Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

The woman looked down at her balloons, brushed her free hand down as if to clear crumbs. “Yes, I put on outdoor clothing, since I mean to ask you could you drive me around. I can pay you,” the woman said, and Myra saw now that she was holding a coffee can half filled with pennies. “I don’t know no one else,” the woman added, and the apology in her voice showed Myra that she knew what a burden she was, knew it wasn’t a normal thing to ask.

Myra knew what it was to be a burden, those days when she couldn’t even get up to pour a glass of juice for herself. It almost made Myra feel tender toward her. And sometimes she could convince herself that doing nice things for others was like an atonement, like the preachers on the radio were always talking about. An atonement that could erase a lot of her sins, make room for more. Plus she knew that Jim might see her a little differently if she helped this beast of a woman — not selfish, not drunken. Human.

“I’ve had a couple,” she said. “But if you want to wait a bit while I get some water in me, I could drive you around a little, sure I can. Come on in.” She stepped back to give the woman the full width of the doorway, though it was clear she’d have to turn sideways to get in, and in fact she did just that, bumping the coffee can on the door frame, ignoring the pennies that scattered down the steps and into the dirt. Myra took the can from her, set it on top of the television. Not because she was taking it as payment, but because she didn’t want no more pennies tumbling out, dotting her rug like flat, dead eyes.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she told the woman, who was already huffing her way over to the couch, using her cane as a kind of stake to steady herself as she half-spun into a landing, her feet going up in front of her as she sat. Myra sat in the chair opposite, her back straight, hands folded in her lap. This felt more like a business transaction than a visit.

“You’re a godly woman,” the woman said to Myra. “This means the world to me.” Her cheeks were flushed pink, it was spreading down her neck. Myra knew that feeling well, too. Never could get cool enough, it seemed.

“Oh, I’m just being neighborly,” Myra said. She could see now that the woman was flushed partly because she was allowing the tears to come again, that she was quick to cry, that crying was likely an important part of her day. “Get you something to drink? Or a Kleenex?” she asked.

The woman waved her away. “It just overcomes me sometimes.” She smeared both palms down her cheeks, wiped them on her pants. “My name is Lulu,” she said, “in case I didn’t say so before.”

“What a lovely name,” Myra said, though she was thinking about how years ago she’d taken Perry to see Lulu the killer whale when they’d visited her cousin in Orlando, and she wanted to laugh about this coincidence with someone, but who? Jim would find it mean. Perry would say the whale’s name was actually Leelu or some shit. She’d have to save it for one of her regulars at the truck stop. It was something she might even have told Pete. But thinking of him made her shudder.

“And I’m Myra,” she said.

“Mm-hmm,” Lulu said, as though Myra’s name wasn’t all that important or believable.

“So just where do you want to drive to?” Myra said, deciding to keep it all business. She remembered she was supposed to be drinking water, and walked over to the kitchen.

“I don’t know,” the woman said, loudly, as if Myra had walked outside rather than just into the next room. “I ain’t left the trailer park in years.”

“Is that so?” Myra asked, though she wasn’t shocked or even all that interested. She had seen a talk show once where they piped in video of a man who weighed seven hundred pounds, who was stranded in his bed, waiting for the talk show people to cut a hole in his wall and forklift him out of there. At least Lulu was mobile. And in fact it seemed kind of nice, never leaving your home ever again. Never having to go through the motions, pretend you wanted something more in life, when really all you needed was the bed, your home, something cold to drink. Myra held a glass under the tap. Did she really feel that way? Yes, she did. She gulped the water down in three long pulls. She never did like the taste of water, that was one part of the problem.

“Mm-hmm,” the woman answered, and now Myra was beginning to understand that this answer was a kind of tic, like how people said God bless you instead of Thank you sometimes. “Once my boy had his troubles with the law, I got to where I felt embarrassed to be seen out, and I got everything I need right at home. Used to have a boy bring by my groceries on the back of his bike until Jamey got out and came home.” The woman mashed her palms down her face again, another tic.

“Well,” Myra said, filling her glass back up. “I guess we can go by the truck stop where I work at, then over to the mall off the interstate, and then we can check his favorite bar, if you know where that is?”

Lulu shook her head. “He don’t tell me much,” she said.

“Well, we’ll just do our best, then,” Myra said, downing the glass, forcing each gulp down. This drive would be a waste of time, she knew. She would devote no more than forty-five minutes to it. She put the glass in the sink, grateful not to be beholden to it any longer, and trudged back to her chair. She and Lulu looked around, quietly taking everything in. Lulu seeing everything for the first time, Myra trying to see something she hadn’t already seen a hundred million times before. The water began its work. “Excuse me,” she said, and took herself to the bathroom.

In the mirror she saw how flattened she looked, not sharpened by the beer at all. Flat hair flat eyes flat face flat flat flat. She ran a fingertip around her lips, an old trick she’d do on dates, draw the man’s eyes where you wanted him to look. But they had become wrinkled, lost all their fullness, flat like everything else. She was lucky to have Jim, lucky he’d stuck around, she wasn’t no prize, not anymore. She felt wistful for him, suddenly. When he returned she’d … what? Too many things she had promised to do or be. When he returned she’d just give him a break, that’s what. Behave herself. Do right for as long as she could stand it.

When she came back from the bathroom Lulu was holding one of Myra’s vintage jars in her hand, holding it up to the light, turning it this way and that. How she’d been able to twist and reach where they sat on the windowsill behind the couch was a mystery. This woman was more able than she liked to let on was what Myra was beginning to think.

“That’s a 1929 Mason—” she began to say, wanting to take it from this woman’s hands and put it back where it belonged, but Lulu had cut in.

“Your husband truly out looking for him?” Her eyes suspicious, taking Myra in. Myra took the jar from her, it required a bit of wresting, but Myra wasn’t about to give in.

“I guess so,” she said, and now she did sit next to the woman, it was her goddamn couch after all. “He left right after you did and I ain’t heard from him since.” Challenging Lulu to say otherwise, to doubt her Jim. She nearly told the woman Jim was in law enforcement, but didn’t when she remembered Lulu hadn’t wanted to call the cops in the first place. The last thing she needed was for this woman to lose her shit on her couch.

“So that’s a good thing,” she continued. “He’s out looking, and we’ll look too.” She and the woman stared at each other; neither wanting to be the one to look away. Damned if it would be Myra.

“He’s a godly man,” Lulu finally said, though it was clear this was yet another tic, something she said when she wanted to seem polite, harmless. Again Myra felt for the woman’s son. What a piece of work this thing was.