Today, she steps back outside and wipes her fake-Ugg clogs on the mat. It’s a mat she has always despised. It says, “Never mind the dog; beware of the owner!” Chuck thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. Tiffany hates it passionately, especially since they don’t even have a dog. Once her feet feel sufficiently clean, she steps back in the house and takes a deep breath.
The house reeks of its normal stale cigarette and beer smell. It’s a scent that’s both sickening and comforting to Tiffany, but today it’s a bit different. Oddly, it seems that being left empty just overnight has added a musty stuffiness to the small house. As Tiffany walks through the living room, she finds the silence deafening. She looks into the galley kitchen on her way through and sees Charla’s coffee cup from the morning she left still sitting on the counter.
It’s a stained and chipped mug that says “World’s Best Mom.” Tiffany had bought it for $4.98 and given it to her mother for Mother’s Day approximately five years ago. Tiffany and Charla both knew that Charla was not the world’s best mom, but Charla loved the mug and used it every single day. Tiffany walks the five paces it takes to cross their kitchen, which is really just a strip of linoleum surrounded by counters and cupboards at the edge of the living room. She peers into the mug and sees an inch of coffee sitting in the bottom. Her mother always drank her coffee black with four teaspoons of sugar. Occasionally Tiffany would take a sip and always regretted it because the normally bitter liquid was sweet enough to rot your teeth on contact.
Tiffany pours the remaining coffee down the drain and carefully washes the mug, then sets it upside down on the drying rack under the window. Looking at the silly mug causes tears to well up in Tiffany’s eyes, so she quickly exits the kitchen and hurries down the carpeted hall to her own bedroom. Once inside with the door closed behind her, she falls face forward on her unmade bed and cries.
After just a few minutes, she stands up, wipes her eyes, and retrieves a large overnight bag from beneath her lumpy twin bed. In it she packs all her favorite designer knockoff clothes. She knows that her aunt Lizzie is a successful career woman in Los Angeles and she wants to fit in as much as she can. Once her clothes are packed, Tiffany places a ratty stuffed frog, Mr. Ribbit, into the bag. She has slept with Mr. Ribbit since before she can remember, and while she would be mortified if anyone knew about it, she would also be devastated to leave home without him. Tiffany lugs the bag across the hall to the bathroom, careful to avoid looking toward her mother’s bedroom.
Inside the grimy bathroom, Tiffany packs her toiletries in a clean, gallon-size Ziploc bag. Like any teenage girl, she owns gobs of products—Noxzema cleanser, Stridex pads, Maybelline cosmetics. She takes them all and stuffs them into her bag. She takes one last look around the bathroom, which smells of Chuck’s Old Spice and her mother’s Aqua Net, and then glances in the mirror. For a second, she doesn’t recognize her own reflection.
Tiffany is a pretty girl and she knows it. She knows that she is one of the prettiest girls at Victory High. Her hair is L’Oréal Preference “Extra Light Natural Blonde,” and her eyes are turquoise blue, like her mother’s. She is skilled at applying makeup and almost never leaves the house without a generous application of Maybelline Great Lash mascara in “Very Black.” Her clothes are always fashionable and too tight in the right places. Today, none of this is evident.
Her hair is a greasy mess, piled on top of her head in a lumpy bun, and her mascara is hanging in dark circles under her eyes; there is also a red pimple blemishing her heart-shaped chin. For a second she is mortified and considers getting into the soap scum–encrusted shower but decides that when Buck said to take her time, he probably didn’t mean that much. She makes a guttural sound of disgust before walking out of the bathroom. She starts down the hall toward the front door, then drops her bag and turns around.
Tiffany walks briskly to the end of the hallway and into her mother’s bedroom without breaking stride until she stands in front of her mother’s worn oak dresser. She opens the top drawer, which contains her mother’s faded cotton underwear and torn underwire bras. In the back of the drawer is a small black velvet jewelry box. Tiffany knows that there isn’t anything of any value in it, but these are the pieces that her mother cherished. Inside are the tiny diamond earrings that Chuck gave her as an anniversary gift, the gold cross that her grandparents gave her as a high school graduation gift, and a tarnished sterling silver heart on a matching chain that Tiffany had given her for her thirtieth birthday. Chuck had actually purchased the necklace, but the gift card hadn’t given him any credit. Tiffany acknowledges that her stepfather was a good man as she tucks the little box under her arm and walks out of the room toward the front door.
The house is basically a long hallway leading to her parents’ room, with her room, the bathroom and the living room/dining room/kitchen branching off. Tiffany walks straight to the front door, hardly stopping as she stoops to pick up her bag. Once outside on the front porch, which is cluttered with dying potted plants, Tiffany removes the key from beneath the stupid mat. She locks the door and bends halfway down to put it back before she changes her mind. She stops mid-bend and instead palms the key, squeezing her hand tightly so that she can feel the metal cuts digging into her palm as she walks back toward Buck’s truck. She can hear Green Day playing quietly on the stereo, but Buck looks like he’s fallen asleep with his head tilted back.
The sound of the door opening makes him jump slightly, and he opens his eyes and turns the stereo even lower in one movement.
“Everything okay?” he asks, looking like he feels guilty for having dozed off while Tiffany collected her things.
“Yep,” she answers, but they both know it’s not the truth.
9
That morning when my alarm goes off at six thirty, I am snapped out of a dream. A dream where I am dressed in a Vera Wang wedding gown I once tried on at Neiman Marcus in a fit of fantasy—a dress with a price tag close to that on my used BMW convertible—standing in line at the Wal-Mart in Victory to buy condoms. For once, I am grateful to hear the piercing beep from my Sony Dreamcube.
I quickly stop the beep, beep, beep before rolling over and looking at Dan, who is still halfway asleep. He looks so sweet and innocent in the blue poplin pajamas he keeps at my house. The night before had been a bit of a roller coaster. Dan’s announcement about his desire to move in together but not get married and definitely not have children for a while had thrown me…especially in light of the fact that much to my dismay I had just inherited a teenage child. But after that, he had been so sweet. We’d “celebrated,” and then Dan had ordered my favorite Chinese food to be delivered and we spent the night on the couch, cuddled up watching repeats of The West Wing. Around eleven thirty, he turned off the TV and kissed my forehead, which I thought was a signal that he was leaving, but instead he said, “Let’s go to bed.” I’d fallen asleep, wrapped in Dan’s arms, and hadn’t stirred until my alarm rescued me from my strange dream.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” I coo at my wonderful fiancé in bed beside me.
“Five more minutes?” he begs me without opening an eye.
“I’ll take the first shower,” I tell him and slide out of bed and into my robe, hoping that his eyes are still closed and that I am covered before he sees the bony structure that is my body. I sneak a peek back at him as I walk around the bed toward the shower and am relieved that his eyes are shut and his breathing is the heavy, borderline snore that means he is asleep.
Once safely locked inside the bathroom, I neatly hang my robe on the hook behind the door. I wash off the previous day’s makeup—this is something that I normally do before going to bed, but when Dan spends the night, I always keep it on, lest he see me au naturel and go running for his life. After a shower, I carefully reapply the makeup as well as moisturize every square inch of my body and tend to my hair with a dryer and a round brush before removing the robe from the hook, putting it back on, and exiting the bathroom, which now feels about 95 degrees.
“Okay,”