God, it’s too early.
With a heavy sigh, I poke my arm out from underneath the comforter to swat the alarm clock, accidentally knocking it off the night stand in the process. The loud clatter of plastic on tile immediately sends my brain into full-on wake-up mode.
Well, that’s one way to kickstart another grueling Monday grind.
I sit up in bed and push the hair out of my eyes, tucking it behind my ears as I blink blearily in the dim light of dawn. The sunlight streaking in through the cracks in the blinds tells me that I’ve probably snoozed the alarm at least four times before finally turning it off. I have never been a natural morning person, and if it were totally up to me, I wouldn’t get out of bed until at least eleven. But I’m not one of those girls lucky enough to play to my own whims. I don’t get to sleep in. I’ve got serious responsibilities, and if I don’t get up now and get the day started, the delicate balance that keeps all the balls rolling in my life will be seriously disrupted. There is a lot to juggle, and it all starts right now. Every weekday at six in the morning.
So I launch myself out of bed, wiggling my feet into my worn-down slippers, and pad my way across the bedroom to the little en suite bathroom to start the shower. While I wait for the water to warm up, I yawn and lean over the sink to look at myself in the mirror. Sleepy hazel eyes with purplish bags below them blink back at me. I try to force myself to smile. It’s something my dad used to always tell me: “Smile, even when it’s the last thing you feel like doing, and you’ll be amazed at how your outlook can brighten just a little bit.”
But my smile in the mirror just looks lopsided and forced, and I quickly look away. I wish it were easier to follow my dad’s advice, but these days, everything seems a lot harder than it was when he was still alive.
As the mirror begins to fog up, I shed my nightgown and slippers and slip under the hot stream of water. A pleasurable shiver runs down my spine while steam gathers around me. It’s a bad habit, I know, taking such hot showers. “One of these days you’re going to boil yourself alive in there,” my mom has told me on numerous occasions. But I can’t help it. I love the feeling of scrubbing all my worries away, feeling the hot water cleanse my skin and make me feel brand new again. Shower time is one of the few moments I get to purely be myself and give into my own needs throughout the day. There was a time, long ago before things got so hectic and crazy, when I used to sink into a hot bubble bath and stay there for hours reading or just daydreaming about the future. About pretty things and handsome boys and faraway places I would someday visit.
Nowadays, I’ve had to settle for a steamy shower in the morning.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if my love for a good scrub is part of what fuels me to keep plugging away at the struggling family business. I manage a luxury bath goods shop called Bathing Beauty, and even though it’s been a long, long time since I was last blessed with the opportunity to partake in any of my sweet-smelling bath bombs or shower gels, I still feel pretty passionate about going into work every day. Sure, it’s a lot of effort for not a lot of pay-off, but it’s close to my heart just the same. And it’s lucky that I feel that way, because my passion almost makes up for the fact that I don’t have much hands-on business experience. Nor do I have the kind of financial backing most people need to keep such a frivolous business afloat. But I can’t give up. I refuse to.
As I shampoo my hair, I run through the list of things to do today. First of all, I need to remind mom to drop off the power bill. Of course, it would make my life much easier to have all the bills set up to pay automatically online each month. But my mother is old-fashioned, and she likes the ritual of writing a check and handing it to a living, breathing associate. And she’s held onto this almost vintage-level quirk for years, even though it’s no longer her name on the check anymore. It’s mine.
If it were up to her, she would still be signing off on everything. God knows how difficult it is for a woman of her bearing to give up control and lose face like that. I’ve tried a million times to convince her that it’s no big deal, that I don’t mind being the breadwinner. But even though these days she’s finally given in and allowed me to take control of the finances— purely because the alternative was much worse— she’s still quite bitter about the whole thing.
You see, my mother comes from serious money. She’s a born-and-raised mafia princess, and she’s had the best of everything since the day she was born. So, naturally, our fall from power and money in recent years has hit her pretty hard. Sometimes I find her just poring over old photographs, her finger tracing over the fancy fur-lined coats, Prada handbags, and Hermes scarves she used to wear all the time. She’s had to sell a lot of her old wardrobe classics, which to me doesn’t seem like a huge loss, since I’ve never been quite as much of a clotheshorse as my mom, but to her I think it really does feel like she’s lost a chunk of her identity.
Someday, though, I’m gonna put her back into the pearls and perfumes she’s used to. I know good things are coming. I can feel it. After all, I’ve often heard that bad luck can only go on for so long until there’s a bounce in the opposite direction. As far as I’m concerned, we hit rock bottom years ago, and everything has been on the up-and-up ever since.
But God, is it a long, slow ride back up to the top. And I’ve had to put aside my own pain to help my mom through hers. Losing my dad… well, it ruined her entire life. It just almost ruined mine.
I turn off the water and start towel-drying my hair, then move on to applying the kind of low-key makeup I tend to live in these days. When I was a teenager, I used to wear the raciest red lipstick and the most outlandishly vivid colors imaginable. Back then, I was never afraid of standing out from the crowd. It wasn’t that I was starved for attention, either. Daddy spoiled the hell out of me, and like my mom, I walked around with the kind of self-assured cheekiness you get when you come from money. But I wanted to make a statement. I wanted everything. I wanted to wring every last drop of excitement out of life that I could manage.
Nowadays, I settle for some lightly tinted chapstick, a splash of mascara, and a ponytail. Just enough to make me look professional, yet approachable. God, I wanted to be approachable. Anything to draw a customer into my shop. I was a hard worker, and I had passion out the wazoo, but none of that could matter if I didn’t make a sale.