Waking Beauty (30 page)

It felt good to be back in my peeling-ceiling room. No smiling and nodding required. My ugly old futon welcomed me in. I found the sweet spot, an Allison-shaped indentation between lumps, and snuggled down with Nathan’s screenplay
—An Honest Man
. It was a dark comedy about a bored billionaire who sets up an elaborate game to test the mettle of those around him and see if he can find a truly incorruptible man. It was clever, funny, and even poignant in spots. It had lots of ingenious plot twists and a nifty surprise ending. I read the whole thing in one sitting. Later, after dinner, I reread it. I was hoping Nathan would call me back so I could tell him how much I liked it. But he didn’t call me back. No, he didn’t.

All night I waited for the phone to do what it was supposed to, but at midnight, when I could no longer stave off slumber, it was still sitting there, as mute and mocking as a mime.

The following morning I had to go to 505 Richmond to meet with Fiona and see my model photos.

“Aren’t they something?” she said.

“They’re incredible.”

“Do you like the ones I picked?” She had selected four to be blown up. Two full-body shots and two head shots—one smiling, one serious. I looked eerily model-like. Flawless.

“They’re amazing. But the thing is…”

“What?”

“Well…I know this is terrible timing, and I’m sorry, but I’ve decided that I don’t want to be a model.”

“What? Why on earth not?!”

“Because it’s just—it’s not me.”

“Of course it’s you. Look.”

“No, I know…but it’s not. It’s not what I want to do.”

“I see.” Fiona laughed mirthlessly. “Well, I wish I’d known that earlier, Allison. I submitted you for a job this morning.”

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“Well, they’ll probably want someone with experience anyway. But if it had been a local thing, and they wanted to hire you, it would’ve been very awkward for me.”

“I’m sorry. Honestly. And I’m going to pay you back for the pictures.”

“Fine.”

“Um, how much…?”

“Nine hundred.”

Gulp. “Well, I’ll pay you as soon as I can.”

Fiona smiled wryly as she gathered up the photos.

“I will,” I said. “As soon as I get a job.”

“I thought you had a job.”

“No, I quit the cleaning thing.”
And I’m living off a loan from George, and my roommate bugged out on me, and my credit card is maxed…
.

“Well, best of luck to you, Allison.” Fiona stood up and extended her big man hand for a shake. She said it kindly, without bitterness.

“Look,” I said, “if that job you submitted me for comes through, I guess I could do it.”

“It’s a long shot, trust me, but I appreciate the offer.” Fiona withdrew the warm hand and showed me out of the office.

“
Art & Trash
.”

“Nathan?”

Silence.

“It’s Allison.”

“Hey.”

“Can you talk for a sec?”

“Um, I’m sort of busy right now. With a customer.”

“Oh. Well, I’m in a phone booth. Can I hold or do you want me to call you back?”

“Actually, it’s kind of busy in here.”

“I need to talk to you. Should I call you at home later?”

“I’m working tonight.”

“Oh, right.” I waited for him to tell me when it would be convenient to call, but all I got was silence. “Okay,” I said, “I guess you have my number.”

“Yes, I do,” he said.

And I knew he meant something else by it, and that I would never hear from him again. “Listen,” I blurted, “the guy who picked me up that night, George, we’re not involved, okay?”

“Whatever.”

“I mean, we dated briefly, but it’s over. Totally over.”

“You know, it’s really none of my business.”

“But it is your business. If we’re going to be seeing each other.”

“Well, that’s the thing. I don’t think we should. I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Why not?”

He laughed. “I don’t know, it just—it doesn’t make any sense; it wouldn’t work. And to be honest, I’d prefer to spare myself the misery.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe it would be hard for someone like you to understand. It’s just—I don’t want to get embroiled. The weekend was bad enough.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have canceled and I shouldn’t have gone. But there are reasons why I went, complicated reasons, which I can explain. And I swear to you, I’m not interested in George!”

“Okay, maybe not George, but you probably get hit on a thousand times a day, you know, by studs in sports cars with glam jobs and full heads of hair. I can’t compete with that.”

“Yes, you can, actually.”

“No. Not a chance. And anyway, I don’t want to have to try. I don’t want to be obsessing about it all the time. And I would be. I know I would.” He laughed. “I don’t even know why you’re interested in me in the first place.”

“I just am, okay?” Stupid answer. “I loved your screenplay, by the way.”

“Uch, the second act is a mess.”

“Well, I thought it was good.”

“I should probably get that back.”

“Yeah, you should probably come over tomorrow night and get it,” I said.

Silence followed by a sigh. “Do me a favor, okay?”

“What?”

“Just mail it to me when you have a chance.”

“But—”

“I gotta go.” Click. Dial tone.

I stood in the booth feeling hollow and small, staring mutely at the street and the people passing by. Clearly, Nathan had no interest in hearing my complicated reasons for driving away with the man in the Vanquish. I had been written off. He would spare himself the misery. And it wasn’t hard for “someone like me” to understand, because I wasn’t someone like me. I understood perfectly. Old Allison was too
unattractive for Nathan to date, and New Allison was too beautiful. Oh, God, I thought, at least when I was ugly I could depend on a warm conversation three times a week. Now…now I was alone in the booth with the people passing by, and the phone beeping its ugly message about the severed connection, and I couldn’t hang up and try my call again. No. He would spare himself the misery. I stood in the booth with tears in my eyes and the phone in my hand, and I wanted to call someone. I wanted very much to talk to someone…. But there was no one no one no one for me to talk to.

Or was there?

Maybe there was someone, someone who didn’t fit my idea of the picture-perfect mother, just like I hadn’t fit Simon’s ideal of the picture-perfect daughter.

She was, sitting on the porch when I arrived. Same sweatpants. Different T-shirt. This one said: I
New York.

“You again,” she said, flicking her cigarette on the lawn.

An attosecond impulse to bolt, but I resisted. I strode to the porch stairs, then stalwart, chin out, I gravely and bravely pronounced: “My name is Allison Penny. I’m the daughter you gave up for adoption twenty-two years ago.”

The woman stared for a moment, then erupted into a wheezy cackle. She was missing teeth, three or four on the left side of the upper plate. “I’m not Jeannie,” she said. “I’m Maureen. Her sister.”

“Oh! Oh. Is she—would it be possible for you to tell me how I can get in touch with her?”

She cocked her head. Shifty. Suspicious. “Why don’t you come in for some tea.”

“All right.”

She wheezed her way up to the second floor and unlocked a door that had
2B
written on it in ballpoint pen. I followed her into a filthy apartment that smelled like cat shit and cigarettes. There was a small bedroom with a wide doorway, and a larger room that served as a second bedroom/living
room/kitchen—if you could call it a kitchen. In one corner was an arborite table, a food-encrusted hot plate, a Stone Age microwave, a bar fridge, and the world’s smallest sink. No counter, just a tiny ceramic sink sticking out of the wall. Underneath was a litter box that could have benefited from nuclear strike, likely the only way to refresh it at that point. No bathroom for humans in sight. Presumably, somewhere in the house there was a shared facility.

“You want tea or something else?”

It was stifling in the room. “Um, something cold would be good. Water?”

“I got soda.”

“Thanks.”

She opened the fridge and pulled out two jumbo bottles of dubiously hued no-name pop. “Grape or Cherry?”

“Um, grape, I guess.” I found a wooden chair that wasn’t covered in cat hair and waited while she poured the drinks into Styrofoam cups. I lost a staring contest with a rheumy-eyed feline—a cat so fat it apparently couldn’t reach all the way around to groom itself. It had a patch of oily black back fur flecked with dandruff.

“Cheers.”

“Thank you.” I sipped to be polite. Worse than I expected. Ninety-nine percent syrup and dye, one percent H
₂
O. It was flat, too, like a tumbler of melted Popsicle.

“So,” she said, settling on the edge of an unmade sofa bed, “what do you want with Jeannie?”

“Want? Um, I just want to meet her.”

“‘Cause if yer lookin’ to get somethin’…” The woman was giving me an down. For what? For the jumbo jar of Skippy peanut butter on top of the microwave? For the macraméd Phentex plant holder dangling, empty, from the ceiling?

“I don’t want anything from her. I just want to see her. I just want to know who she is.”

The woman looked suspicious. Also wily.

“Are you her?” I said.

“I told you, I’m
Maureen
. Her sister. I wish I was her. Then I wouldn’t have to do nothin’. Then I could sit around all day paintin’ pictures.”

“Jeannie’s an artist?” I felt a swell of hope and happy. I saw her in a smock, in a well-lit studio space, her long hair swept into a Katharine Hepburn-style bun.

Maureen snorted. “She isn’t no artist. She isn’t anything.” She lit a cigarette and launched into a terrible tirade about how she, Maureen, had to do everything. Everything. How she had to do all the cooking and cleaning (?), shopping and bill-paying. How she had to have knee surgery—she rolled up her sweatpants to show me the gnarled knee—and how much her knee hurt all the time, and how she couldn’t stand on it for more than an hour, which is why she had to quit the job at the restaurant and why she couldn’t work anymore. She told me how she had been burdened with Jeannie since their mother passed away, when Jeannie was fourteen years old, and how it had interfered with her marriage and was the main reason her husband took a powder. She told me how tired she was of doing
everything
, and how she didn’t get any thanks for it, no thanks from anyone, not from Jeannie or anyone else, and how she could sure use some help if I really was who I said I was.

“Jeannie lives here? With you?”

“I just told ya! I’ve been takin’ care of her my whole life! And nobody’s been takin’ care of me, I’ll tell you that much. And that one’s got a temper on her, believe you me. No one else knows how to handle them tantrums she throws. But I know how to handle her all right.”

I got a chill when she said that. I pictured some kind of
What Ever Happened to Baby Jeannie
? thing going on (perhaps involving the dangling plant holder).

“She’s lucky. Darned lucky to have me. If it wasn’t for me, she’d be out on the streets. She’d be dead or something.”

“So…where is she now?”

“She’s over at that Healing Art Center. She’s there most days, thank God, ’cause I can’t watch her every minute of the day. I gotta have time to do everything. I can’t watch her every minute of the day.”

“Is it close to here? Can I go talk to her?”

She laughed. “Yeah, you can go talk to her, you can talk all you want, but she won’t talk back.”

“She doesn’t talk?”

“Not since we was kids.” She laughed. “When we was little I couldn’t shut her up. Now she don’t say a word. Except in her sleep. She wakes me up, and I can’t get back to sleep. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do everything if I don’t get proper sleep. I need a door for that room. I asked the landlord for a door, I asked him ten times for a goddamned door for that room! But he won’t do it. He don’t do nothin’ around here. ’Cause he’s lazy,” she hissed,
“a you-know-what
.”

I did not know what, and I didn’t want to know. I stood up. “I think I’ll go over to that art center. Could you tell me where it is?” It felt like a hundred degrees in the room. And no air to breathe. Just cat exhalation and bitter smoke.

“Yeah, I can tell you.”

I waited.

“So, you look like you did all right,” she said.

“I guess.”

“Rich parents?”

“I take care of myself.”

“’Cause it was my decision, you know. You can thank
me
for that one.”

I carried my drink to the sink.

“Still sayin’ you’re Jeannie’s daughter?” she asked with a snide smile.

“I am her daughter.”

“Well, I don’t mind, but you sure don’t look nothin’ like her.”

“I guess I look like my father, then.” I said it as a question. I was curious about that, too.

Maureen laughed. “I guess. I guess she musta got attacked by Mr. America if you’re really who you say you are.”

Air. I needed air. I stumbled out of the house and inhaled a lungful. Even with the exhaust from the traffic, it felt cool and sweet. Water was next. I was sweat-drenched and frenzied by thirst. I lurched into the first variety store I could find, grabbed a jumbo bottle of club soda, and drank most of it. I paid for it, then drank the rest.