“Mom, stop calling, I’m already on the curb — Ah, damn it!”
“Silvery white Chevrolet, ready in four minutes,” Nathan read the info on his phone screen out loud.
The moment Abby turned around, she saw the lights once again and felt her stomach churning tremendously. She squatted down and curled into a tiny ball.
Those casinos, the haunts of Joe, had similar flashing lights. Abby could hear the clinking from the slot machines, chips, dices, roulette, in the timeless, enclosed space, for those casino owners didn’t set clocks above the craps tables or gouge any windows. All they supplemented was infinite oxygen, caffeine, and specialized fragrance.
If it paid off, Joe would try to arouse the smoking, sexy dealers’ maternal instincts, as though adding more pride to his victory, by telling Abby to call him daddy.
“Call me daddy.” “Daddy.” Why do you deserve it? “Call again.” “Daddy.” Gross. As gross as how her grandmother took her to Joe’s hometown and held a make-believe show in front of the relatives: “It’s not really ‘error’? We need to adjust the last syllable. Say ‘Errol’. Let me think. It’s like ‘roll’, the tahini roll.” “I don’t eat ‘tahani’ roll.” “Oh, is it? That’s your father’s favorite. Or just ‘pumpkin roll’.” “Okay.” “Now say it.” “E-roll.” “Ok, now let’s make it less of an ‘o’ sound but more of an ‘uh’ sound” “E-r-uh-l.” “Correct.” “So. what’s your male ancestor’s name?” “E-r-uh-l Bowen.” “Good girl.”
To satiate his pretensions, even more, Joe would peck her on the cheeks and chafe them painfully with his stubble. Though the acrid cocktail smell in his mouth was pungent, Abby genuinely thought it was the best thing that could happen between them. The only other possible olfactory sensation she gained from Joe was the odor of the blood oozing from the clenched fist amid the debris of the bedroom door mirror, and the blood coming out of Evelyn’s neck — the scene after he lost, drank, or went broke.
Abby felt Joe’s hand creeping up her back and sending chills down her spine as though his fingers would grip on her neck the next second.
But the hand clapped gently on her shoulder, and a girl’s voice asked solicitously if she was okay.
It was just Ella. Abby grabbed Ella’s hand and said she was fine.
“Hi, Sir, where are you now? The crossroad?” Nathan was on the phone with the driver.
Ella picked up the phone from Nathan’s hand: “If you are on the crossroad just go straight to the next traffic lights, and then turn back. You’ll see us at the east gate.”
“You are quite familiar with this place, huh?”
“It’s Hawkwood, and you can’t tell my greenbacks to stay put — There he is.”
Ella started emailing the Amazon seller as she settled in the front seat. Earlier that morning Mrs. Mayfair was abusing the seller when Ella asked her what she needed to tell him. The answer she got was “let his drop dead.”
Ella tapped her head. Why bother to ask? It has been like this since she could spell anything. Mrs. Mayfair could pay to lift her fingers, but no paid service could reach her daughter’s capacity when it came to dealing with her personal affairs. Abby used to admire Mrs. Mayfair, for, despite bowing out of the business community, never having been a mediocre housewife. Then she learned a quality that women like Mrs. Mayfair had in common: the ability to turn every connection into cash. Mrs. Mayfair was such an expert that she could receive a million in her bank accounts just being an idler indoor and a shopaholic outdoor.
One of the only two things she was concerned about was how to use greenbacks to take care of her complexion. The other was her sexual but non-marital alliance with Mr. Mayfair, a senior politician whom Abby regarded as a big shot, though later this impression dimmed when Ella blubbered in front of her after somebody sent Mr. Mayfair a note — “fair skin covers a multitude of sins” — as a metaphor for blackmail.
Still, when Ella was caught up in typing and sending messages on Mrs. Mayfair’s behalf, she would tell herself “never mind”, since right before Mrs. Mayfair was in the delivery room she told Mr. Mayfair “I’m not ready to be a mother.” Until now, Ella didn’t think she was ready, either.
On the back seat, Abby wept quietly. Her head nestled on Nathan’s shoulder. Her eyelids were half-closed. The weeping made her flush, most visibly seen from her forehead: a bonfire was flaming up within it, unleashing two irregular reddish marks. One of them was larger than the other. Under the dusky lamplight, Nathan glimpsed at them and surprisingly discovered that Abby’s forehead was a little bit…just a little bit…uneven. Or it might be an optical illusion.
Sensing the pair of eyes peering at her, Abby sat up straight to match her face to Nathan’s. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” Nathan said. He looked straight into Abby’s eyes.
Turning to face the window, Abby flushed further and rubbed her forehead absently: “he bumped me on the bassinet stroller. It had a steel rail. It cost her a lot to buy, and three years to wear the bone down. She said if it hadn’t been for her I’d have a protruded bone on the forehead like a condemned angel.”
“That’s a good analogy,” said Nathan.
Abby smiled weakly. She saw her reflection in the window, the cherry mouth she got from Joe. Pink like the wallpapers in her room, it looked sweet but cunning at the same time. Little girls loved sweet pink, and so did she. But her room was only wallpapered after Joe hurled an ink bottle toward Evelyn and tainted them.
She saw Evelyn’s bushy eyebrows and innocent eyes. They seemed innocent because the rings in Abby’s eyes, under her bristling lashes, were amber and relatively large, so at first glance, people would naturally compliment her by saying “you look like a doll, especially your cute eyes”. But if they minded lingering for a few more moments, they may discover the nonchalance and the stubbornness beneath the well of loveliness.
Abby thought a bit sorry that Evelyn’s eyes looked less impressive on her face, which was chubbier than her mother’s.
