Little Lock Press Presents
MORE THAN A MAYBE
by
Clarissa Monte
to N
for help and a male perspective
to P
for love and sympathy
Foreward
The young woman sitting in front of me at the coffee shop is wearing sunglasses and a Dodgers baseball cap — the traditional ensemble of a Californian who absolutely does not wish to be identified by any curious passersby. The overall effect of this only manages to stir the interest of the other coffee shop patrons, naturally. They each take a few leisurely seconds as they walk past our table to slow down and try to figure out just who she might be. Without success, however.
This may have been her plan all along. I can’t be sure.
She had tracked down my email address through my publisher, and after a few exchanges back-and-forth I’d agreed to met her for coffee, to hear her proposal face-to-face. I’ve spent the hour and a half trying to convince this person that I am not the right woman for the job.
It isn’t going well.
“I’m glad that you like my work,” I say. “Really, I am. And I think your story is one that deserves to be told. It’s interesting, no doubt about it. But one of my mentors has done biographies before. Why don’t I put you in contact with —”
“No,” she says. “I want you. You should do it.”
“Yes, but why?” I ask. “My books are fantasies. I’m not sure it would be an honest account of your life.”
She takes a sip of her coffee. “I don’t want an honest account. I want it to be romantic. Like the things you write. I can’t have my actual story out there. My social circle is way too small. The names are too big. You’ll have to change everything: the names, the locations, most of the major details . . . ”
I frown. “But then I won’t be telling your story at all. It’ll just be made-up.”
She smiles. “That’s what I want, though. My life, but a really romantic retelling of it. Call it a spiritual biography. I mean, I’ll know that it’s based off of me. And maybe a trusted friend or two, if I decide to tell them. I just want it out there, you know? One way or another.”
I take a deep breath. “I would have to self-publish this, though. Under a pen name. Definitely. I couldn't tell my editor. Or any of the people who normally give me input on my work. I mean . . . if I did this, you'd have to give me carte blanche on the final draft.”
She shrugs, nods. “If you need it, sure. Oh — and you should have one of those disclaimers, too. Like at the end of movies.”
This is a work of fiction.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
My makeup is the real me.
The me that anyone sees, anyway. It’s the last thing I take off at night; the first thing I put on in the morning. I’ll sometimes just stare at the foundations and powders and creams in their jars, and think for a moment how amazing it is to use yourself as a living canvas.
It’s nothing short of magic, that.
Xavier only sees me without makeup at the strangest times. In the middle of the night, perhaps, if he turns the light on for some reason. Otherwise, I am the only one who sees the blank slate of my naked face.
I find that interesting — how that naked reflection seems so little a part of me now. I don’t hate it, though, or anything. I just don’t see it as me. It’s more of a way to mark the days — a reminder that one beautiful day is beginning, or another is drawing to a close.
So many of my days are beautiful now — one blends into another, like an endless perfect beach of pure white sand. I look back, and I see only a whirlwind of blurred memories: shopping with friends, and endless parties, and passionate sex. I look in front of me, and I see much the same thing. It’s a fog, really . . . and I can’t usually be bothered to look forward or backward.
The here and now are far too much fun.
Still . . . because you want to know, and because I want to tell you, I’ll let myself look further backward. I’ll take a good long look at that girl in the mirror, the one without makeup, and I’ll tell you her story.
And then, when I’m done, I’ll let my fingers find my powders and perfumes, and I’ll turn back into myself.
And then —
Then I’ll step back into the dream.
* * *
I was born Alice Alexis White, in a gray-green Chicago suburb, in a gray-green slab ranch. I don’t remember much about that house, really. I’ve only seen it in pictures. It seemed like a good starter home for newlyweds taking their first steps on their journey as a family. And maybe it ended up being one — for some other family, anyway. After dad died, it meant my mom had to move us to a little two-bedroom apartment and build a life for us there instead.
I was a baby when my father got jackknifed on the expressway and got taken to where my mother always assured me was Heaven. My mother didn’t like to talk about him too much, but she always said he was a funny man. She told me that he was the only person on this Earth that could make her laugh, and laugh often. That’s why she married him.
I didn’t get to see that side of my mother, the one that laughed a lot. I saw the one that worked a lot. That wasn’t something mom had been planning on . . . like her mother before her, she’d never gone to university. She’d planned to stay at home, take care of me — get supper on the table for dad to come home to.
Dad’s death meant that she suddenly had to do everything — she had to make sure that the lights stayed on, that there was food on the table. It had been hard without a degree. She’d tried a couple of different things at first. Amway sales, a real-estate course . . . nothing seemed to work. Finally, in desperation and with dad’s life insurance money quickly drying up, she went into the dog-walking business.
It turned out to be a lifesaver — she was able to charge fifteen bucks an hour to people who didn’t have time or patience to walk their dogs themselves. Every morning she’d pull her hair into a tight ponytail, zip up her tracksuit, and walk out clutching a big fistful of multicolored leashes. And every morning she’d look at me, rattle the leashes, and say exactly the same thing:
“Study hard today, Alice. You want to do this all your life?”
Then she’d go walk dogs all day.
Still, part of me envied her. At least she got to be the one telling the dogs what to do, instead of the other way around. Most days, I felt like I was the one with a leash around my neck. Mom was strict, no doubt about it. Rules, school, church. Frugality was next to godliness, hard work next to frugality . . . and so help you if you ever forgot it. My clothes came from secondhand shops, and were more often than not the blue-jeans-and-sweatshirt variety. Cosmetics, the nail art that the other girls at school always got to show off — all those girly things I had a natural curiosity about were labeled frivolous or excessive by my mom.
And so, growing up . . . I missed out on some things. Some important things.
When the other girls were playing with dolls, I was doing phonics flashcards and vocabulary drills. When the other girls were having stuffed animal tea parties, I was practicing my 12 x 12 multiplication tables. When the other girls were having slumber parties with makeup experiments gone wrong and late-night games of Girl Talk with muffled whispers about the boys they liked, I was doing practice tests for the PSAT. There was never any discussion about what I wanted: the soft caress of silk against my skin, nervously agonizing about eye shadow before a big date . . .
In fact, there wasn’t a lot of dating to be done at all. There were a couple of boys that I liked here and there, and I had one or two makeout sessi
ons with Greg Farkus under the bleachers in junior year, but my mom always put her foot down about me getting a real boyfriend.
“Not now. After school. After you graduate,” my mother had said, her voice carrying a hard edge of absolute finality. “If you still think those things are important, you can worry about boys then. For now, you work, and I work. End of story.” To see my mother with those dogs every day, slaving away at something she clearly hated just so that we could have enough to get by . . . well, it was usually enough to shut me up.
And so we survived. We had to be savers, to be sure, always squeezing our pennies until the little picture of Lincoln cried . . . but I made it through grade school and high school without missing any meals.
Still, even if I had to keep all of my girly passions to myself, I did have a couple of creative outlets.
One was knitting. Because it actually involved the creation of warm winter clothes, knitting was deemed to be an acceptable enough hobby, provided my homework had been attended to. I would knit elaborate scarves for myself, using whatever yarn happened to be on sale.
The other hobby . . . well, this one was inspired by our aging Panasonic TV, of all things.
My mother claimed that she hated television. She made sure that I knew it was a waste of time. Still, though it smacked a bit of hypocrisy, basic cable was a luxury that we always seemed able to afford. My viewing was restricted to an hour a day, to be watched after my homework was done, and always before bed. Of course, to a teenager wanting to know what was going on in the world around her, this was intolerable — and so I did what any other enterprising American girl would do if they were desperate for a TV fix. I got a secret television.
I bought it for twenty dollars after a fifteen-minute bargaining session at a neighborhood garage sale. It was an old thing, an ancient black-and-white Sony Watchman with a tiny screen, but it worked perfectly. I was able to sneak cable from our home’s connection as well, by attaching an extension cord and snaking it under the carpet into my bedroom.
That’s how I discovered the Goddesses.
I could have been watching Jackass or Cribs on MTV or something. Maybe I should have. Maybe it would have helped me relate to the other kids at school, the ones who saw me as the bookish geek girl whose mom didn’t let her wear makeup. But I didn’t.
TCM — Turner Classic Movies. That was my addiction.
Clara Bow. Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford . . . and especially Marlene Dietrich. These women were my friends, my sisters, my idols — monochrome angels that lit up my face under my blankets every night. I called them my Goddesses. Without them, I don’t know how I would have survived. I wanted their beauty, their power . . . and Jane Russell’s boobs (which completely failed to materialize along with my periods in the 6th grade. I grew up but not out, and, much to my dismay, had to endure an entire high school career of being called Flatty).
Nevertheless, I did survive . . . and much of the reason was my Book.
The Book was a simple 3-ring binder that I’d prepared for a high school chemistry class in freshman year. It even said Chemistry on the front, but since our chemistry teacher was a somewhat doddering man who failed to give us many notes it went unused for its original purpose.
So I filled it with pictures of all of my Goddesses. I’d print them out from the Web, or photocopy them from books at the school library, and paste together elaborate collages of their perfect faces. They were my monochrome dream of a bygone era, but their beauty, their power . . . it was eternal. It somehow kept me sane.
Then came university.
I’d been pushed into enrolling in a perfectly reasonable, mother-approved major: pre-med, with an eye on becoming a registered nurse. Mom believed helping others to be an acceptable use of one’s time, and I’d long ago learned not to argue with her. It sounded perfectly normal and . . . well, fine. I guess.
And then we got jackknifed. Not literally — but the news that my mother had Lou Gehrig’s Disease changed everything in a way that only disaster can. It all fell apart, like dominoes tumbling in line, one after the next after the next. My mother’s movements became labored, then they stopped. Her days became an endless series of visits to doctors and physical therapists, with long discussions of quickly-dwindling treatment options.
Our stacks of unpaid bills quickly became a menacing tower. I did everything I could think of to stretch our budget and save money: I clipped coupons, I scoured Groupon . . . and finally, when there was no other option, I traded in our trusty old Toyota for a pair of sneakers and a bus pass. When even that wasn’t enough, I secretly took a part-time job at a neighborhood café, a little greasy spoon of a local diner with high-strung management. It was very much against my mother’s wishes for me — she’d wanted me to focus on my studies full-time, but it simply couldn’t be helped. The extra trickle of funds were a lifeline, a much-needed supplement to the government assistance we were suddenly forced to take.
Even so, despite the steady drumbeat of hospitals and tragedy, my mother managed to give me a gift — and one for which I will be forever grateful.
It wasn’t my last visit to the antiseptic-scented hospital where my mother spent her final days. But it was the visit where I finally understood just who my mother was. Her voice was nothing more than a whisper by that point, but the sentence she spoke to me will be forever burned into my heart:
“I know about your Book. And your TV . . . ”
That weakened sliver of a smile following this admission brought us together in a way I’d never thought possible. It was acknowledgement, of a kind . . . that the things that were important to me were known to her. Accepted. I knew then that I was looking at the women who had once charmed my father, so very many years ago. For once in my life, I didn’t just have a boss and a disciplinarian. I had a mother.
And then she was gone.
She’d wanted me to continue my studies somehow. Of course she had: my mother had never been a complainer — she’d firmly believed that if you weren’t making it, then you weren’t really trying hard enough. Still, when the money is gone and you’re counting on tips to make the rent, you honestly feel out of options.
So I did what I always did.
I called Jayla.
* * *
Jayla is one of the most blithely cheerful people on the planet — definitely one of the strongest, most definitely one of the wildest. She’s the only person I’d ever met who could wrangle a different hair color for every Organic Chemistry class in a given week; the person who first introduced me to the worse-than-crack addiction known as Etsy; the only person I’d ever heard refer to herself as a Hipster of Color. She’d been the one to help me get a little digital freedom away from my mother’s ever-watchful eye: Jayla had been the one to hook me up with her old iPhone to replace my scuffed and ancient Nokia.
We’d met during freshman orientation. Jayla had given me an off-handed but sincere compliment about one of my knit scarves the moment I’d sat down next to her. We’d been fast friends ever since.
Things always seem to work out for Jayla . . . she is the one person I know who never gets in over her head. At the time, however, I thought her one of the sleepiest people I’d ever laid eyes on. She usually claimed that Introduction to Human Biology was her favorite class: it allowed her to get the most sleep atop her textbooks, her peacefully snoozing head perpetually capped by whatever colorful wig she was rocking that day. I couldn’t understand how she kept passing the endless torture of tests and quizzes, but she always seemed to manage just fine. She’d snap smartly awake just as the TA was passing out the xeroxes, wipe the sleep out of her doe-like brown eyes with the back of her hand . . .
And then she’d pass. Again and again.
“You’re either a genius, or you’re cheating,” I’d joked, after she’d pulled out yet another successful squeaker of an exam.
“Me? Never!” she said, giving me a maybe-too-innocent batting of her eyelashes.
Those eyes. That was another thin
g about her — they were always made up so perfectly. No matter how sleepily she had to drag herself to class, Jayla always had her makeup in place. Nothing too elaborate, but she obviously knew what to do with a powder brush. Those eyes held as much fascination for me as those of the Goddesses I watched under my covers each night. My mother hadn’t seen the need to teach me the ins and outs of cosmetics, beyond the simple application of lipstick. Besides, she’d always assured me, it was frivolous.
Jayla was addicted to coffee — and it was because of our shared lust for the hot brown stuff that we finally had our first good conversation, at the little campus café next to the medical science building. I liked her immediately . . . we clearly ran with different crowds, but it was always a blast to hear about the clubs she’d just been to, or who she was currently sleeping with. On the reasons for that perpetual sleepiness of hers, however, she’d always been weirdly evasive.
That is, until the day that I called her and told her I was quitting school. She’d rushed over to meet me instantly.
“What!?” she said. “No way. I don’t believe it.”
I poked at the foam at the bottom of my latte cup. “It’s true. I’d keep going if I could. That’s what mom wanted. But with the funeral expenses . . . her hospital bills . . . ”
Jayla stared at me. “There must be something you could do . . . the financial aid office, or . . . I mean, shit, you’re a great student!”
I could only shake my head. “Not great enough for scholarships. I’ve been to see them like three times. They say there’s nothing they can do for me. I can apply for a grant in the future, maybe. That should cover a semester’s worth of textbooks. If I’m lucky.”
Jayla bit her lip and stared off into the distance. I could see that she wanted to tell me something . . . but I could also tell it was difficult for her.
She reached out and touched my hand. “Look. I don’t tell a lot of people this, but . . . okay, look: money’s tight for me, too. I know that I sleep a lot in class. That isn’t by accident, and it’s not just the fact that I’m sometimes kind of a club rat. Actually I have a part-time job.”
More Than A Maybe Page 1