Mendocino and Other Stories (12 page)

Another salmon-coated woman appeared. “Oh,
fun
,” she said. “Wild Sage on her lids, don't you think?”

“I was thinking Midnight Velvet,” Kristen said.

They joined forces. They mixed colors. They tried a little of this and a little of that. Half an hour later Kristen offered me a hand mirror. “You're going to love this, Elizabeth,” she said.

I searched the image for signs of myself, but I looked like a stranger—not just someone I didn't recognize, but someone who wasn't quite human. My cheeks had unnatural-looking hollows, and across each cheekbone was a slash of pink. They had used so much mascara it looked as if I were wearing false eyelashes.

“Well?” Kristen said.

“She has to get used to it,” the other woman said. “It's a change.”

I handed Kristen the mirror. “It's a whole new me.”

She gave me a wide smile. “I knew you'd like it.”

I thanked them and left the store. There were some benches arranged around a fountain and I slumped onto one. I closed my eyes and felt the sun on my hair and skin. My face felt odd, as if I'd washed it and let it dry without rinsing the soap off. I thought about the pompon tryouts instruction sheet, the part about hygiene and grooming. I wondered whether everyone else would be wearing a lot of makeup for the tryouts: I knew that the other girls who were trying out were the kind who
did
wear eye shadow and lip gloss to school every day. I imagined myself in the girls' gym on the day of the tryouts, standing there in my forest green polyester one-piece gymsuit and my white gloves, waiting for my turn; my stomach did a queasy dance. Then I thought about what my mother had said, and I stood up, ready to try Peaches and Cream.

And there was Bobby.

He was coming toward me, but he hadn't seen me yet. I thought of running, but I knew that would attract more attention than anything. Hoping I would somehow be invisible to him, I sat down on the bench again and stared at the ground.

“Elizabeth?”

I looked up. “Hi.”

He did a quick double-take, so subtle that if I hadn't been looking for his reaction I might not have noticed it. “What are you doing?” He put his foot up on the bench next to me.

“Shopping.”

“What have you bought? I need socks.”

“Nothing,” I said. “I forgot my wallet.”

He laughed. “Window shopping, more like, huh?” He turned and sat on the bench, a few feet away from me.

“I guess so.”

We sat there staring straight ahead, not talking. I was certain that he thought I was the most pathetic person on earth, that he felt too sorry for me to make a getaway.

“So,” he said.

“So,” I said.

“Can I ask you a question?”

I turned to look at him.

“What happened to your face?”

I felt, surprisingly, that I had a choice: I could die of embarrassment or not, it was up to me. I smiled, and a moment later we were both laughing. “I had a makeover,” I said.

“In there?”

I nodded. “There were two of them, Kristen and someone else. It took half an hour. It was free.”

“What a bargain,” he said, and we both laughed. “I don't know, I think Kristen and her friend are in the wrong line of work.”

“What?! You don't think they're artists?” I stood up and struck a pose.

“More like morticians.”

“So that's why I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror. I look dead.”

We both started to laugh again, but a shadow of unhappiness fell over me and although I kept laughing, I was thinking about
my father; we'd had an open casket, against my wishes, and when I saw him lying there, a false rosiness on his waxy cheeks, I felt a tiny pinprick of shock, as if I had to learn all over again of his death.

I looked at Bobby and he was biting his lip. He smiled quickly and stood up.

“Maybe I could help you buy your socks,” I said. “I mean, I'm sure you don't need help, but maybe I could go with you.”

“Actually,” he said, “I do need help. I can never decide on colors. Red and yellow or blue and green.”

“You wear red socks?”

“No, no,” he said, laughing, “the bands on top. I need tube socks. For practice.” He dribbled an imaginary basketball, then shot it into the sky.

“
WOULD YOU LIKE
to go to a movie tonight?” my mother said at dinner that evening. I'd been back and forth to the shopping center until the middle of the afternoon—I'd finally found some gloves at Peaches and Cream—and since I'd gotten home she and I had been distant and polite when we'd seen each other, as if we were strangers whose paths kept crossing in some foreign city.

“No, thank you,” I said. “I've got to spend some time on things that are beneath me.”

She colored, and Danny looked down at his plate. “I'm sorry, honey,” she said. “I didn't mean it, it was a dumb thing to say. I just don't want you to be disappointed.”

“When I don't make it?” I asked, standing up to clear the table.

Danny all but leapt from his chair and hurried from the room.

“Oh,” my mother said quietly, and covered her mouth with her hand. She shook her head, and I could see she was fighting tears.
After a moment she turned and faced the door, following Danny's path with her eyes. “Should I—”

I went over to her and held her head to my chest. “He's OK,” I said. “I think we should just leave him alone.”

“The old laissez-faire attitude was never my strong suit,” she said. The vibrations her jaw made against my stomach as she spoke felt strange. She sighed and put her hands on my hips and I moved away. She looked up at me. “Show us your dance, honey,” she said. “I think it would mean a lot to Danny.”

I nodded.
Dance
, I thought.

“And to me, too, of course.”

“Tomorrow,” I said.

BUT THE NEXT
day, a Sunday, Danny had been invited by a friend's family to go to San Francisco, and it wasn't until Monday night, just two days before tryouts, that I allowed my mother and Danny into the basement to watch me run through my routine.

“OK,” I said when we got downstairs, “I'm going to pretend you guys are the judges.”

Danny had perched on the washing machine. My mother leaned against the dryer. “How many are there?” she said uneasily.

“Six,” I said. There would be Mrs. Donovan; Coach Simpson; Sally Chin, the head pompon girl for the football season; two guys from the basketball team; and Miss Rosenthal, a Home Ec teacher—
my
Home Ec teacher, as it happened, and it was she who worried me most. We had somehow, already, not hit it off; the other girls in the class were already on their A-line skirts, but I just couldn't finish my pot holder. I was afraid she would take it out on me in the judging.

“Six?” my mother said.

“The competition is going to be tough,” Danny said. “We've got
some very critical judges, ladies and gentlemen, and only five of these fifty beautiful young ladies will be selected. Sam, tell us a little about how the competition works.”

“Fifty!” my mother said.

“He's joking, Mom. It's twenty-two.”

“Oh, that's not so bad,” my mother said. “Five out of twenty-two.” But she looked unhappy.

“And now, from our own Manzanita Drive, it's Elizabeth Earle,” Danny shouted.

“Quiet,” my mother said, elbowing him.

I winked at Danny and turned to start the music. I stood with my back to them, my hands at my waist, my right knee bent. Then, on cue, I whipped around and started the routine.

It was the first time I had done it in front of anyone, and the thing I was most conscious of was the fact that I could not keep a smile on my face: Smile, I would tell myself, and my lips would slide open, and I would think about the kick I was doing (was my knee straight? were my toes pointed?) and I would realize my mouth was twisted into a tight knot again.

I finished with the splits, my arms upstretched in a V for Victory.

“Yes,” Danny cried, leaping off the washing machine. He highfived me and ran up the stairs to the kitchen.

My mother smiled at me. “Very nice,” she said.

I sighed and turned around.

“Really, honey,” she said. “It's good—you got all the way down on your splits. I'll bet most of the other girls can't do that.”

Danny came running back down the stairs, waving a piece of paper on which he'd written “9.9” with a thick pen. “An amazing routine from Elizabeth Earle,” he cried.

“Thanks, Dan.” I looked at my mother. “Well, it'll all be over in two days.”

“Who knows?” she said. “Maybe it'll just be beginning.”

They went upstairs while I took the record off the turntable and put it back in its paper sleeve. I wiped my sweaty palms off on my shorts—I'd decided not to wear the gloves for practicing, to keep them clean—then I turned the basement light off and climbed the stairs.

My mother and Bobby were sitting at the kitchen table. When my mother saw me she said, “Elizabeth's got her tryouts day after tomorrow.”

Bobby looked at me. “Nervous?”

I nodded.

“Twenty-two girls are trying out for five spots,” my mother said.

“OK, Mom.” I looked at Bobby's feet. “Are you wearing your new socks?”

He pulled up one leg of his jeans to display the bright red and yellow bands around the top of his sock. “Listen,” he said, “try not to be too nervous. It'll show, and that'll be the thing that gets you. Know what I mean?” He turned to my mother. “They totally watch for whether the girl has the right look. You know, smiley, bouncy. Believe me, I was once a judge for one of these things.”

“Maybe you should do your routine for Bobby,” my mother said.

“Absolutely not.” His words had sent my heartbeat out of control. Eye shadow and lip gloss, I thought, like it or not.

“Please?” he said.

I shook my head.

“Well, just remember,” he said. “You've got to smile.”

I felt my face fill with color.

My mother coughed and said, “You know, honey, you did look a little fierce down there.”

I gave them a frozen grin. “Like this?” I said through clenched teeth.

“That's the one,” Bobby said. “Glue it on.”

“Good night,” I said. Without looking at either of them, I got myself a glass of water and climbed the stairs.

“Elizabeth?” Danny called from his room.

I stopped in his doorway. He was lying on his bed, our giant world atlas open in front of him. “Planning a trip?” I asked. I sat down next to him and glanced at the atlas; it was open to a page showing the whole of Africa. “They say Morocco is nice this time of year.”

“It was good,” he said. “I'm sure you'll make it.”

I shrugged. “Not according to Mr. Basketball down there.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. I can just tell. He thinks I'm not pretty enough.”

“God,” Danny said. “He does not. You are so puerile sometimes.”

“Puerile?” I laughed and reached over to tickle his neck. “Little Mr. Vocabulary.”

“Don't call me little.” He scrambled off the bed and assumed a bodybuilder's stance. Then he put his hands on his hips and began mimicking my pompon kicks. “Do they have pompon girls in Morocco?”

“Danny!”

He started wiggling around, his arms snaking out from his sides. “I'm a Moroccan pompon girl,” he said. “Elizabethahad Earlakim.”

“Danny,” I said. “Stop, tell me the truth. Did I look fierce?”

OF COURSE
I didn't make it. Ten or twelve years later, at parties, I would offer up the comic spectacle of myself standing in the girls' gym, my back to the judges, my eyelids powder blue, my white-gloved hands clenched into fists, my right knee bent: my
hopeful, embarrassed self waiting for the music to start. I would say that as I slid down into the splits at the end, my arms in their V, I caught Miss Rosenthal's eye and mistook her horsey grin for congratulations on a job well done, when in fact she was trying to get me to smile. I would perhaps also say—although this wasn't true, I was far too nervous for such fancies—that as I stood in the locker room changing out of my gymsuit, I had a triumphant vision of myself on the floor of the basketball court at halftime, facing the crowded bleachers in my crimson and gold dress, and that I felt a thrill of fear at the idea of doing something so marvelously alien. I would say, in closing, that I was lucky: no one could admit to actually having been a pompon girl. The cachet was in having wanted to, and failed.

Here's what I never said: After the list was posted I telephoned my mother to come pick me up; it was nearly six o'clock and the afternoon light was fading. I was sitting on the curb in the parking lot hoping that Bobby wouldn't be around when I got home, when the memory of my mother's voice came to me. “Your father would—” it said. Your father would, your father would … And I was filled with sickness because I realized that she might have been wrong. Wouldn't he, after all, have been on my side? What would he have thought?
Well lucky for me he isn't here to see it.

A LITTLE WHILE
later my mother arrived; neither of us spoke on the way home.

As we turned into our street, I saw that Danny and Bobby were outside the house, shooting baskets. “No,” I said, turning to her. “Oh, please.”

“What?” She put her foot on the brake.

“I can't face him right now. Can't we go to the store or something?”

“You look fine, honey.”

“Mom,” I said. “It's not how I look. He'll think I'm such a loser. He'll try to get me to play basketball. Please.”

She steered the car to the curb and cut the engine. She turned to face me. “You don't get it, do you?” she said. “He doesn't think you're a loser. He's scared of you.”

“Bobby?”

“Terrified. You're what's standing between him and a place to live. Next week his month is up, and if we say he can't stay he's in big trouble. He's scared you want him out.”

My mouth fell open. “He told you this?”

“Elizabeth,” she said. “Believe me. No, he didn't tell me, but I know. You can be—formidable.”

I looked out the window at our house. Dusk was coming on quickly now, but still they played. I watched Danny make three baskets in a row. Then Bobby took the ball, backed up to the foot of the driveway, and drove in for a layup. “That was a good shot,” I said. I turned back to my mother.