“Pudge’s secret-rub brisket, secret-rub ribs, secret-rub pork, and beer-butt chicken. I’m makin’ smashed taters and a Texas cake for dessert. The whole family’s comin’ and bringin’ enough food to feed half of Marfa.”
I’d love to see my relatives again. “You’re makin’ me hungry just listenin’ to you.” Especially Aunt Lavon and Sissy.
“Church is out, Carla Jean.”
“Why don’t ya come on out? You’re too thin and need somethin’ that sticks ta your ribs.”
“Really?” There’s hope yet.
“Edie’s comin’ for barbecue,” she tells Daddy. He whispers something to her, then she replies, “You’re right.”
Daddy bends down and we look each other in the eyes. We haven’t been this close in a long time, and my chest is so clogged with love for him that I can hardly breathe. “Carla Jean is a generous woman, and I know you’ll understand when I tell ya the barbecue is just for family. My wife cried for seven months straight after we lost Brittany Lynn. She’s still sufferin’ but was doin’ better until last Friday. Now she’s cryin’ again, and the last thing she needs is a big-city writer takin’ advantage of her emotions for some book.”
“I would never do that.” I still believe there’s a part of her that will recognize a part of me. Maybe she already does; she’s not the kind of person to invite strangers to family barbecues. One, she doesn’t trust anyone not born and raised in Marfa, and two, a family brawl could erupt at any given time and air dirty laundry. “You have to believe I would never upset her.”
“I don’t have to believe anything.” His eyes turn hard, and I recognize the look. It’s the same flash of anger he gets as he reaches for his pellet gun and aims at Skitter Brown’s dog dumping on his lawn. “I’m askin’ ya nice, leave Carla Jean be.”
I keep quiet even as his words shred me, and I want to beg him to stop hurting me.
“Take care of yourself,” he says, and wraps his arm around Momma, and they walk away from me. I feel like I’ve been hit in the chest with a wrecking ball. Each step takes them farther into the distance, and all I can do is watch.
If I have to listen to the intro music to 7th Heaven one more time, I’m going to throw a chair through the screen. At least that’s what I want to do, but I don’t, because I want to get promoted to concierge. I want Ingrid to recognize that I’m a good person now. Fighting the system doesn’t change anything; it’ll just get me demoted again. That’s not the direction I need to head in. I’ve been in PORC long enough. I know how it works. I get promoted to concierge when Raymundo gets promoted to director and Ingrid gets promoted to Southwest District Five judge when Judge Judy gets promoted to heaven. There’s no fast track. No work-around. No rules that I can bend and change. Edie Randolph Chatsworth-Jones has no more cachet than Brittany Lynn Snider. Hard to believe but true. She’s ruined my hair, talked to my enemy, and banished my dog to a life with the girl who can’t put her shoes on the right feet. If Rowan can’t take care of herself, how can she take care of my smoochy, kissy-face Magnus?
I glance at the aquarium and am tempted to look in on my impostor. Raymundo isn’t in the lounge right now, but there are four patients torturing me with Paradise Inc: Joey, John David, Clementine, and Remington. No, I did make up the last two. I learned my lesson with Ace.
Raymundo enters and does his usual. He bangs his club on the floor and says, “Can I have all y’all’s attention. This is our newest guest, Blossom.”
Good Lord, she looks more weed than Blossom. I guess that she’s in her late teens, and if there is one good feature about her, I don’t see it. Not her frizzy red hair, whiter-than-white skin, or orange freckles. Her jaw is set and her hands are clenched.
Oh boy. Hannah was a handful, but this girl is filled with rage. I move toward her and she looks up at me. Something in her brown eyes stops me.
“Blossom, this is my apprentice, Marfa.”
“Good God, that’s hideous,” she says.
I open my mouth to tell her I’ve seen better clothes in leper colonies, but I don’t. “Why are you at UMC?”
“You work here. Figure it out.”
I know why she’s here without checking with Raymundo. It’s in the desperation in her eyes. The hopelessness and pain.
We’ve never met, but I know her. She and I have stood at the same crossroad. She and I took the same dark path. I know the same cycle of depression and despair. I know the same quagmire of pain and darkness and feeling that life will never get better. I’ve heard people say that suicide is the easy way out, but I beg to differ. The planning is easy, but the follow-through is damn hard—and I should know.
I stand at a different crossroad now. I can walk away from this girl. I don’t have to tell her I know how she feels. I don’t have to try to help her. That’s not my job.
I’m just an apprentice concierge is all.
“Sometimes life really sucks,” I say. “Just when things are going good, something happens. Sometimes it’s the bad things people do to us. Sometimes it’s the bad things we do to ourselves.”
26
Life sucks.
I didn’t stick around Marfa after Daddy told me to leave Momma alone. I drove that red truck all the way back to Midland and put it in a storage unit. If that didn’t suck enough, I lost my old iPhone somewhere between the Paisano and the penthouse.
My first week back in Detroit, I don’t get out of bed and I don’t answer my phone. I curl up and pray to Jesus to make everything like it was before I went to Texas. I want a do-over. Just wipe away those two days in Marfa like they never happened. I pray like Momma did in the hospital. I plead and barter, but God doesn’t answer and I cry until there’s nothing left. I sleep for twelve hours at a time but wake up tired.
The second week, I stop praying and stand in front of the windows for hours, staring at the frozen world far below my feet. I don’t belong anywhere. I’m just an insignificant speck in a window. I called Dr. Barb and told her I have the flu and couldn’t make my last appointment. She believed me.