Lady Luck's Map of Vegas by Barbara Samuel

Author:Barbara Samuel [Samuel, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48691-2
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

India

When I come back to me, to now, I look at my mother. She's waiting, looking at me. “How I wish I could feel her the way you do.”

“I always tell you.”

“I know.” She shakes her head, smiles the faintest bit. “It's all right. It's what twins do. It's good that you can.”

Back in the car, I say, “When did you know that there was something really wrong with Gypsy?”

“A long time ago. How 'bout you?”

“I started thinking there was something wrong on that trip.”

“Her nightmares were terrible that time.”

“Yeah, but it wasn't that. She was odd that whole trip, just thinking strange things. Like Indians were aliens from outer space, and the crosses were their method of communication.”

Eldora says nothing. Her fingernails pluck at her skirt.

“Did you notice it, too?”

“I had other things on my mind. Unfortunately.” She opens her purse and takes out her Juicy Fruit. “Want some?”

“Sure.” The snow is starting to fly a little thicker through the trees, and I frown. “God, I hope we don't get stuck in a blizzard up here.”

“How far is it to Santa Fe?”

“Check the map.” I point to the glove box with my yellow gum wrapper. “It's around eighty from Las Vegas to Espanola as far as I can make out. We're more than halfway.”

“It'll be all right.” She folds the map. “She was afraid of me, you know. When she started getting delusional.”

I nod.

“It broke my heart. She was sure I was poisoning her food or setting traps for her.”

“I didn't know that. When was it?”

“Right before she ran away. I'd been trying to get her to a doctor for a couple of months, but your daddy wouldn't hear of it. He kept saying she was just different and he didn't want her labeled and—”

“I thought it was the drugs, making her so weird.”

“That's what he thought, too.”

I think back to those miserable days with Gypsy before she ran away. It was like something out of Go Ask Alice—she was drinking and drugging all the time, sleeping around, never coming home on time. She barely held on at school, passing with D's and the odd C. A's in Art, which was the only reason she kept going, I think. Art class was the one place, she told me later, where she felt the voices weren't totally trying to take her over. Even then, so young—fifteen, sixteen—she was winning awards and prizes for her work, her crosses and graveyards and neon signs and cactuses and sad-faced people.

And it wasn't like Gypsy was the only drinking, drugging, out-of-control teenager on the block. It was an epidemic, but this was the late seventies, and there wasn't much in place yet to get kids sobered up and back on track.

“How did you know it wasn't the drugs, Mom?”

She lifts a shoulder. “I didn't know, exactly. Just had my suspicions. Gypsy used to do little things that reminded me of my mother.”

“Like what?”

“Little things, really. Like sometimes when she'd shake her head like a horse snorting? Remember that? And the hand-wringing.

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