Lady Luck's Map of Vegas: A Novel by Barbara O'Neal

Author:Barbara O'Neal [O'Neal, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2024-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

We ride in silence for a long time, passing the odd house, a tiny village hidden in the hills, a skinny dog, the rare car, usually an older version of something, or a pickup. The mountains surround us, purply blue and mysterious against dark skies. The emptiness feels lonely. We round a turn, and the only thing standing on the hill is a cross with bright-yellow ribbons flying in the wind.

“God, this is lonely country,” I comment. “Why did we come this way back then?”

“It was an accident.”

“An accident?”

She shrugs. “Yeah. A big pile-up closed I-25, and this was the only way to go. I’m glad now, even though it took so long. It’s like another country up here, you have to admit.”

“And everything Gypsy does artistically comes out of this road. Isn’t that odd? How one day all those years ago should have made such an impression?”

She’s quiet for a little while. “I don’t understand anything about her mind. Not one single thing. I’ve read and read and listened and listened and”—a shrug—“it’s just not in me, I guess. I just don’t understand.”

“I don’t think anybody does.”

“Your daddy seemed to.”

I shake my head. “No, he was just more patient.” Then I add, “Than either one of us.”

“I’m afraid you inherited my attitudes toward illness, baby.” She touches my wrist, lets me go. “It’s hard to know what to do for a person who’s sick.”

“Especially someone—” I halt. “When she would be so afraid. So afraid.”

My mother nods. Then she leans forward, pointing. “Oh, look! It’s the graveyard! Stop, stop!”

It’s the graveyard from my dream, spread out on the top of a hill, far from anything. We get out, and both of us shiver in the brisk wind coming up from the valley. I take out a red sweater that Jack brought me from Ireland the last time he went. Its cottony warmth is the perfect weight. My mother needs me to open the trunk so she can get her coat out, and she shimmies into it with a “Brr!”

“Do you think we should go in?” I ask. It’s fenced to keep cows out, but there are two of them inside anyway peacefully munching grass between headstones.

“I like cows,” my mother says. “They’re so cute. I like their eyes.”

“They’re stupid, though.”

“Not too stupid. They outsmarted the fence.” She strikes out through the long dry grass toward the gate, and I follow, thinking if anyone yells at us, it will be her fault.

Within, she pauses and looks around. “I know why she paints it.”

“Me, too.” We walk along a line of graves for children, every single one of them piled high with pinwheels and plastic flowers and dolls and toys. They’re vividly bright in the dark day—pinks and purples and yellows and oranges celebrating the fact that this child once walked the earth and lived here and was loved and is remembered. “It’s so joyful.”

My mother reaches out to set a pinwheel spinning, silver and red and turquoise. “I don’t know how anyone bears to lose a child.

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