Just Like Me, Only Better (18 page)

“Do you have Pinkberry where you live?” Jay asked.

“Yes,” I said. “We have cable TV and running water, too.”

“Testy.”

“Just trying to channel you-know-who,” I said, though we both knew I was still annoyed about the Brady comment. “Why does she like this stuff, anyway? It’s expensive and it tastes bad.” With my precious little spoon, I added a speck of pineapple to a speck of tart yogurt.

Jay scooped up a bit of green tea yogurt (no topping) with his own teeny tiny spoon. “Partly, I think she just enjoys sending people out to get things for her. But also, she’s got a major sweet tooth, and it’s one of the few desserts low enough in calories for her to have.”

“But it’s not even sweet.”

“She adds sugar.”

“Why not just let her have ice cream? Or even normal frozen yogurt? Would it be so terrible if she gained five or ten pounds?”

“Yes.”

I curled my lip in disgust.

“Try not to gaze at me with too much adoration,” Jay said dryly. “We wouldn’t want to give people the wrong idea.”

 

 

No mention of our outing turned up in the press, and Jay didn’t call again until the next Friday.

“Do you have your son this weekend?” he asked.

“No, he’s with my ex-husband.”

“Do you have any plans?”

“My landlord is having a Pampered Chef party tomorrow afternoon, and I told her I’d go.”

“A—what? Never mind. How’d you like to have a sleepover with Haley tonight?”

“Excuse me?”

“A sleepover. Slumber party? Whatever you girls call it. It would be a good opportunity for you and Haley to bond. You can watch movies, do each other’s hair. You know—girl stuff.”

“Um . . . okay.” This was weird. But it was work, and work was good. “Will anyone else be there?”

“No. Rodrigo normally stays over Friday and Saturday nights—Esperanza’s there during the week—but he has a conflict. A meeting. Something.” He dropped all attempt at lightness. “He didn’t tell me what it was, and I don’t really give a shit. I was supposed to meet him here at three to go over some issues, and he called me fifteen minutes ago and said he wasn’t going to make it. Like it was no big deal. And I have a previous commitment—he fucking
knows
I have a previous commitment—and it’s already two o’clock and . . . ”

“You want me to babysit!” Now I got it.

“No!” he said. “Just, Haley gets lonely and—”

“She needs a babysitter.”

He was silent for a moment. I wished I could take my words back; I didn’t want to jeopardize my job.

“Please don’t use that term in front of her.”

 

 

An hour later, “my” driver—the one with questionable immigration status—showed up at a park down the street from the Motts’ house. I didn’t want to leave my van in the strip mall parking lot overnight; nor did I want Deborah Mott to see me climbing into a Town Car. We endured two hours in traffic before finally reaching the Gates of Haley.

Haley opened the door. She was in her pajamas already—or maybe she had never gotten dressed. Her pants were pale blue with white clouds, and her baggy white T-shirt said, I ONLY LOOK INNOCENT. Her wild blond hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, and a smudge of something white ran across her cheek.

“Hey.” She lifted up a big bottle of red Gatorade as if making a toast and took a swig that left a red mustache above her lip.

“Hi,” I said.

“Esperanza and I have been making muffins.”

“That’s nice.” So far, we were bonding beautifully.

I left my overnight bag by the front door and followed her into the kitchen. Esperanza stood over the sink, washing a glass bowl. The air smelled full and sweet. Esperanza looked up from her work and gave me the friendliest, warmest smile. I beamed back—she liked me, after all!—and said, “Something smells delicious!”

Too late, I realized the smile had been intended for Haley. Esperanza scowled at me and went back to her work.

I opened the big refrigerator. I was really thirsty, and there was no way I’d ask Esperanza to get me anything.

“What are you looking for?” Haley asked, scratching her nose and leaving yet another flour mark.

“Something to drink. Water’s fine.” I took a green bottle and shut the door.

“There’s orange soda in the pantry. Ginger ale, too, I think.”

“Really?” I’d missed them the other day. Ginger ale sounded really good right now. I started to walk toward the large closet.

“Not that pantry,” Haley said. “The good one.” She pointed to a tall cabinet next to the refrigerator.

The good pantry did indeed have orange soda and ginger ale. Also: grape soda, Dr Pepper, Yoo-hoo (Yoo-hoo!), Bugles, Ruffles, Cheetos (regular and hot), Twinkies, Chips Ahoy, Double Stuf Oreos, Ring-Dings, Cap’n Crunch, Reese’s Puffs, Pop-Tarts, and a giant plastic canister of red Twizzlers. My blood sugar spiked just looking at it all.

I pulled out a can of ginger ale.

“I buy those M&M’s you ask for, Miss Haley,” Esperanza said. “You see them?”

“Yeah. I think I’ll have some.” Haley rifled through the cabinet and pulled out a big brown bag, which she ripped open before even closing the door.

She caught my eye. “I’m not, like, bulimic or anything.”

“I didn’t think that!” Of course I did.

“I just like knowing it’s here. In case I want it.” She reached into the bag, took out a big handful, and shoved the candies into her mouth.

“Sure.” I nodded. In an attempt to sound convincing, I added, “I always keep some treats on hand for my son. Cookies or chips or something. Of course, I’m the one who usually ends up eating it all.”

She swallowed, her hand frozen in midair, ready to plunge back into the bag at any moment. “You have a son?”

I nodded. “Ben. He’s six.”

“Can I see a picture?”

“Um, sure.”

My purse was by the front door, next to my overnight bag. I pulled Ben’s first-grade portrait out of my wallet. It wasn’t a great shot: his smile looked more like a grimace, and his usually spiky hair was flat on one side. Still, the image made me smile and ache at the same time. Ben would be eating dinner at Casa Darcy right around now, or maybe they’d all gone out to the Claim Jumper, Ben’s favorite restaurant. Every time Ben told me about the places he went with Hank and Darcy—the baseball games, the theme parks, the restaurants—I felt envious: if only I could do those things with him, too. But I felt grateful, too, because Ben wouldn’t be cheated out of the experiences that his classmates took for granted and that I couldn’t afford.

“Here he is.” Back in the kitchen, I put the photo on the counter because Haley’s hands still had flour on them. “He’s got this whole fake-smile thing going on right now. I hope it’s just a phase.”

She leaned over the image and stared at it for longer than I would have expected. “He doesn’t look like me,” she said, finally.

I blinked at her. “Um . . .”

“I mean, like you,” she said. “I just thought that maybe . . .”

“Oh, right. Of course. He looks like his father.”

“You’re married?”

“Divorced.”

She nodded as if that were the expected answer and studied the picture some more. “I want to have a whole bunch of kids someday. When I grow up.”

Was she joking? No: her expression was sincere and wistful. Haley had been in show business since she was nine—younger than Shaun Mott. Instead of growing up too fast, maybe she had never grown up at all.

Later, after Esperanza had left and Haley had eaten two chocolate chip muffins and half the bag of M&M’s, she sat on a stool and stuck a bare foot on the counter. Not surprisingly, considering how her boots pinched, her feet were narrower and more sharply angled than my slightly squared models.

“You want to paint our toes?” she chirped.

“Um, sure.” This really was a slumber party.

She left her empty Gatorade bottle on the counter and pulled another half-empty one (blue, this time) from the fridge. I scored another room-temperature ginger ale.

Upstairs, on her knotty pine dresser, she had the polishes already laid out: pink, red, black, peach, silver, blue, green—you name it, she had it.

I reached for a muted rose that looked like every nail polish I had ever bought.

She snatched it from my hand. “Too boring!”

I was taken aback for just an instant before I realized that she was right. I chose a deep, blood red.

“Better,” she said. “This one’ll help you get in touch with your inner whore.”

I forced a laugh. “I don’t think I have an inner whore.”

“Of course you do. Everyone does. Let’s see. Jay? That’s easy. He whores himself for money. Rodrigo whores himself for success—or he tries to, anyway. For Esperanza, it’s all about steady work. Simone’s a total whore. She’ll do anything as long as she can control people. And Brady whores himself for everything.”

I decided to let that one pass.

“And how about you?” I asked.

Her face turned sad. She took a long drink of her blue Gatorade and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“I keep trying to whore myself for love,” she said finally. “But it doesn’t seem to be working.”

We climbed onto the log bed and took turns doing each other’s toes while listening to rap and R&B from a portable Bose iPod player; she’d given up on the sound system.

“This is fun!” she said, lounging against a mass of throw pillows (and a few stuffed animals) as I painted her pinky toe.

“It is!” I fake-agreed. It would have been fun if I’d been thirteen. Or if Haley’s mood swings weren’t quite so disturbing. Or if I were drinking wine instead of soda.

She began to sing along to the music, her voice low and mournful.

“You sing really well,” I said, sounding more surprised than I’d intended.

“That’s not what the critics say.”

“You can’t listen to them.” (Note to self: Google “Haley Rush music reviews.”)

She stared at the ceiling. “The last time I did a concert—this was like a year, a year and a half ago—this total dick wrote, ‘Probably half of the preteens in the audience can sing as well as, if not better than, Miss Rush.’ ”

“That’s just stupid.” Pinky toe finished, she shifted her weight and presented the other foot. She pulled a lavender unicorn from among the pillows and held it to her chest.

“I was so psyched when they told me I was going to cut a CD. I never really cared about acting, you know? But my whole life I dreamed of being a singer. But then they made me sing these fucking songs I didn’t even fucking like. And they were way too high and fast for my voice, and . . .”

She chucked the unicorn across the room. My hand slipped; cotton candy pink polish smeared over her toe, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“They were right, the critics. The
fuckers
. My voice did sound whiny and thin.” She forced a smile. “Usually it’s good to be called thin.”

“Maybe next time you can do the kind of music you like.” I painted her toes quickly, sloppily.

“Do you want to hear a song I wrote?” Toes unfinished, she scrambled off the bed and retrieved an acoustic guitar from a stand in the corner. Back on the bed, she adjusted her body around the instrument and began to play.

The tune was a little bland. The lyrics (
When you look at me / You see what you want to see / Why can’t you let me be / The me I need to be
) were not the most original. But Haley’s music had a simple, mournful, heartfelt vibe entirely missing from her pop tunes.

When her final chords lingered in the air, I asked, “Will that be on your next CD?”

“Nope.” She slid off the bed and placed the guitar back on its stand.

“Why not? It’s really good.”

“Because it will not appeal to my fucking
demographic
.” She downed the rest of her Gatorade in one angry gulp.

“How do you know? They might love it.”

“That’s what I said!” Oh, God—was she going to cry?

“But it’s your CD. Don’t you get to decide?”

“It’s not my CD.” Her voice was flat now. “It’ll have my name and my picture on it, but it’s not mine. But the money’s good, and that’s all that matters, right? Do you have any more pictures of your son?”

“What?” The sudden change in subject confused me. “Not on me, no.”

“Oh.” Her face darkened: she was thinking about her career again.

“There are some pictures of Ben online, if you want to see them. His Cub Scout troop has a website. Do you have a computer?”

She retrieved a big Mac laptop and booted it up. The Cub Scout website’s photo section included a shot of Ben taken during the night hike at the Brea Dam. He was standing next to Ken, both of their faces slightly bleached by the flash, the background black.

“Is that his dad?” Haley asked.

“No, his dad wasn’t there, so my friend Ken took him on the hike.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Ken? Oh, no. People keep thinking there’s something between us because we’re both divorced, but we’re just too different. He’s really outdoorsy, and I’m really . . . indoorsy.”

“He’s cute.” She leaned closer, looking a little too interested for my comfort.

“Yeah, I guess. But we just don’t have anything in common, plus he’s got primary custody of his three boys, so he doesn’t have much time.” Single parenthood was a major turnoff for every guy I’d met; presumably it would work the same magic on Haley.

Or not.

“Boys?” Her voice turned dreamy. “I love little boys. They’re so cute and funny and cuddly. What are their names?”

I cleared my throat. “Brice, Powell, and Arches.”

“Oh, my God—those names are fucking awesome.” She put a hand on either side of the screen, as if it could bring her closer to Ken.

She said, “If I ever have a son, I’m going to name him Caden. I used to think Aidan, but I like Caden better. And if I have a girl I’ll name her Britney. Because I think it’s important to have a strong role model.”