What To Keep

I shake my head. “I’m not. I’ve got to work, and I don’t have any extra money.”

She stuffs her hands in her pockets and looks hard at me. “Are you kidding? Someone loves you enough to leave you a house, all their things, and you aren’t going to go and look at them? You’re crazy.”

I think about telling her that my getting the house doesn’t have anything to do with love, but what’s the point? Grey Alexander didn’t leave me his house; some probate judge flung it to me because I’m from a small family.

“I don’t have the money to go,” I say again, and this is so true. Bill left me in debt, took almost everything good we owned. “Besides, Joe isn’t going to let me off for a week. The lawyer said he’d give me the name of a Realtor who would handle everything.”

Leanne sighs. “What’s a Supersaver cost? I never saw a house sell for anything without the owner being there. We sold our house up in Salt Lake after we moved down here and got screwed. You’d better get back there and take care of business.”

I stand, wish I hadn’t told her about the call. “I’d better get back to the pit before I get the ax.”

Leanne shakes her head, clucks her tongue and heads toward the kitchen.

I slip my time card in the clock, and the deep thunk clocks me out at 8:01 p.m. The Golden Nugget time office pulses with boredom, greasy concrete floors, and bright fluorescent lighting that shows too much reality. Up front the casino, restaurant, and lounge are all gold, red and satin under soft lighting. Back here, this is the truth. The timekeeper nods and I walk down the stairs into the parking lot. Furnacelike air engulfs me. Eight o’clock at night and it is still eighty-five degrees. For the next three months the desert heat will cook everyone slowly, in our own sweaty skins, like poached eggs. I open my car, go around and roll down all four windows, curse the air conditioner that gave out two months ago.

Twenty minutes later I’m sitting on the garage-sale couch I bought a week ago to replace the Ethan Allen one my ex-husband stole, along with all my underwear that he forgot to take out of the top dresser drawer and put on the floor when he was cleaning out our house.

Just for the hell of it, I remind myself I own a house in North Carolina. Christ, life can turn on a dime! On the drive home, I tried not to think about the house, the extra money, but I couldn’t help myself and decided as soon as I can sell the house, I’m going to move to a better apartment, or maybe even buy another home and get my car air-conditioning fixed.

I dig in my purse and find the orange tip envelope I picked up right before I left work. It feels fatter than normal and for one brief moment I feel joy. A big tip day, the phone call to Ron Tanner. What more could a girl want?

A twenty, a ten and two ones are wrapped around a pink paper. I unfold it. It’s one of those weak-ass carbon copies of a layoff notice—Reduction In Staff—signed by Joe Gamino, the dickhead.

Great! Stunned, yet not surprised since I’ve known he’s been after me for months, I go to the fridge and grab a Coors Light, twist off the top, listen to it sigh then take a big swig.

Over at the window, I pull back the thin drapes and rest the cool amber beer bottle against my cheek. Fired! Crap.

To make myself feel better, I think about the house in Greensville, how maybe it will sell quickly. It’s just got to.

When I was five my parents moved back to Greensville for two weeks, and we stayed at Magnolia Hall until our apartment was ready. I remember the house was white with bricks, really big and filled with antiques. At night my mother, father and I, along with my uncle, would sit on the porch that wrapped around the front. I played on the steps with my doll or ran out into the grass, trying to catch fireflies while the grown-ups’ whispers floated through the air.

After we moved into an apartment, and as my mother was unpacking the last box, she started crying and couldn’t seem to stop. Two days later my father announced we were going back to California, where it was cool in the summer, warm in winter, and maybe it would be a place where my mother might get her sanity back.

I never understood this two-week, six-thousand-mile trek; it is one of those mythical family stories that children aren’t allowed to enter, just watch from the outside and wonder about.

Most of all I remember the cool morning air feathering my face, touching the trees as the three of us walked to our car, me in between my mother, who was crying softly, and Dad, his hand wrapped around mine. I felt wounded for them that day, like now, aching and not knowing why, afraid of the unknown.

I let the drape fall, take another sip of beer and, for the first time in many months, I admit my life has turned to pure crap.

CHAPTER 2

Magnolia Hally

Greensville, NC

June 2000

Ron Tanner and I are in his black BMW headed down a magnolia-lined, gravel driveway. It’s been three days since I got fired from the Golden Nugget. That night I ended up drinking the last four beers in the fridge, sitting on the couch, in a beer-hazed stupor for, I guess, about an hour thinking about how my life had not just turned to crap, but how it had always been crap and I needed to do something about it. Leanne’s words kept thumping through my mind. How I’d get ripped off if I didn’t go back to sell the house. And I’m tired of people pissing on me.

I nodded off on the couch, then stumbled to bed, didn’t bother to take off my black pants and white dealer’s shirt until twelve the next day. When I got up, I walked down to the 7-Eleven and called the Golden Nugget, asked to speak to the blackjack pit boss and when Joe answered, I whispered, “You asshole,” then hung up, my hand shaking a little. I knew it was stupid and immature, but I did feel better.

I went home, brushed my teeth then sat on the couch wondering how I was going to pay the rent and feed myself. I dug in my purse and found my checkbook, thumbed through the register. Ten minutes later, and a hundred-and-eighteen dollars overdrawn from a subtraction error I’d made standing in line at Walgreen’s, I put my checkbook back in my purse.

I had one credit card that wasn’t maxed out and the thirty-two dollars I’d left on the coffee table. Without changing clothes, I slung my purse over my shoulder, walked back to the pay phone, called the Delta eight-hundred number, got a flight for $694.50, leaving at six-thirty the next morning, with a two-hour layover in Des Moines. Then I called Ron, the lawyer. I told him I’d be in Greensville tomorrow and could he pick me up from the airport? He put me on hold, came back and said he would, and that it was a good idea I was coming.

Now Magnolia Hall, a two-story brick house with white-trimmed porch and dull green shutters, sits at the end of the lane, looking much smaller than I remember.

I glance over at Ron. He doesn’t look like I thought he would, either. His black hair is cut short—I expected longer blond, for some reason. I guess because the last man I saw in Greensville had blond hair. It’s funny what our memories become and what they do to our perceptions.

Ron stops in the circle driveway, in front of the house. Closer, I can see someone has painted the bricks to make it look like the house still has green shutters. He shuts down the engine. The digital clock stays on—it’s three-thirty.

I stare through the tinted window, try to remember more about this house, but can’t. Ron gets out, comes around and opens my door.

“Thanks.” He’s parked in the shade of a huge magnolia and it’s relatively cool. There’s no breeze, no noise.

“This is it,” I say, glancing around. The yard is overgrown.

“Yes.”

“It’s pretty run-down.”

“I talked to the housekeeper. She said Mr. Alexander fell on hard times before he died. You never heard from him?”

“No.” I leave out that I might not have recognized the man if he had a sign around his neck on a deserted street. I’m sure Ron has heard too many stories, him being an attorney and all. I cross the yard to the porch, climb the stairs, turn around. Huge trees surround the house, cut the ground from the cloudless sky. The air smells green—unfamiliar, and I wish I could dig up more memories to take me back to the last time I was here, but it’s impossible. I was too little and it’s been so long. Besides, thirty-five years in a desert town has imprinted dust and cement on my soul.

Ron pulls my black carry-on out of the trunk.

“I’ll get that,” I say, feeling embarrassed I forgot my suitcase. He shakes his head, carries it up to the front door.

“Want me to put it inside?” He nods toward the door.

“No, thanks. It’s not heavy.”

Ron’s face is tan. I’d guess he’s about forty-five. Really mainstream America, clean-cut. Father and mother probably still play golf at some expensive country club, his two brothers, maybe a sister, all have families, dogs, the works.

He’s loosened his tie enough so he could undo the top button on his white-and-blue oxford shirt, but he hasn’t. I bet his wife picks up his shirts from the cleaners every Wednesday. She’s probably someone he met in college, who put him through law school by teaching third grade and is now in good standing with the Greensville Junior League. But there’s no ring on his left hand, not even a tan line.

“I have the key to the house,” he says, and digs in his pocket.

“Thanks for picking me up at the airport.”

Ron takes his hand out of his pocket. He walks to the edge of the steps, stands across from me. A tiny breeze brings his aftershave to me. It’s one of those citrusy, clean kinds. I imagine him splashing it on this morning, standing in front of his bathroom mirror, naked from the waist up, a towel wrapped around his somewhat slim, forty-five-year-old waist.

“This happens every once in a while,” he says.

“What?” I look at him. He’s staring at me, then he smiles.

“Houses dumped on unsuspecting, long-lost relatives.”