Outside Beauty by Cynthia Kadohata Read Free Book Online

than you are.”
    â€œMom had a job?” I said. I couldn’t imagine it.
    Lakey was gaping at Marilyn. “A job?”
    â€œThe actor was mean,” Marilyn said knowingly. “Mack told me.” Mack was her dad. He was named after the truck. Who names their child after a truck? “Mack saved her life. That’s what he says, anyway.”

chapter six
    THEN OUR MOTHER LEARNED THAT Larry started seeing a woman he liked very much. He must have told Mom this on the phone, because we heard her shouting at him. She was in her bedroom at the time, and we were all just outside her door listening.
    She began to spend increasing amounts of time searching for lines, and potential lines, on her face and for signs of breast, belly, and butt sinkage. “The three
B’
s of aging,” as she called them. The joy went out of her man-catching. Before, she used to genuinely enjoy the company of men. She liked their money, yes, but she liked them, too. Now it was all about money. She drank more, laughed louder,and wore more makeup. The men had more money, but we liked them less. They had mean streaks. They drank too much. They insulted my mother.
    By the fall she had turned thirty-five. I had turned thirteen over the summer.
    Lakey was the only one who saw her father regularly, because he flew her out every two months. Around Thanksgiving she came back from California with an announcement. We were about to hold a powwow in our room when our mother came in. Her makeup was so thick, I felt kind of shocked at first. “I’m going out, girls,” she said. She waited. We waited. “Lakey, how was your trip?”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œIs your father still seeing that woman?”
    Lakey blurted, “Mom, you have to marry him right away because he’s engaged. They’re getting married at his cabin in Colorado! Call him up. Tell him you’re going to settle down!”
    â€œI’ll do no such thing. You should never show a man your eager side, if you have one, which I don’t.”
    Marilyn agreed. “Show him you don’t care. Why should you care?”
    I couldn’t stand it. I had to say something. “Because you love him!” I blurted out.

    For a moment I thought her makeup was going to crack off and fall to the ground. Then the doorbell rang, and she walked majestically out of the room.
    Larry not only got engaged, he called up Lakey and invited her to the wedding. Lakey told us she wanted to know why we weren’t all invited, and he told her that it was just going to be a small ceremony. Marilyn said, “That means his fiancée didn’t want us to come.”
    â€œMeanie,” Maddie said.
    So Lakey went off to the wedding of the man our mother loved.
    On the night of the wedding I couldn’t sleep, and when I got up to go to the kitchen for water, I heard a sound I’d never heard before: the sound of my mother crying. I knocked on her bedroom door, first softly and then more firmly.
    â€œWhat do you want?” she said.
    â€œIt’s Shelby,” I said.
    â€œWhat is it, sweetheart?”
    â€œAre you okay?”
    â€œOf course I am.”
    â€œCan I come in?”
    There was a pause, and I heard the bed creak. “Don’t turn on the light,” she said, instead of yes.
    So I opened the door to her dark room. I couldn’teven see her. I put my hands out in front of me as I walked slowly. I almost fell over when I reached her bed. I sat down on the floor.
    â€œMom?”
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œHow come you didn’t marry him?”
    â€œI have no desire to marry that man.”
    â€œBut why? I mean, why not?”
    â€œBecause I don’t. Go to sleep, Shelby. I have a busy day tomorrow.”
    So I left. Lakey called the day after the wedding. She said Larry’s cabin was decorated with dozens of bouquets. Lakey’s new stepmother had asked her to be a bridesmaid. Lakey said she was