Pretty Ugly: A Novel (29 page)

“No, ma’am. I don’t reckon so.”

Miranda chuckled as if she’d made a joke, then happily signed the registration, feeling for the first time in her life the satisfying rush that comes only from spending other people’s money.

“Thank you, Mrs. Miller,” the clerk responded in a barren monotone.

The twinkle lights reflected off her shiny skin, making her humorless face look almost festive. For longer than he should have, Ray imagined having sex with this woman. In his experience, unattractive women were pretty good in bed. Fat girls came quicker, but they tended to just lie there. Ugly girls, however, were memorable. They tried harder, like they had something to prove. Or maybe it was just gratitude.

“Where is my fucking Carmex?” Courtney barked, rummaging through her purse and snapping Ray out of his fantasy.

“Would you like some help with your bags, Mrs. Miller?” The clerk mumbled.

Miranda considered this for a moment and smiled. “You know … I think I would like that very much.”

As the bell captain led them to the elevators, Miranda could tell that everyone was talking about her, but in a good way. With a famous daughter, a loving husband, a can’t-miss TV show, and a young, white nanny in tow, Miranda finally felt like she had everything she’d ever wanted. And without even taking a breath, she immediately started thinking about what she wanted next.

*   *   *

The three adjoining hotel rooms were barely big enough to keep everyone comfortable. Ray, Miranda, and Brixton took the biggest room on the end. It would serve as the command center: Brixton’s dressing room, prep space, and, if needed, press area. Joan and the boys would stay in the room next door, and Courtney would stay in the third room with Bailey, who over the past few months had grown to believe that the pregnant teenager staying at her house was the coolest person alive.

Courtney was like fireworks: a lot of fun to play with but with the very real potential to scar you for life. It was irresistible stuff for a soon-to-be-ten-year-old girl looking to start a new phase of her life. Fascination grew to hero worship when Bailey asked Courtney point-blank what a “BJ” was, something she claimed to have overheard two sixth-grade girls talking about in the restroom.

“Okay,” Courtney said, as serious as she’d ever been in her whole, entire life. “I’ll tell you, but you can’t tell your mom and dad I told you, and you cannot do it for, like, a long, long time, like six or seven years at least, okay?”

Bailey agreed, and Courtney launched into a twenty-minute visually demonstrative, exceedingly graphic answer that went way beyond what Bailey needed, or wanted, to know. She was completely skeeved out, but at the same time had never felt so respected by another living person. A full-grown adult was casually telling her things she wasn’t supposed to hear—gross, exciting sex things—as if they were equals.

Soon after, Bailey went out and got her hair cut and colored just like Courtney’s. From behind they looked nearly identical, which triggered a sadness inside Ray that felt bottomless and eternal.

However, despite their matching hairstyles and frank discussions of oral sex, Bailey did not envy Courtney’s
life
. Not at all. The idea of getting knocked up at seventeen, losing your house, and moving in with a strange family sounded only slightly worse than putting a boy’s thing her mouth.

*   *   *

For Joan, the defining moment of her life had arrived. Bailey had gone to visit the few friends she’d actually liked from her pageanting days, and the boys had fallen asleep in front of the TV. Through the door of the adjoining room, she could hear Courtney showering—probably because the girl felt as dirty on the outside as Joan knew she was on the inside.

Be nice.

“Sorry,” Joan whispered.

Everything is happening exactly as it should.

Joan nodded and gathered her provisions for the night: a sleeve of saltine crackers, a can of Diet Coke, and her murder weapon—a pillow. She slipped quietly into Courtney’s closet, which was surprisingly large for a hotel, and thought how nice it would be to have something like it in her own house.

You pull this off, Joan, and I’ll build you your dream closet. I used to be a carpenter, you know. A good one.

Joan blushed and smiled. “I think I read that somewhere.”

Wait until she told that holier-than-thou Wanda Gilchrist that Jesus Himself was going to build her a walk-in closet. That’d show her.

Leaning against the wall, Joan slowly lowered herself onto the floor and made her body as small as possible. Her knees popped and burned, but she refused to complain. “Soldiers don’t whine,” she whispered, and pulled a blanket over her head as camouflage. Jesus would let her know when it was time. Until then, she would stay alert and ready to act at a moment’s notice. Settling in, Joan put the pillow behind her head for support and closed her eyes. Three minutes later, she was sound asleep.

Dripping from the shower, Courtney checked the time on her cell phone: 7:18. The auction had ended hours ago, and she was pissed that she hadn’t heard from her stupid lawyer. After taking stock of what remained in the house, Courtney decided to just go ahead and auction off everything. This included her grandmother’s full-length mirror, wedding dress, and good silverware that
her
mother claimed had once been used by President Zachary Taylor. Courtney didn’t need any of it. She was ready to create new memories.

On the nightstand was her grand confession, an epic tale of love, death, budding maturity, and unmarried teen pregnancy. It was quite possibly her favorite piece of writing ever, or at least her favorite that didn’t have vampires in it. Lifting passages from her diary and peppered with her own peerless insights on the nature of relationships, the Confession read like a lost text from Nora Roberts, if Roberts couldn’t spell well and thought “chester drawers” was a piece of furniture. Nothing was left out, including an apology which, while sincere, felt superfluous since it likely would not be accepted. Courtney considered taking it out, but accepted or not, it seemed rude not to include it. There was also the question of whether she should give the letter to Miranda, read it off the page, or memorize and recite it. Because of their friendship, Courtney thought she owed it to Miranda to look her in the eye and recite it from memory, even though she wasn’t great at memorizing. She still couldn’t remember her social security number, but that was just some stupid numbers on her driver’s license. The Confession was actually important.

Courtney’s phone chirped. It was Mr. Waxflower. She rolled her eyes and answered it. “It’s been, like, over an hour. What’s going on with my house?”

“Miss Daye?”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “Duh. You called
me
. Is the auction over? How’d I do?”

Mr. Waxflower cleared his throat. “Yes, Miss Daye, I am calling to inform you that the auction of your grandfather’s property is complete. There are still some details to be worked out—papers to sign and items such as that—but it appears that with everything sold, and after the city collects its share of taxes, and all other fees have been paid—”

“Oh, my God, just tell me how much.”

“Somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety-two thousand dollars.”

Silence.

“Miss Daye?”

It was more than she’d expected, a shit ton more. “Astonished” was the biggest word she knew to describe how she felt. In fact, she wouldn’t have been more surprised if Mr. Waxflower had called to tell her he was in love with her.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked.

Mr. Waxflower squirmed. “Um. No. I am not.”

“Holy shit!”

“Miss Daye, please.”

“Sorry, but that’s … that’s a lot of money. I wasn’t expecting it to be so much.”

“Well, apparently several of your grandfather’s neighbors had been trying to purchase the property for years and the bidding escalated quickly. The winner, a Mr. Jim Ed Gaither, is planning to expand his farm, and——”

“I don’t care. When can I get a check?”

Again, Mr. Waxflower cleared his throat. “I can have a cashier’s check to you probably by the end of next week, provided everything goes smoothly with the sale.”

“So, by Friday then?”

“If everything goes smoothly with the sale—”

“Awesome.”

Courtney hung up without saying good-bye. Politeness was for the poor. She was rich now, and she wasn’t going to waste her time being well mannered to Mr. Waxflower, who technically worked for her. Money changed everything, including what she was going to say to Miranda. Taking out her notebook, she started rewriting the Confession. Forget the apology. Forget the friendship. Ray was hers now and she was going to take him,
buy
him if she had to. If Miranda had a problem with that, then she could kiss Courtney’s rich white butt.

*   *   *

Ten minutes before her meeting with Caroline, Miranda was a wreck. She had packed only three outfits for the entire weekend, and two of them were Target maternity dresses. With every change of clothes, Ray insisted she looked great, but Miranda wouldn’t hear it.

“You just don’t understand television, Ray.”

“And you’re an expert?”

She thought for a moment. “Yes. Somewhat. I watch a lot of it. And I know that no one is going to take me seriously if I show up dressed like a Southern housewife with four kids.”

“But you
are
a Southern housewife with four kids. That’s why they want you for the show.”

She ignored him. “Do you think the network would buy me a new wardrobe?”

“Probably not.” Football was on TV and Ray was having a hard time not being drawn to it even though he didn’t really care about it. “You look fine in the clothes you have.”

“I don’t want to look ‘fine,’ Ray. I want to look good.”

“You
do
look good.”

“I look housewife good, but I want to look TV good.”

“What’s the difference?”

She gave him a withering look as if to say,
You poor, poor ignorant man.

“Remember when Sarah Palin was picked to run for Vice President? The first thing they did was take her shopping because it is important for a woman to look good in front of the cameras. No one would’ve taken her seriously dressed like an Alaskan housewife.”

“People never took her seriously anyway.”

“Don’t be mean. She and I have a lot in common.”

“How?”

“Well, we’re both former pageant queens, we’re both from small towns, we’ve both been persecuted by the media, and we both have a special needs child.” Miranda looked over at Brixton, who was sleeping soundly on the other bed, and smiled.

“Well, maybe the two of you could become pen pals or something.”

Miranda rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”

Then again, why not? It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that someone like Sarah Palin would watch a reality show about beauty pageants, especially one featuring a special needs child. A surge of giddiness rippled through her body, and she made a mental note to ask Caroline if she knew how to get the former governor’s e-mail address.

Settling on her one pair of nonmaternity jeans, a black sweater that did a decent job of masking her baby weight, and the pair of sequined Chuck Taylors she found forgotten in one of Bailey’s old bags, Miranda gave herself one last look in the mirror and felt as satisfied as she was going to feel.

“Okay … do I look like I should be on TV?”

After overreacting to a fumble he cared nothing about, Ray turned from the TV and did a double take.

“Wow. You look fantastic.” Not that Miranda didn’t normally look great, but there was something different about her tonight, a brightness in her eyes that had been absent for a long time. What was it? Satisfaction? Confidence? Hope? Whatever it was, it suited her.
This
was the woman he’d fallen in love with, and all of a sudden he realized how much he’d missed her. A feeling he hadn’t known in a very long time overcame him, warming him like a favorite quilt. If he didn’t know any better he’d swear it was happiness, but that couldn’t be right, could it? His wife was about to go off and sell her family for a fleeting taste of celebrity. However, seeing her smile somehow made all that other garbage fall away. Ray took her hand, pulled her onto the bed, and kissed her hard.

“I love you, Miranda. I really do.”

“Well, I love you, too,” she said, thrown by his sudden affection.

“No. I mean I
really
love you. And I’m going to make everything okay. I promise.”

She was on her feet like a shot. “What do you mean? What’s not okay?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s not okay. Everything’s … fine. I’m just … I’m going to work very hard to make our lives better.”

Miranda gave him a curious look. “Okay,” she said, then caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. “I do look pretty good, don’t I?”

They smiled.

“You look great.”

“All right, I’m leaving. Don’t eat anything. When I get back, we’ll go have a nice dinner somewhere to celebrate. I think I saw a Black Angus down the road.”

“Sounds good. Break a leg, or whatever they say in a situation like this.”

Halfway out the door, Miranda turned back and carefully picked Brixton up off the bed. “Almost forgot our little meal ticket.” She laughed nervously, hoping Ray knew it was a joke, then strapped her sleeping baby daughter into her sling and danced out the door.

With at least an hour to himself, Ray thought about masturbating, but he was completely flaccid and working one up would take too much effort. Instead, he unzipped his garment bag and fished around his suit pockets for his biohazard bag of pills. And that’s when he saw it: the wrinkled, bloodstained envelope bearing his name, Marvin’s letter, waiting patiently for the perfect time to show up and shit all over his life.

“Goddammit,” Ray moaned.

The envelope felt heavy, like it was filled with a lifetime’s worth of bad karma. The old bastard always did know how to spoil a mood. Knowing he probably wouldn’t be in a better frame of mind anytime soon, Ray popped something he hoped was Lexapro and fell onto the bed. He took a deep breath and opened the envelope, half expecting to hear Marvin’s ghostly voice escape. The letter was nearly a page, which was something akin to a miracle considering the old man’s condition at the time of its writing. It must have taken him days. Each word was carefully crafted and nearly illegible, as if written by a vibrating child.