Pretty Ugly: A Novel (30 page)

Ray,

Firstly, I want to thank you for taking care of me in the final weeks of my life. You did a good job even though I died anyway. However, that does not excuse what you did to Courtney (intercourse). She is a 17 year old child. A child! How would you feel if a grown man did that to
your
daughter? Shame on you. God will punish you harshly, so I do not feel that I need to. I also wanted to tell you that whatever Courtney tells you, she is not pregnant.

Ray leapt up off the bed and read that last sentence again. “Holy fucking shit.” Ray could barely breathe.

I know she told you she was, but it is not true. I heard her talking to a friend on the phone and she was happy to not be pregnant. When she thought I was asleep, she told me everything. She said she was afraid of me dying and she wanted someone to take care of her. I think she wants that person to be you. I am not telling you this because I think you are a good person. You are not. I am saying this because my first wife tricked me into marrying her by saying she was pregnant. Thank God for Korea and annulment. No man deserves that even if that man is you and the woman is my granddaughter. I am not proud of her behavior, but she is a scared little girl. You are an adult. I know this gives you reason to push her out of your life forever, but even though she is lying she likes you. She may even love you. Please be kind to her. That is my dying wish. You owe me that. See you in hell.

Marvin

Ray ran to the bathroom and threw up into the toilet, and then with equal enthusiasm he tore open the minibar and downed a tiny bottle of vodka followed by a tiny bottle of Jack Daniel’s. After a series of deep breaths, he texted Courtney with the nimbleness and fury of a tween girl.
MIRANDA GONE. NEED 2 C U ASAP. COME 2 MY ROOM!!!

Ray could feel what he hoped was Lexapro coursing through his body as he read Marvin’s letter again, relishing every misshapen word. Everything started to make sense. This was why Courtney was so anxious all the time, why she’d cut him off from sex even though pregnant women are infuriatingly horny, and why after nearly four months she didn’t look fucking pregnant! Because she wasn’t fucking pregnant!

His phone sang “Evil Woman” by ELO—Courtney’s newest text tone.
I NED TALK 2 U 2. BAILEY SLEEPN. B RITE THER.

Before he could respond, Courtney was standing in his room, an eager smile plastered across her lying face. “I’ve got some great news, Ray!”

“Save it. We have to talk. Sit down.” His coolness was almost sinister. For the first time since she’d known him, he didn’t act afraid of her. If she hadn’t been so freaked out by it she would have found it sexy.

“What’s going on? Are you drunk?”

“That’s my business. Sit down.”

“Okay.” She crossed to an easy chair by the window and tried to be cool as the oversized chair swallowed her up, making her look—and feel—like a child. “So … what should we talk about?”

“Let’s start with this.” Ray slammed the letter onto the table in front of her.

“Oh.” The sight of Marvin’s shaky handwriting made her voice crack. “It’s from Granddaddy.”

“Read it.”

“What is—?”

“Read it,” he insisted.

“Okay. Jeez.”

Ray hummed like he’d been freebasing espresso. Every cell in his body wanted to scream, “You lied to me you little bitch!” But that wouldn’t be as satisfying as hurting her. It was important to Ray that Courtney knew her grandfather, the one person she’d loved most in the world, the last person who’d loved her unconditionally, had died disappointed in her. When she got to Ray’s favorite part—the part about her not being pregnant—her face went white.

“Oh, God.” she whispered almost imperceptibly.

Ray cackled. “That’s right.” It was without question one of the top five most satisfying moments of his life.

Courtney’s eyes turned pink as she continued to read. Her mouth hardened, turning in on itself into a puckered frown. Her head shook involuntarily as if her body was finally rejecting all of the lies. When she was done reading, Courtney placed the letter neatly on the table, sank deeper into the chair, and cried into her chest.

“So, what the
fuck
is going on?”

Eighteen seconds passed before she was able to speak. “What?”

He jammed his finger at the letter. “What is this? At the very
least
you owe me an explanation.”

But there was nothing to explain. He wouldn’t have believed her, anyway.

“I don’t owe you shit, Ray,” she murmured, her embarrassment adding a deeper hue to her already scarlet face.

“Are—are you kidding?” he stuttered. “You’ve
got
to be kidding. Do you have any fucking idea what you’ve put me through? Do you even realize what you could’ve done to my family? Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

There was a lot she wanted to say: that despite everything she truly loved him and only wanted them to be together; that they could get past this … misunderstanding; that they really
could
have a future together. But he wouldn’t have heard it. He was done listening, and she was done trying.

“You’d have been a terrible father, anyway,” she said quietly. Pulling herself out the chair, she slapped Marvin’s letter against Ray’s chest and walked out the door. “I’m done.”

But Ray was not done. “Come back here, goddammit! You don’t get to just walk away!” He chased her into the hall, slamming the door behind him. “You lied to me! You lied to my family! What the hell were you thinking?!”

She didn’t answer.

“Courtney?”

She still didn’t answer.

“Courtney!” Fueled by anger, adrenaline, and what he hoped was Lexapro, Ray grabbed the girl by both arms and shook her like Humphrey Bogart would shake women in movies back when that sort of thing was okay. “Answer me!”

“Ray? What’s going on?” Turning toward his wife’s voice, a bright light hit him in the face like a fist. Next to Caroline and two expressionless cameramen was Miranda with Brixton attached to her breast, mortified that her husband was already embarrassing her in front of her new show business friends.

Throwing on an easy smile, Ray let go of Courtney and casually waved to his audience. “Hey, hon, Caroline. How was your—your meeting?”

But before they had a chance answer, Courtney turned to Ray, and wiping a fresh tear from her cheek asked, “Do you want to tell her, or should I?”

*   *   *

Joan lurched awake when she heard the door slam. For nearly two and a half hours she’d been asleep in the closet and had forgotten where she was. The blanket over her face made her think she had been presumed dead and was lying on a coroner’s gurney being prepped for an autopsy.

“I’m alive!” she screamed, pulling off the blanket and finding herself on the floor of a closet.

“Oh, right.” She sighed once she’s gotten her bearings. Dazed but ready, Joan quietly opened her Diet Coke and took a long pull. The caffeine and lukewarm sugar substitute gave Joan enough energy to pull herself up off the floor. Her knees cracked like dry bamboo, but she didn’t complain. When this was over, Jesus was going to fix her knees
and
build her a closet.

The room was dark except for the TV, which was turned up so loud Joan could feel it in the floor. She inhaled deeply until she made herself dizzy.

You okay?

“I’ll be fine.”

I know you will. Now, go get ’em, kiddo.

With this final blessing as motivation, Joan tiptoed across the room, clutching the down-filled murder weapon with trembling hands. Mere inches in front of her, the harlot Courtney was asleep on the bed. Her back was to Joan, but even in the ambient glow of the TV the old woman knew it was her. The trampy hairstyle was unmistakable.

Are you ready?

“Yes,” she whispered, the pillow shaking more with every step.

Remember, you will be forgiven for what you do here tonight. This kind of evil must be vanquished, and since I can’t do it myself, it’s up to people like you, Joan. My true believers, my soldiers.

Joan blushed. She thanked Jesus for trusting her with such an important mission and took her position behind the sleeping whore. Marshalling every ounce of strength in her one-hundred-sixty-six-pound body, Joan brought the pillow down with a righteous vigor and held it over the girl’s face as tightly as she could.

Nice job! Just a few more seconds and it’ll all be over.

There was, however, a complication that Joan had not considered. The girl was fighting back. The would-be murderer had assumed that when a person was smothered in her sleep, she just stayed asleep until she was dead. But that was not the case, especially since the girl wasn’t actually asleep. Joan had also failed to take into account that a healthy eighteen-year-old girl was a lot stronger than a sixty-year-old grandmother. Dodging kicks and fists, the old woman pushed harder as the muffled screams of a familiar voice seeped through the pillow. The voice didn’t even sound like Courtney’s, but Joan knew that was just the devil trying to trick her.

Scratching and clawing for her life, the girl dug her fingernails into Joan’s forearms, tearing her skin like tissue paper.

“Ahhhh!”

Don’t let her go! I will heal thy wounds!

Blood ran from the scratches, soaking her fingers and causing the pillow to slip. But Joan was not about to let a little blood prevent her from completing her mission. Jesus bled, too, and He didn’t quit. Leaning on the pillow with her forearm, Joan wiped her hands on the bedspread and attempted to get a better grip. However, the shift in position was just enough to give the girl an opening, and she let out an audible scream.

“Grandma, stop! What are you doing?”

“Bailey?!” Turning toward the door, Joan hoped her granddaughter hadn’t seen too much. It would be difficult to explain, to be sure, but Bailey was a smart, Christian girl. Ultimately, Joan believed, she would understand. “Where are you?”

“Get off of me!” Bailey kicked hard, hitting her grandmother squarely in the knee. Joan collapsed to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been clipped.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Bailey jumped out of bed and ran to the door. “Mom! Dad!”

“No! Oh, my goodness! Bailey, wait! I thought you were somebody else!” Joan struggled to lift herself up off the floor and hobbled after Bailey into the hallway.

“Do you want to tell her, or should I?” Courtney asked Ray, who stood in the blinding lights of the cameras.

Just then, Bailey ran from her room screaming, “Mom, Grandma just tried to kill me!”

One camera turned just in time to catch Joan staggering from the room clutching a bloody pillow.

“I wasn’t trying to kill you, sweetheart,” Joan said. She pointed to Courtney. “I was trying to kill
her
.”

“What?” Miranda cried. “Mom, what are you talking about? Why were you trying to kill Courtney?”

“Because Jesus told me to.”

A tingle shaped like an Emmy crept up Caroline’s spine. She would masturbate tonight for sure.

As far as Courtney knew no one had ever tried to kill her before, and she wasn’t sure how to respond. She looked around and noticed everyone staring at her. No one wanted to complicate (or alleviate) the tangled mass of insanity unspooling in front of them, so they stood by and waited for Courtney to advance the story, or at least end the scene. The hallway buzzed as if it had taken a fistful of Ray’s pills. Courtney looked into the camera and realized whatever she said next would be on YouTube forever, making whatever she said the absolute truth. Her words would determine the fate of the Miller family as well as the direction of a major television show. They would define her to everyone she’d ever known and everyone she’d ever meet. They would follow her for the rest of her life. She was about to become a character in Miranda’s story, and she would undoubtedly be the villain. In a matter of seconds, Courtney had been given complete dominion over the future of many people’s lives. And she did not like it. Not one bit.

Courtney looked at Bailey, who was sobbing and clinging to her father’s waist as her grandmother—a crazy old woman who had just tried to kill her—stood by in shame, bleeding onto her shoes. She looked at Miranda, rocking her new baby, trying to figure out what the hell was going on and whom exactly she should be mad at. Then she looked down and saw the crumpled letter from her dead grandfather on the floor by her married lover’s feet. For the first time in her life, Courtney felt like an adult, and she wanted to behave as such. So she gave Ray a sympathetic smile and slapped him hard across the face.

Everyone gasped.

She then went to Miranda. Ray stopped breathing. Caroline crossed her legs like she was about to pee and prayed for another fistfight; but Courtney was done fighting—for Ray, her house, her past, or even the future she thought she wanted. This part of her life was over. She pulled Miranda into a warm, sincere hug and whispered soft enough so as not to be picked up by the cameras, “Thank you for everything. You’ve been supercool to me.” Smiling now, she leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on Brixton’s forehead. “Good luck, sweetie.”

Then, as if on cue, Courtney heard the elevator doors open down the hall. Her future was waiting. She took one last look around, waved good-bye to Bailey, and walked out of the Millers’ lives forever.

Uncertain of what had just happened, but knowing she didn’t want to know, Miranda pried Bailey from her father’s leg and led her back to their room, quietly closing the door so as not to add to the drama. The cameras stayed fixed on Ray for another minute, a starving calf sucking at the teat of a dead cow.

“I think we got it,” Caroline said, cueing the cameramen to lower their weapons.

In an instant, Ray felt a clipboard in his hands.

“I’m going to need you to sign this release,” Caroline said, smiling.

Ray nodded and signed his name without hesitation, because that’s what Miranda would want him to do.

“Thank you,” she said, and snatched back the clipboard. “I look forward to working with you over the next several months, Ray. It’s going to be a lot of fun.” She smiled at him and shook his hand. God, she loved her job.