Hang Down Your Head

by Janice Macdonald

  We popped into Lee Valley for fruit fly traps, which Denise swore by, so I obediently bought a box of two as well. The place was like home-project porn for gardeners and woodworkers. All the tools and canny devices listed in their catalogues were set out for inspection. I could see at least seven items that would improve the quality of my life, but the predominant improvement would be the ensuing lightness of my pocketbook, so I restricted myself to daydreaming.

  “You can dream all year long,” Denise confided, as we waited for our numbers to be called and orders filled. “Now that they have your name and address in their computer, they’ll send you their delectable catalogues.”

  After Lee Valley, Denise headed us south to the Callingwood Shopping Centre, which is actually an extended strip mall anchored by a Safeway that also hosts a farmers’ market twice a week. We, however, were here to have lunch. Denise had discovered The Bagel Bin a while back when helping a friend move. The bakery was on site, and everything on the menu—written on chalkboards behind the counter—was made from scratch. I chose the lox and cream cheese on a country bagel with an order of cream of wild rice soup. Denise had a grilled veggie panini. The food was delicious, and another mark of its excellence emerged when we each admitted that we were a little sorry we hadn’t chosen what the other had ordered, since it looked so good.

  Denise scooped a taste of my soup with her coffee spoon.

  “Mmm, it’s sort of like clam chowder without all the fishiness! I swear, everything on the menu is great. I should just sit here and try it all.”

  “It’s a bit out of the way, but that’s probably a good thing, considering how much cream might be in this soup,” I said, pulling my bowl proprietarily back toward me. Denise nodded.

  “No doubt. But it would be worth it to get fat on this sort of diet.”

  We spent the next few minutes digesting in silence, the mark of truly great food or inordinately hungry people. With half a bagel to go, I took a sip of water and sat back for a bit.

  “So, Barbara Shoppe is next, right? Is it very, very swanky? Am I going to be embarrassed to walk in there dressed as I am?”

  Denise raked a clinical eye over my ensemble, which consisted of red jeans, red Birkenstock rubber clogs, and a white and red striped T-shirt. She was wearing a sleeveless black polo-necked top tucked into black slub linen trousers, with black strappy sandals showing off a beautiful pedicure and discreet silver toe ring. Denise would always look classically appropriate wherever she went. She nodded, and said that I looked as if I’d been hauled away from my prize-winning perennial garden and had a sort of Katherine Hepburn disregard for fashion.

  Since I actually bought the T-shirt brand new rather than as my usual thrift shop find, I was a bit put out by her assessment, but was so pleased to be compared to Katherine Hepburn I didn’t let it get to me overmuch. As long as no one looked askance at me in the store, I didn’t mind.

  Denise laughed at my obvious nervousness over our upcoming sortie and seemed so jazzed by the idea of spying out the woman who might be making life miserable for me that I didn’t have the heart to call it off. Besides, what possible harm could it do to go into the store?

  We got in the car and drove to a small shopping plaza near the zoo, halfway back toward the centre of town. The Barbara Shoppe was snuggled in between an Italian bakery and a wine-making supplies store. There was another bistro-style restaurant at one end of the strip, and a small pharmacy at the other. All the cars in the ample lot looked either brand new or classic. It occurred to me that I’d never actually seen this place before. I guess I just don’t move in the right circles.

  I’d read an article in the paper a couple of years ago that made me laugh about where the “working rich” lived in Edmonton, as opposed to both the middle class and the idle rich. It just never hit me that there would be idle rich here. After all, if you didn’t have to work for your livelihood, why wouldn’t you take yourself to somewhere more climatically hospitable? However, it seemed there was a coterie of trust fund babies who ambled about on various curves of the riverbank and never had to bother to ask how much anything cost. This had the look of a place they might frequent. I was starting to regret the whole idea.

  Denise turned to me as she removed her driving sunglasses and checked her hair in the mirror behind her sun visor.

  “Ready, Randy? Just remember, these women can smell fear. Just try to look bored and we’ll be just fine.”

  “I’ll let you do all the talking.”

  “That would be best. Okay, ready set—charge it.”

  The carpet in the Barbara Shoppe was thicker and softer than most mattresses. While the door didn’t chime when we walked in, I think it must have set off some sort of announcement, because a well-tailored woman in her mid-forties appeared from behind a mirrored wall. She smiled a welcome from her position behind a highly polished French-styled table desk, which held a ledger, a small collection of pens in a crystal tumbler, another crystal saucer with assorted pins and elastics, and a large vase of flowers. The clerk, or manager, or whatever she was, feigned arranging the already perfectly arranged orange gladioli and burnished bronze eucalyptus leaves, which I was betting she had chosen to complement her own light auburn hair and creamy complexion. The scarf around her neck had orange and rust colours winding through a cream overprint, along with an almost brown tone that matched the shade of her dark linen skirt. She would have looked right at home in Buckingham Palace, or even Monaco, and her cultured voice matched her looks, I realized, as she spoke to us.

  “I’m so relieved the weather has decided to calm into merely pleasant. My garden was about to frizzle up and admit defeat last week.”

  “Did those lovely glads come from your garden?” Denise moved forward into the circle of conversation. She’d obviously been born knowing the right thing to say in any situation. The woman lost her veneer of forced charm and smiled honestly at her.

  “Yes, they did. I’ve been very lucky with my gladioli these last few years. My mother said she found them too ‘insistent’ but I’ve always loved their vigour.” She dusted imaginary garden soil from her perfectly manicured hands and turned full face to Denise. “Was there something special you were hunting for, or are you having a pleasure jaunt?”

  I don’t know what it is about some people’s ideas of pleasure. I have never found shopping to be much of a joy, but I know of lots of people who see it as a diversion. My grandmother used to love to shop, and she counted it a major victory if she returned home with nothing.

  Denise assured her new friend that we were just browsing, and we were left to our own recognizance. I looked at the price tag on a pair of gabardine trousers and lost the capacity to breathe for a moment. Denise’s hand on my elbow shocked a gasp back into my throat.

  “It might be a good idea to try something on. Salespeople tend to talk more if they think you’re serious about their merchandise. Do you want to try things or should I?”

  “I’m not sure they’d have my size; aren’t they all size 2 at the country club?”

  “Don’t you believe it. In order to survive, a place like this has to have sizes for the dowagers who are rich enough to not have to worry about tennis lessons. The real beauty will be that you will find yourself mysteriously fitting into sizes about one to two sizes less than you would in your average chain store. Extreme wealth means never having to say you’re plus sized.”

  Denise was right. Aside from the rack of camel-hair skirts and jackets from Jaeger in London, most of the sizes were skewed slightly larger than I was used to. She and I randomly chose skirts and dresses to try on. I had to call for help from the saleslady when I discovered that I was swimming in the size 12s and 14s I’d picked out. Soon I was decked out in a full-skirted silk dress slightly reminiscent of the Fifties, twirling in the three-way mirror in the dressing room common area. Maybe it was worth $600 to claim I was a size 9.

  Denise came out of her dressing room looking like a blond Jackie Kennedy minus the p
illbox hat.

  “Chanel is reinventing itself,” the saleslady, who asked us to call her Pia (though I was certain she was going to say Grace), purred approvingly. Denise’s suit was wheat coloured, with black and gold piping around the edges of the boxy jacket and the pocket flaps. Black and gold military buttons marched down the front. Pia pulled a black suede headband from behind her back and offered it to Denise. She was right. It was perfect, pulling back Denise’s blond hair and declaring it part of the ensemble. “Now that suit will take you to the opera or to the steeplechase. In fact, if you wanted to try a pair of black trousers with the jacket you can see how easily this becomes a staple classic for your wardrobe.”

  Denise allowed her to go searching for a pair of trousers with which to make her point, and turned to examine my dress.

  “That style looks great on you, Randy. Actually, most of the Fifties and Sixties styles look great on all women. I think Twiggy and Mary Quant should be taken out and shot for what they bequeathed the rest of us.”

  “Sure it looks great, but did you see what it costs?” I hissed, so that Pia wouldn’t overhear my ingratitude for being considered petite.

  “No one is going to force you to buy it, kiddo. Just enjoy.”

  I shrugged. Maybe I was missing some essential shopping gene. I just didn’t get it. I turned to head back into my changing room, which was probably the most luxurious room I’d ever seen outside a stately homes tour. There was a Louis XIV-style chair and table in the corner, and a huge gilt mirror on the wall. A coat rack with a fluffy white housecoat stood in the other corner. Terry-towel slippers sat under the housecoat. At the side of the louvred doorway was a small framed sign hanging over a set of doorbells, similar to that of a small apartment building. The sign indicated that one should ring the bell next to our particular sales lady’s name if we required any help, but to feel welcome to don the robe and venture out into the shop if we wished.

  I probably could have managed the back zipper on the dress, but I had a hankering to see what Pia’s call bell would sound like. A muted “Ode to Joy” sounded somewhere out beyond the change area, and the super saleswoman appeared almost immediately. She had trousers for Denise, and was more than pleased to oblige with the zipper.

  “I have a middy blouse I think you would just love. Would you care to try it?” I wasn’t all that sure what a middy blouse was. I nodded to Pia and popped back into my red jeans in the meantime. I silently thanked the gods of lingerie that I was wearing a relatively new brassiere that didn’t have that dingy look most of my bras took on just before the underwire decided to work its way through the lining and stab me.

  The mirror in the changing room had to be rigged like a funhouse mirror. I swear I looked twenty pounds thinner when I looked in it. Maybe I should just move in, and let Pia run out for my meals.

  Since we were all alone in the store, I risked opening my door and calling out to Denise. She had the trousers on now, and appeared in the doorway of her change room.

  “Don’t you love it? I wish I could handle having only about four classic pieces in my wardrobe and letting them become my signature silhouette. The trouble is, I have enough budget to get one suit and a pair of trousers, or four blouses, three pairs of jeans, two wool jumpers, a black skirt and four mix-and-match pieces of power-suit dressing—but not both.”

  “I could shop for two years at Value Village for what that dress cost,” I replied. Denise laughed, and then nodded.

  “The thing about this kind of wardrobe is that you’re a lot more likely to come across pieces like it at Value Village than you are to find blue jeans. People eventually grow bored of their clothing, I think, and this sort of thing is just way too good to cut up for rags or sew into a patchwork quilt.” She grinned. “Take me with you on your next foray and I’ll see what sorts of labelwear I can find.”

  Pia reappeared at that moment and flourished a sailor top in front of her. It was made of a thick, cream-coloured polished cotton, and navy piping was worked into two lines around the squared-off sailor collar. My mouth must have hung open because Pia beamed with a look of self-congratulation. She had my number but good.

  I walked into the change room holding the middy blouse in front of me. I didn’t bother looking at the price tag, knowing that I had to try it on, and not wanting to be dissuaded before I could feel it on my skin. I closed my eyes and slipped it over my head.

  It was perfect. It hung just to the right length to make my hips seem controllable, and felt like silk against my skin. The long sleeves ended in cuffs that looked tailored, but somehow hid an elastic, making them easy to slide into. With my hair drawn back into a braid, I looked like a young Victorian girl ready to recite “The Boy Stood On the Burning Deck” for my mother’s tea party, or to be Anne Shirley’s bosom friend, Diana. I loved it. I turned to the door, and opened it. Denise and Pia were standing there, waiting, and both of them clapped spontaneously at the sight of me.

  “Tell me it’s not too expensive, Denise,” I begged, holding up my hair so that she could scoop out the price tag from the back of my neck.

  “It’s not too bad, depending on how much you love it.”

  I took a deep breath. “Tell me,” I said.

  “One hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “It is on sale, dear,” Pia rode in to the rescue, although God only knows what the word sale meant in this environment. “It was in our spring offerings, mostly for cruise wear, we thought. Maybe it was just too young a look for some of our clientele. Let me go check the books.”

  Denise and I looked at each other. While she could walk away from a Chanel suit with a laugh and a shrug, I wasn’t sure I could leave this top behind.

  Pia was back in a minute.

  “It is marked down to ninety-three dollars.” Ninety-three dollars? For a shirt? I couldn’t do it. I shook my head and went back into the changing room. In a minute, I was standing near the door with Denise, back in my red striped T-shirt. Pia smiled and offered a parting shot.

  “Check back with us in another month when all the summer clothes go on sale. Our spring wear will be even more reduced then.”

  I promised to return in late August and pulled the door open. The air was palpable on our skin; it had warmed up that much while we were in there.

  “Careful of the seatbelt buckle,” Denise warned as we slid into her car. “So, that’s the Barbara Shoppe. No sign of Barbara Finster, no obvious element of folk music haters. Did you get anything at all out of that visit, besides a longing for the sea?” she laughed.

  Easy for her. Everything looked good on her. I was going to be dreaming about that blouse for a long time to come.

  18

  ~

  While I had been salivating over the middy blouse, apparently Denise actually got some information out of Pia about what it was like to work for ”the formidable Barbara.” She’d been with the Barbara Shoppes for twenty-two years, and a couple of the other salesladies even longer, lured over from Johnston Walkers when it went the way of the dodo.

  “The first Shoppe was in a basement under a music store on Jasper Avenue, around the same block as the old Paramount Theatre, from what I could figure, give or take a block. Pia started talking about having to stop meeting for coffee and butterhorns at the Silk Hat Restaurant because Barbara had determined that it wasn’t seemly that her ladies would be seen frequenting a greasy spoon. Now, I know the Silk Hat is still there, in a new configuration as a fancy bar, but precious little else is.”

  “Twenty-two years selling overpriced clothing to wealthy women?” Knowing that, I couldn’t imagine how Pia could plaster on a smile in the morning, and her smile had seemed genuine enough.

  Denise shrugged.

  “It’s a living. You would be amazed at what sorts of livings people eke out all over the place, Randy. Look up from your books once in a while.”

  I felt ashamed. Denise was right. Someone had to keep the world as we knew it ticking alo
ng. Just because I didn’t see a particular need for a certain job didn’t mean it wasn’t necessary. After all, without clothes boutiques and artisan bakeries, perhaps the streets would be overrun with gangs of truculent members of the Junior League, looking for trouble.

  Denise went on: “So Pia and the other ladies assumed that when Ms. Finster expanded the business to three Shoppes, two in town and one in Calgary, as well as moving from the original location, that the commensurate profits would be reflected in both their pay and benefits packets. It’s about this time that the picture gets a little less rosy.”

  “God! When did she tell you all this? I swear I was only in the dressing room alone for a minute or two.”

  “You were mooning over that sailor top for at least half an hour,” Denise laughed. “It’s almost two-thirty, you know.”

  I looked down at my wrist to check and realized for the first time that I’d forgotten to wear a watch. There was proof positive that I trust Denise as a true friend. Having allowed her to control the shape of the day, I left it all in her capable hands. Two-thirty? I couldn’t imagine that we’d been breathing that rarified Barbara Shoppe air for over ninety minutes. Maybe I was catching a glimpse of the magic of entertainment shopping.

  We were by this time zooming over the one-lane bridge that merges traffic onto the Whitemud Freeway heading southbound. When Denise got back on solid land, she changed to the middle lane, which meant she didn’t intend to take Fox Drive exit to the university off the bridge. Like any good annoying passenger, I was immediately on the defensive, wondering out loud where we were headed.

  “There’s another Barbara Shoppe out in the southwest end of town. I thought you might be interested in seeing if they had your sailor suit on a deeper discount.” I was about to protest when I caught on that she was joking. Damn if she didn’t look just like the Cheshire Cat when she grinned.

  “I thought it might be a good idea to hit both of the Shoppes here before they begin to compare notes and get back to the boss lady, what do you think?”