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strong. Don’t let this memory own you, Gracie!”
    I realize I will have to be blunt. “I can’t raise my arms over my head.” I demonstrate, lifting elbows to ear level, where they will go no further. “Fourth degree burns. Some muscles were damaged.”
    Marly releases the tool with a soft thud.
    “It’s okay. I would chop down this tree if I could.”
    Her lips tighten even though they ’re still curled into a smile. She stares for a long minute. From up in the house the jangle of an old-fashioned telephone rips through the air. Marly’s head snaps up as though she is guilty of something. “Shit. I just talked to my mother. Only one other person that I know has this number, and it’s too late for estate business.”
    The phone rings on and on, the sheer persistence of it sounding urgent, demanding.
    “Go,” I say. “Answer it, please.”
    As she runs back to the house, I take one last look at the tree. Like me, it is still alive despite what it ’s been through. Then I make my way slowly after her.
    I reach the kitchen as Marly slams the phone down. She kicks a box, dull utensils spilling into a jumble.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “ Nothing. It was just The Loser, my ex.” She stares at me, her mouth parted with what looks like a heavy explanation, but then she closes it. “Grace, I have to go back.”
    “ What? But you just got here. I only just…” I wish I could squeeze her hand again, like when we were girls.
    Marly tilts her head and pulls out her full-wattage smile, the one that raises her cheekbones to high peaks. “Come with me.”
    “ What?”
    “ Come with me, Grace. Why not? Just for a couple of weeks. Tell me you aren’t just dying to get away from here?”
    It ’s true—sometimes the mere sound of my mother shuffling in her pink house slippers from the kitchen to her bedroom at night, the plaintive mewing of her cats at her heels, makes me want to climb the walls. Not to mention the feeling that I am another of Adam’s pity causes, a wounded animal never to be released from captivity.
    Marly eyes are shiny as she grins at me. “Seriously.” I can tell she wants to grab my hands, as though touch is necessary to convince me of something. “Vegas is a Mecca of…the widest range of people you’ll ever meet anywhere. It attracts variety. It’s a place where it doesn’t matter what’s happened in your life, how bad you feel, or what you look like.” She claps her hand to her mouth “Grace, I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”
    I force a smile.
    Marly shudders and clutches herself, looking almost nauseated for a moment. “This town is so damp and cold. Doesn’t it ever get to you?”
    I shrug. “That’s the least of the things that get to me.” The truth is, other than Adam and sometimes Ma, all I’d miss otherwise are a handful of damaged animals and birds that wouldn’t even know that I’d gone.
    “ I need to think about it.”
    Marly nods, still clutching herself. “Of course you do.”
    She drives me home, talking the whole time about Vegas and her life there. By the time we reach my house I can see this strange and beautiful world of showgirls and billionaires, picture the restaurant where Marly manages a team of “underwater mermaids” in a bar that caters to the patrons of fancy casinos, and a few times a week, dons the fins herself, in a floating performance.
    “ I’ll be calling you in the morning, Grace.”
    “ Ok. Don’t pull up all the way. I don’t want Ma to see…us,” I say.
    Marly nods, but says nothing else as she drops me in front of the movie theater. The Marquee is fritzing, and in its flashing pink light I walk toward my house, like the girl at the end of the movie who knows exactly what she wants.

Chapter Five
    Marly ’s headlights recede behind me as I let myself into the house. I force myself not to turn back, as if, like Orpheus, or Lot, I stand to lose her altogether. Images of Vegas—gleaned from Godfather movies, and the one where