Back to Issue 9

Mike Fiorito

Hidden in Lights

A few weeks ago, my eighty-two year old mother, Cookie, fell face first into the wall at home, seriously wounding her collarbone. She didn't tell anyone. Days later my sister, Patty, saw the purpled bruise streaking down from her shoulder and across her chest.

“What’s this?” Patty said, lifting the part of Cookie’s shirt that covered the bruise.

“It’s nothing.”

“Nothing? Mom, please, tell me what happened,” pleaded Patty, clearly out of her mind.

Cornered into telling the truth, Cookie confessed.

At this point, we’re not really sure whether or not Cookie even wants to live. My sisters, brother, and I take turns calling her, visiting her, taking her out, taking her away. Anytime we see her could be the last time.

I call to ask if she wants to go away for Labor Day. 

"Do you want to go the beach at Montauk?” I ask. “They still have available rooms," I add, knowing she probably doesn’t want to go.

She's silent.

“Mom?”        
 
"I don't think so," she says. In Montauk she’d be stuck peering out at the world from the keyhole of a hotel room. As it is, she’s home almost every day, still working one day a week. Work is her last grip on the outside world. She is at war with the seasons. Her unsteady feet can slip on the ice. The summer promises skies of hell flames.

"Do you think we can book something at Atlantic City?" I’m nauseous just imagining the melody of slot machines, noise, and smoke. With Labor Day only a few days away, I doubt that we'll be able to book a room for all of us.

"Let me see if I can get a complimentary room," says my mom, coughing into the phone. She knows all of the reps at the Tropicana. They give her free lodging in return for the money she spends at the tables. Before she hangs up, I hear the clinking of ice in her glass.

The next day Cookie calls me. Not only has she received a complimentary two night stay with two beds, the Tropicana offers her dinner for four at PF Chang's. 
On the way to Atlantic City, Cookie is quiet, sitting in the back seat next to my son, Desi.

"Are you ok back there?" I ask, looking at her in the rear view mirror. Her eyes are four times their normal size behind the lenses of her glasses.

My wife, Bea, tries to talk to her, turning around in her seat. Cookie doesn't talk back much. This isn’t like her.

"Stop for a cigarette?" I ask, after driving about one hour into New Jersey. I know her nerves are rattled from not smoking.

Stepping out of the car, the scorching September sun pours on my face, heavy and thick like lava. I can smell the burning tires from the highway.

My mother swings the car door open on her side before I can open it for her. The door smacks back on her. Normally this wouldn't matter. But in her case, her bones weakening, more brittle every day, the door is a weapon. I should have rushed to open it. I can hear my brother’s panicked voice in my head, “that’s why you need to get the door for her.” Frank follows her around, nervously, like a madcap butler, holding her arm, helping her. “I’ll do it myself,” Cookie shouts at him. He ignores her shouts and never lets her go.

Back in the car, Cookie says that the door left a black and blue mark on her ankle. We have to be prepared for anything.

Driving in on the narrow road that leads to Atlantic City, I can see the shiny golden buildings and glittering facades. The skyline looks like a heap of costume jewelry.

Checking in at the Tropicana, I get a first glimpse inside of Atlantic City. There's a husband and wife on line arguing.

"What the hell do you want from me?" the husband shrieks. "I told them I don't got no more money for them to come."

They're my cousins," his wife says. She has a red beehive hairdo. An oversized gold cross hangs from her neck. "You said you was gonna invite them."

The husband grumbles. As I scan the hotel lobby, it reminds me of the Off Track Betting places my father took me to as a child. Like the OTB, the faces of the people at the Tropicana sweat with worry. Their worn clothes, two decades out of fashion, look saggy and defeated. I am reminded of all of the old worries about my father's gambling. My parents’ anxiety about not having enough money to pay the rent. Being sent to the auditorium with the other school kids whose parents didn’t pay tuition. Knocks on our apartment door from people in long coats, their faces hidden under hats. My mother haranguing my already beaten down father. Night after night.

"Smoking or non-smoking?" the hotel clerk asks.

"Non-smoking, please," I answer.

"Sonofabitch," my mother says. "You're such a phony. I can't believe you."

"Please, Mom. I can't breathe in a smoking room."

"No one smoked like you."

"That was thirty years ago." She’s never forgiven me for quitting.
 
“What about Desi?” She doesn’t respond.

Cookie takes the access card and gives it to me, her hands shaky and tense. I fight back my guilt, knowing I’ll never get a wink of sleep in a smoking room.
We head to the room to drop off our luggage. I hold my mother’s arm and warily guide her through the corridors of the hotel.

Patty had told me to drop my mother at the casino then head to the beach. “You can pick her up later,” Patty said. “If you left her in the casino for a week straight she’d be fine. You come back and she’d still be there smoking a cigarette, drinking a scotch.” I don’t like the idea of dropping her off at the casino. It’s like I’m dropping off my child with a psychotic babysitter.

Unlike me, Bea doesn’t nitpick about my mother’s or my edginess. She guides us to the casino, knowing I will only get us lost.

"Take me to the Wheel of Fortune," my mother says. "That’s where the action is." We walk deeper into the casino, passing a lady with gold teeth, carrying a bag that looks like it contains everything she owns. A man sucks on his cigarette, his eyes rheumy and swollen. He looks like he hasn't slept, like he drinks until his liver gushes with blood every night.

"Not here," my mother says.

I don’t like anything about this place. I can't breathe. My heart feels knotted. There is a constant din of noise. Amongst the jingles and rings of the casino machines there are screams coming from the people as they win or lose, outcries of woe, loud moans. I am trapped inside a deranged arcade, blinded by the flashing multicolored lights and assaulted by the deafening ringing of the slot machines. Hopefully a cliff will appear out of nowhere which I can fall off of, hurtling to my death.

We keep walking into rooms nested in still other rooms. When we finally find the Wheel of Fortune, my lungs feel like rusty engine parts from the smoke.

"This is it," my mother says, pointing to the machine. We walked all this way and it looks like all of the others.

I help Cookie sit down next to a woman drinking scotch from a plastic cup. The woman’s eyes spin with wheeling flames, reflecting the wheels on the slot machine. One seat over a man with one eye open, pulls the slot handle without looking at the machine. There are cigarettes squashed in ash-trays, rows of bottles, and near empty plastic cups, some filled with cigarettes butts.

"Are you sure?" I ask my mother, thinking I am leaving her in a miserable ditch of hell. I am dizzy from the lack of oxygen, the blaring sounds and flashing lights.

"This is perfect,” she says. “Go to the beach. I'm fine.”

I stay, waiting for her start to start playing. Bea doesn’t rush, either. She’s strong like my mother. She takes all of this in stride, looking at me to see if I’m upset. She’s managing everyone’s terrors in her soundless way. 

A waitress comes to take my mother’s drink order. The waitress is an older lady herself. After writing down the order, she hobbles away in her high-heeled shoes, hardly able to walk.

“Go already,” Cookie barks suddenly. Then softly, “It’s nice out and you’ll enjoy the beach.”

Bea and I linger.

“I said go,” she says, sternly now.

Bea nods at me, motioning to leave. Desi trails behind us. The last thing I see is the back of Cookie’s little head. 

"I'm shocked," I say to Bea.

"I can imagine," she says.

"After all we went through with my father's gambling," I say, "and she wants to gamble."

"She likes to gamble. It makes her happy," says Bea. "This is Cookie’s heaven and your hell. The smoking I can do without.”

“I hate the smoking.”

Later that night, at PF Chang's, we're having drinks. Desi hides under the table. I can’t see him, but it bothers me that he’s probably crawling in piles of greasy fried rice and sticky puddles of soda.

Cookie is smiling. The drinks, smoking, and gambling have calmed her. Looking at the menu, she says, "I'll order. I know what to get, and I want to have a taste of everything." 

It’s easier if Bea and I just agree.

Cookie tells Bea that she started going to casinos in the Bahamas when my grandmother was dying of cancer. They went to an alternative cancer center in Freeport. That’s where Cookie started drinking and gambling. Now, holding Bea’s hand, my mother recalls her own mother.

"She was a special woman. Never one to complain. And good to the core. Right?" she gestures towards me.

"She was like a Gandhi," I say, half-jokingly. 

"I don't know about that," my mother says. "She was giving and kind. And when she got sick… I'm going to cry now." She pauses, takes a breath. "When she got sick, I couldn't let go,” she says, swallowing her words.  

I reach out and hold Cookie’s hand. She doesn’t cry easily.

“I couldn't let her die.” Her words weigh down on us. Now sitting on my lap, Desi rocks back and forth, playing with my glasses.

"I couldn't let her die, not so much for her," she repeats herself, wiping tear drops from her eyes, “but for me.” Now we are all crying. The release is like a downpour after a hot day. 

After dinner, we walk my mother back to the casino. Bea takes us back to the Wheel of Fortune where Cookie finds her lucky machine. An overweight woman is sitting next to my mother’s machine, breathing out of the folds of her neck. The woman smiles as we approach. She’s enveloped in a cloud of smoke.

I help Cookie sit down. She immediately lights a cigarette, blowing the smoke in my face. Desi starts banging on the machine, pressing buttons randomly. Immediately guards rush over to us.

"Children aren't allowed to play the machines," one of the guards says, talking into his walkie-talkie, rushing at us. Another guard hurries towards us. I don’t know what’s happening. Knocking the fire from her cigarette, my mother says it’s not legal for kids to even touch the machines.

“I hate this place,” Desi whines. “There are no games for children.” He can only look at the blinking lights. It’s like an amusement park with rides he can’t go on.

"We’ll pick you up a little later," I shout to my mother over my shoulder as we’re escorted out by the casino police. 

Bea, Desi, and I escape to the boardwalk. It's a cool night. The air feels fresh, especially after fleeing the haze of the casino. There are electronic billboards displaying ads and music videos. Even the outside rings with its own din.

Bea and I know we have to do something for little Desi. He’s been locked in cars and hotel rooms. We take him to a video arcade. He pounces on a car racing video machine, punching the controls, wildly spinning the wheel. Desi smashes into other cars, drives off of cliffs into bodies of water. He thinks the point of the game is get into accidents and drive off the road. Bea and I laugh until tears run down our faces.  

A few hours later, Bea and Desi head up to the room and I go in search of The Wheel of Fortune to get my mom. I'm lost walking through a maze, blinded by the alternating lights and smoke. For a moment I feel panic. I’ll never find her. Every slot machine looks the same. I see the people gambling, as if with their last dollars, maybe some have sold valuable possessions to keep playing. This looks like the waiting room for the dying.

I finally find Cookie sitting next to a man with a cane. His hair is wispy and gray. His eyes, fierce and strange, are covered with cataracts. He is blind. How is he playing?


My mom doesn't notice me. She is in the innermost core of the casino. In her left hand she holds a scotch in a plastic cup. With her right hand, she pulls the lever on The Wheel of Fortune. The slot machine now shimmers like an altar, its brassy surface glittering and fiery.

Through the dense smoke, I see a squadron of angels girdle her majestic seat. My mother has said that time slips away when she gambles. When she pulls the handle, she is plunged back in time. Cookie is now thirty years old and with my father again. Her face is smooth, her hair is dark black. She and my father are on vacation in Florida. Now she is pregnant with my older sister; her lips cherry red, her brown eyes on fire with life. Now Cookie is by my father’s side in the hospital. He is dying. The hole that my father burned into my mother’s soul with the pain of his gambling has become the vehicle through which she can now visit him.      
Suddenly, the smoke from the cigarettes balls up in my lungs and explodes. I cough.

The scene comes to an abrupt halt. I have disturbed the magical forces at play.      
"Hi Mom, having fun?" I say, now standing over her, my hand over my mouth to hide my gagging.

She points to the cards on the screen.

"Nothing, see?"

I don't really follow the game. I don't know three card rummy or poker or any card game really besides solitaire. I am drawn to Tarot cards. The Fool. The Magician. The Hermit. The Hangman. I prefer magicians, shamans, and gypsies to gamblers. Maybe they’re all gamblers anyway.
           
My mother presses the button to refresh her hand.
           
"Nothing again."
           
I can tell she's had too much to drink.
           
"So are you ready to come up?"
           
"In a little while," she says.
           
"Have you won?"
           
"Not tonight."
           
She resumes pressing the button, dealing her a new hand. She keeps losing.
           
As I look around I see a light shimmering from a gigantic chandelier over the casino. It feels warm, penetrating the freezing air conditioning.
           
When she's ready to leave, I lift her up. There's no way she could have walked back to the room in this condition. This woman is like a mountain. She is stubborn and powerful, with marshy soft parts and deep dark caverns. Everyone has died around her. She holds on to life with a grip that both whitens her knuckles and rattles her knees. She hates winter and summer and in turn they are fearful of her. They lay waiting for her to stumble. 

When I help Cookie stand up, she is drenched with the world that has left her behind. She is a tribe, a history of her family, fiercely clinging to this world. She is heavy in my arms. It feels as if I am lifting a piece of the earth, earth inhabited by a race of people. This is not just any little old lady.
 
 

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​Mike Fiorito’s writings have appeared in Beautiful Losers, The Honest Ulsterman, Narratively, Beautiful Losers, Mad Swirl, Brownstone Poetry, and The Good Men Project.  His artwork has appeared in Mad Hatters’ Review and Mad Swirl.

Mike is currently working on a short story collection called “Crooners.” He is married and has two boys.  

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