Shimmy Bang Sparkle(35)
The notification was with me for that whole exhausting day. Roxie was emotional and tearful; Ruth was stoic and quiet. I stayed strong for my girls, but inside I was in knots of anxiety, worry, and uncertainty. Over it all was a looming shadow of disappointment. Without Ruth and Roxie, there was no chance we could pull off our plan to steal the North Star.
Waiting in the hallway for Ruth to get done with yet another set of X-rays, I thought back to the day we’d first begun to think of the plan. It had been a strange sort of kismet—like the planets aligned.
It was a hot afternoon in July. I’d been putting away groceries when my phone had buzzed in my pocket. It was my dad. “Stella!” he said, in his usual whisper-yell, like he was calling me during a hostage situation or from inside a movie theater; his new wife, whom I referred to in my head as Wendy, the Wicked Witch of the West, wasn’t a fan of mine. Or the fact that I looked exactly like my late mom. Judging by the echoes and faint noise of running water, I was fairly sure he always called from the bathroom. It was probably the only time she left him alone. It also meant that I usually only got calls at seven in the morning. But this time, it was late afternoon. Highly irregular. “Dad?”
“Stella, the Big Wide Open is for sale,” he whispered.
I froze with a bag of mini carrots in my hand. The words transported me back to the very spot itself. The Big Wide Open was a horse ranch just outside Flagstaff, Arizona. It was also home, more so than anywhere I’d ever lived. It had always belonged to my family, until my grandparents had been forced to sell in order to pay for their medical bills. And for my mom’s, as well. But that had been years ago, and I’d pushed it out of my mind. It was too painful to revisit, even in dreams—so full of nostalgia it almost made me woozy. “You’re kidding me.”
“No!” he whispered back. “I’d buy it if I could, but . . .”
“Rogerrrrrr!” came a shrill scream from his end of the line. “Are you constipated? Did you forget to eat your prunes? What is going on in there?”
“Gotta go! Love you, sweetheart!” my dad had whispered, and ended the call.
As the line went silent, Ruth came out from her room. I turned to her with the bag of carrots in one hand and my phone in the other. She took the carrots, ripped a hole in the side of the bag, and ate one. “If I were to open a yoga studio for low-income women and do like career counseling and meditation and stuff, do you think that could be a thing? Ten-dollar haircuts? Free meditation classes? I’m thinking I could call it Ohm Sweet Ohm.”
Before I’d even had the chance to answer any of her questions—which I would have answered, in order: That could totally be a thing; Yes; Yes; Ten out of ten on the name!—Roxie arrived home, stomping into the foyer in her heels. She ripped off her Jackie O glasses and said, “My attorney says I won’t have a prayer of joint custody unless I have a yard with grass. Can you believe that bullshit? This is Albuquerque! A yard?”
Ruth handed me the bag of carrots and I ate one, chewing slowly in a kind of daze. All the new developments had left me a little bit gobsmacked. A ranch. A business. A house. So many things, but so far out of our reach.
Roxie kicked off her heels and grabbed the remote from the kitchen table. She was just punching some numbers into the remote when Ruth snatched it from her and pointed at the television. On the screen was a segment from the local news. And to the right of the anchor’s head was an image of a jewel that I would have recognized anywhere.
The North Star.
Ruth turned up the volume, and the anchor’s brassy accent filled the apartment. “One of the largest diamonds in the world has been sold at auction. The North Star, which weighs in at a staggering five hundred eighty-nine carats, has been purchased by Sheikh Saud ibn Nejd al-Aziz . . .”
An image of a somewhat swarthy and youngish-looking guy popped up on the screen.
“Fortunately for all you gemophiles, the new buyer has agreed to leave it on public display at the Gemological Institute of America through November 1. You might want to sneak in a road trip to California before that pretty baby disappears for good!”
In unison, Ruth and Roxie turned to me. And I dropped the bag of carrots onto the kitchen floor.
That was how it had started. And now here we were. But with every X-ray and conversation, it became more and more clear that our dreams and hopes were about to fade away and that our plans to steal the North Star were as badly broken as Ruth’s leg and Roxie’s arm. The planets had aligned to make us think we could steal the North Star. Now it felt they’d spun out of orbit completely.
Worn out and tired of keeping a smile on my face, I left the hospital when the nurses told me that visiting hours were over. In the elevator, where I still had no reception, I looked at myself in the shiny stainless doors. Standing there alone, I was transported to how I’d felt with him standing next to me. And how reassuring that had felt. I’d gotten used to being the shoulder to lean on. But it had been awfully nice to have him there beside me. Even if only for a little while.
As soon as I stepped out of the hospital, I hit play on the message. The brief and wonderful calm that came over me when I heard his voice was immediately replaced by an impending sense of doom. Because though I may not have been as experienced as Roxie when it came to men, I knew that if they asked you to Google them, it was probably a very, very bad sign.