Little Pretty Things Page 3

“The girls who? Which girls?”

  “The girls, the girls.” The words were sing-song, but they made sense to her.

  “OK, great,” I said. “I hope they get rides home, too.”

  My old car didn’t want to start, but at last it did, and I was treated to the gas needle’s short trip from empty to not-quite-empty. I drove off with a last glance in the rearview at Teeny seated in the lot, alone. Some of the candies had been transferred to her mouth. One cheek was distended, full, like a child’s.

  Where I lived, the porch light was dark.

  Which is not to say I couldn’t find my way. The whole street was well lit. That was the kind of street it was: houses old but kept up, the grass green and neatly edged. No matter what time I came home, somebody on the block was probably noticing, flicking their curtain back to catch the details. The neighborhood was nicer than Lu’s, maybe, the yards a little bigger. But at my house, we’d long ago given up on flower boxes.

  My mom was fine, I’d told Maddy.

  The first lie I’d told her.

  I let myself in the front door, careful to be quiet. My mom slept badly, which meant she could be trying to sleep at any time of the day or night.

  She had the time. She didn’t work. She didn’t cook or clean much. She didn’t have friends or make crafts or read. I’d moved back home after my dad’s death to get my mom through the cycle of grief. But we hadn’t cycled. I was still living in the room I had in high school. The same wall color, the same furniture. I still had trophies from some of my big races on the dresser. My mom still slept in the bed my dad had left that last morning. His clothes were still in the drawers and closet. We were … still.

  “Juliet, is that you?” my mom called from the kitchen.

  Who else could it be? I’d gotten one shoe off, and carried it around the corner. A low-watt light over the stove barely lit the room. She sat at the table in her robe.

  What I’d learned from my dad’s death was that the Townsends were made of flimsy stuff. One weak heart, one weak mind, and, for baby bear, a weak will.

  “Hey, Mom. Thought you’d be in bed.”

  “I was getting a glass of water.”

  There was no glass in front of her. I dropped my shoe, kicked off its match, and went to the cupboard. When I set the glass of water in front of her, she reached for it idly, as though it had been there the whole time.

  “How was work?”

  “The same,” I said. That’s what I always said. Not just for work, but for everything there was to say. Our lives had been wider, deeper, once. I couldn’t help thinking that my parents had had bigger plans for me than this. You couldn’t name a little girl Juliet without thinking she would turn out to be something more than a motel housekeeper. At the very least, you might expect a girl named Juliet to turn out to be a little more passionate about life than I had become.

  So, the same. It was hard to imagine the past, or the future, being any different. Except tonight had been different.

  For some reason, another memory of Maddy came to me—not from tonight, but from that drive back from our failed state track tournament ten years ago. We had a fifteen-person van, and only the four of us—me, Maddy, and our two coaches—inside. It was full daylight, since we’d come back so early. Maddy had wrapped herself in her own embrace against the window, her face puffy from crying.

  I blinked the image away. “Actually,” I said. “You’ll never guess who came in tonight.”

  “Who?”

  “Maddy Bell.”

  Her eyes brightened. “You’re kidding.”

  I grabbed another glass of water for myself and pulled out a chair at the table.

  “That poor girl,” she said.

  In the dim light, I couldn’t see her face. Was she joking? “Why do you say that?”

  After a long moment, she finally said, “She always seemed so lost.”

  I’d seen what lost looked like pretty close-up this evening. Teeny was as lost as they came. But having a real conversation with my mother for the first time in a while gave me a rush of confidence. She wasn’t so far gone, at least. “You mean when she was beating me in every race I ever ran?” I said, smiling. “She seemed lost to you then?”

  “Well, when your dad used to—” She stood up and went to the sink to dump her glass.

  As quickly as the light had come to her eyes, it was gone. The house grew still and silent around us once again.

  My dad had come to every race. Sometimes he’d even stop by practice. He’d lean on the fence around the track with our coach, Coach Trenton, who had once been on an actual Olympic team, and the assistant, Coach Fitzgerald. Fitz, he let us call him. My dad had never been an athlete, had never run in his adult life, probably, but he took an interest. He knew all the girls on the team, every year, and congratulated them all for, if not winning, for trying hard. He included Maddy, of course, who never seemed to know what to say to grown-ups. Her dad and stepmom didn’t attend races, not even the big ones, not even when she was at her peak, when no one could beat her.

  I might have felt bad for her, but after running the second-fastest two miles in the state of Indiana, I’d been too busy checking the finish line for my own family’s proud, second-place cheers to see how first place sat on Maddy’s shoulders. Afterward, sure, from the lower podium—I’d had plenty of time to study the sharp edge of Maddy’s jaw from below. In the first moments post-race, though, with my lungs burning and my dad pulling me off my feet into a sweaty hug, I hadn’t spared her a thought.

  Coach and Fitz would have been right there, making sure Maddy had all the hugs and high fives she could handle. Still, regrets flooded in, for what I’d said about us not really being friends.

  Two things I’d lied about.

  I felt the sharp point of the pen in my pocket and remembered the loose knot in the belt of Maddy’s raincoat, the easy sway of her clothes. That diamond ring. My palms tingled. “Are you going to bed soon?”

  “Thought I’d get some dishes done.”

  She stood at the empty sink, watching the dark night out the window. Or maybe she could only see the vague reflection of her own face.

  “I’m on the cart tomorrow, so …” I stood up, stretched. “It’s late.”

  “That’ll be fun,” she said.

  “Um … sure. I’ll be home by dinner. Maybe we’ll take a drive or something afterward.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “OK,” I said. “Good night, Mom.”

  In my room, I tore the pen out of my pocket and threw it. I sat on my bed and rubbed my palms together until they were hot, then tender. They itched. I held them flat against the comforter and waited, but it wouldn’t stop. I shoved my hands into my pockets. My fingers grazed something—the barrette. I’d forgotten it.

  I held it in my palm, then went to the mirror and clipped the bauble into my hair. I let down my ponytail and combed out my hair with my fingers.

  I changed into an old T-shirt and sweats and retrieved the pen from where it had landed. I listened for my mom for a second before entering the bathroom and closing the door. In the vanity, a hundred tiny bottles rolled to the back of the bottom drawer and then forward again. The bulk of them pleased me. The scents. The variety of what people left behind from other places they’d been. I chose a lotion, probably a Hyatt or a Radisson brand, better stuff than the Mid-Night offered, and used a dollop to calm the raw skin on my hands. Then I reached behind and under the open drawer and pulled out the old makeup bag I kept there.

  The bag was faded black with white polka dots. Something from childhood, maybe. I sat with my back against the closed door, unzipped the bag, and started pulling out the collection. I lined them up on the floor, one piece after another. Nothing valuable: an interesting spiral paperclip; a single earring I thought might be turned into a pendant; a lipstick from a designer brand, but in a color I could never wear. I pulled the glittering barrette out of my hair and added it. My lost and found.

  Except t
hat no one ever found these things again. No one ever came looking. Not for the single pink-and-orange-striped baby sock that my hands hadn’t been able to resist. Not for the empty cut-glass atomizer that still smelled as fussy as the old woman who’d told me about her trip to visit her grandkids. No one came back for the little pretty things that I couldn’t help but want. That I couldn’t help but take.

  The benefit of the schedule Lu and I split was that I always ended up cleaning the rooms of the guests I’d signed in the day before. I checked in the cheapskates and pensioners, the glassy-eyed parents with yowling kids and sullen teens up until Billy took over the evening shift, and then the next morning I got to see what was left behind. Usually they left me greasy pizza boxes or a sticky, overturned juice bottle, but sometimes they left clues.

  Like the jittery guy with a trim beard and a mega-sized gas station coffee, gone by the time I arrived the next day. He’d left a picture postcard of Italy tucked into the bathroom mirror. I’d cleaned the room around it, expecting him to come back—because of course I’d read it and knew that he hadn’t meant to leave it. But who means to leave anything, even things they don’t care about?

  I picked it up now and turned it over. I barely needed to read the words—Pigeon: I promised you something and I mean to deliver. Love, Your Jedi. Other people led interesting lives. I mean—that was a promise I wanted the guy to keep. That was a promise that I wished I could keep for him.

  But most of the things were just things. They had no other life, no other purpose. They were orphans. That lipstick never got used. That private postcard was forgotten. I gave them a home.

  I held the card to my cheek until I felt foolish, reminded of Teeny and her gumballs. I packed it all up, adding the pen from the Mid-Night. Maddy had used it.

  These things didn’t make me happy. They didn’t make me sad. Often, when I took them out from their hiding place, they seemed like litter. Why had anyone ever owned them in the first place? Who bothered with fancy paper clips? Why would anyone allow someone to call her a pigeon? I should throw it out. I should take it all to the motel and put it into the box under the counter, the real lost and found. Or dump it all in the bin in the recessed alcove next to Billy’s room. That’s what it was. Trash.

  But I didn’t want to … No, I wanted to. I couldn’t.

  The gleam of the perfume bottle or the gold bit on the lipstick tube refused to be thrown away, and once in a while, something small and shiny caught my attention—called out to me, really—until I knew it had to be mine.

  Mine. That wasn’t the right word. I was the one who was owned. I was the one who was captured—by this little girl’s barrette, by this lipstick I couldn’t even wear. And someday I was sure, I would be. I’d be caught.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The alarm had me up again the next morning, too early. Always too early. I dragged myself to the kitchen and forced the first cup of coffee out of the ancient coffeemaker. At my seat at the table, my eyes began to open and focus, until I could finally spot the sugar bowl. Beside it, a nest of old mail gathered. Bills, a couple of them second notices. Fliers, a catalogue, a brochure from a senior-care facility. I picked this up. Had one of the nosy neighbors dropped this by? Not that they ever asked how my mother was, but I could feel their judgments.

  A red envelope had come loose from the pile. Red for alarm, for dread, for Midway High.

  When the envelope first arrived, I’d opened it, noted the expense, and thrown it to the side. But I’d saved it. As much as I didn’t want to go, I’d saved it. The invitation was a nice cream card, the time of the event written out in script as though I’d been invited to tea with the queen.

  I took the card out and looked again. The Luxe. If Shelly had been a vindictive person, I might have suspected aggression. In any case, the event was too expensive. I got up and threw the invitation and the brochure in the trash.

  Maybe I’d have gone, if I’d done something with the last ten years, if I could show up like Maddy, resplendent in her sleek raincoat and diamonds.

  Back at the table, I dropped my head onto my arm, remembering the terrible things I’d said. She’d come all that way, and maybe she hadn’t tracked me to my stupid job only to make me feel terrible. She’d said it could be real, our friendship. That we could try again. I’d turned her away.

  And yet, I wanted … something. Not something, but everything. A new job. My own place. My own life. A boyfriend. And more friendships, like the one I’d had in Maddy. I wanted that, even though it had been years since I’d let myself admit it even to myself.

  I wanted more.

  If only Maddy had actually been staying at the Mid-Night, she might still be there, and I could go make things right.

  I could ask Gretchen for a phone number, or maybe that’s where Maddy had stayed after leaving the motel.

  But Maddy had recoiled at her stepmother’s name. “Retching,” she used to call her. She wouldn’t have gone there.

  Then it hit me. The pen. She’d used the pen I’d pocketed to fill out the information card. The info card was standard issue, a formality. It asked for the make, model, and plate number of a guest’s car—in case one guest’s car nicked another’s in the parking lot—as well as a home address and phone number, in case they left anything behind. Anything of value.

  The clock on our oven said six-thirty. I had to work the rooms today, not the desk, but maybe if I picked up Lu on time for a change, she wouldn’t ask me too many questions when she saw me copying something from one of the guest cards.

  I got cleaned up and dressed quickly and, for my mother’s sake, quietly. Thinking about fixing things with Maddy made me feel better than I had in a long time. Expectant. Could it be that easy to perk up my prospects? Tracking down a phone number wasn’t hiking to the top of Everest or anything. But even as I slipped into my ridiculous maid’s uniform, I wondered how much longer I’d have to wear it. As though I’d made some decision about my future.

  In the bathroom mirror, I studied myself. The snug black dress bunched a bit over the few pounds I’d gained since giving up running. The white collar could have been whiter. The black-and-white sneakers I wore with my uniform looked silly, childish, but I didn’t have anything else. My brown hair hung lank and ignored. I spent a few minutes with the eyeliner, a little mascara. Stuff I didn’t usually bother with when I had a date with the toilet brush. I felt Maddy’s influence hurrying me. I hoped she’d used a cell-phone number on her card, so I could reach her before she left town.

  I pulled out the makeup bag from the hollow place below the bottom drawer and tried the fancy lipstick again. Still a bad color. I wiped it off and went back to my own supplies. A little lip gloss, a few extra strokes of the brush before I put my hair in the standard ponytail. I stood back and gazed at myself.

  I had made a decision. Maddy had helped get me into this spot. She could very well help get me out.

  “Well, well,” Lu said when she got into the car. “Well, my.”

  There was no use arguing that I hadn’t put in some effort, but I thought I could detect extra time spent on her part, too. Her hair was shiny and loose, and she’d worn khakis and slip-ons instead of her usual behind-the-desk jeans and tennis shoes. “You going to church after your shift?”

  She grinned. “That woman last night—”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Where do you even buy clothes like that?”

  “Not around here,” I said.

  “I want that for my kids, you know,” she said. “You dress nice, you walk into a room, and people want to know you, be like you. They want to like you, before you even say a word. She has a good job?”

  “She must.”

  “You don’t know?” Lu shot me a side glance.

  “We only had a little while to catch up last night. But—well, maybe I could do a better job of staying in touch this time.”

  “So I’m not going to be your fanciest friend.”

  “In fanciness, you co
me in a close second,” I said. Second place wasn’t so bad.

  “Well, can you steal that raincoat for me?” Lu said.

  “Forget it,” I said. “I have dibs.”

  We pulled into the Mid-Night’s parking lot and took my customary spot in the last row. “Hey,” Lu said. “Looks like you’ve got an extra room to clean.”

  But I’d already seen it. In the shadow of the Mid-Night sat the sleek silver car. It was parked at the end nearest Billy’s room, forcing Billy’s beater Dodge a spot or two down. Maddy had come back to stay, after all.

  Inside, Billy stood at the front desk. He waved us in impatiently.

  “You,” he said, pointing at me. Billy was the manager, our boss, but he didn’t scare either of us. He was scrawny and greasy, with a mustache that looked like he’d been waiting for it to come in since middle school. He also had a series of nervous tics I could barely keep track of and a high, shrill voice with an exaggerated drawl not native to Midway. I did a mean imitation on our walkie-talkies. Billy lived in Mid-Night’s room one-oh-one, the end room near the overpass, an honor he never stopped talking about. An honor that included living next door to the niche for the motel’s trash bins. We’d never been inside this room, never had to clean it, but Lu and I suspected it smelled a little like dirty hair and cheap cologne, and a lot like garbage. “You,” he said again.

  “What did I do?”

  “Did you tell some Bargains who checked in last night there was a dead body in one of the rooms?” he said, squeakier than normal.

  “No,” I said, and glanced at Lu. “Is there?”

  “I had to comp the room for them, they were so mad.”

  “That’s bullshit, Billy,” I said. “They weren’t that upset about it last night.”

  His hand flew to his mustache, and his fingers pulled at the scraggly hairs. Tic number one. “So you did say it.”

  “It was a misunderstanding,” I said. “But they were looking for a way to get their tacos paid for, and you fell right into their hands.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “See? It’s easy to get things mixed up,” I said. “Has anyone seen the guy in room two-oh-six yet this morning?”