Pretty Girls: A Novel Read online

  Lydia’s fingers flew to her upper lip. Potato chip salt burned the raw skin.

  “Jesus Christ,” she mumbled, because she had forgotten that she got her mustache waxed today, and that the girl had used a new astringent and that the astringent had caused an angry rash to come out on Lydia’s upper lip so that instead of the one or two stray hairs she had a full-on, red handlebar mustache.

  She could only imagine Mindy Parker conveying this to the other Mothers. “Lydia Delgado! Mustache rash!”

  Lydia crammed another handful of chips into her mouth. She chewed loudly, not caring about the crumbs on her shirt. Not caring that the Mothers could see her gorging on carbs. There was a time when she used to try harder. That time had been before she hit her forties.

  Juice diets. Juice fasts. The No-Juice Diet. The Fruit Diet. The Egg Diet. Curves. Boot Camp. Five-minute Cardio. Three-minute Cardio. The South Beach Diet. The Atkins Diet. The Paleo Diet. Jazzercise. Lydia’s closet contained a veritable eBay of failures: Zumba shoes, cross-trainers, hiking boots, bellydancing cymbals, a thong that had never quite made it to a pole-dancing class that one of her clients swore by.

  Lydia knew that she was overweight, but was she really fat? Or was she just Westerly Fat? The only thing she was certain of was that she wasn’t thin. Except for a brief respite during her late teens and early twenties, she had struggled with her weight her entire life.

  This was the dark truth behind Lydia’s burning hatred for the Mothers: She couldn’t stand them because she couldn’t be more like them. She liked potato chips. She loved bread. She lived for a good cupcake—or three. She didn’t have time to work out with a trainer or take back-to-back Pilates classes. She had a business to run. She was a single mother. She had a boyfriend who occasionally required maintenance. Not just that, but she worked with animals. It was hard to look glamorous when you’d just come from aspirating the anal glands of a slovenly dachshund.

  Lydia’s fingers hit the empty bottom of the potato chip bag. She felt miserable. She hadn’t wanted the chips. After the first bite, she didn’t even really taste them.

  Behind her, the Mothers erupted into cheers. One of the girls was doing a series of handsprings across the gym floor. The movement was fluid and perfect and very impressive until the girl threw up her hands at the finish and Lydia realized she wasn’t a cheerleader, but a cheerleader’s mother.

  Cheerleader’s Mother.

  “Penelope Ward!” Mindy Parker bellowed. “You go, girl!”

  Lydia groaned as she searched her purse for something else to eat. Penelope was heading straight toward her. Lydia brushed the crumbs from her shirt and tried to think of something to say that wasn’t strung together with expletives.

  Fortunately, Penelope was stopped by Coach Henley.

  Lydia exhaled a long sigh of relief. She pulled her phone out of her purse. There were sixteen emails from the school noticeboard, most of them dealing with a recent plague of head lice wreaking havoc in the elementary classes. While Lydia was reading through the posts, a new message popped up, an urgent plea from the headmaster explaining that there really was no way to find out who had started the lice pandemic and for parents to please stop asking which child was to blame.

  Lydia deleted them all. She answered a few text messages from clients wanting to make appointments. She checked her spam to make sure Dee’s permission slip hadn’t accidentally gone astray. It had not. She emailed the girl she’d hired to help with paperwork and asked for her again to submit her time card, which seemed like an easy thing to remember because that was how she got paid, but the child had been hand-raised by an overbearing mother and couldn’t remember to tie her shoes unless there was a Post-it note with a smiley face physically attached to the shoe with the words TIE YOUR SHOE. LOVE MOM. PS: I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!

  That was being ungenerous. Lydia was no stranger to Post-it mothering. In her defense, her helicoptering tended to revolve around making sure that Dee could take care of herself. LEARN HOW TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH OR I WILL KILL YOU. LOVE MOM. If only she had been warned that teaching this sort of independence could lead to its own set of problems, such as finding an over-packed suitcase in your daughter’s closet when she had ten whole months before she was supposed to leave for college.

  Lydia dropped her phone back into her purse. She watched Dee pass the ball to Rebecca Thistlewaite, a pale British girl who wouldn’t be able to score if you put her face through the basket. Lydia smiled at her daughter’s generosity. At Dee’s age, Lydia had been fronting a really terrible riot girl band and threatening to drop out of high school. Dee was on the debate team. She volunteered at the YMCA. She was sweet-natured, generous, smart as hell. Her capacity for detail was astounding, if not highly annoying during arguments. Even at a young age, Dee had had an uncanny ability to mimic back whatever she heard—especially if she heard it from Lydia. Which is why Dee was called Dee instead of the beautiful name Lydia had put on her birth certificate.

  “Deedus Christ!” her sweet little child used to scream, legs and arms kicking out from her highchair. “Dee-dus Christ! Dee-dus Christ!”

  In retrospect, Lydia could see it had been a mistake to let her know it was funny.

  “Lydia?” Penelope Ward held up a finger, as if to tell Lydia to wait. Instantly, Lydia checked the doors. Then she heard the Mothers tittering behind her and realized she was trapped.

  Penelope was something of a celebrity at Westerly. Her husband was a lawyer, which was typical to a Westerly dad, but he was also a state senator who had recently announced he was going to make a run for the US House of Representatives. Of all the fathers at the school, Branch Ward was probably the most handsome, but that was largely because he was under sixty and still had a clear view of his feet.

  Penelope was the perfect politician’s wife. In all of her husband’s promos, she could be seen looking up at Branch with the googly-eyed devotion of a border collie. She was attractive, but not distracting. She was thin but not anorexic. She’d given up a partnership at a top law firm to pop out five fine, Aryan-looking children. She was president of Westerly’s PTO, which was a pretentious and unnecessary way of saying PTA. She ran the organization with an iron fist. All of her memos were bullet-pointed to perfection, so concise and focused that even the lower Mothers had no trouble following. She tended to speak in bullet points, too. “Okay, ladies,” she would say, clapping together her hands—the Mothers were big clappers—“refreshments! Party favors! Balloons! Table dressings! Cutlery!”

  “Lydia, there you are,” Penelope called, her knees and elbows pistoning as she jogged up the bleachers and plopped down beside Lydia. “Yum!” She pointed to the empty bag of chips. “I wish I could eat those!”

  “I bet I could make you!”

  “Oh, Lydia, I adore your dry sense of humor.” Penelope pivoted her body toward Lydia, establishing eye contact like a tense Persian cat. “I don’t know how you do it. You run your own business. You take care of your home. You’ve raised a fantastic daughter.” She put her hand to her chest. “You’re my hero.”

  Lydia felt her teeth start to gnash.

  “And Dee’s such an accomplished young lady.” Penelope’s voice dropped an octave. “She went to middle school with that missing girl, didn’t she?”

  “I don’t know,” Lydia lied. Anna Kilpatrick had been one year behind Dee. They’d been in the same PE class, though their social circles never overlapped.

  “Such a tragedy,” Penelope said.

  “They’ll find her. It’s only been a week.”

  “But what can happen in a week?” Penelope forced a shudder. “It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  “So don’t think about it.”

  “That is such fantastic advice,” she said, sounding both relieved and patronizing. “Say, where’s Rick? We need Rick here. He’s our little shot of testosterone.”

  “He’s in the parking lot.” Lydia had no idea where Rick was. They’d had a hideous fight this morning. She was pre
tty sure he never wanted to see her again.

  No, that was wrong. Rick would show up for Dee, but he would probably sit on the other side of the gym because of Lydia.

  “Rebound! Rebound!” Penelope screamed, though the girls were still warming up. “Gosh, I’ve never noticed before, but Dee looks just like you.”

  Lydia felt a tight smile on her face. This wasn’t the first time someone had pointed out the resemblance. Dee had Lydia’s pale skin and violet-blue eyes. Their faces were shaped the same. Their mouths smiled in the same way. They were both natural blondes, something they had over every other blonde in the gym. Dee’s hourglass figure only hinted at what could happen later in life if she sat around in sweatpants inhaling potato chips. At that age, Lydia, too, had been just as beautiful and just as thin. Unfortunately, it had taken a hell of a lot of cocaine to keep her that way.

  “So.” Penelope slapped her hands on her thighs as she turned back to Lydia. “I was wondering if you could help me out.”

  “Oka-a-ay.” Lydia drew out the word to convey her great trepidation. This was how Penelope sucked you in. She didn’t tell you to do things; she told you that she needed your help.

  “It’s about the International Festival next month.”

  “International Festival?” Lydia echoed, as if she had never heard of the week-long fundraiser where the whitest men and women in North Atlanta sat around in Dolce & Gabbana sampling perogies and Swedish meatballs made by their children’s nannies.

  “I’ll resend you all the emails,” Penelope offered. “Anyway, I was wondering if you could bring some Spanish dishes. Arros negre. Tortilla de patates. Cuchifritos.” She pronounced each word with a confident Spanish accent, probably picked up from her pool boy. “My husband and I had escalivada while we were in Catalonia last year. Ah-mazing.”

  Lydia had been waiting four years to say, “I’m not Spanish.”

  “Really?” Penelope was undaunted. “Tacos, then. Burritos. Maybe some arroz con pollo or babacoa?”

  “I’m not from Meh-i-co, either.”

  “Oh, well, obviously Rick’s not your husband, but I thought since your name is Delgado that Dee’s father—”

  “Penelope, does Dee look Hispanic to you?”

  Her shrill laughter could’ve shattered crystal. “What does that even mean? ‘Look Hispanic.’ You’re so funny, Lydia.”

  Lydia was laughing too, but for entirely different reasons.

  “Goodness.” Penelope carefully wiped invisible tears from her eyes. “But tell me, what’s the story?”

  “The story?”

  “Oh, come on! You’re always so private about Dee’s father. And yourself. We hardly know anything about you.” She was leaning in too close. “Spill it. I won’t tell.”

  Lydia ran a quick P&L in her head: the profit of Dee’s undetermined heritage making the Mothers cringe with anxiety every time they said anything mildly racist vs. the loss of having to participate in a PTO fundraiser.

  It was a difficult choice. Their mild racism was legendary.

  “Come on,” Penelope urged, sensing weakness.

  “Well.” Lydia took a deep breath as she prepared to sing the Hokey-Pokey of her life story, where she put the truth in, pulled a lie out, added an embellishment and shook it all about.

  “I’m from Athens, Georgia.” Though my Juan Valdez mustache may have fooled you. “Dee’s father, Lloyd, was from South Dakota.” Or South Mississippi, but Dakota sounds less trashy. “He was adopted by his stepfather.” Who only married his mother so she couldn’t be compelled to testify against him. “Lloyd’s father died.” In prison. “Lloyd was on his way to Mexico to tell his grandparents.” To pick up twenty kilos of cocaine. “His car was hit by a truck.” He was found dead in a truck stop after trying to snort half a brick of coke up his nose. “It happened fast.” He choked to death on his own vomit. “Dee never got to meet him.” Which is the best gift I ever gave my daughter. “The end.”

  “Lydia.” Penelope’s hand was over her mouth. “I had no idea.”

  Lydia wondered how long the story would take to circulate. “Lydia Delgado! Tragic widow!”

  “What about Lloyd’s mother?”

  “Cancer.” Shot in the face by her pimp. “There’s no one left on that side.” Who isn’t in prison.

  “Poor things.” Penelope patted her hand over her heart. “Dee’s never said anything.”

  “She knows all the details.” Except the parts that would give her nightmares.

  Penelope looked out at the basketball court. “No wonder you’re so protective. She’s all you have left of her father.”

  “True.” Unless you counted herpes. “I was pregnant with Dee when he died.” White-knuckling detox because I knew they would take her away from me if they found drugs in my system. “I was lucky to have her.” Dee saved my life.

  “Oh, honey.” Penelope grabbed Lydia’s hand, and Lydia’s heart sank as she realized that it had all been in vain. The story had obviously moved Penelope, or at least interested her, but she had come here with a task and that task was going to be assigned. “But, look, it’s still part of Dee’s heritage, right? I mean, stepfamilies are still families. Thirty-one kids at this school are adopted, but they still belong!”

  Lydia took a millisecond to process the statement. “Thirty-one? As in exactly thirty-one?”

  “I know.” Penelope took her shock at face value. “The Harris twins just got into preschool. They’re legacies.” She lowered her voice. “Lice-carrying legacies, if you believe the rumor.”

  Lydia opened her mouth, then closed it.

  “Anyway.” Penelope blasted another smile as she stood up. “Just run the recipes by me first, okay? I know you like Dee to take on special skills projects. You’re so lucky. Mom and daughter cooking together in the kitchen. Fun-fun!”

  Lydia held her tongue. The only thing she and Dee did together in the kitchen was argue about when a mayonnaise jar was empty enough to be thrown away.

  “Thanks for volunteering!” Penelope jogged up the bleachers, pumping her arms with Olympic vigor.

  Lydia wondered how long it would take for Penelope to tell the other Mothers about the tragic death of Lloyd Delgado. Her father always said that the price for hearing gossip was having someone else gossip about you. She wished that he were still alive so she could tell him about the Mothers. He would’ve wet himself with laughter.

  Coach Henley blew his whistle, indicating the girls should wind down their warm-up drills. The words “special skills projects” kept rolling around in Lydia’s head. So, here was confirmation that the Mothers had noticed.

  Lydia would not feel bad for making her daughter take a basic car maintenance class so that she would know how to change a flat tire. Nor did she regret making Dee enroll in a self-defense course over the summer, even if it meant that she missed basketball camp. Or insisting that Dee practice how to scream when she was scared, because Dee had a habit of freezing up when she was frightened and being silent was the worst thing you could possibly do if there was a man in front of you who meant to do you harm.

  Lydia bet that right now, Anna Kilpatrick’s mother was wishing she’d taught her daughter how to change a flat tire. The girl’s car was found in the mall parking lot with a nail in the front tire. It wasn’t a big leap to think that the person who’d driven in the nail was the same person who had abducted her.

  Coach Henley gave his whistle two short blasts to get the team moving. The Westerly Women ambled over and formed a half-circle. The Mothers stamped their feet on the bleachers, trying to build excitement for a game that would unfold with the same drama as a mime’s funeral. The opposing team hadn’t even bothered to warm up. Their shortest player was six feet tall and had hands the size of dinner plates.

  The gym doors opened. Lydia saw Rick scan the crowd. And then he saw her. And then he looked at the opposing side’s empty bleachers. She held her breath as he considered. Then she let it out as he made his way toward her. He slowl
y climbed the bleachers. People who worked for a living didn’t tend to sprint up bleachers.

  He sat down beside Lydia with a groan.

  She said, “Hey.”

  Rick picked up the empty bag of chips, leaned back his head, and let the crumbs fall into his mouth. Most of them went down his shirt into his collar.

  Lydia laughed because it was hard to hate someone who was laughing.

  He gave her a wary look. He knew her tactics.

  Rick Butler was nothing like the fathers at Westerly. For one, he worked with his hands. He was a mechanic at a gas station that still pumped gas for some of their elderly customers. The muscles in his arms and chest came from lifting tires onto rims. The ponytail down his back came from not listening to the two women in his life who desperately wanted it gone. He was either a redneck or a hippie, depending on what kind of mood he was in. That she loved him in both incarnations had been the surprise of Lydia Delgado’s life.

  He handed back the empty bag. There were specks of potato chips in his beard. “Nice ’stache.”

  She touched her fingers to her raw upper lip. “Are we still fighting?”

  “Are you still being grumpy?”

  “My instinct tells me yes,” she admitted. “But I hate when we’re mad at each other. I feel like my whole world is upside down.”

  The buzzer sounded. They both winced as the game started, praying the humiliation would be brief. Miraculously, the Westerly Women managed to get the tip off. Even more miraculously, Dee was dribbling the ball down the court.