One A.M. at the Beau Rivage

New Year’s Eve, my mother and father and I wait outside the entrance of the newest casino in our hometown. We’ve just seen a stand-up show. We held our noisemakers at midnight but didn’t use them. Instead, we watched my two sisters trot down the aisles, trying to get an autograph from the comedian, who is famous.

My sisters wore black satin. After the show they talked at the famous comedian, reaching the way they do, with their arms. Their arms are curved a good way, a better way than the older white planes of my own. We’re all a little glib. To strangers, two or three of us together are charming.

We’ve been waiting on the valet for twenty minutes. I watch the casino’s mesmerizing, flashy sign, bright as a movie screen. My sisters stand in front of the glowing fountain, which halos their hundred-dollar hair.

“From this doorway,” my mother says, rubbing my arm to warm me, “you could be anywhere.” She’s also in glossy clothes, and they’re soothing.

I’m sort of head-over-heels for my parents. It has occurred to me before that I’m divorced because of it. I don’t love other people that much.

“There’s nothing to let you know where you are,” says my father, “from this angle.” He nods at the air.

His hair is still dark and his ruby-toned sweater has shape. My mother, too, seems young, except for one eye, which is shrinking. The white is marbled red, and the rest, say the doctors, is turning to lattice. When I stand to her right and say something, she jumps.

I think: love is knowing that something besides yourself is real.

Across the street, where my parents are looking, I see a Shell sign, a green traffic light, and a building, a motel maybe, dim in the night fog, that I can’t place. I begin to wonder whether it’s intentional, this view from this doorway, whether it’s all carefully planned out to make us feel that we’re very far away from our lives.

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