Ugly Girls: A Novel (21 page)

I’m evil
, Baby Girl had always wanted to say, just to scare him. Only now she wanted to say it to him because it was true. Perry hadn’t forced her to drive away, Baby Girl had driven them away herself. She had tried to argue, but she hadn’t tried hard enough, and in the end it was a relief to go along with Perry, to pretend they’d call someone or do something only so they could get in the car, lock the doors, and drive away.

It still felt like a relief, days later. And that shamed her.

“I ate it all,” Charles said, before Baby Girl could even ask him if he had. “And now I have to poop.” He had already forgiven her for hitting him, as she hoped he would. The events in his life now were like commercials he’d watched, not all that real.

“Make sure you close the door,” Baby Girl said.

“Of course!” This was his new phrase, something he’d likely seen on television. Everything was
Of course!

Baby Girl set to cleaning up his mess. As she passed the microwave she caught a glimpse of her profile in its glass door: round, bald head, second chin unfurling under her jaw. If she saw herself walking down the street she’d feel pity. Why had she done this to herself? What was the point?
It could be in the most beautiful woman you ever saw.
Or the ugliest. She looked like a demon. Before what happened with Jamey the thought would have pleased her. Now she felt wild, like she wanted to hit something. She closed her eyes, saw Jamey go over the edge. Charles grunted in the bathroom; he’d left the door open.
Fucking no-brain is the one who should be dead
, she thought before she could stop herself. Demon.

When Dave got home she’d ask about his church. If she was brave she’d ask after an exorcism, ask to be whipped or burned at the stake or whatever shit they did to people like her.

If she was brave she’d make the call.

Instead she sent a text to him:
I’m sorry.

PERRY WAS ON THE BUS,
on her way to see Travis. It was nice to sit in silence, and even nicer when it was mostly empty and someone had cracked a window and the breeze was coming in all soft and fragrant, only a hint of exhaust every now and again. After Baby Girl had dropped her off, she’d walked to the Denny’s, right in the door and straight through to the back, walked right up to Travis and mashed her body against his until he put his arms around her. “All right now,” he said, and she realized she was crying, actually crying, the tears hot and wet like tears were supposed to be.

Even now, she wasn’t sure why she had cried. She hadn’t pushed Jamey. But he had gone over. She just kept seeing his feet, how calm they looked, one on top of the other like he was asleep, only asleep.

And Travis had held on to her until she let go. They sat in a corner booth drinking hot tea, something she’d only ever seen her dumpy English teacher do, even on the hottest days, but with Travis it felt different, felt adult. She had oversugared hers, so she sipped it in a way she hoped looked like she was savoring it, not nearly gagging on it. She and Travis had allowed their thighs to touch, sitting there side by side, but that was all. Then the cook came from the back and said, “These dishes ain’t gonna do themselves,” said it in a voice like he was noticing the weather, only loudly, and Perry had walked home. They had made plans to meet up again, Travis telling her he’d be off, his mom working, just like he had that day in the hall. Felt like years ago. And now here she was, on her way.

The fact was she was grateful to him. He seemed to like her despite the fact that she had become ugly, it was plain to see anytime she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, which wasn’t often these days if she could help it. She looked like she did whenever she got rained on. She would always look rained on, she knew. It made her feel powerless, like she’d lost a weapon she didn’t even know she had. She had wilted, something Myra always warned her about, and she had let Jim think losing her Facebook and changing her phone number was the reason.

She hadn’t been the one to push him. She waited for the police to show up at the trailer so she could tell them.
It wasn’t me.
But they hadn’t so far, and there hadn’t been anything about it in any of the news programs Myra watched. Perry liked to think Jamey had gotten up and walked away, was hiding out, cursing himself for letting two bitches get the best of him. She was half scared he’d show up to push her over something. But, those feet. No way he had walked anywhere.

If she had a car she might have driven out there herself. Taken a look. And maybe Baby Girl already had, how could she know?

She was nothing special now, just an old dirty sheet.
But even old dirty sheets need a bed
, she thought to herself, that old wickedness like a tingle in her gut. Maybe being in Travis’s would make her new again, turn her into something else.

A foul smell was coming in from the window. Perry knew it was likely the piles of manure for sale outside the hardware store they were passing, but still she couldn’t shake the feeling that the smell was her.

NOW IT WAS JIM
who was calling in, letting his voice weaken and working a catch into his throat, apologizing earnestly but not too many times, which would have been a sure giveaway. Myra never learned that lesson.
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, hope you can forgive me for putting you out like this
; whoever was on the other end of the line surely rolling their eyes.

Jim simply said, “I hate to do this, but I’m not going to make it in tonight, I’m in bed with the flu or something. Sorry, man.”

Cut and dry, that was the key, because a truly sick person wouldn’t feel guilty for not coming in. Myra’s guilt was as obvious as a burning flag. Myra was all tells.

He found himself doing this more lately. Comparing himself with Myra to see who came out the better person. He always won, and the feeling he got from this had become like an addiction. He had a taste for it, especially on the drive home, when he knew he’d have to pretend not to see so many things. Beer cans and bottles under the couch, Myra in the same shirt as yesterday, the phone off the hook, the TV as loud as a field of blenders. I
don’t hide my beer
, he’d think. Or, I’ve
never been so sick that I don’t want a fresh shirt
.

It was what kept them together, now. In the beginning it had been sex and the mystery that comes with slowly realizing you were sharing your time with another human being, same as you, someone that also chewed food and had nightmares and shat in the toilet. It had been a comfort that was hard-won and therefore protected fiercely, and then it had slowly crumbled, fight by fight, into the ruins it was now. Here, in this pile, the week they hadn’t spoken to each other because Jim had gotten off the couch and walked into the bathroom in the middle of Myra, hands to her face, crying about being a drunk, the evening’s third beer held between her thighs. Over in that pile, all the disagreements over Perry. Gravel shrine to all the nights they’d rejected each other, or worse, done the deed and felt all the lonelier after. Fallen column from when she said she touched that boy. Pebbles and rocks and boulders and whole cracked walls, all overtaking the trailer, and pretty soon it wouldn’t be so easy to push everything to the side to make a clear path to the door. They’d just slowly bury themselves alive, one trying to spite the other.

The thing was, he had known this about Myra. Hell, on their first date he’d pushed her up against the wall outside the restaurant and kissed her, had tasted the stale yeast of beer even though she’d been sipping wine at the table. He’d known just what he was signing up for when he married her. And that kept him right where he was more than anything.

“You ain’t going in?” she asked him now.

“No,” he answered.

“You really sick?” She put her hand to his forehead, and he let her.

“No,” he said. “I just need a night off.”

This was the truth. Ever since the night he’d beaten Herman’s bed to shit, even being in the trailer with his half-drunk wife was more appealing than going into that place. But more than that, he wanted to keep an eye on Perry. She’d been too accommodating when he made her delete her Facebook profile; it had seemed almost like a relief. He’d driven her to and from school each day, and she’d stayed in her room over the weekend, door cracked so he could see her in there. Made him wonder if this Jamey was stalking her, if she needed help more than she was letting on. Jim had waffled on going in or calling in, but Perry hadn’t come home yet, and that had made his choice all the easier.

“Might take a drive,” he told Myra. He hadn’t told her about what Herman had said. He didn’t want her to get hysterical, and he didn’t want to get upset if she
didn’t
become hysterical. When he’d insisted Perry get rid of Facebook and change her phone number, he hadn’t given Myra a reason, and she hadn’t asked. That was how she lived life: dipping her toe in whenever it suited her, and it usually didn’t.

Here he went again, comparing. Well, so be it. Myra didn’t give a shit, but he did.

And then the doorbell rang. Something in Jim wanted to grab Myra and throw her back on the couch, bark at her to leave it be. Maybe it was because she made sure to swig back the rest of the bottle she was nursing before she heaved herself up. Maybe it was something else, something beyond what he could see.

“It’s that woman again,” Myra said.

“Which?”

“I never told you,” she said, standing over him, her voice flat. “This woman from a few doors over come by asking after her son. Said he ain’t been home in days. Thirty years old or something! I told her he’s a grown man, he’ll turn up if he wants to.”

He stood, and now he did push her, just a little, with his forearm, more like he was guiding her back to the couch a hair too roughly. It felt good, great even, but it was a notch on the other side of the tally: now she had one over on him.

“’Scuse,” he said, to make up for it. “I’ll get it.”

“Free country,” Myra said.

The woman was enormous, especially on the bottom. Shaped like a chocolate kiss, everything tapering toward the top. Her hair was thin, not nearly enough of it to be proportionate to the rest of her. Jim could smell the baby powder over something sour, and he was touched, she was trying not to be so monstrous. Still, the powder caught in his throat, and when he tried to get out “Help you?” he coughed in her face instead.

“The lady of the house told me if I come by with a photo of my son she’d help spread the word,” she said. The flesh on her upper arms trembled; it was clear holding herself up took a considerable amount of effort. “It’s been going on six days now that he’s been missing.”

“You file a report?” Jim asked. He wanted to help this woman. He stood up straight, preparing to answer whatever she said next with
I happen to be in law enforcement
.

“Well, I ain’t of the mind to do that since he’s been in trouble with the law priorly,” the woman said, her arms trembling faster now.

“Oh?” Jim said.

“I ain’t proud of it, and he wasn’t neither,” she said, “but it is what it is. My fear is that he’s fallen into old ways, and I’d rather handle that myself than turn him over.”

“You say you brought a photo?” Jim asked. He wanted to get a good look at this boy. If he was out breaking the law Jim wanted to be sure he knew what he looked like so he could bring him in himself.

“Yessir,” the woman said. She held out a crumpled Polaroid of a young man holding his hand up, mid-yell. An eye and a cheek and part of his hairline, that’s all Jim could make out. Even with that little bit, a curl of recognition began unfolding in his gut.

“His name’s Jameson. Jamey,” the woman told him.

But she hadn’t needed to say it, because all at once it came to him. His cell was always meticulous. Another man had tried stabbing him with a fork, and neither could say why. He had called Jim
sir
. He was in prison for statutory rape and assault with a deadly weapon. He had tried to kill a girl, but she had gotten away after stabbing him, leaping a fence and rushing in the sliding glass door of an elderly couple’s home, stark naked but for one sock, gash like a wide mouth in her neck, grinning blood.

And his name was Jamey. And he lived just doors away. And Perry hadn’t come home when she said she would.

“Jamey, that’s right,” Myra called out behind him.

Jim hated her, it was a fact that he knew should have shocked him but instead landed as flat and quiet as a feather. Hated her for stopping short when it got too hard, like how she was too lazy a mother to know her daughter was in real trouble. Hated her all the more for the fact that he’d loved her, had once loved to watch her sleep, back when he didn’t know she couldn’t fall to sleep without a drink in her.
Be that Myra again
, he felt himself think, and then realized that was the same as wishing to be blind.

The woman still held the photo out, her arm trembling, either because she was scared or because she’d never had to hold her arm out for that long. “I’ve got the day off,” Jim told her, “and I’ll leave right now and drive around and look for your boy. I’ve got some ideas. You just go back and wait till you hear from me.”

He shut the door before she could ask him how or why or what, and he’d had to put a firm hand on her arm in order to get her to move back so it could close. There was no tautness to her skin, it was all give. Her insides had taken over, this raw meat of a woman, and for a moment he felt bad for Jamey that he had to live with such a creature.

“Why’d you tell that woman you’d do that?” Myra asked him.

But his moment of sympathy had passed. He watched out the window until Jamey’s mother had gone back inside her trailer, then he left without answering Myra, left without even pulling the screen door shut behind him.

PERRY SWITCHED BUSES,
got off, and walked five blocks. Travis lived in a house amid a clump of other houses. A bona fide
subdivision
, a word she always thought meant “fancy,” but people had toys and tires and old bikes and old men in lawn chairs in their yards just as much as they did in the trailer park. Travis’s house was white with red trim and no shit in the yard, but no flowers either. Just scorched-looking grass and a gravel driveway, no car parked there, which she hoped meant they could be alone.
I’m going to have sex with him
, she thought to herself as she walked up to his door. She always said it to herself just before, partly to shock and partly because she couldn’t believe it, not truly, not until it was actually happening. She tried to picture it: the weight of him, shirt on or off? Off. His hot mouth and cold fingertips, it was always that way. Their feet tangled … feet, Jamey’s feet.