Putting Makeup on Dead People (8 page)

L
ate Holy Saturday morning, the kitchen smells like vinegar and rain when I tell Mom I need to go out. She turns from the kitchen sink, where she’s filling the teakettle with water. “But we’re dyeing Easter eggs.”

“I don’t have to this year.” I tighten the straps on my backpack and hope I sound convincing so I can make a quick escape.

Mom looks sad, but the frown changes course on her face and somehow flips into a raised eyebrow. “Where do you have to go that’s so important?”

I do some speed-fishing in my brain for a good answer that isn’t the truth, which is that I’m going to Brighton Brothers to tell them I turned in my application. “I have to look for some books. For that class at the community center.”

It seems I caught a winner, because Mom smiles a little. She sighs. “Just try to be back soon so you can do at least one with me and Linnie, okay?”

“Okay.”

At Brighton Brothers, when I walk in and say hello, no one answers. I call a little louder, and still nothing.

The doors to Viewing Room One are closed, but it doesn’t seem like any visitors are here. I knock softly and slide open one side of the pocket doors, just enough of a crack to stick my head through.

In front of a black coffin that looks like it’s right out of a Dracula movie stands a muscly man in a lab coat and hiking boots—Joe Brighton. He turns and grins at me.

“Hey, it’s my pal, Donna P.” He’s wearing rubber gloves and is holding a triangular sponge. “My brother told me you stopped by.”

“The other Mr. Brighton.”

“The Evil Mr. Brighton.” He stops smiling and nods with exaggerated slowness, but there’s a little sparkle in his eyes.

“So I call you the Good Mr. Brighton?”

“How ’bout you call me JB instead?”

“Okay.” JB is absolutely the tan body builder, mustache-free version of the dentist head, which I didn’t know was possible until now. “I turned in my application at CCMS.”

“Good for you.” He sets his sponge down on a little cart next to the coffin, which I notice has silver spirals painted on the side. “Want your first unofficial class in restorative arts? I am, after all, the master.” I remember the Restorative Arts Lab at Chapman and think of the tattooed teacher. I wonder if Jason and JB know each other.

I hesitate to answer him, although I’m straining my neck to see the coffin behind him, which I’m not totally convinced is vampire-free. “Sure.”

“You picked a doozy of a day to stop by, so you’re in luck.” He rifles through what looks like the huge, multitiered makeup cases Father Bill bought for the Players last year, and pulls out a small tube. Turning back to the coffin, he says, “Shut the door behind you, would you? Despite what you might think, we don’t usually like people wandering in.”

I step into the room and slide the door shut. “Sorry.”

“You’re an exception, so it’s okay. You’re in training.”

“Not yet. I haven’t even been accepted.” I notice folding chairs lined up on either side of the room, and up closer to JB and the coffin stand two shoulder-height flower arrangements bursting with black roses.

“You’re in training as soon as you start to learn something. Wanna learn something?”

I step up next to JB. “Yes.”

“Well, there you are.”

And holy crap, here I am. In front of us is not what I expected at all. Inside the coffin, which JB tells me is a toe-pincher, tapered at the end like they made in the old days, lies a woman with black curly hair piled high, tendrils dropping delicately over her white ears, contrasting with her shockingly white skin and a mouth gaping wide open.

“No, this isn’t how we usually do it,” JB says. Apparently this woman, Miranda Nethers, had some unusual requests for her viewing, the basics of which were getting made up to look like the undead. JB looks a lot like B does when he’s figuring out a new mechanical gadget—thoroughly delighted.

JB calls his makeup case the Titan, short for the Titan 2000, apparently the fanciest, most complete mortuary makeup kit on the market, equipped to meet the needs of the most versatile artist. From one of the Titan’s lower tiers, JB pulls out something that doesn’t look like makeup, and I realize it’s a tube of superglue. After applying two smooth lines of superglue on Miranda’s top and bottom lips, JB seals her mouth. Suddenly I think of Patty and wonder if this trick could work on live people.

JB explains that he applied an initial coat of white foundation to help him get focused, although he knew he’d need another coat. He points out where he’s already smudged it in a few places when he closed Miranda’s mouth. “Makeup doesn’t mix the same with a dead person’s skin. There’s no heat or oil to help it sink in like it does on a live person. So it’s easy to mess up, but also easy to fix.”

Which he does in no time, sweeping graceful strokes of a blend of white and beige cosmetic on her cheeks and chin and forehead. He paints her lips with a dark red that’s almost brown, and I’ve got to hand it to him—she looks pretty undead to me. Finally he pulls out an atomizer and squeezes three puffs of powder over her face, then pulls off the plastic bib covering her neck and chest, revealing a black high-collared dress with lace at the throat.

“Scary.”

“Really?” he asks, and then nods. “Thank you. I thought so too.” He pulls a bottle of deep red nail polish from the Titan. “Now for the finishing touches.”

As I watch JB delicately paint each of Miranda’s fingernails, I notice how tense my whole body feels—not like I’m stressed out, but like I’m some kind of animal ready to pounce, all systems go. I can’t remember the last time I paid this close attention to anything. And it feels amazing.

On Easter, as usual, Mom has the table set beautifully. A big platter of sliced ham with pineapple rings around it sits in the center. Steam drifts up from the dish of scalloped potatoes and the plate of bakery rolls. And Mom put almond slivers in the green beans, which I wish she did all the time since they taste so good that way. I’m sitting next to Linnie, then B, then Gwen, then Mom on the other side of me.

After we say grace and pass the food around the table, B stands up, holding his wineglass. The sloshing Merlot looks just like the color JB used on Miranda’s lips yesterday, and I almost say so, but luckily B starts talking first.

“We have an announcement to make.” He smiles at Gwen, and I realize her eyes are sparkling and full. “Gwen and I are getting married.”

“Oh, honey,” Mom says, dropping her fork. “Congratulations. To both of you.” She stands up and hugs B.

For a second I feel something drop in my stomach, and I don’t know if I should be happy or sad. Then everyone’s up hugging each other, and Gwen is squealing a lot. Surprisingly, Mom is too. Gwen wears the same sweet department-store perfume that Patty does, which makes the hug a little stifling, and I notice that with her heels on, she’s still a few inches shorter than me.

When we sit back down, Mom says, “I’m so excited, I’m not sure I can eat.”

“I know, right?” Gwen says, although usually she doesn’t eat, at least not like the rest of us. For instance, right now her plate is full of green beans, a pineapple ring, and a tiny slice of ham. Gwen likes to avoid fats, and our Easter dinner clearly falls outside the Weight Watchers’ guidelines.

From what B has told me, Gwen’s not big on conventional cooking. I don’t know that she actually cooks at all. Mostly she eats sprouts and dry foods or things like kelp and carrots. She often won’t eat anything at our house. For instance, last Fourth of July, she asked Mom, “How much butter is in these cookies?”

“I’m sorry?” Mom said.

“The proportion,” Gwen said. “You know, the percentage.”

Without looking up, Mom peeled back the plastic wrap from a plate full of snickerdoodles. “I know what proportion means.”

“Of course,” Gwen said.

“And I have no idea.” Mom held up a cookie. Exhibit A. “They’re cookies. Cookies have butter in them. That’s what makes them good.” Any normal person would have dropped it, but Gwen continued. “Actually, you could make them with yogurt.”

Nobody asked you, Gwen, I thought.

“That’s an interesting idea.” This was Mom’s way of saying hell would freeze over, thaw, and refreeze before she’d make snickerdoodles with yogurt instead of butter. Mom is a diplomat.

I’m not. “Yogurt’s gross,” I said. Then I made Gwen an abominably strong gin and tonic—a tactic I no longer use because of the repercussions. When Gwen drinks too much, at least as far as I’ve seen at family functions, she starts to dance. Or she likes to have sing-alongs. So that Fourth of July, I had to mine my musical depths.

“Let’s have a sing-along,” Gwen said.

“Yes, please,” Mom said. “Donna, why don’t you play something?” And I found myself at the piano with Gwen breathing a gin-and-flat-noted version of “Send in the Clowns” behind me. The clowns never came. But who knows? Maybe they’ll show up for the wedding.

Gwen says, “Mrs. Parisi, I hope you’ll help me make plans. Mom and Dad aren’t so into the wedding thing.”

When she says this, I feel a wave of sympathy for her. I remember B telling me that Gwen is really different from her parents. She’s about to graduate with a degree in exercise science, and both of them are overweight couch potatoes. And they don’t actually seem to take an interest in anything she does. I wonder if she’s even told them she’s getting married. As much as I don’t think Mom gets me, I’ve never doubted that she takes an interest in my life.

Mom reaches over and squeezes Gwen’s hand. “Of course. Whatever you need. I’ll be happy to.”

I decide maybe Gwen could use a little extra niceness. “Me too. I can help.”

B looks at me and smiles. “Thanks, Donder.”

Linnie asks, “Do I have to wear a dumb dress?”

“I’m sure I can arrange that, even before the wedding. I’ve got closets full of them.” Mom stares at Linnie. “Any other ideas of what you could say at this moment?”

Linnie slowly smashes one of the potato slices on her plate. “Congratulations.”

I can’t say I’m feeling a lot more enthusiastic, realizing that helping Gwen may very well involve a whole array of things I’d call dumb, dresses notwithstanding.

“So,” Mom says, leaning into the table, “when will the wedding be?”

“Just after Christmas,” Gwen says. “It will be a New Year’s extravaganza. So there will be lots of things for you to glitter, Donna!”

My earlier sympathy is waning.

“And helping someone else plan her wedding can always give you pointers for your own.” Gwen grins and winks at me. I have the sudden urge to shrink myself to the size of the saltshaker, climb onto one of the pineapple rings, press a button, and shoot myself off into space. Since I can’t do that, heat rises almost instantly to my neck and cheeks.

“She’s right,” Mom says. “Maybe you’ll fall in love with someone at UD too.”

And even though a little part of me tells me to take a bite of my roll and let the conversation flow to other places, the words come out of my mouth. “Or at CCMS.”

Mom glares at me.

“Because I’ll probably go there,” I say a little louder.

“I’ve never heard of CCMS,” B says.

“They teach mortuary science,” I say.

“You want to be a mortician?” B says
mortician
in the same way I think he might say
pole dancer
.

“Yes. I do.” I fold my arms across my chest, which I hope B knows is my way of saying,
See how interesting I am? If you’d been paying attention to me at all, you might have noticed earlier.

“Metal,” Linnie says, like she might, in fact, realize how interesting I am.

Gwen glances around the table, at B’s open mouth, at Linnie smashing her scalloped potatoes, at Mom’s frown. She turns to me. “So when do you start school?”

“She hasn’t been accepted yet,” Mom says, like she’s forcefully shutting a door. “Okay, someone pass me the potatoes before I pass out.” She takes the bowl from Gwen. “Now, Brendan, have you thought about groomsmen?”

Yesterday JB said I’m already in training, and it felt so good. Today it feels like training’s about as close as Guam. I take a big drink of water and wish I could get through a meal with Mom without active combat.

Gwen gets excited about groomsmen and a follow-up question from Mom about cake, so the conversation leaps from funerals to Funfetti, about which I have nothing to say.

I
tell Liz about B and Gwen when she drops me off after school on Monday. “A New Year’s wedding will be fun. You can get all fancy.” She puts her car in park in our driveway.

“I guess.”

“Speaking of fancy, are you planning on going to prom, D?”

“Is that my new nickname?”

“I guess. Does it work?”

“Yeah.” No one but my family had given me a nickname—that one being shared with a reindeer—so I feel like anything else is an improvement. “And no prom for me.”

“Then me and you have a date to do something else fun.”

“No one asked you either?” I pull my backpack up onto my lap.

“Well, no. I just don’t want to go.” Liz, I’ve discovered, seems to always have lots of choices about everything. I wonder what that’s like.

Two weeks later, Mom goes to her first yoga class at the community center, and she comes home with flushed cheeks and bright eyes. Stray hair from her ponytail has curled around her face, and it occurs to me how pretty she is.

“So how was it?”

“Really wonderful,” she says. “And our instructor is part Japanese and part Cherokee; he’s really interesting.” She looks at the kitchen table, covered with the books I have spread out for my last two finals tomorrow. “How’s studying?”

“Okay. I need another hour or so, and then I’ll head to bed.”

Mom looks at me and shakes her head. “I can’t believe my baby is graduating in just a few weeks. Both of my babies. It seems like you both just started.”

B’s and my graduations are a week apart, and it does seem like only yesterday that he started UD and I started Woodmont. That life turned upside down and it felt like I lost both Dad and B in the span of one week. That I started a new school and have never felt at home there.

Mom’s eyes fill with tears, and I know she’s remembering too. “Oh, life goes on, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does,” I say, feeling like I’m lying, but not wanting to upset Mom.

She wipes at her eyes and puts her game face back on. “Have you heard from Chapman yet?”

“Not yet.” I feel my stomach getting tight, and I steady myself for another fight.

Instead, Mom says, “At yoga tonight, we had to take deep breaths. Maybe that would help you too. Just fill up your belly first, though. I never knew I wasn’t breathing deeply before, but I wasn’t.”

“Okay.” I watch my mother show me how to take a deep breath, which seems utterly out of place in the kitchen, where she concocts casseroles and does cross-stitch.

When she goes to take a shower, I do my best to concentrate on my books, although I’m definitely wondering if Mom was secretly replaced by an alien robot, the deep-breathing, New Age kind.

Although I guess I can’t judge. I am going to a rituals class with Liz tomorrow, so maybe I’m a New Age robot too.

When Liz picks me up the next night, and I see Patty in the front seat of the Jeep, I feel ill.

“Hey there,” Liz says slowly. “Patty decided she wanted to take the class too.”

“Great,” I force myself to say, and hope I don’t sound as devastated as I feel. What was going to be my really fun thing with Liz has now become something else.

“Hop in,” Patty says, like she was the one who had the idea in the first place.

“Okay,” I say.

Liz turns to the backseat and smiles at me, and it looks like she’d like to say more, like she’s got an explanation, and that at least makes me feel a little better.

Once we get to the center, there are about ten of us plus the instructor, who I half expected to be wearing a long black robe and to be very pale. I did not expect a ruddy-cheeked woman in a red hooded sweatshirt and jeans, but there she is, introducing herself as Kirsten, the rituals class teacher.

The community center room we’re in has a bunch of old couches and soft chairs, which it seems Kirsten has arranged into a circle of sorts. Liz and Patty and I sit on one of the couches, and Patty makes sure she sits between Liz and me.

Patty checks out Kirsten, smirks, and crosses her legs.

I hear Liz say, “You know, Patty, you didn’t have to come. We could call your mom to come pick you up.”

“No, I want to be here.” Patty stops smirking. “I think it’ll be really interesting.”

Kirsten talks for a while about all kinds of things, how rituals can be as simple as a prayer before bedtime or before meals. “Often, effective rituals are balanced,” she says. “As in, if you want something new to come, sometimes you have to let go of something else. For instance, in many Christian rituals, there’s an opportunity to say you’re sorry for your sins before you petition the deity for anything else. Or in many earth religions, you acknowledge and thank the gods and goddesses and spirits around you and release any negativity before you welcome in new energy.”

Then Kirsten explains how rituals can take us from one place to another, like rituals welcoming new babies into a community or coming-of-age rituals for young men and women in Native American or other traditions. Or rituals to help the dead journey to what’s beyond, and to help the living move to a peaceful life without them.

My ears perk up at that. I wonder if Dad has journeyed to what’s beyond, and I worry that maybe he hasn’t, since I haven’t moved to anything I’d call a peaceful life without him.

Liz glances over and gives me a tiny smile. Her eyes are soft.

At Dad’s funeral we sang that song “On Eagle’s Wings.”
And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of His hand.
I cried as I sang, and I cried as I listened to the sound of other voices when I couldn’t sing anymore. Maybe God did take Dad that way—it sounds so beautiful and tangible. Eagle’s wings and dawn’s breath and glowing warm and safe in a big divine hand. But going to church doesn’t feel like that to me, in a building that’s often stuffy and with so many things to do right and wrong and to feel bad about either way. More of a divine fist than an open divine hand. It just sort of makes me feel numb and bored, kind of like how Patty looks right now.

Her eyes seem glazed over, and I notice she’s tapping her boot on the floor, her knee bouncing up and down. That Patty may be bored right now baffles me since all of this seems so fascinating. And I’m assuming it pisses Liz off, because she clamps her hand down on Patty’s knee and mouths the word
Stop
.

Patty stops and rolls her eyes.

Kirsten says that in ancient Egypt, they took great care getting dead bodies ready for the afterlife, and all of a sudden I imagine Mr. Bob Brighton decked out like King Tut. Which is not actually a great look for him. I push that out of my mind and wonder if that’s what I’d be doing as a mortician. If that’s one way of loving the whole person—you know, getting them ready for the afterlife.

I remember Dad in his coffin and noticing the makeup. Did JB do that to get Dad ready? And what does that say about the afterlife? You need lipstick to get by? What with the lipstick and the eagle’s wings, I worry there’s a real possibility that the afterlife could be an awful lot like a musical Father Bill might write for the Players.

By now Kirsten is quoting someone named Joseph Campbell and talking about following our bliss—how cultures used to have coming-of-age rituals in place to help young people do just that, but now we have people of all ages wandering around not sure what to do with themselves or their lives.

And as she talks about how each person may in fact have something he or she is deeply supposed to do, the only thing I can think about is death. I wonder if my bliss is death, which sounds ridiculous. But also true. Because right then being a mortician doesn’t feel like an
if
. It’s more like a
when
. I feel the certainty slip over me like a new fancy dress that I’m not quite sure how to wear. Does it fit? Do I look stupid? Will anyone even notice I’m wearing something different?

For a moment, I look to my right, and both Patty and Liz are paying attention. I guess Patty’s not bored anymore. And I’m so interested in what Kirsten says that I forget to be self-conscious or even mad that Patty came with us.

At break, when Patty goes to use the ladies’ room, Liz grabs my arm. “I’m sorry! She called, and she was so bummed. Her prom date has mono or something, so he can’t go this weekend. I couldn’t get the whole story because she wouldn’t stop crying. I didn’t know what to do.”

“It’s okay.” I know it’s childish, but I’m totally relieved that Liz didn’t ask Patty to come with us. I can feel better about Patty as a charity case.

When class starts again, Kirsten says, “Now I want to hear from you. I’d like us to go around the circle and each share a ritual we do, or at least one we know about.”

No one said anything about class participation, and I feel myself start to sweat and hope my deodorant from this morning takes me and my armpits through the night. Then Kirsten adds, “You can also pass,” and I let out an almost audible sigh of relief.

Sharing works its way around the circle, with everything from saying a prayer to the four directions each evening, to lighting candles in church.

Liz says that every time she takes a shower, she sings.

“A very powerful water ritual.” Kirsten nods. “And claiming your own voice.”

I can see Liz eating this up, and I’m glad Kirsten said those words to her.

Even Patty says that every morning as she puts on her makeup, she looks herself in the eyes and tells herself how beautiful she is and that she better keep working to maintain it.

“Interesting, Patty, thanks,” Kirsten says, and I like her even more for her diplomacy. Then Kirsten holds out her hand to me.

I think for a moment of the quiet place in my chest where I go whenever I need to escape the world. “Pass,” I say.

On the way home, Liz decides we’re going to do a springtime love attraction ritual on Saturday night, while everyone else is at prom. Since no one has asked me to go, and since Liz has declined what I’ve now discovered to be about five invitations, I think that’s a great idea. Patty, however, bursts into tears. “I can’t miss my senior prom.” She sniffles.

“You could go by yourself,” Liz offers.

“That’s even worse,” Patty wails.

Come Saturday night, Liz, Patty, and I are situated in Liz’s basement, where Liz has lit what seems like hundreds of candles and is burning an incense stick in one of the Shiva statue’s multiple hands. The smoke alarm went off once already, and Liz’s mom asked us to open the screen door to let some air in, so it’s a little chilly.

We each sit on big cushions Liz took off the couch. I have goose bumps, which Liz has said will enhance the ritual, that I’ll feel “more alive.” Right now I’m just cold, and wondering how much longer we’re going to “sit in silence to prepare ourselves.”

I look at Liz, whose eyes are closed, and Patty, who is checking out her fingernails. I whisper, “Should we paint our faces?”

“No,” Liz says, opening one eye. “This is serious.”

“Face paint can be serious,” I say.

Liz looks at me with an expression I’ve seen Mom use—maybe we all have one of those “settle down” faces at our disposal. Liz takes a deep breath and says, “We will begin.” From under her cushion she pulls out three pieces of homemade paper and three purple pens and divides them among us. “Now we list all that we want in a partner.”

After several questions from Patty about what
partner
means and if it’s the same as
boyfriend
, Liz uses sage to smudge the room and us and our paper. After one shot glass each of chocolate liqueur, we make our lists.

Good dancer, smart, nice hands like Dad’s.
Does that belong? Then an image of Charlie, environmental champion, pops into my head.
Interested in the world; kind.

After we burn our lists to release them, and set off the smoke alarm once more, Liz’s mom says we’re done with the gift of fire. So we end the night eating Cheerios in Liz’s blaze-free kitchen, and Patty invites us to a senior picnic she’s attending tomorrow.

“I can’t. I have a Players meeting tomorrow.” I’m assuming the chocolate liqueur made me do it; otherwise I have no clue why I’d say that in front of Patty.

Liz adds some Cheerios to her bowl. “Your theater troupe?”

Patty laughs. “Are you still doing that weird thing?”

“Donna knows it’s weird. That makes a difference. Besides, everyone knows you can learn from unusual and interesting people.” Liz slurps milk from her spoon.

I wish that Liz could be around all the time to be my interpreter. She always makes everything sound so much better than it is. “Although, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to learn from Leaf,” I confess.

When I describe Leaf, Patty says, “She sounds like a freak. Why else would her husband leave her?” I nod in agreement and feel bad at the same time, like I’ve betrayed someone. But what if Patty’s right? Freaks get left. Freaks might not even ever get found. Right then I have a sinking feeling that that’s what I am, and fear pours cold and damp over my skin—what if Patty knows? What if everyone knows? I swallow the thought and the fear deep down into a back corner of my gut, hiding it as best as I can.

Patty lifts her bowl and drinks the last of her milk. “Sit up straight,” she says, staring at my shoulders and setting her bowl down. “Tall girls shouldn’t slouch.”

“And short girls shouldn’t tell people what to do,” Liz says, taking Patty’s bowl to the sink. Still, I push my shoulders back just a little.

On Sunday afternoon, when Father Bill is supposed to hand out a new script, all I can think of is what Patty said about freaks last night. And what Kirsten said in class. If you want something new to come, you have to let go of something else. Like this. Before the meeting, I tell Father Bill that I have an announcement to make. I’m intending to quit.

But then Father Bill says we need some cast bonding and that he’s planned a June Lock-In for us, full of theater games and improv, and after that, Keenie hands me a graduation card saying dream big. live large with $150 from all of the Players.

When Father Bill asks if I still have something to say, I shake my head. A ray of sun from the window glares off his bald head. “Okay then, calendars out!”