Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault

by Cathy Guisewite

  “What are they up to this summer?” I forge on, digging for clues.

  “Jack just wants to sleep all day and Ricky still lives to play ball!” she says, shaking her head with a smile.

  In the olden days, I could assume that Jack and Ricky were human children. Now they could be cat children, dog children, gerbil children . . .

  “And Suzy just learned to say ‘Hello!’” she chirps.

  Or parrot children.

  I’m saved by the hostess who walks past with “Time to move to the dining room, Cathy and Paula!”

  Paula! I spin toward the dining room. “Nice talking with you, PAULA!” I say.

  I probably spun a little too quickly, but I need to get away from Paula before I’m found out. Before Paula, who knows everything about me, knows who I am.

  I stop at the edge of the beautifully set table.

  There are place cards. Right next to Cathy is Paula. I’ll be spending the evening next to this woman and have been completely out of conversation since I told her how nice it was to see her.

  I excuse myself to the powder room. Not to hide. Not to cry. At least those pitiful days are over. I excuse myself to the powder room so I can Google Paula. Search her on Facebook. Search her on the hostess’s Facebook. Search emails. Search . . . nothing. There’s no Internet in here. Up in the corner of my phone where all the happy connectivity indicators are, the dreaded “No service.” I wave the phone around the room, high over the toilet, in the cabinet under the sink. Zilch. There are a dozen backup bars of soap in this bathroom. Zero bars of the Internet. I feel ill. Very ill. What kind of friend has no Wi-Fi in the powder room???

  Someone’s jiggling the handle. “Just a moment!” I answer. I flush the toilet and run the water so the jiggler will at least think I’ve done what I was supposed to be doing in here. I return to the table. No choice now but to be completely truthful. I sit, gather my courage, and turn to Paula.

  “Sorry I was detained,” I say. “I felt ill in the powder room.”

  Stroke of genius. Paula scooches her chair away from me and my potential flu germs and strikes up a conversation with the person on her right. I breathe a grateful sigh of relief and peek at the woman on my left, someone I’ve definitely never seen before. I bow my head and silently give thanks for the food and for the blessing of having a chance to redeem myself. I turn to the new woman and smile.

  “Hi,” I say. “My name’s Cathy.”

  “I know that!” She bubbles. “Great to see you! How’s your daughter liking freshman year?”

  Neighbor? Teacher? Sister of the hostess? Marcia? Fran?

  Her water glass is blocking my view of the place card with her name, and even if it weren’t, it wouldn’t include a synopsis of our shared history that I could read without her noticing.

  I hate this age.

  29.

  IN DEFENSE OF MY 2,000TH TRIP TO THE MALL

  Eleven years. That’s how long I’ve been driving a skirt around in the trunk of my car trying to find a top to match it.

  “It goes with everything!” That’s what the salesperson declared all those years ago when I bought it. “That skirt goes with absolutely everything!”

  It goes with absolutely everything except anything that’s been created yet. I know because I’ve tried it all. Sweaters are too long, too short, too bulky, or too clingy. Blouses are too tailored, too sporty, or too frilly. Jackets are too jacket-y. The lovely muted tones of the skirt’s beautiful print match nothing. The skirt has logged 500,000 frequent-trier miles in the trunk of my car . . . in malls all over town . . . and in the air. It’s gone on trips with me, even once on vacation to Paris—one eighth of the precious space in my suitcase given over to the skirt and the hope that the country of France might provide what malls in nine American zip codes didn’t.

  Women in our family don’t give up. Not on people. Not on causes. Certainly not on a sort-of-casual-sort-of-dressy-softly-flowing-unbelievably-flattering-go-anywhere-midcalf-length skirt that would be stunning with flats, boots, or heels—if only I had a top to match.

  Just yesterday my mother brought it up on the phone, as if she were checking in on a grandchild: “How’s the search for a top to go with that skirt coming along?”

  My sister mentioned it last week: “I found a sweater that almost would have worked for the skirt.”

  Complete strangers volunteer ideas when they see me holding the skirt up to racks of tops in a store: “I saw something that might work with that in the next department! Want me to show you the one I mean?”

  Matchmakers. Explorers. Seekers. Most women love joining another woman’s hunt. We’re all at the mall on some kind of mission—a quest to find something to go with something . . . or make sense of something . . . or rekindle something . . . or dream something . . . or discover something . . . or share something . . . or get perspective on something . . . or take a break from something . . . or . . . something.

  “Shopping isn’t about shopping!” I tried to explain years ago to my husband at the time. “We’re looking for a lot of things besides clothes when we go to the mall. Even if we’re technically looking at clothes, we’re searching for all sorts of bigger, more important things. Life things.”

  My husband, who once ordered thirty-five pairs of identical socks online so he wouldn’t have to walk into an actual store, stared at me.

  “Women assemble the pieces of life!” I forged on, determined to get credit for my part in sustaining the universe. “That’s why there are pretty flowerpots in front windows, framed pictures on mantels, and children eating heart-shaped waffles at breakfast tables!”

  My husband, who once bought a swimsuit at an airport newsstand on our way to Hawaii because he forgot to pack anything for the beach, rolled his eyes.

  I rolled mine right back at him.

  “We turn houses into homes, people into families, clothes into outfits . . . We make things whole!”

  With that, I picked up my purse and headed for the door.

  “As long as you’re going shopping,” he called after me, “grab me a pack of underwear and a couple new pairs of jeans!”

  Just as well, I thought back then and still think now. How much do we really need our loved ones to know? What possible end would it serve for a life partner to understand me well enough to ask follow-up questions—like why so many of the beautiful outfits I work so hard to assemble never get to leave my closet because they’re “too nice to wear”? Clothes I put on only for special public appearances—like going to the dentist—and then rip off and rehang as soon as I get home, so I can get back into happy sweat pants and a baggy sweat shirt.

  I can ask my mother the questions, since she’s the one who trained me.

  “You’ve owned that blouse for fifty-six years, Mom,” I say. “Why do you take it off the second you come home from the grocery store?”

  “Oh, this is much too nice to wear in the house! I might get something on it!” she answers.

  “Is it dry clean only?” I ask.

  “Heavens, no,” she answers. “Everything I own can be tossed in the wash!”

  “Then why do you worry about getting something on it?”

  “It’s too nice! I’d feel too dressed up!” Mom declares. “I wouldn’t feel like myself! I can’t go around the house not feeling like myself!”

  No need to ask Mom why it’s okay to not feel like herself when she sees other people, since the identical respect for beautiful unwearable clothes is embedded in my genes. The “too nice to wear” category is only the start. Women in our family have all sorts of other clothes we also don’t wear for all sorts of other reasons:

  Clothes we don’t wear because they don’t fit.

  Clothes we don’t wear because they need a button resewn or hem fixed and we can’t stand to pay someone else to do it when it would be so easy to do it ourselves,
and then we never get around to doing it.

  Clothes we don’t wear because we don’t feel like ironing.

  Clothes we don’t wear because we don’t like them anymore, but we can’t get rid of because they were bought on sale.

  Clothes we don’t wear that still have the price tags attached that we waited too long to return, and now can’t stand to give away because they’re brand-new.

  Clothes we don’t wear because they were never our style, but we can’t pass them on to anyone because they were a gift and we’re afraid whoever we give them to might run into the person who gave them to us.

  Clothes we don’t wear but will never part with because of “The Time Mom Gave Away the Lavender Sweater.” How many times have the women in our family relived that one: the tragedy of Mom’s beautiful lavender sweater that went with nothing, which she finally surrendered to Goodwill. Mom owned it for four decades without ever finding the right thing to wear it with. She finally let it go. ONE DAY LATER, a dress the exact odd color of the sweater—a dress that was wearable only if it had a matching sweater because it was sleeveless—came into her life. The dress she’d searched for for decades was here. The sweater was gone. Mom marched back to Goodwill with her new lavender dress and demanded that they go through thousands of donations to find the matching sweater—not to get it back for herself, but so she could give the recipient of the sweater the dress too, and spare another woman the endless search Mom had endured. There’s a special memorial section of almost-wearable clothes in my closet that’s devoted to lessons learned from the Lavender Sweater Incident.

  Plus . . . there’s unwearable body-hugging holiday wear, the unworn workout wear . . . tops that promised to make someone love me . . . pants I’ve hung on to decades after it was over . . .

  And yet, even with so many unworn clothes at home, sometimes I go to the mall just to be with people who think I need even more clothes. I like to try on new versions of myself. For a few minutes or a few hours, surrounded by all those pretty things so neatly ironed and hung up on matching hangers, I can pretend I’m not a person with a closet full of chaos at home. One small purchase of anything new—a two-dollar pair of socks, a four-dollar scarf; anything—can change how I feel about everything. There’s something magical about taking something that isn’t a problem yet home to meet the rest of my life.

  When my daughter was young and I was exhausted from work and motherhood by Friday evening, I would sometimes park her with a babysitter at home, drive to the mall, and just stand there in the middle of it all. Looking for nothing, wanting nothing except to be in a place where the “MO-O-OM!” I kept hearing wasn’t directed at me. Where I could watch another mother haul a shrieking toddler out of the Disney Store . . . or see another woman take the same pair of pants in four different sizes into a dressing room because she had no idea what size she was after the week she’d just had. Lots of times, the best thing I brought home from the mall was one sentence: “I’m not the only one.”

  Online shopping is joyful instant gratification, but trips to the mall are almost always about something else. Especially now, when everyone I know is in the middle of some huge overhaul of stuff. People packing up their kids’ childhoods so they can turn their bedrooms into tidy home offices; moving parents from large homes to little assisted-living spaces; friends downsizing their own big lives into condos. Everyone I know is trying to get rid of stuff. Trying to remember who we were before we had all the stuff. To discover who we might be without all the stuff. Who we could be if we had room for different stuff.

  At this time of life, when the urge to unload is so strong, when every single thing we could ever need can be ordered on an iPad without getting out of bed, the mall is, strangely, even more comforting. I can only assume it’s because there’s all sorts of stuff there besides the stuff.

  “What do you DO there for so long??” my husband used to ask. “How could it take FOUR HOURS to shop?? When I have to go to the mall, I’m in and out of there in four minutes! What could you possibly do there for FOUR HOURS??”

  I kiss my new guy—my dog, who never asks questions like that—goodbye, walk to the car, pop open the trunk, and lift out a tattered shopping bag. The bag containing the Skirt. The skirt I’ve been driving around for eleven years. I pull the skirt from the bag and hold it up to myself in the driveway. I admire the lovely muted tones of the unmatchable fabric. I note the softly flowing lines that would be so flattering if the skirt were ever on my body instead of stuffed in a shopping bag in my trunk.

  I think fondly of the years I’ve wasted trying to create a future for us. I remember Paris. How my sister, who took that vacation with me, eagerly spent three days of our five-day trip searching for a top to match my skirt. How we spent so much time shopping for the top, we had to do the entire Louvre in fifteen minutes. How we bought a book in the Louvre gift shop and wept together on the long flight home looking at all the pictures of the artistic masterpieces we missed seeing because of our futile obsession with finding something to go with my skirt. I remember how we toasted each other with our sixth little bag of airline pretzels and vowed that if we had it to do all over again, we would do the exact same thing.

  I think of my mother’s supreme patience at the mall when I was young, as I tore through personalities, trying on every possible version of being a girl, snapping at Mom because she kept insisting I looked nice, not like the dork I saw in the mirror.

  I think of my supreme patience when I do the same thing with my daughter.

  I think of Dad’s supreme patience, the endless hours he spent waiting outside stores for three sisters and a mom to shop when I was growing up. He didn’t like the mall but loved to be with us so much, he usually wanted to come along. I have a perfect mental picture of him, sitting on a bench outside a store with a transistor radio to his ear, trying to tune in the World Series that he was missing while my sister tried on hour after hour of homecoming dresses.

  I get in the car, put the shopping bag on the passenger seat, and head for what must be my 2,000th trip to the mall. I’ll be irritated by the parking lot, the noise, the people who refuse to rush, and the people who refuse to slow down. I’ll hurry past the fast-food court, the perfume ladies, and the sunglass kiosk so I won’t be tempted. I’ll seek revenge on companies that quit making the basics I could finally buy without thinking by finding other companies to whom I can pledge allegiance. I’ll get to feel a little bit arrogant, a little bit humbled. I’ll practice not being intimidated by people selling clothes I can’t—and don’t even want to—afford.

  I’ll look for familiar faces of women who must feel just like I do. A tired smile as we pass on the escalator, a beaming one in Shoes. The commiseration of strangers. Women shopping for a little rest from the rest of their lives. A spark of hope. Something new to introduce to the closet. Camaraderie. Connection. Moral support. Reinvention. Restoration. Possibility. Validation. Hope. Tests of willpower. The triumph of a great deal. The trying on of fantasies. The search for something to go with something . . . or make sense of something . . . or rekindle something . . . or dream something . . . or discover something . . . or share something . . . or get perspective on something . . . or take a break from something . . . or . . . something.

  Something to make me feel a little bit different—even if all it makes me feel after an hour or so is really happy to leave the mall and go back home.

  That’s what I’m going shopping for today. I glance at the bag on the passenger seat. Maybe today I’ll even find a top to match the skirt.

  30.

  MY MEANINGLESS MIDLIFE SIX-MINUTE FLING

  Why? I crinkle up the words, furious that I let myself be vulnerable again. Flatten them back out, search for what else they could possibly mean. How could I let myself get involved again? I’m too old for this. I crinkle the words back up. I can’t believe I committed so freely and completely before I knew the facts.

 
The Nutrition Facts.

  I flatten the words back out. There they are, plain as day:

  Calories: 250. Servings per container: 5.

  I stare at the empty Almond ’n’ Fruit Granola Crunch bag in my hand. Anyone would assume this contained one small healthy snack, not five. I feel betrayed to my core. I’ve just accidentally said yes to almost as many calories as I should eat in a whole day. Betrayed and all alone.

  It gets worse almost immediately.

  I’m not alone. I feel the granola clusters start to expand inside me. Feel the dried cranberries and apricot pieces doubling and tripling in size in my stomach. The fiber-rich almonds are dividing and multiplying, dividing and multiplying. By tomorrow I’ll need to wear baggy smock tops and jeans with elasticized front panels.

  I look down in dismay. My bump is already starting to show. One innocent six-minute fling and I’m pregnant with Almond ’n’ Fruit Granola Crunch. I try to steel myself for a great big stint of unplanned motherhood. Brace for the repercussions of this one irresponsible episode.

  It gets worse almost immediately.

  My eyes land on a display of garbanzo beans and I realize I’m still in the grocery store. I’m only in aisle two of a fifteen-aisle market, a fraction of the way through my grocery shopping. I’ve finished the relationship, am carrying an Almond ’n’ Fruit Granola Crunch love child, and haven’t even paid for the snack bag yet.

  How appropriate, I think ruefully, that almonds were involved in what just happened to me. Now, when I feel so strong and unseducible. Almonds keep sneaking up from every direction. Was their impact not bad enough before? Almonds used to appear only in little gift bags at two of life’s most emotionally loaded events: bridal and baby showers. Pastel-colored, candy-coated Jordan almonds—symbols of another woman’s superior life choices. Party snacks that scream: