Three days later she flew private to Provo. (She never planned calling back. She’d try her luck and just drop by.) It felt like half a fool’s errand but she didn’t care anymore. She was biding time till she met with “Snoop” Raskin, Livia’s mucky-muck shamus.
High in the air, she remembered…
Tustin, where she grew up. County of Orange. He was a few years older, a football player. Gorgeous. He’d been after her awhile, all the boys were but she never put out. One time a jock called her a dyke and Ronny got him in a headlock until he begged apologies through rank, ugly tears. Dusty had a top-secret girlfriend, an Australian foreign exchange student, and was aloof to such chivalries. It was the year of Grease; when she and Miranda were in bed they used to laugh about which of them was John Travolta and which was Olivia Newton-John. Boy oh boy, that Melbourne girl swallowed her up. It was the first time Dusty ever came with anyone, and the volcanic force of that brand-new unconfused knowledge of who she was at the core of her being scared her shitless. She nearly died when it was time for Miranda to go home. Out of shame, loneliness, and desperation, she ran straight to the football player’s arms, and let him do all the things boys do (which was almost nothing, compared to Miranda). She never came with Ronny, not once, but didn’t stop trying, right up to when she got pregnant. Her mother pulled her from school before she started to show.
How she wanted that little girl…
She knew Reina wouldn’t be moved by her entreaties so she cried to her dad but he didn’t stand a chance against that woman either. He was the cuckold in a film noir, his life having effectively ended upon an arrest for exposing himself to an undercover cop at a public toilet in Mission Viejo. Reina somehow—somehow—saved his job as branch manager of City National in Newport. (Dusty wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d slept with someone at the bank to make that happen.) Now her mother had him where she wanted him, which was where she had everyone.
She read Dusty’s diaries and stole the hidden cache of overheated letters from Miranda. One night, when father and daughter attempted a final, tender plea to keep the baby, Reina exploded with rage and said they were perverts that filled her with disgust, she would never abide her grandchild being raised by a faggot mom or a faggot gramps, and if they dared bring it up again she’d publish the diary of what Dusty’d done down under and the pornographic letters too, she’d dump a thousand xeroxed copies on the schoolyard before marching into City National with Arnold’s arrest record, so all the world could see how much she’d suffered, living under the same roof with two weak, conniving, promiscuous queers.
It wasn’t until years later that she learned her father had taken an overdose of pills a week after Reina’s screed; Dusty was told he’d been hospitalized for heart problems. Eventually they separated but never divorced. (Reina had a lover all those years — a Mormon! — who called her his “sister-wife” and assured that he would know her in the afterworld by “Sarah,” her celestial name. She drunkenly told Dusty all about it, the day after Arnold died.) Even before she got famous, Dusty would send him money. God, he wrote the saddest letters. It was pretty much all he did in those last few years, apart from slowly dying of liver failure — write sad and beautiful letters to his daughter from the Skid Row SRO where he would succumb, at fifty-six. She wondered what she’d done with them…
Provo—
The neat grid of houses sat on the hem of a serious mountain, as the neighborhoods tended to. She didn’t want to just pull right up. She asked the driver to stop so she could walk the rest of the way.
The streets were empty and the residences large and well-kept, with Disneyfied lawns and facades. The Swerdlows’ had a rustic frontier theme, the only home on the block that departed from the generic. She smiled to herself; that actually struck her as “kind of Ronny.”
Powering through her trepidation, she strode up and rang the bell. The door swung open and they just stared. He beamed at her through his startle.
“Well, hey there! Sam told me you called.”
“Hi, Ronny! I am so sorry to drop in on you like this!”
“Not a problem! You know, I tried calling you back but it just kept ringing.”
Oh! The free-fall sorrow of it killed her and she started to bawl. He hadn’t really figured out why she’d gotten in touch but knew some of it probably had to do with being of the age when life sandbags you — suddenly, you’re a forced enlistee in that army of brave, conflicted, slap-happy souls not yet ready for the finish line but sure as shit chagrined to have caught a glance of the endgame’s blazing lights not too far off, like a fatal, glittering Oz.
As they held each other, she heard the delicious, tumbling sound of life behind them. Dishes and voices jostling…
His tiniest girl shyly snuck up and peered.
“Why is she crying?”
“Aw, she’s just tired from her trip.”
(She loved that he actually said Aw—like Jimmy Stewart would have.)
“Hi there!” said Dusty, yanking on the throttle of acting chops, to pull out of her tailspin.
“Aggie, this is Dusty. We went to school together. Say hi!”
Aggie retreated behind her dad — then Sam popped up.
“Well, look who’s here! Welcome!”
The other daughters scrummed to the door wide-eyed, to Mom’s laughing reproach. Sam hooked her arm in Dusty’s and led her in, adding that most beloved of moviedom tropes—
“You’re just in time for dinner!”
—
The girls were aflutter — the oldest was seventeen — and anxious to know when to expect the sequel to Bloodthrone. Dusty said soon but swore them not to tell. If they Instagrammed or even talked about it she’d be fired. The warning got them excited and they promised that her secret was safe.
She lied about being in Salt Lake for Sylvia & Marilyn, as if anyone cared — they were so happy to have her as a guest in their home. The girls couldn’t get over their dad knowing her; he definitely rose a few notches in coolness. It wasn’t Thanksgiving but sure felt like it: the white tablecloth and platters, the sweating, burnt-orange turkey, the corn on the cob, biscuits, mashed potatoes and perfect gravy, the effortless care and generosity of spirit. It wasn’t even put on, because they didn’t know she was coming! She wondered if that was a “Mormon country” thing or an archetypal American thing or just the bountiful way that certain people — kind, decent, giving people— chose to live their lives. She never had that experience as a child, remotely.
Aggie asked if she was married and got swatted by one of the sisters. When Sam said, “You are though, no?” the eldest rolled her eyes. The actress said yes, she was, and the middle child piped up, “To Allegra. We saw the wedding online.” Dusty said, “You did?” and the older girl said, “Big Sur! We couldn’t really see anything — I hope you don’t think it’s rude that we watched! — but you could see the people arriving. Sort of. Some of them.” “They should have used a drone!” said the middle one. “They didn’t have drones then,” chastised the elder. “It was before drones.” Sam told the girls not to talk so much but Dusty was utterly charmed. When Aggie asked, “You’re married to another girl?” the ponytailed brood pounced. “You are such an idiot, you know that she’s married. To a woman, not a girl.”