All This Could Be Yours

by Jami Attenberg

  She’d always been this way, loving boys and girls alike since she was a little girl. But you try being queer in the state of Louisiana. You try growing up in the Catholic Church in the South. There wasn’t so much as a flicker of openness in her family. Lately, her parents had gone full MAGA. So she snuck around with her Mustang and her driving gloves and her multiple gym memberships and her girlfriends and her dirty text messages and her hot little encounters three days a week.

  She did this thing where she said, “Guess it’s my cheat day,” to whichever woman she was with, and they loved it, and they loved her, Sierra, and her red hair, and her skinny legs, running her finger down her body, giving her girls a flirty wink. She didn’t even think about it, that she used the same line over and over. Wasn’t it what they wanted to hear? She felt certain they’d never find out she was a one trick pony. And she paid the bills to all the gyms right on time.

  Sierra’s husband was a fireman and had six maxed-out credit cards and had just opened a seventh account.

  Today was Friday, Candice’s day. She was a trainer at a CrossFit in the Irish Channel. There was a CrossFit in Algiers, but Sierra thought she’d be asking for trouble having that much fun close to home. Candice had big blond curls and blue eyes and incredible posture and she was clean and toned and from Colorado and extremely mellow. After class, they’d drive to her house in Mid-City, split an edible, hydrate, swing in a hammock in her backyard, and grope each other. A dream date if she’d ever had one.

  She parked around the corner from the gym on Second Street, checked her texts. There were six in a row from her friend Twyla. Panicky. Icky. Sierra didn’t want nothing to do with that. She’d given her all the advice she could on that subject. It was all up to Twyla now. If she knew what was good for herself, she’d keep her mouth shut.

  15

  Twyla hadn’t anticipated seeing Gary’s mother and sister upstairs at the hospital, and whatever practiced calm she had conveyed earlier with Alex, and the moment of peace she had achieved in prayer in Victor’s room, both had disappeared. Surely they knew why Gary was in Los Angeles. Surely they were all faking it together. Soon it will all come to an end, Twyla thought as she sobbed in the front seat of her Suburban.

  The searing pain of the collapse of her face, witnessed in the rearview mirror; just to see it destroyed Twyla. Tears and flaking makeup, lips in distress, cracked at the edges, only half the color left behind, the other half disappeared, god knows where, absorbed into skin, into air, into grief. Those eyes once fresh and young and dewy, this skin once taut and without a mark. This is the place where hope ends: in a hospital parking lot, overexposed to the sun, dehydrated by air conditioning and day drinking, every flaw apparent. She couldn’t bear to look at her face any longer. The circumstances of the past three months had altered her so deeply that it had changed her physical makeup, she was sure of it.

  When Twyla was seven there was a wildfire in the nature preserve that bordered her family farm. Her father and his employees fought it off with hoses. She stood in the wind with her mother, wide-eyed at the raging orange tree line, covering her mouth and nose with her shirttail, until he yelled at them to help. She awkwardly ran buckets of water from the house for hours. They triumphed that day—a miracle, really—but what was left behind on that preserve devastated them all. Gray, smoldering earth, dark nubs of trees. Green gone forever. Her father spoke for months on Sundays about the apocalypse. He spoke of ashen horses. That land never looked the same.

  And neither would she.

  Comfort, she wanted comfort. Soothing, serene, calm. Twyla dug in her bag and secured a pair of sunglasses, black, oversize, with rhinestones attached, and put them on. The world grew darker. But she needed more than that. A cool, clean, pristine environment. She drove around the block, dizzy with options, and then a few blocks farther on Claiborne, tears still shedding, wiping them away with the heel of her hand, until she found a CVS.

  Oh, she loved a CVS, bright lights, frigid air, everything intact and frozen and sealed for her protection. Perfection in plasticity. She grabbed a basket and then stopped herself; for this visit, she was going to need something bigger. She wheeled out a shopping cart instead. Bring it on, she thought. Give me some solace; let me dream. For what was the makeup aisle to her but a grasp at hope?

  She had been a makeup girl always. To transform her face had meant something deep to her. It was artful, it was a challenge, and it was a way of knowing herself. But not everyone was a makeup girl. She remembered a best friend she had as a child, Darcy, a friend by default, really, because she was the closest neighbor within biking distance—the next child after that was five miles farther down the road, out there in their isolated town. Twyla’s family lived there for the farming, and Darcy’s parents for intellectual and political reasons, something to do with a rejection of society and all its ills, which she couldn’t argue with now—it was ill, after all—but at the time, the idea of rejecting anything, let alone the entire world, mystified and entranced Twyla.

  “Do you reject this twig?” They were in Darcy’s backyard, hiding from her parents beneath the porch, Darcy insisting on a secret society between the two of them. Twelve years old, and nothing bad had happened to them yet.

  “No. Nature is pure,” said Darcy.

  “Do you reject The Outsiders?” Twyla asked.

  They were reading it at school and were supposed to be working on a report together, although Darcy had already written it, out of boredom, without bothering to ask Twyla.

  “No, we need books. Books will save us.”

  “Do you reject me?”

  “Not yet,” said Darcy, retreating beneath her drape of hair. She had great bangs. Her mother was Japanese and thoughtful and kept bolts of batik fabric stacked up in the living room, and her hair was exactly the same, thick and straight, with a serious, immaculate fringe. Darcy raised her finger thoughtfully. “But there’s still time.”

  Darcy paid a lot of attention to her, and Twyla didn’t mind it. Darcy commented on Twyla, narrated her, her eyes, her skin, her laugh. “Twyla’s in a good mood today.” Fingering the tie-dyed T-shirts Twyla’s mother had made for her in a tub in the backyard. Darcy sniffing her. “You smell like bubble gum.” Twyla couldn’t keep up. “You smell like a tree,” she tried. Darcy frowning. You know how girls can be together when they’re young? Where they love everything about each other until they hate everything about each other? They were like that.

  Twyla showed up for the first day of eighth grade in full makeup, pastels from hell: petal-pink blush, slimy pink lips, seafoam-green eye shadow, her blond hair pushed back on one side by a pink, glittering, scalloped barrette. Newly double-pierced ears. What a trip to the mall she’d had with her mother, a ninety-minute drive to the promised land, Twyla chattering the whole way. She’d prepared for weeks beforehand, studying every teen magazine in her possession, licking her thumb before she flipped a page. A visit to the hair salon, the stylist cooing, “People would kill for this much body, remember that. Just let your hair be free to do its thang, girl.” The makeup-counter girl smelled delicious, and her lips were a vivid liquid red. “You’re young, you don’t need too much,” she said. “Just show me how to do my eyes,” said Twyla greedily.

  She wasn’t going to be a farm girl forever. She rejected nothing; she accepted all. Eighth grade was going to be the beginning of everything for her.

  And then there was Darcy in the bathroom on that first day, the two of them standing side by side, judging all of the changes in the mirror as they washed their hands. “It’s a deception,” she told her, and Twyla gasped. Darcy already had breasts and the hint of a mustache, which she would never touch, throughout high school, not bleach it, not remove it, just let it be. “You’re just jealous,” said Twyla, although it was she who was jealous of those breasts.

  Darcy hauled back and slapped her, and though her hand did not land hard, it still broke Twyla a little bit.

  “I reject thee,” said D
arcy.

  Thee? thought Twyla. When had a “thee” come into play? Did she have to say “thee” too? That was ridiculous. Twyla growled at her and then tackled her to the ground. The whole bathroom of adolescent girls screamed at once. The two girls fought poorly, as neither knew what they were doing, half punches, hair-pulling, shin kicks without heft, but they were serious nonetheless.

  But the war was already over: the rejection had happened. It was the first time someone hadn’t wanted her. And it was all tied up in appearance and competition and getting older. It was disgusting and confusing and, hazily, somewhere in the future, sexy. Twyla cried for days, and threw up twice, and her mother held her while she sobbed. Her mother gave her a diary with a lock and a key. “Instead of being so upset where everyone can see it, how about you write it all down here instead,” she said. “I promise not to read it. It’s just for you and your secrets.” Twyla did as she was told—“Darcy thinks she is so special, well, she is not,” she wrote—but a few hours later she was still in tears.

  “Darcy is a strange girl, I will admit,” said her mother.

  “I hate her,” said Twyla.

  “Shhh, you don’t hate anyone. Hate is a strong word,” said her mother.

  “But I do,” Twyla said.

  “Don’t cry anymore,” said her mother. “Your eyes are all red. Go look in the mirror.”

  Twyla went to the bathroom and washed her face. Her mother had slyly set out a new makeup set, a gift a thousand times better than a diary, thought Twyla, though she treasured both. She began to work on her eyes until she looked better, felt better, was better. She doubled down on her looks for the rest of the school year and on through high school. Five years later, Darcy went east to college, and never returned.

  * * *

  Twyla picked up a tube of salmon-pink lipstick, weighed it in her hand for half a second, and then threw it in her cart. All the pinks she could find, cart, cart, cart. Next she halted in front of a display done up in fluorescent candy hues, exclamation points, emojis. That it was for fifteen-year-old girls neither repulsed her nor appealed to her. She saw nothing but color. She did not need to be sold; already she was all in.

  * * *

  In high school, she had proudly done makeup for the theatrical productions, arriving at rehearsals early, analyzing and organizing the years-old supplies. Before casting for the winter play began, Mr. Powter encouraged her to audition. “He did this whole thing with his hands,” she told her mother later, when she asked why Twyla was trying out for the play. Twyla imitated him, wiggling her fingers in her mother’s face, laughing, beside herself, even though she had been flattered. “That face is too pretty to hide backstage,” Mr. Powter had said. She didn’t have a crush on him, but she liked to talk to him, was compelled by him, his obvious flaws, his genuine humanity. And she enjoyed how he looked at her, that her face held his. He wasn’t unhandsome, she had thought at the time. His acne scars were an issue. Once she had caught him in the makeup room dabbing his face with foundation. The tone was too dark for his skin, she could see that from where she stood, quietly lingering at the entrance. A door creaked behind her, elsewhere in the theater, and he turned, and blushed.

  “I wasn’t doing anything,” he said.

  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” she said. She moved to him and examined his face. “This one’s better for you,” she said, and began to gently apply a different, creamy liquid to his skin.

  He gave her all the lead parts. Whether she was any good or not was irrelevant. Now there was a thought in her head: she wanted to be an actress. Mr. Powter told her not to bother with college. “All those degrees just keep you from getting to work,” he said. “And it’s better to start young. Believe me, I know.” He nodded his head furiously as she floated the idea of moving to Los Angeles after graduation.

  “Truly, anything but that,” said her mother after dinner, spring rain beating down on the roof of the house. She worked hard at the school district. Savings had been put aside for Twyla, but not for her to pursue a dream that didn’t even feel like hers. In the doorway, her father, hardy, white-haired, red-cheeked, drifted out of the room. Twyla was, for the moment, nonsense to him. He didn’t see her anymore, she thought. I’m air, I’m a ghost, I’m smoke.

  She didn’t need their money. She had enough to get started from summer jobs and graduation gifts, and she also had a cushion, a check from Mr. Powter, whom she now called Garth. “Starting-out money,” he said. Maybe he’d visit during winter vacation and see how she had set herself up, so he could be proud of her. She liked the idea of someone being proud of her, of course.

  No such thing as money for nothing, though, for there he was, January 1, 1999, not just for winter, but forever, a moving van, suitcases, everything he owned, in front of the apartment she shared with three other girls in West Hollywood. An air mattress on the floor was surely no place for a forty-year-old man. She was so confused. Had some agreement been made that she didn’t know about? Her roommates, all actresses, viewed him as a curiosity for a weekend, almost affectionately, for they all had had an eccentric theater teacher, and in fact still did. And he thought they all were gorgeous, too, as it turned out—but after he’d blown through every tourist attraction in town, he was just another body in a small, shared space. He had to go. Twyla felt both shy and furious toward him. He was her supporter. And now she had to reject him.

  “I’ll pay you back,” she said as she walked him to the door.

  “It was a gift,” he said. “I’ll let you know where I land.”

  She closed the door and shuffled across the parquet floor, head down, genuinely depressed, an unfamiliar state for her. How did she even end up here? It was his vision for her to be an actress, not hers. And now she was away from home, and she hated rehearsing her lines for auditions for roles she never got, and having to diet for the first time in her life, and feeling competitive about something she didn’t care that much about. She was not having any fun at all and she was eighteen years old. Twyla had no intellectual interest in the movies from a performance standpoint; there was no catharsis waiting in the wings. She just liked the appearance of it all. The billboards, the faces on the big screens. The way she looked in her head shots. But she didn’t want to go home yet. Solemnly, she deflated the air mattress. Why did she want to stay in Los Angeles? The beach, she liked, so wild and romantic, different from the tamer Alabama shores of her youth. She was blond and pretty and had a sweet accent everyone teased her about, but she loved being teased. Her roommates were fun girls, bouncy, like her; they ran around in a gang. Someday they’d all be ruined in their way, but right now everything seemed possible to them. They could get cast. They could fall in love.

  The next Saturday, her roommate Caroline had a date, and Twyla offered to do her makeup. Just for fun, to flex those muscles, and as an apology, too, for the two weeks Mr. Powter lived with them. “You, but better,” Twyla murmured. “And I’m already pretty good,” said Caroline. She looked at herself in the light-studded bathroom mirror, rubbed her lips together, smacked a kiss. “But now I’m great.”

  Twyla went back to makeup. That was what she loved. She enrolled in a makeup school in Burbank, a thing her parents could get behind, happy to pay for that, school, at last, and took the bus there every day until she found someone she could carpool with from West Hollywood. And she did the work. She loved the principles of it. And she loved the transformation. A face looked one way when she started, and another way when she was done. And she was the one who did that. Her. That whole time she was wondering if she could ever be special or at least a little bit good at something, it turned out she had a real skill. She got an apprenticeship, then worked freelance until she landed a job on a new comedy series, and there she was, having a grown-up life of her own in California.

  She stayed in Los Angeles for five more years. Maybe she would stay forever. She still liked the beach. She joined Local 706, which pleased her mother, who had been in variou
s educational unions for thirty-odd years, often as an elected officer. She bought herself a VW bug, used, from an old surfer who lived in Topanga Canyon, and she immediately discovered the back window rattled on the freeway, but she had paid in cash, and she loved that little car anyway. Her hair bleached by the sun. She was always healthy, tanned, freckled, and busy. She was young, and her life was grand.

  The only problem she had was men, who constantly bothered her. Why were they always around, and why did so many of them want to know if she was an actress? What business was it of theirs what she did for a living? Still, she was sweet to all comers, neither accepting nor rejecting them, simply moving seamlessly onward with a polite glance or word, occasionally training her spaced-out gaze on them. Even if they annoyed her, she knew how to fend them off easily enough. Her mother had taught her a long time ago to serenely respond, “That’s interesting,” if a man explained things to her for too long. Or there was always someone across the room she had to speak with immediately. She spent half her life running off to meet imaginary friends. Sometimes she felt sad when no one was actually waiting for her.

  She began to believe all men were boring, especially at work. Even in the midst of all that action and excitement on the set, no one was saying anything of interest. Men running around with clipboards and headsets, all in business with each other. She liked a few of her coworkers in the makeup department, but they were friends, sparring partners, impeccable humans, and mostly gay. She thought about Darcy during that time in her life. Darcy with all her philosophies. That was what was missing. A thoughtfulness, a mindfulness.