Hey, Dollface

by Deborah Hautzig

I gave a little smile. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess we think we look good this way.”

  Mrs. Fox gave a noisy sigh and shrugged, muttering, “I don’t know. I buy her nice things and they sit in the closet.” I tittered nervously.

  After some small talk, Mr. Fox came out of the den beyond the kitchen. He was the kind of person you like immediately. He was very tall and thin and had high cheekbones and the same wide smile Chloe had. He said, “Hiya, Valerie! How’ve you been doing? Glad you could come!”

  “So am I,” I said.

  “What did you girls do today?”

  I looked at Chloe, my eyes questioning.

  “We went to the Museum of Modern Art, Dad. There’s a great Matisse exhibit,” she said instantly.

  “Yeah,” I piped.

  “Good. You kids should enjoy yourselves.” He said it so good-naturedly I didn’t mind being called a kid. He put his arm around Chloe. “How’s my princess in her golf jacket?”

  “Great.” Chloe looked happy.

  “You’ve never met our other daughter, have you? Julie!” She came in a moment later. “This one’s home from the old grind. Work them to the bone out there.” He winked. Julie looked a little like Chloe, but her hair was short and she wasn’t as skinny or as flat-chested. She seemed nice.

  We stayed in the kitchen for a few minutes, and then Chloe and I went to her room, which I loved. The walls were painted lavender and the ceiling was white. She had a large Vuillard print on one wall and a Picasso on another, and a little table by the windows with three avocado plants. There was a bed unit with two beds up against adjacent walls. There was a table in the corner joining them which had a stereo on it, and one of the beds could be rolled under the table to save space.

  I sat on the floor as Chloe pulled a huge carton out of her closet filled with clothes; it was her reject box where she put things she was tired of wearing, and whenever I was over I could take whatever I liked, provided I’d return it if she ever wanted it back. Chloe had a strange habit of cutting all the collars off her shirts, because she didn’t like collars. She also cut off sleeves if they were short-sleeved shirts; she hated short sleeves.

  I whimpered at the sight of the demolished Bonwit Teller shirts. “How could you?”

  She grinned helplessly.

  We went through her clothes until dinner, which we all had in the den, where the Christmas tree was standing, dripping tinsel and crazy-looking angels and Tucan birds Chloe had made out of dough and then painted. Mr. and Mrs. Fox asked me about what my parents were doing and about school. Whenever I began to loosen up, Chloe kicked me under the table, and I was glad to get back to her room after helping her do the dishes.

  “I’m a very polite person, you know,” I said when we closed the door to her room. “No one ever complained about me before.”

  “Well no one is now, either.”

  “Hrmph,” I said sulkily. Then she reached under her bed, pulling out a big box and opened it. “What’s in there?” I said, leaning over to look.

  “This,” she said, “is my beautiful-lady collection.” I peered in and saw a pile of cut-out pictures of women.

  “Did you get those from magazines?”

  “Yup.”

  “What for?”

  “For my beautiful-lady collage. I had this brainstorm one night last week at three in the morning. See, I have this theory. See this?” She picked out one of them and showed it to me. It was a brunette model, very pretty, wearing a low-cut black cocktail dress.

  “She’s pretty,” I said, waiting for an explanation.

  “Yeah, she’s pretty. But she’s not different. I mean, if you go down to Bergdorfs or something, you see hundreds of women like that.”

  “Not that pretty.”

  “But if you saw them from the back, or even from the front, really quickly, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart if you saw them again.”

  “I know what you mean. I have a cousin who had a nose job, and she’s pretty, but she’s pretty like everyone’s pretty. I always think I see her across the street or something, and it isn’t her.”

  “Right. Well, I’m collecting these pictures, see, until I have a whole box of them, and then I’m making a big collage out of them. And someplace on the collage I’ll have a picture of you and a picture of me. And we’ll be the most beautiful women on the whole collage.”

  “We will?” I said doubtfully.

  “You bet your ass we will. You’ll see. I’m going to paste the cutouts overlapping and everything, so you won’t really be able to see anything but parts of these,” she said, pointing to the box. “You know, a face here, a leg there, half a face, a breast. Like that. But we’ll be in there all the way. Maybe I’ll blow up that picture I took of you in the park.”

  “You’re using naked women, too?”

  “Sure. They’re exploited, so I’ll exploit them even more, like saying big deal, it’s a breast. Half the world has two apiece.”

  “Can I take the picture of you?”

  “I want you to,” Chloe said, going back to the bed and pulling out a pile of magazines. “Want to help me cut out some more?”

  “Sure.” We sat around going through magazines and cutting. Chloe turned on the radio.

  “Chloe, I love it here. I feel safe.”

  “Thanks, kid.”

  “Your house is so beautiful. You’re rich,” I said accusingly.

  “I am not!”

  “You must be. Look at this place.”

  “This is nothing compared to what those jerks at school have. Your apartment is just as nice.”

  “But both your parents are lawyers, aren’t they?”

  “So?”

  “So lawyers are rich.”

  “They are not. Anyway they have a lot of expenses, and after taxes they’re really not rich.”

  “Oh, phooey,” I grumbled. “Everyone says ‘After-Taxes-I’m-Poor.’ I don’t believe it.” Then a fast song came on the stereo. “I love this song,” I said, tapping my feet. Chloe got up and danced around the room, and I got up with her, feeling giddy. After a while I got tired and flopped on the bed to watch her.

  I don’t think I ever said how beautiful Chloe was. But beautiful like no one else. It wasn’t only that she had beautiful teeth that never needed braces, and gorgeous eyes, sometimes a very light gray and other times an astonishing, intense blue, and thick hair that would have been long ringlets if she hadn’t forced it into mere waves; she had something else, something I can’t explain very well. There was a kind of passion about her, which always made me think of her as a zooming screaming vision, always exciting and never bored or boring. Sometimes I’d look at her face and wonder if she knew how beautiful she was; I told her occasionally, but she said I was crazy, and that I was the beautiful one.

  “Chloe?”

  “What?” she said, landing on the bed and grabbing a magazine and scissors.

  “I saw Dr. Elgin on Broadway the other day.”

  “You did? You didn’t tell me! What’d he say?”

  “Just hello. And he smiled. Chloe?”

  “Mm?”

  I hesitated. “The other night my father came home and he hugged me and I felt funny.” She didn’t react. “You don’t know what I mean, do you?” She shook her head no. I picked up a scrap of paper and fiddled with it “Well. I mean, look at Dr. Elgin. He’s nearly my father’s age and he’s all over me. I mean—my body—” I waved my arms around. “Men want it.” She nodded. “When I hugged my father I thought, My God, he’s a man too. I never thought about my parents having sex, not really thought about it. I can’t imagine it. So—so I got scared, you know?” She looked up from her magazine. “It just made me think that the only reason my father isn’t attracted to me is because he won’t permit himself to think that way.”

  “Well, he’s normal,” she said simply, after a moment.

  “Yeah, but I mean, it isn’t innate or anything. If he didn’t know who I was, who knows? If he wasn’t married to
my mom, that is,” I added quickly, listening to my thoughts uneasily. “It’s just scary to think about it. I got scared when he hugged me. Not scared of him, but—” I felt flustered, not knowing if I was saying it right. “I tried to think of him objectively, just as a man, but I absolutely couldn’t. It’s impossible. I don’t know if I’d like his body, or what.” I shivered.

  “I’ve never really thought about it,” said Chloe, putting down her scissors. “My dad’s just my dad.”

  “So is mine. But he’s a man, too. Isn’t that weird? I never thought of him as a man before! Chloe, I never used to think about things like this. Is something wrong with me?” I was shocked to feel a tear rolling down my cheek. “I get so mixed up sometimes. Things get complicated,” I said, wiping it off and feeling another start down my other cheek. Chloe picked up a corner of the bedspread and gently dabbed my face.

  “Whatsa matter, dollface?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I leaned my head and rested it on her knee. “Am I too terrible for you?”

  “Val, you’re the greatest,” she said, and pushed the hair out of my eyes. I shut them for a moment and then lifted my head to look at her. It was around then I began to realize that there was some current between Chloe and me that was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before; it was a vague, clouded feeling that I couldn’t quite place or identify. It didn’t just happen all of a sudden; it was more like moments of dim awareness, followed by a gradual recognition that it was there without my understanding what it was. I never said anything, thinking, What would I say?

  I don’t mean to make this sound like a big thing, because it wasn’t, not then; in fact, I hardly even noticed it, and if I had told anyone about Chloe at the time I’d never have mentioned it because it wouldn’t have occurred to me. It’s weird how sometimes things happen that you don’t notice and then a long time afterward you see they were part of something bigger, and you say, Oh, now I understand, now it fits. Well, that’s how it was with this feeling. I know I felt it that night in Chloe’s room, just for a moment, like when there’s a fly buzzing in your room and you can’t see it but then the buzzing stops and you forget. A chill came over me and I jumped up abruptly to switch radio stations.

  We sat around listening to music, talking, and cutting up magazines until late, and after having some corn flakes in the kitchen with Julie we went upstairs to the attic where Chloe painted. There was a bedroom up there, too, with a big double bed, where Julie slept, and the other room was strewn with tubes of paint, rags, and canvases. I made Chloe show me some of her old paintings, ones I’d never seen before, and I looked at each one for a long time. Chloe didn’t paint the way I did; I painted a lot in watercolor, which I liked much better than oils or even acrylics. My paintings were light and impressionistic and had an underwater quality, as if I were afraid to make a definite statement. Hers were clear and dark with harsh lines and strange people, and I was struck by their power.

  “Chloe, these are terrific,” I said, putting down one that she’d painted on cardboard.

  “No, they’re not. They’re lousy.”

  “I wish I could paint like this.”

  “You’re crazy. I love the way you paint.”

  “Oh, why argue?” I said. “I really love your work. Can’t you just believe me?”

  “Okay, I believe you. Thanks. But you’re crazy.” We talked to Julie for a while about Garfield, because she’d gone there, too, and then we went downstairs to bed.

  “I wish we could sleep upstairs,” I whispered. “Then we could make noise.” Her parents’ bedroom was across the hall from hers.

  “Next time, when Julie’s back at school.”

  “Okay,” I said, and put on the pajamas Chloe lent me. I pulled the top on quickly, because I hated getting undressed in front of people. “I dread the day I’ll have to strip for a guy,” I said glumly. “Maybe I could hide under the sheets.” Chloe flipped off the light and turned on the radio very softly.

  “What about Dr. Elgin?” she teased. “Would you hide under the sheets from him?”

  “Hell, I’d hide in the closet,” I said, pulling the blankets up to my chin. We whispered for about ten minutes and then I must have fallen asleep to the soft drumbeat coming from the stereo above me.

  7

  By the time Christmas vacation was over I was almost glad to go back to school, though I’d never have admitted it. I was getting tired of reading and watching the Million Dollar Movie. Chloe and I ran around the city a lot, but after a while we’d been every place we wanted to go and kept winding up at the Metropolitan Museum just to get in out of the cold. Everyone at school had great suntans, just as we had predicted; Jacky had gone all the way to Greece for hers. Patty was the only one who hadn’t gone away; she got her sunburn, she told me gravely, from sitting under a sun lamp, and she burned her boobs, too, and was excused from gym because she couldn’t wear a bra and it hurt when she bounced.

  One Friday, Mom and Dad and Ben and Grandpa all drove up to Pennsylvania to visit some cousins. They were going to spend the night and asked me if I wanted to come but I said, No, Chloe was going to sleep over. I could have told her I had to go away, but the prospect of having the whole apartment to ourselves was too good to pass up. It’s not as though we wanted to do anything like smoke that we wouldn’t do when everyone was home; it was just this terrific feeling of freedom. Usually when she came over we’d hole up in my room with the door shut, but Dad would be stomping around the house or practicing, and Ben would have a friend over and they’d be making noise in the living room, and Mom would be trying to write and grumbling at everyone to shut up, and even with my door shut I felt like I was at Grand Central—plus I felt conspicuous for having my door shut in the midst of all that ruckus. I was really glad to get rid of everyone for one night.

  Chloe and I snuck out of school early by way of a back door in the new wing, which had a big sign on it saying USE ONLY IN CASE OF FIRE. “Don’t worry,” Chloe assured me. “The alarm isn’t turned on.” We opened the heavy black steel door and the fire alarm went off. I thought I’d have a heart attack; Chloe grabbed my scarf, nearly choking me, and we bolted out the door like cats and raced up to York Avenue, turning the corner to safety. No one ever did find out it was us.

  We walked downtown, congratulating each other, and spent the afternoon roaming up and down Fifty-seventh Street. All the card-and-candy shops were selling the last of their chocolate Santa Clauses at half price, and I bought a few for myself. Chloe said chocolate made her break out. We walked all the way west, past Tiffany’s and Bergdorf Goodman’s, which we told each other probably had its summer clothes on the racks already. As soon as the big Christmas rush was over all the winter stuff was reduced like crazy and you felt like a jerk for having paid a lot for it, plus you felt frantically under-equipped for the next season. Department stores always made me feel like I never had enough. We peered into the Russian Tea Room and promised each other to have lunch there someday. “We’ll get really decked out and order martinis,” Chloe said, and I nodded approvingly. I took Chloe to my favorite art-supply store and introduced her to Sam, one of the men who worked there. He knew me from when I went to the Art Students League on Saturdays. We hung around there for a while looking and talking, and then crossed the street to pick up a catalog at the Art Students League.

  Mom had left us enough food for a wedding reception, and Chloe spent ages with her head stuck in the refrigerator, deciding what she wanted. We ended up taking everything out and putting it on the table, and settled into the big green kitchen chairs. Kitchens are really the best places to sit and talk in.

  “Dig in,” I said happily, as Chloe swallowed a piece of chicken. “Hey, you know, Patty’s been running around saying she thinks she’s pregnant.”

  “Oh, phooey. She’s a virgin.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because,” Chloe said patiently, as though talking to a child, “the ones who do it don’t run around yapping abo
ut it.”

  “Oh,” I said lamely. “Who does it?”

  “Oh, Rollins does, probably, and North.”

  “How do you know?” I persisted.

  “Boy, you’re a pest. I just know. I know the kind of guys they run around with.”

  “Wow.” I couldn’t imagine either one of them having sex with anyone. “Isn’t that kind of young?”

  She nodded, and started on her second roll.

  “Can I put on your green shirt? Mine’s too hot,” Chloe said.

  “It’s right there. On the washing machine,” I said, as she went to get it. “Hey, Chloe? I read an article the other day. About how women are afraid to even kiss each other in public nowadays because they’re afraid everyone’ll think they’re gay.”

  “Yeah?” she said, smiling slightly.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s stupid. People should do what they feel like doing, as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.” She pulled off her shirt, her back turned to me. I looked at her thoughtfully. What’s she thinking about? I wondered. Is she saying it’s okay to be gay? Or that it’s stupid to worry whether people think you’re gay when you’re not anyway? I remembered reading in The Diary of Anne Frank about how Anne wanted to feel another girl’s breasts and offered to let the other girl feel hers, but the other girl didn’t want to. I guess if you’re cooped up all that time and miss out on everything you start doing with boys when you get to be the age Anne Frank was, it’s okay, I thought. She had an excuse to want to do it, anyway. But what about people who don’t have any excuse—they just want to? Do I want to? Is it sick to even think about? I wonder what Chloe looks like from the front, I thought, watching her put on my shirt. She never undresses in front of me. Does she undress in front of other girls?

  “But if someone’s gay it hurts people,” I said suddenly.

  “Who?”

  “Their parents.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” Chloe said, sitting back down at the table. “But you can’t get married or sleep with someone you don’t want to sleep with just so your parents don’t get upset.” She began to laugh.