Red Plaid Shirt

by Diane Schoemperlen

  On Monday I decided to change my life.

  Granted, I’ve made this decision before. In fact, when I told my alleged friend, Laurie, that I was going to turn over a new leaf, she snorted and said, “Cynthia, you’ve already turned over every leaf in the forest. What more can you do?” But this was the first time I had any real inkling as to how to go about it.

  What precipitated my decision was nothing spectacular. It was simply that the night before I had a dream: a blatant but brilliant dream in which I had just achieved perfection and been crowned Absolute High Priestess of the Modern World. This impressive title was emblazoned in white letters on a black satin banner draped diagonally across my breasts. I was sitting naked on an elaborate throne, a cross between a peacock wicker chair and a flower-festooned dentist’s chair. Ranged around me, cross-legged and humble on the cold stone floor, were all the people (including Laurie) who had ever hurt, insulted, ignored, demeaned, dismissed, degraded, or laughed at me in my entire life. While they bowed their heads before my consummate beauty and wept at their hitherto wicked ways, words of wisdom were plopping out of my mouth and rolling around their dirty suppliant feet like pearls. When I arose and waved a limp royal hand over their heads, they fell to their knees, scrabbling like seagulls for the shimmering pulsating pearls, scooping them up with their long pink tongues and swallowing them whole. I levitated briefly and then dissolved right before their adoring apologetic beady little eyes.

  This dream was in the nature of an epiphany and I woke from it saying, “Of course, yes, of course, now I see, yes.”

  I knew better than to tell this dream to skeptical negative Laurie, so after I said I had to hang up because there was someone at the door (there wasn’t), I called in sick from my job at the delicatessen and then I called my better friend, Brenda.

  Brenda said she’d just had a call from Bruce, the man who has been wanting to marry her for over a year and a half. Brenda doesn’t know whether she wants to marry Bruce or not. They do love each other but whenever they spend more than two days together, they end up arguing about absolutely everything. Then they break up and Brenda is sure that she wouldn’t marry Bruce if he were the last available man on earth. But after a week or two Brenda gets lonely: it begins to look more and more like Bruce is the last available man on earth. So then they get back together and Brenda thinks she might as well marry him after all.

  This Monday morning Bruce had called Brenda and said, “I just wanted to tell you all the things I love about you.” He told her that he loved her eyes, hair, lips, heart, belly button, breasts, arms, legs, fingers, nose, ears, toes, lungs, liver, her neck, her stretch marks, her leopard-skin underwear, her quirky sense of humour, and the hairy little mole in the middle of her back.

  So now Brenda and Bruce might be getting married in August. I could hardly blame her: who could resist a man who loves the hairy mole in the middle of your back, not to mention your stretch marks?

  All of this fit right in with my decision to change my life. I was at the tail end (or so I hoped) of a long series of misguided, unpleasant, and ultimately unsuccessful romances. There was a time in my life when I had actually found myself in danger of being happy but that was a long time ago, I was much younger then, and perhaps my ideas of happiness were rather stunted. It was, to coin a phrase, a humbling experience. Since then I’ve had nothing but bad luck and after a while I pretty well gave up on men altogether. I just couldn’t seem to get it right. But I had to admit that without a man in my life, I felt old, ugly, undesirable, and totally uninteresting. I felt nigh unto invisible. Without a man in my life, I barely recognized myself. The life, it seemed, had gone out of my life.

  Listening to Brenda, I realized that all I really wanted was a man who would tell me all the things he loved about me every single day of my life, at least once a day, preferably three or four times if necessary. I realized that I had been looking for years for a man who would tell me all day long that I was wonderful.

  I also realized that at my age the only men who are willing to do this are married to other women. So far all the other men of my dreams have been unwilling or unable to comply with my hyperactive expectations.

  After I told Brenda my fabulous dream, we pondered briefly and without resolution the reasons why we are so incapable of convincing ourselves of all our wonderful attributes on our own. It has something to do with seeing our reflections in another pair of eyes. Admittedly, those eyes must be masculine, for the reflective properties of other women’s eyes are not nearly as effective. Other women’s eyes, we conceded, are likely to be clouded by a murky and ambivalent combination of sheer envy, the need to be nice, and a set of self-esteem problems all their own.

  It was only in a man’s eyes, we decided, that we could really see ourselves. I fantasized about a world where all men wore mirrored sunglasses in which I could see myself in all my splendour, twirling on my tiptoes like the tiny pink ballerina in my first jewellery box.

  If I could not find a man to reflect me, perhaps it was time to concentrate on other reflective surfaces. Finally I had a plan.

  Brenda and I knew we liked each other a lot but we had to admit that we didn’t much like ourselves. This, according to all the pop-psychology books I’ve been reading, is the root of all evil. I have studied these best-selling books in some detail. I have done all the quizzes to determine exactly how low my self-esteem really is:

  A.I feel that I am not as happy/smart/attractive/funny/successful/good as other people.

  1.rarely

  2.sometimes

  3.often

  4.always

  B.I feel hopeless, helpless, and out of control of my own life.

  1.sometimes

  2.often

  3.always

  C.I feel defeated and pessimistic about the future.

  1.often

  2.always

  D.I feel disgusted, depressed, and dissatisfied.

  1. always

  I have tried the exercises guaranteed to improve my wilted self-esteem once and for all. I have tried, for instance, to generate feelings of control and accomplishment by:

  1.planting a garden (but I hate gardening and do not see the point of all that dirty work when you can buy perfectly good vegetables downtown at the market three days a week, cheap)

  2.organizing my photo album (which I hadn’t touched in years because it always makes me depressed to see how much my life has or hasn’t changed since 1973)

  3.alphabetizing my spices (this proved more difficult than you might imagine: does Sweet Basil, for instance, belong under S for Sweet or B for Basil?)

  I have tried replacing my negative thoughts about myself with positive ones so that I was walking around all day chanting silently: I am good. I am beautiful. I am kind. I am strong. I am damn near perfect. I am a bloody miracle. I was not convinced.

  In the end, these books just made me feel like I was a lost cause and the only thing I could do now was kill myself or turn into somebody else altogether.

  So on Monday I decided to make myself over. Brenda thought this was a great idea. We agreed though that we wouldn’t call each other for the rest of the week because I did not want to be consulted, advised, or otherwise interfered with until my transformation was complete.

  After talking to Brenda, I got right down to business and spent the rest of Monday making a list. In the middle of the afternoon, my mother called for our weekly chat, but I said, “Not now, Mom, I’m changing my life,” and she said, “Good, it’s about time. Call me when you’re done,” and I said, “Yes, I’ll call you back on Sunday night.”

  As for the make-over, I would begin with the basics. First, it would be in the nature of those full-colour Before-and-After spreads featured in women’s magazines:

  BAMBI GETS A NEW LOOK

  Meet Bambi Bird, thirty-two, mother of six, skydiver, gourmet cook, award-winning quilter, and Children’s Hospital Volunteer of the Year. Bambi’s hair was too long, her skin was too
oily, her lips too thin, her nose too big, her cheekbones too low, and her absolutely colourless eyes were set too close together. See how ugly Bambi was! With just a little help from a battalion of beauticians (and no major surgery whatsoever!), see Bambi become a cover girl! See Bambi become the most beautiful woman in the world!

  The trouble, I have always thought, with these magazine make-overs is that they never go far enough. I, on the other hand, was going to change the whole picture. I was going to change my life.

  Tuesday morning I got my hair cut short to show off the graceful bones of my skull. I had what was left tinted a deep and dramatic shade of black. This, my hairdresser assured me, was the look I was lacking: the look of a strong, independent, confident, socially correct woman who knew how to take charge of her own imminent life. “It’s you, it’s you!” he cried. “Thank you,” I said smugly and let him sell me a bottle of jojoba shampoo with matching aloe vera conditioner (guaranteed no animal testing).

  I went to the dentist and got my front teeth fixed. I got green contact lenses. I had a facial to slough all the dead cells off my face. I had a full-body massage to relax and rejuvenate my tired muscles. I signed up for aerobics three mornings a week plus a one-week crash course in water ballet.

  I dropped by the delicatessen and handed in a formal letter of resignation in which I explained that it was against my new principles to be up to my elbows all day in so much dead meat, not to mention the preservatives, the artificial colouring, and all those other chemical additives.

  Having quit my job, I became a painter. I went to the art supply store and bought an easel, two dozen prestretched canvases, a set of oil paints in forty-eight different colours including Basic Flesh, one of every paintbrush they had in stock, a twenty-volume set of hardcover books called Painting Through the Ages, and a case of rectified turpentine. I also bought a cotton painter’s smock, smoky blue. I held off on the matching beret though, as I suspected such a time-honoured symbol of artistic inclination had lately become passé.

  The salesman told me I was bound to be brilliant. He said he could tell just by looking at me. He also asked me out for a cappuccino but I said I was too busy, I was changing my life, maybe next week when I was more myself.

  That evening I set up my new easel, put on my blue painter’s smock, and created my first masterpiece. It was a still life of red and green apples in a yellow bowl on a wooden table in a shack located somewhere in a Third World country.

  On Wednesday I went to the government offices and put in my application to change my name from Cynthia to Xochiquetzal who was the Mexican equivalent to the Greek Aphrodite. I liked the idea of being a many-faceted Love Goddess, Moon Virgin, Fairy Queen, and Madonna. I had done my homework and discovered she was also the patroness of marriage and sacred harlots, of dancing, singing, spinning, weaving, magic, and art. Best of all, Xochiquetzal was in charge of all change and transformation.

  The woman at the desk said it was a great name but warned me it could take up to three months to process my application. I told her that simply would not do: I did not have all the time in the world. When I explained that I was changing my life, she said she’d put a rush on it. She said she’d speed up the bureaucratic machinery so it would get through by the end of the week for sure. I could see that changing my life was already changing the world. I could see that I was already becoming a significant and powerful person.

  Wednesday evening I went back to my easel and my blue smock (which was now aesthetically spotted and charmingly smeared with red, green, and yellow paint) and whipped up another creation. I painted a Mexican child eating a burrito and refried beans, holding a broken doll, wearing a serape and a big sombrero. I resisted the urge to give her big brown tear-filled eyes and simply closed them instead.

  On Thursday I stopped smoking, drinking, and biting my nails. I stopped watching game shows and listening to am radio. I cancelled my lifetime subscription to People magazine. I also stopped plucking my eyebrows, shaving my legs, and picking my nose. I went through my photo album and ripped out the pictures of all my old lovers. I rewrote my entire romantic history, renounced all former folly, and became a virgin again. Since I had faithfully practised all these nasty habits for years, they were deeply ingrained and most difficult to eradicate. It took me all day to master them.

  Thursday evening I painted a blue recycling box filled with pretty green wine bottles, old newspapers, a TV set, and a vcr.

  Friday morning I threw out every single thing in my clothes closet. I was especially relieved to be rid of my red and black deli uniform. I knew I was on the path to true freedom when I cut my high school graduation dress (peach satin, Empire waistline, a bulging bow at the back) into ribbons and tossed them out the window, watching the satin strips waft down like something out of a tickertape parade. I laughed gaily as I bundled up my blue jeans, my brushed nylon nighties, and my pantyhose. I contemplated giving up underwear altogether but decided that in this climate, replacing all my nylon panties with pure cotton was a more reasonable compromise.

  Friday afternoon I went downtown in my burlap sack and bought myself a whole new wardrobe. I bought embroidered vests, flowing gauzy floor-length skirts with matching scarves, flowered 100% cotton pants, Birkenstock sandals in four different styles, six new colours, and a shopping cart full of 100% virgin wool sweaters. No more of this halfway stuff for me: I wanted to go all the way: 100% pure or nothing. I was making a fashion statement. I also bought a lot of black, which sartorially speaks for itself.

  I left the burlap sack in the fitting room and walked back onto the street. Catching sight of myself in a plate-glass window, for once I did not cringe at my own reflection. Crossing the next intersection, I was sure I spotted envy in the tired eyes of the woman trudging along beside me. Yes, there it was: pure glittering envy so green her eyes were like flies.

  Friday evening I painted a naked woman wearing a string of 100% cultured pearls.

  Saturday morning, dressed in my new diaphanous duds, I tackled the kitchen. I threw out every scrap of food I could lay my lusty hands on. I put the Twinkies, the Crunchy Cheez Doodles, the Oreo Ice Cream Sandwiches, and the Schneiders Spicy Pepperettes in a double plastic bag so that not even the garbage-man would get wind of my former secret shameful ways. I also tossed my microwave oven, my aluminum pots, and my ridiculously primitive coffee percolator.

  Then I went downtown and started from scratch. At the health food store, I stocked up on wheat germ, lentils, oat bran, millet, sprouted wheat berries, soy grits, buckwheat groats, extra-virgin olive oil, ten pounds of unsulphured dried apricots, and a case of carrot juice. I also bought all five flavours of tofu and a book on how to make Tofu Cheesecake, Tofu Pizza, Tofu Croquettes, and Hot Tofu Sandwiches with Miso Gravy.

  Waiting in the checkout line, I chatted amiably with an intensely friendly woman about the relative merits of torula versus brewer’s yeast. This woman, whose name was Nirvana, said, “I’ve never seen you here before, you must be new in town,” and I said, humbly, “Yes, brand new.” Even as we spoke, I could feel my blood being purified, my colon being cleansed, and my karma, like that turpentine, being rectified.

  I thought fondly of my former self crouched not a week before over a quarter-pound bacon burger with fries and gravy on a Styrofoam plate in Eddy’s Eats across the street. From Eddy’s window I had watched the granola girls passing in and out of the health food store as if it were a church. They sported Birkenstock sandals, prettily hairy legs, and 100% cotton string grocery bags. I was so intimidated that I ordered more gravy and a double Coke float. Now here I was: already one of them, reborn as a sister with the whole wide world of health at my empowered fingertips. I knew I would never see the inside of Eddy’s Eats again.

  At the hardware store on my way home, I picked up a yogurt maker and a cappuccino machine.

  That night I soaked for an hour in a hot baking soda bath, dreaming up my future and sponging off my past. This took longer than I’d bargained on so th
ere was little time left for my painting. I didn’t get to my easel until nearly midnight and then all I could come up with was a Jackson Pollock derivative of multicoloured splotches on a plain white ground. The splatters on my smock, I had to admit, were more aesthetic than that. However, I did not despair. By this time I was thoroughly convinced that come tomorrow I would be a whole new person. I would be the woman I had always meant to be.

  On Sunday I rested and spent the whole day sitting around relaxing in my nice new self. Come Monday I would tackle my whole apartment. My belongings, I figured, should be like accessories to the new me, accessories after the fact. Not only would I replace my cheap tattered posters, my fuzzy pink toilet seat cover, and my cute kitten calendar, but I would also throw out all my tacky furniture, my juvenile record collection, and my sadly unenlightened and generally misinformed library. What I wanted first and foremost was one of those intricate handmade dried flower arrangements to put in the centre of my new coffee table, which would of course be natural genuine 100% knotty pine.

  At six o’clock I called my mom but she wasn’t home. Then I called Brenda but all I got was her answering machine. Since I no longer believed in modern technology (except for my yogurt maker and my cappuccino machine), I couldn’t leave a message and hung up politely in its electronic ear. Succumbing temporarily to a wave of nostalgic generosity, I called my unsympathetic friend, Laurie, but she wasn’t home either. It occurred to me that not only was I going to have to find new friends, but probably new parents too.

  After a delicious and nutritious supper of broiled teriyaki tofu with buckwheat groats, I put on my blue smock, which was hardly blue at all anymore, covered as it was with splatters and splashes of the rainbow in forty-eight different colours including Basic Flesh. I stood in front of the pure white canvas on my easel. I concentrated. I squinted. I held one sturdy thumb up at arm’s length, wiggled it around, and peered at it meaningfully with my right eye screwed shut.