by Lou Berney
And if anything like that ever happened to Genevieve? Genevieve noticed that their mother didn’t get all melodramatic about that.
Their mother didn’t want to let Julianna go to the fair at all. But Julianna begged and begged, and finally their mother caved.
“I trust you,” she warned Genevieve, meaning of course that she didn’t. She hadn’t trusted Genevieve since the DUI last year. Since the time she’d caught Genevieve smoking pot when she was fourteen. Since ever, really.
“You’re driving me out of my mind,” Genevieve told Julianna. “It’s like getting tortured. It’s like getting tortured by a Nazi who smells like watermelon Jolly Ranchers.”
Julianna giggled and bumped her head against Genevieve’s shoulder like a puppy. She was so easy. She forgave and forgot, and rainbows filled the sky again. It made Genevieve furious. Julianna should tell Genevieve to go screw herself. She should tell Genevieve, Screw yourself, you selfish, moody, mean bitch of a big sister.
Genevieve just wanted to bite someone. God. It was the heat and the cow-shit funk. The funk of rancid egg-roll grease and generator exhaust as they walked up Food Alley toward the carnival games. It was—oh, yeah, by the way—no drugs.
What she would give right now for a single line of pure white snow. Genevieve shivered, just thinking about the ignition, the surge, the world filled suddenly with Tinker Bell sparkle.
Howard, alleged expert on these matters, had admitted to Genevieve that saying no to drugs and booze didn’t get much easier with practice, not really. The craving never faded. Howard claimed he could still taste the first sip of scotch he’d ever taken.
“Not even a little easier?” Genevieve had asked.
“Maybe a little,” he’d said. Howard, who was always so full of shit. That was the best he could do?
Julianna, excited, turned onto Carnival Row. Genevieve groaned. She wished now she’d picked up an extra weekend shift at Sonic. Carhopping for crotch change was preferable to this.
Well, maybe not. But half a dozen of six, or whatever the saying was.
C’mon, Genevieve. Be reasonable.
No, drugs! Shut your trap for two seconds, will you?
The minute Genevieve graduated from high school—seven months and counting, you better believe it—she planned to flee Oklahoma City, to fly, to get out of Dodge. She thought she might head to California. Or New York City. Thailand, maybe, where she’d heard that people lit paper lanterns that floated up into the night sky. Genevieve was up for anywhere, as long as it was far, far away.
“Oooh!” Julianna said.
“Oooh!” Genevieve said. “What?”
“Let’s play the balloon game!”
The balloon game was a race. You used a pistol to squirt water into the mouth of a plastic clown. If your balloon popped first, you won a prize. Stuffed Pink Panthers hung like meat from the rafters of the booth.
“I know what!” Genevieve said.
“What?
“Let’s not and say we did.”
“Please! Please, please, please?”
“Give me a Jolly Rancher,” Genevieve said.
A goat roper in a big cowboy hat won the first race. So Genevieve forked over two more bucks, and they tried again. Julianna won this time. She squealed and jumped around. The carny who ran the booth produced a Pac-Man key chain and told Julianna that if she won again, she could trade up to the next level of prize.
“Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater,” Genevieve told the carny. He was a lot older than she was, close to thirty, but sexy in a sort of dirty, long-haired, hippie way, with a dark, dirty tan and blue eyes and a diamond stud earring. A tattoo of a snake curled round and round one muscular forearm.
“You’re rubber and I’m glue,” he said, smiling and dangling the key chain from his index finger.
“I think you’ve got that bass-ackwards, Mr. Pumpkin Eater,” Genevieve said.
“Says you.”
“And the horse I rode in on.”
She reached out and flicked the key chain so that it spun around his finger. He laughed, and Genevieve thought it might be the best feeling ever—to stop, if just for a second, thinking about drugs.
Although, God, just imagine the amazing drugs that a sexy, dirty, hippie carny probably had access to. Doy.
“Genni!” Julianna, meanwhile, was bouncing off the walls. “I want to play again!”
“Or you’re gonna pee your pants, presumably?”
“Genni! C’mon! Please?”
Genevieve turned back to the carny. “If my little sister doesn’t win a Pink Panther, she’s gonna presumably pee her pants right here. You are officially warned.”
The carny looked Genevieve over. He took his sweet time, very sexy, and then yawned, and then stretched, and then yanked down one of the stuffed Pink Panthers.
“What the hell?” the goat roper who had won the first race complained. “That ain’t right!”
The carny snapped around—snap!—and gave the goat roper a stare so electric with menace that Genevieve expected the colored lightbulbs that trimmed the booth to buzz and dim.
The goat roper blinked. And he wasn’t some small sissy guy either. He looked away, then slid from his stool and slunk off. Genevieve heard him mutter something under his breath, but only when he was at a safe distance.
The carny turned back to Genevieve and smiled. It was official: Julianna was no longer the only girl at the balloon race about to pee her pants with excitement.
“So, hey,” the carny said. “Some of us are gonna party later. Just after dark, out back at the trailers. Why don’t you come by?”
“Whatever,” Genevieve said. She grabbed Julianna’s wrist and pulled her away from the booth. Julianna hugged her Pink Panther like she’d just given birth to the baby Jesus. Genevieve waited till they were almost to the end of Carnival Row before she glanced back. And sure enough there he was, the sexy carny, watching just like she knew he’d be.
GENEVIEVE HAD STARTED smoking pot when she was fourteen. Everyone smoked pot. Who didn’t smoke pot at parties? Or on break from your shitty job at Baskin-Robbins, the only place in town where you didn’t have to be sixteen to work. You could lie about your age to get a job at other places—a lot of people did that—but why bother? Those jobs were none the less shitty.
Pot was fine, but pot was boring. Ludes made Genevieve feel gross and sluggish. Cocaine, on the other hand—oh, my. Genevieve had been introduced at age sixteen, when she and her friend Lacey snuck into a college party. That first rush was like nothing Genevieve had ever experienced before.
Why, hello there!
Most normal humans, like her friend Lacey, could do drugs on the weekends or at parties and then go on with their normal human lives. Genevieve, apparently, was not a normal human.
God. The stupid shit that Genevieve had done when she was on drugs. And she had done it without a second thought.
But why blame the drugs for that? According to her mother, Genevieve had never given a second thought to anything. Her mother said Genevieve had never cared about anyone but herself.
So please explain why Genevieve, if she was so selfish and self-centered, had practically raised Julianna by herself those first few years after their dad died. Fixing her breakfast, fixing her dinner, giving her baths. Julianna permanently attached to her like she was a tumor or something, even after Julianna was way too big for Genevieve to carry around on her hip.
While their mother worked all day and ran around with her girlfriends all night and only managed to drag herself home so she could yell at Genevieve about the laundry not being done.
Typical Genevieve, their mother would say if she could hear her now. It’s always all about Genevieve, isn’t it?
“Genni?”
“What?”
It was dusk. Th
ey were sitting on the curb in front of the rodeo arena, watching the colors of the midway catch fire. Genevieve felt gritty and grimy and tired. But with the sun down, and the light mellow, and a cool breeze blowing, and those amazing midway colors—all the hard edges, both the world’s and Genevieve’s, seemed a tiny bit softer.
“I’m scared about high school,” Julianna said.
“You don’t start high school till year after next, you dork.”
“I know.”
Genevieve knew. She listened to the screams drifting over from the midway, the bad hair metal, the muted clank and hiss of the rides.
“Look,” she told Julianna. “High school is like anything. It sucks. But you’ll live.”
Why that should cheer up her little sister was a total mystery to Genevieve, but it did. Julianna smiled and tore off a hunk of pink cotton candy. She was a bottomless pit.
Howard had told Genevieve once that she needed to listen to her better angels. Genevieve wasn’t sure what that meant. Were some angels good and others even better? Or were some angels not good at all? Kind of an alarming notion when you stopped to think about it.
Speaking of bad angels, here came her friend Lacey, walking toward them. She was with a couple of girls Genevieve recognized in a vague sort of way. She thought they might be cocktail waitresses at the new Marriott on the expressway.
“Small world,” Lacey said, smirking.
Genevieve corrected her. “Small town, actually.”
“Hi, Lacey,” Julianna said.
Probably, Genevieve admitted to herself, she was Lacey’s bad angel, and not vice versa. From the age of ten on, starting with a pack of Kools she stole from her mom’s boyfriend, Genevieve had done most of the leading-astray. Lacey’s mother had warned Lacey to stay away from Genevieve soon after the two girls met in third grade. Lacey’s mom wasn’t fond of Mexicans or even white people, like Genevieve’s mom, who had married a guy who was part Mexican. Southside trash. Genevieve had overheard Lacey’s mom say that about Genevieve’s mom one time. Which excuse me? Not only were there plenty of nice neighborhoods on the south side, but until last year Lacey had lived three blocks from Genevieve.
“Stuck with the brat?” Lacey said, smirking because Lacey would never be caught dead in such an embarrassing situation. With her little sister at the fair on a Saturday night. With her hair dead on her shoulders and her mascara a mess.
The pupils of Lacey’s eyes were flared. The cocktail waitresses were high also, chewing gum way too fast and giggling for no reason. All three girls had on pristine slutty makeup, just like the robot girls in the “Addicted to Love” video.
Yeah, well, I’m still hotter than you, Genevieve wanted to tell Lacey, and always will be.
Instead she said, “Do you remember when we overheard your mom tell your aunt that my mom was Southside trash? And you guys used to live like three blocks away?”
That blew Lacey’s mind. It was too much to follow when you were on drugs.
“Did I . . . what?”
“Never mind,” Genevieve said.
“We’re gonna cruise the midway,” Lacey said. “You want to come? Plenty of room in Santa’s sleigh.”
Wink, wink. Santa’s sleigh—snow—cocaine. Get it?
Julianna was oblivious. She had decided to ignore Lacey after Lacey had ignored her. She was eating pink cotton candy and throwing hunks of it toward a jabbing sparrow.
Lacey had good drugs. Genevieve could tell. Why had Genevieve decided, today of all days, to say no?
Genevieve shook her head.
“You’re such a loser,” Lacey said. She and the robot cocktail waitresses strutted off. Genevieve felt like bursting into tears.
“She’s always so mean,” Julianna said.
“I’m meaner than she is.”
“But you’re my sister.”
“See? Life sucks.”
“Why are you crying, Genni?”
“I’m not. It’s all the stupid dust in the air. It makes my eyes water.”
The stupid dust, that, too, but also a sensation like she was being turned inside out. Genevieve wanted to go running after Lacey and Lacey’s drugs. Would one line of blow really be the end of the world? Genevieve had been straight all day. Surely that counted for something.
She had to do something. She had to do something right now or she would go sprinting after Lacey.
You couldn’t just sit around and not do drugs. Howard had explained that. So you flew model airplanes or played golf or did needlepoint until your fingers cramped. Whatever kept your boat afloat.
“Listen, Juli.”
“What?”
“I’m gonna check out that party. Just for a few minutes. That one that guy was talking about.”
Julianna looking alarmed was like a cartoon character looking alarmed. Da-doing!
“That skeezy guy at the balloon race?”
“Shut up. Just for fifteen minutes. Okay? I really just need to get out of here for a minute.”
Julianna was winding Pink Panther’s tail around and around her finger. “It’s getting dark, Genni.”
“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. There’s like a million people here.”
“A million skeezy people.”
True. As soon as the sun went down, the families abandoned the midway and packs of rowdy young guys started funneling in, packs of slutty girls. Southside trash.
“That’s why I want you to stay right in this spot,” Genevieve said. “Okay? Just for like fifteen minutes.”
Julianna looked away. She shrugged and nodded.
Genevieve felt guilty, a little. But she’d be back in fifteen minutes, before it was even dark dark. The carny trailers were close by, just behind the midway. And Genevieve would make it up to Julianna. She’d take her to the mall tomorrow. Or to Fun Skate. Or both. And you’d think that a day at the fair and a stuffed Pink Panther would count for something, right?
Genevieve just wanted to forget about drugs and her mother and life for a minute. That’s all. She just wanted to laugh and flirt and feel the heat coming off a dirty, sexy hippie when he looked at her. If he offered her drugs, she would say no. It was as simple as that.
She stood, dug around in the pocket of her jeans, found her last crumpled ten-dollar bill. She dropped it in Julianna’s lap. “I don’t know how you could possibly eat anything else, Miss Piggy, but have at it.”
“Okay,” Julianna said, but still wouldn’t look at her. God.
Genevieve told herself that her sister was twelve years old, she wasn’t a baby. It wasn’t even dark dark yet, there were millions of people around, and Genevieve would only be gone fifteen minutes.
Everything was going to be fine.
She squatted down and gave Julianna a quick hug. “I’ll be back in a flash,” she said. “And we’ll get out of Dodge.”
Julianna
CHAPTER 3
October 2012
One of Julianna’s only vivid memories, from that time so long ago, was the psychic. October of 1986, the living room of the little house on SW Twenty-seventh, just off Olie. The psychic wore a gauzy black dress that swirled around her when she walked and a silver ring on every finger, even her thumbs. This was before anyone wore rings on their thumbs, anyone in Oklahoma City at least, and the psychic had also dyed her long hair a shade of deep, unnatural black, so black it was almost purple. You could tell that the psychic thought she made a striking and dramatic impression, but she didn’t, not really. Her upper arms were pimply, her gray roots showed. She owned a shop called Moon Breeze, on a run-down stretch of Classen Boulevard, that sold New Age crystals and feathered dream catchers.
“Yes, yes,” the psychic had said. She sat on the sofa with her eyes closed, rocking back and forth. “I see, I see.”
“What do you see?” Caro
l whispered, leaning closer. Carol lived next door and had arranged for the psychic. She’d always been friendly enough with their mother, but after what happened, Carol had made it her mission to be their mother’s best friend. Carol had landed her dream job.
“I see her,” the psychic said. “She’s alive.”
“Genevieve’s alive!” Carol said.
“I smell the ocean. I see her. She’s smiling.”
Julianna remembered that their mother had remained expressionless, her face slack and heavy, like a drop of water trembling on the lip of a faucet. Carol reached over to squeeze her hand.
“Genevieve’s smiling!” Carol said.
“I hear the waves, I see—” The psychic stopped. Carol made a big deal of holding her breath and waiting for the next revelation. The psychic sneezed. “Sorry,” she said. “Darn allergies.”
It probably wasn’t allergies that made the psychic sneeze, but all the patchouli oil she was wearing.
Who else was there that morning? Their Aunt Nancy and the psychic’s boyfriend, who had an enormous belly and needed a cane to walk. And Joe, Carol’s husband. He stood apart from the others, leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest.
It was a chilly, rainy day. Every now and then, the wind flung a spray of rain hard against the living-room window and made Julianna jump. She was sitting cross-legged on the dusty wood floor, right beneath the window.
She had been skeptical when the psychic arrived. The pimply arms, the gray roots. Julianna and Genevieve had driven past the run-down shop on the run-down stretch of Classen Boulevard many times. Now, though, when the psychic said she could smell the ocean and hear the waves, her voice was clear and certain, like the chime of glass on glass.
The sofa was faded red velvet. It, and the house, had belonged to their grandmother. When she died, the summer of 1983, the three of them moved in, Julianna and Genevieve and their mother. The house smelled like mildew, and the wood floors were warped, the neighborhood was so-so, but both the house and the neighborhood were a step up from the place they’d been renting before.
