The Comeback(7)

I’ve eaten two of my waffles when Sleeping Beauty walks into the restaurant and, after pausing at the entrance to scan the room, sits down in the chair opposite me. I’m surprised because I have been coming here for a year, always wearing my sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled over my bleached hair, and, until today, nobody has either recognized or wanted to talk to me.

“Are you okay, honey?” Sleeping Beauty asks in a high voice. She has a hint of a southern accent, and I try not to stare at the cakey foundation caught in the corners of her mouth.

“I’m fine, thank you.” I smile at her politely and then turn back to my waffles, hoping she’ll move on to another table. There is a prepubescent boy at the table next to us gazing intently at her.

“Wow, I didn’t realize you were British,” she says, blinking heavily under the weight of her false eyelashes. “I’ve seen you in here before. I like your movies.”

“Oh. Thanks. I like your . . . movie too,” I say, unsure of what the Disneyland rules are for adults, whether I might offend her if I don’t play along.

“Oh, you’re sweet for lying,” she says, and I wonder if that’s something you start to care about when you do her job. My last movie was a biopic about a sex worker who murdered seven of her former clients, and I think I would still experience a visceral reaction if someone criticized her right now. It always surprises me how willing we are to forgive someone once we think we understand them.

“If my only friends were a bunch of vermin and three senile bitches, then I’d kill the person who bothered to wake me up,” Sleeping Beauty says as she adjusts her wig slightly. Her hair is dark underneath the synthetic spun gold.

“It’s itchy,” she tells me. “So do you want a photo?”

“I don’t have a camera.”

“You have a phone though. Everyone has a phone,” Sleeping Beauty says, narrowing her eyes.

“I actually don’t have a phone,” I say, patting my pockets. I nod at the boy at the table next to us who is now staring at us with unconcealed interest, his Mickey Mouse–shaped PB&J sandwich hovering in the air. “Maybe that kid will want one.”

“I doubt it, they want to meet Anna and Elsa now. I’m left with the creepy dads.”

“Sorry to hear that.” I push my sunglasses up on my nose. Sleeping Beauty plays with the packets of sugar, shuffling them in the pot so that the Sweet’N Low is mixed in with the brown sugar and the stevia, but she doesn’t show any signs of leaving.

“Look, I don’t want to be rude, but I really just came here for the waffles,” I say, pointing to my plate.

“Well, there’s no need to be a bitch about it.” Her voice is lower now, grittier, as she pushes her chair back and stands up.

“You know the hotel manager asked me to talk to you because you always look so sad that you’re, like, freaking out the other customers. They’ve had meetings about how to handle you.”

She waits for me to say something, and when I don’t, she sticks her middle finger up at me before walking away. The kid at the next table stares after her, his jaw slack and his eyes wide.



* * *



? ? ?

I return to the house dragging a seven-foot Christmas tree behind me, even though it’s too early in November to have bought one. The encounter with Sleeping Beauty has cheered me up, and it might even be something my mom would find funny if I can tell it right. I’m feeling something close to exhilaration after our fight, as if it could have finally cleared the heavy air that’s been hanging between us since I came back to Anaheim. Perhaps I can even show her a tiny bit more of myself, loosen my grip slightly. At the very least, this is familiar territory for us. We’ve both always been on our best behavior after our very worst, and I figure that if everything plays out like it used to, there will be no need for apologies and, in fact, no need to mention this ever again.

When I was sixteen, during one of our worst fights, my mom told me she’d been pregnant with twins but that I had killed my twin in the womb before we were born. I asked my on-set tutor about it, and it turns out that the other fetus would have died early from natural causes, and that I may have absorbed her fetal tissue due to the fact that we were sharing a womb with limited space and disposal options. The phenomenon has a name, vanishing twin syndrome, but to hear my mom tell it, I took up too much space before I was even born. I’ve never told anyone else the story, and not because I was traumatized by it or anything, but because I know exactly how it sounds. It wouldn’t be fair to define anyone by such an appalling moment, let alone your own mother.

I nod at my parents’ other neighbor, Donna, who is leaving her house dressed head to toe in velour, and I drag the tree up the porch, dropping pine needles as I heave it into the hallway. My dad stands just outside the kitchen with his hands in the pockets of his corduroys. I lean the tree against the wall, and he just stares at me for a moment, looking uncomfortable. My mother comes into view, and I can see that she’s been crying. I take a deep breath and try to stem the resentment already building in my chest.

“I meant to ask you, did you see that Donna got a new dog?” I say, making my face as open as possible to show I’ve forgiven her. “I think it’s a rescue, or maybe she was saying she rescued it from her daughter. The one with the OxyContin problem. Also, is it just me or has she had something done to her lips?”