Mendocino And Other Stories Part 9

She grabbed my wrist. "Elizabeth, for G.o.d's sake, you're only going to wear them for ten minutes."

I shook her hand off. "I want to look nice."

She stood up and cut me a disgusted look, then stalked out of the room. I hurried after her and caught up with her on the stairs.

"Why shouldn't I get new gloves?" I said. "What do you care? I'll pay for them."

"I don't care," she snapped.

"Mom," I said.

We reached the bottom of the stairs and she turned to face me. "It's just so silly, Elizabeth," she said quietly. "It's beneath you."

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

"Your father would-"

"Well lucky for me he's not here to see it!" I jerked open the front door and hurried out of the house. My bicycle was locked, and I had to twist the dial several times before I got the lock to open.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER I was at the shopping center-with-out a cent. I decided to look around anyway; when I found the gloves I wanted I would ask the saleslady to hold them for me, then go back home for my wallet.

I went into Penney's and found the glove department. There was no one behind the counter, so I circled the gla.s.s case, looking. There were leather gloves and wool gloves and gloves made of bright red satin, but I couldn't find a single pair of white gloves.

"Can I help you?"

A woman stood behind the counter, blue hair piled on top of her head. I told her what I wanted and she said, "Oh, we haven't carried white gloves in ten years, dear. Is it for Halloween?"

"Um, no."

"Prom?" she asked, c.o.c.king her head gaily.

"No, I just need them for school."

She raised her eyebrows. "School play?"

"No, I-thanks anyway." I turned and hurried away.

"You might try Peaches and Cream, dear," she called after me.

I got outside the store and leaned against the wall. My face felt hot. At the other end of the shopping center was Bullock's, where my mother took me twice a year for school clothes. I decided to go there first, even though Peaches and Cream was on the way; Peaches and Cream was a shop full of breakable knickknacks and precious little silk flower arrangements, and although I'd never been in it I had always held it in a kind of contempt: it seemed to have nothing to do with real life.

But Bullock's didn't have white gloves, either. I wandered around the ground floor of the store, and, as if I were languishing in a boat on a hot day and needed the feel of the water, my hand trailed behind me, touching whatever I pa.s.sed: wool, leather, chrome. In the makeup department I slowed even more, studying the nail polish and lipstick at first one counter, then another. A young woman in a salmon-colored lab coat caught my eye.

"Free makeovers today," she said. "Would you like one?"

"I don't have any money," I said.

"They're free."

"But I won't be able to buy anything after."

She patted the seat of a chair set against one of the counters. "You'll feel better."

I glanced around the area; it was nearly empty. I climbed onto the chair.

"I'm Kristen," she said. "Tell me a little about what you usually wear. Makeup-wise, I mean."

"Oh, just a little eye shadow and lip gloss," I said, although in truth I never wore a stroke of either.

"What's your name, honey?"

"Elizabeth."

"Well, Elizabeth, I'm going to start with a little foundation." She unscrewed the top of a small white bottle, tipped some liquid onto her fingers, and began dabbing the stuff onto my face.

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 embarra.s.sment 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 pinp.r.i.c.k 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 att.i.tude 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 cla.s.s 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 compet.i.tion 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 compet.i.tion 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."