“The Vegas life is hard, huh?”
“Hard?” she echoes. “Vegas doesn’t do hard. It does cruel. It does bright lights and bad men and mornings where you can’t tell if you’re hungover or just ready to end it all.”
I flinch. End it all? Did she have it that bad? Or is she just being hyperbolic?
I choose to believe the latter.
“It was rough, huh?” I finally say.
“That’s no lie,” she says. “You don’t last out there if you don’t learn how to bluff God Himself.”
“And you did?”
“Once or twice. But He’s got a better poker face.”
God. All these canned jokes. She really doesn’t want to talk about anything serious, does she? She couldn’t be making it any clearer.
But still I want to keep the conversation going. It’s nice to talk to someone who has no stock at all in my problems. Who can take an unvarnished look at me, maybe inject some much-needed perspective.
“Did you ever think of leaving?”
“Sure,” she says. “Every night around three a.m., right before I lit another cigarette.”
“And why didn’t you?”
“I did. I met your father. I had plans.”
“But you self-sabotaged when you screwed the pizza man.”
She rasps out another laugh. “I guess I did. I liked the view from the edge, I suppose. When you’ve danced with the devil long enough, heaven just feels dull.”
I watch a bead of water gather at the end of the porch rail and fall.
“So what do you want, sugar?” she asks.
I sigh. “I don’t know. I thought hearing your voice again would…do something.”
“Like a key in a lock?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“It feels more like I knocked on a door and no one was home.”
I regret the words as soon as they come out. I may not know this woman, but she’s still my mother. She’s still a human being with feelings.
“Ah.” She doesn’t apologize. “You want me to say I’ve thought about you every day? That I pressed my hand to a window and wondered if you were warm and fed?”
“No,” I say honestly. “But in case you’re wondering, I was always warm and fed.”
“I know that.” She sighs into the phone. “I knew your father would take better care of you than I ever could. As for thinking about you… Most days I didn’t. I couldn’t. Thinking of you meant thinking of the life I could have had with you and your father. I blew it.”
I swallow, my throat tight. “I’m not calling to make you feel guilty.”
“I know.” A beat. “Do you laugh like him? Your father? Do you laugh at all?”
“Sometimes.”
