by Randi Rigby
Model
Behavior
RANDI RIGBY
Model Behavior Copyright © 2018 by Randi Rigby. All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Cover designed by Victorine Originals
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: Dec 2018
Independently Published
ISBN-97 817-9-03587-9-3
For Alice, Isla, and Claire
Who walk like beauty in the night,
But also do a bang up job rocking it through the day.
1
“I get knocked down, but I get up again”
Chumbawamba
Someone famous, or maybe it was just my middle school choir director, Mr. Moss, who was fond of throwing his arms heavenward to shout at us with his booming voice to SING TO THE BACK OF THE ROOM, once said, “The answers to all of life’s questions can be found in the lyrics of country music.”
Mom laughed her throaty laugh when I told her that. She tucked her feet delicately beneath her on the gray-striped couch in her art studio we seemed to have all our heart-to-hearts on, looking every inch the southern belle while I was still gathering my sprawling limbs. “Baby, that only holds true if you drink beer and drive a pickup truck.”
Her religion was classic movies. She believed all a girl needed to take on the world was a quick wit, a sense of style, and perfect posture.
Which is why the moment I was born and the nurse dried me off and handed me over, wide-eyed, blinking, a fuzzy tuft of blonde hair emoting in a pink blanket, my mom turned to my father and cursed me. “Grace Kelly. Lucas, we’re calling her Grace Kelly.”
I was basically a 6'2" giraffe who took ballet for ten years and still tripped over her own feet. But Mom only ever saw Grace in me.
“Kel? You okay?” Dad stepped inside Mom’s art studio, looking as wrung out as it was humanly possible to look and still remain upright. He cleared his throat. “We need to leave for the church, sweetheart.”
Swiping at my eyes I untucked my legs and carefully smoothed the wrinkles out of my little black dress as I rose from the gray-striped couch and slipped back into my heels.
It was the dress’s first outing. It hadn’t been in my closet two weeks. Mom and I found it—or as Mom would say, it found us—on one of our unhurried weekend jaunts through one of her favorite vintage shops. It was hanging half-hidden and winking at her from the rack. There was audible intake of breath as she’d reached reverently for it, shaking it out slightly to free the folds of the swishy skirt.
“Look Grace, this was meant for you.”
I’d raised an arched eyebrow. “For when I finally decide to go all Sandra Dee, Queen of the Night?”
“Come on now, every girl needs a little black dress in her arsenal. This should be yours. Why this cut is just darling. And it appears to be in pristine shape. Try it on?”
She was right, of course. It fit like a glove and felt like a dream. “Where am I going to wear it?” Together we’d stared at my pale reflection draped in uncharacteristic sophistication in the three-way mirror of the shop.
“Who knows?” She’d smiled smugly. “Just so long as I’m there to say I told you so.”
Dad stopped suddenly, looking distracted. “Is that country music I’m hearing?”
I turned off the sound system that normally piped in the classical music Mom liked to listen to while she painted. “Never mind, it didn’t work.”
My beautiful, elegant, gifted, vivacious, irreplaceable mother was lying cold and lifeless in a coffin and I still had absolutely no idea how to make any sense of it.
That was early February, Groundhog Day to be exact, which seemed fitting. Dad and I couldn’t seem to be able to get past it and we were now deep into April.
“I want to talk to you about something.” He put his spoon down by his bowl of granola, dark brows drawn and pinched, there were lines furrowing his forehead. I handed him his vitamins and protein shake and slid into the stool next to him at the kitchen island. We never ate at the table anymore. We sort of existed in a tight little triangle of kitchen, bathroom, bedroom—and Dad had been sleeping on the couch. “What would you think about us moving to Austin?”
Dad was from Austin. His family, with the exception of Uncle Chris, was still all there. He met Mom when they were both students at the University of North Carolina. He played basketball on scholarship for the Tar Heels until he was sidelined by a rapid succession of injuries, giving him plenty of time to nail a degree in chemistry on his way to pre-med and then dental school. She was an art major from Georgia running late for class who literally knocked him sideways—which was hard to do. He was 6'10" and built like a tank. Dad always said she swept him right off his feet. He asked her to marry him after they’d only dated a couple of months. I don’t think they ever stopped honeymooning.
They moved to Chicago when I was three and Dad opened a flourishing practice as an oral surgeon. We’d been here ever since. We had roots. We had ties. We had way too many memories of her here.
“Really?” For the first time in ages I heard myself sounding excited. “Can we?”
He looked surprised. Probably because he’d been so lost in his own fog that he hadn’t noticed how deeply lost I was in mine. “We’d have to wait until school is out,” he said slowly. “That would give me time to sell my practice here and find something in Austin.”
“Okay.”
“We’d have to put the house on the market.”
“I’ll help.”
“I want you to really think about this, Kel. You’d be starting your senior year in a completely new school. You won’t know anyone.”
“None of that matters, Dad. Not anymore. I just need a change.”
He ran a hand wearily through his rapidly graying hair, suddenly relieved and grateful. “So do I kid, so do I.”
We divided and conquered. I took the house sale; Dad, his practice. There were an unbelievable number of YouTube videos that offered advice on selling a house. Find a reputable agent was a breeze. I’d been good friends with Ben Porter since kindergarten. I’d never lost to him in four square. He brutally and consistently picked me off in dodgeball—unfair really, given I was already practically a foot taller than everyone else and an easy target. I even set him up with the girlfriend he’d had since sophomore year, dragging Carrie to Froyo Chicago after ballet and then lingering over the scrapings of my Mango Sunrise sorbet for ages because Ben was late. Anyway, his mom, Nancy, was like the Meryl Streep of Chicago real estate—her office was lined with trophies. She was delighted to be our agent. Nancy was delighted about pretty much everything.
Remove personal items to make it easier for potential buyers to see themselves in the space took longer. I hauled several trips worth of boxes and bubble wrap home in the back of the Mini and invested in an industrial tape gun. Mom always took pictures of things she wanted to paint so she was also a skilled photographer and her favorite subjects to shoot were her family. I stripped the rooms bare of our faces and packed them all away with the exception of one: a picture of Mom, me, and Charlie—our toffee and cream-colored, mostly Airedale, with bits of poodle and spaniel thrown in just to keep it interesting.
She took it with a timer the day school let out for the su
mmer last year. Mom and I were wearing faded blue jeans and white linen shirts with the sleeves pushed up, lying on our stomachs barefooted in the grass. Our elbows were bent, our pointy chins in our hands. Our long, ash-blonde hair was lifted in the breeze, Mom’s perfectly styled, mine–per usual–a bit of a bush. Our identical, winged-eyebrows; toothy grins; wide-set, blue eyes; and tip-turned up noses stamped us undeniably and forever as mother-daughter. We were laughing because Charlie was trying surreptitiously to lick my face. In the split second the shot was taken he’d succeeded. There was so much happiness captured in that one moment that it never failed to make me grin. And then, now, irrepressibly heart sad. But I couldn’t bring myself to pack it away. Instead, I stashed it under my bed.
Streamline—get rid of anything you no longer want or need meant tackling a project I’d been dreading. While Dad was gone on a trip to Austin to look at a practice, I briskly sorted through Mom’s stuff, deciding what to keep and what to donate to her favorite charities. It was the unexpected notes in a sweater pocket: Don’t forget to pick Grace up from Lexi’s, the razor-sharp memory of how she looked the last time she wore something, or the sudden catch of her scent I was terrified I’d never smell again that hurt the most. I was ugly crying the whole time I packed her away into cardboard boxes. And then, blotchy and red-faced, my eyes puffy and swollen, I changed into shorts and laced up my running shoes and hurled myself faster and further than I’d ever gone before—until my lungs were burning and my heart and muscles felt ready to explode.
Charlie ran with me. He patiently sat and waited without any judgment, head cocked, tongue panting, his little sides still heaving from our punishing pace as I threw up repeatedly in the park bushes.
Then I went home and showered and made some calls. By the time Dad returned looking thinner and more hollow than when he left, the boxes had all been picked up and taken away. I spared him that. I suddenly felt very grown up and capable. The next day at school I wore a classic red lipstick and sandals with a three inch heel, which basically meant I was taller than most of the basketball team, but I held my head high. Maybe Mom was right. It felt incredible.
The house and Dad’s practice sold within a week of each other and closed just as my junior year did. Mrs. Porter—Nancy—was delighted for us.
“We should celebrate,” I told Dad as we walked out of the title office together.
“Celebrate?”
“Celebrate. You know? Do a little victory dance in the parking lot? Charlie has mastered most of the Macarena—you haven’t seen that yet. He’s getting pretty good. Or we could just go out to dinner. It’s my night to cook if you need a reason.”
Dad grinned. It was more of a slight upward lifting of the edges of his mouth but it was closer to a real smile than anything I’d seen from him in ages. My heart soared. “Okay, Kel,” Dad said, opening my door for me. “Where do you want to eat?”
I picked a restaurant we’d never been to with Mom. The desolation Dad had been wearing like a second skin almost disappeared as he relaxed into dinner. Any misgivings I might’ve had earlier when I was exchanging yearbooks for signing and saying good-bye to all my friends vanished.
We would be fine in Austin. We. Would. Be. Fine.
It took roughly nineteen hours to drive from Chicago to Austin. You could probably do it in less if you were a machine and could drive straight through, but I was driving Mom’s Mini and had a bladder. We had to make pit stops. Even then, by the time we hit Memphis my long legs were seriously whining. By the time we reached Dallas they were screaming profanities.
“You drove here in that?” My cousin Jake whistled, heading straight for me, barefooted and incredulous. Uncle Nick and Aunt Jill were hugging Dad in their driveway while Charlie tore around their lawn like a lunatic freed. “Brave girl.”
Jake was the handsomest of my cousins and the least aware of it, which was strange given how crazy smart he was—he was home from M.I.T. for the summer and even for them he was brilliant. But he lived in rumpled, nerdy slogan shirts (he was currently sporting a white T-shirt with some formula scrawled across his chest, underneath it said, Get a half-life) and he tended to hang out a lot in research labs so that incredible face went largely unappreciated.
“Give me a hand? Please, Jake?” I was not above shamelessly begging.
“How about a can opener?” He bent way over, ducked under my arm, and bodily hauled me out. With one arm still around my waist he kept me upright. “We good? Because you still seem a little wobbly to me.”
“You poor thing.” Aunt Jill reached around Jake’s assorted limbs to hug me. She always looked like she just stepped off a golf course, probably because most of the time she had. Trim and tanned, she had straight, swingy dark hair that she tossed when she laughed and amazingly expressive eyebrows that she could move independent of each other, a trick that used to entertain me for hours when I was little. “Well at least you made it, Kel. I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too. Thanks for having us.”
“There’s my girl.” Uncle Nick crushed me in a bear hug, lifting me right off the ground and making me squeal. He was solid, beaming, and pretty gray for someone only in his mid-fifties, although Dad was rapidly catching up to him. “Okay Squirt, let’s get you to bed. You two look dead on your feet. We’ll talk in the morning.” He carried my suitcase. Even at this late hour of the night it was stifling hot outside. Welcome to Texas. “It’s nice to have you home again, Lucas.” He snaked a long arm out around his little brother’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. And by “little” I meant “younger.” Dad might be the baby in the family but he was the tallest, though not by much. The McCoys only came in XXT.
When we came down for breakfast, Pops; Gran; Dad’s oldest brother, Bryce and his wife, Shae, were already sitting at the kitchen table waiting for us. We were only missing Uncle Chris and Aunt Liv, who were currently stationed in Egypt. Chris was just older than Dad and a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marines. They made it back for Mom’s funeral though. All the McCoy brothers were there, dignified and serious as they proceeded through the church carrying the casket, a solemn wall of solidarity with Dad and me at the gravesite in their dark suits. They stayed to help fill the space in our gapingly empty house with their big bodies and rumbling voices for as long as they could. Because when the unthinkable happened and a drunk driver crossed the median into oncoming traffic suddenly upending the world of those you loved, if you were a McCoy, you showed up and reminded them you had their back.
They all sprang to their feet when we wandered into the kitchen now. Dad was freshly showered. I was yawning, still in my PJs, wearing my glasses because I just couldn’t bring myself to put my contacts in yet and I was practically blind otherwise, my hair thrown up into a sloppy bun—not quite ready for the onslaught, although I did brush my teeth.
The McCoys were big huggers. We often looked like bumper cars whenever we first got together. But given we missed out on the earlier hugfest, we began dutifully making our way through the receiving line.
There was a moment, fleeting and infinitely tender, when Gran paused before embracing Dad: she, searching—her brilliant blue eyes working as a mother’s truth serum on her youngest son; he, allowing her a brief glimpse into his private pain. It was filled with profound grief and loss and self-doubt, so honest and raw it made me catch my breath. The love and confidence emanating from Gran was palpable and encircled him just before her arms did. I wasn’t the only one in the room swiping at tears but I’d never missed my mom more.
“Let’s eat!” Uncle Nick said, his voice a little thick.
“Has everyone seen the house but us?” Dad asked as he poured Gran some orange juice and then sank down into the open seat next to me.
“Why do you think we’re all here?” Uncle Bryce said with a grin. “We want to see your face when Nick opens that front door.”
“Hey, you said you wanted a project.” Uncle Nick was piling eggs on his plate and reaching for toast.
&n
bsp; Dad shot a look at me. “Bryce has got your back, Kel. He’s making me let him take over all the major renovations.”
“I have to sleep at night. So does my favorite niece,” Uncle Bryce winked.
As all my cousins were boys, I was his only niece. Still, it had been awhile since we’d been a part of anything breezy and light; I’d forgotten what it felt like. “Thanks Uncle Bryce,” I smiled sweetly at him as I passed the strawberries to Aunt Jill.
After breakfast and after I managed to pull myself together, we all piled into two cars and headed to the “new” house. “So, the good news, as I told you, is it’s on Lake Austin,” Uncle Nick said, looking at us through his rear view mirror. He was a real estate developer. When the property came open the end of May, he snatched it up and he and Uncle Bryce, who ran McCoy Construction now that Pops had retired, mulled over their options. When Dad said he wanted to build instead of buy they suddenly knew what they wanted to do with it. “You can’t beat the location.”
“What’s the bad news?” I asked.
“I hope you like camping.”
The house was boxy and musty and dark and depressing. It smelled old. The ceilings had water stains and were sagging in places. Even Charlie looked nervous as we traipsed through halls and up and down stairs. Gran took my hand and patted it consolingly. “The boys will have it fixed up in no time, you’ll see.”
“Ta-dah! This is it.” Uncle Bryce waved his hands wide as we crowded into a little alcove off the kitchen.
“This is it,” Dad repeated quietly as he looked around.
“It is? What is it?” Gran asked.
“It’s the only corner we’re keeping. Everything else goes,” Uncle Bryce said cheerily.
He retrieved a sledgehammer he’d obviously stashed away earlier from a nearby closet and handed it to me. “You want to have the honor of the ceremonial first strike, Squirt?”