Pretty Ugly: A Novel (5 page)

“He your first Asian?”

“Hm? No. I don’t know. What’s Filipino?”

Christie shrugged and looked at the clock on the wall. “Time of death six oh nine
P.M.
”

“Shit,” Ray said, “I gotta get to work.”

“Try not to kill this one, will you?” Christie laughed.

“It’s hospice,” Ray said, forcing a smile. “Those ones are supposed to die.”
But it’s still early,
he thought.
Maybe I’ll get a leap year before sundown.

Heading toward the parking lot, Ray passed the nurses’ station and spied two unattended pills in a tiny paper cup waiting to be delivered. A rack on the nearby wall was filled with informational pamphlets left by various pharma reps: “Stop Suffering from Depression,” “How to Cope with Stress,” “Why Be Anxious About Your Anxiety?” They looked trustworthy, like they’d been lifted from the pages of the
New England Journal of Medicine
or
The Lancet
. Informative, in that everyone who read them could easily diagnose themselves as having that particular disorder; and comforting, in that they could recommend an effective new medication that could help! None of them suggested exercise, or a change in diet, or turning off the TV. Just drugs. Ray shook his head and threw back the tiny paper cup like a shot of tequila. In an hour he would be feeling … something. It was something to look forward to. Just then his eyes landed on a pamphlet he’d never seen before. Three smiling, ethnically diverse women sat in a gazebo surrounded by wildflowers: “The Breast Self-Exam Guide.” Ray stared at it and tried to imagine the breasts of the women in the picture. They were just models, probably never even had cancer, so thinking about their breasts didn’t seem inappropriate. Ray looked at his watch: six fourteen. He was going to be late. Adjusting his still erect penis, nurse Ray Miller snatched a copy of “The Breast Self-Exam Guide” from the rack and quietly slipped out the back door by the used-needle incinerator.

chapter four

Stiff-arming the horn, Miranda slammed on the brakes of her 2002 Chrysler Town & Country and slid into her mother’s driveway, an unwelcoming patch of dirt and gravel that had spent the last twenty-five years winning a war of attrition against the backyard. It was seven forty-seven, and Miranda was already behind schedule. The boys had refused to share a bath again, so they didn’t get one, and the drive-thru line at McDonald’s was too long so they didn’t have breakfast, either.

“Why don’t you enter the boys in pageants?” Ray had once suggested. “They’d probably enjoy it, and it might help you connect with them a little more.”

But Miranda just sighed and shook her head. Yes, there were little boys who competed in pageants, but Miranda suspected that they all grew up to have sex with each other, and she was not about to raise a couple of gays. Not that she considered herself homophobic. Most of the best pageant coaches were homosexual, and she genuinely enjoyed their company, even considered them friends, but spending a few hours with one on the weekend was different from having one as a son.

“Is that what you want, Ray? A couple of gay boys?”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” he replied, genuinely concerned.

But Miranda wouldn’t hear him. She knew her boys would be better off if she just let them be, so that’s exactly what she did.

The sign on the bank downtown said it was already eighty-six degrees, and Miranda’s pregnancy hemorrhoids felt like she was smuggling fried grapes. Bailey was slouched in the passenger seat scrolling through the pink iPod she’d won at the Miles of Smiles Perfect Face Invitational (Hendersonville, Tennessee). Pageant weekends were always stressful for Bailey, but something about this one felt heavy. Not only was she relinquishing her title of Junior Miss Beautiful, but her mother had decided to take a risk and enter her in the Most Beautiful Princess division, fudging her birthdate by three months to meet the age requirement.

“Isn’t that cheating?” Bailey asked when Miranda informed her of the scheme the day before.

“I like to think of it more like a
gamble,
” her mother said.

A gamble that if unsuccessful could get them both banished from the Southeastern Pageant Association for life, but Miranda believed it was worth the risk. The SPA sponsored only four pageants a year, and two of them weren’t much better than dog shows.

“And sometimes gambles pay off big time,” Miranda said with a wink.

“But why?”

“What do you mean?”

Bailey looked her mother in the eye, knowing the answer before she asked. “Why are we lying about my age?”

“Well,” Miranda tiptoed, “I was thinking about your diet, and how we could turn what has become a negative into a positive.”

Bailey crossed her arms. “Explain, please.”

Miranda looked at her daughter. Recently, she had started to think that Bailey was saying things just to mess with her, asking questions she already knew the answer to just to study Miranda’s reaction, as if Bailey was a scientist conducting an experiment and Miranda was a rat. She would never say it out loud, but it kind of creeped her out a little.

“Princess contestants are older, ten to fourteen.” Miranda explained. “In your regular category, you’ll be one of the oldest, so you’ll look big, bigger than you even are in real life. So next to the girls in the princess group, you’ll look normal size. Smaller even, which is better!”

Bailey stared at her. She was thinking about the five Cadbury Creme Eggs she’d eaten during that morning’s “elliptical workout.”

“So … it
is
cheating.”

“I’m trying to help you,” Miranda said, confounded by her daughter’s reluctance to endorse her deceitful, yet sensible plan. “Just … trust me. It’ll work.”

The warm purr of a lawn mower sputtered to life in the distance. Miranda laid on the horn again, inciting a dirty look from a portly neighbor on a Rascal using a grabber to jerk obscenely large underwear from a clothesline.

“Hey there, Emma.” Miranda waved, then honked again. “Mom, hurry up! We’re late!” She honked again. “I’m gonna leave these boys on the porch if you don’t get out here!”

Drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, Miranda saw her old, battered swing set slouching like an elderly nanny in the corner of the yard. Her father, Roger, had built it from found materials when Miranda was five. It quickly became Miranda’s second home and her only needed source of entertainment. There were two swings, a tube slide, a rope bridge, a pole to slide down, and a set of monkey bars. The design made it versatile enough to be whatever her imagination wanted it to be. When she wanted to be a princess, it was a castle. When she wanted to be a pirate princess, it was a pirate ship. When she wanted to be Princess Leia, it was the Millennium Falcon. Now, weather-beaten and rusted through, it was a monument to tetanus. Her boys loved it.

Finally, Miranda’s mother, Joan (pronounced “Jo-Ann”), unlatched the screen door and waved.

“Jesus, it’s about time,” Miranda said under her breath. The sliding door of the minivan moaned and sputtered open like a huge mouth deciding whether or not it wanted to vomit. It was the boys’ cue to get out.

“Listen to Grandma!” Miranda yelled at their backs as they ran toward the house. “I’ll see you Sunday!” And then added, “Wish your sister and me good luck!”

“Hang on!” Joan yelled as she laboriously inched her way down the worn wooden steps of the screened-in back patio. Miranda felt the increasingly frequent anxiety of a blown schedule and rubbed Brixton for comfort.

“Come on, dammit,” Miranda said quietly, cursing the woman who gave her life. “I don’t have time for this crap right now.” She turned to Bailey, “I love your grandmother very much.”

Joan’s knees were swollen from arthritis and stiff from the rain that would start in about four hours. Her left meniscus had ground to powder, leaving her bones to rub against one another like a mortar and pestle. Sometimes they would vibrate on contact, and Joan could feel her soul shudder, that nails-on-a-chalkboard feeling emanating from deep inside her being. Wearing her best smile, and third-best housecoat, Joan finally made her way to the minivan and leaned in the window.

“You off?”

“We’re late. Heading to Knoxville.”

“Okay.” Joan nodded knowingly several times. “In Tennessee?”

“Is there another one?”

“I don’t know. Probably.” She put her hand on Miranda’s belly. “Hello, sweetie.”

Miranda put the minivan in reverse, “We need to go, Mom.”

“What time should I put the boys to bed?”

“Just let ’em fall asleep in front of the TV. Ray should be by around ten or so to pick them up.”

“Okay, then.” Joan waved to Bailey and smiled. “Hey, hon. You gonna win this weekend?”

Bailey looked up from her iPod, smiled at her grandmother, and gestured toward her mother. “Mom thinks so.”

“Good. Good for you.” Joan smiled.

Miranda blushed and let her foot off the brake a little. The car creeped backward. “Mom, we really need to go.”

“Okay, well, y’all have a nice time. Be careful.” She called in to her granddaughter, “Bring back a crown, sweetheart! Or just have fun. Remember, you don’t have to win to have fun!”

Miranda slammed on the brakes and shot her mother a look of grave disappointment. “Dammit, Mom. We talked about this.”

That was exactly the kind of so-called encouragement that had forced Miranda to ban Joan from being a pageant chaperone. For some reason, Joan just could not get her mind around what was at stake, and trying to explain it to her was like trying to explain a card trick to a cat. She would never understand. Few did. Pageants were like wars: expensive, cruel, and necessary. Casualties were inevitable, and Bailey needed a warrior’s motivation to foster not only survival but victory. To Joan, it was all about having fun, looking pretty, and doing your best, which Miranda thought was sentimental horseshit. Everyone knew the girls who had the most fun rarely took home a crown.

“Sorry,” Joan said, raising her hands in defeat. “I’ll let you go.”

“We’ll be back Sunday night,” Miranda said through her closing window.

“Okay, then. Bye. Y’all be careful now.”

The Town & Country kicked up a cloud of dust as Miranda tore out onto the road. Joan watched her daughter and granddaughter drive away and felt her smile turn sour. She knew how stupid Miranda thought she was, but Joan disagreed. She was a smart cookie. She watched the news. She knew things. Big things. Joan kept her eye on Miranda until she drove through a rarely observed stop sign at the end of the street next to the big, empty parking lot. Some people said it was the biggest parking lot in the state, but Joan thought that seemed unlikely.

Shaking her head, she erased the negative thoughts of her daughter like an Etch
A
Sketch and pulled herself back up the steps of her porch. Stopping to rest, she asked Jesus if he had a few seconds to talk.

I always have time for you, Joan. How are your knees?

She grinned and shook her head in astonishment. “That is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Entering the kitchen from her back patio, Joan found J.J. and Junior sitting at the table shoving handfuls of homemade cherry pie into their laughing faces.

“Boys! That pie was for your supper,” she yelled. “I’ve got a good mind to send you outside and pull a switch off the tree.”

But she knew if she let them outside she’d never get them off Miranda’s old swing set. They looked up at her with big, worried eyes, cherry pie filling ringing their mouths like clown makeup. Joan shook her head.
These boys need discipline,
she thought, and Joan was not one to spare the rod.

No child ever turned out worse because he got his backside tanned every now and again.

The Bible was pretty clear on that. Then again, they looked so happy, full to bursting on something she’d lovingly made with her own hands. What was the harm, really? They were just being boys. Maybe instead she should be flattered that they loved her pie, the same recipe
her
mother made, and her mother before her. She couldn’t give the boys much, but she could give them pie. Besides, what’s a grandmother for if it’s not to spoil her grandchildren? The boys rarely ate something homemade. It was nice to be the person who provides them with something healthy for a change. When she thought about it, if she punished them for eating that pie, she would
really
be punishing them for loving her so much. And that didn’t make any sense at all.

“Okay.” She smiled. “When you finish up, go wash your faces, then it’s time for your lessons.”

For a little over a year, Joan had been homeschooling J.J. and Junior. Of all the roles she’d had in her life, teacher was probably the one that made her proudest.

“Only in America,” she once said to Jesus, “could someone who never finished high school be allowed to have the same educational influence as those so-called professionals.”

It really is a great country,
said Jesus.

After seventh grade, Joan’s father made her drop out of school to work full-time on the family farm. “But that didn’t mean I stopped learning,” she told the boys in one of her many diversions. “I’ve read near seventy-five books in my life, and those were
not
books I would have read if I’d stayed in school. So do with that what you will.”

Joan believed that her life experiences and personal opinions
had
to be more relevant than anything the boys would learn in a classroom. Public schools had become nothing more than godless reeducation camps created for the sole purpose of indoctrinating children into accepting and perpetuating the liberal agenda. The 700 Club had alerted Joan to the nefarious plot of the public education system to brainwash an entire generation of young people, and she refused to stand idly by while her grandsons were exposed to dangerous subject matter like evolution, global warming, and the performing arts. She would rather the boys forgo education altogether than become hippie theater majors who believed their people came from apes.