Milk Read Free Page A

of the Alta Vista. There’s somebody ahead of me, an elderly woman in a pale, thin gown. “They give me tumblers of bourbon or they drug me,” she says into the receiver. “Um-hmm. Or I’m shot up with something, a truth serum sometimes. There might be a group of us strapped to one of those circular laundry lines and we’re forced to march round and round, like donkeys bringing up water from a well. We’re to walk until somebody slips. Darling, somebody always slips. Some of us have already slipped and are on crutches, some of us have lost our minds. There are nooses around our necks. Nooses rigged with razor blades.”
    She hangs up the phone, walks blithely past me. Maybe my father is right about this place.
    â€œCan I do something? Help you back to your room?” I offer.
    â€œDarling, I’m fine.”
    I fumble through the phone book—I’ve got to look up old friends, somebody , I’ve got to talk to somebody other than the residents at the Alta Vista. Maggie Devoe—no listing. Of course, she’s probably married now, might have taken her husband’s name. Technically, she is a cousin of mine, the relationship so distant it went unacknowledged by both our families. I picture Maggie’s face, sarcastic, smirking—a face twenty years younger. I have no idea what she looks like now but I keep picturing cutoffs, T-shirt, hoop earrings. What we wore in high school. Thumbs out, hitchhiking to or from our latest adventure; squished smokes in our back pockets.
    I could call Maggie’s parents, still listed on Lorraine, I see, but I won’t. Anymore than she’d call my father.
    I move on to old boyfriends. Gregg, the one I most want to call. To see, to sleep with. A voice in me says: call him, quick, before you get any bigger. Call him before you chicken out. Call him. Call him.
    Feeding quarters into the pay phone, I try number after number; the one listed in the phone book leads to another and another. (“That number has been changed. Please make a note of it,” says a recorded female voice that ever so slightly hinges on irritation.)
    This is what desperate women do when they’re drunk and it’s late at night—they call old boyfriends.
    Only I don’t have the excuse of drunkenness, just plain old loneliness. As I dial the last number, pigeons coo in the palm trees overhead, not like the racket they make during the day. Gregg’s phone rings. Panic: what if he’s married? Surely he is by now, even Gregg. The phone rings and rings and I’m about to hang up gladly, when I get a machine.
    It’s his voice, music in the background. “Gregg?” (My voice comes out like a squeak.) “This is Theo. I’m in town.” A pause. Help, I’m pausing too long—what if he picks up? Or his wife does? “Um, I’ll call back. There’s no phone where I’m staying. Ciao.”
    Ciao . I never say that. An attempt at sounding continental? I’ll call again tomorrow. I’ll never call again. If I see him, another part of me is planning already, get rid of the wedding band. Or maybe I should leave it on as a challenge. Or a deterrent.
    I dial my brother’s number.
    â€œThis is Corb,” he answers.
    â€œWhy do you always answer the phone like that?” I say. “Don’t you realize how off-putting it is? Why don’t you just say ‘hello’?”
    â€œDad told me you’re in town.”
    â€œDid he tell you why?”
    â€œYes.” He sighs. “I’m sorry, Theo.”
    My turn to say something. I can’t.
    â€œI hear you’re staying at a residence hotel. Dad’s all caught up about that too, never mind why you’re here. ‘She’s staying at the Alta Vista!’ he said. He wanted me to offer you a place to stay.”
    â€œSo offer.”
    â€œWould you like to stay here?”
    I think of nooses rigged with razor