“You know, Scarlett, I’ve never missed work because of a hangover or lack of sleep in my life. But if my only two choices were calling in sick or being seen in public with my glasses? I’d call in sick.”
Unbothered, I’d merely pointed out, “That’s what makes the world go round. People like us being so different and yet not killing each other.” Then I’d ordered the salmon.
I looked at myself in my glasses. I didn’t look too bad…did I? I’d always thought my glasses looked kind of neat on me. But then I tried to think of movie stars whom men made passes at, despite their glasses, and I drew a blank. Nicole Kidman had put on a big nose to be Virginia Woolf, but that was hardly the same thing.
Sophia Loren!
There was one, I thought, tamping down my own enthusiasm an instant later. Somehow, I doubted that the same sort of people who were drawn to Sophia Loren were going to be drawn to me. Besides, her glasses were a lot different than my glasses. I’d look silly in her glasses.
I tried to tell myself that the short hair looked good on me. I tried to tell myself that the glasses made me look like a funky kind of chic, if not necessarily a Sophia Loren kind of chic.
Then I called my mother.
It had been long overdue. Calling my mother, that is. Having been unable to face her while I was sick, now that I’d been well more than a week, it was time to bite the mother bullet.
My mother, Mom, was the kind of woman for whom the phrase “She means well” was originally coined.
Meaning well, in this instance, however, meant me meaning well and going to see her for lunch in her oversize house on Candlewood Lake—at least the swimming was good, theswimmingwasgood, theswimmingwasgood!—so that she could ply me with the homemade chicken soup that I’d cheated her out of plying me with when I’d been really sick.
As I eyed a suspicious-looking piece of chicken bone floating around in the greasy liquid, I refrained from telling her I thought that maybe I liked ramen better.
Needless to say, Mom’s a lousy cook.
But she had been living in a great home, ever since Dad died, and I liked visiting there, if not too often, liked gazing out her big picture window at the sun shining down on the lake, the children playing near the shore, the boats in the distance.
Mom had changed a lot in the seven years since Dad had died. Sure, she’d loved him—or seemed to, in the way that people who have been married a long time often do—but once he was gone, it was like some sort of door had opened for her. She no longer wore jeans, having adopted polyester for the duration; she’d stopped dyeing her hair, letting her short cut go steely, which somehow complemented her brown eyes; and she’d taken to decorating parts of her home in what I could only think of as “TV Guide Style.” No, I don’t mean she got inspiration from decorating articles in TV Guide. Are there any? I mean she decorated with TV Guide. She’d done a quarter panel of one living room wall from floor to ceiling in TV Guide covers as well as the support pole in the garage. Somehow, whenever Sam Waterston got his picture taken, I doubted he pictured himself ending up here.
She’d also taken to paying extra for any and every sports station cable had to offer.
“Your father always hated sports,” she’d said the first time that, having picked up the clicker, she’d turned on the TV during one of our dinners.
“Um, yeah,” I’d said, thinking I had after all known the man for more than thirty years, “I did know that.”
“Go Yankees!” she’d yelled at the screen, apparently not hearing a word.
And, somehow, since Dad’s death, she’d also grown taller.
“How did you do that?” I’d asked her once, looking slightly up at her as we’d stood side by side at services on Rosh Hashanah the autumn before. I was sure she used to be shorter than me. “Aren’t women supposed to get shorter as they age? You know, osteoporosis?”
“Who knows?” she’d said. “Maybe I was slouching all those years? Anyway, shush, the rabbi’s glaring at us.”
As I spooned my chicken soup, watching her watch the game, it was as though she were reading my mind.
“And you’ll go to services with me again this year? The High Holy Days will be here again before you know it.”
“Do I have to?”
Sometimes, I could sound soooo twelve.
“No, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to be religious anymore, that’s between you and God.”
“Good.”
“So, I’ll buy tickets for both of us?”
“Okay.”
“Are you seeing anyone special?”
“No.”
“Still working at the library?”
“Well, it is my job.”
“Feh.”
What I didn’t tell her was that I was in the midst of a two-week leave. Having decided to devote myself to My Transformation, I’d put in for the vacation time I hadn’t taken yet that year. True, they didn’t love the idea on such short notice, but they did feel bad I’d been so sick, and I had worked there for a long time and was a good employee.
“You could always change your job,” my mother suggested.
“We’ll see.”
A commercial came on, something involving talking fruit that could also dance pretty good, and my mother finally tore her eyes away from the screen.
“Omigod,” she said, “there’s something different about you.”
Hard to believe, we’d been together for an hour already. You’d think she’d have noticed when I first walked in the door, but the TV had been on. With one eye on the game and the other on the pot, she’d served up my bowl of chicken soup without looking at me once.
“What?” I asked, hopefully. “Maybe I look taller?”
“No—” she pooh-poohed the suggestion “—you’re still shorter than me.”
Rats.
“Omigod,” she said. “Your hair! It’s…gone!”
I waited, dreading to hear her cry over the loss of my “crowning glory.”
Then: “I love it!” she cried. “Where did you get it done? I want to get a cut like that!”
Oh, God: it was even worse than having her cry over the loss. Apparently, I was now sporting my polyester mother’s ideal haircut.
I told her I’d done the snipping myself, but she wasn’t listening. She was already on to something else.
“And those glasses!” she enthused. “You just look so…kind-of smart.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Oh, are they going to love you at synagogue this year!”
In part to make myself feel better over the fact that my mother now wanted to look like me, I accepted Pam’s suggestion we spend the evening at Chalk Is Cheap. Besides, I needed to try out my new look in the Real World, didn’t I?
Chalk Is Cheap was somewhere on the middle of the continuum between the high-end pool halls that refused to admit anyone wearing a leather jacket and the grunge bars I’d frequented when I was younger; there was plenty of leather in sight but the carpeting was still intact, there was only minimal risk of getting shot, and the police never raided the place after hours for allowing gambling.
As I sat there at a tall but tiny round table with Pam, I noticed there was something different about her.
“Your hair!” I said.
Indeed, her hair. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d been doing some changing. In place of her previous overdone-for-nights-out-on-the-town coif, Pam was now sporting a look that would have been at home on any of a number of sexy sitcom stars: an uneven part separated the strands that had been tinted in pretty colors ranging from a white gold to chestnut. The hair itself had been straightened, with just the ends turned up in a perky flip.
“You like it?” she asked, preening.
“Yes,” I said. And I did. It was beautiful hair.
“Thanks.” She smiled. “You know, I just figured, why not? Why not shake things up a bit?”
Her hair wasn’t the only thing Pam had shaken up, I noticed, peering at her m
ore closely in the dim light. She’d also done something new with her makeup, her previous too-much attempts having been muted down to a pretty and tasteful technique that made her eyes pop without looking as though she had pop eyes. I would have complimented her on that, too, but I’ve never felt comfortable complimenting other women on their makeup, the underlying message akin to: “I’m glad to see you’re getting professional help. You look sooo much better now!”
“I had the girl at the Macy’s counter do me,” she said, answering my unasked question. “Usually, when I do that, I don’t buy anything afterward. But she did such a good job on me, that I bought it all. Good move, you think?”
I thought.
Too bad she hadn’t done something about her clothes. Still determined to look like a Joan Collins throwback, she appeared to be wearing every sequin in her collection for her night on the prowl. I, on the other hand, had on a pair of old tight jeans—no way was I going to engage in the belly-baring low-riders that had taken the nation ill-advisedly by storm—and a tight white T-shirt that bore the faded pink legend “National Cha-Cha Champion”; not that I’d ever cha-cha-ed, but the cotton felt good.
“Your hair looks good like that, too,” Pam said, returning the compliment, although her smile seemed a little wicked. “I like the glasses, too. They’re, um, very anti-chic.”
“Thanks. I think.”
Two rounds of drinks later and Pam was brooding that no men were approaching us, not that that’s what I was there for at least, so I put some quarters down on the pool table and waited my turn to shoot.
When my quarters finally came up, the usual kerfuffle ensued, meaning some guy I’d never seen in there before approached me, assuming—wrongly—he could con the table off some girl.
I, of course, wasn’t having any.
“Just because I have ovaries,” I said to the guy, who might have been attractive if his eyes weren’t so red with drink, “doesn’t mean I can’t remember where I put my own quarters.” We librarians can be tough. “See this blue chalk mark across the face of these quarters?” I held up the two in question close to his face so he could see. “Did you put that chalk on these quarters?”
Of course he hadn’t. I’d put the chalk mark there—hey, chalk is cheap—knowing this kind of con attempt was more likely to happen as the night wore on and people got drunker, ruder.
He shook his head, sheepish.
“No, of course you didn’t.” Librarians can be pedantic, too; we get a lot of practice at work. “I did. Now move it.” I gave him a gentle I-mean-business shove. “I’ve got a game to shoot here.”
As I bent down to put my coins in the slot, I heard from behind me, “Whoa! Nice butt!” This was from Cute But Too Drunk Guy. And then, from farther behind him, “Ah, shit.” This, of course, said in disgust, came from Pam.
And so the evening went.
No one paid attention to Pam and me as a duo, no one approached with offers to buy us drinks, but whenever I took my turn at the table, whenever I bent over to take a shot, someone would comment on my backside, some offering invitations, all of which I declined.
“Ah, shit,” Pam said again at the end of the evening, as we divvied up the bar tab. “You still have an unfair advantage. We’ve really got to do something about that wardrobe.”
14
The Danbury Mall in the evening, particularly in late summer, never feels the same as it does during the daytime, when the mothers and young children rule the skylight-covered lengths, or the weekends, when the fathers have been added to the mix. Like some kind of netherworld, it becomes overrun with teens, the whole place taking on an edgy quality, as though something could happen at any moment, although, truth to tell and Danbury being a relatively safe city, it never had the few times I’d been there on a weeknight.
Based on what had happened the last time we’d been in Chalk Is Cheap, Pam had decided it was time to take my extreme makeunder to a new level.
As we met in front of the carousel, debating where to grab a bite to eat before shopping, we discussed the merits of Sbarro’s versus the brick-oven place.
“Sbarro’s,” Pam decided for us. “I want to get a big salad.”
“You? Salad?”
“Sure, why not?”
I shrugged. She’d never wanted salad before.
As we walked past the other tables and stood in line, I felt Pam put her hand on my arm, leaning in to whisper, “Omigod! Did you see how that…boy was looking at you?”
“What boy?” I asked, ordering a slice of plain cheese and a large diet soda.
“Him.” She turned back toward the tables, indicating with her chin the one she meant.
There was indeed a boy back there—well, okay, he was probably at least nineteen, but to us he was a boy—sitting with a group of friends and looking our way. He had dark hair, pants that were way too loose for my taste and soulful eyes that looked like he might have at least read a book in his life. If I’d been twenty years younger, I might have gone over to say hi. When my eyes met his, he blushed, having been caught staring, looked away, then boldly looked back to see if I was still looking. I smiled to be polite, the kind of smile you give to the convenience-store clerk whenever he gives you the right change and remembers to thank you, and turned back to pay for my dinner.
“He’s probably just a very friendly person,” I said to Pam. “I’m sure he smiles that way at everybody.”
“Hah!” she hah-ed, paying for her salad and water. “Look at you.”
“What about me?”
“Look at how you’re dressed.”
I had on my white summer short-shorts and red tank, a pair of skinny gold sandals that had seen better summers adorning my feet. No slave to the current trends in sloppy fashion would ever dress this way, but hey, I’d grown up in a time when short-shorts were the norm and the look worked for me.
“It’s summer,” I said. “It was hot outside today.” I certainly wasn’t about to defend my inalienable rights to life, liberty and the wearing of comfortable clothes in seasonably hot and humid weather.
“I’m just saying,” she said. “It’s not like anyone can miss how…you you are when you’re dressed like that.”
Again, I wasn’t about to debate this with her, but I did kind of know what she meant.
For as long as I could remember, going to the mall meant selectively ignoring a certain kind of attention: men, sometimes ancient and sometimes too young to know what puberty was, passing me by, their eyes staring too long at things like, oh, say, my breasts. Truth to tell, I didn’t mind the young ones so much as I got older—I thought it was kind of funny, kind of flattering. But the old ones? I did wonder what possessed men, because they always looked as though they thought it was possible, however remote, they might have some kind of a chance, which was kind of icky. If, when I’m seventy, I go through life always staring at the penises of forty-year-old men, looking as if I expect to get some, don’t you think someone might lock me away?
But I wasn’t about to change the way I dressed. Nothing I wore was ever overly suggestive—okay, maybe some things were a little tight, but nothing overly suggestive—and I did have the same rights as everyone else to wear whatever I found comfortable.
“See?” Pam smiled, grabbing us a small table. “We’re doing this just in the nick of time.”
“How’s that?”
“We’re saving you from yourself, Scarlett. Don’t you think it’s time you find out how the world treats you when it’s no longer staring at your breasts?”
“What do you suggest,” I asked, taking the plastic knife and fork and, with much effort, cutting the large slice right down the middle, “purdah?”
She ignored my question, watching what I was doing to the pizza instead. “You always do that,” she said, “cut your food in half. Why?”
I shrugged, raised the half slice I intended on eating. “I’ve been doing it for years. It was something I read once.”
“What? A diet book?”<
br />
“No. I think it was Muriel Spark’s A Far Cry from Kensington. This woman loses a lot of weight simply by cutting everything she eats in half.”
“Sounds like a great book.”
“Well, that wasn’t really what it was about. Anyway, ever since then, I never say no to anything I want to eat. I just eat half.”
“Sounds efficient.”
I shrugged again. “It’s only ever really a problem when what I want to eat is a whole pound of M&M’s.”
I was tired of the microscope always being on me. “What about you?” I said a bit defensively, indicating the salad. “What’s up with that?”
“Oh. That.” I could have sworn she blushed. “Well—” she squirmed around a little, self-consciously playing with her new pretty hair “—I just figured, while you’re busy deglamorizing yourself, why can’t I try to improve my appearance, to see how the world treats me if I look different?”
Why, indeed?
A half of a scoop of mocha-chip ice cream for me and a cup of black coffee for Pam, and we were contemplating where to shop first.
“Eddie Bauer?” I suggested. “J. Crew?”
“Sears,” Pam said.
“Sears?” Even non-materialistic me was horrified at this.
“Oh, all right,” she conceded, “we’ll compromise: Filene’s. At least there I can get some new things, too, and it won’t all be about you-you-you.”
Sometimes, I wondered: just who was this all about?
As I fingered the price tag on a deep purple silk blouse—it would be great for work with a gray wool skirt I had, plus I could tuck it into jeans for an eclectic look on Saturday nights—Pam tugged on my arm.
“Come on,” she said, stowing me in a vacant dressing stall. “I’ll bring you things. Sheesh! No way can you be trusted to pick out your own clothes.”
She made me feel like my ten-year-old self out shopping with Mom: “No, Scarlett. You most definitely cannot have that tube top. You need to wear a bra.” Then, snagging a passing salesgirl: “Foundations? Don’t you sell foundations here?”
A Little Change of Face Page 7
