“What do you want to hear first?” I ran into my little brother Oliver in the plush, bordello-red lobby of the Encore, lugging my roller bag behind me.
“There was no traffic,” I said. “Your sweater looks very festive.”
“How much can you take before a drink?” he said.
I was in a good mood. I’d just purchased a thousand dollars worth of Christmas presents for about two hundred dollars at the Williams-Sonoma discount outlet in Primm. The drive from Los Angeles had been a civilized four hours including a stop for an oniony grilled cheese at In-N-Out. I’d driven a hundred miles per hour and didn’t get caught. When I’d checked into this brand-new, never-been-slept-in hotel, the girl at the counter had said, “Oh, your brother is Bruce Palamede!” I was happy for Bruce and proud of him and glad we could all spend Christmas here, together, in Las Vegas. I hated Las Vegas. I still hate Las Vegas. Las Vegas seems to me like an extreme, city-size example of beside the point. But away from my parents’ house for the holidays, maybe no one would break a window during an argument, maybe no one would call anyone else a fag and mean it, maybe Bruce wouldn’t torment my mother until she broke into uncontrollable sobs. Maybe my little niece, Twink, the most neglected three-year-old I’d ever encountered, wouldn’t piss and shit all over every carpet she could find. Oliver took my backpack, with computer and notebooks and books, everything needed to avoid familial contact over the next two days. He slung it over his shoulder like a lightweight gym bag.
“Your niece has pierced ears,” he said. “And won’t take off her geisha costume, which is completely soaked in urine.”
“A geisha costume?”
“The regular hotel bar is actually pretty good.” Oliver had been here for two days already. He was on his way through the lobby to meet his boyfriend, Alan, at the poker tables. Low-stakes. Oliver and Alan loved Vegas.
“They make toddler geisha dresses?” I said.
Our middle brother, Bruce, had just opened the nightclub at the top of the hotel. It was Christmas Eve. We wandered around the poker area for a while, but couldn’t find Alan in his lucky gold hat. Oliver said, “Your mother has been at the blackjack table for twenty-one hours.”
“Your mother,” I said.
“Your mother,” he said. “Their plan is to order in pizza tonight.”
“It’s Christmas Eve.”
“You really are as bright as they say.”
“Who’s ordering in pizza?”
“Your brother and your sister-in-law. And your parents, I guess, if we can get your mother out of the casino.”
Oliver and I hadn’t yet figured out how to maintain a viable degree of estrangement from the rest of our family. “Where’s your father? Who’s got Twink? Why did they dress Twink as a prostitute?”
“I’m sort of craving booze, like I’m starving for it.”
We had the first round of Manhattans before I had taken my luggage upstairs.
“This is a disaster,” Oliver said. “Where’s Alan?” He took out his mobile phone and began to text.
“Maybe I’ll go find Mom.” The cocktail girls wore dresses so short, you could see their black thongs when they leaned over, like the black thong was part of the outfit. It made me depressed. But they had very nice asses, with no little fat bumps or anything. At the next table was a group of middle-aged Asian couples in sequined Christmas tree sweaters who twice dropped their bowls of nuts on the floor.
“She’s not here.”
“You said she was playing blackjack.”
“She’s at the Red Rock Casino. She thought we wouldn’t find her all the way out there. But we did.” He kept texting. “The women in this family are so predictable.”
“I think it’s rude when you text and I’m right here.”
“Texting helps me drink less.”
“Is she winning?”
“She won. But she never keeps winning.”
“Sometimes she wins. When she wins, she wins big.”
“You act like this is some genius of hers or something.”
“She’s even.” When I was 13, my mother won a half-million dollars playing the California lottery. She won on a scratch-off, when you could win that much on scratch-offs. In Vegas (and in Indian casinos from Encino to northern Michigan), she played small stakes blackjack, and mostly won or lost a couple thousand a night. Gambling keeps her busy. It keeps her from eating and it keeps her from Christmas, two obsessions much more destructive than gambling.
My mother has a Christmas problem. Like some people hoard lamps or broken furniture or twenty-year-old phone bills and magazines, my mother hoards Christmas paraphernalia. There are two rooms stacked with it at the house in Encino. At Christmas, family portraits come off the walls and Currier & Ives prints go up. The bookshelves are evacuated to make room for an entire village of wooden carolers. Regular cookery is replaced by red and green pots and pans. Christmas tree dishes replace everyday china. Half the living room furniture is stored to make space for what must surely be the world’s largest and most varied collection of snowmen.
Christmas in Vegas must have been homesick for my mother. She probably missed her village of carolers, her 7,012 snowmen. Who cared if she needed to escape and play several hundred hands of blackjack?
“Let’s have another drink,” Oliver said.
“Who’s paying for all these drinks, Oliver?”
“Oh look, this one’s for you.”
I have no phone or mobile device, so my boyfriend Glen texted Oliver. “Mom in bedroom, loaded and crying after Jack Welch party. All very Christmassy here in West Palm! Viva Las Christmas!” Glen and I were on the verge of breakup, I knew, because rather than just staying in Los Angeles or Aspen for Christmas together, we’d both chosen to go home to our families. Also I knew this because right before the holidays he had thrown his Blackberry at me during a fight and because he’d called me a “spoiled brat,” which was not true, and “a bitch” which might have been, who knows. Last week, he’d left me alone at a bar at 4 a.m. and I’d had to take a taxi home. I knew things were over between us many months before that because his father hadn’t invited me to his 70th birthday party. I still had a bruise on my shin from where Glen had torpedoed his Blackberry at me.
“Sounds like he’s having as good a time as we are,” Oliver said. Oliver liked Glen. Everyone liked him. Except for my mother, who didn’t like anyone. Glen was gloomy and hostile only when no one else was around, which made me feel like I must be doing something wrong.
