Page 87 of In a Far-Off Land
It was my turn to do something noble, but when it came right down to it, I couldn’t. I took the cowardly way out, God forgive me. “Give me some time,” I said, forging a smile and feeling like a heel when I saw the hope flash in his face. Time was something I didn’t have any more of.
Always the gentleman, he hopped out and loped around the car, opening my door and helping me out. I stood on my tiptoes—I really meant to kiss his cheek, but my lips touched the corner of his mouth, and he turned to me, enough for a real kiss. You might even call it our first real kiss, if you were sappy that way. Me, I called it a goodbye kiss.
I closed my eyes, my cheek on his, breathing his scent of tobacco and soap. I wanted more than anything to tell him I loved him back and always would. That I was doing this for him. But I couldn’t.
Add that to my list of regrets.
I opened the door of my room to find Lana wearing my favorite green dress and suede pumps. She jumped like a jackrabbit when she saw me.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said. “The reward is old news.”
She covered her disappointment well. “Oh, Minerva, I’m so glad you’re back. You can’t imagine what I’ve been through.” She put her arms around me and kissed my cheek, her lips not quiet meeting my skin. “I’ve been so worried.”
“Worried enough to sell a sob story to the papers.” I twisted away from her. I wasn’t going to let her off easy.
She stepped back and dropped the act. “You have to understand,Minerva, how it was. The press, they were everywhere. What’s a girl supposed to do?” She looked at me with doe eyes. “Really, I didn’t mean any harm.”
I pulled my cardboard valise from under my bed. I wouldn’t need much, but I wasn’t going to leave Lana with everything. I thumbed through my closet, where it looked like Lana had been making free. A pair of silk stockings with a small run, white cotton gloves. I’d leave most of the dresses, but I was taking all my shoes.
And something else. “How much did you get?” I interrupted Lana’s attempts at explanation.
She closed her mouth fast.
I went to her side of the closet. The tea tin hidden behind her cigarettes held a little more than a hundred dollars. “This is all of it?”
“I had debts, Minerva.” She pouted. “You know how it is.”
I sure did. I took out as much as I needed. Not enough for what she’d done to me, but it was the least she could do when I was leaving her most of my wardrobe. I was packed in minutes.
I turned to her. “You can do one thing to make it up to me.”
“Anything,” she said as if she meant it.
I told her and she agreed. It wouldn’t be hard for her. She never had liked Max all that much.
I’ve thought a lot about Lana since then. I could have been like her, if Max hadn’t found me, so I can’t judge, can I? And I hope, in my better moments, that she will find another way. In my worse moments, I hope her face sags and she gets bunions.
——————
As the bus lumbered out of the twilit City of Angels, I curled up in my seat and closed my eyes. I’d tried so hard. I’d put in everything I had and lost it all. I’d lost my self-respect at the Rose, my hopes anddreams at Roy Lester’s—my heart I lost to Max, although he didn’t know it. I’d even left my mama’s wedding ring behind in a dirty hockshop. I was going back home with nothing. Not even myself. I wasn’t the girl Mama and Papa had loved. That girl was gone for good, and I wasn’t sure who had taken her place. Maybe I should have been angry—at myself or Lana or Louella—but anger didn’t come.
As the road hummed beneath me, I finally realized something. I’d told myself all along I was doing this for Papa and Penny, but that was a lie. Sure, I wanted to help them. But if I were bone-deep honest, I’d have admitted to myself long ago that I’d wanted to show them—Penny, Ruth, Alex, all of them in Odessa—that I was worth more than they thought. I’d wanted to convince myself, too. But I hadn’t. I’d done wrong—sinned, I guess you’d call it—against Papa and God and everybody. I’d sinned, and now there was nothing I could do to make up for it. Nothing to balance the ledger.
I must have finally slept, because I opened my eyes to a stiff neck and the rising sun glinting off coral and gold buttes with traces of snow. A road sign welcomed me to Utah.
“Thought you’d never wake up,” the man beside me said with a whine in his voice. He had a sharp face and beady eyes like one of the gophers that popped in and out of holes on the prairie.
I moved as close to the window as I could, putting a little space between his stale cigar breath and my face.
“Where’s a pretty little thing like you headed?”
“Not far,” I answered, pulling out my purse and compact.
“Salt Lake City for me. Got a nice place there,” he said, his slippery glance running down to my ankles. He asked questions—Did I have a fella? How about family?— and I answered them as politely as I could, but all the time I was thinking of Papa. What would he say when I showed up at his door? Would he even let mein the house? And Penny. I’d be the talk of Odessa, and not in the way I’d always hoped.The shame of it,she’d no doubt say.
The weasel-faced man didn’t let up, regaling me with stories of his childhood home—a miner’s hut in Montana—and his favorite pet—a snake he kept in a jar—as we passed through flatlands of purple rock and green scrub grass surrounded by shadowed peaks splashed with white. I nodded and murmured at all the right times, I think. It was better than being alone with my thoughts.
The sun set over the Great Salt Lake, streaking the sky with magenta and turning the water to gold. The far side was a dark line of mountains. Rays of light reached up into the sky. My eyes prickled with tears for no reason at all.
