Driving west toward Idaho Springs from Denver, I was thinking about stopping at the Shell at the edge of town and picking up a pack of Camel Shorts, my favorite cigarettes of all time. I frowned, and the light dimmed, becoming yellow and artificial as I entered the Twin Tunnels. I was almost home. The ride to the Springs was only forty-five minutes in reality, but emotionally, it was like entering another world. The city had disappeared as I’d hit I-70, buildings giving way to long, green fields and eventually, if they were out, to herds of buffalo on either side, right as the mountains came into view, not long before the exit to Evergreen. Evergreen, which had turned closed-gate housing and yoga-loving long before Idaho Springs.
Then there was the steep climb down, the sheer drop of cliff, the new highway that led to Central City, which had once been beautiful. Full of old turn-of-the-century houses, and long-glass-doored businesses downtown, with ornate twists in the architecture lining the sides. A tourist trap, but a wonderful one; rock shops and faux-old-fashioned photography. I remembered going there with friends countless times, hitching and drinking and laughing as we held the newly minted black-and-whites of us dressed up like barmaids, feather boas wrapped around our long brown and white necks. Before the casinos. They provided jobs, but, alongside the Walmart in Evergreen, they changed everything. Central City had become a ghost town, the only occupied buildings the ones where you could gamble and get a steak dinner for $12.99 in the same territory I imagined the Arapaho once defending, paying with so many of their lives.
I rolled the window down to light a smoke, and the big, old mill came up on my right. This place. Of sorrow, of cigarettes, of babies born to teenagers who lit the tip of black eyeliners in the back of their old cars so it would go on smooth, heavy, one finger holding an eyelid down, drunk and oblivious to the rest of the world.
I slowed to exit, rolling over the small bridge that linked highway to town, and then the Safeway was on my left, the gas station where I used to hang out as a kid, bumming smokes off strangers. Then it was downtown, Beau Jo’s and the shiny coffee shop with the gorgeous tin roof that had come in when I was a teenager, where I’d bought coffee—and pills and weed from the local drug dealer, a kid named Margaritte, who I’d teased relentlessly in junior high.
Finally, on the other end, trailer park city on the left with its sea of pink flamingos, and my dad’s and cousin’s fading white houses on the right.
I parked and got out.
A few hours later, Debby was desperately trying to calm the four-year-old—Rachel—down enough to get her into bed, while the two-year-old sat next to me, propped in front of Dora the Explorer, one hand around her bottle like it was a Bud, the other, perched companionably on my arm. I cheers-ed her with my beer, and she giggled.
“I’m out,” Jack said.
Debby looked up, blinked. “Out?”
“Yeah, me and Carl are going to Tommyknocker’s.”
Carl was standing behind Jack, an awkward shadow.
“I thought Kari and I could go out for a change,” she responded, bouncing her kid up and down.
Jack narrowed his green-blue eyes. “I don’t want you running around with her.”
“And I don’t want you running around with Carl,” Debby retorted.
In answer, Jack turned around, the sound of the screen-door slamming behind him like a bullet.
Debby started crying, and Rachel crawled up into the La-Z-Boy with her, curling into her lap, she and Rachel sobbing together until Rachel stopped and ran her small, chubby fingers down her mom’s face, telling her not to cry.
I felt like hell.
“Honestly, Debby? Maybe I should just find shit out about my mom solo. Not drag you into it. He already hates it when you and I go off on our own.”
We’d been discussing my talk with Squeaker, my next steps, when Jack came in. Debby had made the mistake of updating him, telling him she wanted to take me to a spiritualist she and her mom liked in Denver. He’d told her that I could go on my own, and they’d argued.
“What? No. Don’t let that fool,” she said, her foot flipping in the direction that he left in, “influence you.”
Her kid started hiccupping, then her eyes began fluttering closed.
“Besides, I think it’ll help you move forward to know what happened to your mother,” Debby said.
I made a sigh of pure exasperation. “That’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it for Daddy.” I stopped, sipped. “Not everybody got to be like you, Debby. I don’t need a boyfriend or a college degree to be happy. I’ve moved forward, I’m fine. Shit.”
“Don’t you yell at me too,” she said, her voice wavering.
I sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just … look at the crap it’s causing between you and Jack. I don’t want to make that worse,” I said, glancing at her sleeping child.
“I already told you not to worry about him. Kari, your mom’s ghost, she’s been like, unleashed. You can’t change that.”
I was silent.
“And Jack and me … we gotta have it out sometime.”
My stomach tightened. I had begged her to come live with me, countless times. But I didn’t want to be the reason they split. Or had some crazy argument in front of the kids—worse than what they’d just seen. Growing up, I heard countless tales of men beating their wives in front of their kids, beating their kids. Or not coming home at all. Or staying at home, drinking and doing nothing else. There were a thousand ways to turn your life into a living hell, and though Jack and Debby weren’t perfect, I’d do anything I could to not let them slide into that.
The images on the TV were strange and soupy in my sleepy, half-drunk state. I felt angry then, tired. I wished Debby had never found that bracelet. That I’d never touched it. That my mother had never left. Or that my father had never started drinking. That he’d never gotten into that accident. Ended up with brain damage. My God, what had happened to my mother? If she was a ghost, surely, she was long dead.
I was half-asleep when my eyes flew open.
“Debby,” I said, “don’t cops have records of shit?”
Her eyes sparkled. “They do.”
I nodded. Debby knew a lot about cops, and records and all that—all our cousins were cops and she and Jack hung out with them, down at the Derby. And her husband worked security at the prison.
“What if I went down to the station in town—wouldn’t they have records about my mom? And anything to do with her?”
“They would. And you’re her kid, so they’d have to release whatever they got to you.”
I nodded again. “I’m doing this tomorrow.”
“You mean we are.”
I laughed. “Jack’s not going to like that,” I said.
“Too bad!” she responded, and took a long, rebellious sip of her Bud, choking a bit at the end of it, her little, chubby arm coming around to block the cough.
I shrugged and went back to the blue light of the TV, my eyes closing again for real this time.