Waking Beauty Read Free Page B

did teenage girls start dressing like whores? I must have spotted at least a dozenkinder-whores as I made my way to my mom’s that morning. They were everywhere, in halter tops and miniskirts, or skintight blue jeans cut just above the pudendum with the thong underwear sticking out, teetering high on Frankenstein platform shoes or strappy stiletto sandals, with their toenails screaming in lacquered Technicolor. I thought: Even if I could get away with it, I wouldn’t dress like that. No way. Not in a million years. Little did I know.
    So I got to my mom’s house, the house in which I grew up, and realized that I was starving. Bad news, because even if she had any food around—unlikely, since I’d be taking her grocery shopping—she wouldn’t offer me any. It made her uncomfortable to see me eat. I thought about backtracking to the corner and grabbing something but decided to tough it out. I wanted to get the mission over with as quickly as possible.
    She was on the cordless phone, lighting a Salem Menthol, when she answered the door. “But I’m already a subscriber,” she said. “I just want to pay via credit card.” No smile, just a nod and a small step back to gesture me in. “Uh-huh,” she said, “…uh-huh,” as she turned and padded barefoot up the hardwood stairs. I heard her bedroom door close.
    I bypassed the just-for-show living room with its pristine sofa and love seat, its perpetually empty candy dishes, and white baby-grand piano (that as far as I could recall had never been played). I moved through to the kitchen and sneaked a peek in the fridge. Mayonnaise, mustard, a urine sample, one Medusa-like potato, and some rag doll celery sprawling limp over the edge of a wire shelf. I listened for her approach, then quickly checked the cupboard: an unopened jar of cocktail olives, a jumbo bottle of Worcestershire sauce, some crusty old Tabasco, and a jug of Coco Lopez Cream of Coconut Mixer—vestiges of happier days. I closed the door quietly, marveling at her ability to finish to the crumb every item of food we had purchased the previous Friday. Then Ispotted one remnant, a box of All-Bran on the counter beside the stove. I listened for sounds of imminent mother, and then went for the box. I struggled with the resealable cardboard flip tabs, unrolled the wax paper liner, and dug my fist into the dusty gerbil pellets disguised as breakfast cereal. I almost scraped open knuckle flesh in the process of excavating a handful, which I was cramming into my mouth when my mother walked in. The look on her face…a brilliantly subtle cross between disgust, disappointment, and disdain. As if she had found me with my pants around my ankles, taking a dump in her Crock-Pot.
    “Haben’t eaden today,” I said, trying to speed-masticate the gravel into a swallowable sludge.
    She looked away, her lips curling slightly, and I could tell she was thinking, Yeah, right. She plonked her giant purse on the kitchen table and began fishing through it.
    “Ready to roll?” she said, digging deeper in the purse.
    “Whenever you are.” I sealed the box and placed it back in its spot.
    “Where the fuck?” More brisk digging, followed by frantic rummaging, followed by an exasperated yelp and the upending of the purse onto the table. “Christ!”
    “What are you looking for?”
    She swooned a little and slumped into a chair. “The Holy Grail,” she said. “Jimmy frickin’ Hoffa.” She closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her forehead. One of her dizzy spells. From the medication.
    “If you’re looking for your keys, they’re right there.” I pointed to the key ring, which was caught in the folds of the wallet under the cell phone in the pile of makeup, match-books, gum wrappers, prescription bottles, Bic lighters, Wet-Naps, hair clips, pens, and pocket combs snagged with peroxide tresses.
    She opened her eyes and plucked the keys from the pile. Then she stood up and started sweeping everything back intothe purse.