The Desert Rose (22 page)

She watched Pepper while she was scrambling the eggs. Pepper was looking totally beautiful—it was not hard to believe a rich man wanted to marry her.

“Pepper, stop making that face, it’s no big deal that you woke up early,” Harmony said, but Pepper was blow-drying, she didn’t pay any attention.

The thing was, Harmony didn’t believe it had been a dream, that explanation was looking on the bright side, which was important but just not always true. Sometimes the truth lay on the other side from the bright side, which was where it lay in this case. She was really fired.

She gave Pepper her eggs and juice and sat down at the table, she wasn’t going to mention the bad news and spoil Pepper’s breakfast. The lucky thing was it was a very bright day, the kitchen was filled with sunlight, which always sort of gave her hope. It would have been horrible to have to know you were fired if it had been a cloudy day.

Harmony just had some coffee and kept quiet, hoping that Pepper might have something to say about the marriage or the audition or whatever was going on in her life. It made her feel like a good mother when Pepper told her things. Until she was about fourteen Pepper had told her everything, but lately she took the opposite tack and told her nothing. It was hard to feel like a good mother if everybody knew more about your daughter than you did, often she had a left-out feeling, but it did no good to gripe at Pepper about it, Pepper didn’t respond to gripes.

“Pepper, do you know anything about a Bobby?” she asked, she wanted to get that point cleared up. Maybe she could reassure Wendell.

“Yeah, he’s Myrtle’s other boyfriend,” Pepper said. “He fixes air conditioners or something.”

“Oh, poor Wendell,” Harmony said. “Now why would Myrtle do that? Wendell’s so sweet.”

“Yeah but he’s boring,” Pepper said. “He never talks.” Pepper was still hungry. Fortunately there was about half a pint of ice cream in the fridge, she got a spoon and went about finishing it off.

Harmony couldn’t argue that Wendell was a talker, they both knew better than that.

“Pepper, I heard you had a beautiful audition,” she said. There was no point in pretending she didn’t know.

“It was okay,” Pepper said, she was eating the ice cream. “Denny took my picture and asked if I gave blow jobs.”

Harmony sort of flushed at that, it made her feel ashamed that she had had a boyfriend who would say such a horrible thing to her daughter. Although Pepper wasn’t upset, she was just eating the ice cream.

Thinking about it made Harmony feel so awful that even the sunlight didn’t help. She had meant to ask Pepper about the marriage but she couldn’t, she was too ashamed. She went out and sat under the umbrella, not crying, just feeling ashamed and hurt, remembering stuff it didn’t do any good to remember, then feeling flashes of anger, maybe she would kill him if she ran into him, not for stealing the check, just for what he said to Pepper. Then she could just go to prison, she didn’t have a job anyway. She stroked the peacocks a little bit, they liked for her to sort of tickle their heads, she did that for a while and went back in to see what Pepper was doing.

Pepper was just lying on her bed listening to tapes, she didn’t seem very excited that she was about to be a star.

“It’s hard to get used to you not going to school,” Harmony said. “What are your teachers going to think?”

“Maybe they’ll think I became a hooker,” Pepper said.

“I don’t know why you say things like that,” Harmony said. “Nobody thinks you could be a hooker. I guess I ought to tell you what happened to me.”

It annoyed Pepper a little that her mother had come into her room. After all it was her room and nobody had been invited in. She couldn’t enjoy the music with her mother standing there looking sad. In fact she looked terrible, she had big dark circles under her eyes, plus the lines around her mouth were showing. People wouldn’t think she was such a great beauty if they had to see her in the morning, without her makeup.

“It’s funny how things work out,” Harmony said. “You got hired and I got fired.”

That was news, Pepper hadn’t been expecting that.

“No kidding?” she said. “Bonventre fired you?”

“Yep, he’s a genius, he fired me last night when I was too tired even to be mad,” Harmony said. At least Pepper was taking an interest in something she was saying for a change.

“So what’s the reason?” Pepper asked.

“Oh well, Pepper, I’m nearly thirty-nine,” she said. “Jackie told me I could work until my birthday.”

Pepper scooted back a little so her mother could sit down on her bed. She wanted to hear all about it.

“So is it a law you can only work until you’re thirty-nine?” she asked.

“Not a law, it’s just that they like younger women,” Harmony said. “There’s two girls from Texas who have very good bosoms, I think he wants to put them on the discs. I’m sure that means Jessie’s fired too, I just haven’t told her yet.”

“I thought Jessie was younger,” Pepper said.

“She is but she looks the same as me,” Harmony said.
“I think it’s because she worries so much, it makes lines you know.” But then she looked at Pepper, whose face was perfect. How would she know about lines, or even about worry?

“I didn’t have to do the top drop,” Pepper said. “I only danced about twenty minutes. They sure make up their minds quick.”

“Jackie always does,” Harmony said. “He said it wouldn’t be too good to have a mother and a daughter on the same stage. I guess I can see his point.”

She could, too, looking at Pepper—it was just a point she had been tuning out for quite a few years. It had only got through to her a little at the Taco Belle, when she noticed where the guys’ eyes were going. All through the years she was used to looking up from a meal and if there were guys around they would usually be watching her, eating or just walking through the casino she was used to picking up the looks. Maybe it was because the looks had kept coming that she had just tuned out the age question. She wasn’t prideful about it, she just assumed she was as good-looking as anybody around. Ever since Didier had fallen in love with her, over twenty years ago, she had felt that way. Besides, she had always been gifted with energy, she kept active and didn’t sit around brooding about her age, like some women did.

But the bad night and the K rations and getting so sick at her stomach had taken her energy for the time being. Now that she was slowed down from her usual pace she could see what Bonventre and Gary and probably a lot of others had seen, which was that Pepper was the truly beautiful one now. Pepper was so fresh, she was like a perfect flower that had just bloomed in the desert—obviously if you put them on the same stage Pepper was going to be the one who would get the looks. Gary had said several times that Pepper’s face was flawless, he loved to use that
word and he was right, sitting on the bed with her hair all rough from the blow-dryer she looked wonderful.

“What will you do, Momma, go to dealer school or what?” Pepper asked.

“Pepper, you know I can’t count, how would I ever get through dealer school?” Harmony said.

She hadn’t given it a thought, really, after all she’d only been fired a few hours. Maybe she could go back to the Trop, just because Bonventre didn’t want her didn’t mean she had to absolutely quit.

“Did Gary tell you I’m getting married?” Pepper asked. She was getting the impression Gary had been a fink, but she wasn’t mad, it was just as well he was the one who spread the news.

“He said you knew a guy, only he didn’t know much about him,” Harmony said.

Pepper didn’t say anything, and she didn’t either—the basic information had been exchanged and Pepper wasn’t ready to supply a lot of details. Harmony felt unhappy that her life and Pepper’s life wasn’t a shared life anymore, the little talk on the bed was the most they had shared in maybe a year or two. She had just been pretending to herself that Pepper was still a little girl.

It made her want to go get all her scrapbooks, the ones with the pictures of all the birthday parties, she knew Pepper wouldn’t want to look at them but she had a great urge to go get them anyway, not just to see the shots of the birthday parties but also some of the scrapbooks had shots of her on stage when she was younger. She wanted to see the shots Didier had taken of her when she first came to Las Vegas, when she was Pepper’s age. It was like jealousy suddenly, she just wanted to see if she had ever looked as good as Pepper looked. All through the years people had told her she was the most beautiful woman in Las Vegas, it sort of pepped her up, sort of made up for the times that
weren’t so great in some respects, she always was the one with the best looks—only now her own daughter had slipped past her, Pepper was the one with the best looks.

Feeling jealous was horrible, that was certainly no way to be a good mother, it was upsetting that she had such an urge to get the scrapbooks, there was no way to explain it, Pepper would think she was crazy if she started dragging out scrapbooks.

In an effort to make herself stop feeling so horrible she took a shower and washed her hair. It was not very reassuring though, she had never looked her best with wet hair, when she looked in the bathroom mirror she decided it was sort of amazing Bonventre hadn’t fired her sooner, luckily he never saw her with wet hair.

Then her blow-dryer wouldn’t work, it started blowing cold air at her which was really annoying, who needed a blow-dryer that worked like an air conditioner? She said as much to Pepper when she went in to borrow her blow-dryer and Pepper sort of giggled and said maybe Myrtle could get Bobby to fix it.

“Oh, Myrtle shouldn’t cheat on Wendell, he just adores her,” Harmony said. It just made things seem more out of kilter that Myrtle had another boyfriend. Actually things couldn’t be much more out of kilter, after all Jessie was hospitalized, Pepper was getting married and she was fired, life was definitely changing.

“I hope you won’t do anything like that when you’re married, Pepper,” Harmony said. “Can’t you even tell me his name, maybe I know him?”

“His name is Mel and you don’t know him,” Pepper said in her snippy voice, as if it would be some terrible crime if she knew her own daughter’s fiancé.

But it was true, the only Mel she could think of was a doorman at Caesar’s and he had died of a heart attack a few years back, it couldn’t be him.

“So when’s the wedding? Maybe your father would like to come,” Harmony said.

“Why? he doesn’t even know me,” Pepper said.

“He doesn’t have much confidence, I think he was afraid he’d do something wrong,” Harmony said, that was her reading on Ross. Besides liking to change lives he didn’t want to take a chance on making a big mistake. He would hardly even change a diaper he was so afraid he’d stick the pin in Pepper.

Harmony waited to blow-dry her hair, she was hoping Pepper might be feeling friendly and might tell her a few things about Mel, after all she hadn’t expressed any hostility to the marriage plans or anything. Why wouldn’t Pepper just describe the house or what he did for a living, just the normal things a mother would want to know?

But Pepper was not interested, she was just lying on her bed thinking her own thoughts and listening to tapes, so finally Harmony went to her own room and did the blow-drying. In the process she started feeling horrible again, it was beginning to sink in that she was fired. She could only do the show for two more weeks. Maybe she could get on with another show but it would just be luck probably, they would just think she was too old. But she had quite a few bills, she was going to have to get some kind of work, Denny had certainly picked the worst possible time to steal the check.

Then she remembered the scrapbooks, they were up on the top shelf in her closet, she went and got one or two while she was blow-drying and sat on the bed looking through them. She just picked at random and one of the ones was only a couple of years old. It was mostly snaps made when Roberto was her boyfriend, in just about every picture he seemed to have his hand on her leg. If Pepper was in the picture she looked sullen, unlike Roberto, who was always smiling, showing off his big white teeth. At
such a late date it was hard to remember what she had seen in Roberto other than the big white teeth. Pepper had had a lot of friends then and it was embarrassing if she invited a lot of kids on a picnic and Roberto spent half his time trying to get a hand under her clothes.

The other scrapbook was earlier, it wasn’t the Didier one, it was mostly pictures when she had first come to the Stardust and was definitely the lead showgirl. There was one of her getting crowned Miss Las Vegas Showgirl, Maurice Chevalier was putting on her crown, and there were a few with Dan Duryea and several with Hugh O’Brian. She thought he was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen, they took a nice picture together, he was just the right height. For a week or two she had hoped maybe they would have a romance, she would have gone for it in a second, but they didn’t, Hugh O’Brian had a tight schedule.

Looking at the scrapbooks was a mistake. She had lost interest in comparing herself with Pepper, why do that? it was just a mood. But the scrapbooks reminded her of how much fun she had had. She was just about always laughing in the pictures. If she had on her sunglasses she might look a little mysterious but she was never downcast, that had not been a way she felt much.

Harmony hated it when she lost her optimism, she liked to be thinking about good things, it was just that being fired hadn’t really happened to her before. Then when she was looking at the scrapbooks and wondering when there would be some more fun Pepper happened to walk by and see her, Pepper gave her a sarcastic look that was just too much, why would her own daughter give her such a cruel look?

“Oh, Pepper, I don’t know why you hate me,” she said, crying. “I tried to be a good mother, I gave you birthday parties every year!” It was all she could think of to say in
her own defense, it wasn’t that easy giving birthday parties if you were a single parent. Fortunately Jessie and Myrtle had helped, Jessie enjoyed birthday parties almost more than the kids.

“Who hates you? Just don’t burn out my blow-dryer,” Pepper said.