Putting Makeup on Dead People (2 page)

“It’s spelled with a
Q
.” He writes out a word on the back of his herb book, right there on the cover, and turns it to face me. Q-U-I-N-O-A.

“That’s even better. It’s like Spanish.”

“It is Spanish. The grain of the Incas.”

“Nice,” Liz says. “And thanks,” she says to me. “We made a pretty good team today.”

“I guess so.” I look again at the word on Charlie’s book, and I touch it. It’s different, and I think it’s beautiful.

After school, when I close my locker and turn around, Liz is standing there. She’s wearing big movie star sunglasses and says, “Want a ride home? I think we live pretty close.”

“Riding the bus happens to be one of my least favorite things.”

“Then you’re in luck.”

In the parking lot, the sun shines so bright on my face that I decide to take off my sweater and stuff it into my backpack. The air feels cool through my long-sleeved cotton shirt, and I’m noticing springtime, which used to be my favorite season. I’d rejoice at the end of winter—a miserable time in Dayton, usually with a bunch of snow, a lot of wet icy rain, and gray day after gray day. But then, all of a sudden, everything would change, like it’s changing now. The tulips are popping up out of the ground all crisp and sure and bright, and I can smell the ground getting warmer.

And springtime means that it’s almost my birthday, which used to mean Dad waking me up singing Happy Birthday at the top of his lungs and sticking candles in my scrambled eggs because it was funny. Now for my birthday, Mom and I stick flowers in the dirt in front of Dad’s gravestone, which isn’t actually funny at all. I used to love springtime, to feel it on the inside. Since Dad died, it’s more like watching a movie full of lush gardens while I’m sitting in the dark theater with the trampled bodies of Sour Patch Kids lying in flat gummy destruction below me on a dirty floor.

A week from today, it’ll be April second, and I’ll be eighteen. I was due to be born on April first, but Dad always said I waited a day because I’m no fool. Sometimes I wonder.

Liz stops us at a Jeep the color of metallic chocolate. Of course she has a car this cool. “Wow,” I say.

“I’m the only child, and my dad likes to give big presents—you know how they do.”

I don’t say anything. I hate when this happens. I should be used to it by now. I should just say yes, I know, just agree so no one feels awkward. But the truth is I don’t know how dads give big presents to their car-driving daughters. I doubt Dad would have gotten me a Jeep, but I’m never going to find out.

“I’m sorry. Shit. I didn’t even. Shit.” Liz tugs at the fringe on her enormous purple purse.

“It’s okay,” I say. Usually when this happens, I don’t care how it turns out. I don’t care how the other person feels, but I’ve never met anyone like Liz, and I don’t want to mess this up. Liz feels like possibility, like the door to the magic kingdom, like, well, springtime.

She asks softly, “You still want a ride home?”

“Yes.” I reach out and touch her arm, and it feels strange to touch someone not in my family. “Really, it’s fine.”

“Okay? Okay. Then climb on in.” She opens my door for me and shuts it once I get in. Her car smells like cinnamon.

On the way out of the parking lot, she smiles and says, “Let’s roll the windows down.”

I nod, and we roll the windows down. All the way. The air makes my face tingle, and I wonder if anyone will see me riding in Liz’s chocolate Jeep. On the dashboard, a little statue of a fat happy man bounces up and down on a suction cup, and I laugh at him.

“That’s my Buddha,” Liz says. “He likes to go for rides.”

“Didn’t he start a religion?”

“If that’s not a ride, I don’t know what is.”

I laugh and nod my head as the happy Buddha bounces.

It turns out Liz does live pretty close to me. Her family’s house is in Oakwood, and mine’s just over the line in Kettering. I’m guessing Liz’s house is probably as cool as her car. Oakwood holds the distinction of being Dayton’s fancy suburb, with its own fancy supermarket and fancy shops where middle-aged women buy sequined walking outfits with their Gold American Express cards. Some parts of Kettering are fancy, but my part’s pretty normal suburban land. We live on Sherwood, which always makes me think that more exciting things should be happening there, involving forested escapades and surprise attacks from trees, but the most interesting thing at the moment is Mr. Grant’s new cherry-red riding lawn mower. Although, given the big smile on his face last weekend when he broke out his new ride, I guess that purchase did make him merrier than the average man.

As we pull onto Sherwood, Liz says, “Thanks a lot for today. I’ve actually been a little lonely since we moved.”

“No problem.” It feels so easy to be with her, and there are so many questions I want to ask, like,
How can I one day be as cool as you are?
Before I can stop myself, I ask a different one, “You want to come over?” And then I immediately regret this offer. What would someone like Liz do at my house? Watch Mom do craft projects or see how much black makeup Linnie can put on her face? I can’t remember the last time I had someone come over. Maybe Becky in the eighth grade? I don’t even know what people do at each other’s houses anymore, so I’m not sure how to do it right.

Then a thought crosses my mind. Maybe she wants to hang out with me. Maybe she’s new in town and wants a friend, and maybe there’s not a right way to do it.

“Can I?” Liz asks, and by the brightness in her eyes and voice, I know she means it, and otherwise I’ll be spending all of Friday night watching boring television with B, who’s home from college this week on spring break, or the incomprehensible Linnie, who plans to secretly dye her hair blue this evening. I’m not sure how long it will be a secret from Mom, but that’s Linnie’s problem.

“Yeah,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant. I point to my house, where Mom’s in the front yard, holding a shovel and wearing a rolled-up bandana to restrain her blond curls. “That’s it. Um, my mom isn’t used to me having friends stop by, so I’m not sure what she’ll think.”

“I’m not worried.” I’m pretty sure Liz doesn’t worry about anything. What she doesn’t know is that she’s about to meet the Wonder Woman of worrying, someone who worries about everything from dynamite to dust bunnies.

Worrying may be the one thing Mom and I have in common, and mostly I worry that someone else in my family will die one day. I’m not so much concerned about the dust bunnies. So, otherwise, I’m not sure how we’re related. When we’re out and people don’t know she’s my mother, I like to joke that the Gypsies brought me. She looks more like, say, Heidi from the Alps, and I look more like, well, like Dad. Long brown hair, dark brown eyes, nose a little bigger than I’d like. And it’s not just looks. Dad was the one who
got
me, while Mom doesn’t seem to understand anything I do. Mom likes ketchup, and I like Frank’s RedHot sauce. I like metaphors; she likes the metric system.

When Mom sees us pull up and catches the glare from the shiny Jeep, she covers her eyes.

As Liz and I step out onto the driveway, Liz says to Mom, “That’s quite an impressive begonia bed you’ve got there.”

Mom says, “Aren’t you going to ask for my phone number, too?” Then Mom and Liz both start laughing. Mom even makes that little wheezing noise she does when she finds something especially funny.

“You must be Mrs. Parisi. I’m Liz.”

As I watch Mom wipe her eyes and sigh, I start to feel like I’m on someone else’s date. I clear my throat. “Liz just started at Woodmont.”

Mom cups her hand over her eyes like she’s looking off into the horizon, or staring at me and trying to figure out if it’s possible that I might have a social life. She turns to Liz. “In the middle of your senior year? Wow, that’s a big move.”

“My parents finally retired, and Dad got an offer to be artistic director for the Dayton Ballet. Mom and Dad were both dancers with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.”

“Really?” I can tell Mom’s impressed. “Well, come on in. Do you girls want a snack?”

“Mom, we’re not twelve.”

“Seventeen-year-olds also need to eat. Right, Liz? And I made lemon cookies from a new recipe I found in the
Dayton Daily News
.” I guess I have to cut Mom some slack; it must be as exciting for her as it is for me to have company.

Liz follows behind Mom through the front door. “I will not turn down lemon cookies.”

In the kitchen, Mom gets a plate from the cupboard and asks, “So how was today?”

“We went to the funeral home in the morning,” Liz says, “for Lila Cardoza.”

Looking past Mom, out the kitchen window, I think of Liz hugging Lila’s mom, and I think of Mom greeting everyone at Dad’s viewing.

Liz looks from Mom to me, but maybe Mom’s thinking about Dad too, because she doesn’t say anything either. Mom uses the spatula to lift cookies off the cooling rack, and sets them on the plate. I can hear each cookie sliding off.

“It was sad,” Liz says.

“I’m sure,” Mom says, and turns around to bring the plate to the table. Her eyes seem hazy and vacant.

It’s quiet in the kitchen, like we’re all back at the funeral home, and everything sounds hushed and far away, like when my ears are underwater at the pool.

Liz licks her lips and runs her fingers through the fringe on her turquoise shawl. “Um, also, Donna and I have Spanish together. We are both
muy bueno
.”

Something bright and lively in Liz’s voice pulls me back to the surface again, and Mom too. She laughs.

And then it’s like Mom and Liz are new best friends, and I watch a little dumbfounded. I’m glad I have something good to eat—the perfectly round cookies are sweet and tart and crumbly—because I wouldn’t know what to do otherwise. Mom asks questions about the ballet, and Liz describes her dad in
Swan Lake
and the costumes and the lights and how her dad would pick her up when she was small and spin her like a ballerina.

“My dad used to do that too.” Mom looks at the cookie she holds delicately in her fingers. At the moment, she seems fragile, like she’s a little girl, and it makes me nervous. She sets the cookie down and says shyly, “You know, I always wanted to be a ballerina.”

Liz reaches over and touches Mom’s hand. “I bet you would have been a beautiful dancer.”

My brain is on overload. This intimacy between my new friend and my mother. Mom talking about her dad, who I rarely hear about, other than that he was very athletic. Mom wanting to be a ballet dancer. Mom wanting something, period.

“You never told me that,” I say, and it sounds angrier than I mean.

“You hate ballet,” Mom says.

“No I don’t.” Actually, I do, but I just met Liz, who happens to be the spawn of ballet people, and I’m not ready to alienate myself just yet.

Mom points a finger at me. “When I took all of us to the ballet last November, you said, ‘I hate ballet. Why are you making us go?’” I guess Mom has decided that alienating me from Liz is an acceptable choice.

Linnie passes through the kitchen. She’s wearing black-and-white-striped pajamas, and her dyed black hair hangs down to her waist. She has the same round perky kind of nose Mom has, but it doesn’t seem to fit with Linnie. “You did say that, and you were wearing that ugly silver jacket.” She looks at Liz.

Liz brushes cookie crumbs off the corner of her mouth and smiles. “Hi, I’m Liz.”

Linnie pours herself a tall glass of orange juice, drinks half of it, and fills the rest with ice cubes. “Hey.” She nods at Liz and walks out.

“Charming,” I say.

“I wish I had a sister,” Liz says, which makes no sense to me, given the example she just witnessed.

“Donna’s got a brother too,” Mom says.

Liz looks up, interested. “Really?”

“Sorry, he’s taken,” Mom says.

“But his girlfriend’s seriously lame,” I say. “So you might have a shot.”

“Donna, Gwen’s very nice.” Which is Mom’s way of saying she might not totally love Gwen either, but employing something she calls tact.

On cue, my six-foot-tall brother B comes up the stairs from the basement, where his bedroom used to be. Now it’s technically my room, but Mom made me move back in with Linnie for the week so he could stay here. He rubs his eyes and yawns. “I was dreaming about cookies.”

B has the same brown hair that I have and that Linnie has when she’s not trying to look like a vampire, but it’s curly like Mom’s, and there’s no doubt that he’s her son.

He’s got not only her nose but also her cheeks and the forehead shape and something like her narrow chin.

When I was three and B—Brendan—was seven, he used to wear a yellow-and-black-striped shirt all the time, and I told him he looked just like a bumble bee.

Mom said, “Yes, and, his name starts with the letter B.”

So I said, “Then he’s just B to me.” And he has been ever since. I can’t help but smile when B walks in a room. Growing up, we spent a lot of time together—building forts in the dirt with twigs and rocks and leaves, and making up stories. Maybe mostly I followed him around, but he let me. When he left for college right after Dad died, I thought I might fall apart. He only went to the University of Dayton, and although it’s literally just ten minutes away, it feels like he’s been in another country. And especially since he started dating Gwen last year, I can’t help but feel like he’s not mine anymore.

Now Mom gets up and pours B a glass of milk. She looks at Liz and smiles. “Apparently napping is part of the university curriculum. I haven’t taken a nap since I was four years old.”

I laugh. “Does it count when you fall asleep in the living room chair while we’re watching movies?”

Mom puts the glass in front of B and sits down again. “No.”

“That’s more of an accidental nap,” Liz says, “so it doesn’t count the same.”

“Exactly,” Mom says.

“By the way,” I say to B, “this is my friend Liz.”

B puts a whole cookie into his mouth and says, “Charmed, I’m sure,” amid a spray of lemony crumbs. Liz cracks up.

I shake my head. “He’s also part Neanderthal.”

Still with a mouthful of cookie, he says, “I’m hungry.” I am always amazed at how delightful my brother seems under any circumstances—mouthful of food, half asleep. And everyone loves him. I’ve never met someone who doesn’t like B, and vice versa. Last summer, he and his roommates had a barbecue at their house in the Ghetto, what UD students call the neighborhood where they live. Mom and Linnie and I went, and I sat on the porch and watched him for three hours laughing and talking with literally everyone at the party. He was like a magnet with a crowd of people around him at all times. I watched him and wondered how, after Dad died, he kept it—all that joy—and why I didn’t.