a sweep of the casino and brought my mother in for interrogation. We left because my mother thought she might get arrested if we stayed; we left when opportunity dried up; and we left because she plain old didn’t like where we were anymore. We left Miami, Atlantic City, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Dallas, New Orleans, Lake Tahoe. We left even when my mother promised me that we wouldn’t leave anymore.
“I am not going to leave you, Mom. Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve got cancer. You’re going to need me to take care of you.”
I expect her to weep, and soften; but instead her face hardens into something immobile and cool. “For God’s sake, Nina,” she says softly. “You are no help to me at all if you’re in jail.”
In my mother’s expression, I read disillusionment, even anger, like I have failed her and we are both going to pay the price. And for the first time since I came to Los Angeles I am truly frightened by what I have become.
4.
SO I’M A GRIFTER. You might say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree—I come from a long line of bagmen and petty thieves, opportunists and outright criminals—but the truth is that I was not raised for this. I had a Future. That, at least, is what my mother used to say to me late at night when she found me reading Pride and Prejudice under the covers by flashlight: “You have a Future, baby, the first one in this family.” When I performed on command for her male visitors, doing long division in my head while they sipped dirty martinis on our sagging settee: “Isn’t my girl smart? She has a Future.” When I told her I wanted to go to college but I knew we couldn’t afford it: “Don’t worry about the money, sweetie. This is about your Future.”
And for a while there, I even believed her. Got caught up in the great American myth, the Puritan ethic of nose-to-the-grindstone-and-thou-shalt-prevail. That was back when I thought the playing field was even, before I learned that it was not flat at all; and that, in fact, for most people not born into privilege, the playing field is a steep incline and you are at the bottom with boulders tied to your ankles.
My mother had the ability to make you believe, though. This was her great gift, her sweet con. The way she could fix a man with those innocent eyes of hers, as wide and blue as a spring lake, and convince him of anything she wanted: that the check was on the way, that the necklace in her purse had ended up there by mistake, that she loved him like no one had ever been loved before.
The only person she truly loved was me; I knew that much. It was just the two of us against the world; it had been that way since she kicked my father out. And so I always believed that my mother couldn’t possibly lie to me, not about this person I was going to become.
And probably she wasn’t lying to me, at least not intentionally. Instead, the person she was really lying to was herself.
My mother may have been a con artist, but she wasn’t a cynic. She believed, she truly did, in the great opportunity of life. We were always on the verge of hitting the big time, even as my shoes were being held together with duct tape or we were eating baked potatoes for dinner for the third week running. And when those opportunities did come—when she won big at the card tables or managed to hook herself a big fish—we lived like queens. Dinners out at hotel restaurants, a red convertible in the driveway, a Barbie DreamHouse with a bow on it. And if she wasn’t looking far enough down the road, saving up in anticipation of that convertible being hauled away by the repo man, who could fault her? She trusted that life would take care of us, and it always did, right up until the moment when it didn’t.
My mother was pretty but not a beauty; though what she was, was more dangerous than that. She had a kind of sex-kitten innocence, with the summer-peach complexion