The Throwback List

by Lily Anderson

  “My grandfather would be so honored that you noticed. He installed that himself before he and Lita moved in up here. He thought it made it feel more like a home and less like an office.”

  Jo fiddled with the height of her tripod before nervously glancing over her shoulder. “Are you sure it’s okay that I hog this space for an hour or two? No one is going to want to use the bathroom while I’m in my undies?”

  “No one. The shop isn’t even open today. My mom has a special appointment, but she’s using one of the downstairs stations.”

  If she ever gets here. Bee checked her watch again.

  With the lighting trees in place and blazing false daylight at them, Jo moved to sit.

  “Not to sound like a creep,” Bee said, looking at Jo’s loose sweater and slacks, “but you’re probably gonna want to change your clothes before hair and makeup, not after.”

  “Right, right,” Jo said. She stood and kicked off her shoes. “I brought something for this.”

  Bianca barely had time to avert her eyes before Jo had her clothes off, briefly revealing the tobacco-colored lace chosen for the shoot. From inside her gray tote, she fished out a wrinkled khaki trench coat.

  “Are you planning on becoming the town flasher after this?” Bianca asked.

  Jo sheepishly slid on the trench coat, belting it loosely around her waist. “No one in my family had a bathrobe.”

  “You should have asked me!” Bianca said. “Everyone in my house has a robe.”

  “I really don’t know if either of my parents wears pajamas. They both appear fully dressed every morning. Always have,” Jo said. She swept her hair back without even glimpsing a mirror—How in the world? Bianca thought—and sat down on top of the desk.

  Bee had one of the instrument trays from downstairs. On it, she set out clean makeup brushes and the various cosmetics she and Jo had compiled to match the reference photo displayed on Jo’s phone.

  Ignoring how odd it was to be so close to a face that until recently she had only associated with resentment, Bee dappled Jo in primers.

  It’s not flip-flopping to get to know someone, she assured the part of her that felt disloyal to her younger self.

  “Wow, being in my underwear is so much weirder than I thought it would be,” Jo said, aiming her gaze at the kitchenette rather than staring directly into Bee’s eyes. “I really didn’t think it would bother me. I’ve worn less clothes to the beach.”

  “Less clothes than a trench coat?” Bee teased. “I would hope so.”

  She started sponging foundation onto Jo’s cheeks. Jo flinched at the cold liquid.

  “S-sorry,” Jo stammered, wiping her palms on her thighs. “This is the most nervous I’ve been doing a list item.”

  “Really?” Bee held the sponge away from Jo’s face. “Because I was there when you saw the piercing needle.”

  “Yeah, but that was done by you,” Jo protested, biting her lower lip. “You’re Bianca Boria—”

  “Bianca Boria-Birdy.” Bee was used to correcting people. No one in town ever called her Mrs. Birdy. Sometimes people called Birdy Dr. Boria. Lita called him Mr. Bianca when he took what she considered the wrong side in a fight.

  “—you’re effortless,” Jo continued, talking too fast to leave Bee room to argue—or ask for elaboration. “What if I can’t make myself look normal on camera? I never take self-portraits with my actual camera. I like selfies because there’s a built-in mirror. I can control my whole situation.”

  Bee continued blending foundation into Jo’s skin. The woman didn’t even need it. Her color was already even, her skin unbothered by bumps or scars or scraggly mustache hairs. “You’re a pretty girl who exercises for fun, Jo. What could go wrong?”

  “My face is going to do that thing where it slides right off my head,” Jo groaned.

  “Excuse me?” Bee asked.

  “I make this specific, awful face when I’m uncomfortable in a picture,” Jo said. “So many of the dinner-party photos I didn’t post look just like this.”

  She made the face. It did appear as though her smile were attempting a getaway.

  Bianca had to hold in a giggle. It would be so rude to laugh directly into Jo’s face.

  “See!” Jo cried. “It’s bad.”

  “Stop squirming or you’re gonna crease your foundation,” Bee warned. She held Jo’s jaw still between her thumb and forefinger. “You control the list. If you take the pictures and you hate them, you’ll delete them. Or find a different way to represent it for the internet. The important thing isn’t how you sell it, it’s that you’re trying stuff that scares you.”

  “That is literally the opposite of how I have been thinking about this,” Jo mused to the back wall. “I start with the plan for the post and then work backward.”

  Bianca shook her head too hard and had to push her head scarf back into place. “That means you’re prioritizing the consumption. You’re more than your social media.”

  Jo cut her eyes at her. “Yeah, but outside of social media, I’m just a grown woman living with her parents. The Throwback List is the only thing keeping me sane.” She wrung her hands in her lap. “I really do appreciate your help today. Just let me know what you think a fair price is for makeup services.”

  Bee scoffed as she leaned over to her instrument table, loading her favorite fluffy brush with eyeshadow. “You don’t have a job, Jo.”

  “That doesn’t mean you should give me free labor. You are the only person I’d trust with sharp implements near my eyes. You’ve got professionally steady hands and technique. I have neither. Before homecoming once, I poked Autumn in the eye trying to help her put on fake lashes. I haven’t even looked at lash glue since.”

  “Most people don’t let it dry on the strip long enough before they apply. Rookie mistake.”

  “I poked her in the eye. With a finger that I have to keep on my hand forever. Ugh, it was disgusting. Squishy.”

  “Don’t make me flinch while I am this close to your face.” Bee motioned for Jo to close her eyes. Sweeping arcs created shadow, deepened her lids, brightened the deep set of her eyes.

  “Your eyes are less hooded than Meghan Markle’s,” she observed.

  “I know! And I’m, like, so much younger than her,” Jo said, peeking out of one eye. “I keep almost cutting bangs so that people will stop comparing us, but there’s nothing that screams life crisis like new bangs.”

  Bee agreed. That’s why her bangs were just artfully rolled and pinned long hair.

  “This is the first time I’ve ever had another woman of color do my makeup,” Jo said. “It is cool that I don’t have to tell you not to use pale concealer on me. I don’t know what it is about having vaguely Anglo features that makes girls at MAC counters want to cover me in buff beige powder. I eventually just gave up. I was tired of paying to come out like a ghost.”

  “Do people try to guess your race to your face?” Bee asked Jo.

  “Daily. You?”

  Bee pointed at herself. “Hello, I am also ambiguously brown. My ancestors are from an American territory, and no one has ever said, ‘Oh you’re Puerto Rican!’” She set to work on Jo’s other eye. “My grandparents wouldn’t think that was a bad thing. The point of living here was to blend in. Not to stand out. My mom never even learned Spanish.”

  “It’s supposed to be safer to assimilate,” Jo said. “They never think about how it means you’re supposed to disappear.”

  “White people don’t dream about blending in.” Bee sighed. “The American dream is being loudly and defiantly yourself. For better or worse.”

  “But first you have to decide what the you things are.” Jo wrung her hands in her lap. Bee had to tip her chin up again when she tried looking down. “After the dinner party, Wren asked me what the list was getting me.”

  “Shocking,” Bee said drolly. She was zero percent surprised that Wren Vos could only quantify things in terms of what they earned her. Judging from the dinner party, Wren appeared to
be the same hipster snob Bee remembered from high school. The kind of person who even hated the things she liked. Like the bacon-wrapped dates that she insulted and bogarted.

  “I mean, I mostly just wanted something to do,” Jo said. “But I like testing the boundaries of what I am. When I first read the list, every single item felt so far away from me. But I haven’t hated any of it so far. I’ve been uncomfortable, I’ve been frantic—”

  “You’ve been surprised by pie underneath ice cream.”

  “Never forget,” Jo concurred. She picked up the end of her coat sash and wound it around her knuckles like a boxer. “I haven’t flaked on anything yet. But I might just be saying that so I don’t chicken out of taking a picture of myself in my underwear.”

  “It’s hard to try new things,” Bianca said. “What if you suck at them? We’re a culture obsessed with winning.”

  “I like blaming the culture for it. It makes me feel better than saying that I’m a competitive bitch.” Her eyes slid up to Bee’s. “You posed in a bikini in high school. Were you nervous?”

  Bianca rarely thought about the Fat Doesn’t Mean Ugly picture she had been known for in high school. It had even made it into the yearbook, not to commemorate any kind of body positivity but on the Beach Weather page that showcased the various ways people dressed on the beach through the year. From Bianca’s gingham bikini to Vince Rice’s snowsuit during that year’s freak blizzard.

  “I wasn’t nervous. I was pissed off,” Bianca explained. “It was the summer before senior year, and I wanted a new bathing suit. And that already started a fight about my weight because I couldn’t get one in town unless I wanted to get an old-lady suit with a swim skirt. I was seventeen and wanted to feel cute. I couldn’t even wear lipstick.”

  “Seriously? You weren’t allowed? But you love makeup.”

  Bee threw a guilty glance at the red candle, burning in Tito’s memory. “My family was obsessed with the idea of me not growing up too fast. They thought lipstick was too sexual.”

  “I’d argue, but you’re literally dressing me up so I can take my clothes off.”

  “You already took your clothes off. You’re clinging to a coat.” Bee chuckled. “I fought so hard to get that particular gingham bathing suit. It was the first vintage-looking piece of clothing I ever bought. I found it for cheap online and convinced my mom to buy it. And then Tito saw it come out of the box in two pieces and flipped out. He loved me, but he hated my body. That’s a weird thing to say, but it was equally weird that he had an opinion. Some people just hate fatness. He was sort of offended by it. People in his family weren’t fat. I’m built like Lita, but she didn’t gain weight until she had my mom. I’ve been fat the whole time.

  “When Tito saw the bikini, he said that I was going to humiliate myself putting my stomach on display. Like people can’t see the curve of my body underneath clothes. Like a bikini was going to reveal some great and terrible truth of my fatness. So I put the bikini on and went down to the beach to ask a tourist to take a picture of me on my phone. I posted it on Facebook because my whole family was watching what I was doing online. I just wanted to prove that it wouldn’t change anything. It was like wearing lipstick. It wasn’t like the first time I wore makeup to school, my virginity fell off. People could always see me, no matter how much my family thought I should be hiding.”

  “Your super-courageous act of body positivity was motivated by spite?” Jo asked.

  “I’m mostly powered by spite. And coffee.”

  Jo smiled. “I can’t think of where else I would have been inspired to do my own pinup shoot. It must have been something I wanted to do because you did it.”

  Bee hardly counted standing in a bathing suit as posing as a pinup. In the picture in question, she was a chubby teenager in a plain ponytail.

  “Because if the fat girl could do it, why not you?” she asked, too sharp.

  Jo gently pulled her head back, out of Bee’s grip. Her filled eyebrows formed a concerned V. “No, not at all. If you did it, then it was probably worth doing. You never bothered with the low-level bullshit everyone else did.”

  “You mean ‘having fun’?” Bee asked ironically. “Are you sure you weren’t influenced by a real pinup? Like Bettie Page?”

  “I was never interested in Bettie Page,” Jo said, putting her face back into Bianca’s care. “I prefer my porn gayer and less old-timey.”

  “I didn’t ask if you like Bettie Page recreationally!” Bee giggled, swatting at Jo’s shoulder. “I mean that she’s most people’s first pinup. She was mine, and I hardly want to bang girls at all.” Jo gave her a significant blink and Bianca laughed. “I live in the same world as Lizzo. Come on!”

  Jo cackled, almost ruining her blush as her neck snapped back like a Pez dispenser. Happy Jo was the Tin Man with all of his joints oiled.

  The lip pencil stole the conversation for a moment as Bianca focused on tracing a clean line around Jo’s mouth. It was hard to push her ego down enough to make space for the revelations of the last minute.

  Jo Freeman had put items on her bucket list to emulate her.

  The TP making number one made more sense. Even so, Bee couldn’t yet feel the truth of the moment in her bones.

  Jo Freeman really had been jealous of her once.

  The stairs creaked with body weight. Bianca dropped the lip pencil onto the instrument table with a clang. She raced toward the door as Jo tightened the sash of her coat. The door opened just enough to let through a Shining-level amount of Bonnie Boria’s appalled bug eyes before Bianca wedged her body behind the knob to keep it from opening farther.

  “Mom!” she shouted, pushing forward to move her mother out of the way. She closed the door behind her, standing on the landing above her mother. She adjusted her head scarf imperiously. “Do you need something?”

  “What are you doing in there?” Bonnie asked. “Is it true you’re having a naked photo shoot?”

  Bee looked over the railing of the stairs, seeing Dede standing at the counter with a pair of red high heels.

  “I promised I’d bring shoes, but I forgot last night,” she squeaked up to Bee. “Bonnie and I ran into each other in the parking lot.”

  “I’ll take them,” Bee said. “Jo’s makeup is almost done.”

  Dede scampered upstairs, her chin tucked into the cartoon dinosaur on her sternum. The red patent-leather shoes rubbed together as they swung from her fingertips, making almost as much noise as the stairs. Bee took them by the ankle straps and thanked Dede for making a special trip to help Jo.

  When the front door closed behind Dede, Bonnie’s jaw dropped. “It’s true? You’re letting a girl take her clothes off in your grandparents’ home?”

  “It’s not their home,” Bianca said. “They once lived here. Lita’s home is my house.”

  “Oh, it’s your house now,” Bonnie said, acerbic. “I see. Well, Little Miss Square Slice, that room is the office in your business.”

  “That room is empty,” Bee snapped back. “I can’t rent it out. I can’t convert it. Am I just supposed to light the candle and sweep out the cobwebs?”

  Bonnie’s lips pressed together into bloodless anger. “It’s not right, Bianca.”

  “I didn’t realize you were such a prude, Mom. Was that not your butt crack in Inked magazine?”

  Bonnie glared at her. “I was displaying the art on my back, Bianca, and making money for this shop. That article brought in a lot of customers.”

  “That was art, but my friend wanting to reclaim some of her sexuality from the infantilization of living with her parents is what?”

  “None of our business and does not belong at our business.”

  “It’s upstairs. We aren’t open just because you’re taking a special appointment—and barely on time, by the way. This isn’t about business. This is about you not wanting anyone inside your dad’s house!”

  “Don’t talk to me like that, Bianca. I am your mother and one of the artists of this business
. You need to think like a professional and—”

  “And what, Mom? Promote our work? Advertise for us like you do?” Dumping the red heels on the floor, Bee pulled the shirt over her head, frizzing her hair in defiance. “How about I get some professional pictures taken of some of our art?”

  Dripping in inked rose petals and rubies below the cups of her bra the word Boria connected to the crescent-moon curve of her underbust by delicately drawn lace.

  “I’m very proud of Dede’s lacework,” Bianca said to her mother, voice clipped. “I’ve been neglecting my duties by not advertising her strengths. I have thigh tattoos to match, but I wouldn’t want to disgrace the family by having pictures taken in a bra that doesn’t match my chonies. Now, when your appointment is over, please lock the front door after you’re done sanitizing your station. Cruz has a ten o’clock session there tomorrow. Excuse me.”

  COMPLETED ITEMS

  TP Bianca’s house

  Perform onstage

  Get belly button pierced

  Redo the yearbook prank

  Eat the giant sundae at Frosty’s

  Host a dinner party

  Pose like a pinup girl

  TO BE COMPLETED

  Surf the Point

  Have a glitter fight

  Get stoned

  Try everything on the menu at Days

  Do a keg stand

  Play hide-and-seek in public

  Break something with a sledgehammer

  Climb the giant anchor on the boardwalk (and survive)

  Get a high score at the boardwalk arcade

  Get a pet

  Learn an entire dance routine

  Have a bonfire

  Eat breakfast at midnight

  Dig up the time capsule

  BIANCA: If you don’t have Easter plans, you’re welcome to join us for Family Dinner tonight at 5:30. Autumn & Flo are coming!

  JO: Thanks for the offer, but I have to pass. I quietly bulldozed my dad into cooking tonight.

  BIANCA: How do you bulldoze quietly?

  JO: Since I’ve been back, my dad hasn’t cooked. He makes salads and sandwiches at the store but zero cooking at home.