“When I wasn’t laughing out loud (which was often), I was wiping away a tiny tear.”
— Meg Cabot
“Paul Rudnick is a champion of truth and love and great wicked humor, whom we ignore at our peril.”
— David Sedaris
For my mother
Contents
Title Page
Praise
Dedication
Epigraph
Becky
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Rebecca
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Becky
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Her Royal Highness
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
The privileges of beauty are enormous.
— JEAN COCTEAU
I grew up in what some people would call a mobile home and what other, snobbier people might call a manufactured home, but I was always fine with calling it a trailer. That’s right, I said I grew up in a trailer. Fuck you.
I lived with my mom in East Trawley, Missouri, until I was seventeen. My mom weighed almost four hundred pounds and you’re probably thinking that she was lazy or everything that’s wrong with America, or that she belonged on one of those stupid cable TV docudramas called stuff like Jumbo Mama or I Weigh More Than My House, but you’re way off base because my mom was the sweetest person and the best mom ever. But she did have a problem, because from as far back as I can remember I only knew one thing for sure: My mom was terrified of something, and as long as she kept eating she’d never have to go outside and face it. Whenever I asked her about my dad or about what she was so scared of she’d just sort of smile and say that I was talking crazy, and so after a while I stopped asking, because I was pretty sure that my dad, whoever he was, and her fear were the same thing.
On the morning of my eighteenth birthday, just as I was about to leave for work, my mom grabbed my hand. She’d been sick for almost a year and she could barely leave our couch, but being my mom, she wouldn’t see a doctor.
“Oh, baby,” she said, “I know it’s your birthday and I can’t buy you anything, but I have something to tell you, and that’s going to be your present.”
“Mom, I don’t need presents….”
“Hush, just listen. I know that I haven’t been the sort of mom you deserve….”
I rolled my eyes because she knew this wasn’t true.
“I just wish that all sorts of things were different. And I know that lots of people think I’m gross, or a freak, or they feel sorry for me. But they shouldn’t, and you really shouldn’t. Because I’ve had the best life, because I’ve had you. But Becky, you have to promise me something.”
“I know, I remember, I will pick up more laundry detergent, in the Mountain Spring scent….”
“You have to promise that — you won’t be me.”
I wasn’t sure why she was talking like this but her voice sounded urgent.
“Things have happened to me, all sorts of things, grown-up things and I just, I got overwhelmed. I let myself get overwhelmed. And I don’t think that’s been fair to you, not one little bit. But something is going to happen to you. And it’s going to be magical.”
She was gripping my hand very tightly and looking right into my eyes. “And it might be scary and you might not know what it means, not at first. But it’s going to change your life, forever. And Becky, I want you to swear to me, because I love you so much, and because you deserve everything, you deserve the whole world, so Becky, when the magic shows up — I want you to say yes.”
Later that afternoon when I called to check on her, she didn’t answer her phone, so I called 911 and I ran for my car. By the time I got to the trailer a police car and an ambulance were already parked outside but everyone was too late. A policeman asked if I wanted to see my mom’s body, instead of just asking did I want to see my mom.
My mom was lying on our couch with her eyes open, and one of her hands was slightly raised, as if she’d just thought of one last thing she wanted to say. I knelt beside her and part of my brain told me to say good-bye, but instead I just touched her hand and said, “Hi.” I wondered if her soul had flown upward, grateful to be leaving her difficult body behind. I stayed like that for a while, just watching her. But then my knees started cramping and when I stood up I got dizzy, so the cop dragged me outside for some fresh air.
A bunch of people had gathered from the nearby trailers, and they were discussing the whole deal.
“That poor woman,” said Mrs. Stangley, who was wearing a kerchief over her head full of curlers and dropping cigarette ashes onto her nylon housecoat. “She certainly was large.”
“Large?” said Emmett, the guy with the gun collection from two trailers down. “Hell, she was huge. If they want to get her out of there, they’re gonna have to take that door off its hinges.”
“I will pray for you,” said Cheryl Gann, clutching my arm. Cheryl weighed about ten pounds and was always handing me pamphlets about abstinence, with drawings of screaming fetuses. “Your mother was such a sad woman, so perhaps this is truly a blessing.”
I looked at her. I looked at all of them. “Excuse me,” I said. “On her worst day, my mom was still a million times nicer than all of you put together. And if you want to stand here and talk about her body, why don’t you take a look at your own. Because, Mrs. Stangley, if you’re going to have a fake tan, you should remember to spray your neck. And, Emmett, maybe my mom was fat but at least she never exposed herself to a crossing guard.”
“She’s possessed!” cried Cheryl, stepping away from me. “Please, Jesus, don’t listen to this girl!”
I was about to say something to Cheryl but instead I just howled like a demon and lunged at her, which made her shriek and run back into her trailer, while Mrs. Stangley lit another cigarette and Emmett mumbled something about me being a whore.
Then at least four guys from the volunteer fire department began maneuvering my mom out of the trailer and I yelled at them to be careful and then I apologized for yelling, and then I started crying. Which was when I knew for pretty much 100 percent certain that no matter what my mom had promised me, I was never, ever going to believe in magic.
After my mom was gone, I felt beyond lonely. I felt like there’d been some terrible mistake and that God was going to find me and apologize and bring my mom right back, so we could still do what we always did, which was to read magazines together and watch TV shows about celebrities and Google any details we weren’t sure about, like the exact square footage of a celebrity’s beachfront Malibu home or the age of another celebrity’s much younger third husband or the brand of eco-friendly guest towels made from hemp, which the much younger third husband swore by. It sounds silly and loony but my mom loved all of that gossip and information, and while I was growing up, those stars and their favorite designers and their spa treatments were like my fairy tales, and I memorized the details of every strappy sandal and contested prenup and five-step system for removing eye makeup, because my mom and I could have the best time, just by talking really seriously about ridiculous things. No one could make the world seem sparklin
g and enchanted the way my mom could.
Three weeks after my mom’s funeral while I was getting her clothes together to give to the church, I came across her favorite sweater, which was a Volkswagen-sized cardigan of hot pink acrylic yarn crocheted with powder blue bunnies holding Easter baskets. My mom had loved holiday-themed clothing and the sweater was so neon-bright and cheery that I started crying again because the bunnies reminded me so much of my mom, and of how incredibly hopeful she’d been. I curled up inside the sweater, which became my hot pink acrylic igloo, and I kept sobbing, because while my mom had been obsessed with glamour and romance and magic, she’d never had any of those things in her life, and that was pretty much going to be my life too.
As I was sniffling and nibbling some stale peanut M&M’S I’d found in the sweater’s pockets, I heard a few notes of my mom’s ringtone, coming from beneath a mound of her Christmas, Thanksgiving and St. Patrick’s Day sweaters — we weren’t Irish but my mom had fallen hard for a kelly green hoodie with sequined shamrocks. I froze because my mom hadn’t had many friends, so I wondered who could be calling. But when I looked under the sweaters for her phone, it wasn’t there. Instead there was a pearl gray shoe box. The shoe box said “Tom Kelly” in silvery, almost invisible letters and at first I thought it was empty because it was really light and just filled with crumpled-up tissue paper, but as I was about to toss the whole thing I heard something rattle and so I uncrumpled the tissue paper and found one of those little hinged velvet boxes, like for an engagement ring. Only the little velvet box was empty too but then, tucked under the piece of velvet-covered cardboard where the ring would go, there was a scrap of paper ripped from the flap of an envelope with a phone number scribbled on it in pencil and the phone number had a New York area code.
I didn’t call the number for a week because I was afraid. It was like on my mom’s death certificate where it said Cause of Death, I felt like instead of saying “complications from diabetes” there might be that phone number. But then I decided that I was being superstitious and besides, that phone number was the closest I’d ever been to New York or anywhere except East Trawley. So I called the number and a lady answered and she asked me my name and then fifteen minutes later the lady called back and offered me a thousand dollars and a plane ticket.
I asked my best friend, Rocher Bargemueller, what I should do. Rocher’s mother had named her after a box of imported, gold foil–wrapped chocolates and most people pronounce it Ro–share, although when Rocher is being fancy she calls herself Roshay, and when the other kids in first grade were being mean they called her Roach Motel.
“Wait, so you called this number and some lady wants to send you a thousand bucks and a plane ticket to New York?” Rocher asked while we were on our breaks from working checkout at the Super Shop-A-Lot. There were also regular Shop-A-Lots but adding the word “super” meant “we promise to mop the floors at least once a week, especially if a baby throws up in the produce aisle.”
“What should I do?” I wondered as we were sitting on top of the Dumpster behind the store, dangling our legs while Rocher chain-smoked and I sucked on a grape slushie. “I mean, what if it’s like when they tell those poor girls in, I don’t know, China, or the really crappy parts of Russia, they tell ’em they’re gonna get married to rich, handsome guys, and they send ’em a plane ticket and then when they get off the plane some creepy guy with gold teeth steals their passports and they end up being like, sex-slave hookers on some rich creep’s yacht in like, Vietnam?”
“Becky,” said Rocher, “we’re checkout chicks, excuse me, Register Associates, at a supermarket which from what I hear, is probably gonna get shut down by the end of the month along with all the other stores in the strip mall. Which means that we’ll have to drive fifty miles more each way just to fill out applications to work behind the counter at Kentucky Fried Horse Doodie in Jamesburg. When we were still in high school and that guidance counselor, the sweaty one with the hair plugs, when he asked me what was my dream career, I told him ‘sex-slave hooker on some rich creep’s yacht in Vietnam,’ and I asked him if he had a brochure.”
“You did not!”
“Get on the damn fucking plane, shit-for-brains. At least find out. Your mom kept that number for a reason. You should honor her. You know, her last wishes. Like, my mom says that after she dies she wants me to kick my stepdad really hard in the balls.”
I got on the plane. I’d never been on a plane and my seat was in something called Premium Ambassador Class, which meant that I sat right up near the front, in a wider seat, and there was a menu and a complimentary headset for watching a movie. I liked all of that fine but all I kept thinking was, I wish I could tell my mom about it.
I got to the New York airport, which looked like the biggest mall I’d ever seen, and I got so scared and confused that I just let myself get swept up with all of the other people from my plane and as we’re all swooping along and I have no idea where I’m headed, I hear that music again, my mom’s ringtone, and while I’m trying to figure out where it’s coming from I see this really good-looking man. I mean he was so good-looking that it was almost silly. He had the square jaw of a marine commando in a video game and these friendly, squinty, Windex-blue eyes and the sort of thick, wavy, dark blond hair you only see on professional surfers or soap opera actors playing heart surgeons. And he’s wearing a black uniform, including a stiff-brimmed hat, like he’s a chauffeur in an ad for really expensive vodka or one of those body sprays called Mach Noir or Stealth Sport, and then I see that he’s holding up a small rectangle of white cardboard with my name printed on it — Rebecca Randle — only no one ever calls me anything except Becky.
“Um, that’s me, right?” I said to the good-looking guy in the uniform and when he smiled he got even more ridiculously better looking, to the point where I wanted to kiss him or smack him, and then he said, “Of course, Ms. Randle. Right this way. Is there any checked luggage?”
“Um, no, just carry-on,” I said and I only said it because Rocher and I had agreed that I should call my old, stained, lime green nylon backpack, the one I’d used all through high school, we’d decided that if I brought it on the plane with me that I should call it “carry-on.”
“If you’ll please wait here, Ms. Randle,” the driver guy said, showing me where to stand on a curb outside the airport. “I’ll bring the car around. I’m Drake, by the way.” Then he smiled again and I knew that if I was Rocher I’d be thinking sex-slave-hooker thoughts, so I used my phone to take a picture of the back of Drake’s head and I sent it to her.
Pretty soon a black Mercedes pulled up and Drake jumped out from the driver’s seat and opened the rear door for me.
“Is this your first time in the city?” asked Drake once we were underway.
“This is my first time anywhere,” I said, and that was when I saw the New York City skyline and I felt like I was drunk and like I was about to cry and like I was really far away from East Trawley. Then we began gliding along what Drake said was the West Side Highway and he said that I could see across the river to New Jersey.
Pretty soon we reached a long stretch of high chain-link fence, at least three blocks of it, topped with curls of barbed wire, like it was guarding a top secret military base or a nuclear reactor. Drake pulled up to a checkpoint and we drove through, passing all of this expensive black gravel that had been raked into neat furrows connecting to perfect circles. We drove farther, out onto a mammoth pier set atop hundreds of wooden pilings and jutting out onto the water itself.
The pier was filled by an enormous warehouse, or an airplane hangar, with no windows, just towering walls of rusting, battleship gray steel. A wide, concealed door set into the side of the building yawned open, and Drake drove through. Everything was happening smoothly and automatically, as if the building itself had studied us and made a decision, and I could hear the river lapping and heaving beneath the pier; it was like boarding someone’s private ocean liner or aircraft carrier. Even now I c
an’t describe exactly what was inside the outer shell of the building. There was more of that Japanese-style landscaping only with white gravel and gnarled, almost leafless trees, like five-thousand-year-old stick figures, flailing toward an endless, floating dark glass pavilion, a sort of epic, gleaming, ultra-high-end car dealership kept hidden from view, because if regular people ever saw it they’d get too jealous or angry and they’d smudge their fingerprints all over the miles of tinted glass.
Drake stopped the car, and leaped out and opened my door. “Don’t worry,” he said as a glass panel in the pavilion hissed open. Even though I still hadn’t seen a single other person, I clutched my backpack tightly in front of me, like a nice girl in a bad neighborhood.
A woman was waiting, seated behind what I think was a desk, although it was the size of at least two dining room tables. There were no drawers, no wastebasket, and no electrical cords or office equipment of any kind; the glass desk was more like a sketch, or the ghost of some actual object. The woman stood up, smoothing her slim, taut black skirt, which she wore with a crisp white shirt and very high heels. Everything about this woman was classically simple, from her clothing to her hair and makeup, but I knew instantly that even beginning to look like her would cost thousands of dollars.
“Hello,” said the woman, smiling. Her voice sounded like cashmere, if cashmere could talk. “I’m Lila.”
She studied me with a professional’s expertise, as if she were a hairstylist who could be nasty or nice. “I can see it,” she concluded, although I had no idea what she was talking about. What could she see?
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