Lakewood(2)

“Lena?” her mother said.

She finished her drink, set the glass on the floor, and went out to Deziree.

“Everything okay?” Lena asked. The mirror gave a full view of the back of her mother’s head. It looked as if she had been pulling on her hair. Her black bra straps poked out. Her eyes were bloodshot, her fingers trembling. It was hard to tell whether it was because of the poor bathroom lighting or because of illness, but Deziree’s skin was now sallow.

“We can go home,” Lena said. She smoothed her mother’s hair, adjusted the straps back into place. Watched her hands and mouth for tremors. They were still. Deziree’s dark lipstick was smudged, but still looked pretty good.

“I lost it all,” Deziree said. They paused for a moment, and laughed.

Lena coughed when she was finished. She couldn’t help asking, “You took your medicine today, right?”

“I wouldn’t have been able to do anything today without it.”

They left the bathroom and headed to Miss Toni’s favorite blackjack dealer. When he noticed them, he signaled a waitress, who brought over two more Dark & Stormys. “May you have Toni’s luck tonight,” he said. Then, with a laugh, “Please don’t have her luck. I need a job.”

They smiled at each other, then did what they always did. Snapped their fingers for luck and clasped hands. One of the first things Lena could remember was her grandma teaching her blackjack. The game’s rules, but also things like remembering—as with most individual sports—that it was also a game you mostly played against yourself. You had to be confident, engaged, patient. Don’t allow yourself to be polluted by the dealer’s silence or the chitchat of the people around you.

Lena leaned forward a little. Focused on counting, paying attention to everyone’s cards, watching the dealer’s hands and eyes, looking for tells. She sipped her drink slowly, at a rate fast enough to make her feet ache a little less, but not enough to feel too bold. And when she hit blackjack for the first time, she automatically turned to the right, where her grandmother might be, before quickly turning and squeezing Deziree’s hands with delight.

An hour later and two hundred dollars richer—an amount Miss Toni would have called “fine”—they shimmied and danced their way over to the buffet to eat blueberry-bacon gelato and lobster and scrambled eggs. As they waited to get served coffee, Deziree kept putting one hand over her forehead and rubbing the spot between her eyebrows. “Don’t worry,” she kept saying.

Deziree sagged down, her head and forearms resting on the table. She didn’t notice the purple gelato drip pattern that she was creating on the front of her dress.

Lena asked the waitress for a double Americano.

“She drunk?” the waitress asked. She was young, probably a college student. Hair dyed purple, a nose ring. She had also been at the funeral, Lena realized.

“Nah. She good.”

“This is the best I’ve felt in days.” Deziree was crumpling into illness, grief, exhaustion. Her voice came out slurred.

“She gonna need a chair?”

Lena took off her own left shoe beneath the table and rubbed her toes hard. “We’ll be out of here in ten, I promise. She’s fine.”

Stumbling into their living room, Deziree dumped the contents of her purse on the floor. Dollars, credit cards, lipstick, a mint that looked as if it had already been sucked on and then put back in the cellophane wrap, coins scattered across the wood floors. Deziree looked at the mess for a moment, then fell.

Lena rushed to her side. Her mom propped herself up.

“Smile at me,” Lena said.

“I’m fine.”

“Come on. We both know you didn’t drink that much.”

Deziree gritted her teeth. Lena raised her eyebrows. Deziree rolled her eyes and did a big fake grin.

Lena had her mother lift her arms and repeat the phrase, “Pancakes are better with bananas in them.”

“They said we had to do this every time you fall.”

“You sound just like her.”

Deziree sat up and went to her bedroom. When she returned, she was holding a large envelope that was stuffed to the limits. She tossed it onto Lena’s stomach.

“Can we do this later today?”

But her mother was already in the kitchen, opening drawers and rifling through cabinets as if she had stored secrets among the plates and glasses. Inside the envelope were bills. Insurance statements that looked as if they were all disagreeing with each other about the amount of coverage. Folded-over invoices from the cemetery, the funeral home. Electric and water bills. Some receipts. Deziree came back holding more.

“Have any of these been paid?”

“I don’t know.”

Deziree stooped over the coffee table. She pulled more bills from between the magazines. It felt like an absurd magic trick.

Lena rubbed her eyes and the remnants of her mascara stained her fingertips. She made herself sit up straight.

“There’s more bills I can pull up on my phone.”

Lena felt all the aftershocks of no sleep, the stress of the past months, and now this. She wanted to go to bed and sleep for three days. Instead, she went to the kitchen, found the least green banana she could, poured a glass of water, and pulled out her mom’s pillbox. There were only enough pills in the box until Saturday.