Pretty Ugly: A Novel (11 page)

“Maybe the other mothers could even help us out,” she whispered to Brixton.

Rumors spread like viruses at pageants, and Miranda was going to start the Ebola of rumors. At breakfast she would tell Joanna Lawson “in strictest confidence” that Bailey’s weight gain was the result of precocious puberty and early menstruation,
not
frivolous overeating. Miranda figured if she told Joanna by eight o’clock, the judges would know by eleven. At the very least it would be worth a few sympathy points from each of them, and that could make all the difference. Then she remembered another ace up her sleeve: Bailey’s sexy new photographs. Miranda had expected the pics to be controversial, but now if some uptight prig grumbled about inappropriateness, she could simply say, “We are talking about a girl who has just received her color and become a woman. What exactly is the problem here?”

Miranda looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and sighed. She was now as old as her mother was when Miranda was Bailey’s age, and that made her feel ancient. The thin smile lines around her mouth and eyes seemed to be reaching out to each other like desperate lovers, straining to meet and deepen their bond. She made a silent vow to smile less. Her hair was dry and brittle, so she wrapped it into a loose bun, but the yellow highlights made it look like a Thanksgiving centerpiece. The tube of hemorrhoid ointment was empty, and the swelling around Miranda’s eyes was barely noticeable. Her actual hemorrhoids, however, were bulging and stung like she was getting a tattoo on her butthole. She hated the sensation because it reminded her of the tattoo she got on her nineteenth birthday.

After drinking too many banana daiquiris, Miranda staggered into a beachside tattoo parlor in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and got the Chinese symbols for “peace” and “harmony” tattooed on her ankle. Years later she discovered the symbols actually translated to “rabbit nephew,” and she cried for three days.

Using the heel of her hand against the countertop, Miranda managed to force a dime-sized dollop of Wal-rhoid from the tube.

“Thank Jesus,” she said as she hoisted her foot up onto the toilet and massaged the ointment into her fiery anus. The relief was sublime. As she rubbed, Miranda was hit with another brilliant idea. While it was obviously against pageant rules to bribe judges, as far as she knew there was no rule against bribing cameramen of third-party reality shows. Wiping her greasy finger on the Shania Twain T-shirt she’d slept in, Miranda rushed to her purse and found twenty-one dollars in her wallet. In the front pouch of her suitcase she discovered a crumpled five and added it to the few emergency bills pulled from the zippered purse pocket where she usually kept her tampons and lighter.

“Forty-seven dollars?” she said after counting it. “What am I supposed to do with forty-seven dollars?”

Three seconds passed between the moment she noticed Bailey’s purse sitting on the dresser and when she casually knocked it onto the floor. Its contents—the pink iPod, three different colors of lip gloss, a picture of Mark Ruffalo torn from a magazine, and a dog-eared paperback of
The Lovely Bones
—spilled across the carpet. Miranda nudged the purse with her foot until she saw the
iCarly
wallet Ray got Bailey for her eighth birthday. Miranda casually opened the wallet, pretending to just be curious. Another picture of Mark Ruffalo looked back at her, and Miranda made a mental note to keep better track of what Bailey watched on TV. There were a few phone numbers scribbled on pieces of notebook paper and a school picture of a nerdy boy in glasses who, according to the handwritten note on the back, was named Dashiell and “hearted” Bailey. Then, hidden in a side pocket, Miranda found what she was looking for: a neatly folded, obviously revered twenty-dollar bill. Where had she gotten so much money? Probably from her father. Ray was always spending more than he made. It was one of the reasons they were in so much debt. Money was the thing they argued about most. Money and pageants. Holding the bill between her fingers, Miranda considered the difference it would make to a cameraman. Sixty-seven dollars sounded a lot better than forty-seven, but she still didn’t think it would be enough to bribe someone from Hollywood.

The doorknob rattled, and Miranda let out a small caninelike yelp.

“Mom! Open up, I forgot my key!”

Miranda quickly closed her fist around the money and scooped Bailey’s belongings up off the floor, stuffing them hastily back into her purse.

“Hurry up, this ice is freezing my hands off!”

Miranda opened the door, pausing briefly at a mirror to see if she looked guilty.

“I just saw like three guys with cameras coming out of Starr Kennedy’s room,” Bailey said as she entered, “and another bunch of people following Bethenea Jackson around. Do you think it’s about the show?” Bailey asked her mother, knowing full well it was about the show.

“Oh, my God, Bethenea Jackson! Of course!” Miranda wanted to kick herself for not thinking of Bethenea. It made perfect sense that she would be the other one, what with black people being so popular now.

The wad of bills had become damp in her tightly clenched fist, either from perspiration or squeezing ink from the paper. After a series of deep breaths, she turned to Bailey and tried to sound casual.

“So … put on your eyelashes and airbrush your knees. They look a little splotchy.” She slipped on a pair of ratty flip-flops and flew out the door. “Mommy’ll be back in a minute.”

“What about your ice?” Bailey called after, but Miranda was already halfway down the hall, their future clutched firmly in her hand.

As a girl, whenever Miranda was in public she would play a game called Civilization. The object was to imagine that there had been an apocalyptic event where the only survivors were the people in that room. She would look around and imagine the society that would establish from the people present. Who would become the leader? Who would pair up as couples? Who would be the problem citizens that would need to be dealt with? Regardless of who was in the room, Miranda always saw herself becoming the leader. There were often others more qualified for the job, but eventually she knew everyone would see things her way. She gave thoughtful, impassioned, commonsense speeches that turned her most fervent critics into her most emphatic supporters. Miranda was a fair and capable leader who brought peace to the universe. She kicked ass at Civilization. If she could rebuild society from the ground up, she could certainly get her daughter on a reality show.

At the end of the hall opposite the vending machines, Miranda spotted a young man squatting over an open duffel bag and obsessively cleaning the lens of an expensive-looking camera. He was alone, removed from the chaos. She couldn’t see his face, but his long hair and wardrobe—jeans, hiking boots, and a back brace over a Panavision T-shirt—screamed “Hollywood hippie.” And hippies smoked pot and pot cost money and she had sixty-seven dollars.

“What’s going on here?” she asked, casually leaning against the wall.

“Making a TV show,” he responded without looking up.

“Oh, about the pageant?” she asked, trying to sound surprised. “Neat!”

“Mm-hm.”

“You know, now that you mention it, I think I remember hearing something about a TV show being made here this weekend. That’s very exciting.”

He continued cleaning his lens. Her heart beat a little faster.

“You know, my daughter’s competing today.”

“Cool.”

“Yes. Her name is Bailey Miller. She’s the reigning Little Miss and she’ll be competing in the Princess category as well.”

“Cool.”

His lack of interest was irritating. Obviously, he didn’t understand what was happening here, or perhaps he had become so jaded from years of Hollywood cocaine parties that aloofness was his default setting.

Miranda looked around again—her heart pounding against Brixton’s tiny head—and opened her hand. The wad of cash fell into the bag as if the cameraman was a street musician and Miranda was his biggest fan.

“What’s this?” He stopped cleaning his lens.

She forced a casual shrug and said, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s yours.”

“It’s not mine.”

“Maybe it could be. Would you like that?”

The man looked up, and their eyes met for the first time. She wasn’t expecting his beard. His voice sounded too soft for facial hair, especially so much of it. Miranda shifted nervously as her red, puffy eyes scanned the hall, for what exactly she wasn’t sure—the police, perhaps, maybe her dignity. He picked up the money and counted it.

“Sixty-six dollars?”

“Sixty-seven.”

“Sixty-seven dollars. Okay. For what exactly?”

“Well,” she said, clearing her throat, “maybe when you see Bailey Miller onstage or walking around the halls, you could shoot some extra footage of her and make sure she ends up on the show. Would that be worth sixty-seven dollars to you?”

He tilted his head, genuinely confused. “Are you bribing me?”

Miranda feigned shock, but her delicate façade was cracking quickly. “Bribing? That’s … that’s not a word I would use.”

“Look, I don’t have anything to do with what makes it onto the show. I just shoot what they tell me to shoot. You’d need to talk to the producer. She’d probably take your money.” He held the crumpled bills out to her. “Here. Sorry.”

Miranda’s entire body started to perspire at once. Her mouth was a desert. Her hands shook. She felt dizzy. And then she remembered she still had hemorrhoid cream on her face. She literally felt like an asshole.

“Can I just have the twenty back, please?” she managed to squeak out.

“You can have it
all
back—”

“No! Just the twenty. Please.”

The cameraman shrugged and pulled a twenty-dollar bill from the wad of cash. “Here you go.”

Looking at the bill, she felt her eyes start to burn. “I’m sorry,” she said, forcing words around the sour lump expanding in her throat, “but … can I have the one that’s folded up? It belongs to my daughter. She’s competing here this weekend. Bailey Miller. I said that already I’m sure she’d like to have it back.”

The man put down his camera and stood up. Miranda took a step back. He was at least a foot taller than she’d expected, and the tattoo on his arm—a half-naked hula girl riding on the back of the devil’s motorcycle—had, until this moment, gone completely unnoticed. Had she seen him upright, she would never have spoken to him. In fact, she probably would have turned around, run back to her room, and called security. He took her hand, sending a tense shiver through her body. Is this how she would die? Should she scream for help? How would Ray be told of her murder? How would he tell the kids?

Dear God, please don’t let anyone think I was having an affair with this man!
she thought.

Then, pressing all sixty-seven dollars into her palm, the cameraman closed her fist around the money.

“Are you okay?” His dark green eyes projected genuine concern.

It was all too much. Miranda expelled a burst of raw emotion, launching a perfect stream of snot to the tip of her chin. Without judgment, the cameraman reached into his pocket and handed her a clean handkerchief, which she used to wipe off the snot and then the hemorrhoid medication. Surprising them both, Miranda then threw her arms around the man’s neck and forced from him a small, involuntary, “ah!”

Through a series of heaving sobs, Miranda whispered, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Not sure what to do, the cameraman awkwardly laced his fingers behind his head and held his breath until, mercifully, he heard a tinny voice squawking through his walkie-talkie.

“Hey, Freddy, you fall down a well? We need that camera. ASAP.”

Freddy the cameraman grabbed the handset clipped to his collar, “Flying in.” He then said to Miranda, still clinging to his neck, “Um, lady…? I gotta go to work.”

Miranda let out a huge sigh and attempted to regain her composure. “Thank you, Freddy.” Forcing a smile, she released his neck and handed him the handkerchief.

“Keep it,” he said. “I’m betting you’ll probably need it again.”

She smiled. After everything they’d been through, Miranda felt like she owed him an explanation. Forcing a chuckle, she shrugged and said, “Pageants, you know?” hoping he would understand.

“I reckon,” he said, then picked up his camera and walked away.

When she was sure he’d reached the elevators, Miranda ran back to her room as fast as her gravid body would allow.

*   *   *

Backstage at the 29th Annual Little Most Beautiful Princess Pageant was a dollhouse of grown women playing with smaller versions of their ideal selves. Fifty scantily clad prepubescent girls scampered about like the main attraction in a Bangkok coffee shop: sexy children marketed as wholesome family entertainment. The room reeked of anxiety, self-tanner, and schadenfreude.

This year’s pageant had gotten off to a controversial start, to say the least. Three days earlier, the ballroom had served as the venue for an amateur MMA fight. The hotel’s cleaning crew had not been able to find welterweight challenger Duane “Triple Threat” Triplett’s tooth. But Tiffany-Chanel Teich found it.

“That’s why she messed up her choreography!” Tabitha Teich screamed at the judges. “I mean, come on! Finding a man’s tooth would distract anyone!” She teemed with genuine outrage. “It’s only fair that Tiffany-Chanel be given extra points to compensate. Or at least the other girls should have to hold the tooth.”

Aerosol cans of hair spray hissed and rattled throughout the room, making it sound like the snake pit it was. When the EPA forced hair spray manufacturers to replace chlorofluorocarbons with a more ecofriendly propellant, many pageant mothers were outraged. The new stuff, while arguably good for the planet, just didn’t have sufficient hold.

“I know the environment is important and all, but how is Bonjosie supposed to win a crown with limp hair?” complained one mother, desperate to blame her daughter’s lack of winning on
something
.

“That global-warming stuff is all just liberal BS, anyway,” said another, puffing away on a Marlboro Ultra Light as she applied fake eyelashes to her squirming five-year-old. “I’m
so sure
BreeDonna’s hair spray is destroying the planet. I mean, how dumb do they think we are?”