Putting Makeup on Dead People (7 page)

She unlaces and then relaces her fingers. She sighs. “No.”

“Okay, what else can you tell me?”

She sighs again, breathes in like she’s rewinding her inner message tape. “The program is a year,” she says, which is, in fact, how the message starts on Chapman’s voice mail. Maybe she recorded it. “After that, most students typically do a one-year internship before entering the workforce.”

“Last bolt on the casket, eh?”

She doesn’t laugh. “That it? Or do you have more pertinent questions?”

I’m not sure for a second if she said impertinent, but I think my time is done here. “Nope.” I hand her the application. “Sign me up.”

“Actually, there’s an application process,” she says, glancing at my paperwork, “Ms. Parisi. So I can’t really do that.”

I force a smile. Now who’s being pertinent?

I take myself on a walk around the campus, keeping an eye out for Lars and Sarah and Betty from the catalog, but I don’t see any of them. I do see a few wooden benches, some gingko trees with the stinky berries, old brick buildings, and people milling about with backpacks and books and teeth that aren’t as white as I was led to believe.

One of the buildings has a gold plaque with two lines of writing: the suzanne palmisano restorative arts laboratory on top, and underneath, restore in peace. I walk up the path to the door and try the knob. It’s unlocked, so I walk in. Down the hallway ahead of me, I see a long window with bright light washing through and over the patch of hallway floor below. I tiptoe farther in and peek through the window.

Below, I see what looks like an art studio—long tables and paintbrushes and carving tools. About twenty people in lab coats are working with what I think is clay, shaping it into things I have to squint to realize are parts of the human face—noses, ears, cheeks, even what I’m guessing is an eyelid, which one woman is gluing eyelashes onto. She holds it out to the man next to her, who nods as if to say, “Nice job.”

Behind me, I hear footsteps, and turn to see a guy in a white T-shirt whose exposed arms and neck are covered in multicolored tattoos. He’s got a white lab coat tossed over his shoulder. He tilts his head to the side and smiles at me. “Don’t tap the glass or try to feed the animals. They bite.”

“Or it looks like they could make teeth to bite me.”

“Right on.” He pulls the lab coat off his shoulder and slides it on. “I’m Jason.”

“Donna.” I try to figure out what to do with my hands, and end up putting them on my hips, which feels totally silly. I slide them behind my back and pull at the dangly straps on my backpack. “I’m thinking of becoming a student here.”

“Rad. When you do, try to get to class on time, even if the instructors don’t.” He flashes another smile at me and heads down the hall and around a corner.

A few seconds later, I see him walk through a door in the room below, and all the people in lab coats turn to look at him and stop the work they’re doing. They sit in tall chairs next to the long art tables and pull out notebooks. Jason holds up a clay model of a human head and starts to talk. I can see them all laughing. I have no idea what he’s saying, but I smile too. I’ve never seen a teacher with that many tattoos, and it looks like everyone is, in fact, restoring in peace.

By the time I get home, Mom’s car is in the driveway, and I pull in right next to her. She’s walking up the sidewalk to the front door with grocery bags in both hands.

I remember unloading grocery bags with her when I was little. On the way home from the Kroger, Mom would keep the box of Dutch cocoa sugar cookies out so we’d have a treat. Once we got inside, she’d pull a kitchen rag off the sink and promptly wipe the cookie crumbs from my face. “There,” she’d say. “That’s presentable.”

I remember her doing the same thing the day of Dad’s funeral. Some cousin with stinky perfume had left a lipstick mark on my cheek, and Mom marched me to the funeral home water fountain, pulled out a Kleenex, and went at my face. I protested, dragging out the word “Mom” into two syllables, the skilled pronunciation perfected by all fourteen-year-old girls.

Mom paused, immobilized my protest with that mythical look that could petrify plants and animals, and then wiped off the rest of the lipstick.

Now she turns as she hears the car and waves to me, a little white flag kind of wave. I’m just not sure we’re going to have a truce.

I follow her into the house and down the hall to the kitchen with the last of her grocery bags. “So,” I say, “I turned it in. My application for mortuary school.”

“I thought we were going to discuss this.” In slow motion, she puts a gallon of one percent milk in the fridge and carefully closes the door.

“I never said I wanted to discuss this.” I lean against the kitchen wall and hold my backpack against my stomach and chest.

Mom unloads cans and boxes on the counter and folds up the paper grocery bag. She doesn’t look at me and holds on to counter like she’s steadying herself, like she held on to the table yesterday. “When do you find out if you’re accepted?”

“In a month, I think,” I tell her, and then remember the nice lady in the peach sweater. “But maybe longer.”

“If you’re accepted,” Mom says, handing me a box of garbage bags to go in the closet next to me, “we’ll discuss it then. Because I want to. And I’m your mother. And because I want what’s best for you.”

I take the box from her, and the phone rings. “Can you get that?” Mom asks on her way down the steps to the laundry room, where Clorox and dryer sheets go.

“Hey, kiddo,” Uncle Lou says. “What’s the good word?”

“Turned in my application for school today.”

“Oh,” he says, “for the aviary.”

“Right.” I sit down at the kitchen table and thumb through Mom’s pile of unused coupons, including ones for string cheese and Drano, which I think may have some sort of cause-and-effect relationship. “Mom just ran downstairs for a minute.”

“Honey?” he says. “Go easy on your mom, will you? She’s doing her best to raise you kids right and keep it all together.”

For a moment, silence hangs between us, and I see Mom very clearly, holding my little sister’s hand and greeting each relative and friend as they made their way to the white cushioned kneeler in front of Dad’s coffin. And I see her later that night, after we’d all said good night and I came out to lie on the living room floor, tired of my bed, and she sat crying at the dining room table with an untouched cup of tea.

Now I hear Mom on the creaky middle step. I know she’s had it rough, but I don’t know what to do for her. I’m struggling to figure out what to do for myself. “Mom’s back,” I say in the phone to him.
Uncle Lou
, I mouth to her. She nods, taking out two cans of cream of mushroom soup and folding up another brown bag.

“Bye, Uncle Lou,” I say.

“I love you,” he says.

I hand Mom the phone and watch as she stretches the cord across the kitchen so she can put the bags away under the sink. It’s rare for my mother, master multitasker, to do one thing at a time. Put away groceries, talk with her brother-in-law, thwart my happiness.

O
n Tuesday at lunch, Patty and Becky are working on a presidential history handout they forgot about that’s due this afternoon, Charlie’s still reading his herb garden book and making notes, and Jim has crafted a paper football he’s shooting through various invented goalposts, like Becky’s lip balm and lipstick tubes and the salt and pepper shakers. Liz and I are sharing french fries and a chef salad when she says, “Oh, I almost forgot. I have a proposal for you.”

From her purple bag she pulls out the
Dayton City Paper
and shows me a circled blurb for a workshop called “Rituals,” which is scheduled to start a few weeks from now.

“Wanna take this with me?” Liz asks. “It sounds amazing.” Today Liz wears a red-and-white polka-dot scarf rolled up thin and around her head like a headband, with the long silky ends hanging down her back. And she has a different ring on every finger. The one pointing to the amazing rituals workshop has an inch-long silver lizard crawling up toward her fingernail.

“I’m pretty sure nothing in the
City Paper
is amazing,” Patty says. Since she must not be paying such close attention to the presidents, I figure she’s trusting Becky to do most of the work. Figures.

“Don’t be so trapped by expectation,” Liz says. “And besides, I wasn’t talking to you.” She looks at me. “What do you think?”

The blurb reads,
Learn about rituals of all of the major religions and spiritual paths. This extended evening workshop will introduce you to rituals for living and dying, rituals to attract love, protection rituals, and rituals to discover your true purpose in life.

I nod, curious and flattered. No one has ever asked me to do something like this before, and I don’t know how anyone says no to someone like Liz. “Okay, sure.”

“I hope you have an amazing time,” Patty says. “See, I’m not trapped.”

“Whatever,” Liz says. I guess she and Patty aren’t best friends after all.

When everyone else takes their trays up to the line, Liz closes the paper and looks me in the eyes. “I’m so excited to learn about this stuff with you.”

I want to say thank you, but I look down and start tearing little pieces off my napkin. “So do you think we’ll get to study Pagan stuff at all? I have an aunt who’s a Witch. Aunt Selena.”

“Really? That’s so cool. Can I meet her?” Liz’s eyes are bright, and I think she may actually be salivating.

I wish I hadn’t said anything. “No one in my family actually talks to her.”

“Witches don’t mix with the Catholic Italians? Seems like a good match to me.”

“She stopped going to church, and Aunt Sylvia was sure Aunt Selena hit her with the evil eye. And everyone stopped talking to her. Except my dad would call her sometimes, even though Mom didn’t like it. At all.” Words are spilling out of my mouth, and I worry that Mom is right, that I don’t know how to interact with living people in any kind of balanced way. It’s either nothing or all this.

Liz’s eyes open wide, and she leans in closer.

“Oh, yeah, and Uncle Lou told me once that Selena was psychic or something.” With each word, I watch Liz get more interested as I get more uncomfortable. Then I remember something I hope might deter Liz, because it actually freaked me out a little. “They all say she’s only psychic because she worships the devil.”

Liz shrugs. “But listen, you’re not them. You could talk to her.”

I tie my straw wrapper into a knot. “I don’t think so.”

Liz frowns, but then shakes her head. “That’s fine,” she says. “Still, you know it’s in your blood.”

“I’m not sure it’s genetic.”

Liz makes that sharp direct eye contact again. “Donna,” she says, “I think you have amazing personal power.”

What I like best is that she means it. I know a faker when I see one, and she isn’t faking. She really does think it. I just wish I could figure out how to locate that amazing personal power without sacrificing small animals to the Dark Lord.

On our way out of the cafeteria, I see Charlie waiting by my locker. Liz looks at him and winks at me. “Later, skater,” she says, and walks away.

And there I am, with my throat feeling like it’s about to close up.

“Hey, I think that class you and Liz are taking sounds incredible. You’ll have to tell me how it is.” I guess Charlie wasn’t totally paying attention to his herb book either.

“Okay.” I see that look again in Charlie’s eyes, because he’s staring right into mine. I remember hearing once that eyes are the only places other than the brain with brain cells in them, so you really can see inside of someone that way. I hope Charlie can’t read my brain cells and know that I’m wondering what it would be like to kiss him. Or that I’m wondering what would happen if we went out on a date that went wrong. Like Charlie would ask me all kinds of interesting questions, but I couldn’t think of anything to say, and so drown us both in awkward silence, which would lead Charlie to promptly toss me into the girlfriend recycling bin. Then how on earth would I survive sitting at the same lunch table with him and everyone else for the next two months? This road, I decide, can only end in disaster. I blink fast a few times, hoping that might throw Charlie off my trail.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“Something stuck in my eye.” I smile. “But it’s gone now.” I tell my brain cells to shut it, and force myself to think about more attractive things, like rain forests and Greenpeace. Just in case.

After dinner, while we’re loading the dishwasher, I tell Mom there’s a class down at the community center I want to take with Liz, and she says, “Sweetheart, that’s wonderful.” I think Mom is just relieved I’m taking an interest in activities with people my own age. I think she’s also relieved I’m asking about a one-night workshop instead of a year-long degree program. “It’s interesting,” she says, “because I’m going to take a class at the community center too.”

“Like on knitting or something?”

“Yoga.”

“Really?” I realize my mouth is hanging open and that I may have responded as if Mom had just told me she’d decided to ride cross-country naked on horseback.

“You’re not the only one who can try something new.” She closes the dishwasher door with a little more force than usual.

“I didn’t mean you couldn’t do it. I was just surprised, is all.”

“Yeah, I guess I am too.” Mom puts on the kettle for her evening tea and seems to relax again. She smiles a little and looks unsure, something I rarely see. I’ve always wondered if Mom has a secret manual stored somewhere that tells her how everything should be done, from folding dish towels to making meat loaf. For Mom, there’s always been a right way to do things; but at this moment, she seems more like a question mark than a period. “I just think it might be time to shake things up, you know?”

I think about my Chapman application, wonder where it is today. “Maybe that’s what I want too.”

Mom nods. “Maybe,” she says softly.

And since Mom is all loose and into yoga, I think maybe now would be a good time to bring up my Witch aunt. I remember hearing Dad and Mom and Aunt Sylvia, one of Dad’s sisters, talk about her once when they were figuring out who should come to my first Communion. I had been coloring a worksheet for school.

Aunt Sylvia said something about the word
Pagan
and made the sign of the cross about three times. “She casts spells on people.”

“How do you know this?” Dad asked.

“I think she cursed me,” Aunt Sylvia said. “Why else would Ralph leave me?”

“Ralph left you because he’s a jamoke,” Dad said. “I’d like her to come.”

Mom said, “Nicky, I’m sorry. I’m just not comfortable with her being there.”

Dad agreed, but he sounded a little sad.

But that was ten years ago, and I am eighteen now. I can ask my mom a question. I push in the kitchen table chairs and say as casually as I can muster, “Have you seen Aunt Selena in a while?”

“Why?” Her back is to me, but it sounds like she’s got both eyebrows up.

“I was just wondering.”

“No, I haven’t seen her. Lou said that Irene saw her at the Dorothy Lane Market, but they didn’t talk.” She sets her favorite yellow mug on the table and puts an English breakfast tea bag in it. Her eyes are now narrowed toward me. “Just to be clear, your aunt is involved in things I don’t approve of.” Definitive Mom has returned.

“Okay.” I take a drink of water, which I hope says,
I wouldn’t dream of getting in touch with Aunt Selena
, even for Liz, but Mom doesn’t look like she got that message.

The teakettle whistles, and Mom turns off the stove. She pours boiling water over the tea bag, the hot stream pinning it to the bottom of the mug. “Things you shouldn’t be involved in.”

“Got it.”

On Good Friday evening, Mom and Linnie and I go to the Stations of the Cross at St. Camillus. Inside the dark church I smell incense and the polish they use on the wooden pews. Tonight’s service doesn’t require talking to anyone on the way in or out, and I like the excuse to be somber.

Father Dean walks from station to station, stopping in front of each statue of Jesus on his way to being crucified. At the station where Jesus carries his cross and Veronica steps out of the crowd to wipe the sweat and blood off his face, I think of Mom wiping Dad’s face with a cool washcloth as he lay on the hospital bed she had set up for him in their room. Supposedly, Veronica’s cloth somehow carried the imprint of Jesus’ face after that. With a Kleenex from my pocket, I wipe the tears from my own cheek. I look down at it and search for the imprint of my face. All I see are dark spots in the tissue. One looks like a rabbit, but I can’t be sure.