Hot Springs (6 page)

“What do you mean?”

“I made a scene at Albertsons. A lady started giving me shit about Emily, and I lost it.”

Gillian laughed. She took off her jacket and went around the kitchen divider and into the small living room, where she sank down onto the sofa and kicked off her shoes. “God, she is such a cute kid, Bernie. There’s so much of you in her.” Bernice hadn’t told her anything beyond the fact that she and Landis were relocating. “Are you guys going to get married, or what?”

“Maybe. Probably.” Bernice wondered if she would ever even see Landis again. “The marriage issue hasn’t really come up.”

Gillian massaged her feet. Her toenails were neatly painted magenta, even the smallest one, which was barely there. “I’ll never get married. I go through one doomed relationship after another. Before this, there was Paco, except it turned out he was cheating on me with two other women. Before that, there was Michael, who wore panties and liked to hang out in gay bars. He said he found it empowering to get hit on.”

“What happened with him?”

“Amazingly, it turned out he was gay.”

“My last boyfriend before Landis was a Roosky,” Bernice said.

“Oh,” said Gillian.

Bernice realized that if Gillian had assumed Landis was Emily’s father, she probably no longer did. “In Miami Beach. Vaseline. Well, Vasily, technically. But he was a greasy guy. In the hospitality furniture
business.” She hadn’t said his name aloud in months. His intense, light blue eyes had made him seem almost ethereally beautiful—a space alien. She’d drawn a number of portraits of him when she was taking classes up at Broward, and she knew every inch of his face. “Things were going just fine until his business partner showed up from Moscow. I guess Communists figure the whole sharing idea is supposed to extend to women, too.” She shuddered. That particular night was one she tried never to think about. They were drunk at his apartment, where she’d been spending almost all her time. She’d hit him; he’d hit her. She left with a black eye. Her boss, Pete, from the Mango Lounge, had let her stay on his sofa for a few nights because she was scared to be alone at her own place. “That was kind of my wake-up call. Life is short. No point in wasting it. Decide what you want and then go after it. That’s the one thing I learned from old Vaseline. Lie, cheat, steal—it doesn’t matter.”

“So, you and Emily moved to Colorado to get away from him?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“Anyway, I don’t know what I want,” said Gillian. “That’s my whole problem.”

“I know what I want,” said Bernice. “A margarita.”

She made them each one, and they stepped out on the apartment’s tiny balcony which overlooked the parking lot. The sky was deepening in color, a pretty vermilion that reminded Bernice of the way the ocean sometimes looked at twilight. They sat on plastic furniture.

“Tequila is the best,” said Gillian. “We should go down to Nogales this weekend and get some really good stuff, cheap, bring it back. Have you ever been to Mexico?” She brightened at the prospect. “We’ll bring Emily, and we’ll go down there and do some shopping! “

“I should tell you what’s really happening,” Bernice said. “It’s not fair if I don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I lied to you just now. We didn’t move to Colorado—I did. Emily wasn’t with me in Florida. She wasn’t with me until just a little while ago, in fact. I mean, she’s my daughter and all. It’s just that I gave her up for adoption.”

“OK,” said Gillian.

“I don’t think they know it’s me who’s got her. We didn’t leave a note.”

“We?”

“Right.”

“Landis is in on this?”

“Was. He may have had second thoughts.”

“Bernice! Do these people have money?”

“Oh, sure. Big house, two SUVs.”

“Then they’ll hire a private investigator, at least. And they’ll find you. Did you sign papers? I mean, it’s all legal?”

“I signed all kinds of stuff. But I’m allowed to change my mind. I don’t give a shit about some legal document—she’s my daughter.”

“I don’t think you
can
change your mind.”

“Well, I probably wasn’t supposed to wait five years.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She looked at her nails, which were bitten to the nubs. “A lot of stuff. I did nothing
but
think.”

Gillian clasped her hands nervously, putting things together. “I can’t believe you did this. And I can’t believe you came here and got me involved.”

“You’re hardly involved.”

“Then why does it feel that way?”

“I think of you as my friend—maybe my only real one. You
get
me. Hey. ‘I’m sailing away,’” Bernice sang. “Remember?”

Three staccato coughs sounded in the guest room. “Is she OK?” said Gillian.

“I should take her to a doctor, I guess. She’s got a temperature.”

“How bad?”

Bernice didn’t answer. She didn’t particularly want to know, and she had on purpose not yet bought a thermometer. She remembered temperature taking from her own childhood, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to go there yet with Emily. She could just hear the policewoman they’d have testifying against her in court:
The child stated she was subjected to sexual abuse by the defendant, specifically in the form of anal penetration
.

“You don’t know the first thing about this, do you?” said Gillian.

“Please, not you, too. I’ve only had a few days on the job. But I love her and she loves me, and we’re going to be fine, no matter what. We’ll figure it out as we go along.”

“How? How will you figure it out?”

“I’ve read books.
What to Expect. Parenting for Dummies
. I know plenty.”

Gillian stood, then downed the remainder of her drink. “I’ll make us dinner,” she said, but Bernice knew she was saying something else. She didn’t want them there, and that was fine. Bernice didn’t want to be anyplace she wasn’t wanted.

“Look, I’m sorry to unload all that on you when you’re having such a bad day.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” said Gillian. “So, who is he?”

“Who’s who?”

“The father.”

“Just some guy. It doesn’t matter. Ancient history.”

“Vaseline?”

“Jesus Christ, no. That’s recent. She’s
five
. I don’t know who he was, exactly. I have ideas.”

“Wow.”

“Wow, what? Wow, you slut? Wow, I’m sympathetic?”

Gillian looked away. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“All right. Here’s what I think: You ask for this stuff. You like drama. You thrive on it.”

There were people in your life who just knew you. You could pretend all you wanted, it didn’t make a difference. “You know what I’d like?” Bernice said. “For her to turn out to be an artist. It ought to run in the family, at least a little.”

“I guess that depends on which family. Maybe you slept with a car salesman or something. Or a lawyer.”

“I’m going to work on that. It’s one of the things I promised her.”

“Bernice, you weren’t pregnant when I left Atlanta. Let’s see. You went out with that English piano player a couple of times, right? Him?”

“You wouldn’t know the person. I just got careless, OK? And if I was hooking up a little too randomly, well, all right. I was. Did someone tell you that I had high self-esteem?”

Gillian shook her head and straightened the tiny green table. “Promised her when?”

“Back when it was just the two of us, when I was pregnant. We talked a lot. I did, anyway—she mostly kicked, floated around, and hiccuped. She was the only person I had
to
talk to.” Bernice stared out at the parking lot, imagined she saw flames rising from beyond the pale cars. What would make a child think she’d swallowed a demon? “I called her Chili Bean.”

“I don’t get it. If you knew you were giving her up, what were you doing promising her things? Or naming her. You pick up a stray dog, you don’t name it. Name it and you’re keeping it.”

“Chili Bean isn’t much of a name. But, yeah, that was one of the things. I promised her I’d come and get her when the time was right.”

“Why didn’t you just
keep
her then? Bernice, you aren’t making sense.”

“I couldn’t. That’s all.” How to tell her? How to explain the absolute certainty she’d had about herself? She’d known she would fail. She wasn’t like other people. Sure, she looked like them, she walked around in the world, bought things at stores, ate, made love. But there was something wrong with Bernice, something broken. She knew it. Vaseline had known it.
You don’t cook!
he’d shouted.
You don’t clean. And now you won’t fuck?

“What is it that you do for a living?” Bernice asked.

“You know that. I work for DataSoft,” Gillian said.

“But what do you
do
?”

“It’s really not that interesting. We process information for various clients. A lot of it is health-industry stuff. It all depends on the particular contract.”

“I don’t understand,” said Bernice. “I don’t. All these people in the world, all of them going to their jobs, sitting at desks—I don’t get what they do. I’ve had jobs, but they all involved delivering food to tables or mixing drinks. Seriously, I feel like there’s something I missed, something no one ever explained to me.”

Gillian put her hands on the stucco wall of the balcony and looked out and away toward the next group of buildings. “Do you understand how all this makes me feel?”

Bernice bit at her thumbnail. “You? No. Why should it make you feel any way at all?”

“Some of us want nothing more than to have children. Even if it’s probably never going to happen, realistically. We still hope. But that’s not the point. It’s just—”

“What?” said Bernice. She was feeling worse and worse. Gillian was right—she’d only been thinking of herself.

“It’s just you, I guess.” Gillian turned and looked at her with sad eyes, reminding Bernice of the first time she’d seen her. The skin around her neck was leathery from too much sun. “It’s just who you are.”

“Could you please do something for me?” Bernice asked, suddenly feeling as if all the air was being sucked from her lungs. She stood up and held out her arms, trembling. After a few moments, Gillian moved toward her. Bernice closed her eyes and felt the softness of Gillian’s wet cheek against her face. But it wasn’t a real hug—Gillian embraced her the way people do a relative they hope will soon leave.

L
andis spent his first day back in the Springs attending numbly to all there was to be done. His trailer was a mess, and he brought a couple of loads of stuff to Goodwill: boxes filled with clothes he didn’t wear, old shoes, kitchen things they’d replace eventually, once they were settled. A waffle iron he’d never once made waffles in went, as did a blender he’d used for a week for smoothies, before he decided they weren’t all that tasty. His previous girlfriend, Junebug, had liked them, and he’d always thought of himself as someone open to new experiences. He threw away magazines and old pizza boxes and catalogs from Pottery Barn and Banana Republic that only proved to him that those people had no idea who he was or where he lived.

The bus ride up from Tucson was a reverse version of the same trip they’d just gone on, almost, and in Truth or Consequences, where there was a scheduled stop, he bought himself a coffee across
the street from the place where he’d gotten rid of the Hyundai, though he didn’t see the car in the lot. Back on the road, with a scheduled arrival time after 1:00 AM, he allowed the vibrations of the wheels to hum him into a light sleep, as if he were attached to a speaker cone and the whole bus were its cabinet. He enjoyed public transportation. He liked how it was this system that was always there, always in motion—man-made, certainly, but even so, more like a tide or a wind—to which you could attach yourself for the price of a ticket and magically get shot out someplace entirely different. A wormhole, maybe. Eyes closed, he imagined trains and buses and planes slowly inscribing an elaborate, hieroglyphic pattern onto the entire country.

His neighbors at the trailer park were mostly gone during the day, but the woman who lived just across from him kept vigil in her lawn chair under her awning, a beer and a cigarette going at all times. Landis hadn’t spent much time at home since he’d met Bernice. Her place was larger and nicer. Still, on occasion they stayed at what she called “the spaceship,” and they both laughed about this woman, the way they’d hear her abrupt coughing inside following her morning bong hit, before her door clanked open and she came out accompanied by the strains of “Sugar Magnolia” to smoke a cigarette and stare at the sky.

“You outta here?” she called over, now. She wore Ray-Ban Wayfarers that sat askew on her face.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Job?”

“That’s right,” he called back. “New job.”

“Where at?”

“Tucson.” He felt Bernice kicking him and telling him he was an idiot. There was no point in leaving a big trail of clues behind.

“Where’s
she
?”

Landis finished tying up a contractor bag of garbage, stood it up, and walked over to her. He didn’t feel like shouting his business, and he thought he probably ought to be polite and act normal, just in case some Columbo-type ever came around asking questions about him.

“We broke up,” he said.

“Really?” The woman yanked her glasses down her nose just enough to peek over them in what she probably thought was a sexy way, but Landis couldn’t help comparing her thighs, which were pale and dimpled, coming out of a pair of white shorts, to Bernice’s. Landis loved Bernice’s body, found it almost inconceivable luck that at his age he got to sleep with her. “You guys have a fight?”

“Not a fight. Things just kind of ran their course. You know how it is.”

“Oh, yeah, I know. That’s my life in a nutshell. Want a beer?”