She replied like she was telling the time. "The morgue."
He was dead…
Betty felt the world crash down around her. The Citadel was out to get her. She was going to snap. She was going crazy. She wondered if this was how her mother felt.
She left work early to visit her mom in the mental ward of the state hospital. Betty felt obligated to tell mother that her ex-husband was dead. It had been awhile since she'd seen her. The conversation didn't go well.
Madge acted like she'd been preparing for a bout in a boxing ring. She was agitated and paced erratically around the padded room. She was looking for away out. She only noticed Betty like the girl was furniture to avoid colliding with.
Her eyes were wide. Her hair was tousled, and down and wild. Betty had a different recollection of her mother. She was seated in the kitchen reading while waiting for a pie to bake. She wore a high collared dress with an ornate cameo clasped tight around her neck. Her hair was neatly tucked up in a bun.
Betty searched for her first memory of her mother. They were just flashes or impressions of her mom’s unpredictability over the years; just shadows of the past. Betty realized she was now the same age her mother was, when she could first recall her. With her hair down, Betty noticed how much they actually looked alike.
She tried to calm Madge’s frantic gait. Eventually she got her to sit down, but not hold still. At any moment it looked like she would throw herself onto the floor.
"Mom, I wanted to talk to you about dad."
Betty looked for a sign of acknowledgment that her words were received. She tried again, talking slow and loud.
“Mom, I wanted to tell you about Randall from the farm."
Nothing.
Out of remorse and frustration she blurted, "Mom, he's dead!"
Madge stopped cold. The words struck a nerve. Her wide, dark ringed eyes scanned the room like a lighthouse looking for a shipwreck, but met Betty's eyes instead. Her voice startled her daughter.
"He was so sensitive to your pain. No matter how small it was. If you fell off a horse he dusted you off and put you back on. You pricked your finger on a rose bush, he kissed it, took your pain away. He couldn't kiss my pain away. He was always doting on you. He did more for you than he ever did for me. You were my daughter too. He loved you more. He chose you over me, his own wife. If he's dead, he's dead because of you somehow."
That was not what Betty needed to hear. It was too much to take. She thought of her mother as the last connection to her old life, but another part of her childhood died that day. The orderlies came and locked her mom away, and Betty was alone.
Betty returned to Razzles. It was the only home she had left. She sat at the bar in her white nursing uniform. A tiny captive, cyclopean audience of empty shot glasses stared up and waited for a show. In any other place this may have been an odd site, but the crowd ignored her. The intoxicating serum she ingested acted like medicine. She administered it to try and stay ahead of her pain. It hurt too much to think she had killed her father. He was the only man she ever really loved.
She looked around and asked herself. "How did I get here?"
Sometimes the city seemed so small, but then everyone ended up at Razzles sooner or later. It was like the drain to a sewer. She watched the faces in the crowd through the mirror behind the bar. She saw herself in the refection too. "Am I one of these people?"
These people were all the family she had left. She knew most of them. She knew their secrets and desires. She had a story to tell about each and every one of them. But none of them knew her.
Her eyes stopped on an older man in the crowd. She recognized him all too well. His name was Carson and he was the President of the Citadel Bank. He was the man who evicted her family from their farm. He was the man who held the deed to the vacant property. He came to Razzles often, although she never served him. In fact she avoided him. He had power over her in a way that no other man did. He had something she actually wanted. And she wanted it back tonight.
She was ready to step over another line. It was a line she hadn’t crossed before that night. She felt like a traitor to her parents, but now they were both gone. So what did it matter? It wasn’t really a betrayal. It was just business.
She picked herself up from the bar…twice. Removed a hairpin from her nurse’s cap, shook her hair down and approached him. She wasn't the little girl she once was. So she wasn’t surprised that he didn’t recognize her. He was interested in what she was offering that night. She had the manager set up a typical deal.
Shortly, the brokered couple was in a cozy rented room. He was standing near the door wearing only black socks. She was posed on the bed covered only by a red sheet. They sized each other up. Neither spoke. Carson could tell this wasn't going to be the typical intercourse he was accustomed to.