Sloane Decker wore an unfettered outfit of her own, bold creation. Turquoise cowboy boots with silver-tipped toes. Purple tights beneath a wedding-cake skirt made of tiers of white lace. A ruby-red polyester blouse with enormous belled sleeves, a black velvet choker with a tiny bell sewn in the center. And on her head, a tightly knitted purple cap with multicolored ribbons dangling like long locks of hair. The eight-year-old’s dark brown hair—Javier’s hair—was stuffed beneath the cap. When set free, it tumbled down her slim back in heavy, undulating waves.
When Lily named her daughter for the Aviator, she hadn’t realized the perfection of her choice, that in Ireland sloan had been used to refer to a warrior. Although Lily’s warrior no longer permitted her mother to hold her hand, that September morning Lily was allowed to walk beside her daughter along the dirt road leading from their lot in the Yucca Terrace Trailer Park to the bus stop. Lily carried Sloane’s mug of hot chocolate and her own cup of coffee. Sloane carried the framed photo wrapped in layers of protective newspaper.
“I’m so happy this morning,” Sloane said, the bright polish of her boots’ toes catching the sun with each step. She twirled, and her skirt lifted like flower petals in a breeze.
They waved at arthritic Mrs. Henderson, who slowly descended the shaky metal steps of her trailer in her pink chenille bathrobe, headed to retrieve her morning newspaper.
“I’m happy, too,” Lily said, taking a sip of her coffee, which was cooling quickly. “Here,” she said when they reached the spot by the long line of mailboxes where the school bus paused each morning. “I’ll hold the photo. You drink your hot chocolate.”
Lily had felt a brief flutter of reluctance when Sloane announced that she wanted to take the photo to illustrate the essay she’d written about her mother. Still, Lily resisted the impulse to squelch Sloane’s plans. She didn’t want for the girl’s enthusiasm to be in any way diminished. Sloane was proud of her mother, and Lily’s daughter would not be made to feel shame for any innocent act—ever.
It was an eight-by-ten black-and-white portrait of Lily in full showgirl regalia, standing next to Tom Jones. His arm was about her bare waist, and his fingertips pressed into her soft flesh. Ruby Wilde wore cuffs of rhinestones, a wide fan of feathers at the crown of her head, a silver beaded G-string, fishnet stockings, and heels covered in a mosaic of mirrors. The photograph was autographed: For my favorite pussycat. LOVE! Tom Jones. At least Lily’s breasts were covered; it was an outfit that had been designed for less risqué performances and public appearances.
“They won’t know who Tom Jones is.”
“Then I’ll tell them,” Sloane said with a kind of confidence Lily could only envy. “I can even sing one of his songs! And besides, he’s famous!” Sloane added. “And you are too, Mom.”
The bus brakes shrieked, and Sloane traded her mother an empty mug for the photograph. She even let her mother kiss her cheek before she bounded up the steps. The driver saluted Lily.
Lily watched until the bus disappeared around the corner, and then she walked back to their trailer to finish getting ready for work. At first, Lily and Sloane had stayed on at the hacienda, where Jack and the Aviator could help with childcare. Then, when Sloane was ready to enter kindergarten, Jack’s connections had won Lily a job at the Santa Fe Opera. Lily and her daughter moved sixty-five miles north, to the outskirts of Santa Fe.
She worked as an apprentice in the costume department, researching, designing, and creating costumes, wigs, and props. She’d traded applause and power-packed casino bands for backstage creativity, and it suited her. As a lowly apprentice, Lily wasn’t paid much, and Santa Fe was exorbitantly expensive. Nevertheless, she hoped eventually to rise to a level at the opera where she could afford to move herself and her daughter out of the trailer park and into a small house. For now, she was satisfied.
The textbook for Jack’s Friday afternoon graduate seminar in deviant behavior sat squarely in the middle of Lily’s coffee table, next to her mother’s palmistry book. When she could, Lily drove with Sloane to Albuquerque for the weekend, and although Lily was nothing close to a graduate student, she enjoyed sitting in on Jack’s lectures and classroom discussions.
The Aviator was unabashedly pleased that Lily was “using her mind,” and although she wasn’t yet ready to admit it to him, she was considering applying to the university and taking at least one class each semester. It was psychology that intrigued her—if only as a means of trying to comprehend the players in her life, those people represented by the myriad lines of influence in her palm.
Lily refilled her coffee cup and went to sit on the steps. She wore her hair long, caught up on the sides with a length of creamy lace, and at most she briskly, scantily coated her eyelashes in mascara. Lily listened to the soft tinkling of her capiz wind chime, watched the Nelsons’ fluffy gray cat amble across the road. The house finches chimed in with their intricate arias, and the scent of dinner sifted through the screen door, making her mouth water. She’d filled the Crock-Pot with chicken, celery, onions, and carrots so that when she got home, there would be a rich broth waiting, tender meat falling from the bone. Simon would join them, bringing Sloane’s favorite dessert of rocky road ice cream, and Lily would steam some rice. And then the three of them would sit down to dinner and share the news of their days.
Simon worked as a carpenter in the scenery department of the opera, building elaborate sets from often sketchy, incomplete plans. He could literally make dreams reality—this, Lily knew from having watched him over the course of the past year. His wildly curly, sun-bleached blond hair threw sparks as he worked, and his lean limbs were accustomed to hard physical labor. Simon could fix anything. Anything. Maybe even Lily.
He smelled intoxicatingly of freshly sawn wood. His fingertips when he touched her were wounded, rough from labor, and he’d introduced her to Tom Waits’ guttural, blindingly beautiful poetry masquerading as song. And Simon made Lily laugh. Laugh until she begged for mercy. Laugh until it felt as though she’d done five hundred sit-ups. He made up stories—wild, exuberant, improbable, and outlandish stories. He was easy with Sloane, and she was easy with him, journeying alongside him through the vibrant colors of his imagination, worlds populated by inanimate objects come to life, animals who stumbled about just as badly as their human counterparts. He’d also taught Sloane to hammer and drill, and together they were building a sled for when winter draped a thick blanket of snow over the shoulders of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Santa Fe.
Lily hadn’t read Simon’s palm. She never would, although she knew he was there, a finely etched line in her own palm. When Lily had first spotted Simon’s interest in her, she told him that before anything could begin, they’d have a long conversation. “Full disclosure,” she’d called it, and then she had watched as Simon tried to hide his trepidation.
She gave him honest Lily, not a mirage. He was her first, after Javier, and she hadn’t hidden anything—not her past’s freeway pileup of death and loss, the serial rapes, the confused push and pull of Javier. And then she’d told Simon to go, not to see her or speak with her for at least a week.
Lily had waited. Waited for her words, the images they carried on their backs, to bleed into the soil of Simon. She waited until Simon truly knew who she had been, if not who she was.
When he came back to her with clear-eyed certainty, she hadn’t quite known how she felt about it. He was absurdly convinced that he understood her, said he’d known pain too, that everyone was damaged in some way. But Lily knew that he couldn’t possibly understand her. Not this early in the game, if ever, and not any more than she could ever understand him. Who understood anyone, truly? But she was willing to try—to take a risk, as Jack had coached her. And, Simon had received the approval of both the Aviator and Jack, which gave her a sense of hopefulness.
Lily longed for the respite of a man, the abiding sense of acceptance and belonging she hoped a lover might give her. But she was also afraid. Lily was afraid that Simon was nice. And she was afraid that, for her, nice would always be dull. Nice would be placid waters, cloudless skies, temperature-controlled rooms, and cookie-cutter housing developments with well-maintained lawns. Nice would not thrill; nice would not possess her, make her lose herself, starve her of breath. Nice would not be enough.
A few nights ago, she’d put Joni Mitchell’s Blue on the turntable after dinner, and the three of them danced free-form to Mitchell’s splendid, soaring voice. When the needle reached “A Case of You,” Lily had slowed her steps and let go of the others’ hands, left Sloane and Simon to dance together. She stood against the wall, watching them and listening as Mitchell sang of her fear of the devil, her attraction to men who weren’t afraid. That’s it, Lily had thought—the menacing, rumbling, lightning-filled thunderhead of Javier. When Simon lifted Sloane off of her feet and spun her, giggling and red faced, Lily had feared she didn’t deserve him.
She drained the last of her coffee and set the mug on the step beside her. This weekend was the party at Jack and the Aviator’s, in celebration of their tenth anniversary. Vivid was leaving Wild!, her Vegas dress boutique, in competent hands so that she could come for a week-long visit, and Rose was driving out with Vivid, bringing her twin three-year-old boys. Dee was flying in from Oregon with the husband none of them had yet met, and Jack was in seventh heaven, wholly consumed by the marvelous press of preparations. He called practically every night to tell her of changes he’d made to the menu or decorations. Last night, he’d proposed individualized marzipan sculptures for each guest. Lily could easily imagine the Aviator’s patient, put-upon expression.
Sloane had made Jack and the Aviator a card, since store-bought cards didn’t celebrate the anniversary of two grandfathers, and Lily sewed rich, satiny vests for each man. Jack’s had pearl buttons and was made of a midnight-blue brocade patterned with white cranes in flight. For the Aviator, Lily had chosen a conservative emerald-green material with a pronounced basket weave, and she’d found black, leather-clad buttons to give it a subtle zip. Sloane threaded plastic beads that looked like throat lozenges onto lengths of red yarn for each of her grandfathers, and Lily knew that the Aviator would wear Sloane’s bracelet proudly.
Lily stood, opened the screen door, and paused, looking into their cozy dollhouse home. Floating in one corner of the living room ceiling were angel’s wings Lily had made of papier-mâché and white feathers. They were a firm reminder of the power of guardian angels—of the human variety.
Lily rinsed her mug and set it in the sink. Despite all of her uncertainty about her future, she felt a steady sense of peace. Peace came from this home, her home. A home filled with Sloane’s effervescence and full-throated potential. A home that held the sheer beauty of the parts of Sloane that were so clearly Lily, unscathed.