Every Little Thing

Praise for

pamela klaffke

and Snapped

“Klaffke’s debut is a delicious guilty pleasure full

of hilarious, irreverent moments … A dark, comic

absurdity peppers every page.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Profane, painfully honest and savagely funny, Klaffke’s

debut novel is a coming-of-middle-age story sure to

evoke terror in the under-40 set and reminiscent smiles

in those who have already crossed over.”

—RT Book Reviews (4 stars)

“Snapped had me laughing and wondering what was going to happen next … Klaffke’s writing was so brilliant.” —Kansas City Literature Examiner

Also available from MIRA Books and

Pamela Klaffke

SNAPPED

Every Little Thing

Pamela Klaffke

www.mirabooks.co.uk

The apartment my mother shared with Ron is possibly the tackiest I’ve seen. Everywhere, there are mirrors and furry rugs. The lights are off and the curtains drawn. Lit candles cover every surface and there is a giant photograph of my mother above the fireplace. It’s the photo that accompanied her column. It’s at least twenty years old and her lipstick is magenta.

Seth pushes a glass of champagne into my hand. The bar is open; we missed the service thanks to the wake-up call I forgot to book at the hotel. I hear someone say something about a pagan priestess and down my drink too fast and the bubbles stick in my head, fizzy needles pricking at my brain. “She’s here,” Seth says in a whisper.

“Who?”

“Your mother.”

“Not funny.”

“I’m serious, Mason. She’s in the bedroom. She’s wearing fur. And big earrings that look like diamonds but they’re so big, they might just be—”

“They’re real,” I say. I know the ones. My father gave them to her before I was born, when she was his mistress and the scandal whore of San Francisco. I edge through the crowded living room, my head down and Seth a pace behind me. I have no idea where Janet is, but I need another drink more than I need to find her. I order a vodka from the tuxedoed bartender and he pours me an ounce over ice. It is not nearly enough. He pours another careful ounce and now this is tedious, so I take the bottle from him and pour until the vodka is flush with the rim of the glass. “There,” I say and take a sip. Half burns down my throat while the rest dribbles down my chin. Seth gets a napkin and dabs at my dress. I swat him away. I don’t care. It will dry.

I’m wearing a black dress and heels. My blond roots are showing but I have the pearls my mother gave me for my eighteenth birthday clasped around my neck. I bring my hand to my throat to make sure they’re still there, that they haven’t fallen off and already been pawned. That’s surely what she’d expect. She’d call it typical and then write about it in her column.

We find Janet in the bedroom, talking with Ron, who is crying, but his face is perfectly still. He may have had more work done than my mother.

“Mason! Thank God you’re here!” Ron pulls me into a hug and weeps onto my dress. He kisses my cheek and his fluffy mustache tickles my skin. I’ve met him only once before, about five years ago, when he and my mother came to visit me in Canmore shortly after I started working at the bookstore and was living with Neil. The trip was a disaster. Neil and I split up a week after my mother and Ron left. He said the timing was a coincidence but he wasn’t a good liar, and I added him to the list of things my mother has fucked up for me. The list is in a spiral notebook in the bottom of my suitcase back at the hotel. I started it when I was fifteen. It has three hundred pages and is nearly full.

“I just feel like it’s my fault,” Ron is saying, “that I shouldn’t have bought her the gift, but that’s what she wanted, she really did, Mason. And you know there was no way to stop Britt from getting what she wants—you know that, right? But I can’t help thinking that it’s my fault.”

Ron is blubbering and he keeps trying to touch me. I think he’s right: it is his fault. He’s the one who bought her the stupid vaginal rejuvenation surgery. It was a gift for her sixtieth birthday, which would have been next week. As much as I’m sure she’s pissed about this whole situation in whichever afterlife she believed in lately, she’s undoubtedly glad she is forever fifty-nine because it sounds so much better than sixty.

Ron is a tacky asshole with a cheesy mustache and he killed my mother, whose body is laid out on the double-king four-poster bed, dressed in fur and diamonds just like Seth said. Her eyes are closed, her makeup is perfect and in the forgiving candlelight she looks almost as young as she did in her twenty-year-old column photo. I wish I had a magenta lipstick so I could smear it on her lips—then she’d be perfect. But I only have red.

Two men are staring at me from across the living room. They’re young—well, youngish. I’d say they were in their thirties, like me. They’re impeccably dressed in tailored black suits and polished leather shoes that even from a distance I can tell are too expensive for them to be writers or arts people.

“Who is that?” Seth asks, pointing to the taller of the men. Seth has never been known for his subtlety.

“Stop pointing,” I say.

“Do you know him?”

I turn my head to the side, and pick imaginary lint off my shoulder. I squint and focus. “I don’t think so,” I say. I really do need to get glasses.

“You don’t think what?” Janet asks as she joins us.

“That she knows those yummy guys over there,” Seth says.

“Which guys?”

“Never mind,” I say.

“The ones in the good suits?” Janet asks.

“Yes, the ones in the good suits,” I say. Can we please change the subject? I’m trying to mourn.

“The ones who are walking over here?” Janet asks.

“What?” I spin around and sure enough, there they are.

“Mason, I’m so sorry about your mother,” the shorter man says. He knows my name. “She was always my favorite, you know.”

“Favorite what?” I take the bait, though I know where this is headed: your mom was great, your mom was funny, I loved her column, you’re so lucky. He looks like someone I know, or maybe someone on TV. He’s grinning and staring at me like he’s highly amused.

He looks puzzled. “My favorite stepmother.”

My mouth falls open. I look at him. It’s Aaron. I remember the dimples, those bright blue eyes. I look at the other man, the taller one. God, it’s got to be Edgar. My mother was married to their father when I was—what, five, maybe six at the most? He was a widower and we lived in a big house on his vineyard in Sonoma. We were only there for a year.

Edgar leans in and hugs me. “It is so wonderful to see you after all this time,” he says. “I just wish it was under better circumstances.” I look up at him. He’s awfully tall. “You look great, by the way.” He smiles down at me. Edgar, I suspect, is also a good liar. I push my long black bangs out of my eyes. I wish I had had time to touch up my blond roots before I came, before I had to drop everything and jump on a plane, after Ron called and told me my mother was dead.

“Are you still in the city?” Aaron asks. He’s a year younger than me. Edgar and I are the same age.

I shake my head. “I live in Canada,” I say. This always throws people off; they never know quite how to react.

“That must be very nice,” Edgar says.

“It is,” I say, and it’s true. It is very nice, my quiet life in Canmore, the small Canadian mountain town where I work at the bookstore and everyone thinks I’m some sort of witch because I wear black and dye my hair. “And you?” I feel like we’re reading from a script at a modern etiquette class that teaches you how to deal with awkward situations like running into your ex-stepbrothers at your mother’s funeral reception surrounded by animal print furniture and rugs.

“I have a studio in SoMa,” Aaron says.

“He’s a painter,” Edgar adds.

Aaron blushes. “I try.”

“What about you?” Seth asks Edgar. The look on his face is carnivorous. I step to my left and my arm grazes Seth’s. I take my free hand and pinch him hard on the forearm, through his jacket. “Ow!” he yelps. Aaron and Edgar look alarmed. I notice my black polish is chipped and slide one hand into the front pocket of my faded black cotton dress and drop my drinking hand down, holding the glass behind me in hopes that no one will notice my nails.

“I’m Janet—and this is Seth.” Janet shakes Aaron’s hand, then Edgar’s. Leave it to her to know exactly what to do in an uncomfortable situation like this. She’s got a sixth sense for these kinds of things. She should be running modern etiquette classes. She could write books, be on TV—she would make a fortune.

“Looks like everyone could use another cocktail,” Edgar says. With introductions done, Janet shuffles the five of us off to a corner that’s freed up. I sit on the sofa, between her and Seth. I kick off the cheap, low-heeled pumps I bought yesterday at an outlet store. But my black toenail polish is chipped, too, so I shove my feet back into the ugly discount shoes.

“Just bring a bottle,” I say to Edgar, only half joking.

“Maybe you should take it easy,” Janet whispers to me. I scowl. I have no intention of taking it easy. Janet is out of line, telling me what to do. She’s not my mother, I think, but the moment that thought hits my head I want it gone. I close my eyes in an effort to keep the bigger truth down. She’s not my mother. No one is.

“Mason, are you okay?” I hear Aaron’s voice and open my eyes. He’s kneeling across from me, a long glass coffee table between us.

“I’m—” What am I? I blink back the tears I can feel rising. Janet rubs my back. “I’m—” I look up and see Edgar, an ice bucket under one arm and a full bottle of premium vodka in the other. I laugh and smile. “I’m fine.”

I have no idea what Aaron and Edgar are talking about, but I nod and laugh in all the right places and stuff myself with grapes and cubes of cheese. They’re reminiscing, telling stories about the silly games we played as kids, the times we got away with things and the times we got caught and in big trouble. Most of it I can’t remember. Before middle school, there are only flashes and faces, moving boxes, new schools and new classmates, but no complete stories. And everything I do remember I hardly trust, since most of the information about my earlier childhood I got from reading my mother’s column. She wrote about me incessantly, documented my every move and mood, for better or worse—whether it was embarrassing for me or not was hardly her concern.

“The estate sounds lovely,” Janet says. “Is it still in the family?”

Edgar shakes his head. “My Dad sold it years ago and we moved back to the city. I wish we could have stayed—I loved it out there, all that space to run around. Right, Mason?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. I think I remember the summer in Sonoma, the heat, the three of us running through the vineyard when the sprinklers were on.

“Edgar’s place in Montana is a bit like that,” Aaron says.

“Well, there’s lots of space,” Edgar says. “But we have to buy our wine in the shop like everyone else, I’m afraid.”

“I thought you lived here,” I say, confused.

“I do. Montana’s just for weekends. We should go some time, take you out there.” Edgar throws back another vodka in one shot. The bottle is nearly empty. “You’d love it.”

“Everyone loves it,” Aaron adds.

“I’m sure,” I say as I toss back the vodka the way I watched Edgar do. But instead of nonchalant and smooth, the burn gets stuck in my throat and I start to cough, sputtering wet goo onto my sleeve. Janet rubs my back again and Edgar hands me a cloth handkerchief he pulls from his jacket pocket. Aaron fetches me a glass of water as Seth gazes off into space.

“Are there real cowboys in Montana?” he asks.

THE CECIL

Several full glasses of vodka have propelled us across town to The Cecil, which is the same as always: dirty, divey, selling cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon for a dollar. There was a show tonight at the Warfield, the concert hall on a sketchy stretch of nearby Market Street. Some nineties British band I think I know but could very well be confusing with Oasis performed, and now everyone is here, crammed into the tiny bar, drinking gross cheap beer and slouching. In the corner, two girls dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” They’re laughing. They think they invented irony. They’re maybe just legal and their skin is perfect. I dance alongside them in my faded black dress and pearls.

I smile at the Irony Girls, letting them know I’m in on the joke. They stare back at me with big eyes and then look at each other. I shuffle around until my back is to them, moving in a slow groove, a nearly finished can of beer in one hand. I down what’s left and look for a place to set the can, but there’s nowhere. I could drop it on the floor, step on it, crush it with the heel of my sensible black pumps and belch the way Seth taught me to do when we were twelve. But I do none of these things and dance the song out with the empty can in my hand.

“Thriller” segues into New Order’s “Blue Monday” and the Irony Girls disappear into the crush around the bar. Now it’s me, dancing alone, wishing I had worn a more supportive bra. I’m careful not to move too fast or sway my upper body too much for fear that any sudden movement may cause my breasts to swing and bounce in ways that give away my age.

Aaron and Edgar are the only ones in the bar not drinking beer. They’re standing together, drinking highballs and looking out of place in their designer suits. Edgar taps a toe of his polished black loafer in time with the music. I cringe for him and spin around. I wave to Seth and Janet and beckon them with my finger. Come dance. Janet shakes her head—she doesn’t dance except if she’s at a wedding or a fancy party and it’s a waltz or a fox-trot and her date is taller than her even when she’s in heels. Seth will dance and as he pushes his way through to me, I catch the Irony Girls staring, pointing, whispering to their friends. They must recognize me; not only did my mother write about me obsessively, she liked to run pictures with her column.

Seth hands me a fresh beer and now I’m dancing double-fisted. I throw the Irony Girls a look that’s more of a smirk than a smile. It’s my yes-it’s-me look. I had perfected it by the time I was ten and now it’s second nature, though I haven’t had to use it in a while. Living in Canmore, the smile/smirk is rarely called for. The locals—the wannabe hippies and summer students and Aussie snowboarders—don’t know about my mother or her column and neither do the rich weekenders from the city.

I pour the second beer into my mouth, swallowing as it fills, and drink until it’s gone. I spot the corner of a low table jutting out between the stalks of hipster legs outfitted in three-hundred-dollar jeans they bought purposefully filthy. I duck and lean, still keeping my rhythm, and reach my left arm out as far as I can. I set one can on the edge of the table and then stretch my arm again, hoping to drop the second empty beside the first. But my balance fails and gravity pulls and I’m on the floor, sticky and tired, close to tears with an aching hip. I bite my lower lip till it bleeds and Seth helps me up. I don’t want to—I shouldn’t, I know—but I look at the Irony Girls. They are sneering. They’re horrified. They start to laugh and I know it’s at me.

My lips are bleeding and chapped, my blond roots are showing and I hate, I hate, I hate these ridiculous black pumps and these stupid, stupid pearls. Seth holds me up and I walk the best I can, lopsided and gimped. As we make our way to Janet, who is talking to Aaron and Edgar, I step out of my shoes. The concrete is wet with liquor and littered with garbage. Scraps stick to my feet and I cringe, but anything is better than those awful pumps I’ll gladly leave behind.

And the pearls—the pearls have to go. I tug at the strand around my neck. They really aren’t that great anyway—the quality isn’t so high. There’s no knotting between the individual pearls and if you look closely under the right light you’ll see they aren’t all the same size or color. I give the necklace another tug and this time Janet notices and so does Seth and he tries to stop me, to grab my hand away, but he doesn’t think and I don’t let go and the pearls fly and scatter. One lands in Aaron’s drink. I notice one of the Irony Girls crouch down, pretending to tie her shoe, but it has no laces and I see her pocket a pearl. Let her have it.

“What the hell, Mason?” Seth says. He and Janet are crawling around, scooping up as many of the pearls as they can find. Even Aaron and Edgar fall to their knees, scrambling for stray pearls.

“Please stand up,” I say. Everyone is looking. I just want to be normal, to blend in, to have friends who respect my right to drink and fall down and abandon my sensible pumps and shoddy pearls. “It’s not worth it—please.” Finally, Seth stands and brushes himself off. Edgar pulls Janet to her feet. I kick Aaron lightly in the thigh and he stands, too. They try to hand me the few pearls they’ve found but I refuse. “I don’t want them.”

Janet collects the ones the men have found and slips them into my handbag. “You might in the morning.”

My laugh comes up as a snort. Someone taps my shoulder. I turn and it’s Aaron, holding out another pearl. He tries to press it into my hand, but I shake my head and shirk away, avoiding his touch. “Keep it,” I say. “Or give it away.”

“Come on, Mason, just take it.”

“No. Really. But thank you.” I turn away from him, but he doesn’t budge.

I move back and step on a pearl in my bare feet. “Ow! Fuck!” I bend over and scrape the pearl off my foot, letting it roll into the crowd.

“Are you okay?” He touches my shoulder but I slap his hand away. I narrow my eyes; I think I growl. I want to slink away, but the only way out is to walk through the bar, and everyone’s looking; my hair is too big to ignore. My mother called it the rat’s nest. My mother. The pearls. She’s dead in fur and big earrings, lying on Ron’s bed. Janet squeezes my hand. Fuck the pearls, the earrings, my mother, Ron—I’ll just get through the rest of this week and then I’ll be back in Canmore, where everyone thinks I’m a witch. I have no boyfriend and no prospects and my job at the bookstore is boring and going nowhere, but anything is better than this.

Aaron hands me a drink I begrudgingly accept. He looks amused.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing. It’s just … you are exactly how I remember you.”

“Clumsy? Stupid? Drunk?” I am offended, incredulous, humiliated, a bitch.

“No—funny.” Aaron knows nothing. “And the way you’d get Edgar into trouble—I loved you for that.” Aaron says this and I fight a smile, the sudden flood of memory. There was the time Edgar and I tried to run away from home after being yelled at for something we almost certainly did, though I can’t recall what it was. We packed our bags but didn’t make it as far as the gates—which were at least a mile from the main house—before being rounded up by Edward in his Jeep. There was also the time I mixed wine with apple juice and fed it to Edgar when he was sick. I told him it was medicine. He drank glasses of it and was drunk by noon and threw up on my mother. And then there were all the times we ruined my mother’s expensive makeup and dressed Aaron as a girl.

I take a big sip of beer, trying to calm myself. I keep my lips tight and try not to laugh but the picture in my mind of three-year-old Aaron in bright lipstick, blue eye shadow and cheeks rouged like a clown is too much and the beer I was holding in my mouth sprays out and onto Aaron. This makes me laugh more and soon I can’t stop. My stomach hurts and my head feels like it may explode. I double over and collapse on the disgusting, sticky floor. Everyone is staring. Aaron lifts me up by my underarms. I’m shaking with laughter, my body limp and heavy. I look at his face and see the makeup and hair I curled and feathered. He’s wearing one of my mother’s sequined tops as a dress. She’s angry and I blame it all on Edgar. That was one of the few times she didn’t write about me in her column; I haven’t thought about that in years.

LAW & TAXES

Now I know why people hate lawyers—and the government—and mustachioed past-middle-age men who keep trying to hug them when they don’t want to be touched.

I’m standing with Ron on the sidewalk outside of the estate lawyer’s office, smoking, and trying to reflect the sun with the Medusa-head gold buttons of the ridiculous Versace suit my mother bought me years ago, during one of her attempts to fancy me up. If I could just get the perfect angle I’m sure I could blind one of these lunchtime busybodies who keep elbowing past and glaring at me for what could be any number of reasons: my smoking, my hair, my suit, my boots, all of the above. Or it could be the fact that I’m standing in the middle of the sidewalk and everyone has to walk around me.

I have no intention of moving. Instead, I move my legs as wide apart as the suit skirt will permit, and take up even more room. It’s not very ladylike and my mother certainly would not approve. But I don’t care about anything—other than getting Ron to stop touching me and shutting him up. He keeps telling me it’s going to be okay, that everything will work out, that he’s there if I need him, that if I’m short on cash, he’s glad to help out. I’d rather turn tricks, but that may not be very lucrative considering the state of my body, with its jiggle and bruises and lumps. At best, I’d be a street whore, queen of the five-dollar blow job. I couldn’t pass for a high-end escort and I would rather die than strip.

I could get a webcam and talk dirty, looking sexy and stoned, for businessmen and suburban dads who haven’t yet made the leap to the hardcore stuff, the ones who pretend if it’s not actually sex then they’re not actually cheating. I could get them off then listen to them talk—or type—about their guilt, their shitty marriages, how it was never supposed to be this way, about how they’re old and can’t believe they’re bald. I’d charge by the minute and rates would escalate the more they whine.

None of this is very realistic. I will not be a whore. I will get in the taxi and go to the hotel. I will pack up my things and check out. Room service, dry cleaning, concierge, everything—it’s gone—just like my emergency credit card, the one my mother gave me, the one I used to pay for my flight down here, the one I was using to pay for my suite at the Fairmont Hotel. The estate law yer said it will be canceled this after noon. I explained I was broke and therefore was experiencing a genuine emergency. He smiled and leaned forward, resting his arms on his big desk. “I know this is a difficult time,” he said. “But there is a set way of doing things.” And by things he meant that there are taxes and expenses to be paid before the estate can be settled. It could take months, or at best, weeks, and until then my mother’s accounts are frozen. I have nothing and am stuck in San Francisco with nowhere to stay.

“You’re more than welcome to stay with me,” Ron says as we stand on the sidewalk. The taxi is taking forever to arrive and I wish I had a snack in my bag. Unfortunately, San Francisco is not the kind of city where you can easily flag down a cab on the street. You have to call and order and wait. “I know it could be—” Ron pauses and looks down. “I know it could be uncomfortable for you, being at your mother’s apartment.”