Women melt at those words.
I am not one of Sophie’s most devout clients, but I do like to, you know, pay my respects every once in a while. Once a year, I celebrate getting older by spending some of my hard-earned teaching salary on a gorgeous designer bag. And the rest of the time? I buy regular bags. Lots of ’em. Doug likes to joke that I was born—or, at any rate, bred—in a handbag.
As I come fully into view of the living room, I am overwhelmed, as usual. There is just so much to see, so much to touch. All of it is sexy, and all of it comes with Sophie’s testimonies. There is soft, tan, fringed suede (“isn’t that luscious”) and bumpy black leather (“it’s ostrich, you know, ridiculously high-end”) and slouchy and quilty and patent…oh my!
Sophie picks up a large red bag with interlocking Gs splattered all over it and a wooden shoulder strap. “Now, I know this is not your style, Lauren, but isn’t it just fierce?”
I make a face and tilt my head. “Not so sure.”
She shakes her hairsprayed helmet at me. “How long have we known each other? Eight, ten years? You always go for the safe bag. The classic. Everything about you is sort of…” She looks me up and down. “Conservative. You need to break out a bit. Try something messy, less structured, more…fun!” And with that, she throws me a shockingly purple Balenciaga motorcycle bag covered in hardware.
For good measure, I sling it over my shoulder and pose in the mirror against one wall. “Yeah, nope.”
“Today’s the day. I can just sense it,” she says, clearly not deterred. On tiptoe, she weaves in and out of the piles of bags, wiggling her fingers over them like a magician conjuring a rabbit from a hat.
And then she stops, bends over, and grabs one. It is a large, somewhat slouchy, dark blue Chloe. I actually gasp upon seeing it.
“Ta-dah!” she announces triumphantly.
“It’s so…rock-and-roll!” I gush, immediately taking it from her and putting it over my arm. “It’s seriously glam.” I turn one way, then the other. “I love it.” I size up my reflection, as if I’m another woman. “I’m just not sure it’s me.”
“It’s so you,” Sophie concludes. “The new you.”
As I stare at my reflection, I think, Maybe it’s actually the old me. Coming back. In high school and college, I used to dress sort of funky. I used to be playful and edgy and…interesting.
What the hell happened to me? When did I start to equate “growing up” with being dull and conservative? What’s the big deal about breaking out a bit, being a little glam, a little fun?
I smile and tell Sophie I’ll take it.
I eventually end up with the Chloe bag tucked like a poodle at my feet and a cup of tea in my hand. From time to time I reach down and stroke the soft leather as if it actually is my new pet: dead calf. Sophie and I have taken a break from posing in front of the mirror with the bags (which all look great on her; she’s the best model for her merchandise) and are sitting cross-legged in an available corner of her living room floor.
“This just occurred to me…how do you entertain?” I ask, looking around. Even her dining room table, on the other side of the fireplace, has bags piled high across it.
“Oh, I don’t!” She laughs. “I don’t like cooking. And because of my business”—she gestures around the room—“I feel like I am always entertaining. It’s a tad exhausting, actually.”
“So is my job,” I say.
“Yes, work is…work.” She shrugs. “Otherwise it would be called something else. Speaking of which, you never did explain…why aren’t you at school today? Mental-health day?”
I look at her and nod my head yes, then no. “What I mean is…” I drift off, considering for a moment spilling the story, telling Sophie how I purposefully tried to get selected as a juror. But then I’d have to explain why, and I’m not really sure I have a clear answer for that one. I look down at my new purchase and stick to the basic truth. “I’m on jury duty.”
“Ugh, poor thing,” she concludes, and I let her believe it.
Ten minutes later, I push open the heavy, spring-loaded classroom door and step inside. The lights are off, and a hazy afternoon sun leaks through the windows. Finger-painted animals cover one wall, while a giant calendar with movable felt pieces hangs on another. A blue shag circle rug sits empty in the middle of the room. Spider plants hang limply over the teacher’s desk. I hear a scratching sound and remember the hamster. What the heck did this year’s class name it? Hammy? Something original like that. A low, muffled sound belonging to a human voice startles me.
“Kat?” I whisper loudly. Something about empty classrooms creeps me out. I flick on the lights and try again, louder this time. “Kat! C’mon, I know you’re in here. You’ve called me three times since twelve thirty!”
And then I see it—a curling black telephone cord vanishing into the supply closet at the far end of the room.
Inside, Kat is crouched on a wooden, three-legged kiddie stool, like a teenager on a toilet seat in a bathroom stall hiding from the principal during math class. She has the phone cradled under her left ear and a cigarette clamped between two fingers in her right hand.
“What the hell?” Kat calls out, squinting into the sudden light. She momentarily loses her balance on the stool and has to put out her right hand to steady herself.
“Kat, I think the question is ‘What the fuck?’ and I’m supposed to be the one asking it.”
She rolls her eyes and speaks into the phone. “I gotta go. No, it’s not the administration. It’s just Lauren. Yup. Me, too. TTYL.”
Kat emerges, brushing a stray black curl from her eyes. “Hang this up for me, will you?” Then she gestures with the cigarette. “Do you have a light?”
“Is that a candy cigarette?”
“Insert second eye roll here. Duh, Lauren. You really think I’d smoke around those frigging five-year-olds?”
“Such colorful language.”
“I’m outta matches is all. I’ll be golden once I take a puff.”
“Fine.” I move my thumb across the knuckle of my pointer finger and hold it out to her. “Use my lighter.”
Kat presses the dusty white sugar stick to her lips and closes her eyes. “Much better. Thanks.”
“Who was that on the phone?” I ask.
“Just…no one.” She takes a bite of the hard candy and starts chewing.
“It was Varka, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no.” Chew, chomp, puff.
“I thought we talked about this. I thought we agreed that a ten-dollar-a-minute psychic was not the answer.”
Kat is complete nonchalance. “Depends on the question. Mercury is in retrograde right now, and Mercury rules travel and communications, among other things. It means things are gonna be kooky for the next few weeks.” A smile plays on her lips. “Lauren, Varka has me worried for our safety.”
“Oh puh-leeze! You know, I don’t need this. I’m ‘off duty’ at school this week. I promised myself I wouldn’t step foot into this building unless completely necessary.”
“Technically, this is the elementary wing, so you’re not really in the middle school, you know.”
“Technically, go to hell.”
“Such colorful language.”
There is a break in our banter, neither of us knowing what to say next. I meet Kat’s eyes and see for the first time that she must have been crying. Her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. I wait.
“Psycho Mom is at me again.”
“What’s the complaint this time?” I ask. “Air toxins? Not enough visual stimuli in the kindergarten? Too much?”
“Gluten in the finger paints.” She tries to say it with a straight face but can’t help breaking out in a smile of sorts. It’s not a happy smile, more like the kind that says, My life is ridiculous and I’m in on the joke. I know the feeling.
“But who eats finger paints?” I ask.
“Son of Psycho Mom does, actually. This little fucker loves the green. Licks it off his f
ingers like it’s candy! And he’s allergic!”
“Well, that’s not funny.”
“But his mom is the one who bought the paints for me in the first place because they were ‘environmentally friendly.’ She tried to petition the school board about it, remember? Get the whole district to change over their art supplies?”
“Okay, now it’s funny.”
The woman stresses me out and I don’t even know her. It should be illegal to carry a reputation like that. Poor Kat’s taking this really hard. I mean, she’s a tough one, generally speaking, but here she is, laughing so hard she’s crying.
Like, hysterically.
After a minute or so, she still hasn’t stopped. It’s the kind of laugh/cry combo made by a sociopath in a movie right before he cuts out someone’s guts and eats them, so I’m starting to get a little uncomfortable. I scan the room for the blunt scissor caddy and am glad to see it’s safely on the art cart, on the other side of the room. Next to the finger paints.
Kat is now rolling on the carpet and clutching her side. Snot and tears are everywhere. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was rabid.
I check. “Have you recently been bitten by a squirrel?”
Kat goes on making this “he-he-he” sound from the back of her throat.
“Shall I call 911?” I ask in a British accent, trying to sound authoritative.
She shakes her head, now tucked in the fetal position.
“Varka, then?”
Again, she shakes her head.
It’s good that she’s responding. But I’m still freaking out. I mean, I’ve been drunk with Kat and high with Kat and I’ve even grieved with Kat when her mom died. But I’ve never seen her like this.
I tentatively approach the blubbering blob on the circle-time carpet. “Are you on something?” I ask. “Is this, like, a Pulp Fiction moment? Do you need me to shock you in the heart with a hypodermic needle?”
I reach out and touch the curve of her protruding backbone. She’s so thin, I think. Since when?
Kat takes a deep breath. It rattles her whole body, but she seems calmer suddenly. She’s probably too exhausted to respond to me, but I try again.
“So…” I begin. (I didn’t say I try well.)
She uncurls herself and sits up. I hand her a tissue from the nearby box. She blows her nose.
Again, I wait.
At some point pretty early on in our friendship, I discovered that pushing and prodding and asking lots of questions causes Kat to clam up. The trick is to wait.
Which takes some getting used to.
I stroke her back and hand her another tissue while trying nonchalantly to glance at my wrist and see what time it is. I’ve got to get back into my own classroom soon and sort things out for tomorrow’s substitute.
As I begin to go off into a daydream about the joys of jury duty—sleep late, eat lunch out, meet new friends, read a cheesy novel—Kat clears her throat. I snap back to attention. Her bloodshot green eyes find mine.
“Peter wants a divorce. For real, this time.”
I am momentarily startled. I was in Psycho Mom mode, and so this is surprising. Although, in most ways, it makes perfect sense. I shake my head, shifting gears, and manage to get out some words of support. “Oh damn, Kat. I’m so sorry.”
She produces another candy cigarette from a pocket in her blazer, holding it out to me with a shaking hand.
“You sure he doesn’t want to work it out? That he isn’t just being hotheaded like usual?” I ask, taking the sugary stick.
She shakes her long black ringlets back and forth emphatically, like a woman selling shampoo on TV. “He bought a Maserati with our retirement savings. He’s moving in with a younger woman named Carly.”
“No!” I groan.
“Yes!” she cries.
“But that’s so…stereotypical! Like a caricature of what a forty-year-old guy would do. It can’t be for real.”
“What can I say? Peter always did lack originality. It’s the friggin’ truth.”
We sit like that for a moment, smoking and taking bites in the still classroom. No wonder she is losing her mind. “This sucks,” I offer as encouragement.
“The candy or my life?”
“Um…both?” That gets a half chuckle out of her.
I have a momentary image of Kat, hiding on her wedding day. She disappeared before the ceremony, but I eventually found her hiding in the back of the florist’s van her dress bunched up around her. She was pulling the petals off some discarded daisies.
“Can I just say something?” I ask, and Kat nods. “Without offending you, I mean?”
“Now my interest is piqued.”
I speak quickly, in one short breath. “You never really liked Peter all that much. You didn’t want to marry him.”
“Not the point.”
“Kind of is.”
She stares at a blank spot on the wall, between all the kid art. “Still…it hurts. I should have left him a long time ago.”
“I’m sure it does, Kitty-Kat.” I rub her back and we chew on our candy cigarettes. I feel like a sixth grader suddenly, helping my friend through a breakup with a boy who beat her to the punch.
“Consider it your starter marriage,” I try.
“As in: I have to start all over because now I’m broke?” She attempts a wan smile.
“As in: Practice makes perfect. Next one’s a guaranteed Prince Charming.”
“Can you put that in writing? Guaranteed in under five? Cause my eggs are getting hard-boiled as we speak.”
“You’re fine. You’re what? Thirty, thirty-two?”
“Thirty-three next month.”
“A mere babe in the manger. A wee lass.” I dismiss. “I didn’t have Becca until I was almost thirty-five.”
“I won’t think about it.”
“That’s the spirit!” I encourage, because, really, what else is there to say?
We make plans to go drinking after school with the gym teachers, which brightens Kat’s mood significantly. “I hope they are all sweaty,” she pines. “Even the girl ones.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“I’m hurting.”
I glance at the clock over the door and stand, stretching. “How can you sit on this carpet all day? Doesn’t it kill your back?”
“I’m not old like you, remember.”
“Ha.”
Kat turns to me, her green eyes intent. “Seriously, Lauren, I know I’m the one who’s an emotional wreck, but can I be honest with you?”
I consider her request. “Actually, I’d prefer if you lied.”
“You really look like shit.” She gets to her feet and gives me the once-over. “I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while, see if you wanted to get your makeup done at Nordstrom’s or something. On you, thirty-nine is like the new fifty.”
“And on that note…” I start heading for the nearest exit. I pull the handle on the classroom door and say, with fake enthusiasm, “Thanks!”
“It wasn’t a compliment!” she calls back.
I give her the finger. “Call down to the gym, please. See you at Flannigan’s. Three fifteen!”
There are still nine minutes left before last period. In teacher time, that’s like an hour. I figure I’ll sneak into my classroom once my students vacate to attend their foreign language classes at the end of the day. That way I can set up the lesson plans for the rest of the week and leave them on my desk for the sub. Which reminds me: Better call the sub service and secure a real substitute through Friday, since I’m sure Martha won’t be interested in keeping the job past today. My ballet flats squeak against the glossy linoleum tiles as I make my way purposefully down the hall.
I duck into the nearest girls’ bathroom and examine my face in the cloudy mirror.
Kat has a point.
I don’t know how or when the change occurred, but staring back at me is not the me I picture in my head. Instead, I have been replaced with one of those poor, uns
uspecting women pulled out of the crowd at the Today show for a miracle makeover.
Over the winter, my hair has grown very long, and it’s now too heavy around my face. And though technically the color fits somewhere on the blond spectrum, my mousy natural-colored roots are showing themselves in a thick racing stripe down the center of my head. My blue eyes lack spark. Worst of all, the skin around them seems swollen and slightly black-and-blue. And forget my forehead. All those creases and lines. Put it all together and I look…what is the right word? Haggard? Harried? Haggard and harried?
Oh hell, who am I kidding? That assessment is kind. In truth, I look like a woman who has just had her mug shot taken and is next in line for fingerprinting: Dazed.
“Mrs. Worthing. What are you doing here?” The monotone of Martha’s voice simultaneously shakes me from my reverie and scares the shit out of me. “Is that a cigarette in your hand?”
“Jeez, Martha!” I clutch my chest. “You trying to give me a heart attack?” I realize my error as soon as the words escape my lips. I mean, not that Martha necessarily caused our assistant principal’s heart attack last month, but still. Faux pas extraordinaire. Her always brown-lipsticked mouth is set in a straight, tight line. I smile wide enough for both of us. “I mean, hey there!”
She points to my right hand. “Explain.”
There are benefits to being on jury duty. Not having to teach anyone anything for several consecutive days is one of them. Knowing that the world is bigger than the one in which your principal reigns supreme is another. Which is why, in the bathroom with the fake cigarette, I decide to have a little fun with her and simultaneously throw a kid under the bus.
I take a deep breath and gather my courage.
“Oh, Martha. I’m so glad you are here. A little miscreant was pretending to smoke this candy cigarette when I walked in to use the facilities a moment ago. I, of course, immediately confiscated it, and sent her right to the principal’s office. You probably passed her in the halls just now.”
Lauren Takes Leave Page 5
