A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty

by Joshilyn Jackson

  I wasn’t me. I wasn’t Mosey Slocumb. It was like weights fal ing off. I could be anyone, and that meant I might do anything. Any damn thing I felt like. Anything at al .

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Big

  WE LOST LIZA almost four months ago, on the night of Calvary High’s End-of-School Luau. That night she seemed altogether too pleased to be going to an event that seemed about as much fun as dental surgery to me. Too pleased, and way the hel too pretty. She sauntered out to the car with her eyes striped in black liner and her fat mouth painted a deep plum. She wore a pair of her regular tight Levi’s, the ones she cal ed her tip-getters, but she’d paired them with a dressy white silk blouse. It was buttoned to the top, but sheer enough to tel me plain she’d put on a black bra.

  “Shotgun!” she cal ed over her shoulder; Mosey was dragging out the front door in her wake.

  I was sitting in the driver’s seat already, engine running. I narrowed my eyes as Liza climbed in, and she widened hers at me in response, feckless and overinnocent as a kitten who’s been off in the kitchen licking the butter.

  “You’re a little too cute for the room,” I said, but she only flirted one shoulder up at me and climbed into the passenger seat. I added, “Would you let Mosey out of the house in a top like that? Monkey see, monkey do.”

  “Lucky we’re not raising any monkeys, then.” She tipped her seat forward to make a crack for Mosey, who had final y trudged across the yard to the car. Mosey slipped in, sighing a loud, martyred sigh.

  I said, “Oh, stop it. It’s not like anyone in this car wants to go.”

  “I do,” Liza said, slamming the door. “I like a luau.”

  “A Baptist luau? Since when?” I said.

  Liza smiled al smug and creamy to herself, facing out the front windshield. Right then I should have sent Mosey back inside and pinned Liza down and tussled it out of her, exactly who she was al dressed up for. Almost every man there would be married and either a teacher or the devout daddy of one of Mosey’s classmates. That read to me like three different kinds of hands off, but when it came to men, Liza could miss the nuances.

  It was already pushing six, and the luau only went to seven. I backed out of the drive and pointed the car toward Calvary. I’d keep a hard eye on Liza tonight, but I figured I could tel her later on that she ought not to crap where Mosey had to eat. I was certain that al the later on I needed was waiting right around the corner.

  Once we were out of our neighborhood, I sped up and said to Liza, “Don’t run off. The new science teacher wil be there, and we need to meet him. See exactly who is going to be screwing up Mosey’s worldview next year.”

  “Oh, my God,” Mosey said to no one, in the back.

  “She’s not five, Big,” Liza said. She was making hula-girl arms, first toward the window, then toward me.

  “How else wil we know if she only needs to watch Discovery Channel for five hours a week or if I’m going to need to hire one of the fel ows who kidnaps cult members to do an un-Baptisting detox?”

  “Please don’t embarrass me,” Mosey said.

  Liza was stil dancing her top half around in her seat, but she shot me a sideline grin and then said, “Sucks to be a teenager, Mosey-baby. Big has the power to embarrass you just by breathing in public.”

  Mosey said, real pointed, “I mostly wasn’t talking to Big.”

  Liza laughed outright at that. “I’m the only one looking forward to this, and you want me to sit it out? Fat chance.” She was getting used to this new tone Mosey took with her now. A few months ago, Liza had left her little girl to go on an overnight druid campout, and she’d come home to a ful -

  fledged teenager who eye-rol ed and flounced and sighed at everything her mother did.

  I said to Liza, “Durn right you’re going. The first half of Mosey’s tuition is due this week if we want to hold her place. Mrs. Doats has left me four messages saying you have not returned her cal s.” I wasn’t about to shel out almost a third of my yearly salary so that Mosey’s civics teacher could tel her who was going to hel (Democrats, loose girls, and most medical professionals) and those who weren’t (Baptists). “Can you write her a check tonight?” I pressed. Last year Liza had paid every scrap up front, out of her “savings,” an animal I would have thought was off playing cards with Pegasus when the ark fil ed up.

  “Tel her I got it covered,” Liza said, unconcerned. I felt the little row of suspicion hairs that grow on the back of my neck rising up even higher, because having it covered wasn’t the same thing as saying plain she had the money.

  I turned in to the Calvary lot and parked, and al I said was, “Mm-hmm. After you write the check, take Mosey around to the booths and take a look at next year’s extracurriculars.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Mosey and Liza, same time, same exasperated inflection.

  “I’m sorry, but if the child is going to stay at Cal, she needs to have more friends than the Evil Fetus.”

  “She’s staying at Cal, al right,” Liza said, firm, at the same moment Mosey said, “His name is Roger.”

  “His name is Raymond,” I told her, and Mosey sat up straight so I could get a good view of her rol ing eyes in my rearview.

  Liza was already slipping out of the car and speeding away ahead of us across the parking lot, getting the jump on me, no doubt running straight into man trouble. Or money trouble. Or both. I tilted my seat back open so Mosey could scramble out, and she stomped along slowly right in my way with her arms crossed and her shoulders in an angry hunch. Liza had disappeared inside before I could hustle our mud-foot kid even halfway across the lot.

  Inside, the gym looked as though a discount-vacation brochure had thrown up al over the auditorium. Inflatable pink-and-green plastic palm trees hung down from the ceiling, and a long sheet of butcher paper with a wobbly ocean view painted on it lined the wal behind the stage. Way too many of those seagul s that look like M’s had been drawn on, as if it were the backdrop for the high-school musical version of that Hitchcock film. Parents and kids who had come on time were standing in chatty bunches, eating store-bought cookies and drinking what looked like foamy white slushies.

  I went with Mosey to get a cookie and said hey to a couple of her teachers, al the while scanning the huge room trying to find Liza and see who she’d been so al -fired eager to talk to. I eventual y spotted her up on the stage. She was faced forward, scanning the crowd herself, side by awkward side with Claire Richardson, of al people. They each held a paper cup ful of those foamy white drinks, and Claire was facing the crowd as wel , unwil ing to waste her minty-fresh moneyed breath on smal talk with my daughter. Liza sucked at her straw and ignored Claire right back.

  I saw Mrs. Doats wending her way toward us through the crowd at the snack table, so I got a good hold on Mosey’s arm and steered her the other way. We fetched up by some decorated folding tables where kids were recruiting for chorus and soccer and track and chess. I waved a hand at them and told Mosey, “Pick something, and which one is Mr. Lambert?”

  She pointed at a stocky, bearded fel ow, and then her expression brightened and she said, “Hey, there’s Roger!” before she darted right and wriggled off through the crowd, gone as fast as a skinny minnow. I went over to meet the new teacher. After ten minutes with him, I was confident the fel ow knew his way around a microscope and also that he wasn’t a pedophile; he told me how the sophomores would be making their own plant-cel slides while sneaking a subtle peek at my age-appropriate breasts. He was cute, and he made a point of saying something about his “late wife,” but I’d never date one of Mosey’s teachers.

  I left him and started looking for Liza again. I was back up near the stage when I felt a light touch on my arm. I turned to see one of the cheerleaders standing there with a tray ful of those white drinks.

  “Virgin colada?” she asked.

  “Good Lord, child, what are you wearing?” It just popped out.

  She bridled up and said, “I’m a hula girl. Mrs. Richardson g
ot us these costumes.” She had on a grass skirt and a coconut-bra top over a flesh-colored leotard that made her body look naked but strangely wrinkled, like she was a slim, peachy-pink elephant.

  Sharla Dartner, another cheerleader, came up on my other side and handed me a large wicker tote bag ful of papers and sample-size fruit snacks and hand sanitizer, saying, “Here’s your gift pack!” Claire Richardson had put Sharla in a peach-colored leotard, too, as if getting her one that actual y matched her flesh might lead folks to realize she was black.

  I thanked Sharla, and as I turned away, I found Mrs. Doats blocking my path, staring at me down her knife-thin nose. She bobbled her plastic hump of hair at me and said, “I checked my log, Ms. Slocumb, and I see I have yet to get that instal ment on Mosey’s tuition?”

  I busied myself tucking my clutch purse down in the big wicker tote so I’d only have one thing to carry, saying, “I told you, Mrs. Doats, you’re going to have to take that up with Liza.”

  “She seems a little busy just this now,” Mrs. Doats said in a prim voice, and she cut her eyes in a tel ing glance to my right.

  I fol owed her gaze and saw Liza near the wal talking with Steve Mason, a big barrel-chested fel ow with a sweep of brown hair and two kids at Cal. I frowned. Steve certainly had enough money to pay a few extra tuitions. He also had a wife. Liza was leaning toward him, very close. Too close. She put one hand on his chest, and her shiny lips parted. She stil held her cup with the last sips of her slushy colada in her other hand, and it was like she’d forgotten that it existed. The cup tipped sideways as she leaned in. She looked as if she was about to take a lick off Steve’s neck, see if he tasted like ice cream. Steve craned his head away from her and twitched his eyes back and forth, seeking help.

  Something was very wrong. Liza, who could read men easier than the morning paper, didn’t seem to realize how uncomfortable he was. I left Mrs.

  Doats without a single word and hurried toward them.

  Steve stepped back, and Liza fol owed, letting her cup fal out of her hand so that the remains of her white drink splashed onto some woman’s metal ic sandals and up the backs of her bare legs. The woman wheeled around, gasping, and more people turned to see what was going on. Liza cackled like a drunk hyena and splayed both her hands across Steve’s broad chest. I caught sight of Steve’s wife, off to port. Her eyebrows were up so high they’d nearly hit scalp territory, and she began fast-winding her way through the crowd. I sped up, pushing through and saying excuse me, hurrying to beat her to my daughter.

  Claire Richardson was handing a wad of Kleenex to the woman with the splashed shoes, her mouth pursed up tight as a cat’s butt, pushing her lipstick into humps. She started to kneel down, more Kleenex in her hand, but I bent and snatched the cup before she could. I sniffed at it, trying to tel if Liza had brought a flask and turned those virgin drinks into something right sluttier. I smel ed nothing but that suntan-oil smel , and anyway, Liza didn’t drink; in January she’d pressed her twelve-year pin from NA into the trunk of her wil ow. As I came up beside her, she pushed her thick coils of hair back over her shoulder. I saw how hard her hand was shaking, and I thought, It’s worse than that. It’s drugs again. Dear God, she’s jacked up.

  Liza vibrated from head to foot, and the years melted away, and it was as though no time at al had passed since she’d shown up on my doorstep with meth sores around her mouth, poor Mosey riding her bony hip. I started shaking, too, with rage, though, a red wave of pure angry that Liza could decide to shit-can her life like this, now, here, at Mosey’s school. How could she? How could she?

  I grabbed her arm and turned her toward me. She was cackling again, this high, weird pitch of sound, and she kept making it as I spun her. I pul ed her away from Steve, everyone staring at us, and I knew what I would see if I got her face pointed up into the light: her dark irises whittled down to rims around huge pupils.

  I tilted her face up toward the ceiling, and as the light hit her eyes, I saw one pupil blow open like one of those roses they film blooming fast in stop-motion. Her other pupil spiraled closed, becoming no more than a speck, and she frowned at me, one side of her mouth pul ing down as if someone had run a needle and thread through a corner of her bottom lip and yanked.

  I took hold of both her shoulders, my anger flat gone and fright rising up behind. This wasn’t drugs. Behind her eyes something else, something very bad, was happening. “Liza? Liza?”

  She stared at me and said, “The drums gave me a headache,” and then I saw it happen. I saw Liza go away. Everything Liza drained out of her twisting face. Half her mouth yawped downward, and she jerked like a puppet with its strings cut and tumbled straight to the floor so fast, no sway, no warning, nothing theatrical about it. I fel to my knees by her and grabbed her, hol ering, “Help us! Help!” Conversation died around me, leaving the awful tinny sound of the surfer music coming out of a boom box that was too smal for this cavern of a room. I flipped Liza over, and her head lol ed back, and both her pupils were blown now. She started jerking in my arms, and her tip-getter jeans darkened as her bladder let go.

  I heard a man say, “We need to get a spoon in her mouth,” and I yel ed up at Claire Richardson, “Cal 911, cal 911!” Her lips fel open out of their little pursed-up wad, and she stood there, teetering on her high, expensive shoes like a stupid giraffe with her lipstick al in stripes. “Help us, oh, God, help her!” I yel ed, but it was like I wasn’t speaking English. She stared at me and Liza on the ground, her nose wrinkling as the sharp tang of Liza’s urine rose to meet it. Steve Mason stepped around her, and he already had his cel phone out, dialing, so I turned back to Liza.

  I heard Mosey wailing “Big? Big?” in a scared, shril voice, but I was grabbing Liza’s head and making her face point at my face and cal ing her.

  Her body stil ed into deadweight, and she wasn’t in her eyes anymore. I started screaming, and strong male hands lifted me and shoved me to Mosey.

  The school nurse was by Liza now, saying, “Get that spoon away! Step back, give her air.”

  I pul ed Mosey to me, and we held on to each other in the endless minutes before we heard the sirens in the distance. Liza kept breathing with her head lol ed back and her eyelids at half-mast, but she wasn’t Liza anymore. She was just a body, taking in oxygen, sending out carbon dioxide for the plastic palm trees.

  She never came back. Not until today anyway. I had not seen my daughter for a red second, not until Tyler Baines dug that box up and she’d fought me so fierce in the yard. That had been Liza.

  I hoped so anyway, as afternoon faded into evening and I realized that none of us had even eaten lunch. I cal ed Mosey. She came out of her room and sat at the kitchen table like I was paying her to do it, but she didn’t much enjoy the work. She stared at the wal with her eyes bright and a feverish splotch in each cheek. Looking at her, I hoped to God I had seen Liza, pul ed back into her body in the yard. I couldn’t do this on my own.

  I stepped to the table and put my palm to Mosey’s forehead. She felt cool, almost clammy. She got very stil under my hand, waiting it out the same as a cat who likes you but who doesn’t much want to be petted wil do. I took my hand away.

  I couldn’t imagine eating, but I went ahead and opened a can of tomato soup and started making gril ed cheese sandwiches. I leaned on the counter by the stove, waiting for the soup to heat.

  Mosey asked, “Are they al gone?”

  I said, careful like, “Everyone except Chief Warfield. He’s stil waiting on the medical examiner.”

  “I meant Olive and them, al those people in the front yard.”

  I turned fast to the stove and flipped sandwiches that didn’t need flipping yet, hiding the flush that rose up, hot and hopeful in my cheeks. When I’d gone to roust the looky-loos, our yard had been empty. It didn’t make sense. Mosey had said half the town was there.

  Then I saw we had a state trooper’s car parked on our corner, and I thought his name. Lawrence. My heart jammed itself into my throat, pu
lsing there al red-hot and stupid, and my gaze darted al around, seeking him.

  He was in the street facing away from me, but of course I knew it was him. He was ushering our across-the-street neighbors back to their own property.

  Lawrence lived clear on the other side of Moss Point, but his territory stretched from the edge of Immita al the way to Pascagoula; he kept his radio tuned to the same station as the local cops. He must have heard Rick Warfield cal ing Joel to my home address, saying that human remains had been found in my yard.

  And he had come. He’d come immediately to do me a kindness on the sly. I hadn’t seen Lawrence in more than twelve years, but it didn’t matter.

  Looking at his straight spine, the shape of his broad shoulders in his trooper’s uniform, it could have been a day ago. It could have been this morning. I was already stepping through the open door, as if my body had been cal ed to his.

  I only stopped myself by asking, when he got home tonight, would he confess to his damn wife that he’d been on my lawn today?

  “The police sent them al home,” I told Mosey now, and I was proud to hear my voice came out hardly trembling. I flipped the sandwiches onto the undone side. Not three seconds after I’d seen Lawrence, Mosey had started screaming in the backyard, tel ing the cops and the professors and even poor Tyler Baines to get out, cal ing them al bastards. I’d closed my front door and run to find her. Lawrence must have gone home to Sandy and his boys without so much as knocking on my door.

  Perhaps he thought seeing me, even after a dozen years, was too powerful a thing to play with. The heat washing even now through my face, down into my chest, landing lower, told me he might’ve made the right cal . He had simply come and done what he could for me, not making any kind of scene. Very like him. I blinked hard and wil ed my cheeks to cool while I ladled out the soup.