A Little Change of Face

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  Pam made me feel just like that.

  For the next half hour, I stood in the stall as Pam brought me armload after armload of clothes.

  “Just think of the favor I’m doing you,” she said brightly. “You do need a fall wardrobe, don’t you?”

  “Well, maybe one or two items,” I muttered. “But, no, I hadn’t planned on doing a whole new wardrobe this season.”

  I pulled one of the dresses, all of which looked remarkably similar in shape, even though the colors were slightly different—olive, forest, beige, tan—over my head.

  Looking in the mirror, I saw that it had long narrow sleeves and a loose Empire cut with a long skirt touching nearly to my ankles. Across the back, there were two strings to tie, which—take your pick—made me look either asexual or pregnant, in that the whole effect somehow made my breasts look like nonstarters while the rest of me now looked like there was perhaps much more to me than there really was.

  Well, I thought, feeling the material against my skin, at least it was one-hundred-percent cotton.

  “Isn’t this, um, a little big?” I asked Pam tentatively, fiddling with the tag to check the size. “Hey!” I answered myself before she could say anything. “This is three sizes bigger than what I normally wear!”

  She shrugged. “Just think of how much more comfortable you’ll be this fall. Now wait here—I’m going to go get you a few more things.”

  Going to get me a few things took her far longer this time. What? Had she stopped for a snack? But as she knocked on the pink door and entered, I saw that, in addition to two more tent dresses for me—mauve and orchid this time, so she was branching me out—she was carrying a Filene’s bag with a paid receipt stapled to the top.

  “You bought me something?” I asked, slipping into the mauve dress.

  “No, I bought me something.” She carefully pulled apart the receipt closure and removed a stunning cashmere wool sweater dress with gently folded turtleneck in an off-white that looked soft as a bunny. Throw in a pair of decent pumps, and I’d wear that dress.

  As she held it against her body, I saw that something was wrong: the dress was so much smaller than Pam—more my size, really—I could wear that dress.

  Apparently, Pam was able to guess what I was thinking. “It’s all right,” she said, not at all bothered. “I’ll just hang it in my closet until my body is ready for it.”

  “Right,” I said, “the salads.”

  “You know,” she said, eyes sparkling, “while I’m losing weight, you could be gaining weight!”

  “Uh, no,” I said emphatically. After all, I had to draw the line somewhere. “Who do I look like to you—Renée Zellweger? Are you going to pay me twenty million to do this?”

  “No,” she conceded, “I guess not. So maybe that was too much to ask.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, still miffed as I turned to check out my mauve reflection, “maybe.”

  The mauve dress looked exactly like the olive dress had, only mauve.

  “Um,” I said, realizing even as I said it that I’d suddenly become the kind of person who said “um” a lot, “don’t all these dresses look, um, remarkably the same? What is this supposed to be, um, my new uniform from now on?”

  “Exactly!” said Pam. “Are you sure you’re not willing to bind—”

  “No!” I half shouted, crossing my arms protectively over my breasts.

  “No need to get so touchy. I was just asking.” Pam surveyed my reflection in the mirror with satisfaction—the shapeless mauve dress, my short hair, my glasses—the same reflection that caused me such unease because I felt as though I didn’t know this woman. “Empire waists—” she smiled “—what a wonderful thing. They’re the next best thing to bound breasts!”

  Having persuaded me to wear the new clothes home— Pam: “Might as well start with the New You tonight”; Me: “But it’s hot out”; Pam (winning): “Oh, don’t be such a baby”—our next stop was the shoe department. Well, since the mauve dress did look ridiculous with my gold sandals, I realized Pam was right; I needed new shoes.

  As I looked at the fun boots that were out for fall—soft leathers with heels that were architectural marvels—Pam picked out a pair for me.

  They were brown. They laced up above the ankle. They had a clunky heel.

  “Don’t these look, um, military?” I asked, trying them on.

  “They’re perfect,” she said, putting on a pretty pair of pumps to go with the new dress she had in her bag.

  Hey! I wanted those pumps! Who cared how much they made my feet hurt? Besides I was lying when I said I didn’t want to wear high heels anymore.

  Then she selected a new bag for me: a nondescript pleather thing that was more book bag than fashion statement.

  “It’s perfect for the librarian in you,” she said.

  Finally, she took me to a store where they sold only sunglasses.

  “Here,” she held out her hand, “give me your old pair.”

  Feeling like a robot, I surrendered my Wayfarers.

  Not my Wayfarers!

  “Here,” she said again, handing me those clip-on sunglasses made for the visually impaired who can’t handle contacts. “Tomorrow, when the sun is shining, you can put these on.”

  I glanced in the tiny mirror: I looked like an idiot.

  Not that there’s anything wrong with people who wear clip-ons. It’s just that on me, they looked idiotic.

  Then Pam put on my Wayfarers: she looked, if not great, almost cool in them.

  All in all, it really was worse than shopping with Mom.

  Since Pam was now on a diet, and I had lost my appetite, rather than having a snack, we headed back to the carousel. At the top of the ramp leading from the mall to the parking garage, I saw the young guy we’d seen earlier when having pizza and salad, the one who’d been checking me out. He was still hanging out with his friends, sharing a cigarette. As we walked by them, his eyes briefly met mine, but there was no spark of recognition as he moved his gaze onward.

  It was as though I wasn’t even there.

  The tide, apparently, was already starting to turn.

  It was as though a fairy godmother had come to visit, only she’d been an evil fairy godmother; instead of waving her wand and giving me a ball gown and a royal coach, she’d left me in rags and bare feet.

  Best Girlfriend wasn’t going to like any of this.

  Just then, I heard a voice yell out of the relative darkness of the parking lot, “Yo, mama!”

  Pam and I both turned reflexively, being the only two mamas around. Pam actually preened a bit.

  “Yo, mama! You in the big dress! I’m talking to you.” It wasn’t the guy who had looked at me before, but it was one of his friends.

  If preening could be said to dim, I saw Pam’s preening dim.

  “I like a woman in a big dress,” he said.

  “Oh, shit,” Pam muttered. “It doesn’t matter what I do to you, does it? Someone still finds you attractive.”

  15

  Best Girlfriend did not like any of it, had said as much during a long phone conversation recently, and she certainly wouldn’t like what Pam was telling me now.

  “It’s your breasts.”

  “It is soooooooo not my breasts.”

  “It’s your breasts.”

  “And if it were, what do you propose I do…bind them?”

  I couldn’t believe we were back on this subject again. Pam had dropped by, unannounced, and we were sitting in my living room, drinking the wine coolers she’d brought. People might not think anyone still drank wine coolers, but Pam did.

  “Hey…” Her eyes gleamed.

  “Oh, no. What in the world are you thinking about? Did I ever mention how I hate it whenever you get that particular look in your eye? I positively hate it whenever you get that look in your eye.”

  “Listen, Scarlett, believe it or not, there are days I don’t completely love you, either. But this isn’t about that.”

  “Yo
u’re talking about talking me into binding my breasts, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there are times you don’t completely love me?”

  “Who said anything about binding your breasts?”

  “Uh, you did,” I said. “You said it that last time we were at the pool with T.B. and Delta and you said it again when we were shopping at Filene’s.”

  “You must be mistaking me for someone else. I never said anything about binding your breasts. I mean, how gross. How geisha-y. How Asia.”

  “Now, there’s a whole continent you don’t completely love?”

  “Put it like this—are you going to ever go there?”

  I thought about my bank account; did some quick mental calculations. My bank account was actually in good shape, given my father had left me nearly as well off as he’d left my mom, but still: “Probably not.”

  “Me, neither. See what I mean? Why bother?”

  The sad thing was, I did kind of see what she meant, which made me feel very small and very much like I was a part of what constituted the least attractive part of being born an American, like maybe I was still on the flag, but I was the star that had gotten mustard spilled on it at the baseball game or something. Know what I mean?

  “Hello, Scarlett. Earth to Scarlett. Is anybody still at home?”

  “Ouch,” I said, fending her off. “You don’t need to tap on the side of my brain like that.”

  “Maybe if you stayed with me, I wouldn’t. But as T.B. always likes to say, ‘You does like to wander.’”

  Somehow, hearing Pam mimic T.B. never seemed the same as when I did it or when Delta did it, especially since we knew T.B. hammed it up for us, anyway. And in Delta’s case, she wasn’t exactly mimicking. Regardless, T.B.’s voice coming out of Pam’s mouth seemed just plain wrong somehow, making me feel like I used to feel when I was a kid and I’d run into a teacher in some out-of-school place like the grocery store or the town pool or whatever and I’d think to myself, “What’s wrong with this picture?” only to answer my own question: “Everything.”

  So, yes, everything was wrong with T.B.’s words, real or mock, coming out of Pam, but, like with those wandering teachers who wouldn’t stay where they belonged, it was nothing I could articulate to other human beings, certainly nothing I could ever properly articulate well enough to still sound sane.

  “Well, Pam,” I said, finally returning to her definition of Earth, “if you could ever just once tell me what it is you’re thinking from start to finish, it might make it easier for me not to get distracted or even completely lost in the details.”

  “Do I need to keep spelling out in so many words that nothing I’m about to suggest has anything remotely to do with binding your breasts?”

  I reflected for a moment. “Yes,” I finally decided, “you do need to keep spelling it out in so many words. Until we reach a point in this conversation where at least five minutes have passed without the words ‘binding’ and ‘breasts’ appearing together in the same sentence, you absolutely do need to keep spelling out in so many words that you’re not going to suggest that.”

  “Fine.” She looked at her watch, started timing herself. “This is what I’ve been trying to suggest, if you’d only just let me get the words out.”

  “Yes?”

  “Except for the breast-binding part, how would you feel about giving me your looks for a while?”

  16

  “Who are you—the devil?”

  It’d taken me longer than the five minutes Pam was supposed to be timing her success at not simultaneously using “breast” and “binding” in the same sentence—a success that had turned out to be a complete failure, I might point out, as evidenced by that last question of hers.

  “And, by the way,” I added, “wasn’t having me moderate my appearance what we’ve been doing all along here?”

  I don’t know why I was so bugged exactly. Maybe it was simply that I’d never felt she’d voiced her idea, her plan, in such cold terms.

  “No, I’m not the devil,” she said, answering my first question and ignoring my second. “I’m your friend. I’m trying to help you find out if people like you merely for what you look like and not who you are. Besides, what kind of a devil would offer you a deal to make yourself look worse? It seems to me, that all the devils I’ve ever read about only make people deals that will make them look better.”

  “Yes—” I tried to sound sage and mystically in-the-know, but only succeeded in sounding like a complete and utter ass, even to my own ears “—but you might be the cleverest devil of all, the devil that does the exact opposite of what all other devils have ever done so that no one will ever suspect that you’re the devil, and not just any devil, but the real one, the tricky one, which is what you are, the realest and the trickiest.”

  “Whoa, you really need to stop watching the same supernatural shows that all of those preteen girls get hooked on, Scarlett.” She held up her hands defensively, looking like she was going to go for the garlic next. “Watching them like you do is really starting to turn you into some kind of flake.”

  She was my Default Best Friend. You’d think she’d have known I didn’t watch those shows.

  “Oh.” I hands-on-hipsed her. “And, like, suggesting that an American woman compromise what looks she has is such a completely unflakey thing to do?”

  “Relatively speaking.”

  “We can talk like this all day, going in circles, can’t we?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Any time you want to start explaining…”

  “Any time you want to start listening…”

  “We’re doing it again.”

  “Yeah, but you started it.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “Omigod! Sometimes, I don’t even know which one of us is talking anymore!”

  Pam gently—very gently, for her—removed my hands from over my ears. “That person—” she wince-smiled “—that person who just screamed? That person was you, Scarlett.”

  Is it possible to feel both mollified and mortified at the same time? “Thanks for clearing that up,” I said.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  17

  I wasn’t sure if it was Pam’s idea or my idea, or if maybe it was simply me domino-reacting to Pam’s ideas but Pam and I had decided to switch places in life by switching faces.

  Well, sort of.

  “You be nuts,” said T.B., seeing my haircut, glasses and new clothes for the first time, and hearing Pam’s Official Plan, as she’d finally spelled it out for me during her impromptu visit to my home.

  “She be right,” added Delta.

  “You both be annoying,” said Pam, sounding completely wrong somehow, and prompting me to say, “I wish we all be stop talking like this. It’s giving me a Fat Albert headache.”

  We were all seated on the floor around the coffee table at Delta’s, site for that month’s edition of our book club.

  For a few months, after Pam had initially introduced me to T.B. and Delta, they’d both taken to attending the once-a-month book-discussion group that I was moderator for at the library. Pam had been an attendee for some time and she pulled the other two in. This made it nice for me, since it kept the numbers up and made the program look like one that was worth the library maintaining, which was further nice for me since I preferred to spend a portion of my hours preparing for that rather than staring endlessly at Mr. Weinerman. But a few months into it, the glow had worn off. Oh, it wasn’t anything so mundane as them finding my discussions too mundane. I mean, really: how could such a thing be possible? No, rather, it had to do with the fact that the library forum wasn’t fulfilling the function that we all wanted in a book club together: a reason to meet other than specifically for food or drink, where we could spend five minutes pretending to be literary and then spend the rest of the time talking about our usual girl stuff, the group feel
ing self-satisfied in having engaged in a communally cultural activity. So we spun off from the library group (which I still moderated).

  That night, we’d discussed Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent—Delta’s choice since she was this month’s host—for five rip-roaring literary minutes, and now we were back to our favorite topics: us, men, life, and how to be satisfied with any and all combinations of those three.

  Delta was the only one of our merry little foursome who had ever taken on multiple marriages and kids. The marriage part was now a dead issue for her, two of her three long-gone exes being card-carrying members of that widening circle of men known as deadbeat dads. True, with Delta’s legal talents, she might have run them to earth and demanded some kind of support, but as she so wisely put it, exhibiting a hard-won wisdom that her twin pigtails belied, “Sure, a person can try to get blood from a stone, but whyever would you want to bother? A stone with blood in it, on the other hand—now, that’d be the kind of man I could still do something with.”

  If the marriages were a permanent thing of the past, the two children they had produced were still permanent things of the present.

  A half-century ago, Tennessee Williams would have called Mush and Teenie no-necked monsters, and his depiction would have been wholly accurate. The no-necked part was a result of regular consumption of the standard American child’s neo-diet of a super-sized Big Mac, fries and milk-shake combination; I cast no aspersions on the notion of body fat in general by relating this, but rather, I’m merely pointing out that they were already well on the road—through no witting choice of their own—to becoming part of a sad national statistic. Mush was exactly what his name stated, while Teenie was anything but. As to the monster part, trust me on this: they just were. And that simple fact—that they were in fact monsters—made it a little difficult for them to come across as sympathetic characters to me, never mind the fact that so much that was awful about them had been created within them by events and circumstances over which they’d had no control.