Girl Before a Mirror (31 page)

If it was about them, there was nothing I could do. It was beyond my control. I was helpless.

The rain falls.

They're not right.

They're not right.

They're.

Not.

Right.

It's time to step into the rings.

I pick up my phone and dial.

“Mallory Consulting.”

“Hi, this is Anna Wyatt, is Mr. Mallory in?”

“No, he's not in. He's actually speaking at a small college upstate for their parents' weekend,” the woman says.

“Oh, that's right. And which small college is that?” I ask, digging a piece of paper out of my purse along with a pen. The woman tells me the small liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie,
and I thank her. I look at the clock on the dashboard. I input the address of the university into my phone's map. Five hours. Over three hundred miles. I could make it tonight and be there to meet him by morning.

I pull out of the Recovery House's parking lot and set my course for Poughkeepsie, New York.

And I'm stuck in the D.C. traffic. I don't have cash for the tolls and I have to stop and get money in some gas station whose bathroom is a porta-potty by the side of the flooding highway. I pull past Manhattan as night falls and it's another traffic jam and horns blaring and should I stop and get clothes for tomorrow or at the very least my toothbrush—no. I press on.

I have no good music, so I'm forced to listen to the radio all the way up. Pop song after pop song. And it's amazing. I turn up the music and, once the rain stops pouring, I roll down my window and sing along. I stop at a diner and have the world's greasiest cheeseburger and fries, sitting by myself in a booth by the jukebox. The waitress calls me hon and she's worried that I'm driving around after dark.

I roll into Poughkeepsie just after nine
P.M.
and find the nearest hotel. Full. Parents' weekend, they say. Sure, that makes sense. Onto the next hotel. Full. The night grinds on and I decide to stop and call around to the other local hotels. All I can find is a terrible twenty-four-hour fast food place that's full of obnoxious college kids, so I order a soda and sit in the parking lot calling around to find that no hotel has any room.

“This is why a plan is a good idea,” I say, locking my doors, lowering my seat down, and pulling my coat over my shoulders. I turn onto my side, mess with the headrest like it's an actual pillow, and pull my coat up a bit more. The clock on the dash. The little
blue numbers illuminated as my windows fog over. 11:34. I turn on the car and run the heater. Off again. Doze off. My eyes blink open. 12:56. I run the heater again. I flip over on my other side, pull my coat up. Doze off. 2:21. Is this the longest night ever? I flip over again and wonder why sleeping on that stupid cot all those months didn't make this one night any better. 3:01. Oh good. Time is slowing down. Shift change as employees arrive and I decide to go inside and use the bathroom at the fast food place. I sneak back outside and try to resituate myself as I run the heater. 3:34. 3:56. I turn off the heater and flip over. 4:01. I close my eyes. Keep them closed. My contact lenses are dry and my mouth is a ball of cotton. My shoe got kicked off at some point and now it's just hitting me in the shin every time I move. But if I try to get it, the cold of the early morning will rush in as my coat falls off my shoulders. I bend down and quickly resituate my shoe. Freezing. I bring the coat up over my shoulder again. I'm now past tired and have reached that lovely point where the exhaustion and cold is just in my bones. This was a terrible idea. I couldn't have gotten a hotel when I was back in D.C.? Stopped in Manhattan and started this stupid trek first thing in the morning?

Of course not. I had to be dramatic. 4:37. More people start pulling into the fast food parking lot. Then a few more. Headlights on my windshield as I feign sleep. At five thirty, I decide to give up. I start the car up and head back to the diner on the edge of town for breakfast.

It's in the diner bathroom that I see what evil spending the night in that fast food parking lot hath wrought. The rearview mirror had been kind. Black circles under my eyes, makeup askew and worn out. I find some Lumineux Shower Gel samplers in my workbag and use those to wash under my arms and
my face. I make a mental note to pitch Preeti a Lumineux Woman-on-the-Go bag for emergencies. That's twice in the last year I could have used it.

My hair is doing things I've never seen it do before, actually sticking straight out of my head in places—which I thought was physically impossible. I use the water from the sink and try to smooth my hair down, but now I just look like a drowned rat. Do I slick it back into a ponytail and look like the lunch lady who tormented me at school, or do I try to keep it down so I look like I've just run through some sprinklers after breaking out of the state pen? It's really a win-win. I decide to put it back into a ponytail. No, down. A braid? Maybe two ponytails? How about some cinnamon bun rolls on the sides of my head? That seemed to be quite effective. I dry my hair under the hand dryer in the bathroom and decide to keep it down. It's windswept, I tell myself. When I sit back down, the waitress looks terrified. Once she leaves, I throw the whole rat's nest into a ponytail.

Two cups of tea and a country breakfast later and I'm parking my rental car/sleeping compartment on the edge of the picturesque college's grounds. My silk blouse looked tasteful and amazing for yesterday's meeting with Ralph and Ferdie. This morning? It looks like I wadded up a napkin, cut out a neck hole and some armholes, then proceeded to squeeze my body inside it. My sensible pencil skirt is wrinkled and off-center, but it's the drool on my blazer that really brings the outfit home. I walk onto campus and see the white tents set up in what appears to be one of the main common areas. Students are beginning to mill around, and it's the coffee kiosk that has drawn the most interest at the moment.

I find a flyer for today's festivities and see that Lincoln is
speaking this afternoon at a room just off the common area. Okay. I can see if any hotel rooms have opened up, go take a shower, fix my hair, and—

Lincoln.

“You know I meant messy in a metaphorical way,” he says, his black overcoat pristine and his gray cashmere scarf lilting in the crisp morning air. I smooth my drool-stained blazer over my wrinkly napkin blouse and step closer to Lincoln.

“I eat all the movie popcorn before the trailers have finished. That TV show about the chemistry teacher that makes meth? I got through one season and then just watched the finale. I hate cats; I think they're smug for no good reason. I had an accident in my sleeping bag when I spent the night over at Tatiana's house when I was twelve and lied about it. I love sports being on in the background. It makes me feel not so alone. I didn't love my ex-husband and I almost canceled the wedding, but the invitations had already gone out. I love Taylor Swift. I do. I love her. I cry during any medal ceremony. My left foot swells up when it gets hot, and I'm positive it's because I secretly have diabetes. I bite my fingernails and have no intention of stopping. I think I'm smarter than most people and if someone doesn't think I'm funny, I am immediately suspicious. I think you are amazing. I knew it the moment I met you. You made me believe in The One and I know how cheesy that sounds, but it's true. It's you. It was always you. You're my person, too.”

Lincoln pulls me into him, his mouth fast on mine, his arms wrapped around me. The warmth of him envelops me. That oaky, outdoorsy smell is everywhere. He pulls me in close, hugging me tight.

And in my ear he whispers, “You Marpled me too, love.”

About the author

Meet Liza Palmer

Anna and Lincoln's Guide to Phoenix

Read on

Have You Read? More from Liza Palmer

Meet Liza Palmer

Author photograph by Edwin Santiago

L
IZA
P
ALMER
is the internationally bestselling author of
Conversations with the Fat Girl
.
Conversations with the Fat Girl
became an international bestseller its first week in publication and hit number one on the Fiction Heatseekers List in the United Kingdom the week before the book debuted.
Conversations with the Fat Girl
has been optioned for a series by the producers of
Rome
,
Band of Brothers
, and
Generation Kill
.

Palmer's second novel is
Seeing Me Naked
, of which
Publishers Weekly
says, “Consider it haute chick lit; Palmer's prose is sharp, her characters are solid
and her narrative is laced with moments of graceful sentiment.”

Her third novel,
A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents
, which
Entertainment Weekly
calls a “splendid novel” and
Real Simple
says “has heart and humor,” was released in January 2010.

Palmer's fourth novel,
More Like Her
, received a starred review from
Library Journal
, in which they said, “The blend of humor and sadness is realistic and gripping, and watching Frannie figure out who she is and what matters is gratifying.”

Kirkus Reviews
called her fifth novel,
Nowhere but Home
, “a heart-wrenching tale told with true wisdom and brilliant wit. . . . An uplifting reading experience.”

After earning two Emmy nominations writing for the first season of VH1's
Pop Up Video
, Palmer now knows far too much about Fergie.

Girl Before a Mirror
is Palmer's sixth novel.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.

 

 

Anna and Lincoln's Guide to Phoenix

I
HAD NEVER BEEN TO
P
HOENIX
. I haven't been to a lot of places, so this isn't really news in the Palmer household. But I wasn't setting
Girl Before a Mirror
a lot of places—I was setting it in Phoenix. I thought I could hide behind good research, but it remained plainly obvious: as Tina Fey says (ish), “I had to go to there.”

So, if you're ever in Phoenix . . .

STAY

ARIZONA BILTMORE
2400 East Missouri Avenue
Phoenix, AZ 85016

I needed a solid location to set Anna and Lincoln. It had to be a character in and of itself. And that's exactly what I got in the 1929 Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired Biltmore. So I set my GPS from L.A. and drove. And drove. And drove. New Edition's “If It Isn't Love” can only energize you so many times. It was hot. That last loop into Phoenix rivals
Cannonball Run
. I needed food and a bed. I pulled into the Biltmore and I remember just sighing. It was nighttime, so it was all lit up—fountains, Italian café lights—people milling around. It was exactly the type of place two broken people would let their guard down long enough to fall in love.

EAT

ASADERO NORTE DE SONORA
122 North 16th Street
Phoenix, AZ 85034

Real Cokes. Spanish wafting all around. It reminded me immediately of when I used to visit my aunt Concha—the smell of pinto beans lilting from the kitchen. Tiled tables with a roll of paper towels atop. Vending machines with cheap toys and framed pictures of old Sonora. I was in heaven. I spoke in broken Spanish and the waitress, bless her heart, acted like it wasn't terrible. And then I ate. And ate. I can still smell the barbecue even now.

MRS. WHITE'S GOLDEN RULE CAFE
808 East Jefferson Street
Phoenix, AZ 85034

Whenever I did research on Phoenix, someone would always mention Mrs. White's. The cobbler, they'd drool. The cobbler though. After having more than a bit of trouble with an ornery one-way street (it was the street's fault, okay?), I parked and headed in. The thing about locals-only places? They know you're not from there. The good ones, though? Can't wait to find out more about you. That's Mrs. White's. All the way from L.A.? For our cobbler? They hated to tell me: they were out. BUT. BUT. Have you tried our sweet potato pie? No, I whimpered. We'll get you
some, honey. AND OH MY GOD. It was warm. And I may have cried a little. But I'm still going back for that damn cobbler one day.

GO

IRISH CULTURAL CENTER
1106 North Central Avenue
Phoenix, AZ 85004

I needed a location to set an event for RomanceCon. Something . . . epic. Maybe an Irish castle in the middle of Phoenix will do? I parked—oh my God was it hot—and walked through the gates, and it was . . . how does this place exist? Gray stone castles and little cottages and barns with raftered ceilings and libraries and kids learning Gaelic (programs you can find under the heading of “Wee Folk”). A wonderful red-haired woman with a smoky voice proudly showed me around, explaining murals and giant black fireplaces and flags, and I was transported. They have a little shop there. Sells tea and chocolate. Just sayin'.