Aftermath of Dreaming Page 4

  The first time she pulled this was on a warm spring Sunday morning when I was thirteen. I immediately decided to get Daddy’s support against her absurd and unjust injunction. Usually I left him alone about stuff like that, but when one of Momma’s dictums really crossed the line beyond all reason, he was my big gun. I ran to find him, dashing through the house, crossing soft rugs, sliding on polished hardwood floors, taking the sweeping staircase two steps at a time, until finally I found him in his study sitting in his large leather chair listening to an old, scratchy jazz LP.

  I paused in the open doorway for a moment to collect myself. My father’s head was leaning back, his brown eyes closed, his tall elegant frame looking completely at rest except for his fingers, which were tapping out the sax player’s notes on the taut leather armrest. I wanted to jump on his lap and surprise him; then sit there curled up, both of us silent, him with his thoughts, me letting the music become colors and shapes in the air, as we listened to the jazz together the way we had so many times before.

  But lately it had begun to feel weird. My body was changing, the dimensions of what was where were all wrong, and in the past few months an awkwardness had developed between us that I kept waiting to outgrow, the same way I had suddenly outgrown the easy affection we’d had. And I think he felt it, too. He looked so removed a lot of the time, like a verse in search of its refrain, and I was angry with my body for enforcing this change whose consequences I couldn’t control.

  “Daddy,” I said, standing next to him and patting his arm high near the shoulder. He hadn’t heard me walk in, my footsteps on the old kilim rug had disappeared under the sharp aching melody.

  His eyes flew open and he saw me above him. For one chilling moment there was a question in his eyes—a “Who are you?” question, “Who are you and why are you here?” question—that made me doubt my entire existence. Then the thought shot through me that my very existence was intrinsically wrong and that the floor was going to fall away and I would be gone, and he could be rid of me and go back to that place where I could never join him. But the turntable’s needle skipped over a scratch, abruptly ending the song, and the expression in my father’s eyes shifted. The moment ended.

  I almost felt out of breath again, as if the fast-paced, heavy brass number that had started playing had knocked the wind out of me. But my body took over and words about Momma’s stupid rule were coming out of my mouth as I twirled in front of him, showing my outfit off to full effect—a pale pink skirt and blouse, his favorite color on me. It was a treasured outfit of Suzanne’s that I’d finally grown into and wanted to wear that morning to mass, making at least that part of it interesting.

  I stopped my pirouette and waited, all prepared to hear his “Why, you look beautiful, darlin” so I could run and tell Momma that Daddy said it was fine, but he just kind of stared ahead, not even noticing my clothes. In fact, he barely seemed to see me, which was a first. He pulled himself up out of the chair—when Suzanne and I were small, we’d each take a hand and pull on him hard, and he’d sputter and huff while he stood up, then tell us he’d still be sitting there if we hadn’t come along—got halfway across the room, and said, “Listen to your momma, Yvette,” in this vacant voice I’d never heard before, then he walked out of the study, leaving the jazz playing and me standing there all dressed up.

  I stood in shock for a moment, unable to believe what had just happened. I’ll run after him, I decided. He just didn’t hear me with the music, that’s all; he didn’t understand. But by the time I’d searched the whole house without finding him, then finally gone outside, he was already in his work shed—the one place we weren’t allowed to bother him—concentrating on a mandolin.

  My father made musical instruments in his spare time. Not professionally—it was just a hobby. Beautiful glowing wood instruments, finely carved and individually detailed, that he’d give away to family members whenever we’d drive to New Orleans for a visit. No one played anything but the piano, so there they’d lie—violins, mandolins, and even a few banjos—sprinkled throughout our relatives’ homes like a mute melodic detritus left behind.

  I could see my father through the work shed’s window. His back was to me and he was leaning forward over the worktable putting finishing touches on a mandolin, this fine object coming to life in his hands. Many times during the past few weeks, I had sneaked in while he was at his office to see the progress he was making. Now I had a sudden desire to run in, jump up on his worktable, and smash the instrument to smithereens in a dance of destruction in front of him. But my father continued his work, his small gentle movements obvious in the stillness of his back, so completely unaware of me standing right outside that I felt frozen in place, forgotten and dismissed.

  Suddenly I could hear Momma yelling for me from inside the house. I didn’t want Daddy to realize I was watching him, so I dragged myself up the steps, across the porch and into the kitchen, then allowed her to yell some more until finally she came through the swinging door and saw me standing there.

  “How long have you been in here, young lady?” Her hands were tying a silk scarf expertly around her slender neck. My mother could put on clothes and makeup in the pitch dark and still come out looking like a million bucks. “Oh, never mind. Come on.”

  With Daddy in his work shed—out of reach, like the safety zone in a kids’ game of cops and robbers—I had no choice but to follow Momma and endure her “light check,” a procedure I had watched Suzanne put up with for years. I walked behind Momma to the back door in the den—the place she had long ago deemed best suited for this absurd and draconian purpose—and waited while she opened it wide. I went to the doorway, turned around to face her, and planted my feet hip-width apart. Momma stood glaring in front of me, squinting into the sun, checking to see if the light shining through my skirt was showcasing my legs.

  “Go straight to your room this minute, young lady, and put a slip on.”

  I made a face at her behind her back when she turned to go off in search of her constantly misplaced car keys. Who cares if someone sees the outline of my legs; it’s no different from when I wear shorts, I wanted to yell, but I knew better than to argue with her, especially without Daddy on my side. As I passed the den’s picture window, I glimpsed his work shed and longed to be in there with him. Hidden in there with him. Never to have light checks or go to mass with just Momma and Suzanne again. Then seven months later, right after I turned fourteen, when Daddy left us, I didn’t have to put slips on at all anymore because Momma barely left her bedroom.

  But in the socially accepted seminudity here in L.A.—people go around as if they are constantly in the middle of a workout—I wear slips by themselves. Or used to. I’m actually more careful about that now, since an incident almost two years ago on a summer day right after Momma died, a day when the tears didn’t so much stop as just sit right below the surface all lined up waiting for one errant memory to trip their flow.

  I was browsing on Melrose—not in the crowded retail part, but farther east where a few fabulous shops dot stretches of nothingness—in a mid-century furniture store. The designs were vastly unlike those I grew up with, so I thought it’d be a good distraction. I was admiring a low coffee table, all curved lines and golden glow, when a woman came into the store who had my mother’s forehead. The resemblance nearly knocked me over. The stunning widow’s peak that urged you to look down at the perfectly proportioned expanse, then to the naturally arched brows and the bridge of the nose that demurely finished it off.

  The woman did not have my momma’s eyes—no one could. One of Momma’s eyes was hazel, the other green, as if the light she emitted was so complex that her eyes needed two hues. Like dichroic tourmaline, gems that have more than one color when viewed from different angles; Momma’s eyes did that, too.

  The woman turned to face me so she could have a better look at a bedroom set near the golden curvy coffee table I still stood by. She was asking the store’s owner questions, pulling out her measuri
ng tape, discussing size, so very much alive, and with my momma’s gentle brow and creamy skin, but on this perfect stranger, on her and on my mother no more. I turned too quickly to leave, bumped into an old hi-fi—good God, not memories of Daddy, too—and rushed to get out of the store before the crying started, but my tears raced ahead, beating me as I opened the door. I hurried to my truck parked just up the block, slopping along like an overfilled bucket, leaving water drops in my wake. The day’s bright heat was like too many bodies pressed together for a hug, no affection exchanged, just suffocating my skin.

  I was wearing a black slip I’d found in a thrift store that a thin, red-faced, elderly man used to run. It was a tiny space filled entirely with clothes that were jumbled and jammed everywhere, no discipline or system in sight. The elderly man sat at a desk in the front, guarding against the clothes’ eventual onslaught.

  Being in that thrift store was a huge hue challenge for me. Ever since I learned the color wheel in fourth-grade art class, I have been in love with the logic of light and the order of shades that result from it. Crimson becoming red turning into orange changing to yellow. White is all and black has none. It was exhilarating to discover that color—such an old friend, one of the first and easiest distinctions to make—was not what it appeared to be at all: there and solid, preexisting and depending on nothing for its tone; but, in fact, was waves of light traveling at different speeds.

  Though I never could figure out how that made different shades, I’d try to imagine it. Would close my eyes and visualize light, would see its curvy cupid arrows moving through the air, but how that eventually made blue, I hadn’t a clue. Yet it was comforting that something as basic as green was gloriously, magically formed. From that point on, I began putting my clothes into color wheel order. It made me feel part of the huge, silent rainbow dispersed everywhere all at once, and I could help, too, by putting the light waves in order of speed, a race always won.

  I have never cared about being organized; I just like decorous hues, so being in that thrift store was an ultimate challenge visually. I had a brief, wildly unpleasant idea of color-coordinating it for him, a kind of corporeal act of retail mercy, but wisely decided to just never go there again. The next time I drove by, the shop was closed, the clothes and old man gone, as if the whole thing had imploded from within.

  Anyway. On the day I wore the black slip and saw my mother’s forehead on a stranger in that furniture store, I had finally reached the refuge of my truck and was letting the sobs come out. It was horrendously hot, as I said, so the windows were down, and I was crying freely, safe in the false invisibility that vehicles provide, when suddenly a man stuck his head inside the cab and yelled, “Are you all right? Where’d they go?”

  I jumped in such fright it stopped my tears.

  “You were attacked, weren’t you, miss? I seen you walking down the street, half your clothes gone, shakin’ and cryin’.”

  I tried to comprehend what he was saying. He looked about seventy, with clipped white hair on a dark head, and wore neat pants and shirt with a green sports jacket too heavy for the temperature. I glanced down at my slip. The strong sun made my legs completely visible through its thin inky silk, and it suddenly became all too clear what the old man had thought my crying was about.

  “Oh, God, no,” was all I could say. It was impossible to explain that an inappropriate clothing choice had happened to coincide with a really bad day, so I just threw my truck into gear and drove away, leaving him staring after me in confused dismay.

  Thus began my own kind of “light checks.” Not as stringent as Momma’s, but not as lax as before. Though occasionally I will change clothes in my truck—or my shirt, I should say. Some days, when it seems as if every article of clothing I own has transformed itself into an item I suddenly loathe, I give myself backup. I go out in whatever is my current favorite—even though it doesn’t feel like a favorite, like eating food you love with a cold and having to remind yourself the whole time how it really does taste—with a couple of options brought along in case I decide that I could be happy if only I were wearing that other shirt.

  And I watched Momma do her own version of this while I was growing up. It wasn’t unusual for her to change outfits three times a day. Every social function’s attire was highly stratified, even a trip to the grocery store had its own code—Daddy didn’t allow her to wear pants there. And in the small town that we lived in everything was so close, and Momma could just pop home, exchange one perfectly accessorized look for the next, and head back out. But in L.A., most places I go are a good twenty minutes away, so driving home is not an option.

  Which is how I decided that if I really needed to, I could change my shirt in my truck. A bra covers just as much as a bikini top, I decided, so surely a quick switcheroo on a side street would not be that different from a swimsuit stroll on the beach past completely clad customers at a café.

  Not that I do this a lot. Only once in a while, when it is absolutely necessary. Like now, today, after a morning with my sister-the-bride before an appointment to show my jewelry at a recently opened store. Rox is what it’s called, for the owner, Roxanne, who previously ran a rock star’s wife’s store on Sunset before going out on her own, backed by the rock star’s producer, Bill, whom coincidentally I used to work for and who very kindly set up this appointment for me. Which I’m thrilled he did. I feel ready, but also a little nervous.

  Because I haven’t really done this before. Sold to a store. I mean, I do have my jewelry in Tizzie’s, a small shop in Venice. One day while window-shopping, I wandered into the store, and the owner admired my earrings and necklace, then flat out said she’d love to carry my stuff, even got me to give her the pieces I was wearing, so sure she was they would sell. And I was flattered since I had been designing jewelry for only six months. I’ve been selling pieces there for almost a year, but I haven’t tried to sell to other stores because private commissions have kept me really busy. But when this connection to Rox appeared, I thought, why not follow it up? My goal is to sell to department stores and go national. And I guess showing my jewelry to the women who commission counts as practice somehow, but they have already seen one of my pieces on someone else and call me specifically to get something that will be at least as good as or usually better than their friend’s.

  But here I am, parked on this street off Beverly Boulevard, around the corner from Rox, with fifteen minutes to kill until it is time to go in, and the idea of changing my shirt is relaxing me a little somehow. I wish Reggie had been home when I phoned him after Suzanne’s; he would have made me feel better about this appointment. With all that Michael-brunch insanity between us on the phone this morning, I didn’t remember to tell him that my appointment with Rox was today, so he has no idea. Maybe I’ll try him at the editing room after all. Stop. Now, just relax. The appointment’s going to be fine. She’ll either buy my stuff or she won’t. Please, God, make her buy a ton. Now c’mon, focus on something I can control, like…which top should I change into? Black is the obvious choice, but dark blue accomplishes almost everything black does while still being blue. I take my pins off the pale pink top I am wearing that I hoped would subconsciously convey to Suzanne my happiness about her impending nuptial bliss and affix them onto the dark blue fitted knit one. I whip off the pink top, put it on the seat next to me, and as I am about to pull the blue one down over my head, I notice an elderly Hasidic man in a large station wagon watching me as he slowly drives by. His expression indicates that he does not equate my partial nudity with a day at the beach.

  If sea water were a store, it would be Roxanne’s boutique. Tiny, aquatic-colored tile descends the walls from pale to deep. Clumps of clothing sprout up in beams of light focused from below and above. Three aquariums, each a different letter of “ROX,” hold languid blue angelfish. As I wait for the salesgirl to get Roxanne, it is hard even for me not to be overcome by the extensive color-coding, especially when it strikes me that the shirt I changed into matches.


  Emerging from the depths of the store, Roxanne glides to the counter where I am waiting, puts her overly manicured hands on her hips, and says, “Let’s see what you got.”

  No “hello” or “nice to meet you,” so I quickly decide to forgo all that, too. I read somewhere once that mirroring the other person’s behavior in a business meeting helps you establish a rapport—I just never thought that would mean being curt, but it’s her store; I’m only selling to it.

  I lean down, unzip the fake Vuitton travel bag, and start taking the black trays out. I bought the bag when I began going to women’s homes to show my jewelry for private commissions and sales. I needed something large enough to carry the trays in, and I realized that with the amount of gold and gems (semiprecious, but still) coming out of it, the women would assume the bag was real, and the implied fiscal success might make them feel better about the prices they were going to hear.

  “These are the earrings, bracelets, and rings I told you about on the phone.” I have set three trays on the counter side by side. Straightening a ring in one of them, I glance at Roxanne to see which pieces have caught her eye, then unhook a bracelet since her attention is on the earrings, and lightly blow imaginary dust off it, turning it this way and that, as if to check its gems, but really to give her time to see everything without me staring at her or off into space. I put the bracelet back, wait a long moment, and then bring the last tray out.

  “And these are the pins, though they can also be worn as pendants on a chain. See this…” I pick one up and turn it over to reveal a small loop on the back. “But I prefer them for what they are.” I have jumped in, my words escaping in an air-bubble rush, like a sea diver adjusting his mask. “The whole idea is a further personalization of our clothes. That simple black top we all have, well, you put one of these on, or two really, and the odds of someone else…I mean, how many parties have you been to where thank God for different hair or we’d all look just alike.”