by Nina Solomon
“Good morning. Beautiful day, isn’t it?” Grace said.
Dolores nodded. “Sí, but it’s mucho frío,” she answered. Grace noticed that Dolores was still wearing her blue down jacket.
“Please call me Grace.”
“Certainly, Señora Grace,” she responded, as she carried the silver bowl into the dining room and placed it in the center of the table. Before Grace could warn her, Dolores flipped on the light switch. With a quick flash, the dining room fixture and the lights in the entire apartment blew.
When Grace called down for the handyman, the superintendent told her he’d send someone up right away—one of the many perks of being generous tippers at Christmastime.
The handyman arrived within minutes, once again removing his shoes, although Grace would have much preferred footprints to the sight of his canary yellow socks. It was only a matter of minutes before the apartment once again blazed with the light from the Duro-Lites and the Christmas tree sparkled in the living room.
“Remember to turn off the circuit breaker the next time if you need to replace the dimmer,” the handyman advised her, as he bent down to put his shoes back on. She noticed that they were not his usual work boots, but a pair of shiny tap shoes, which, paired with his baggy blue carpenter’s pants, gave him a Chaplinesque appearance. He stood up, lingering a bit until Grace pressed a twenty-dollar bill in his hand and bid him good-bye.
After he left, Grace went into the dining room to test the dimmer. She lifted it up and down and felt a sense of complete satisfaction as the Duro-Lites dimmed to a quiet, calming orange and then brightened. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a strange flickering from the living room, like the flashes from a silent summer lightning storm. To her dismay, she realized that the Christmas tree lights as well as the sconces above the mantelpiece and the Arts and Crafts lamps on the end tables were all dimming and brightening in unison with the Duro-Lites.
When Grace turned the light off, the lights in the living room went off as well. She flipped the switch back on quickly, hoping she could somehow fool the circuits. Once again, the Christmas tree and all the other lights went on. She jiggled the switch, thinking the wires were just stuck together and that she could somehow unstick them, but it didn’t help. Her first inclination was to call the super again, but instead she decided to adjust the lights so that the Christmas tree and the Duro-Lites were all at a tolerable level of brightness.
Then she went to the closet to get Laz’s jacket to take it to the tailor’s, along with a pair of his pants that needed hemming. When she got back, she would call Chloe.
THE TAILOR AT Aphrodite Cleaners was busy sewing buttons onto a thick shearling coat when Grace walked in. He nodded for her to sit down on a folding chair, then he ended off, cutting the thread with his teeth, and walked over to her.
“These pants need hemming,” she told the tailor, “and there’s a tear in the pocket lining of the jacket.” The tailor unfolded the pants and examined them.
“How long?” he asked. Grace hadn’t remembered to measure the length of Laz’s inseam, although she was certain she could come pretty close to the measurement if she tried the pants on.
“Is there someplace I can change into them?” she asked.
“Right in there,” he said, indicating a small half-curtain to the left of his sewing table.
The tailor didn’t question whether the pants were hers or not. She went behind the curtain into a space no larger than a telephone booth and put the pants on. They were not as large as she’d anticipated. Clearly, the sugar binge she’d been on over the last few weeks was beginning to take its toll. The waistband skimmed her pelvic bone. As she adjusted the pants low on her hips, she pictured how Laz’s body fit into hers, the way his hands could practically circle her waist when he stood behind her.
“The hem should just graze the floor,” she told the tailor when she emerged. She stepped up on a small stool and stood in front of the mirror as he knelt down and marked the pants with a white wax crayon. She was amazed by how much she resembled Laz, at least from the waist down, except for her shoes, which were high-heeled boots. She felt like a picture in one of those children’s flipbooks that mixes and matches different heads and bodies—a strange hybrid creature. A Chimera. As Grace stood in front of the mirror, she wasn’t sure where the line of demarcation was, where one began and the other one ended. And who was inhabiting whom now?
“Which one needs repair?” the tailor asked, picking up Laz’s jacket and turning it inside out.
“Excuse me?” Grace asked.
“Which pocket has the hole?”
“Oh, the right one,” she answered.
“Do me a favor and check to make sure there’s nothing in the pockets. You wouldn’t believe the things people leave.”
She slid her hands into the pockets. These pockets that had once held Laz’s keys and change, into which his hands had slid so many times to keep warm, were now empty. Not only was his PalmPilot gone, but so were the Life Savers. Grace felt as if she’d been fleeced by a phantom pickpocket. She wondered if the vanished items might lead her to her vanished husband, a trail she knew she wasn’t yet prepared to follow. For now, it would remain another mystery.
DOLORES WAS STANDING in the doorway, waiting for Grace when she arrived home. She hung up her coat, ready to write the name of some cleaning product on a shopping list, assuming that Dolores had run out of Brillo Pads or Murphy’s Oil Soap, which Marisol used liberally on all surfaces and that soaked through even the Sunday Times, leaving the pages nearly translucent.
“Excuse, me,” Dolores began. “Marisol says Señor Brookman forgot to leave her pay.” Grace was baffled. She’d been so diligent about writing checks to pay the bills, but then it dawned on her that Laz must have always paid Marisol in cash.
“How much do we owe her?” Grace asked.
“Cinco weeks,” Dolores answered. Something about hearing the number, even in Spanish, made Grace’s head spin. To her, it felt as if Laz had been gone no longer than a matter of days, despite all evidence to the contrary—such as the fact that the supply of deli cups, which had come in a pack of fifty, was more than half depleted. Grace had stopped counting the days sometime after Laz’s birthday. November might as well have been frozen in one of Francine’s containers.
“Cinco?” Grace repeated. She opened her wallet and gave Dolores all the cash she had on hand. “I’ll go to the bank right away for the rest. Please tell Marisol I’m very sorry.”
The telephone rang. She picked it up, half expecting it to be a bill collector.
“Grace? It’s Chloe.”
“Chloe,” she said. “It’s so good to hear your voice. I’m so sorry about your mother. I wish you had called to tell me.”
“You know how it is.” She paused, sniffling a bit. “It’s been rough.” There was another pause. Then Chloe said, “So you’re coming to Chicago?”
“For my birthday,” Grace answered, although she was already having misgivings about the plan.
“Laz, too?” Chloe inquired.
“Yes, he’ll be tied up with some conference, but I thought you and I could spend some time together if you want.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“I know. I’m really sorry I’ve been out of touch,” Grace said.
“Me, too. Let’s make sure to change that.”
Grace hung up and dialed the toll-free number of the discount travel agent whom her father had once told her about, and she booked a flight to Chicago for the day before her birthday, using frequent-flier miles accrued by Laz on his many transatlantic flights. Out of force of habit, she asked for two bulkhead seats—Laz liked a lot of legroom. By the time Grace had realized her mistake, the agent had already put the order through, so Grace decided to keep it. She told herself it was in order to avoid wasting more time, but what she was really feeling was trepidation about traveling alone, which was somehow alleviated by the thought of Laz’s disembodied presence. He was
like her new imaginary friend—if only he didn’t demand so much attention.
LATER THAT EVENING, Grace was straightening up after Dolores. It seemed that Dolores had a similar propensity as Grace did of shoving things in incongruous places wherever they fit, and Grace noticed her bag of ombré yarn stuffed into the umbrella stand.
She opened the bag and pulled out the crochet hook and a skein of yarn. Removing the paper sleeve, she located the end and proceeded to begin a chain stitch. At first it was slow and laborious, but soon the yarn began to slip easily through her fingers, the stitches forming as if automatically. When the chain was a good length, Grace began to crochet, pulling the yarn under and through and wrapping it around the hook until she came to the end of the first row. The edges curled up and it didn’t look like anything, but after several more rows, Grace began to detect the beginnings of a pattern.
For an indeterminate span of time, no thoughts entered her mind. The yarn alternated in a pleasingly unpredictable way, varying in tone and thickness, with intermittent flashes of fuchsia. The rhythmic pattern was spellbinding. She wondered if crocheting could become addictive, as she considered the merits of a twenty-four-hour yarn store and tied the ends of one skein to the next.
After crocheting some more, she started to tire of repeating the same stitches and decided to make variations in the pattern by adding a stitch here or there, inserting the hook into the same stitch twice or dropping a loop, which created a clustered, starlike effect. She liked not having to follow a pattern; however, she did have to pull several rows when she tried to get too fancy.
Before she knew it, the bag of yarn was empty. Only after she’d ended off the last stitch did she realize that it was well after midnight and that she’d crocheted something—what, she wasn’t sure, a sort of continuous flow of color and texture that spanned the entire length of her living room.
17
A GRIMM TALE
Kane did not call the following day or the next. It wasn’t noticeable at first. His calls were not all that regular—varying from once or twice a day to once a week, or even less frequently. It wasn’t that he wasn’t calling, it was the way in which he wasn’t calling that Grace knew was somehow different.
She’d already left two messages for him. The first was to provide an excuse as to why Laz couldn’t make hockey that night—a fundraiser his mother had roped him into—and the other was to try to make amends for the other night. Both calls went unanswered.
Another stack of mail had materialized on the front hall table. Grace likened the pile of mail that had begun to overrun her life to the suburban phenomenon of trying to maintain a manicured lawn, the bills like stubborn dandelions and the junk mail like fallen leaves. She wished taking care of the bills were as simple as upgrading to a more powerful leaf blower or a more potent weed killer.
Among the bills, she saw a letter from A Perfect Match. Ordinarily, she would have just ripped it in half, but after the meeting with the strange Mr. Dubrovsky, her curiosity was piqued. When she opened it, she saw that she’d been mistaken. The letter was from the lipstick company, informing her that they needed an additional five dollars and ninety-five cents per tube and another sample of the lipstick, if possible, which would have to be sent to the laboratory in Minnesota for further analysis.
Grace was disappointed. She was almost certain she didn’t have anymore Velvet, but she went into the bathroom and dug into her vinyl makeup bag on the off chance that she had missed it. She stored the bag on the windowsill above the broken radiator because her mother once told her that the shelf life of makeup is shortened if it’s exposed to heat or humidity, advising her to keep her extra lipsticks in the freezer. If Grace followed all of her parents’ advice on proper storage, her freezer would be filled to capacity with film, batteries, stockings, and makeup, probably even Duro-Lites.
The bag overflowed with tester-sized tubes of moisturizers, eye shadows, perfume samples, lip and cheek stains, shimmery face powder, white lip gloss, metallic eyeliner, and an array of age-defying lotions that her mother had given her, none of which Grace ever used. Francine gave leftovers; her mother gave beauty products. Grace always felt a pang of guilt when she even entertained the idea of tossing the entire makeup bag in the garbage, just as she would have felt if the did the same with Francine’s meatballs.
She was about to give up her search when she noticed an orange pump bottle containing a hydrating body mist called Happy. She read the directions on the back of the bottle: Spray it. Be Happy. Enticed by the promise it made, she opened the top and sprayed it over her neck and forearms. It couldn’t hurt, her mother would say. The citrusy smell was pleasant enough, but Grace didn’t notice any other effects. If only it could be that simple, she thought as she tossed it back into the transparent makeup bag and went to get dressed.
She chose what she considered to be one of her more pulled-together outfits—a cream-colored cashmere turtleneck and her new purple suede skirt—for her visit to her grandmother at the nursing home.
Grace was an unseasoned shopper and left most sartorial decisions to other people. Elliot, one of the salespeople at Barneys, called whenever something came in that they thought suited her, like a pair of must-have black pants, a puckered pink shell, or the beaded silk sarong that Grace had later found for a fraction of the price on a foray with her mother to the Woodbury Commons Outlet. Yesterday, Elliot had left a message telling Grace that he was holding a Katayone Adeli suede skirt for her, but when she went in to try it on, he made the gentle suggestion, not able to fully conceal his raised eyebrow, that they go up another size. Decorum stopped him from suggesting they go up still further. “It will stretch,” he assured her.
Grace recalled numerous Saturday shopping expeditions with her mother over the years, the two of them often coming home with matching outfits, such as the satin blouses with bell sleeves and macramé vests, or the bright floral minidresses with white peace sign belts. Shopping was her mother’s forte as well as her form of therapy—a cure-all for whatever ailed you. They’d spend hours scouring the racks and then, shopping bags in hand, find the nearest Burger Heaven for what her mother referred to as a little lift, which consisted of half a cantaloupe, a medium-rare burger on half a bun, and a large Coke. But at the end of the day, Grace would feel anything but uplifted. While clothes were her mother’s means to attain her desired image of herself and that of her daughter, for Grace clothes would never be more than another ill-fitting costume.
WHEN GRACE WAS FIFTEEN, she broke up with her first boyfriend. Her mother wasted no time questioning her about the particulars of the breakup, bringing a box of Fiddle Faddle and some tissues to Grace’s bedroom as though having prepared all her life for this mother-daughter bonding moment. Grace was too numb to cry.
“I hear you broke up with that sweet Jamie. What happened?” her mother asked. Grace pulled her feet underneath her and tried to find the right words.
“I didn’t feel like me anymore,” she said quietly. Her mother looked at her quizzically.
“You’re still you. Jamie liked you just the way you are.”
“It wasn’t him. It was me. It was as if I had found the perfect outfit and wore it everyday and never wanted to change it—you know, like that polka-dotted dress I wore until it didn’t fit anymore?”
“I know exactly what you mean,” her mother said, nodding. “Variety is the spice of life. But that dress was adorable on you.”
“Only the more I wore the dress, the less I liked myself in it. I didn’t know who I was supposed to be or what I was supposed to wear. It was like I’d run out of outfits.”
Her mother put her arm around her, and passed her the box of caramel corn and a handful of tissues.
“Honey, not to worry,” she said. “Lord and Taylor is open until nine, and there’s a sale in the junior department. We’ll have you back to yourself in no time.”
GRACE ZIPPED up her skirt and pulled her hair back with a clip. There had never been any questio
n in her mind that her mother was not capable of more. Grace had always tried to accept her mother’s good intentions, even if they came in the form of frilly skirts and turquoise belts, but in Grace’s mind she was still in some metaphorical dressing room, trying on clothes chosen by someone else.
Going into the kitchen for a quick cup of tea, Grace opened the cabinet, and there, next to a canister of peppermint tea, she saw the familiar silver tube of Velvet, shining like a beacon in the darkness. It did strike her as a rather odd place for the lipstick, but it was just like her to have absentmindedly put it in there. She felt the sense of elation she usually felt on Christmas morning.
Grace thought about the rhinestone lipstick holder that Laz’s mother had coveted at last year’s Historical Society auction. Even though the auction was for charity, and Laz’s mother would have received a tax deduction for the purchase, she’d refused to go above the estimated value and had lost out to Francine Sugarman, who had instructed Bert to outbid anyone while she was at home with a case of the flu. Bert had waved his paddle as if he were a table tennis champion, once even bidding against himself as Laz’s mother lowered her paddle to her lap.
Laz’s mother still eyed the lipstick holder with a sneer every time she saw Francine pull it out of her purse—which Francine did often and with obvious pleasure—because she, Nancy Brookman, would never pay full price. Grace thought she might bid on it herself at this year’s auction so that she would have a special place to hold her custom-blended lipstick, when it finally arrived. She regretted having not renamed the lipstick—“Velvet” seemed somewhat generic now.
She wrote a check for the required extra amount, placed the lipstick sample in an envelope, and sealed it. She felt as if she were participating in some cloning experiment and wondered if she sent them the smudged fingerprints from Laz’s eyeglasses, would they be able to come up with a reasonable replica of him as well?
