Pretty Ugly: A Novel (6 page)

With Jesus’s guidance, Joan worked up a tight eight-minute presentation for Miranda, who was skeptical at best.

“Homeschooled kids are ignorant and weird,” Miranda said. “I got enough problems with those boys. I don’t need them to be weird, too.”

“But,” Joan countered with the deftness of a TV lawyer, “think about how much more time you’ll have to focus on Bailey’s pageants.”

Miranda hadn’t thought of that. Smart cookie, indeed.

Joan adored the boys and wanted nothing but the best for them. They were pretty much her only human contact. Her knees prevented her from leaving the house very often, and when she did venture out it was usually only for Sunday service at the Pleasant Ridge Church of Christ or the occasional Mel Gibson movie. God knew she could use the company.

The boys finished their pie, and Joan shuffled over to the stove. Since 1975, an endless pot of pinto beans had warmed on the back burner. It was about all Roger would eat, and the smell reminded her of him. Plus, it was nice to have hot food to offer if anyone stopped by for a visit. She ate a spoonful and made her way to an open door on the other side of the room. Feeling her way across the wall, she flipped a switch and flooded a cramped utility room with light. Jars of canned peaches lined a wall in perfect, uniform rows like three-dimensional wallpaper. Generations of winter coats hung over each other in pregnant bulges above the washer and dryer, and half a dozen dusty fishing rods rested in the corner with Roger’s old squirrel rifle. Joan shook her head. She really did need to clean this room up.

It would make a wonderful study.

Carefully maneuvering the deliberate piles of clothes (some to be washed, some to be donated, some to be ignored), Joan made her way to the home computer nestled in the back corner. For her first semester as a teacher, Joan had relied primarily on Wikipedia for her lesson plans. It was easy, free, and allowed her to fix some of the more egregious errors made by the ignorant know-it-alls who posted the information in the first place. However, when she stumbled upon the simple brilliance of Conservapedia it was like getting an honorary doctorate in common sense. Joan felt as if she could have written those articles herself, which was high praise indeed. Pages spit from the Lexmark ink-jet printer Bailey won at the Rebel Belles Glamboree (Huntsville, Alabama), and Joan felt a blush of self-righteous pride. “
This
is what they should be teaching in schools.”

Classes began with an hour of Christian apologetics, followed by American history (
real
American history), Bible study, penmanship, recess, a healthy lunch, social studies (the evils of Hollywood values), and if there was time left over before
Wheel,
math.

Joan thumbed through her lesson plan and took her seat at the kitchen table. Through the open toe of her support hose, she felt a wide crack in the linoleum and ran her toe along the length of it. Installed in 1966, the dark brown wood-grain flooring had faded to the burnt yellow of a tobacco chewer’s teeth. A distinct path had been worn from the refrigerator to the sink to the stove to the table. In the corner by the window, a small rag rug covered the cigarette burns near the legs of Roger’s old secretary desk where, at the end of the day, he would read the evening edition as Joan hurried about making his dinner. Seventy percent of Joan’s adult life had been spent in this room, and she was grateful for every imperfection: the discolored flower basket wallpaper, the stove’s permanently grease-covered backsplash, the warped cabinet doors, the stained porcelain of the sink. It was warm, like wrapping herself in her father’s tattered cardigan.

The old stuff is the best stuff, Joan.

She laughed. “Yes, I suppose that’s true,” she agreed, and slid her big toe along the crack until her knee told her to stop.

The boys had started licking the pie pan clean, and a look of pity crossed her face.

“You boys need haircuts.” She sighed. “Why can’t your mother see how beautiful you are?”

Miranda’s indifference to the boys didn’t make a lick of sense, but there wasn’t a lot about her daughter Joan understood. They rarely talked about anything other than schedules, and whenever Joan tried to question her daughter about the time (or lack thereof) she spent with her sons, Miranda would blow up and use terrible words that started with the letters
f
and
s.
Joan would just shake her head.

“Why a pretty girl like you would want to make yourself so ugly by using those words is beyond me. I don’t even know where you learned words like that. Certainly not from me.” Joan had never said those words, although after three or four beers, Roger would occasionally use profanity. But he worked hard, he deserved those beers.

Roger Sylvester Ford drowned in the shower while brushing his teeth. Time management had become an obsession for Roger. Insurance didn’t just sell itself, and if he was ever going to surpass that pompous ass Brad Souther as the insurance leader of Daviess County, then he needed every spare minute he could find. With his right hand, Roger would brush his teeth while his left used the removable showerhead to rinse the Pert Plus from his hair and mustache. It was so efficient that after a few weeks he had begun shaving and flossing in the shower as well. All told, the new system saved him nearly five and a half minutes a day, time that would later be spent around the Big Table at Gabe’s Restaurant bullshitting with other local businessmen who fancied themselves the town’s power brokers and brain trust.

As a boy, the sight of his old man’s upper plate soaking in a bedside glass of water had given Roger nightmares, and he vowed to never get dentures. Considerable time was spent each morning tending to his healthy yet slightly crooked teeth, primarily his molars. “That’s where the cavity monsters hide,” he told a terrified five-year-old Miranda, who spent the next three years of her childhood believing tiny, malevolent ogres lived inside her mouth.

Roger had gotten his routine down to a science: Starting in the back and working left to right, he would brush in thirty deliberate circles before moving forward to his bicuspids and repeating the process. He did this top and bottom, front and back, three times a day. Normally, it was more than sufficient, but that morning he felt a tiny sausage remnant stuck behind a back tooth. With precious seconds ticking away, Roger poked at the food, but slipped on some toothpaste he’d just spit out and shoved his toothbrush halfway down his throat. Panicked and gagging, he threw his head back and slammed it against the tile wall, knocking himself unconscious. The removable showerhead swung like a pendulum on a grandfather clock ticking down Roger’s final seconds. An arcing stream of water filled his open mouth and drowned him as he sat upright in the tub. Joan discovered the body fifteen minutes later.

Thank God for Jesus. If it weren’t for His little pep talks, Joan probably wouldn’t have gotten through it.

Don’t you worry about a thing,
He told her the next morning.
Roger’s with me now. And just so you know, he’s already the number-one insurance salesman in Heaven.
Joan never asked why angels needed insurance. She didn’t have to.

Joan ran her fingers through her grandsons’ mops of hair and picked out small sticky pieces of cherries they had flung at each other. “Do you want to start your lessons now, or do you want Nana to give you haircuts?”

“Can we just watch TV today?” Junior asked. “I’m not in the mood to learn anything.”

“Yeah,” seconded J.J. “No learnin’!”

Gazing into their big angelic eyes, Joan’s heart melted like butter over hot grits.

“Of course,” she said calmly.

The boys leapt from the table and ran into the living room. Joan called after, “But nothing too violent and none of that Disney Channel garbage! Walt Disney was an anti-Semite, and Israel is our friend! We’re gonna need the Jews when Jesus comes back!”

Joan dropped the day’s lessons on a growing stack of previously untaught schoolwork and pulled a deck of cards from the junk drawer.

Deal me in.

“Okay,” Joan warned, “but I’ve been practicing.”

Jesus laughed.
I’m sure you have. I’ll try and stay alert.

As a wrestling program blared from the living room, Joan slowly lowered herself into the chair and dealt two hands of cards.

chapter five

Miranda and Bailey arrived at the Knoxville Crowne Plaza Hotel a little after 6
P.M.
, only thirty minutes behind schedule. The parking lot was gridlocked with minivans, suvs, and overflowing luggage carts. The first real challenge of any pageant weekend was transferring the contents of your vehicle to your hotel room, and whoever parked closest to the entrance could claim the first psychological victory. Miranda just shook her head. “Amateurs.” Smiling, she hung a placard she’d lifted from Joan’s rearview mirror, and whipped into a handicapped spot.

Bailey was passed out in the backseat. She’d fallen asleep somewhere around Harriman, Tennessee, after inhaling her dinner of McSalad, small fries with no ketchup, and large Diet Coke. On average, Bailey drank six Diet Cokes a day, which was acceptable under the complex meal plan Miranda had put together. Anything with the word “diet” or “fat free” on the label was allowed in unlimited quantities. Everything else had to be approved.

A bellman approached the minivan but was abruptly waved off.

“No! No, thank you! We got it!”

Miranda groaned. She was constantly disappointed by how the host hotels insisted on nickel-and-diming their guests. Everyone expected a tip for doing a job they were presumably already paid to do. It was frustrating and embarrassing, especially when the hotels refused to give a significant discount to pageant attendees.

“Ten percent is not a discount,” she’d written to the president of Marriott. “It’s a slap in the face. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. With all the publicity these pageants bring your hotels, contestants and families should be asked to stay for
free
.”

Slowly lowering herself off the inflatable hemorrhoid donut, Miranda brushed french fry crumbs from her shirt and rubbed her belly just in time to feel Brixton laugh. It was the full, rich laugh of a happy, well-adjusted baby. During the trip, Miranda had told Brixton some of her favorite knock-knock jokes, and the kid could not get enough.

“You’re such a smart little girl, Brixton,” she cooed. “And funny, too.”

Miranda tapped the back window of the minivan with her wedding ring and startled Bailey awake. “We’re here, sweetie! Get up and help me with these bags.”

Bailey nodded. She knew the drill. She slipped on her shoes and grabbed a luggage cart from one of the bellmen by the front door while Miranda inventoried their bags. Every week there was more stuff: garment bags, makeup kits, hairpieces, photos, r
é
sum
é
s, crowns, camcorders, air-brushing system, self-tanner, eyelashes, shoes, back-up shoes, etc. Thank God Bailey was naturally (for the most part) beautiful, or they’d have to buy a full-size SUV.

Maneuvering the luggage cart through the hardening artery of the loading zone, Bailey thought about Frogger. The game had become one of her favorites since winning a Nintendo DS at some pageant. She couldn’t remember which one. Currently, Bailey held twenty-four titles in six states, and she couldn’t name half of them. They had all become one big pink blur. She hated to think that her greatest accomplishments had come before she was even a teenager, but it was also difficult to imagine that she would ever do anything else in her life that would earn her a room full of trophies.

When she reached the revolving door, Bailey found her mother, ashen faced, mouth agape, staring at a piece of paper taped to the window. Miranda snatched it from the glass and read it out loud to make sure she was as angry as she should be.

“SHOOTING NOTICE”

“Welcome! This weekend the Learning Channel (TLC) will be following several contestants from the Little Most Beautiful Princess Pageant for a reality show to air later this year (title TBD). By entering these premises, you are legally agreeing to be videotaped. Your image may be used for the program and/or for any promotion pertaining to the program. Cameras will be in the audience during the pageant as well as many of the backstage areas. Production assistants will be on hand to get signatures for release forms; however, because of the large crowd expected to attend, obtaining signatures from everyone will be impossible. Therefore, your attendance at the Little Most Beautiful Princess Pageant, and its surrounding activities, is an implicit agreement to be recorded. Thank you for your cooperation and good luck!!”

“A reality show?” Miranda screamed to no one in particular. “Those filthy sons of bitches! They stole my idea!”

For five years Miranda had been trying to convince a network, any network, that a reality show featuring her and Bailey would be the biggest thing on television. Beauty pageants were made for reality TV: pretty girls, cutthroat competition, and inspirational role models. Entertainment distilled to its purest form.

“Aren’t there already a ton of pageant reality shows?” Ray asked one night as Miranda sat up in bed addressing envelopes.

“Not like this one. This is a mother/daughter show. It’s called
The Princess and the Queen
.” She paused to let him tell her how great it was.

“Cute,” he said, sluggish from an old Valium he’d found in a winter coat pocket.

“I just think pageants are so much more interesting than the regular reality show garbage: Oriental people having a bunch of kids, or midgets going to work. I mean, good for them, I guess, but who cares, you know?”

The idea, which came to her fully formed in a dream, was so perfect she had a treatment written before breakfast.

THE PRINCESS AND THE QUEEN®

A reality show by Miranda Miller

“My name is Miranda Miller and I’m Miss Daviess County Fair, 1991!”

Aside from my wedding vows, no words have made me prouder to say than those. I know firsthand what it takes to be a beauty queen, and that’s why my daughter, Bailey, has become one of the most successful pageant girls in America! But have you ever wondered what it takes to get there? Well, I’ll tell you, it takes
two
—a princess
and
a queen!