by Claire Adams
“Your hangovers are always worse than mine,” I said and got her two pills. I took only one with a cup of water.
She muttered something incoherent as she checked her phone. “Oh, look at that,” she said and scrolled down on a page. “Five thousand new followers over the whole weekend. That’s pathetic. Kelly-Anne gets 5,000 almost daily. How many did you get, Maddie?”
I hesitated. “Not that many.” I made myself a plate of sausage and eggs and sat across from her. “You’re way more active on social media than Kelly-Anne is. She only gets that many followers daily because they’re paid promotions. You’re doing it organically.”
“Michelle did say to post three pictures a day, and the followers will come,” Nancie said. “Oh, shit.” I watched as she scrolled through the calendar on her phone. “I completely forgot I have a modeling shoot in the afternoon.”
“You forgot?” I laughed. “If I had a shoot I don’t think I could think of anything else.”
“It’s not that big of a shoot,” Nancie admitted. “But the clothes are to die for, Maddie. Straight import from Italy, one of their top designers. I’m doing a few full outfits and a bath suit spread.”
“Itchy leather again?” I asked, and we laughed. Nancie and I did a photoshoot together a few years prior for an Italian leather company, and we hadn’t realized until then just how uncomfortable true leather was.
“This stuff is itch-free, thank God. It’s even going to be in like three magazines, but they’re trying to get a spread of it in Glamour. This might be the shoot that sets the course for my future.”
I watched as Nancie voiced her dreams and ambitions over a plate of greasy food. It was something we’d done since late high school when we were in social studies class together, and the whole class said we should be models. I hadn’t taken them seriously, not until Nancie made a fake photo shoot with her parents and a few of our friends, and shown me just how much fun it was. We both had been blessed with skinny and tall frames, Nancie a pale skinned beauty in the sun with a dust of freckles across her nose, and me a tanned brunette with green eyes that demanded attention everywhere I went. Nancie had always aspired to be a model, and it wasn’t until our friendship that I realized my life ambition was to either to act or to model as well.
Nancie and Maddie, always together, modeling together, making our careers together. We had made the decision to get separate agents, and I was beginning to wonder if that had been a mistake.
“You should go,” she said.
“Where?” I asked.
“To the photo shoot; they always need a stand-in just in case, and you would look amazing in the bikinis,” she said. “Your squats are really paying off.”
“I wish,” I said honestly. “But I already made dinner plans with my parents, and you know how they get.”
“It’s your career, though,” she said. “Wouldn’t they understand?”
“They don’t see it as a career.” I started cleaning up our kitchen. “They think it’s just a hobby, and they’re so serious about family time that if I canceled they would probably take me out of their wills.”
“Fine,” Nancie sighed. “It just would have been fun to have you there. We haven’t done a shoot together in forever.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Next time for sure,” I offered. Our shoots together had been one of my favorite things to do. Nancie was fun to work with and always made sure everyone in the room had a smile on their face. She was alluring, and I always strived to be like her on my own shoots.
“Well, now that I just ate 10,000 calories, do you want to go to the gym?” she asked. I knew that I needed to call Martin at some point, but I decided to save it until later and agreed. We dressed into our workout clothes, and I drove us to the gym, where we shut everyone else out for the hour before going for a light jog.
Once upon a time, I hated working out. Nancie convinced me to give it a try after I complained about gaining three pounds after a holiday, and we had started with running. The first time we went for a jog I lasted barely two minutes before having to take a break and sit on the ground. It wasn’t until we found something else I enjoyed that I actually wanted to go to the gym.
We took our time getting ready for the day in our bathroom. I gave Nancie the majority of the time and didn’t rush her. We watched a few episodes of our favorite modeling reality show while eating salads for lunch, arguing over the host’s decisions and which girls were cut out for the modeling gig and which weren’t.
“You have to have a thick skin,” Nancie said. “Like us. She cries every time someone even looks at her.”
“It’ll just be harder for her than the rest,” I argued. “She gets the best pictures though; she deserves to be final two at least.”
Our miniature marathon ended, and we went our separate ways after a quick goodbye, Nancie toward her future, and me toward my parents’ house on the outskirts of the suburbs.
My childhood home wasn’t anything special; in fact, it was much smaller than the average family home and almost always full of trash that my parents never wanted to get rid of. It was on the other side of town from the nicer homes, and just close enough to school that taking a bus was useless. I walked to school every day, with a beat-up backpack drooping from my shoulders and a younger brother retying the laces of his worn shoes.
I didn’t hate my childhood home, but I certainly didn’t have any pleasant memories associated with it. I parked in their tiny driveway, behind a car that was a few years older than my early two-thousands Corolla, opened the outer screen door, and knocked on the door.
“Maddie!” my dad answered the door as if my visit was entirely unexpected. His hair black with soft gray tips around the scalp, and brown eyes that my younger brother had gotten. He was tall and lean, exactly where I had gotten my height from.
“We’re so glad you’re here, sweetheart,” Mom said and gestured at the dinner table. “I was just finishing up setting dinner.” Her hair was long and brown, like mine, and we both shared the same startlingly bright green eyes. Mom had gotten the freckles though, and I always wondered if maybe I would have been as popular as Nancie had I gotten freckles as well.
“We have dinner once a week, guys,” I said and dropped my purse into a chair. I pulled out my phone and saw that I had a missed call from Martin. “Is it okay if I call my agent?”
Mom gave me a disappointed look, and I returned my phone to my purse. “Fine, I can take a hint. No phones.”
“Only for emergencies,” Dad said as he hugged me. “How has your week been?”
I never knew how to answer that. They didn’t understand the importance of keeping up a social media presence in the modeling world, so I definitely couldn’t say that I spent the weekend partying in popular clubs and posting pictures to attract more followers.
“Long,” I said. I glanced at the simple house, with its simple decorations that hadn’t changed in more than 20 years. The TV was old and dusty, with the cords of a cable box, DVD player and Blu-Ray player tangled behind a wooden entertainment center that was older than me. “You do realize you can get one simple box that does all of that?” I pointed at all of the boxes beneath the TV.
“We don’t need anything fancy,” Mom said. “Plus, there’s no point in spending money we don’t have.”
I groaned. Dad had been an electrician for 10 years after serving a term in the army, and for a while, he had made decent money until mom decided to quit her job in the lucrative field of selling makeup door to door. I had begged her not to quit, and to save up until they could afford a more lavish lifestyle, but they both refused. Instead, wanting to spend more quality time with another they decided that dad would work from home for a call center, barely making enough to pay the bills, much less their debt.
“Maybe one day we’ll get a new TV,” dad suggested. “We have some DVDs that would look good in HD.” His arm rested around mom’s shoulders comfortably as they shared an inappropriate joke.
“Ew, no.�
�� I helped mom set the rest of dinner on the table, a meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, and a basket of bread and butter. I could hear Nancie in my head warning me how many calories must have been in everything.
“Let me get you a bowl of ice,” mom said and left for the kitchen.
“A bowl?” I followed her. “Mom, don’t tell me your ice maker doesn’t work.” I stopped in my tracks as I saw the new fridge. It wasn’t new, actually much older than their old fridge, with a tiny freezer section and no ice maker built into the door. “You sold your fridge?”
“We just needed some extra cash at the beginning of the month,” mom said. “One of the neighbors put this fridge on the curb just when the car payment arrived.”
“We saw the opportunity and took it,” dad added from behind.
“Mom, dad, when people put their shit on the curb that means it’s trash. It doesn’t mean it’s up for grabs,” I argued.
“Watch your mouth,” mom said. “And everyone knows junk on the curb is up for grabs. It’s how we got our new washer and dryer.”
I grimaced. Nancie and I had rented a washer and dryer for the apartment after years of hauling our clothes to the laundromat, and even we had been hesitant about rentals. I couldn’t imagine buying used ones.
Mom and dad sat down and plopped some ice cubes in their drinks before eating. Conversation flowed easily between them, about dad’s new promotion in the call-center to mom’s blooming flowers she planted the previous year.
“Almost as beautiful as you,” dad said. Mom rolled her eyes, but there was a soft blush across her cheeks.
“Have you been looking for a more stable job?” mom asked. “I know your modeling gig is more than a hobby; you don’t have to lecture me.”
“Then you’d know that I’m not looking for a different job,” I said. “Plus, you’re one to talk. Dad, this is the third promotion you’ve gotten, but you haven’t been given more than a quarter raise.”
“Your father likes his job,” mom said. “He’s home all the time, he’s not stressed out about traffic and if the car breaks down, and doesn’t have to eat out every day for lunch.”
“I’d rather take a pay cut than go back to being gone for 10 hours a day,” he said. I realized that I had stuffed a bottle of wine at the bottom of my purse, but I wasn’t thrilled to have two drunk parents flirting with one another in front of me.
We finished our dinner, and I thanked the both of them. Dad closed the screen door behind me, holding it shut until the lock was finally popped into place. I couldn’t remember a time that it wasn’t broken.
I slipped behind the steering wheel of my car and looked at my childhood home once more. The windows were covered with thick iron bars, a feature that all of the houses in this area had, and the roof needed some serious work. My parents were more than okay with this sort of life, the one where your clothes were all purchased on sale days from thrift stores and food from the discounted corner of the grocery store.
It wasn’t for me; that much I’ve known for more than half of my life. Lower-middle class just wasn’t for me, and as I gripped the steering wheel, I made the vow that I would never settle for such a life. I would do anything, I realized.
Chapter Three
Gavin
The white walls of the hospital waiting room were as bleak as ever. I wished for some color, a pop of red or streak of blue, anything other than the white on white that filled Timothy Johnson’s Hospital from corner to corner. Mom didn’t seem to mind it, but I suppose it was because she wasn’t feeling well that particular day and had to close her eyes or else risk nausea. I stiffened my shoulder as it supported the small weight of her head and stayed alert as nurses rushed to and from the waiting room.
There was another family waiting for their father to return from his appointment with Dr. Lemonis. The kids were young, possibly a boy of eight and a girl of six or seven, but were far more mature than the rest of the kids their age. They sat with a woman who I presumed was their mother, gripping her thin hands as they glanced at one another. There was an elderly woman with pure white hair and a permanent frown sitting on the other side of the children. I had watched as the father, a man my age, promised to return with good news and left with the nurse just as Mom and I arrived.
Nearly 30 minutes later and there had been no news yet.
“He’ll be fine,” Mom said as she rested against my shoulder. I looked down as she peered up at me, a slight grin on her face. She was always in a better mood while waiting for her appointment.
“Who?” I asked.
“The father of that family,” she said. “You’ve been staring at them and the door for the whole 30 minutes.”
“I’m just trying not to think about your appointment,” I said. I tried imagining what the family was like. Did they have a family dinner every night? Church every Sunday? Was this their first experience with an illness? Did the dad remind his kids that he loved them every single morning and night?
“So you’re using that poor family as a distraction.” She kept her voice low as I shook my head. “Stop worrying so much, Gavin. Everything is going to be okay.”
“You always say that,” I muttered. She pushed herself off my shoulder and started fixing the curls of her hair. They were thin and frail, not unlike her, and strands clung to her skin. But mom was smiling despite squeezing her fists through her pain, and I realized that if you didn’t know she was sick, it was nearly impossible to tell.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” she said again. I nodded, convinced she was right. She would always be right.
My father was often gone as a child, leaving only mom to raise me. And she had been right about nearly everything growing up. When father would return, how often he would leave, what he would bring me. When I stressed over tests, she would study with me, a woman nearly 15 years out of school, and I would always pass with flying colors. When I tried out for the football team, and I arrived home with a giant bruise on my face and cut on my lip, she assured me that my injuries would only make me stronger, and the following season I had been the star quarterback. The first tattoo I ever received, a lighthouse in a traditional pattern on the inside of my upper arm, she had warned me to take proper care of else risk infection. And it had gotten infected within nearly a week of me getting it. She found one of the best tattoo artists in Alaska and paid for them to fix it, and told me not to worry. The lighthouse was now better than it had ever been, vibrant colors and straight, black lines; it was a reminder that mom was always right.
She did her best raising me, despite working in her own field that demanded long nights and extra days, hiring in-home babysitters when it was necessary and firing them when they either spoiled me too much or not enough. She always said finding the right caretaker was impossible, and to never settle for anything less than what you would do. It had been just as hard hiring a live-in nurse for mom. Karen was the 23rd applicant, and I had begged mom to consider her for just a moment. She had wanted to live alone in her newly built house, and I had considered it at first. Her prognosis had been decent, an 80 percent chance of success with the right dosage and treatments. But then one night I had found her on the floor in her bathroom choking on her own vomit, and we had hired Karen the following day.
The moment I welcomed Karen into the house, mom promised me that there was nothing to be worried about. And since she had been right about everything else, I believed her.
The door opened, and the children’s father returned with the nurse. My breathing paused as I watched him hug his wife, clinging to her as if it was the first time he’d touched her in years. The entire family began to cry, but whether from good or bad news it was yet to be seen. And then the father took his turn kissing each child and pressed a long kiss on his mother’s forehead. She held his hands and raised her eyebrows, and he nodded with such a smile that even my mother was struggling to fight back her tears.
“Remission,” he said, and his family broke down crying. Mom slip
ped her hand into mine and looked at me.
“See?” she said, “I told you everything was going to be fine.”
“I never doubted you,” I said. The nurse spoke briefly to the man’s family, about what this meant and how it would affect their life. I heard snippets of their conversation, aware that eavesdropping during such an intimate moment was rude.
“He’ll still check in once every six months,” the nurse said. “But we’re extremely optimistic that it won’t return.”
Another nurse entered the waiting room and gestured at mom.
“Ms. Hayward?” she asked, and mom nodded. “Dr. Lemonis is ready for you.”
I stood with mom, not giving her the slightest opportunity to tell me to wait, and followed her toward the door. Someone grabbed my hand on the way out, and I turned to find the young girl staring at me with wide, blue eyes.
“Good luck,” she said. “We got good news; you will, too.”
Mom held back tears as she thanked the girl, and I shared a brief glance with the man’s mother, still speaking with the nurse. She nodded toward me, a brief acknowledgment, and I mouthed a thanks to her and thanked the daughter aloud.
I followed mom into Dr. Lemonis’ office with the words of encouragement still ringing through my head.
Dr. Lemonis had a head too big for his body and a chin too small for his face. It seemed he was trying to hide his small chin with a patch of facial hair, a new addition since mom’s last appointment. It didn’t look bad, but it didn’t look natural either.
He greeted us as we entered his small office. Everything was still white on white, with white chairs in front of a white desk. I helped mom take a seat and stood behind her. Sitting in his office was a foreign concept to me.
“Mona,” he said, looking through a thick file on his desk. “How have you been?”
“The same, Dr. Lemonis.” Mom pulled out a thin blue napkin from the depths of her purse and coughed into it.
