8
ALICE
Arthritis was turning Alice into a stiff-limbed man-nequin. At home she sat around on a heating pad, but she didn’t dare use one of those at the office, especially now that little Alison was around. So Alice creaked and ached through her day, and after work she drove straight to CVS to buy a cartload of Bufferin.
She was hungry, and cranky, and her feet hurt, so naturally the lines at the cash register were long, and everyone was sneezing or hacking with a late-winter cold. She sighed, letting her eyes rest on a display on a nearby counter. Out of the blue, a truly bizarre craving possessed her.
There, among the chocolate Easter candy, was a rack of plastic beaded bracelets, in a symphonic sherbet of colors: turquoise, pink, pale green, lavender. Suddenly, for no reason, Alice desperately wanted to buy every color and slip them onto her wrist.
It would be like wearing a rainbow.
Still:
plastic
bracelets? For thirty years she’d worn only solid gold jewelry. She considered it a kind of signal: Whatever she touched was only the best. If anyone saw her wearing plastic bracelets—she shuddered, paid for her Bufferin, and hurried to the door, each step a burn of pain. She
had
to get different shoes.
Sleet hit her face as she rushed to her car. Just as she reached it, she slipped on some thin ice coating the pavement. Reaching out to catch herself, she knocked her arm on the hood of her Audi. She had to stop a moment to get her breath. Now her feet hurt, her back hurt, and her arm hurt.
“You okay, ma’am?” A punk kid with spiked hair and more spots on his face than a leopard approached her, sleet slapping against his jeans jacket.
“Of
course
I’m okay!” she snapped.
He held up his hands as if she’d pointed a gun at him. “Sor—
ry
.” Loping off, he looked over his shoulder at her.
“Jeez.”
“I am
not
an old woman!” Alice yelled at him, but only in her mind. She wasn’t so far gone that she’d taken to yelling at hoodlums in the street, even if she had spoken rudely to him. He’d only been trying to help, and she was appalled at her instinctive fear simply because he was young, tall, and resembled a space alien.
What was happening to her? She watched the boy move off down the street, making a game of sliding on the ice.
Come back,
she wanted to call.
Come back and
tell me if I look like an old woman!
Turning around, she entered the pharmacy, strode up to the counter, and selected seven plastic bracelets.
“For my niece,” she informed the salesgirl, needlessly.
“Oh, she’ll love these,” the girl cooed. “Everyone does. It’s the rage right now. They bring you good luck, too.”
“They do? How do you know?”
“It says so, right here.” The salesgirl pointed to the print on the card behind the rack of bracelets.
ORIENTAL GOOD LUCK BRACELETS
IN REAL FAUX STONES
WILL BRING YOU GOOD LUCK!!
One size fits all.
Stretchable. Made in China.
“Uh-huh.” She had respect for
stretchable
. “Thank you.” Accepting the paper bag holding the bracelets, she headed back out to her car.
After turning on the engine to warm up the car, she reached into her purse, took the bracelets out, and slipped them onto her wrist. Now her arm looked different. In the dim neon light from the pharmacy, who could tell the beads were plastic? They were cool on her skin and made a companionable rattle as she put the car into drive.
Buying plastic bracelets, for God’s sake. Was she losing her mind? They glimmered when she stopped at a red light. If it were summer, they might be appropriate.
But maybe this demented purchase signaled an authentic yearning. It occurred to her, as she drove, that it had been years since she’d bought anything with color in it. Needing to look businesslike and competent, a woman intruding into the old boy network, she’d bought only shades of beige, and gray, and black, and ivory, for years. It simplified her life. It sent the message that although she always looked presentable, even elegant, she didn’t waste much time on shopping. Even the clothes she wore at home were in neutral shades, in case someone dropped in unexpectedly.
At the long brick building, a restored warehouse running along Boston Harbor, she pulled her mail from the box in the hall, pressed the elevator button, got off on the fifth floor, and let herself into her condo.
When she’d moved here twenty-one years ago, she hadn’t wanted to waste time on decorating; there had been so much work to do at the office. Besides, for a woman from the Midwest, the ever-changing display of sailboats, steamers, and massive foreign container ships seemed a luxury she’d never tire of. So she’d had the place done up in cream, beige, and black. Then, she thought it looked sophisticated.
Now she thought it looked dreary. Impersonal. Bland. Even the art she’d chosen for the walls was black-and-white—photographs of different cities at night.
Suddenly, with the same inexplicable craving that had driven her to buy the bright bracelets, Alice wanted to look at flowers. She wanted to cuddle a teddy bear. She wanted to cuddle a real-life, hair-shedding, dander-strewing cat. She wanted to wear a crimson robe while she painted her toenails scarlet.
She looked at the bracelets on her wrist, and smiled.
After changing into the robe she had—caramel, with cream trim—she padded into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of red wine. Then she threw herself onto the sofa and lifted her tired feet, tucking a pillow beneath them. Ah. Bliss.
Her mail lay in the center of the coffee table. Nothing she couldn’t wait to check out—except—something heavy, addressed by hand.
She opened it. Oh, yeah, the going-away party for Eloise Linley. The other executive secretaries had organized it, and Alice was glad. Eloise deserved it. Even if Alice felt Eloise was bailing out just when she needed her most, she had to go. It would be churlish not to, plus it might signal a weakness to the new kids on the block. Sighing, Alice turned on her heating pad and lay back on the sofa, staring out into the night.
9
Saturday night as Faye prepared for the party, she put on a CD of Strauss waltzes and concocted a light drink of vodka with cranberry juice, loving the rosy color, which always put her in a festive mood. She showered, pulled on her turquoise kimono, and sat down on the quilted rosewood bench in front of her dressing table.
She looked in the mirror.
A stranger looked back.
She leaned closer, as fascinated with her face as she’d been as a teenager, scrutinizing each pore. Back then, of course, she’d been trying to maximize her sex appeal. Now she wanted only to remain recognizable. Every day it seemed some bit of her skin slipped another millimeter. Her eyes were no longer the same size or shape, and her lids drooped like a pair of ancient panties with stretched elastic waistbands.
Behind her, on a padded hanger, was her new, loose dress of fawn-colored silk, which, when she’d tried it on in the shop, had seemed dignified and subdued. Hanging from her closet door, it looked more like garment bag than garment.
Not so long ago, a new dress was a cause for excitement. Red dresses especially. She loved red dresses. With their flamboyant
look at me!
intensity, they aroused within her the kind of anticipation she might feel for a lover. A red dress invited the unexpected and promised excitement.
This dress promised comfort.
Not a bad thing. After all, Faye thought, a life, like the earth, has its seasons: the pastel blush of youthful spring, the green luxuriance of fertile summer, then the flames of autumn, in defiance of the approaching colorless winter. Faye was fading into the winter of her life. Her looks and powers were diminishing. She needed glasses, and she was beginning to consider the sense of hearing aids. Her mind, which had once flashed fast, efficient, and bright as a hummingbird, now flapped and squawked like a turkey.
Faye wasn’t afraid of the future. She hoped her death would reunite her with Jack. She had wonderful memories of her past: She’d been married to a man with whom she shared a profound love, she had a daughter and a granddaughter, and she had worked, for so many fulfilling years, at her art.
The present baffled her. She knew it was time for others to move into the spotlight. It was time for her
daughter
to wear red dresses. Faye wouldn’t change that for the world. But wasn’t there something more she could do with her life while she still had health and energy, sporadic as it was?
For starters, she counseled her reflection, she could attend this going-away party for Eloise Linley. Jack would want her to. And it would be a way of celebrating the retirement of a contemporary.
She began to make up her face. She’d never used foundation, but now she wondered whether she should, to even out her skin tones. Or would it emphasize her wrinkles? She made a mental note to buy some new eye-liner shades. The black she’d used for years stood out too harshly against her fading skin, giving her the horrified stare of an extra in a Stephen King movie. As she carefully painted her mouth, she remembered she used to assume old women’s lipstick was applied crookedly because they couldn’t see well. Now she realized it was the lips themselves that had become uneven, thinned with age and pleated with lines.
Never mind, she soothed herself, as she rose and slipped on the fawn silk dress. It looked elegant, and it felt blissful, sliding over her like water. She draped a long silk scarf swirling with roses around her neck, letting it hang loose almost to her waist—a trick she’d seen on television, this was supposed to elongate her appearance. She rubbed a tissue of fabric softener over her stockings and slip to prevent any static cling that would accentuate her bulges. She used to sprinkle her skirts with water for this purpose, until she realized any wet spots might hint at incontinence. She tucked an extra sheet of softener in her purse, clipped on a pair of gold earrings, stepped into her shoes, and blew her reflection a kiss.
After locking her kitchen door, she settled into the comfort of her BMW. She was just a little nervous as she drove toward downtown Boston and the spectacular new TransWorld building. She still wasn’t comfortable going out alone at night.
The traffic heading into Boston was light. She found the TransWorld parking garage, showed her invitation to the guard, and spiraled up to the fifth tier before she found a spot. She locked her car, patted its hood in appreciation of its friendly automotive beep, and headed toward the office complex.
Several others joined her as she entered the vast lobby. They all smiled, but the others were couples, and as they all crowded into the elevator, Faye felt shy. Odd, how when Jack was alive, she’d had no reluctance about entering a crowd by herself. She’d gone off to movies, theater, parties, lectures, without the slightest self-consciousness. She’d had no trouble approaching strangers at these affairs, and now she realized how Jack’s existence in her life had accompanied her like a tag on her chest saying
chosen
. She could be independent precisely because she was attached.
The door slid open on the twentieth floor. They stepped out into an enormous ballroom. Chandeliers shimmered. A live band played light rock. Waves of laughter rose and fell as men in tuxes and women in drop-dead dresses floated effortlessly toward one another, animated and glossy with success. As Faye passed through the crowd toward the drinks table, she saw how their glances dismissed her. In this sea of life, they were mermaids, sting-rays, and sharks, while she was only a large, homely manatee, the sea’s cow.
She took a flute of champagne and a handful of cocktail napkins, then retreated to a corner to look around the room. When she spotted Eloise, she did a double take. Always before, chubby Eloise had been dressed for success in appropriate executive secretarial garb: suits and pantsuits in taupe, navy, and gray. Tonight a dazzling amber-and-gold caftan draped her full figure and set off her hair, newly dyed a shocking saffron and cut short and stiff as a whisk broom.
Eloise was surrounded. She would be all evening, so Faye began to squeeze her way through the crowd.
“Faye!” Eloise bent forward to hug her. “How nice of you to come!”
“You look amazing tonight,” Faye told her.
Eloise threw her head back and laughed. “Well, Faye, I feel amazing! I’m so excited about my plans.” Linking one arm through Faye’s, she pulled her close. “I was just getting ready to tell Marilyn and Shirley what I’m going to do.” With her free hand, she gestured, “Faye Vandermeer, meet Marilyn Becker and Shirley Gold. Faye’s husband Jack worked in Frank’s law firm. Marilyn’s son Teddy was my Jason’s best friend in high school.”
Faye nodded at Marilyn, a thin, scholarly looking woman with gray hair and glasses, clad in red tartan skirt, gray turtleneck, and burgundy plaid blazer.
“And,” Eloise continued, “Shirley has quite simply saved my life—she’s a masseuse and good witch.”
Faye thought Shirley, with her turbulent red tresses, glittering violet eye shadow, voluminous batik trousers, and multicolored scarves, looked more like a belly dancer, but she admired her audacity.
Eloise was bubbling over. “Now! Let me tell you my plans! I was so damned sad and lonely in that huge old house after Frank died, I thought I’d go mad. So I sold it, bought myself a cute little Winnebago, worked out a route with the best campsites on Internet maps, and next week I set off to drive all over the United States.”
Marilyn’s jaw dropped. “By yourself?”
“By myself! Well, I am taking Roger.” She paused wickedly, then added, “He’s my Rottweiler. He’s four years old and the biggest baby on the planet. He wouldn’t bite someone stealing his dinner, but he looks ferocious.”
Faye asked, “Won’t you be lonely?”
Eloise adjusted her gold tortoiseshell glasses as she gave Faye a reprimanding look. “You mean as lonely as I’ve been in that big old house all by myself? As lonely as I’ve been working in this corporation that’s just merged and the new people assume I’m just a fat old lady?”
“Assume,”
the academic interjected, “makes an ass of u and me.”
“Ha! Precisely!” Eloise chortled. “Look, I’ve been wanting to do this all my life. I’ve got stacks of books to read, and the addresses of a ton of old friends and acquaintances to visit, and I bet I’ll make a lot of new friends along the way. I’m going to lie on the grass looking up at the stars from every park I can find. I’m going to drive down every side road that catches my fancy and while I drive I’ll listen to opera—the entire opera, not just the arias—and country western music, and jazz, whatever I’m in the mood for. I’m going to eat whatever I want and in the evenings, if it’s raining, I’ll curl up and read scientific essays and adolescent porn. I’m going to explore this country and my own mind. I’ve spent my whole life paying attention to my outside. Now I’m going to pay attention to my inside.”
Faye was speechless. So, it seemed, were Marilyn and Shirley, who stood next to Faye with their mouths hanging open.
“Eloise!” A handsome older couple approached and Eloise turned the radiance of her personality on them.
“Widow’s wisdom or menopause madness?” A tall African-American woman in a chic black pantsuit stepped into the gap Eloise left. The three women stared at her with the guilty expressions of choir girls hearing a friend say
Fuck
in chapel—she had said the
M
word in public. A quick look around assured them no one was near enough to hear, and so they relaxed.
“I think Eloise finished with menopause long ago,” Shirley whispered.
“But has menopause finished with her?” the tall woman shot back. “I’m Alice Murray, by the way, Eloise’s former boss.”
Alice looked formidably classy, except—Faye squinted— she wore several bracelets of different hues ringing her arm. The bracelets looked
plastic
. Odd, but they made the regal woman seem approachable.
“Your point is that we’ve lost control of our destinies, right?” Faye asked.
Alice nodded brusquely. “Absolutely. We can’t decide when our bodies will cooperate as they always have— something beyond our control has taken over.”
“Our control has always been an illusion,” protested Shirley.
Alice’s nostrils flared. “No,” she insisted, “it
hasn’t
been. Until the past year or so, if I controlled what I ate, I lost weight. Now, even if I starve, I gain.”
Marilyn stepped closer, nodding so enthusiastically her tortoiseshell glasses slid down her nose. “It’s not just weight! When I sneeze or laugh or cough, I pee, no matter how much control I exert.”
“And I certainly have no control over the hot flashes that scorch every thought from my head,” Faye added.
“I haven’t had a hot flash yet,” Marilyn admitted.
“Lucky you,” Alice said dismissively.
Marilyn experienced the timeless terror of being cut from the popular group. She needed to
offer
them something. “But I can’t find my armpits!” she confided urgently.
The other three women looked startled.
Marilyn rushed to explain. “I mean, I don’t always shave because I can’t see up close like that without my reading glasses, and I can’t wear my glasses in the shower, they fog up, you know—”
Alice snorted. “Honey, count yourself lucky to be able to get near your armpits. Mine are lost in the crevices.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Shirley advised. “As you get older, you grow less hair.”
Marilyn looked stricken. “Everywhere?”
Shirley nodded. “Everywhere.”
“Oh, my.” Marilyn’s gaze fell downward.
“If that bothers you, you can get a wig for your pubic hair,” Shirley told them. “Something called a merkin.”
Alice nearly spilled her drink. “You’re kidding!”
Fascinated, Faye asked, “How does it work? I mean, wouldn’t it come off during, um, any kind of friction? And for heaven’s sake, how is it attached? You wouldn’t want to use glue down there!”
Marilyn was scribbling into a small leather notebook. “I’ll research it,” she announced.
A young waitress appeared before them, holding out a doily-covered tray of pleated gray mollusks on beds of curly endive. “Marinated mussels?”
“God, no!” Alice barked, recoiling.
The four women burst out laughing, instant rapport zapping among them like a kind of electric shock.
Looking puzzled, the waitress moved away, while a group of the young and the beautiful cast curious looks at the four older women.
“Want to get out of here?” Alice asked.
“Yes!” Faye said.
“There’s a bar just down the street—” Alice began.
“I don’t do bars,” Shirley interrupted. “I’m a recovering alcoholic.”
“Fine,” Faye told her. “Anyway, I’m starving.”
Alice took charge. “Let’s go to Legal Seafoods. Does everyone have her own car? Everyone know where the restaurant is?”
Everyone did. They made a dash for the elevator, giggling and knocking shoulders like schoolgirls sneaking out of class.
“Should we say good-bye to Eloise?” Marilyn whispered just before the doors slid shut.
“I don’t think we need to,” Faye said. “We’ve done our duty.”
“Hey, I think we’re past all that duty crap,” Alice said, and the other women looked at her wide-eyed.
At the restaurant Alice requested a booth in the back, and the maitre d’ led them to it. The ride in separate cars had cooled their initial affinity and at first, as they studied their menus and ordered, their conversation was stilted. They were, after all, nearly strangers.
Then Alice turned sideways, lifted the hem of her black silk jacket, took hold of the waistband of her trousers, and tugged with both hands. Fabric ripped.
“Are you crazy?” Shirley demanded. “That suit must have cost a thousand dollars!”
“More,” Alice retorted calmly. She took a huge, belly-deep breath. “It has an elastic waist and I
still
couldn’t breathe! One bite, and I’d pass out, hit my head on the table, and you’d be driving me to the ER.”
Faye laughed. “I know just how you feel! Why is it that no matter how little I eat during the day, the jeans I can zip in the morning are tight in the afternoon and impossible by evening? I mean, what’s the
purpose
of that?”