“Anyway, Beula at the desk—you remember Beula?” He didn’t wait for her to reply. “She told her that under no circumstances could we give out counselors’ home addresses. The woman said she’d find you herself and walked out.”
Now, Winnie mentally shook herself before answering Samuel’s question. “I have a job, silly—being a mom.”
Samuel shrugged. “It would be cool to help people.”
“Well, I help them now,” she said quickly. “Just in a different way.” She hated the defensiveness in her voice, hated that Samuel heard it, too.
“Chill out, Mom, I get it. You plan parties now, right? To raise money for the homeless.”
“Well, no,” Winnie said tightly. “I sometimes help with the charity events, but now I manage the people who...manage the people. If that makes sense.”
The server unloaded five plates onto the table in quick succession, and in the face of imminent sugar, Samuel stopped asking questions. He was still a kid and she could control some situations, but how long would it be before he started asking questions about why his dad never really looked his wife in the eye?
6
JUNO
For one brief and awful year, Juno and Kregger had lived in Alaska. It was the seventies, and in America, lust was on the menu for the decade. Juno and Kregger were wet for adventure, hard for travel. They sold everything in their little studio apartment, gave their parrots and cacti away to friends, and bought two one-way tickets to Anchorage. The pull was the Wild West, and they were young enough to still want to play. When Juno remembered the cold and isolation she experienced that year, she would shiver. But back then, back in grand ol’ 1977 when they arrived at the meager airport, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline had just been completed and oil was flowing. Kregger planned to work the oil, and Juno planned on getting a job wherever they’d have her. She was working on her thesis, and Anchorage had seemed like the place to buckle down and get it done. So while Kregger worked those grueling hours, Juno shriveled in the Alaskan winter like a cock in the cold. It wasn’t at all what she’d pictured; Anchorage was a muddy little place with gambling dens, drug houses, and street walkers, as Juno’s nan called them. Half wild and half civilized. Late at night, men would shoot guns into the sky to blow off steam. She’d be so afraid on the nights Kregger was gone that she’d carry her blanket and pillow to the closet and sleep on the floor under the sweeping hems of their clothes. When summer came, things got moderately better. She was able to walk to the city center without fear of losing her nose to the cold and got a part-time job at the Piggly Wiggly.
The tired little grocery store was on Spenard Road where massage parlors lined the street all in a row like little duckies. Juno had suspected Kregger stopped by once or twice, but she never asked and felt better not knowing. Other than getting your wang wanked, there was little to do. Squalid little bars, adult bookstores, and houses of worship all shared a street just like Jesus would have preferred. There was a drive-in theater, they’d been excited to discover. They went twice in that year: the first time it had been winter and the exhaust fumes from the cars rose into the air until it was impossible to make out the actors’ faces on the screen. And they’d gone in the summer when the days were endless and night never fully arrived and found they couldn’t see a damn thing on the screen because it was too bright. They’d laughed all the way home that time.
The memories would often come with a strong mixture of revulsion and nostalgia. The Fancy Moose on Friday nights, and Club Paris for special occasions, lying alone on a ratty brown sofa for days while the snow caked itself around the tin box they called a house. Juno had begged Kregger to take her home, home to civilization and chain fast food. Home to the glamorous hot squalor of New Mexico. They’d stuck it out for the year—due process, as Kregger called it. The last time she had felt truly claustrophobic was in Anchorage, Alaska, from 1977 to 1978.
And then there was now.
The brother being in the house was bad—bad for everyone, but mostly bad for Juno, who had taken to hiding. She didn’t like him; she could agree with Nigel on that. For one thing, he never left the house—lurking in the family room and downstairs in Nigel’s den until late, keeping Juno up with his drunk laughter. He pretended to leave the house in the mornings under the guise of “beating the pavement to look for work” but he really snuck back in shortly after the family left. Since Dakota had arrived, they’d taken to leaving the alarm off during the day, which was less of a hassle for her to come and go, she supposed.
Dakota only cried now when he got off the phone with his wife. And with tears like that, she was fairly certain Manda wasn’t taking him back. She’d seen him passed out on the sofa once, a dozen mini bottles scattered around the remote like confetti. He must have cleaned it all up by the time Nigel got home because she didn’t hear explosive yelling. He was taking advantage of their charity and making no attempt at all to find a job, despite what he told his sister and brother-in-law. And Juno found herself claustrophobic, desperate to get away and breathe fresh air. He was imposing but stupid. A giant, looming dummy. When Winnie conversed with him she crooned, and when Nigel spoke to him he bit down and spoke through his teeth. Sam avoided his uncle altogether. From what Juno pieced together, there’d been a fight a couple years ago, well before she’d moved in. Sam had witnessed the whole thing. Nigel had taken flak from the family, being that Dakota was a guest in his house at the time, though an unwelcome one even then, and Winnie had sided with them, staying with her sister for a week and taking Sam with her.
Juno found it a bit maddening—why marry a man and then serve loyalty to the family you’d left for that man? As far as Juno was concerned, when you got married you started a new family with the person of your choosing: leave and cleave. You had to fight it out together, figure it out as a team. And when the extended family tried to get involved, as they usually did, you were to tell them to mind their stinking business. Either way, she was forced to share a house with the big buffoon, and she wasn’t happy about it.
She was lying with her head nestled on her favorite blanket and eating stale Cheez-Its when she heard a familiar suction of air followed by the boom of the front door closing. Sitting up in bed, Juno listen for any further noises but heard none. Good, he was gone. Maybe today he’d actually find that job. First things first, she thought, winding her hair into a bun—she had to pee.
After relieving herself, she stood at the sink, brushing her teeth vigorously for several minutes. Juno could still remember the days of her own deep depression, when she would go for days without bathing or eating a thing. She’d lost near a hundred pounds and never put it back. If only Kregger could see her now, thin and lithe. She let out a little whoop of laughter, looking at her body in the mirror. Kregger had never been attracted to thin women; he’d probably tell her to eat a stick of butter.
It was when she looked at her face that the laughter was snatched from her throat. The right stuff was all there: nose, eyes, chin, mouth—but the way her skin hung was unfamiliar. She regretted looking in the mirror; she always managed to avoid it; what happened this time? As she headed down to the kitchen, she made a vow never to look in the mirror again.