Pretty

by Jillian Lauren

  Now I get up every morning and stand on my feet. No, I am definitely not hunting for love. But when the phone vibrates in my back pocket, I have this feeling that it’s probably Jake and my chest gets a little tight and my big toe starts twitching and I know it’s foolish, but there it is.

  Nine

  I 536 hours down. 64 hours left to go.

  I remove the rollers I left overnight in Kitty Hawk’s hair: wet set number one hundred and eighty-six of the two hundred required. I tease and spray, tease and spray, one section at a time, attempting to sculpt a peak of record height at the crown of her head. As I tease and spray, tease and spray, I meditate on Jake and our date tonight, which he may or may not remember to show up for. Things he said blindside me at unguarded moments and I think about him more than I mean to.

  My boobs seem to be in the way of my arms as I style Kitty’s hair. They’re sore and swollen. The new meds are probably the reason I feel all tilted: ringing in my ears, occasional tunnel vision, shaky hands, fucked-up hormones. The list of possible side effects is about ten pages of microscopic print, so nobody really reads it, but you can safely assume that any disturbing physical development is a side effect.

  Next to me Javier also teases and sprays, teases and sprays, until we are enveloped in a haze of Grand Finale. At least once a week Javi comes to school wildly hair inspired by late-night TV. Last week he convinced us to style our dolls like Charlie’s Angels. Today we’re doing Valley of the Dolls.

  His doll is Sharon Tate; mine is Patty Duke; Violet’s is that other girl what’s-her-name. Javier fusses at his station and makes frustrated little snorts as he tries to create realistic-looking mascara tear streaks down Sharon’s face. He is a true perfectionist. When he is satisfied he removes the glamorous yet trashed doll head from her stand and holds her up.

  “They love me,” Javier slurs like Sharon after swallowing thirty Valium. “They all love me, Goddammit.”

  Violet and I scramble to finish our far inferior attempts.

  “Fine,” says Javier. “I don’t need you. I don’t need any of you. I’m going to make art house films. Now give me some damn quaaludes.”

  “You don’t do art house films. I do art house films. You get breast cancer and kill yourself, remember?” I say.

  I’ve spent my share of sleepless nights in front of the TV. I know my Valley of the Dolls.

  “Oh, what do you know, you lezzy lush? I want to do the dirty movies.”

  “Was she a lezzy?”

  “Patty Duke? Oh, honey, please.”

  “What is my doll’s name?” Violet asks, spraying a liberal coat of shellac on her sagging bouffant. Violet has little natural talent in the hair department, but she has resolve, she has determination.

  “No one knows that other actress’s name except for obsessed queens hiding under a rock of crystal somewhere in West Hollywood. Reasonable people only know the name of the actress who was gruesomely murdered by sociopathic hippies on bad acid.”

  “And the one who played Helen Keller.”

  Miss Mary-Jo surprises us, sneaking up on us from behind. “What is it that you are doing back here? You are supposed to be doing the work. Not as much the talking for playtime. One point each for the wet sets, now we are moving on. Why don’t we open our books for the studying?”

  She’s good-natured about it, though. She looks at our doll heads before marking the points on our cards, her head tilted quizzically.

  “What is wrong with her face?” she asks Javier.

  “She’s been ravaged by fame. Plus, she’s a drug addict with breast cancer,” he says gravely.

  “You are the very naughty one,” Miss Mary-Jo says, pinching Javier’s cheek and then giving him one of her hugs.

  Sharon and Patty and what’s-her-name go on the shelf and we sit with our books open in front of us and talk about Sex and the City. Violet prefers true-crime specials. Javier is adamant that Carrie’s new love interest isn’t worthy. I am adamant that a writer could never afford that apartment, much less that shoe collection. Javier is genuinely disgusted with me.

  “You’re missing the whole point.”

  When Miss Mary-Jo comes by, we act like we’re quizzing each other from the questions at the back of the chapters.

  “How many processes are involved in double-process hair coloring?” Violet reads from the book. I think she’s making that one up, actually.

  “Uh. Wait. I’ve got it. Two,” says Javi.

  “What is the difference between off-the-scalp lighteners and on-the-scalp lighteners?”

  “Uh. One is applied on the scalp and one is applied off the scalp?” I offer.

  “What is the role of ammonia in hair color formula?”

  This one stumps us.

  “You see?” says Miss Mary-Jo. “You should do more of the studying and less of the yakking. The State Board will come to you before you know it.”

  The thought of the dreaded State Board exam sends us into our books for real for about three minutes before I get restless and stare at the clock again. Let me explain about the State Board. The State Board is like the beauty school bar exam. It’s a looming storm cloud: a full day of sadistic torture with your fate in the hands of embittered public servants. One wrong move and you may fail and if you fail you don’t get your license and if you don’t get your license you can’t work in a salon. All these hours of your life, a whole year spent staring at these walls, and in one afternoon it can all be fucked. It would be a sobering thought, if I weren’t so sober already.

  Lunchtime we clock out and walk out of the fluorescents and into the sunshine, which always makes me want to take off running, but I don’t. Instead I stroll with my friends along Brand Boulevard toward the falafel place a few blocks away. Glendale looks like a city in a different state. There’s no Hollywood trendiness, just a combination of generic Old Navy–ish stores and small Armenian clothing boutiques with window displays that look like Stevie Nicks’s garage sale. There are mysterious-looking used bookshops, cell phone stores, and hair salons, none of which you would ever go into. They look like fronts for money laundering or drugs, but they probably aren’t. Or maybe they are.

  And then there are bars. Weird bars with stone facades and names hung over from another time like Dante’s or the Cave. Sports bars and Armenian restaurant/bars and vintage tiki bars with Polynesian murals on the walls. Now, there may very well be cell phone stores I’d never walk into but the same definitely does not apply to bars. Anyplace you can get a vodka cranberry feels like home to me. Every time I pass one of the bars on Brand, I have an overpowering impulse to turn in to it and shift my trajectory in a whole other direction than this life of meetings and school and trying so hard to change. Easy as that, just turn left instead of walking forward, and have a glass of white wine, a vodka martini, a Bloody Mary. Or do it just once and don’t tell anyone and show up for groups at Serenity and for school and live with a little lie on my conscience. What’s one lie? Who would care?

  But today I don’t. Sometimes I’m not sure why I stay sober except that I suspect it is my only chance. Sometimes I’m not sure why I stay sober except that I want to drink so bad I know it must be the worst choice. Instead of taking a drink, I put one foot in front of the other and wait in line for my falafel sandwich. The tables at the restaurant are too crowded so we order our food to go and bring it back to school in greasy paper bags.

  When I pass back under the stucco archway and through the door of Moda, I see a little girl wearing red clogs, funny sunglasses, and Snoopy barrettes. She colors quietly at one of the stations. Her mother must be a student here. She gives a little wave as I pass by her and I think about how I used to play beauty shop with my pop.

  For some reason my beauty shop was called Mrs. Jones’s Beauty Parlor. I was Mrs. Jones. My pop would sit on the floor as I sat cross-legged on the couch behind him with a hatbox full of plastic barrettes in the shapes of pink flowers, yellow butterflies, orange teddy bears, and red apples with ti
ny green stems. My pop made funny faces in a hand mirror while I covered every inch of his head with the barrettes, clumps of hair sticking out all over. He made me laugh so hard it was a struggle not to pee my pants. When I was done, he always acted thrilled with his hairdo and walked around with it for hours as if he was so fancy. I remember him putting me to sleep with the barrettes still in his hair, the light from the open doorway behind him framing him, casting him in silhouette. The silhouette of some crazy Muppet with clumps of hair sticking out crazy all over.

  We would hold our hands out as far as they could get from each other.

  And he would say I love you this much.

  And I would say I love you this much.

  And he would say I love you as much as the whole ocean.

  And I would say I love you as much as the whole sky.

  I love you all the way to heaven.

  I love you infinity infinity infinity infinity.

  Maybe it was stolen from one of my baby books or maybe we made it up, I don’t remember. I don’t care.

  One time I decided I wanted to give him a DA, like dreamy John Travolta in Grease. I applied nearly a whole jar of Vaseline to his hair until it was gleaming and perfect, my finest creation. He was so handsome.

  He couldn’t get the Vaseline out for weeks. He tried dish soap, floor cleaner, anything to cut the grease. Nothing worked. He got scabs on his scalp. He had a fight with my mother about it.

  “You can’t go to work like that.”

  “What would you like me to do about it exactly, Jean?”

  “You were too drunk to notice she was using Vaseline? I mean, Vaseline? You let her do whatever she wants. She could have been shaving your head. You spoil her. You don’t notice anything. You’re a menace.”

  She was right. He was a menace. And then he up and died and left us alone. So I had a pop who disappeared but there was one man who never left me. My love, my soul mate. John Travolta.

  Later, when we moved into Rick’s house I kept a poster of John tacked up above my white wicker headboard. My love for John spanned years, withstood the changing houses, schools, fathers. John’s smiling, dimpled face floated on a background the color of a sunlit Caribbean Sea. Or not John Travolta exactly, but Danny Zuko. The real John Travolta wasn’t half as cool, though I forgave him for Saturday Night Fever. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with John, but he wasn’t Danny. Every night before I lay down to sleep I pressed my lips to the cool, shiny paper of the poster. Staring into the dark, I silently moved my lips and rehearsed the words to our duets. Summer lovin’, happened so fast.

  Then I’d imagine how it would happen. I’d round the corner of an aisle at the Kroger and I’d see him standing there at the end of it—black T-shirt with the sleeves rolled, hair so greasy it glimmered in the harsh lights over the deli counter. Or I’d be standing next to my mother at the Kiwanis Carnival and would slip into a crowd of sticky-faced children so stealthily that she wouldn’t even notice I was gone. Then I’d see Danny operating the Tilt-A-Whirl, his hand on the rusty lever.

  I kept a knapsack packed and hidden in my closet—a sweater so I wouldn’t get cold, an extra T-shirt, a pair of socks, my special folding travel toothbrush for sleepovers. I was ready to leave at a moment’s notice for a world where there were dance numbers and saddle shoes and bell skirts that rustled when you walked. A world where when you were sad you sang your heart out wearing a nightgown in a moonlit backyard.

  I loved Danny for his smile and his “Stranded at the Drive-In,” but mostly for his flying car. Because even Rydell High wasn’t high enough for Danny, and that was the perfect boy for me. He would know it the minute he saw me. There weren’t enough roads. Roads were too slow. I needed the boy who sang and had a magical car. That way there would always be music and we could always fly away.

  I’ll always be grateful to John Travolta for never really showing up in the first place. That way I never have to say that he left.

  After lunch, Violet pulls out her personal collection of nail polishes that span a decade. At least fifty different bottles of every size and color, tiny to huge, new to crumbling dry, some shaped like Christmas bears or Halloween skulls.

  We wash the morning’s makeup off our dolls before embarking on our new project: transforming them into rock stars. We use Violet’s nail polish to paint crazy makeup on them, à la Ziggy Stardust. I paint sky blue wings on either side of Kitty Hawk’s neck, a star around one eye, a moon on the other. Javi looks at her and sings: Don’t tell me not to fly, I’ve simply got to.

  At the end of the day, the rest of the students noisily crowd the back hallway, chatting and slamming their locker doors. Javier straightens his compulsively organized equipment before locking it up. Jake is meant to pick me up out back in a few minutes, but I have money for the bus in case he forgets. I cross my arms across my chest and press the sides of my hands into my breasts, testing the strangely amplified tenderness that has been bugging me all day. The ache pulses through me and nearly churns my stomach. It must be the stress, the PMS, the meds.

  One rule I have learned: never bring your doll head home at night. The disembodied head will scare the shit out of you in the dark, even if she was your salvation from boredom during the day. I put Kitty Hawk into my locker before we clock out. Shut the door on her unblinking stare. Tick off one more day of school. One more day of my life.

  1544 hours down. 56 hours left to go.

  Ten

  I walk out the back door to the alley. The sun is setting and it has turned chilly—chilly like I imagine San Francisco, with the sky twelve shades of gray. The red of the brick wall looks darker in the moist air. I lean against it and the cold penetrates through my hair to the back of my head, through my jean jacket to my spine.

  I check a voice-mail message that was left while I was doing a haircut. I don’t recognize the number.

  Hi, Baby.

  The voice makes me sick. He always called me Baby instead of Bebe. The whole band did. It used to make me feel like I was part of something.

  Francesca got your number for me from some friends . She heard you’re clean now and living in Echo Park. It’s been a long time and I think—

  I hang up. I don’t want to hear. I can’t believe he tracked me down and I don’t want to hear what he thinks. Actually,

  I can believe it. Because Billy is like the devil that way. He never gets tired of fucking with your life.

  I decide to forget he called. And if he calls again, I’ll forget again. I’ll forget as often as I have to until he leaves me be.

  I wrap one arm around me and smoke a bummed cigarette with the other, half expecting that the night will get even worse and Jake won’t show. But I look to the right and spot, with a rush of relief, the unmistakable bumperless Ghetto Racer trundling down the alley toward me. Of course, he’s driving the wrong way down the one-way street.

  When Jake emerges from his prized bucket, I can see from his face that he’s having a good day, which probably means he quit his job and did whatever he does all day when he doesn’t work. Paint. Drive around. Who could guess? Or it could mean he’s seeing signs and the signs say good and holy things, but I try not to think that. I try not to look at him all the time and wonder if he’s going crazy again. Because that’s no way to look at someone.

  For now he looks like some kind of supernatural messenger. It’s a unique thing he has. It’s why he slides by, fucking up all his life, and he remains afloat. These moments when he is scrubbed clean of the film that living leaves on you. The muddy haze we carry around from doing dishes and coming up short on our bills and eight and a half deadening hours a day of blob brain, like I have. Jake is free of it. He’s pure and electric, his slate gray eyes alive with light. He lifts me off the ground, no small feat for my size, and nearly crushes the breath out of me. Then he sets me down and kisses my eyes and my earlobes and my cheekbones and my mouth. He acts like he hasn’t seen me in ten years, and not just since yesterday.

&nb
sp; “Angel,” he says, “I have plans for us.” He takes both my hands in his and kisses them. “But first, we have to attend to our healing. You and me, Angel. We’re the least likely prophets. If we can heal, there’s hope for this race that’s otherwise turning fast into zombies.”

  I don’t say much. I don’t need to when he’s on a roll. He talks the whole drive and keeps going without a pause as we park and walk up the street to the United Methodist Church, complete with steeple, nestled among the soaring property values on the corner of a rapidly gentrifying street.

  We descend the side stairs to the rec room where they hold the AA meetings. Along the back wall people gather around a table set with large, stainless steel coffeepots and foam cups and trays of cupcakes and carrot sticks. This particular group of alcoholics is fashionable and smiling and some say hello to us, but most of the pretty ones are otherwise occupied. I notice they favor the carrots over the cupcakes. I notice that even the ones who do say hello avoid looking Jake in the eye. I wonder if maybe I’m just so accustomed to Jake that I miss the first signs of another episode, because other people definitely edge away from him as soon as he starts talking. Like they’re thinking, oh, crap, I don’t want to get verbally held hostage by this crazy guy. Like they’re thinking, oops, that’s what you get for trying to be inclusive, for trying to be friendly.

  But they don’t know him. They’re just squares.

  We find seats and thirty or so people file into the rows around us as the leader of the meeting and the speaker take their places at the front of the room. It’s ironic or comic or something, that after walking away from church here I am in yet another church, a member of yet another congregation. Here I am trying again to change my life, trying again to have faith in myself or in other people or in Jesus or whatever, sitting in a horseshoe of uncomfortable metal seats and attempting to look open in the eyes. As if I’m part of the thing, whatever is going on. And if I had to compare the two, well, church was more fun. I always want to suggest, to the twelve-step powers that be, that they should have a little band, that the speakers should testify with a killer soundtrack, that we should all sing and lay hands on each other, that we should believe in miracles. But if I had to compare the two, this is not as much fun, but there are less roadblocks.