“A girl I knew when I was a freshman? Her mother got to be Veronica.”
“Who’s Veronica?”
“You know, Veronica’s Veil.” When Olivia shook her head, Roberta explained, “She wiped the sweat from Christ’s brow and her veil took on the image of His suffering face.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Uh-uh. I mean, that’s the story. It’s in the Apocrypha.”
“What? Never mind.” Apocrypha was probably a word she knew, when she wasn’t drinking. “Don’t you think that’s revolting? Did anybody help him blow his nose?”
Roberta made a face that indicated the exquisiteness of her pained disgust.
“I’m making a point here. There’s all this veneration of the body…” The phrase rolled grandly off her tongue, and in pausing to admire it, she lost the thread of what she intended to say. “…yeah, the body, but they make it disgusting, you know, all the disgusting parts, like blood and sweat, and all the relics, bits of teeth and bone. You don’t have to look like that, I’m just telling you.”
“It’s supposed to be proof of the miraculous,” Roberta said primly.
“Like toenail clippings prove anything. The poor old body. It’s been my only religion. You live by the sword, you die by the sword.”
“What? What do you care what the Catholics do anyway, what have you got against them?”
“Their parade tied up traffic.”
“Seriously, Mom.”
She liked drinking with Roberta because that was when they had their serious conversations. Olivia said, “Sacrifice. They’re all lousy with giving things up and then congratulating themselves about it, but still being all pissy about giving them up in the first place.”
“All right,” said Roberta. “That’s an answer.”
“Pedophile priests. There’s another.”
“I think they feel pretty bad about those guys.”
“And isn’t a crucifix, a cross, really just another big ole phallus? That means…”
“I know what it means. There’s something wrong with you, Mom.”
“Thank you.”
“You turn everything into a dirty joke.”
“Eat some cheese or something. Don’t keep drinking on an empty stomach.”
Roberta picked moodily at the chips. “I wonder what it’s like to have a normal mother.”
“You’ll never know, will you? Besides, I’m so much more fun than normal.”
“Sure you are, Mom.”
They were quiet for a time. Olivia turned on the light over the sink, a small fluorescent that was the next best thing to sitting in the dark. The drinking was taking her on a familiar ride, extravagant loop-the-loops of emotion that you couldn’t entirely trust. But you hopped on anyway, because there were times you needed your feelings to be bright and loud, oversized, even sloppy. She watched Roberta sandwich a piece of string cheese between two chips and raise it carefully to her mouth. “Darling daughter.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“You’re a beautiful girl. I’m not just saying that because I’m your mother. It’s an objective judgment. Thank God you take after me.”
“Objective. Sure.”
“And you’re smart. You’re the smartest little baby girl in the…” She had momentarily forgotten which grade her daughter was currently enrolled in. “…the whole school.”
“I don’t want to go to college,” said Roberta, as if this was what they’d been talking about all along.
If she really did get shitcanned, Olivia considered, and couldn’t find anything right away, and the bills backed up, there wouldn’t be money for tuition anywhere decent, even with loans, and she would have to try to extort or beg money out of Roberta’s warthog father. That would be one more bad consequence of the truly fucked-up circumstance of being fired. She forced these thoughts back into the subbasement of her mind. “What’s wrong with college, baby girl?”
“The people who want to go there, mostly. They are like the major snots. The ones with little outfits and hopped-up computers.”
“I’ll buy you a new computer, baby. Just say the word.”
“Are you even listening to me? Huh?”
“So if you don’t go to college, what do you do?”
Roberta’s eyes were cat green and thickly lashed. The gunky makeup was one more of those mother-type things Olivia tried not to get into. Roberta gazed at the ceiling in a plea for patience and for forbearance. “Get a job, duh.”
“Great. What kind of job?”
“Any dumb old thing to start with. Work at the music store. Waitress.”
“Is this a Larry-based decision? You want to hang around with Larry instead of going somewhere else? Because you’re going to be so not into Larry someday. Trust me.”
“It’s not about Larry.”
“Jobs like that don’t pay many bills.” Olivia congratulated herself on sounding abnormally calm. Maybe she was supposed to screech and argue, but she hoped this was just talk, something Roberta was saying out loud to hear how it sounded. Like little kids announcing they wanted to be ballerinas or astronauts. They hadn’t yet learned that what you became in life didn’t have that much to do with intention. “It wouldn’t make you happy.”
“Oh right, because your job makes you so happy. Did you get in trouble for coming in late?”
“I can be late once in a while.”
“Says you.”
A couple of times in the last couple of weeks. She’d been out with Marlon, or maybe she was home, just like this, in the kitchen with her feet up, not hurting anybody, and she’d slept heavily and couldn’t get her eyes unglued in the morning. Then had to make a production out of charging into the office full speed ahead, juggling coffee and keys and cell phone, as if she’d been in hectic, productive motion for hours. That was the way you did it. Make an entrance, put a good face on it. She felt bad about being late but not that bad. Other people came in late all the time, and their making a federal case out of it showed you what she was up against.
Roberta said, “You could, like, not drink so much. OK, me neither.”
“Did you kno
w,” Olivia said, “that your father left and didn’t come back for three days? You were still in a crib. He finally called. From Florida. That was the one time.”
“All right, Mom. He was a real shit. Go ahead, drink yourself stupid.”
“You’re the only thing I care about in the whole whole world.”
“All right. Jeez. I’m going to call Larry. We’ll probably go over to his brother’s for a while.”
“Don’t get pregnant. I wish somebody had told me that when I was your age. So I’m telling you.”
Roberta was gone, and then she’d been gone for a while, and the nighttime noises filtered in through the open windows: slower, rolling traffic, scraps of music, raised voices that could have been either arguments or good times. Marlon hadn’t called. She couldn’t decide if she was mad about that or relieved. Somewhere along the line she went to bed.
Saturdays were for sleep. Neither Olivia nor Roberta got up much before noon. Olivia woke first, dressed, and went down to the corner for coffee and a newspaper. Doughnuts too, in case Roberta wanted breakfast. As a gesture toward nutrition, she added two tough-looking oranges and a banana, and stood in line, waiting for the morose Korean shopowner to ring her up. The register was decorated with red plastic flowers and a small gold bell with a silk tassel and a three-year-old calendar featuring an Asian beauty with lacquered pink cheeks. Olivia had stared at it all without seeing any of it for days and weeks and months, while the dust solidified over everything, the Bic lighters and key chains and snuff and bags of hot chips and breath fresheners, the small, tired items that little by little became the scenery of your life. And then you goddamned died.
That night she told Marlon, “You’re lucky you have your music. Nobody can take that away from you.”
“Nobody would want to. It’s not worth anything to them.”
“Oh boy, you can’t ever agree with me, can you? You’ve got an answer for everything.”
“If you say so.”
“Now you’re agreeing just to be a smartass.”
“Whatever you say, pumpkin.”
“Why don’t you just shoot me in the head? Never mind. I want a chili dog. Go get us a couple of chili dogs.”
Marlon stood up and headed to the bar. He was tall and he walked with his shoulders carried forward from years of playing the piano. Every chair in his apartment pitched and curved, so that sitting, you slumped too. “I got them with fries,” he said when he came back. “If you don’t want yours, I’ll eat them.”
“No, fries are good. Fries are our friend.” The bar was one of their usual places. It had a high, unfinished ceiling with exposed rafters, like a barn, and was decorated with Scottish memorabilia, in tribute to the owner’s ancestral homeland. There were tartans and coats of arms and framed landscapes of lakes and highlands, moors and fens and glens. What was it with this city, Olivia wondered, that everywhere you looked was a different country?
“What are you so worked up about?”
“The fries.”
“You’ve been in this major mood all night, what’s the matter?”
Olivia thought she must really be losing it, if even Marlon noticed. But then, she’d wanted him to notice, even if she didn’t want to tell him about work or anything else. The bad part about drinking was how illogical it made you. But then, that was also the good part. She said, “I don’t know. Just bored.” She made a bored gesture with one hand.
“You ever think about a hobby or something?” asked Marlon, looking out over the room with his watery, nearsighted gaze. He wore glasses with clear pink plastic frames, like a crippled child on an old March of Dimes poster. “A serious, important kind of hobby. You could join a book club.”
“Nobody reads books anymore. It’s all movies, television, stuff with pictures.”
“Sure they do. Or OK, you could take up weaving. I had a lady friend who became very involved with weaving. First she bought a loom. Then she got way, way into yarn. She learned to dye it and then to spin her own and eventually she ended up at the source, you know, sheep.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re kind of stuck on no, aren’t you?”
“Just say no to sheep.”
“You need to work on being a more positive, affirmative type of person.”
“Tomorrow’s Easter,” said Olivia. It was one of the things that struck her as melancholy, the way you could get sometimes on a sad night. “Think of all those little Mexican kids, watching Jesus get whipped.”
Marlon snapped his fingers. “What’s that book, that book that’s so big right now. See, people still do that. Read. It’s about how Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a kid.”
“You’re making this up.”
“No, it’s in the book. You can read it for yourself.”
“Old Mary Magdalene’s a mom?” Sure. It made perfect sense. One more thing they’d hold against her. “What else happens?”
“I didn’t read it,” Marlon explained. “I’ve just heard people talking about it.”
The food came and they settled into eating. Olivia liked the idea of Jesus having a kid. Even if it was just another bullshit story. It made him more human-sized and regular guy-like. She should have married Jesus. All the good men were already taken. Her cell phone rang in the depths of her purse, and Olivia groped for it, cautiously, as if the thing was a little wild animal getting ready to scratch and bite. “Hello?”
“Mom?”
“Honey?” She was instantly alarmed. Roberta never called her on a night out “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“You better tell me.”
“I’m at this guy’s house and he’s acting kind of weird.”
“What guy? Weird how?” The connection kept zooming in and out. She couldn’t tell if Roberta was really scared or just drunk. “Where’s Larry?”
“Wait a minute.” Roberta put the phone down. There was music in the background, loud, techno stuff. “He’s from somewhere else,” Roberta said when she came back. “Bosnia. Or one of those other places that wasn’t a country before.”
“Roberta. Where are you? Like, an address.”
“His name is Bruno,” Roberta informed her, her voice now bright and strong. “He’s a friend of these other guys we met, I forget their names. They’re all from this same dumb place.”
“Is Larry there? Put Larry on.”
“Larry went home. We had a fight.”
“He left you there alone?” Was the boy good for nothing? Marlon was stealing her french fries. She slapped his hand. “What’s Bruno doing that’s weird? Is he hurting you?”
“I think it’s because he’s a foreigner. Stuff he says comes out funny. Where’s Tuzla? That’s where he says I should go.”
“Go where, what are you talking about?”
“Because he could get me a job there.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I haven’t even told you what kind of job it is, you just start right in saying no. It’s in the entertainment industry. Americans are very popular over there. Bruno knows some people who could, you know, sponsor me.”
“Now listen to me,” Olivia said, slowly, overenunciating, as if Roberta was the one who didn’t speak English. “I want you to keep your phone on. Keep talking to me. And walk right out the front door.”
“Just a minute,” said Roberta. The phone made clattering noises, and the music surged again.
“What’s going on?” Marlon asked, as Olivia shouted into the phone.
“Some Slavic pimp is trying to sell my daughter into white slavery.”
“Oh wow.”
“Roberta?” The music roared and bleated. “Roberta!”
“Hello?” A man’s voice, furry with accent. “Hello in there.”
“Who is this? I want to talk to my daughter.”
“Mamma,” said the man. “We are good times.”
“How much English do you know, slimeball? Police? Comprendes? Police?”
“Ma
mma, this is Bruno. Your daughter friend. Beautiful girl. Very fun.”
“She’s seventeen. She has no passport. After I shoot your sorry stinking ass, they’ll put what’s left of you in jail for the next hundred years.”
“Mom?” Roberta came back on the line. “Mom, I feel better now. I threw up.”
Olivia put the phone to her heart, then brought it up to her ear again.
“We’re supposed to go see some guys he knows, so I should get off now.”
“Do not go anywhere with this person. Do you hear me? This is not negotiable.”
“I never should have told you he was a foreigner,” Roberta complained. “You are so totally prejudiced.”
“Are all your clothes on? Huh?” Olivia realized she was shouting into the phone. People in the bar were turned around in their seats, listening. “Excuse me,” Olivia said to the room. “Does anyone here speak Bosnian?” People turned themselves back around again, grudgingly. “Does Bruno have a last name? Does he have a visa? Where are you meeting these people?”
“Some club. It’s not real far from here.”
“Where’s here? Roberta!”
“Club Veejay. Or it sounds like that.” Olivia mouthed the name to Marlon, who nodded. He knew most of the questionable bars in the city.
“Fine, go there. We’ll come get you there. Me and Marlon.”
“Marlon’s such a loser. I don’t think you have any business criticizing me when you hang out with him.”
“Stay on the phone,” Olivia ordered, but Roberta had already shut it off.
“Let’s go,” said Olivia. She was already at the door while Marlon was still standing at the table, saying his good-byes. Then they were in the car. “What is this place, where is it?”
“Go north on Western Avenue,” Marlon told her. He was playing the piano on his knees, an unconscious, irritating habit that she tried not to let irritate her. He said, “I knew a Bruno once, but that was just a nickname. Are you sure you should be driving?”
Throw Like A Girl Page 14
