Pretty Ugly: A Novel (21 page)
Over the years, Geralton Waxflower III had learned to depend on the comfort that came from setting boundaries. It was considered by many to be a rude and insensitive way to live, but as far as he was concerned his job as Marvin’s attorney did not include consoling his hysterical, pregnant granddaughter. If the girl needed a counselor, she could hire one, but their legal business had concluded and it was time for her to leave.
Courtney stood up and tried to compose herself. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
“I am your lawyer, Miss Daye.”
“I mean, my
new
lawyer. My
good
lawyer.”
Courtney snatched her copy of Marvin’s will off the desk and stormed out of the room, making a point to slam the door behind her. The lawyer sighed through his lips like an exhausted horse and decided to quit for the day. Rising slowly from his desk, Mr. Waxflower locked his front door, turned out the lights, and hoped his other scheduled appointments would assume they’d made a mistake and go away. Alone in the darkened room, Geralton took a porcelain doll named Laura from a shelf and slowly began brushing her hair.
On the way to the mall to pick up some strappy heels for the funeral, Courtney tried to figure out how to get Mr. Waxflower fired from being a lawyer. Maybe the police could help her, or the Internet. She’d figure that out later. Right now she had to figure out how she was going to get Ray to give her $12,735.63.
* * *
Courtney pulled several dresses from her closet that she felt were both respectful and hot. Her two best friends, Britney and Kaitlin sat on her bed dressed in their sexiest church clothes. Overall, Courtney was arguably the best looking of the three, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. Just because she was burying her grandfather didn’t mean she couldn’t still look cute. Actually, as the bereaved, Courtney had an obligation to look better than everyone else.
“I like this one.” She shrugged and stepped into her original choice, the cleavage-baring black minidress. She might not have had pregnancy boobs, but she still had perfect ones. Britney, a star volleyball player with long slender legs that made up sixty-five percent of her body, was bare legged in a thigh-high skirt, so Courtney also slipped on a pair of black leggings. She had enough to think about without wondering if people were comparing her legs to Britney’s.
Scrolling through her phone, Britney twirled her long red hair and tried to lighten the mood. “I know your grandfather just died, Court, but it’s going to be so effing awesome when you start having parties in this house.”
Britney didn’t swear because of church, so she peppered her conversations with implied vulgarity. She was an R-rated movie edited for an airplane. “I might just move in with you. My stepmother is being a total b lately.”
“Dude, I cannot wait! I am
so
ready for a party!” Kaitlin had recently started calling people “dude.” It annoyed pretty much everyone, but if someone asked her to stop, she just did it more. Having an affectation that bugged everyone was empowering. Besides, there was something so un-Kaitlin about calling people “dude” that it had become her favorite thing to do. She was also well aware that her effortless beauty allowed her to get away with pretty much anything. Her fresh, freckled skin was a stark contrast to her shiny onyx hair, and her deep blue eyes were the color of a Blue Lightning Blast Slurpee. If it weren’t for the arm she lost in a car accident five years earlier, she could have been a model.
Courtney adjusted the tights over her legs and sighed. “Yeah. A party. That sounds fun.” Kaitlin and Britney exchanged dramatically concerned looks.
Britney tried again. “I saw Kevin Biggins at the movies last night. He said he was coming to the funeral today. I think he likes you.”
“Dude, he is so hot. He talks about you all the time, Court.”
“I know he’s only a sophomore, but I’d totally give him a handie.”
“Britney! Jeez, he likes Courtney!”
“I didn’t say I was going to. I’m just saying, he’s totally yummy. What do you think, Court?”
“Yeah. He’s nice,” she said, checking out the dress in the mirror. “But I’m not interested.”
“Oh, my God, dude, I so wish I had your boobs.”
Britney nodded, “Me, too. Mine are more like boos.” She and Kaitlin cracked up and playfully fell back on the bed as if they were in a commercial for cotton sheets.
Courtney wanted to smile, but her face wouldn’t let her. She nodded and went back to checking herself out in the mirror.
“What’s wrong, Court? I mean, obvi it’s your grandfather, but is it something else, because if it’s something else you can totally tell us.”
“Yeah, that’s why we’re here,” Britney said sincerely, “to support you. What’s going on?”
Fighting tears, Courtney joined them on the bed and wailed. Everything came flooding out in long, breathless chunks. She told them about how she might lose her house because her stupid lawyer is stupid, and how she owes the government $12,735.63, and if she can’t get the money she’ll be homeless by Christmas. As she spoke, the girls just stared, mouths agape.
“But that’s not the worst part.”
“Oh, my God, what’s the worst part?” Kaitlin asked as if on the verge of orgasm.
Courtney braced herself, unsure if her friends were mature enough to handle her truth, then closed her eyes and said calmly, “I’m pregnant.”
There was a silence longer than Britney’s legs.
“Dude…”
“OMFG.”
Neither girl was still a virgin. Well, Britney was technically kind of still a virgin, maybe—but they were smart enough to take precautions despite their school’s abstinence-only stance on the unreliability of birth control.
“And I don’t know what I’m going to do because the father is older, and…”
“And what?”
Her voice got very small, “… married.”
Kaitlin and Britney almost exploded. They were simultaneously appalled and titillated. “Holy shit!” they said in unison, the magnitude of the situation exempting Britney from her swearing ban.
“Who is it?”
“I’d rather not say right now. His wife just had a baby, like three days ago.” Kaitlin’s mouth was a tunnel of disbelief. A string of drool slid down her chin, which she wiped on the shoulder of her good arm. Britney, meanwhile, just kind of blinked and twitched as her brain short-circuited. But Courtney felt better than she had in weeks. Just telling someone made the whole situation more manageable. It was now a common problem shared among friends instead of a secret shame. Plus, she loved gossip even if it was about her.
“Cool. Thanks for letting me vent, guys. I feel so much better.”
As the girls processed, Courtney crossed to the mirror and gave her friends a quick once-over and determined that she looked better than they did. She was funeral ready. Then, remembering something important, Courtney turned and in her most deadly-serious voice said, “Oh, and you can’t tell anyone, okay?”
They nodded like pliant zombies.
“Cool. Now…” She adjusted her breasts and did a quick twirl in her new dress. “How do I look?”
For the past nine Father’s Days, birthdays, and Christmases, Ray’s kids had given him ties. Ray never wore ties and, quite frankly, he didn’t understand them.
“Why is a man wearing paisleys, or stripes, or the Spider-Man logo around his neck considered more dressed up than a man in, say, a nice sweater?” a teenaged Ray once asked his father over steaks at the club. “It makes
no
sense.”
“A tie lets people know you’re successful,” his father explained, a fork in one hand, a cigarette in the other. “Look around anywhere. You can always tell who’s the most successful by who’s wearing a tie.”
Ray looked around. “Only the waiters are wearing ties.”
Dr. Miller tossed his silverware onto the table. “Look, I’m trying to teach you something. If you don’t want to learn, fine, just don’t be a prick.”
If success was judged solely on the
number
of ties a man owned, Ray would, for once, have impressed his father. His collection consisted of two SpongeBob ties, one Darth Vader, four Yodas, three designed by Jerry Garcia, one Harley-Davidson, a green John Deere, a red bow tie, three with medical themes, and six with snowmen—two of which were identical. He also had a skinny tie with a piano keyboard on it given to him by Joan as a joke. What the joke was exactly, he never knew.
His long-out-of-fashion dress clothes were crushed into a tiny corner of the closet he now shared with Bailey’s retired gowns. It was hard to believe, with as much death as he was exposed to, that Ray didn’t own a single tie appropriate for a funeral.
Eventually, he gave up and grabbed one with tiny snowmen on it. From a distance they kind of looked like polka dots. It didn’t match his gray (and only) suit, but it would have to suffice. Checking the pockets of the suit, he found a five-dollar bill, a wedding program from three years earlier he had no memory of attending, and two random pills that he swallowed dry. He slid the mirrored door of the closet until he heard the satisfying
fwoomp
that reminded him of a coffin closing.
In the living room, Miranda was on the sofa breast-feeding Brixton, who was “sleating” (sleeping while eating), a cutsie family term they’d coined when Bailey was an infant. The past three days had been emotional, to say the least, but Ray had fallen in love with his new daughter so effortlessly, that first night at the hospital now seemed like a bad TV show he was only half watching. Brixton was no different from any new baby: fussy, sleepy, wet, groggy, quiet, impossibly difficult, and impossibly easy. Miranda had even joked that maybe it would have been easier if all their kids had been born with Down syndrome, a joke that instantly made her break down into crippling, apologetic sobs. The Millers were well aware of the challenges that lay ahead—Joan’s incessant reminders made sure of that—but Miranda was trying to stay positive, and much to Ray’s grateful surprise, she had been.
“Hey there, handsome,” Miranda said when Ray entered in his suit. “Where are you off to?”
“Marvin’s funeral. I told you I needed to go.”
“Right. You don’t ever go to funerals. You must have really liked that man.”
Ray nodded. “He was … a good family man.”
“How long do you think it’ll be?”
“Couple hours, I guess. Funeral length.”
“Is it going to be outside?”
“The cemetery part. Why?”
“Well … how would you feel if I went with you?”
Ray felt a little bit of pee slip out. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve been sitting in this room for two days. The doctor said a little exercise would be good, and I’d love to get some fresh air. Then maybe after we can pick up some Moonlite or something for dinner.”
“Okay, well, maybe when I get back we can go down to the river, take a walk, have a picnic, I’m sure there’s some festival or something going on down there.” He smiled, then frowned. “It’s a funeral. It’ll be depressing.”
Suddenly, Ray felt insanely alert and helplessly sleepy.
Shit,
he remembered these pills. Ambiall (a combination Ambien and Adderall), “sleep aids for adults to help turn off their thoughts and focus on rest.” They never made it to market, too many side effects. Ray remembered the sensation from the last time he’d taken them. It was like being shot in the adrenal glands with horse tranquilizer.
“I’ve never met any of your patients before,” Miranda said.
“That’s because they’re all dead,” Ray said, wiping his brow and yawning. “And this one will be, too.”
“Don’t be condescending. I want to get out of this house and I think it would be good for Brixton to get out, too. She’s never seen a cemetery.”
“She doesn’t need to see a … cemetery.” Ray was thirsty.
Miranda pulled herself up from the sofa, “Just give me ten minutes.”
“Miranda … I…” He trailed off. There was more he wanted to say, a lot more. The words were forming perfectly in his head, a succinct, incontestable justification for her not going to this funeral, but he was just too sleepy to speak them.
Giving Ray the baby, Miranda charged down the hall to change her clothes. The girl melted into Ray’s chest as the leather La-Z-Boy recliner Bailey won at the Louisiana Queen of the Levees Pageant and Katrina Fund-Raiser (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) absorbed them both. He studied his daughter’s face, tried to memorize it. It was a good little face.
“You want to go to a funeral?” Ray asked his new baby.
She smiled and threw up on his tie.
Seated prominently beside the casket, Courtney, Britney, and Kaitlin reigned like a homecoming court while a few dozen others huddled under the small tent, hiding from the sun. The heat index was in the low nineties (a near record for mid September) and Courtney seriously regretted her leggings. She didn’t need them, anyway; no hot guys showed up. But that was okay, that’s not what the day was about. It was about Courtney’s loss—and Marvin’s life, of course. When everyone closed their eyes for the Lord’s Prayer, Courtney considered slipping off the tights but remembered she hadn’t worn underwear. Being pantyless at her grandfather’s funeral seemed disrespectful.
When she spotted Ray ambling toward the tent, her breathing relaxed and she smiled for the first time since Gatlinburg.
Thank God,
she thought.
Someone to take care of me.
It took a moment for Courtney to realize that the short, pretty woman with the baby next to him was his wife.
He did
not
bring her!
Over the sun-kissed corpse of her grandfather, Courtney screamed at him with her eyes:
What the fuck is
she
doing here?
Ray shrugged and tried to respond in kind.
She wanted to come. What was I supposed to do? I really need some water.
Miranda whispered in Ray’s ear, “Which one is the granddaughter?”
He whispered back, “The, um, the blond one. In the tights.”
“She’s cute.”
“You think so?”
Miranda chuckled. “Like you never noticed.”
