Diary by Chuck Palahniuk

home. Even more than her own home. Her house.
    Your house.
    Halfway across the lobby, Misty's edging between sofas and little tables, and Grace looks up.
    She says, “Misty, come sit by the fire.” She looks back into her open book and says, “How is your headache?”
    Misty doesn't have a headache.
    Open in Grace's lap is her diary, the red leather cover of it, and she peers at the pages and says, “What is today's date?”
    Misty tells her.
    The fireplace is burned down to a bed of orange coals under the grate. Grace's feet hang down in brown buckle shoes, her toes pointed, not reaching the floor. Her head of long white curls hangs forward over the book in her lap. Next to her chair, a floor lamp shines down, and the light bounces bright off the silver edge of the magnifying glass she holds over each page.
    Misty says, “Mother Wilmot, we need to talk.”
    And Grace turns back a couple pages and says, “Oh dear. My mistake. You won't have that terrible headache until the day after tomorrow.”
    And Misty leans into her face and says, “How dare you set my child up to have her heart broken?”
    Grace looks up from her book, her face loose and hanging with surprise. Her chin is tucked down so hard her neck is squashed into folds from ear to ear. Her superficial musculo-aponeurotic system. Her submental fat. The wrinkled platysmal bands around her neck.
    Misty says, “Where do you get off telling Tabbi that I'm going to be a famous artist?” She looks around, and they're still alone, and Misty says, “I'm a waitress, and I'm keeping a roof over our heads, and that's good enough. I don't want you filling my kid with expectations that I can't fulfill.” The last of her breath tight in her chest, Misty says, “Do you see how this will make me look?”
    And a smooth, wide smile flows across Grace's mouth, and she says, “But Misty, the truth is you
will
be famous.”
    Grace's smile, it's a curtain parting. An opening night. It's Grace unveiling herself.
    And Misty says, “I won't.” She says, “I can't.” She's just a regular person who's going to live and die ignored, obscure. Ordinary. That's not such a tragedy.
    Grace shuts her eyes. Still smiling, she says, “Oh, you'll be so famous the moment—”
    And Misty says, “Stop. Just stop.” Misty cuts her off, saying, “It's so easy for you to build up other people's hope. Don't you see how you're ruining them?” Misty says, “I'm a darn good waitress. In case you haven't noticed, we're not the ruling class anymore. We're not the top of the heap.”
    Peter, your mother's problem is she's never lived in a trailer. Never stood in a grocery line with food stamps. She doesn't know how to be poor, and she's not willing to learn.
    Misty says, there's worse things they can do than raise Tabbi to fit into this economy, to be able to find a job in the world she'll inherit. There's nothing wrong with waiting tables. Cleaning rooms.
    And Grace lays a strip of lacy ribbon to mark her place in the diary. She looks up and says, “Then why do you drink?”
    “Because I like wine,” Misty says.
    Grace says, “You drink and run around with men because you're afraid.”
    By men she must mean Angel Delaporte. The man with the leather pants who's renting the Wilmot house. Angel Delaporte with his graphology and his flask of good gin.
    And Grace says, “I know
exactly
how you feel.” She folds her hands on the diary in her lap and says, “You drink because you want to express yourself and you're afraid.”
    “No,” Misty says. She rolls her head to one shoulder and looks at Grace sideways. Misty says, “No, you
do not
know how I feel.”
    The fire next to them, it pops and sends a spiral of sparks up the chimney. The smell of smoke drifts out past the fireplace mantel. Their campfire.
    “Yesterday,” Grace says, reading from the diary, “you started saving money so you could move back to your hometown. You're saving it in an envelope, and you tuck the envelope under