Once upon a time, I would have expected a man in his position to give me a different once-over than this critical one he was doing. Sure, it wasn’t politically correct, that I’d become accustomed to men in power pleasantly ogling me, but what one is accustomed to and political correctness do not always go hand in hand.
“Perhaps,” he said, “but I was hoping to get someone with a bit more experience. Uh, I mean,” he amended, obviously recalling his earlier remark, “practical experience. It’s so much more trouble, training someone from scratch.”
“But I thought this job was entry level,” I said.
“Well,” he looked embarrassed, “the pay is…”
“I’m a quick learner,” I said, feeling as though I were selling myself.
“A late bloomer and a quick learner?” he laughed. “Maybe if you’d learned quickly first, you wouldn’t have bloomed so late.”
I laughed at myself right along with him, hoping that amiability would be a selling point. Then, for good measure, I crossed my legs.
Well, shameless as it is, it had always worked for me in the past.
But I’d forgotten that I’d become A Wearer of Long and Shapeless Garments. So my crossing of my still-in-great-shape-for-thirty-nine legs didn’t even cause a ripple in the office. The man didn’t even look up from his perusal of my falsified records.
“Well,” he finally said, perhaps deciding a woman like me couldn’t possibly do any harm, or, more likely, that the town would save a lot of money by hiring someone like me instead of someone experienced, “when can you start?”
“Whenever you want?” I offered, feeling surprisingly meek.
“Good. You can start in Circ, see how it works out.”
20
To go with my new job, I needed a new place to live.
“Isn’t this, um, taking this thing a bit too seriously?” T.B. had asked when I’d told my friends about it.
“I don’t know,” I’d said. “I’ve already qualified for Loon of the Year, so why stop now? Besides, I never really felt like I lived in the condo, no matter how long I’d lived there, you know? Why not start fresh?”
As the Realtor showed me places in Bethel, I wondered what kind of place Lettie Shaw would buy.
“No, definitely not a condo,” I told the Realtor, Sue Buchanan, when she pulled up in front of one.
“All right,” she said, in a tone of voice that indicated she thought I was the stupidest woman who ever lived. “But condos are really hot right now and they represent the best value for a person living alone.”
A person living alone. That had always been me. Sometimes, I thought it always would be me.
Sue had taken my future salary, my current savings and the projected earnings from the sale of my Danbury condo, plugged it all into her calculator, added some more mumbo jumbo, and decided I could actually afford quite a bit of house.
So, of course, she tried to show me quite a bit of house.
“This is really more than I want to spend,” I pointed out, looking at the mini-McMansion she showed me.
“What?” she sniffed. “You mean you’d like some pin money left over?”
“Maybe.” It was getting late in the day. If I was going to get home in time to change for services with my mother, this being the eve of Rosh Hashanah, I was going to have to move quickly. When I said as much, Sue’s eyes brightened with recognition.
“Oh! You’re Jewish! I guess the Shaw name confused me. This explains everything.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, you do seem to be savvy about numbers….”
It really was late in the day, too late for me to find a new Realtor before sundown, or I’d have fired her sorry ass.
“Given that you’re so, er, finance-conscious,” she said, “I’ve got one more place I think you’ll want to see.”
The one more place turned out to be a tiny house, more like a cottage really, set far back from the road on a half acre of land. Tall trees lined the property, and the house itself was made of naturally stained shingles and had peaked roofs and a covered porch held up by four wooden posts. As we walked through, I saw that on the lower level, there was a cozy living room with a stone fireplace, in front of which was a wooden rocking chair, a Mexican throw over the back. There was also a small dining room with a Shaker dining set and an even tinier country kitchen.
Natural wood stairs and banister led up to a recessed loft bedroom on the second floor. The design of the bedroom echoed the southwestern accent of the Mexican throw down below, with a big ash bed that looked as though it had been handmade, covered in a spread of aqua and coral. Off the bedroom, there was a small but perfectly modern bathroom with a skylight over the marble tub.
I wondered: would Lettie Shaw live in a place like this?
Lettie would, I decided, she really would.
“It’s charming!” I said.
“Oh, it is, it really is,” Sue said eagerly, seeing the end in sight. “It’s the perfect place for someone like you to live.”
I didn’t dare think what she meant by that.
“There’s just one catch,” she said.
“Catch?”
“The owner’s in Europe for a year, working on a book. He’s not sure he definitely wants to sell it. So, for now, it’s just a rental with a possible option to buy at the end of the year.”
I felt so disappointed. Having decided to change my life, I wanted to make a total change.
“But I was looking to buy something. Why would you show me a rental?”
“Because it’s perfect for you!” Sue had gone back to being perky. “And besides, you know how writers are.”
I did?
“In a year,” she said, “he’ll probably have fallen in love with Florence so much that he won’t want to come back to Bethel. He’ll probably sell long-distance!”
She was right about one thing: it was perfect for me. It was certainly perfect for Lettie.
“So all the furniture stays?” I asked.
“Definitely,” she said.
I looked at the walls, which were kind of dingy. The one thing wrong with the place was that it could really use a fresh coat of paint on all the interiors.
“But what if I wanted to paint it?” I said. “The owner probably wouldn’t like me changing anything, not until he’s completely sure he doesn’t want to move back here again.”
“Oh, sure you can paint it.” She dismissed my concerns. “He’s a writer. You know how they are—so oblivious. If he ever comes back home again, he probably won’t even notice the difference.”
21
“Where did you get that dress? I love it. Maybe I’ll go to the same place to get one.”
“Shush, Mom, the rabbi is talking.”
We were in the United Jewish Center on Deer Hill Avenue in Danbury, the pale blue walls and white trim of the sanctuary providing a feeling of, well, sanctuary.
“I just love these changes you’ve made,” my mother said.
Apparently, there was to be no shushing her.
“Oh, Scarlett,” she said, “you look like such a librarian.”
I was outraged. “I am a librarian!”
“Yes, I know. But now you look so…Amish.”
“And that’s good?”
“Shush, the rabbi is talking.”
When I was growing up, my mother had not been much for synagogue, only going on the High Holy Days. But ever since my father had died, she’d taken to coming nearly every weekend, claiming that it gave her some kind of peace she couldn’t find anywhere else.
“And the little food get-togethers they have right after services, with those minipastries and desserts? Yum,” she always said. “Where do you think they find those tiny éclairs?”
Of course, I still only went on the High Holy Days. And, even then, I only went because it would have hurt her feelings if I didn’t. Sure, I still considered myself Jewish. But, for me, it wasn’t tied to anything like regular attendance; I’d b
een Jewish all my life and, for me, I couldn’t see ever being anything else.
Naturally, going every week as she did, my mother had social relationships, however tenuous, with all of the regulars. Naturally, only going a handful of times a year like I did, my relationships with people there were secondary; myriad people would say to Mom, “It’s so nice, Scarlett coming with you each year,” and she’d reply, as I stood mutely by, “Scarlett’s a good girl.”
So why should this year be any different?
“Scarlett?” the rabbi peered at me closely, questioningly, having greeted my mother first, as the congregation all gathered for little plastic cups filled with Manischewitz and apples and honey in the little room off the main synagogue.
“Er, no,” my mother hastily corrected him. “This is Scarlett’s cousin from out of town, Lettie Shaw.”
I couldn’t believe this: my mother was lying to the rabbi!
“Shaw,” he said, “Shaw…That doesn’t sound…?”
“Of course it’s not Jewish. It’s from her father’s side of the family. You know—” and here she leaned in closer to him so she could whisper behind her hand “—intermarriage.”
When I’d told T.B. about the name change, she’d said, “You want to change from your cooler-than-cool name to something that sounds like you got left over from the Grand Ole Opry? That’s your problem. But don’t expect me to be calling you Lettie. That dog just won’t hunt with me.”
“Are you sure you guys are lawyers?” I’d asked her and Delta. “You talk weirder than Anna Nicole Smith, even if the accents are different.”
“We’re having great careers—” Delta had smiled “—we really are.”
Of course, I’d had to tell my mother, too.
“Why in hell would you want to do that?” Delta had asked.
“I be wanting to do that,” I’d said, “because she is my mother. What if she needed me for some kind of emergency or something, and she called up the Bethel Library, only to have them tell her that they’d never heard of Scarlett Jane Stein?”
“Or,” Delta had said, “what if she came by your new house once you find one and move in, started going through the mail on your table while you were in the bathroom, and concluded from the name on the envelopes that either something weird was going on or you were living with a woman she’d never seen?”
“That too,” I’d conceded.
As I’d predicted earlier, when presented with my new name as being a way somehow for me to meet a man and settle down—not that I had a clue as to what I meant by that—my mother had been thrilled with the idea of the name change.
“Well, of course,” she’d said, “it makes perfect sense. As Scarlett Jane Stein you’ve been a complete romantic wash-out, so why not shake things up?”
Why not shake things up, indeed. But I’d never expected her to…
“Mother!” I hiss-whispered, grabbing on to her arm as the rabbi excused himself to go talk to other congregants. “You just lied to your rabbi!”
“Lied, schmied. If being Lettie Shaw finally gets you married in the end, he’ll dance with me at your wedding.”
I wished there were a way I could convey to her how uncomfortable her talk of marriage and a wedding was making me.
Instead, I knocked back another plastic cup of Manischewitz. What it lacked in refined taste, it made up for in alcohol content.
But, I had to remind myself before reaching for a third, I wasn’t a kid anymore. No one would think it funny if I got tipsy and started dancing the hora by myself in the corner.
“Oh, Scarlett,” my mother said. “I mean, Lettie—” she winked “—I can’t wait to see your new home once you move in, meet all the new people where you’re going to work.” She was practically clapping her hands like a seal.
“What’s so great about it?” I was feeling surly and my words were starting to slur a bit. Maybe just the two glasses were getting to me?
“I think it’s wonderful the way you’re reinventing yourself. It’s just like Madonna or Fergie or something. Everyone should do it at least once in their lifetime. Maybe I should—”
“No, Mom—” I stopped her, scared of what she might transform into should she also try to reinvent herself “—you’re perfect already, so why would you ever want to change?”
I thought I saw her eyes mist over. “Oh, that’s so sweet,” she said. “Thank you, dear. But isn’t this great? Look how differently people are treating you here this year than on previous years.”
It was then I noticed that, since the rabbi had moved off, no one else had approached us. In previous years, I’d been the centerpiece for the matchmakers, every yenta in sight trying to persuade “Scarlett” to take the number of her son, her grandson, even a few ex-husbands! But now…
“See what I mean?” my mother said. “Isn’t this better?”
“Well, it’s better for me,” I said. “It’s certainly quieter. But how is this better for you? I thought your lifelong dream, because you keep telling me it is, is to see me settled.”
“Of course. But who can hear Mr. Right with all of the noise that was going on before?”
“Oy.”
“Oy? You never say oy.”
“Can we stop with the Mr. Right, Mom?”
“Oh, look,” she said, leaning in, “but don’t look!”
“How am I supposed to—”
“David Gladstein is looking this way.”
“But I can’t marry David Gladstein! Then I’d be Scarlett Jane Stein-Gladstein!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’d be Lettie Shaw-Gladstein.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s certainly much better. Now, which one is David Gladstein again?”
“Over there,” she said with a nod.
How could I have forgotten? David Gladstein and I had gone to Hebrew school together, although he’d been two years ahead. Everyone, parents and children, had known who David Gladstein was: if the rabbi needed someone to help out on the pulpit, as David had indeed done just that day, he called on David Gladstein; if a kid needed an ounce of pot for the weekend, they also knew who to call. Extended pot usage having robbed him of any kind of maturation regarding his personality, David Gladstein was kind of like a yeshiva version of one of the more stupid permutations—Vinnie Barbarino, perhaps?—of John Travolta. Naturally, none of the parents had ever caught on, decades later still thinking he was the greatest catch a girl could find.
In previous years, he’d ignored me on the High Holy Days, because, well, I was too good at stringing words together.
But now?
Now, apparently, he didn’t recognize me as the woman I’d been before. Now he was eyeing me across the apples and honey like I was the hottest gefilte fish in the sea.
My mother, in her excitement, grabbed on to my arm. I really wished she’d stop doing that; my arm was starting to hurt. “I think he’s coming over here!” she cried with joy.
Oy.
22
To look at my mother now, with her commitment to polyester and her love of my new asexual wardrobe, you’d never guess that she was once a floozie.
Well, maybe floozie is too strong a word. Let’s just agree then to call Mom a party girl.
Long before she’d met my dad, she’d been declared the prettiest girl New Fairfield had ever produced. Many felt that she should have gone the Hollywood route—which would have made her the Meg Ryan of New Fairfield before Meg Ryan was ever the Meg Ryan of Bethel—but being elected Homecoming Queen had proved to be the extent of her aspirations regarding any kind of public arena.
But she did love the parties she was endlessly invited to, loved being the prettiest girl in whatever room she ever found herself in, loved having men fight over her.
It’s always kind of weird, thinking of your mother as the kind of woman men once fought over.
Once Mom married Dad, whom she was as madly in love with as he was with her—I’m nearly sure of this—people expected her to settle down a
bit. After all, her friends had all settled down with the men they’d married.
But Mom wasn’t ready to settle down. She was only twenty when she got married and she liked the hippie clothes that soon burst on the fashion scene (even if she couldn’t pick Vietnam out on a map), she liked all the blue makeup (even though electric-blue mascara looks silly on a brown-eyed woman) and she liked the parties where the lines were blurred as to who came with whom (okay, maybe I wasn’t there, so I don’t really know, but I’ll bet I’m right).
Dad, on the other hand, wore suits every day and hated those parties, which he could only be dragged to because he was so besotted with Mom. I mean, of course he hated them—the man sold insurance! (This was also why he was smart enough to be so heavily insured that, when he died, Mom was so well taken care of that she’d been able to afford the house she’d always wanted on the lake.)
Anyway, I remember them going off to those parties, Dad dragging his feet all the way and Mom all merry, and then, lying in bed later, hearing them come home, always arguing, the arguments always being about what men Mom had been talking to for too long, standing too close to, what men she’d disappeared for a while with.
For years, I tried to tell myself that Dad was just a jealous guy; that he was seeing things that simply weren’t there.
But somehow, deep down inside, I knew that wasn’t true. Somehow, I knew that Mom had cheated on Dad—and that she’d done so repeatedly. She’d cheated repeatedly because she liked the attention, couldn’t give up on her idea of herself as being the prettiest girl who every guy wanted.
Naturally, I never discussed any of this, either with Mom or Dad, but I was always aware of his love and his pain. I would have liked it if things could have been somehow different for him.
Of course, in rebellion against her, I’d grown up makeup free, almost daring the world to like me without the gimmicks. But somehow, along the way, I’d come to rely on gimmicks, even if I’d been unaware of them, even if all my gimmicks amounted to was a contact lens here, a high heel there.
A Little Change of Face Page 10
