Good Days Bad Days: A Novel, page 19
I assumed she’d be more cautious or maybe even quit, but obviously she’d chosen to keep playing with fire or perhaps felt like she had no other choice. She tells me the rest of the story like she’s lost in a dream, her delivery monotone, her eyes glazed over like she’s watching the scene from a great distance.
“Usually when I recognize someone, I see them first, avoid the table, get one of the other Bunnies to swap with me or something, and that does the trick. Honestly, most of the time men don’t even look at our faces, that’s why you caught me by surprise that last time. I don’t know”—she taps her thumbnail against her front teeth—“but this time I definitely didn’t see him first. I was working at a table across the room when someone grabbed my elbow roughly but not rough enough to trigger the bouncer Eddie, who hangs out at the bar. My heart nearly stopped. He didn’t yell, not in the lounge, but he did look at me like I was dirty and told me I’d better meet him in the hall in fifteen minutes or else.”
The “or else” lingers ominously in the air. I could probably guess the rest of the story, but she continues, and I listen with rapt attention.
“I snuck out the side entrance to the stairwell that leads to the guest rooms, where Don was waiting for me. I’ve never seen him so . . . unglued.”
I haven’t seen him anything more than stern, but I can imagine what unfiltered Don Hollinger looks like because I know what my dad looked like when my mom burned his toast or forgot the celery in his chili. I follow the curve of the highway, nearly wild at the idea of Hollinger harming Betty.
“Bunnies aren’t allowed back by the rooms ever—and I knew it. I knew the rules and I knew why. My Bunny mother told us on our first day of training: ‘We’re not a brothel and you girls are not strippers, remember that.’ And so we were never, ever, ever to go anywhere close to the guest rooms. Well, it didn’t take long for my security to show up after drunk Don started yelling. They forced him out, and within ten minutes I was out, too. Fired.”
She makes a loud raspberry with her tongue, blinking her fake eyelashes rapidly, fighting off tears. “I didn’t push back. I’d broken the rules and I knew it, and I couldn’t even blame Don. I’m his girlfriend and I’d been lying to him for months. What man wouldn’t feel betrayed?” she says with resignation.
She looks at me as though, as a man, she expects me to agree that Hollinger didn’t have any other choice. But I can’t agree with her or condone his explosive behavior. I’ve never had a serious girlfriend, but I’d like to think I could keep my head screwed on straight in a similar situation. I’d feel betrayed, sure, but would I raise my voice, get her fired, and single-handedly destroy her most prized possession? I hope not.
“Anyway, it took me a bit to change, turn in my uniform, and clean out my locker. I only got to say bye to a few of the girls before I was escorted out by Eddie. He looked like he could cry, I swear. He’s always been such a sweetheart. His wife works in the laundry at the hotel, and I’d bring them some of the baked treats from the set when our schedules lined up. I gave him my number and he told me he’d pass it on to Naomi. He locked the door behind me, and I walked off into the parking lot with no problems other than a lack of tissues.” She sniffles.
I offer her a clean, folded handkerchief from my back pocket, which only seems to make her cry more.
“Thank you.” She dabs at her cheeks and under her nose. “You always seem to be there when I need you.”
“Wish I’d been in that parking lot.” Instantly, the image of my fist slamming into Hollinger’s face flashes through my mind.
“What? So he could’ve beat you with that golf club as hard as he tore into my car. No.”
“With a golf club?” I echo, imagining the shiny steel reflecting the yellow overhead lights with each swing, the glitter of glass splashing through the air, the sickening clank of metal against metal keeping time.
“He’d done most of the damage before I got there, slashed my tires and bashed out my head- and taillights. He was hacking at my windshield when I ran up and tried to stop him, but he kept going as though I wasn’t even there. His friend was parked behind my car, hanging out the window, kinda like . . . cheering him on.” She shakes her head a little like she knows how awful it sounds. “Finally, the two of them drove off and I . . . I didn’t know what to do. So I found a public telephone and thank God you’re listed ’cause I had only one dime left in my change purse.”
Rage pulses and grows with every added detail until it burns like a molten ball of lava in my throat waiting for the right opportunity to spew out. But who could I direct my vitriol at? Betty? No, she’s been through enough tonight already. I could find Hollinger’s address in the phone book, go to his house, pull him out of bed, threaten him. But even though he’s at least half a foot shorter than me, I’m sure all his time in the gym would mean I’d end up in the same shape as the car.
“We really should call the cops,” I spout, clenching and unclenching my fingers around the steering wheel, craving some sort of immediate recourse.
“I told you. No police. You think WQRX will let me keep my job if I report him? I love our show. I can’t lose it . . .” She sounds terrified.
I want to say “You won’t!” but she’s right. She’d lose the show, her only remaining job, all she’s worked for and deserves.
Betty begs me again to “let her handle it.”
And I respond with a muttered “Fine.”
“Thank you,” she says, and it’s the first time those words coming from her mouth make me ill.
As I drive, counting the yellow dotted lines down the middle of the highway to keep my murderous thoughts at bay, she rolls down her window, letting in the cool night air. I hadn’t realized how stuffy it’d gotten, and the fresh breeze is exactly what I need. I roll my window down, too, and inhale deeply, savoring the sweetness of the warm wind whipping through my hair.
Betty twists her legs up under her again and turns up the volume on the radio. We drive like that for a while, Betty’s head against the headrest, hair lashing around her face, her lips occasionally moving along with the lyrics coming through the speakers.
We soon reach the turn that leads back to Janesville. I slow to a stop, clicking on my turn signal. Betty sits up, rod straight, and puts her hand on the wheel.
“Stop!” she shouts, shaking her head, staring deep into my eyes. “He might be there, at my place. I . . . can’t go back there. Not yet.”
We sit at the crossroads, exhaustion tugging at my limbs as the sweet saccharine lyrics of “Monday, Monday” play. My bed is only ten minutes away, fifteen if I count dragging my tired ass out of the car and up the stairs to my room. But as much as the comfort of my own home and my own bed calls to me, Betty’s tearstained cheeks and fine lines of worry call to the part of me that only wants to be with her.
“All right,” I hear myself say before I’ve even truly decided to give in. “Where to?”
“Kegonsa,” she says, licking her nearly nude lips, leaving a natural shine that turns the bare part of them a little pink. Kegonsa is another forty minutes away, just off 90 and east of Madison. I’ve seen the exit at least a hundred times while driving back and forth to UW-Madison for football games. It’s a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, corn fields and dairy farms with little else to brag about.
I flick off my turn signal. When the light flips to green, I shove my foot on the gas hard enough to make the engine rev and our heads whip back as we speed past Janesville.
“You maniac!” she shouts over the wind. I smash the pedal against the floor and she whoops, throwing her arm out the window, making me feel invincible.
“So,” I yell, adrenaline chasing away the exhaustion and heaviness, feeling like a bad boy for once in my life, “what’s in Kegonsa?”
She pulls her arm back inside, presses her head into the headrest, and closes her eyes like she’s submitting to the chaos of sound and air inside the car.
“Home,” she says. “We’re going home.”
Chapter 21
Charlie
Present Day
My father had alerted Shore Path that we were on our way, and Nurse Mitchell did a good job of preparing Betty for our arrival. She knows who I am as soon as I walk into the room, calling me Lottie in the same irritated tone she used the last time I saw her on a “good day.”
But within a few seconds, Betty calls me Laura and refers to Olivia by my childhood nickname, making it clear that today is a bit different. Not exactly a good day but not fully a bad one either. I’m not sure if that’s entirely positive, but I keep my mental fingers crossed as Nurse Mitchell excuses herself, leaving us alone with Betty.
I thought it’d be hard to explain to Olivia that my mother might be a little pricklier than her loving grandmothers on her father’s side and Ian’s side, but she seems unfazed, even when my mother sends a cutting barb my way every so often.
“I volunteered at Mountainview for my NHS community service hours, remember?” she reminded me when we got into the room. “They had a whole memory wing there.”
“Aren’t you a sweet thing,” Betty declares from her armchair when I introduce her to her only grandchild. Olivia accepts the offered kiss on the cheek.
“You too. I like your green chair. It’s so regal looking.”
“Yes, my husband got it for me. He’s a kind man. Are you married?” she asks Olivia, who seems to find the question funny.
“No, no. Not yet.”
“You have time but might need a haircut and some rouge.”
“Olivia is wonderful the way she is,” I snap back, remembering how my mother’s critiques had stuck with me over the years. “Besides, she’s only nineteen.”
“So, you’re not going to school for your MRS, then?” She makes an old joke I heard several times as a kid.
“No. More like a bachelor’s in arts,” she banters back. “Grandma, how old were you when you got married?”
Betty’s eyes roll upward like she’s counting, but when she doesn’t come up with a number, I fill in the little bit of information I know about my parents’ marriage.
“Thirty-one. Well, thirty-one when I was born. So, a year before that I think.”
“Is that right?” Betty asks as though we are talking about an old friend instead of her own history. I know it’s part of her memory loss, the Swiss cheese, as Nurse Mitchell calls it. I have holes in my memory as well, but for very different reasons.
As Betty and Olivia chat, I pull out a deck of cards, shuffling them a dozen times, keeping an eye on the door for our food delivery and hoping it gets here before Betty remembers who I am again.
“I read your book last night when I got to town,” Olivia adds, catching my interest, as I deal three hands in a clockwise order.
“My book?”
“Yes. The Classy Homemaker.” Olivia retrieves the book from the box we brought with us and lays it on the corner of the roll-away table. “I didn’t know you wrote a book.”
My mother glances at the weathered hardcover a few times and then stares daggers in my direction.
“I wish you’d all stop digging through my things, Lottie. The girl doesn’t know better, but you should and so does your father,” she scolds, as though my childhood mother just popped into the conversation from another room.
Her reprimand releases a flood of frustration inside me as I think about everything we’re doing to clean up the mess she left behind—our time, our money, and the physical and mental effort we’ve put in. I open my mouth to respond, but Olivia stops me with a steady gaze.
“I’ll go first,” Olivia says, flipping the top card of the deck over.
I close my mouth with a click, which stops my retort but doesn’t stop the resentment behind it. It’s so hard not to engage when my mom’s hardened edge returns on her more lucid days.
Olivia’s redirection works, and we all ignore the book on the table, playing silently until our meal arrives.
“Ooo, this looks like a treat,” Nurse Mitchell says as she brings in the brown paper bags of food.
“I hope you didn’t let Mrs. Thompson near it,” my mother bites. “She stole my brownie after dinner last night. I saw her chomping on it in her room.” I cringe, filled with a familiar embarrassment at her sharp complaint.
The paranoia isn’t new, though it’s likely heightened by her illness and new location. But even when I lived at home, my mother’s anxiety increased as her hoarding intensified. Eventually, she was sure anyone walking on the shore path was trying to peek into our house. To my mortification she’d often yell at them if they stopped for too long within her sight. She also insisted our house be removed from the boat tour’s script and opted to have our mail delivered to a PO box in town rather than the box on the dock.
The one time her paranoia was merited was when CPS showed up and she blamed Miss Johnson, saying my teacher made the call, that she had it in for her. In that case, she was right.
The nurse leaves the brown paper sack, assuring us it’s been in no hands but her own. I distribute the Styrofoam containers, the heavenly scent of homemade soup filling the room, distracting my mother from her suspicion.
“This is sinfully good,” my mother says, taking a spoonful of cream of potato soup with a saturated lump of homemade sourdough bread. “I haven’t had Lake Aire’s in . . .” Her thought drifts off.
“Mmmm, so good,” Olivia agrees. And I remain mute so I don’t distract from their conversation.
“You are a pretty girl,” she says to Olivia, who’s wearing ripped jeans and an oversized sweater that would’ve triggered my mother in my younger years.
“Thank you. I like your nails. Did you just get them done?” Olivia returns the compliment. My mother stares at her cotton candy–pink fingernails.
“I . . . I think so.”
“Well, that’s a lovely color.”
“Thank you. It’s my favorite.”
The idea that the soft pink of a baby’s blanket could possibly be my mother’s favorite color strikes me as odd. Pale pink is such a contrast to the dark cavern of our home.
“It’s my favorite too,” Olivia adds, which is true, though for a brief time in high school she shunned the color, calling it “demeaning” to her feminist values. But apparently she’s realized she can be a feminist and wear pink.
“We should go shopping,” Betty says to Olivia with a youthful verve, finishing the last bit of creamy broth. A long-lost grandmother shopping with her newly acquainted granddaughter—it’s like a subplot from a Hallmark movie. It’s sweet and it’s something I never thought could possibly happen in my lifetime.
“Shopping?” Olivia looks to me to see if this is an odd request. I shrug.
“Yes. Shopping. I know a girl who works at JCPenney’s. She lets me use her discount.” She’s slipping a little, teetering between two times, two realities. I don’t know if my mom has ever left Shore Path, much less visited a department store. I peel a piece of crust off my roll and chew it slowly as I watch the interaction. “And we could go to Ike’s for dinner. If you think this is good, wait until you try Ike’s pot roast. But they only have it on Wednesday nights so we should go on a Wednesday.”
My ears perk up and I risk an interruption. “Ike’s Diner? In Janesville?”
“Yes, yes. Have you heard of it?” she asks us both politely. Olivia shakes her head as I nod mine.
“Olivia, that’s where I was coming from yesterday. It’s the town I was telling you about.”
“When your phone was off?” Olivia asks with raised eyebrows, leaving out the handsome dentist companion. I roll my eyes as Betty claps her hands.
“We should go to Ike’s,” Betty says eagerly, sitting up in her chair as straight as her stiffened spine allows. Olivia seems nearly as worked up by the idea.
“When I volunteered at Mountainview, family could sign the residents out for the day. We could ask,” Olivia says to both me and her grandmother, which enhances Betty’s mood. She starts to list off places she’d like to take us, a park by her house, the ice cream shop, the studio.
While shopping sounds like torture, I’d love to take Betty back to the mysterious town where she met my dad and see if any of the sights trigger her memories. But I deflate internally as the voice of reason prevails. It’s unrealistic.
“Let’s not get her hopes up,” I say under my breath to Olivia before the fantasy of a day trip can take hold any further. I read every pamphlet Nurse Mitchell gave me on my first day here, and one of the big rules, after the one about not arguing, is don’t make any promises, especially false promises, to the dementia patient.
I stand up and start collecting the cards.
“Sorry, but we should probably get going,” I say to both Olivia and Betty, cutting our visit short. The lack of sleep is catching up with me, a piercing headache developing in between my eyebrows. I’ve been the engaged mom, I’ve shown Olivia the town, introduced her to her grandparents, and even played nice with Ian, but I’m out of parental patience. I’ve had my oasis invaded and far too many of my choices hijacked. I need a long bath and maybe a nap before I can think clearly again.
Olivia must be able to tell I’m burned out, and after pushing her luck by showing up on my doorstep, she doesn’t fight me. Betty says easy farewells, the sharp edge to her comments having dulled a bit.
“Ike’s next week,” she reminds us as I write in her visitor’s log, detailing the visit with Olivia, our special lunch, and the card game, leaving out the proposed visit to Janesville, hoping she’ll forget all about it.
Olivia disappears into her room when we return to the rental with promises of unpacking. I take the opportunity to run an insanely hot bath, soaking with the lights off and listening to a white noise app on my phone until the water grows tepid. Wearily, I work my fragrant argan oil shampoo through my hair and rinse by holding my head underwater, shaking the strands wildly till they tickle my shoulders and I run out of air.
