Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

Matt looked from her to Travis. “Sure,” he whispered, and quickly handed them over like Travis was mugging him. “But I need that pen back.” He had never said that to Perry before. She probably had a dozen of his pens in her locker, on the floor of Baby Girl’s car.

“Thanks,” Travis whispered. “I’ll make sure to give it back.” He bowed his head, started writing down the scraps of equations Mr. Clark had written on the board throughout the class. Going through the motions was what he seemed to be doing.

He must have felt Perry watching him. Looked up at her with his big cow’s eyes.

“You’re welcome,” she whispered. He nodded, and Perry was disappointed that he didn’t smile at her. In her mind he had smiled, and she had smiled, and after class they’d walked together in the hall, out the front doors, into the woods … but there she stopped herself. She wouldn’t be like that with him. And besides, he hadn’t even smiled at her.

But he was probably as tired as Perry was, more even, since he’d been working all night. Mopping and cooking and whatever else. Helping that old witch waitress adjust her wig just so. Pam. Again Perry found herself thinking how nice it’d be to go back to the trailer and have Myra and Jim be gone, lay down on her bed with Travis. Take a nap, nothing else.

Perry’s phone vibrated. A text from Baby Girl. Pay attention bitch! need 2 copy ur homework l8r!!

She clicked her pen, ready to take notes. It occurred to her that she wanted, very badly, for Travis to think she was smart.

IT WAS A THIRTY-MINUTE DRIVE to and back from the high school, so when Jim got home Myra had managed to shower and get into a clean dress; the white one with the tiny blue flowers dotted everywhere. Made Myra feel younger. Cleaner. The beery sheets she’d thrown into the small closet washing machine were frothed and rinsed, ready for the dryer, though Myra knew they’d have a better chance hung from a line, old as the dryer was. But that seemed like a lot today. Too much.

“Hey,” Jim said to her, standing at the front of the hallway, hands on his hips. “You eat?”

“Surely did,” she answered. They were out of fabric softener; they were always out of something. “Can I make you a bite?”

“Might make myself some eggs,” Jim said. Myra was no cook. Still, she wanted Jim to see that she’d offered. She followed him into the kitchen, sat at the tiny nook table to watch him. He cracked some eggs into Perry’s old plastic bowl. A chipped cartoon fish with a mouth full of teeth grinned from the bowl’s center.

“Myra,” Jim started to say, whipping the eggs with a fork. She loved the sound of her name when he said it. So serious. Like she was someone worth knowing.

“Mmm?” she asked. She felt lulled by the sound of the fork, tiny pings and the liquid swish of the eggs. “What is it?”

“I am pretty sure Perry was out all night last night,” Jim said, turning his back to her to pour the eggs into the pan. He was testing the waters, seeing how Myra would react. Because she knew she had done wrong last night, she gave him a taste of what he wanted.

“You’re kidding,” she said, working a thread of shock into her voice. “Again? And after all the talks you’ve had with her.”

It wasn’t that Myra didn’t worry for her child. She did. Only not for stuff like staying out all night. Instead, Myra worried Perry wouldn’t appreciate her youth, her beauty, all the chances she was being given to create moments she could hold on to. To make her life a jewelry box full of shiny things rather than a cabinet that rarely got dusted.

But Myra had gone too far. Or maybe she hadn’t gone far enough. Her words, instead of coming out sincere, had landed flat and unfeeling. She sat up straighter. She needed to pay better attention.

“Anyway,” Jim said, his back still turned. “She was in one piece and she went to school. So maybe I’m wrong and she was home after all.”

“I’m glad we have you to worry after us,” she said. “Jim,” she said, when he still hadn’t turned. When he did a moment later she shook some pepper into her hand, held it out to him.

“No thanks,” he said. His eyes held her face a beat too long; he was watching her, waiting to see if she knew Perry had been out. She couldn’t let on that she knew, couldn’t let him know a strange boy had been in the trailer drinking with her while her daughter was out in the night with that half-bald girl. Myra hated that she felt like she had to pretend in front of her husband.

Finally he turned back, raked a spatula through his eggs. “You sleep okay?” His way of dropping the subject. Myra felt tired. She knew Jim was tired. Perry was tired. They were on a carousel that wouldn’t stop.

“I might go over there and knock on her door,” Jim was saying. He meant the neighbor, the polka music. “I know she’s old and she enjoys it but we all need our sleep.” He was already halfway out the screen door; he closed it gently behind him.

Myra went to the bathroom, wet her hands, flicked water onto her face with her fingertips. The carpet of regret had returned, her face was as hot as a stone in the sun. She heard Jim knocking on the neighbor’s door, calling Mrs. Kozlowski? Mrs. Kozlowski? The music stopped. Jim and the neighbor murmured to each other. Myra looked into her own face in the mirror. Where Perry’s looks had come from, she didn’t know. She herself was blond and blue-eyed, and Perry’s father was Italian. Myra was pretty sure about that, anyway. It hadn’t been a long courtship.

But sometimes she saw Perry catching her own reflection in a window, that quick appraisal, and Myra could see how Perry was pleased with what she saw. That was what she had given to Perry.

She heard Jim come back in, remove the pan from the stove. The neighbor’s music started up again, turned down a smidge.

“Jim,” Myra called. “Come here for a sec.” She appraised herself in the mirror, straightened her neck and shoulders, allowed that flood of knowing vanity to fill her face. She had held the attention of a young man for quite some time the night before. When Jim appeared in the doorway, she took him by his belt and led him into the bedroom.

IF YOU LET YOUR EYES LOSE FOCUS everything becomes a smear. That’s how Baby Girl liked to get through class. The teacher a moving smear of brown and gray, his voice like someone was rubbing an eraser over it: the words were there but you had to work hard to find them.

She used to be good at this shit. Math, English. School. Back when it felt like it mattered, paying attention and doing homework and playing the clarinet and never missing class, not even when she was sick, not even when Charles called collect from jail at five in the morning.

She checked her phone. No new texts. That was all right, she told herself. That was fine, they’d talk l8r .

“Dayna,” the teacher said. “What’d I say about the next time you bring your phone to class?”

She let her eyes focus. Even still, Mr. Clark looked like a smear. She hadn’t had the time to fully convince herself that no new texts was actually just fine, and maybe that’s why she answered, “That you’ll set it to vibrate and put it up your butt?”

A boy in the back of the room exploded with laughter. Some other kids giggled behind their hands. Baby Girl hated them for it. They should think she was an asshole. What she said wasn’t even all that clever, had come out before she had time to stop it. Perry hadn’t laughed, either. That was happening more and more these days.

She began packing up her things. She knew she’d be sent to the principal’s office, and she wanted to make it as easy on Mr. Clark as possible, the least she could do. She also knew she’d walk right past the office, push out the doors, run to her car to wait for Perry. She could feel the hard slaps her feet would make, could feel the heat of the treeless parking lot. Was already composing a new text to him: What u doin? or even just Hey .