Beautiful Children Page 9

  Is your teen sullen and nonresponsive? asked an advice nugget, found inside a three-ring binder, its pages among the few legal resources available to those who wished to help. Has he/she changed friends and peer groups? Has there been a falling off in his/her personal hygiene?

  Lorraine suffered through each category, veritable Cosmo lists of parenting. “Listening to Your Child”; “Overcoming Hurdles to Communication”; “Can You Tell the Difference Between Normal Adolescent Rebellion and a Teen in Crisis?” She tortured herself with their earnest feebleness, their sugary and semiofficial language. It is important to be active in your child's activities. It is imperative to be your teenager's advocate. The active advocate parent takes great pains to praise success and feed their youngster's sense of self, even as they vigilantly guard against that child acquiring a sense of entitlement. Children should be taught to ask questions, to think both de- and inductively, to explore the creative facets of their developing personalities, all without challenging authority. It is important to make sure your child has room to make decisions for him/herself, and learn from his/her own mistakes, although if your child is not working up to his/her capabilities, you are to confront your child, or even his/her school system, for your child should not be allowed to create a pattern of taking the easy way out. Remember: teenagers have peer pressure to deal with. They have friends and influences that may or may not be wholesome. Raging hormones. Body changes. Attractions and dealing with members of the opposite and/or same sex. Delineated sections of the runaway counselor advisory notebook deal with these problems. Should you so desire, you also are more than welcome to stay on the line and converse further with your teen crisis counselor. Otherwise, however, you are advised to continue as you are, dealing and coping, staying calm and supportive, being firm and strong, not sacrificing your dreams, but channeling them; you are to prostrate yourself and give everything you can and fight that good fight, to balance yourself on dental floss above a giant abyss, to work and slave and do the best that your limited and fallible self can, every night laying your weary head against a pillow and comforting yourself with the thought that you have given your all. You are to do all of these things and then one night you are to discover—that perhaps because you have done these things—your only child has not come home. And thus you are to face the stark and brutal fact that every single thing you've done in your life has been WRONG, that your child has fled and your marriage is a sham and your home reeks of cat urine and even the workings of your brain have turned against you. And when this happens, the only way out is to go downstairs and head to the kitchen cupboard and remove that fateful white sleeve from the shelf; only, when you do this, upon removing the videocassette, you will discover a rupture, loose ends of brown film dangling from each end of the cassette. You will discover the cassette has been destroyed. That bastard husband of yours, he's broken your videotape, oh he did it all right—though he will claim the machine ate it, say it was an accident, the thing just snapped, it got worn down. He will feign innocence and make his paltry excuses and you will know better. Whenever he passes your son's bedroom he closes the door. He drops oblique references to “the future.” He's developed that hangdog look and taken to saying, “There's a lot we should talk about.” You do not need his words. You do not even need your tape. You have your misery. Your endless internal monologue. Your running conversation. Your missing child.

  2.5

  Against the wall, the boy was sitting maybe six inches from the television, staring right into that idiot box. Absorbed by the flashing images, he was ignoring the voice behind him.

  From his relaxed position on the couch, Lincoln continued addressing the back of his son's head, explaining that eight hours was average for labor, usually a lot longer for a first child.

  The story's subject kept looking ahead—he'd need glasses eventually, Lincoln knew. For Newell's sake, he hoped it wouldn't be soon.

  “The nurses told me, if I wanted to take a break, Lorraine's parents were in with her, she wouldn't be alone. They even wanted to give me a pager. The second anything happened, someone would be in touch.”

  Shifting in place, Lincoln waded through a memory or two, and reported that he hadn't been able to make heads or tails of the nurse's accent. But he'd known that just like he'd done his part conceiving the kid, he was gonna do his job in the delivery room. Hell or high water, Lincoln was the rock for his wife's fingers to clutch, the flesh for her nails to tear. “I told them straight out where they could stick it,” he said, turning up the macho a few notes, adding a bit of drama and bloodlust to this disturbance. “They tossed me right out of Humana Sunrise. Took three guards. I'm kicking and screaming, and they throw me right out of there, right out on my ass.”

  The last word brought eye contact from Newell—a sudden shared moment, both parties knowing the boy's mother would not tolerate that kind of language, that Lincoln used the word for precisely this reason. The code of men. The bond of fathers and sons. Newell's profile was bathed in the television's spooky half-light, frozen there, as if he were not quite sure how he should be reacting. Lincoln thought he saw a twinkle of bemusement in his son's expression, and for an instant wondered if he was laying it on too thick. But he also saw that he had Newell's attention.

  “Oh, I was pissed,” Lincoln continued. “Had half a mind to take my pickup right through the front of that hospital. If I'da had my thirty-eight in the glove compartment, I promise you, any son of a bitch dumb enough to keep me from what I love, what I created . . .” He leaned into a crouch. His hands came together in front of him, and his tone was more focused now. “I mean, we got this, this happening here. And you're nervous as shit. We've done the Lamaze and all that, got the breathing down, but it's different. Like going from a complicated game, dress-up and make-believe. It's the real deal here. A man can't help but wonder. The ultrasound says everything's okay but what the hell do doctors know? If they're such good doctors, what are they doing in Vegas, right? You worry, are Drs. Siegfried and Roy gonna pop you out one of them deformed freak babies, with the second head growing out of its neck or something?”

  “Dad.”

  “What? You telling me you wouldn't have liked a twin brother?”

  “Twenty dollars, please.”

  “Deal's a deal, hotshot.”

  “Kenny's going to be here any second.”

  “Well, when he gets here, I'll get my wallet.”

  From the hall bathroom, his wife's voice told him to stop torturing the boy. After a moment, Lorraine emerged from the open doorway, working at the clasp of one of her earrings. “And you,” she said. “Listen to your father.”

  She fixed the clasp and started into the living room, toward the kitchen, where she walked in a nervous half circle around the dinner table, looking in each chair. If she was aware of the effect of her little black cocktail dress, she did not let on.

  “Your mom sure cleans up nice.”

  “You haven't seen my purse?”

  Lincoln pretended to make an effort to look, quickly got back to business: “This was when big prizefights still took place behind Caesars Palace. They used to build grandstands on top of the outdoor tennis courts, have the fights right out beneath the stars. Your dad didn't have the clout to get tickets then—I never had a lot of friends at Caesars—and you were on the way, so we didn't have any spare bucks for the pay-per-view.”

  As Lincoln spoke, he was aware of Newell glancing down into the shoe box in his lap, the game cartridges he'd been rummaging through when all this started. He was aware of the boy looking up and turning, searching out his mother and making eye contact. Immediately Lincoln knew she'd visited Newell's room, and while he did not know details of their truce, this glance gave him some idea. We all make compromises, it said. This is part of the agreement. This was almost enough to make him quit. To just junk it all and walk away. If this tale didn't truly deserve to be passed down, he would have given up right there. But damn if he was going to hand them victory,
be denied the telling of such an excellent tale. His voice filled with forced goodwill, a hint of temper. “So what I'd do. I'd drive up and down I-15, where it runs behind the Strip, have the radio tuned to the sports station for the round-by-round updates. The closest parts of the freeway, between the sounds from the grandstands and the blow-by-blow recaps, it was just like being at the fights.”

  “What time are our reservations?” Lorraine asked.

  “We're fine.”

  “I just don't want to be late.”

  Newell's head tilted back ever so slightly, the back of his skull making soft impact against the wall behind him.

  “I drove around for a while,” Lincoln said, “kind of light-headed. I was so pissed at myself for getting thrown out of there, letting your mom down. I don't remember driving, just that I ended up pulling into the employee lot at work, I think from repetition as much as anything. I had a copy of the Lamaze notes in the glove compartment and was going over them.” He stopped now, became contemplative, the memory apparent to him as if he were looking at it through a thin sheet of gauze. “You know, your mom and I, we really didn't have a lot. She'd given up dancing to have you, and my bonus money had been just enough for the banks to let us go into debt for the house. We were getting by, not much more. We had health insurance but it wasn't going to cover it all, and that was just the beginning. Having a kid, you don't know what you're getting into.”

  Memories had him now, back in those moments, possessing him to the point where his affectations were stripped away, and he spoke candidly, honestly; to the point where he did not notice the changing tenor of the living room—his son going bone still, being sucked into the tale against his will, Lorraine coming to the edge of the kitchen, listening silently, her guard lowering enough to find herself occupied by her own memories, and a different tale of how that night went.

  “This guy I know, Stromboli, was working the pit and I remember we talked for a while. Guess I was nervous, because Stromboli, and the craps dealer too, and pretty much every single individual around that table heard about the bundle on the way. I mean I blabbed. Getting kicked outta the hospital. The mutant two-headed flipper baby. If worrying made me a bad guy, and about not wanting a flipper baby—shouldn't I love the kid no matter what? This is to a full table, remember. All kinds of action going on. Money's at play. But you know what, every person around that table was pretty sympathetic. Concerned even. Then they wanted your old man to shut the hell up.”

  Lincoln chuckled at his own joke; Lorraine interrupted: “You're not wearing that tie.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “With that jacket?”

  He turned away from her voice, away from the reality of a wife who habitually challenged and corrected his sense of style. “Five's the point,” he announced, assuming the barking voice of a croupier. “ ‘The point is five. New shooter here. New shooter coming out.’ I figure what the hell, right? Reach into my pocket. When I open my wallet, the damndest thing—this orange and red piece of confetti, I didn't know what it was. It carries up into the air, sweeps up in the air, just the damndest thing you ever saw, it's a butterfly, fluttering, unsteady above the crap table, right in the middle of all that smoke.”

  The smell of his wife's perfume and the weight of her presence were behind him; her arms wrapped around his neck.

  “A moth,” Newell said.

  “Not many times in your life you honestly come across magic,” Lincoln said. “That was one.”

  “I love that story,” Lorraine said.

  He looked up, admiring her for a count. She smiled—a bit sadly, he thought, before she broke the moment, straightened something on the adjacent table.

  “I took those bones,” Lincoln said, with renewed energy. “Straight off rolled myself a four and a three. Like something from the movies. You couldn't have scripted it any better.” He felt a catch in his throat. “I'm telling you, whatever I needed, I rolled. It was insane. The crowd was cheering. ‘Hot shooter. Make way for the hot shooter.’ ”

  “Why'd you have a butterfly in your wallet?” Newell's face betrayed interest, confusion. “I mean, if it's a moth the story makes sense. But a butterfly?”

  “What time's your show?” Lorraine asked.

  “Um . . . Seven-fifteen, I think.”

  “You'll be home by ten?”

  “What if I get hungry and want to get food?”

  “You shouldn't get hungry. You had dinner and your dad's giving you money for popcorn and snacks.”

  “He hasn't given me anything, yet.”

  “Don't rush me,” Lincoln said, laughing. “I'm still trying to figure out why there was a butterfly in my wallet.”

  “Did or did we not agree, Newell?”

  “Mom.”

  “You get to go out with your friend so long as you agree to be home by ten.”

  She did not break, no matter how long he studied her. Finally, if Newell did not exactly nod, the blankness of his face registered understanding, an unhappy acceptance of the terms, but acceptance nonetheless. He said, “Ten a.m. it is.”

  “Young man—”

  Let them spar, Lincoln figured, let life and its messy details swirl. Rather than getting involved, instead of paying attention, he returned to a March night that did not feel all that long ago, a night when he had stayed at the craps table for five hours, when he'd won enough money to pay off all of his wife's hospital bills, and had continued to win, rolling so well that expecting baby or no expecting baby, the other players had not wanted him to leave the table, those bastards had wanted Lincoln to rattle them bones.

  He'd about had to pull himself away, but pull himself away he had. He'd been exhausted and pumped, reeking with nicotine and drenched with sweat, riding on adrenaline and love and whiskey, while still sort of worried about flipper babies, how the delivery would go, which breathing technique went where.

  He had told his son this story many times, it was true, overacting each time, stepping into his overblown tough-guy persona, painstakingly going over the details, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, so many times that he knew Newell was sick of the story, so many times that it was not uncommon for the kid to poke holes in his exaggerations, to roll his eyes, report, I'm going into diabetic shock here. Lincoln knew his son had become inured to how much the story meant to him, knew the emotion that the tale drew from him was repellent to his boy. At the same time Lincoln saw his son tempted, struggling with and repulsed by and suffocating with his own connections to the tale. The safe conclusion was that his dad was a big old softie. A lightweight. And maybe it was true. Maybe he was. Because Lincoln could not help himself. His voice breaking, he recalled the assuredness that overtook him that night on his drive back to the hospital.

  “The word blessing,” Lincoln said, “is flowery and unmasculine. I know.”

  But on that March night of twelve years ago plus change, be it boy or girl or flipper baby, he'd been sure that the coming child—yes, the very same one who was writhing now at having to hear all this, you, you little pain in the ass—surely was some sort of blessing. A blessed infant coming from some blessed place.

  Even now telling the story made him more sure of it.

  And what Lincoln did not say—what his wife did not now or ever correct him on—was that Lorraine had been in labor for only two hours.

  He did not report that he'd missed the page from the hospital. That he had not been on hand for the birth—the breech birth.

  Not while Lorraine was cut open. Not while his baby was unwrapped from its umbilical cord, forcibly removed from his momma's womb.

  The fact is, he'd heard the news with his wife resting in hospital room seven. A glossed-over, secondhand version, accentuated by Jamaican lilts whose loveliness he still vividly heard: Don't feel bad. The childe jes coulden’ wait to come into the world.

  Newell Ewing would never know about these details. In the same way Lincoln never arrived at the blessed event itself, revisionist history would drop his absence fr
om the story. Instead, what finally was mentioned, the last word in this little tale, was a postscript, a vow made when he had snuck away from his sleeping wife and their room of bounty, and had stood in front of the baby nursery's glass wall. I will never be able to do enough for my child.

  The sound of a noisy engine pulling up to the driveway and idling. A wheezing horn. Newell could not move fast enough, shooting to his feet, extending his palm.

  Chapter 3

  3.1

  The neon. The halogen. The viscous liquid light. Thousands of millions of watts, flowing through letters of looping cursive and semi-cursive, filling then emptying, then starting over again. Waves of electricity, emanating from pop art façades, actually transforming the nature of the atmosphere, creating a mutation of night, a night that is not night—daytime at night. The twenty-four-hour bacchanal. The party without limits. The crown jewel of a country that has institutionalized indulgence. Vegas on Saturday night.

  Nothing matches the spectacle of the four-point-six-mile stretch known as the Las Vegas Strip. Here, some thirty-five gaming resorts are gathered, each boasting more hotel suites than can be found in the countries formerly known as the Soviet Union. They operate like autonomous empires, each one packed with restaurants ranging from five-star gourmet to quickie snack bars, with walk-through shopping malls where high-end couture is as plentiful as suburbia's favorite brands, with amusement centers for the kiddies, thumping nightspots catering to those inclined to shake what their mommas gave them, and sports books whose giant-screen televisions and information boards rival the Pentagon's war room. This is only the beginning. Every amenity the mind, on a whim, might invent, is available. Every offering that might keep someone from heading into another resort.