Mesopotamia (18 page)
I returned to the kitchen to get a cream soda and came back just in time to hear Ludmilla saying to Floyd Jr., “In just five years you’ll be practicing for your Bar Mitzvah.”
“You mean Mars Bar Mitzvahs,” he countered, not missing a beat.
“What is this?” asked Rufus, lifting the rye off his sandwich.
“Northern ham,” I assured him, figuring the word pastrami might scare him.
After they had eaten, the kids scattered around the house, probably searching for more things to steal. At least my sisters and I were able to talk.
“I can’t believe you balance such a glamorous and busy life with all these fabulous kids!” said Ludmilla.
“Huh?”
To my surprise, my sisters had been following my tawdry features in the various supermarket tabloids over the years. Like Vinetta, they seemed to think I hobnobbed with the rich and famous.
“Tabloid reporting is trash, but it pays well and it’s flexible.”
“I’m just amazed that you were able to pile everyone in that little car and zoom all the way down here so fast.”
“Speaking of which,” I said, looking at my wristwatch, “I’ve got to get them back home. Tomorrow’s a school day.”
“But you just arrived,” said Ludmilla.
“You have to spend the night, at least,” Bella added.
“Yes!” insisted Luddy, grabbing my arm. “It’ll be so much fun—we’re getting a babysitter to help with our kids. We can get a second sitter to help with the rest—”
“—and we can have a slumber party,” Bella completed her thought. They looked at me searchingly, and I sensed they were eager to repair the huge rift of sisterly neglect. But Vinetta was getting out of the hospital in just a few hours. And the longer I was there, the greater the risk of being revealed as the fraud I was.
“Two of the children have dental appointments and a third has to see an eye doctor,” I invented. So, to the relief of their well-mannered cousins, I had the jackals put on their hand-me-down jackets.
“The headstone won’t be unveiled until the first week of December, but would you like to pay a visit to Mom’s grave now?” Luddy asked. “She’s in a brand-new cemetery nearby.”
“Absolutely.”
Bella kissed everyone goodbye and stayed with the uptown kids. We all squeezed into my compact as Luddy got into into her seventy-five-thousand-dollar luxury SUV and led us three miles away to the kosher section of Patriot Hills—the same cemetery where I had just laid Gustavo to rest. My sister joined me as I put a flat pebble near the fresh mound of earth that covered Rodmilla’s plot.
“She really did love you a lot,” Ludmilla said softly. “And because she did, she expected so much from you.”
The idea of being adopted, or, more specifically, the selfless generosity of a complete stranger named Rodmilla Bloomgarten, swelled up and smacked me like a tsunami. I was standing above a dead woman who had arbitrarily snatched me from a destitute life in an orphanage halfway around the world—long before Angelina, Madonna, or even Mia had made it popular—and brought me to this land of excess, where everyone was given more than enough rope to hang themselves. She had nourished my self-esteem and sense of fairness, provided me with ample opportunities to use my intellect, and always encouraged my ambition. I wasn’t sure at exactly what point one had to stopping blaming the parents and take responsibility for oneself, but at that moment I realized that it was
I
who had turned myself into an alcoholic almost-divorced tabloid reporter, not she. And I also felt like I was finally on some long, freaky road to recovery.
Barely was I able to sniffle before the shrill cacophony of another woman’s children alerted me to the fact that the Loyd goblins were defacing the graves of other dead parents, knocking mournfully placed pebbles off neighboring headstones.
“Back in the goddamn car!!!” I screamed.
By the time Ludmilla and I had squeezed all those little sardines back into my dented can on wheels, I could see that there were tears in her eyes too.
“It’s okay,” I said, hugging her.
“I’m not crying cause of her, I’m crying cause of you!”
“Me?”
“You’re our sister, but you were always different and we were always sort of scared of you.”
“Why were you scared of me?”
“Because you were most like
her
!”
“Like who?”
“Mom, you ninny!”
“Give me a break.”
“You were the only one who stood up to her, and she hated that. We remember those awful fights. We should’ve stood up with you. And now we’re all grown up and you’re not a part of the family and it
shouldn’t
be this way, Cass! Life passes so quickly and—” She broke down completely and, hard as I tried to fight it, so did I.
“Look, I promise I’ll be back soon … I’ll come back for the unveiling.”
“Really?”
“My hand to God,” I said, raising it high. She knew that though I was being playful, I was also serious, and gave me a hug that nearly cracked my spine. I would’ve stayed awhile longer but I had already put the kids through enough, and their real mother was probably waiting for them. Also, tomorrow was my big Elvis impersonation day and any chance of success depended on some frantic final rehearsals. So we hugged and kissed, and Luddy made me promise to bring them all back down soon.
“I swear I will,” I repeated, wondering if Vinetta would mind renting out her swarm for another day.
No sooner had I started driving away than Floyd Jr. yelled, “Ten Mars bars. You owe me ten Mars bars!”
“Me too!” cried another.
“Those women touched me all over!”
“That food was totally icky …” Slowly and in their own white-trash illiterate preadolescent way, all pitched in their complaints.
“Fine, fine,” I said, feeling too good to let their nagging bother me. Not only was I now a confirmed pro-lifer, I firmly believed that every drip of homeless sperm should be indiscriminately paired up with each forcibly harvested egg—regardless of how deformed or inbred or genetically challenged the donors were. The great pageantry of Mankind needed to literally burst off the globe, so that from space our planet would look like a giant black-brown-red-yellow-pink flower of human skin. I didn’t care if oceans needed to be drained, mountains had to be flattened, or polar caps required melting—every inch of the planet had to be converted to living space. (Love would save the earth from global warming and whatever else.) If panda bears, blue whales, and condors had to undergo extinction to make room for more nurseries and playgrounds, so be it. If great paintings from the Louvre and the Hermitage had to be recycled into diapers, so much the better.
All parents were absolutely right—it was a bottomless well of ceaseless joy. Cancer researchers, dilettante poets, great world leaders, and busy philanthropists—all jobs were a very distant second to that most important job in all the world: being a mommy.
W
hen we screeched into their dirt driveway, Vinetta immediately rushed out of the trailer with a bandage around her head. The kids raced to her from all sides, each one kissing, grabbing, and loving a different huggable clutch of her. Seeing that mosh pit of love, I sensed why Vinetta didn’t mind sacrificing her life for those little screamers. But it was all just a fleeting emotion. For love-camels like myself, such a sacrifice was a bit much. In the way most hungered for love, I usually longed for solitude.
“Where the hell were you?” she finally let me have it.
“We went out for a little dinner.”
“She made us lie,” tattled the seven-year-old from hell.
“My mother just died, so we went to pay our respects,” I explained.
“You shoulda left a note or something. I thought you done stole the lot of them.”
“I’m sorry, I thought we were going to be back sooner. My sisters were holding a wake, and I hadn’t seen them in ten years.”
“She had us all pretend
she
was our mommy,” one of the twins ratted me out. “But you’re our real mommy.”
“How’s your head?” asked the eight-year-old.
“Healing,” she said, hugging them harder to keep them from grabbing at her wound. “I just missed you all so terribly much.”
I finally interrupted all the gushy stuff: “Tomorrow evening is the contest. I was hoping we could get a little more rehearsal in before the big show.”
“That’s fine. Why don’t you suit up,” she suggested.
Twenty minutes later, as I carefully pulled on the starchy white jumper with eagle embroidery in the front, she and the kids positioned the clip-on lamps around the room to spotlight me. Upon her cue, I introduced myself and began my little repertoire of songs. While I sang, Vinetta barked out directions: “Pick up the pace … More Southern drawl … Don’t forget those expressions!”
As I found myself struggling to simultaneously sing in Elvis’s voice and make his key faces, she advised me to limit myself to Elvis’s two main expressions, the restrained grin and sultry stare. Upon taking it all in, I sang “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”
“Why do I feel that you’re just trying to get through it?” Vinetta lamented, sounding her most Simon Cowell.
“I
am
just trying to get through it!”
“At his best, Elvis loved the stage! He would stay as long as he could. The stage is where Elvis was his
most
Elvis.”
“Well, it scares me.” I had been feeling shaky during the past few days, and considered getting a drink, but I knew that if I did, I’d either forget important details or get nervous that I was forgetting important details.
“Aren’t there some pills that’ll calm you down?” Vinetta asked.
“Isn’t that what got Elvis in trouble?” I joked, but she was right. I remembered Gustavo’s diet supplements, which I suspected were Xanax, that he’d left in my car. I decided to bring one with me just in case I had stage fright at the big gig. After a couple more run-throughs, we called it a night. I needed sleep.
Early on the morning of the big Sing the King contest, I jumped out of bed and rushed into the bathroom and vomited. Breathing slowly, I felt flush. I had missed my period by two days, and my body usually functioned like clockwork. I didn’t need to dip a two-tone swizzle stick into a fresh cup of pee to know it wasn’t cancer. I had a little blessing in my own microwave. It only took me a minute to do the math and figure out that the crippled geriatric groundskeeper I’d slept with on that drunken night two weeks ago was my baby’s daddy. He was in fact the only man I had coupled with since breaking up with Paul.
After trying so hard and for so long, I was finally pregnant again—at the worst possible time. I was amazed that I hadn’t miscarried, particularly given all the drama of the past week. I tried to go back to sleep, but I could hear Vinetta stirring in the tiny kitchen. I got up and went out to see her staring into the gray distance over her chipped mug of coffee. She had put a scarf up over her head bandage so it wouldn’t look quite so horrible.
Electing not to mention my newfound condition, I said to her, “I guess you were right.”
“About what?”
“Your deal with God not to leave the house. You went to the county fair and almost got killed.”
“No, that was just an accident, and if it wasn’t, then God’s either wrong or just plain mean.”
“I feel so guilty.”
“Well don’t, I didn’t go there for you. I did it because you were right. The kids need some exposure. Someday they’re going to leave this dung heap and they’re going to have to interact with the world at large.”
“Did you enjoy your hospital hiatus?”
“Worst few days of my life,” she muttered. “When I wasn’t worrying about the kids, I was thinking how empty my life is and wondering how I got myself in this damn mess.”
“It isn’t all that bad.”
“Easy for you to say, you’re a successful reporter dealing with exciting celebrities, breaking big stories and such.”
“I’ve never met a celebrity who couldn’t be replaced by another one. As for success, yesterday I borrowed your accomplishments to make myself look better.”
The first howls from the youngest child woke the others, breaking up our little pity fest. In all the towns and villages around Daumland, Elvis impersonators were popping amphetamines, forcing their congested hearts to beat a little faster. They were greasing up their tar-black pompadours and selecting the loudest, gaudiest costumes they’d ever wear—all getting ready for that great croon-a-thon that would establish their Elvis bona fides, so they could launch successful careers as wedding singers and novelty acts.
I spent the morning practicing my songs and trying to pretend that I didn’t know I was pregnant. I needed one more day to not worry about anyone else’s life. In the middle of practicing “Viva Las Vegas,” my cell phone chimed for the first time in over a day. It was a rising young tabloid star, Hailey Page.
“I heard the awful news about Gustavo Benoit and just wanted to express my condolences.” It turned out one of the funeral fund donors had posted his obituary on a journalist web site.
“Thanks.”
“What exactly happened?”
“We went to this dive for a drink but it was closed. While we briefly separated, a cop drove by and thought Gus was trying to break in.”
“Why ever would he think that?”
“It was pouring rain and Gus had this novelty umbrella that looked like a shotgun. When he drunkenly pulled it, they shot him.”
“Poor Gus.” She paused. “You guys were working on the Scrubbs case, weren’t you?”
“Everybody is. Why?”
“I just thought maybe he’d been killed while discovering something.” There it was—Hailey had left her tasteful little gardening column in some Midwestern paper for a lot more cash in the tabloid compost heap. She must’ve smelled a story in our direction.
“We didn’t find anything. What’s going on down on Beale Street?”
“It’s overrun with reporters in search of news, and there just isn’t any. So are you upstate?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“I just heard that Missy Scrubbs’s family was from upstate somewhere, but no one seems to know exactly where. And I thought Gus said you were from around these parts.”
“I’m at a seismographic center in Purdue University.”