Black and Blue (16 page)

Those were the times I felt bad about what I was doing, the
times when I spoke aimlessly of a life in Wilmington that seemed an empty invention to my own ears, the times when Cindy patted my hand while she was telling another story of another friend getting screwed in divorce court. Cindy thought I was having a wonderful birthday, when my real birthday had been a week before and I’d cried most of the evening, thinking about Gracie somewhere, crying too. Gracie always helped me blow out the candles on my cake, even when I was a grown-up. I hated lying to Cindy, hated that I did it more or less every day just by letting her call me Beth. It was all I could do, sometimes, not to tell her everything.

“I bet Mr. Riordan’ll like your hair,” Cindy said, pulling the minivan onto the highway.

“I bet you’ve been waiting half an hour to say that. Ever since I got out of the chair.”

“Tell the truth, I wanted to say something in the shop, but that Jenna lives in Lake Plata so I decided to protect your privacy.”

“Thanks so much.”

“So what is the deal here?”

“Cindy, you watch too much TV.”

“You may be right, hon, but I can tell you that on TV the soccer coach and the player’s lovely single mother wind up together. After many misadventures. Plus, I don’t see too many other stars on your horizon. Except for Jim. He’s a real romantic guy. That last time you ran into him leaving our house, I heard him say to the other guy in the truck, ‘Man, would I like a piece of that!’ What a sweetheart.”

Jim was one of the laborers who worked for Craig’s pool service. He was tanned from all those hours in the sun, and he took his shirt off every chance he got to display muscle definition that
made him look like a Saturday morning cartoon superhero. The ends of his Fu Manchu mustache were always a little wet, and I had thought about what it would be like to sleep with him the first moment I saw him, balancing a shovel across the tight shelf of his shoulders, looking enough like Bobby Benedetto to be a first cousin. He smelled like sweat and chlorine, and I tried not even to look at him, those few times I’d run into him at the Roerbackers. But once he’d smiled at me, real slow, and I knew he knew what I was thinking.

“Like I said, you watch too much TV,” I said to Cindy. “Mike Riordan is a very nice man. That’s all.”

“Oh, no. A nice man. That tears it. Remember how in high school, your girlfriend would go, oh, him, he’s such a nice guy. And what that always meant was that she was dying to go out with the guy’s nasty friend.”

“Well, thank God high school is over.”

“Oh, please. Life is high school, except everybody’s either ten pounds lighter, or fifty pounds heavier.”

I started to sort everyone I knew into one group or another. “You’re right,” I said.

“I am right, and I’m right about Mr. Riordan. And please don’t tell me you’re holding out for Mr. Right, because he ain’t coming. He never comes.”

“And this from a happily married woman.”

“I’m happily married because I’m real realistic. The statute of limitations on finding them irritating as hell is four, maybe five years. It doesn’t matter how good-looking they are or how much money they make; that’s when you start to notice how they can’t
ever manage to put on a fresh roll of toilet paper or put dirty clothes in the hamper. You’ve been married, you know the drill: Honey, where’s my shirt? In the damn closet, dear, where it always is. Couple years gritting your teeth, and then you just got to get on with it. Or not, I guess.” She looked over at me. “What got me going on that?”

“Mr. Riordan.”

“Oh, never mind Mr. Riordan. Let me do your makeup when we get home. I got these new neutrals that’ll look great on you.”

Usually I resisted Cindy’s sample case, but for once I went along with her. She made bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches for us both, and then went to work on me with pencils and foam pads, powders and creams. Except for a mouth that was too big for the rest of my face, I looked good when she was finished. “Not a day over thirty,” she said. Instead of thirty-six. Or thirty-eight. Another secret to keep straight, my very age.

“God, I wish you had a hot date tonight,” she said. “Can I buy your clothes, too? No offense, hon, but you tend to play down your best feature. Your bod cries out for short white shorts and a crop top.”

“You’re the first person I’ve heard use the word
bod
since junior year high school.”

“Or one of those little T-shirt dresses would be nice, too. And they’re cheap. Dress Barn has them for forty bucks. That’s where I got this.” Cindy was wearing royal blue shorts and a print blouse with a ruffle down the front, white sandals, and a matching white belt.

“Can I ask you something without pissing you off?” I said.

“Shoot.”

“How come you do all this—the makeup, the clothes? Don’t you get tired of having to look perfect every day?”

And Cindy sat down heavily in the chair across from me, all the makeup piled on the glass table between us; with her face sort of sad and serious she looked like exactly what she was, a former prom queen who’d grown up, gotten married, and fought the good fight against losing her looks. “God, I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t believe I said such a shitty thing.”

“Don’t rub your eyes,” she said, “or that mascara will be all over your face. It’s okay, anyhow. You’re the only friend I’ve ever had who would ask me a question like that. Plus I think you’re the only one I’ve ever known who I’d know how to answer. You know, most people, I’d just say, well, a girl’s got to look her best, doesn’t she? or one of those dumb-ass things you learn to say.” I’d never heard Cindy swear before. I wanted to reach across the table for her hand, but she kept it curled up in her lap.

“I think it was the farm, you know it? It was just so dusty all the time, and the dirt came in the windows, so that no matter how often you’d dust there’d be this little bit of dirt that was always on the sills. And my mother would go out to make her deliveries and she’d smell so good and look nice, even though she’s a kind of plain woman, you’ll see when you meet her at Christmas. Then next morning she’d be up in a pair of men’s overalls helping my dad out in the barns, and she’d smell like manure. And after a while I think I got like Scarlett O’Hara in the movie, you know? ‘As God is my witness, I’m never going to be dirty again.’

“I fell like a ton of bricks my sophomore year for a boy named
Jackson Islington, can you believe it, from some little place past Lakota. He was a senior, light-headed boy, but dark eyes, you know how nice that looks sometimes? And you’ll know how crazy I was about him when I tell you I was only fifteen and he was already putting his hand up my skirt in the car, and I was letting him. He dropped me off one day and he was talking to my dad for the longest time and then my dad came in for dinner. I can still remember we were having macaroni and cheese and stewed tomatoes, and my daddy says to me, ‘That’s a nice young man. You don’t meet too many anymore who have their hearts set on farming.’

“Lord, you should of heard that boy when I asked him about it next day coming home from school. Talking about the earth and watching things grow and the air in the early morning, making it sound like planting ten acres of feed corn was like being a priest or something. And then he started kissing me and he kissed my neck and then lower, the way he always did, I think that was what got me going in the first place, and then he kissed me on the mouth, stuck his tongue in the way he had a million times before, except I could taste the dirt, just taste it, so that I almost gagged.

“Even now sometimes I think, Cynthia Lee, what was wrong with you? Because when you’re fifteen you’re supposed to be able to just overlook those kinds of things, get all carried away and loopy in love. But I felt his hands on me and all I could think of was me all scrawny and dark the way my mother was, and dirt on the dining-room tablecloth. And that was that. That was that.” There were tears in her eyes, and Cindy dabbed at them with one carefully bent knuckle. Then she laughed, the sort of shaky gasping
laugh you laugh when you’re trying to shake tears away, a laugh I’d laughed myself sometimes, talking to Grace about things.

“First date with Craig, I say to him, ‘What do you think you’d like to do for a living?’ He was seventeen, must have thought I was crazy. He said, ‘I’m going into business.’ The pool business gave me pause, with all the digging around, but he put that shower in the basement, right by the outside door, and he’s clean and smelling of Christian Dior before he ever comes up those stairs.” And with that she lifted her chin and smiled at me, the kind of brilliant smile one woman gives another that might as well be a punch in the nose, so little is it to be messed with. I looked down, fiddling with the tubes and pots on the table, looking at their labels: Terra Copper, Autumn Leaves, Sweet Peach, Sable. Almost despite myself I started to talk.

“I had this nun in eighth grade who wanted me to apply to this really good private school. She kept saying that she thought I had potential. Potential. I got to love the sound of that word. It sounds like somebody shot you out of a cannon. And then I talked to my parents about it, and my mother looked at the brochure I brought home. It was on this great paper, I remember, soft and shiny and there were beautiful color pictures of the kids in their uniforms, in science labs and reading in this big library. And my mother looked at it, and then she just said, ‘Why?’ That’s all. It was like my whole life in one word. And it just stayed like that—when I wanted to go on a trip to Spain with the language club, or go to college. The answer was always the same: why? What’s the point? I knew it was because they didn’t have any money, with my father on disability and my mother working as a secretary. But it didn’t
feel like it was about money. It felt defeated. I’d look at this picture of the two of them on their bedroom dresser, thin and nice-looking and all happy and smiling, and it was just like defeat had taken over the whole house, until I didn’t see the point either. I went to the local parochial girls’ school and then I went to the local nursing school and then I got married and I guess I was just grateful for anything I could get.

“I didn’t even really think about it until my sister got older. Because they did the same thing to her, except that she didn’t pay any attention to them. What’s the point, Grace? Take shorthand and typing, Grace. Dr. Edgar the dentist is looking for a receptionist, Grace. She’d just laugh at them sometimes, when we were in our room, make fun of them, even. She got herself a scholarship to private school for high school, and she got jobs and grants to work her way through college, and she rented a U-Haul so she could drive cross-country. My mother asked her why she was going all the way to Chicago for school. And she said, ‘Because I want to.’ Like it was the most natural thing in the world, to do what you wanted.

“Sometimes I’d see her looking at me and I could tell she felt sorry for me. God, that just about killed me, that little Gracie, whose diapers I’d changed, who I sang to and read to, who would yell ‘Where Frannie?’ running around the house, her diaper all droopy around her fat knees, who I taught all the line dances and how to roll her uniform skirt after school, that she would wind up feeling sorry for me. But, you know, I had no one, and Grace had me. That gave her confidence. Or at least a lesson in how not to do things.” I shrugged. “She just made herself a completely different life. Just made it up, from scratch.”

“Well, that’s what you did,” Cindy said.

“What?”

“Here,” she said. “You made yourself a whole new life here. Just like your sister did.”

“It’s different.”

“Oh, hon, that’s what we all say,” she said. “Of course it’s different. Everything’s so out of a clear blue sky that everything’s always different. Like if I’d taken French instead of Spanish I might not have known Craig and my whole life would be different. Or if I’d gone all the way with Jackson before I knew what was what, everything would have been different. Scares me to think about it, it would have been so different. And if you weren’t as nutty about Robert as I am about Chelsea I wouldn’t have run into you and that would make things different.”

“I am not nutty about Robert. He was in a new school, he was—”

“I know, I know. It was different than with Chelsea. That’s fine. Anyhow, now we know everything we need to know about one another. You know how come I wear foundation and powder every day, and I know how come you don’t. I thought we were just going to get our nails and hair done, and the next thing you know we’re sitting here ripping our guts out.”

“It’s the birthday. There’s something about a birthday that makes you think about your life that way. About how you got to be who you are. About whether you’re happy with your life.”

“I guess this might not be the best birthday to ask if you’re happy with your life,” Cindy said.

“I guess you’re right. What about you?”

Cindy stared up at the ceiling. It was almost as if I could watch
the years roll by behind the scrim of her eyes, her thinking about everything that had been, the man, the kids. Herself.

“I’m pretty happy with my life,” she said finally. “But it isn’t exactly what I expected.”

“Amen,” I said.

She leaned over, gave me a hug, put all the makeup in a tote bag she was giving away free with every order during the holidays. “Who’s Frannie?” she said.

It was such a shock, but I didn’t show a thing in my face. Besides, she wasn’t looking at me, was looking down at the tools of her trade.

“What?” I said.

“You said your little sister called you Frannie. That she said ‘Where Frannie?’ all the time.”

“It’s an old nickname,” I said, my breathing still ragged from talking, and listening, and feeling.

Cindy held out the tote bag, red with black patent trim. My mother-in-law would have loved it. “Well, Frannie, honey,” she said, and just the word, that one word, sounded so good in her mouth. “Here’s your new face. Happy birthday again. You’re a new woman, swear to God.”

“What happened to Jackson Islington?” I said.

“I haven’t a clue,” said Cindy. “What happened to your eighth-grade nun?”