The Melting Season (22 page)

I had a moment to look at him before he noticed me. His hair was longer and curled around his ears. I used to trim it for him, and blow the leftover hair off his neck when I was done. Also he had grown a mustache. It made him look older and I liked it. I loved it. I still loved him.

Then he saw me sitting there. He pressed his lips together first, and then his cheeks puffed up on his face, and when I looked in his eyes, they were two thin slits filled with something like pity, or something like disgust. Nothing like love. It was hard to tell from where I was sitting, but it was definitely not love. I raised my hand anyway, and waved. I could not help myself. A woman walked through the door and Thomas pulled her back and whispered in her ear. They turned and left.

 

 

 

 

 

“WHAT DID SHE LOOK LIKE?” said Valka.

“Like a slut,” I snapped.

“Really?” she said.

“No,” I said guiltily. “She looked fine. She did not look any different from me.”

 

 

 

 

 

THAT HOT LIQUID inside me was freezing up, starting at the pit of my stomach and making its way up to my chest. In one moment, I had gone from deep love to something close to death. A sharp line of pain dragged itself behind my eyes, a great divide left behind in its wake. Dry earth cracked in my head. Thomas with his hand on the door. That look in his eyes, no love left. And if he did not love me, who was I?

If the insides of me were frozen, the outside of me did not know it. I was crying, right there in the back booth of the diner. It was quiet at first and then I was suddenly gasping and sobbing. I was soaked in my tears. I did not wipe them away. One part of me froze, another part of me melted. I could not stop it if I had wanted to.

I do not know how long I sat there like that before Timber came out from behind the counter.

“Mercy,” I said.

“What?” said Timber.

“Mercy.” That was all that would come out of me.

He helped me get up. I had to lean on him. My legs were so weak he practically had to carry me. We stood outside. There was an icy wind, and it was starting to snow. The snow blew around in little tornadoes all over the town square. My coat was open and I had no gloves and no scarf and no hat. The air was so cold I was choking. My hair was everywhere, up in the air and in my eyes and mouth. I embraced the whirlwinds.

“You might be thinking you won’t get past this,” said Timber. “But you will.”

That was when I went to the bank and withdrew $178,000 from our joint bank account. It seemed like a lot, and it seemed like nothing at the same time. Early the next morning I got in my car and headed to the highway. The snow was writhing all around me. I went west. The roads were not fit for driving, but I kept moving. I knew I could not go back.

 

 

 

 

 

“I DO NOT EVER want to go back,” I told Valka.

“Oh, you’re going back,” she said.

“Don’t you see? I cannot ever go back there ever ever ever. I have shamed myself. I am a criminal.”

“You are
not
a criminal,” said Valka. “That money’s as much yours as it is his.” She sat up in the bed. “And you have to go back.”

“There is nothing left for me there,” I said. “It is all ground up into shit.”

“Sure there is,” said Valka.

And then she said the one word that would make me turn right around and head back home.

I
had never been on a plane before. My life was all about firsts now. I was learning to accept that. There I was, circling Omaha, clutching the armrest on one side, and Valka’s wrist on the other. It had snowed every day since I had left my hometown, though the air was clear at the moment. The pilot told us the landing strip was iced over and we had not been cleared to land yet. That was an hour ago. They were talking about rerouting us to Iowa City. I did not mind the delay so much because I suddenly did not want to go home, but I did not want to die in a plane crash either. Either way, I could go up in flames. I pictured my head a singed mess, my blond hair dust in the air behind me.

“I’m going to be sick,” I said. The air in the plane reminded me of the air in the casinos. I felt myself drying up inside.

“Eat some nuts,” said Valka. She tossed a bag in my lap. She flipped a page of her magazine to the Fashion Don’ts, Rio DeCarlo front and center in a leopard-skin dress, her hands waving high toward someone far away in the distance. Maybe an imaginary friend. “The other thing that works is putting your head between your legs and counting to ten.” She pointed at the picture of Rio. “See, I think that would look good on me. She’s just wearing the wrong shoes. And makeup.” She peered closer. “And nose.”

I looked out the window. All I could see was white everywhere, all over Omaha, all over Nebraska, all over America. We could run out of gas at any minute, I thought. Maybe we should turn around.

“There’s nothing down there but snow,” I said.

“It’s pretty,” said Valka.

“It’s scary,” I said.

“Don’t be a baby,” she said. “You’re just afraid to go home.”

“I am not,” I said.

How could I explain to her that I was still just a mess of parts of myself? She thought I was going to be brave and strong like her but I was not so sure I had it together yet. It was like I was a giant balloon and someone had stuck something sharp in me and I had just exploded everywhere. And what can you do with what is left behind? Throw it away? Put it back together? It will not work anything like it did before. Something new had to be made out of it. I just did not know what that something new was yet.

“This is your reality.” She patted my hand and then scratched her fingernails along my arm. “But I know you can handle it.”

The loudspeaker crackled and the pilot spoke. “Ladies and gentleman, I am happy to report that it looks like we’ve been cleared for landing.” All around the plane people applauded, and then laughed.

This is my reality, I thought. It starts in the air, way up high. It starts right now.

 

 

 

 

 

AFTER LANDING WE RACED through the airport. We were in a hurry to be saviors, I guess. I had nothing but a backpack full of dirty clothes and my suitcase full of money. Valka walked faster than everyone else. That woman shocked me with her energy. How she had been through so much and yet still had so much to give. Her legs pumped as she walked, like she was a stallion racing in the morning, and her arms swung, too, one fist clenching her carry-on bag. I picked up the pace. I did not want to face my hometown but I did not want to be left behind either.

Valka gawked as we walked. Mostly there were businessmen, the ones from the big companies that had taken over downtown Omaha and turned it into something bigger and brighter than the rest of the state. She had no use for them. Businessmen she knew. But she loved the occasional farmer in the mix, those people who were really my people, and she did not hide her stares. The cowboy hats and the flannel shirts on the older men, packs of chewing tobacco in their pockets. They walked gingerly with their gray-haired wives. The bustle of their winter coats. I hoped they were returning from somewhere warm. Valka stared at the young bucks, too, in their tight jeans and flat, shiny hair.

“Yee-haw,” she whispered to me, as we stood at the car rental counter.

“You’re man-hungry,” I said.

“No,” she said. “My heart belongs to a Beatle.”

Jealousy struck me. Right behind it was old Mr. Misery. They both took turns slapping me upside the head.

“My heart belongs to no one,” I said.

“Your heart belongs to you,” she said.

Valka rented the only BMW on the lot. It did not make much sense in the snow, but Valka said, “You have to go home in style. You show them before they show you.”

And then we were on the road heading west, just like that. One day before we were sitting in our gigantic bathrobes in Las Vegas, Valka telling me that I had to return home, that my life there was not done and over and that things needed to get fixed, and that I was the only one who could fix them. Then she was on the phone with her travel agent getting us tickets to Omaha, and we were ditching my truck in long-term parking at the airport, Valka promising we would come back for it, me knowing I probably would never see it again. We rushed through security, Valka explaining away my suitcase full of cash to the airport guard—“She was a big winner, isn’t it fantastic?” We hustled and laughed and landed ourselves on an airplane headed straight for the heart of America. I held her hand then. I held her hand more than a few times. She said I could hold it until I did not need to anymore.

On the road she fiddled with the radio, landing on a top-forty station. The DJ was counting down the hits. Something with a fast beat came on, and there was a woman’s voice singing through some sort of filter. She sounded like an alien, ready to invade.

“Did you see there were seat warmers?” she said. She pressed some buttons on the dashboard and suddenly my behind was warm.

“That is unnatural,” I said.

Valka shrugged. She did not worry too much about things being natural or not, I had figured that much out by now. She pulled her seat back and stretched her feet out on the dash. Then she looked out the window and started to twirl her fingers in her wig. She was a brunette today, the same mod wig from New Year’s Eve.

“So this is Nebraska,” she said. There was snow everywhere but the roads were clear. “Doesn’t look like there’s a hell of a lot going on around here.”

“It’s not much but it’s home,” I said. I do not know why I said that. I did not need to make excuses for my home state. I loved it there. But things had shifted since I had left. I had seen so much already, been through three states, and I had been wrapped up in the thick air of the casinos for days. Just a half hour out of Omaha and already the land had flattened and the buildings were sparse. There were no levels to that part of Nebraska, it was just land and sky and space. And corn, even if you could not see it at that moment. But underneath it all was the aquifer, and it brewed energy and life. Nebraska was more than just nothing. You just had to know where to look.

“Ah, it’s winter,” she said. “And we didn’t come to sightsee anyway.”

The song ended and the announcer came on and said it was time for the entertainment news. Now this was my game. I turned up the volume.

“The Los Angeles Police Department just announced that early this morning television and film actress Rio DeCarlo was in a car accident. She struck a car carrying three teenagers and one adult. We have no information about the passengers’ identities, but we do know all were hospitalized, and DeCarlo has been charged with driving under the influence. Several bottles of pills were found in the car along with an open bottle of vodka.”

“Holy Jesus,” I said. “Rio DeCarlo!”

Valka just shook her head. “I knew something like that would happen to her someday.”

“But she never drives,” I said. “She has a driver. I read it in a magazine. His name is Miguel, and he used to be a professional wrestler in Mexico. He’s saving up to move his mother and two sisters across the border.”

“Oh, she drives all right,” said Valka.

“How do you know?” I said.

“I know things,” she said.

“What do you know?” I said. I could not believe she knew a real live celebrity and she had not told me. I was rethinking our entire friendship.

“Listen, honey, everybody knows everything in Los Angeles. It’s no different than your hometown where everyone knows you took all of that money out of the bank.”

“But why didn’t you tell me before when I mentioned her?” I said.

“I didn’t want to interrupt you,” she said.

“Ha-ha,” I said.

“And also I didn’t think it was my place to tell her stories. I mean, they aren’t
my
stories.” She turned down the radio. “And obviously I’m in no position to judge.”

I swatted her on her arm and the car swerved. “Valka, you had better tell me right now or I swear to God I will not drive a minute further.”

“Hey, that hurt,” she said. She rubbed her shoulder.

“I mean it,” I said.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “We go to the same guy,” she said. She motioned to her face. “The same doctor. He does my Botox and he did my boobs, too. He’s one of the best in L.A. I mean, look at me, not a line on this face.” She dropped the visor down and examined herself in the mirror. “Would you know I am thirty-eight years old? I don’t think so.”

“You look great,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. “Anyway, I’ve seen Rio in the office a few times. She’s no delicate tulip, that one. I know I’m loud, too, but at the doctor’s office, you try to keep it cool. It’s sort of an unspoken agreement among us girls. We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of but we don’t want to advertise that we get work done either. We all keep our heads down in our magazines in the waiting room. Everyone wears big sunglasses. It’s all so dramatic! We look like a bunch of Italian movie stars from the fifties. I sort of love it.”

She did not have me convinced that I would want to spend any sort of time in the waiting room of her plastic surgeon. I had already done enough time at the Helping Hands Center to know how I felt about it all.

“But not Rio DeCarlo, she sashays around that office like she owns the joint. I mean, she’s a funny lady, and she’s always nice enough, but she’s just so over the top. She makes phone calls to her manager. She points out pictures of herself in magazines. Once I even saw her offer to give the receptionist her autograph. And she walks in without appointments all the time, which is totally against the rules. ‘See if he can fit me in,’ that’s what she says to the receptionist. Like we all weren’t sitting there waiting ourselves. But she always gets in. She must be in some sort of frequent flyer program.” Valka snorted. “I mean, sometimes it’s just too much. When your eyebrows are halfway up your forehead it’s time to take a good look at yourself. Eventually we all have to get old. Someday I’m just going to be old, Cathy.”