A Little Change of Face (20 page)

“We can go get massages. I'll drive.”

 

Kelly's car turned out to be a red sports car.

It figures,
I thought.

And she drove like a maniac.

“Where are we going?” I asked, as she zoomed out of Bethel.

“Westport,” she said.

“Westport? We're going all the way to Westport just to get massages?”

I saw her shrug within the dark confines of the car. “There's a place there I like.”

Damn,
I thought. Westport was thirty-five minutes away. We were going to have a lot of bonding time together. Did I really want to bond with this woman?

But it turned out to be not so bad. Mostly, on the drive down, Kelly wanted to talk about work. Well, what else did we have in common?

“Did you ever notice,” she asked, “how people there seem to treat me, uh, different from everyone else?”

Uh, yeah.

“What do you mean?” I asked, figuring it was the polite thing to do.

“I don't even know,” she said, “but I just feel like Roland and everybody else acts different around me.” Pause. “And I don't like it.”

“How come?”

“Because I'd rather just get treated the same as everybody. Who wants to be odd girl out?”

“I don't know.” I shrugged. “Maybe they treat you differently because you're so, um, helpful.”

“I guess.”

She cranked up the radio.

The special massage place she wanted to go to turned out to be a place called No Hands, in a building overlooking the Saugatuck River.

“What's so special about this place that you come so far to get to it?” I asked, getting out of the car, relieved to have survived Kelly's driving. I mean, jeez, thirty-five minutes to get here; we could have gotten to Snips & Moans in five. “And what's with that name—aren't hands the whole point?”

“I like the view.” She answered my first question. “They specialize in using hot stones.” She answered my second.

“Ah.”

Once inside No Hands, we were quickly led to a room. Apparently, Kelly had called ahead and made arrangements.

“Um,” I said, “we're going to get massaged
together?
”

Kelly was puzzled. “Sure, why not?”

“Well,” I said, feeling a bit Puritan, “I usually get my massages alone.”

Not like I was getting massages a lot. In fact, the last time I'd been massaged professionally, it'd been…it'd been…it'd been…oh, hell, it'd been a long time ago.

“What's the big deal?” Kelly asked. “We'll change separately. We'll be under towels.”

When I emerged from behind the changing curtain to let Kelly take her turn, a big white towel wrapped around me, I could see what she meant by the view. One wall was all windows that were darkened on the outside for privacy. But from where we were, you could see out over the river, the stars shining against the water. It was a lot nicer than the kind of dump that I'd have probably picked out if I were pick
ing out a massage place other than Snips & Moans. I'd have probably picked out a claustrophobic little room, no windows, with a calendar on the back of the door put out by the U.S. Beef Association.

This place felt so much more sophisticated than Snips & Moans that it made me feel like I was about to have a new experience entirely, like maybe I was a novice who didn't know what to do here.

I lay down facing the view on one of the tables, draped the towel over my backside, hoping I'd got it the way I'd seen when I'd seen characters getting professionally massaged on TV programs. In another minute, Kelly was on the table beside mine, backside under a towel.

“Hey,” she looked over at me, a lazy smile playing her mouth as though she were getting sleepy or on drugs, “you have a beautiful back.”

What do you say to that?

“Thanks,” I said.

“I never would have guessed,” she said, “under those clothes.”

Just then, the masseuses came in, saving me from having to talk about my peculiar wardrobe.

Kelly closed her eyes and I did the same, as the masseuse went to work on my back. It felt strange, having a stranger touching me like that, not something I was regularly used to, even if there were stones between us. And the stones themselves felt weird, too—not hot to the point of unbearable, but pretty damn warm—and I couldn't tell if I liked the sensation or not, which for me was seesawing between heavenly and awful.

“You have no idea what it's like,” Kelly said, “having people treat you differently.”

“Mmm,” I pretended to agree, thinking it strange to be holding down a conversation with my eyes closed. It was like Kelly and I were playing a weird kind of sensual version of Blind Man's Bluff.

“It's not easy,” Kelly said. “Guys all treat you like an object, like you must be impossible to get, like you must be vain, like you must be some kind of trophy.”

“All at once?” I asked. “They do those things all at once?”

“No, of course not all at once! But they all treat you like an object. The rest of the things they do depends on the individual doing it.”

“Ah.”

“It gets lonely,” she said.

Earlier, when we'd been supposed to be bonding in the car, I'd thought that maybe if things went well, I'd tell her about Saul, tell her about Steve. It would have been a relief to talk about it with someone who was a relative stranger. But I couldn't bring myself to do it, couldn't bring myself to talk to her about how I'd just slept with this incredibly gorgeous guy not too long ago and had another guy who was really nice and whom I'd said I'd maybe go out with. You can't tell that kind of stuff to someone who's just told you how lonely they are.

“If things are that tough,” I suggested, “why don't you try something different?”

“Like what?”

“I don't know.” I shrugged beneath my towel. “You could try doing what I do. You could dress down for a bit, let the world take you for who you are.”

“Hah!” she laughed. “I'm not
that
desperate.”

I would have been offended, but then I figured, no, most normal people probably weren't.

“Hey,” I said, a thought suddenly occurring to me. It was something that had been bothering me ever since I'd first seen her at the library, something I'd been unable to put my finger on until just now. I couldn't believe I was going to ask another human being that question, the one that I always hated being asked, but… “How'd you ever wind up working in a library?”

“Oh, that,” she said. “My parents didn't think I was smart enough to be a lawyer or anything like that. They thought I'd be safe in a library.”

Forty minutes later, we were completely massaged, back in the clothes we'd come in, and on the street again. We were also one hundred dollars lighter each, which seemed kind of steep for a couple of stones.

“B
orrow your kids?”

Delta looked surprised by my offer.

“What's wrong?” I asked. “You're always saying how you could use a break, if only you could find someone who'd take them off your hands for a while. It's what you're saying right now, what you've been saying for the past half hour. Don't you trust me with them?”

“Oh, it's not that. It's just that, well…”

“Well what?”

“It's just that, well, I never got the idea you really
wanted
kids.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“The fact that you never talk about them, maybe?”

“Maybe I never talk about them, because, oh, I don't know, maybe I'm just not the type to think about them unless I've found someone I'd want to have them with first?”

“Really? Maybe?”

“Really maybe.”

“But—” she hesitated again “—are you sure that if you're going to try on parenthood for the first time, the two kids you really want to try it on with are Mush and Teenie?”

I regarded the Mush and Teenie of which she spoke; the former had his hand down his trousers, engaging in his favorite activity, which was making sure his pecker was still there and that it still felt good to touch it; the latter had peanut butter all over her nose, a result of her unusual preferred method for consuming her daily PBJ.

“Sure I'm sure.” I took a deep breath. “Really maybe.”

In fact, this conversation hadn't quite started with my request to borrow Delta's kids. It had started with her inviting me over for a visit, ready to tear her hair out or kill somebody, because she just couldn't take it anymore.

“I love my kids, Scarlett, don't get me wrong.”

“I know you love them,” I'd assuaged her pangs of guilt, all the while wondering
how
she could love them, since they were so, well, Mush and Teenie. “Who wouldn't?”

“Exactly.” She'd been relieved. “It's just that it's impossible for me to bring a man home and have a normal evening with them here.”

“Really?” I'd pretended disbelief.

“You don't know the half of it. But I've, well, I've met someone new. His name's Dave, and I really like him, I'd like to invite him over this Friday night, and if the evening goes well, I was hoping he could stay the weekend. But it's not even worth the bother of having him over here if they're going to be here when he comes.”

“What choice do you have? Even if you can find a place to stow them for the weekend, what are you going to do
when the weekend's up—somehow pretend forever that you don't have any kids?”

I could see that she was sorely tempted by the idea, but then she shook it off. “Of course not,” she'd said. “I just wish, just for once, that a man I like could get a good, long chance to get to know
me
first, to fall just a little bit, before having to meet
them.
”

I'd secretly thought the same thing I always secretly thought, what I'd been telling myself my whole life: that if someone was going to fall in love with Delta, or any woman, it was going to be not because of external things, like looks or kids, but for who she was inside. But you can't tell one of your best friends that her bad luck with men was that, for whatever reason, men didn't find enough in her to love to make it worth overcoming the obstacles.

Still, I'd felt sorry for her, could see how isolated from what she wanted having kids made her feel. Wanting to make it better for her, I'd figured: What the hell? Why not step up to the plate for one measly weekend? I'd had some kid experience with Sarah lately. How much worse could Mush and Teenie be? This was when I said:

“Borrow your kids?”

And this in turn had led to my commitment of:

“Really maybe.”

Which Delta took as a most emphatic yes.

“Oh, Scarlett—” she practically knocked me over with her big-boobed hug “—you won't be sorry. I mean, you probably will be sorry, probably very sorry…but I'll be so happy! And really, however you want to do it, it's perfectly fine with me. If you want to have your mother come to stay with you to, you know, reinforce you should any difficulties too big to handle befall you, I perfectly understand. Or if
you have to go out yourself at all, if you can somehow manage to get an alternate babysitter, don't even worry about it—just tell me how much it is afterward and I'll be glad to reimburse you.”

Delta couldn't seem to stop herself from talking. She was suddenly like that cartoon bird on the old Cocoa Puffs commercial—“I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs! Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs”—just happy-dancing her way off into a rainbow sunset of dizzy happiness.

“Oh, I just can't believe it,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Do you know the last time I had a man in this house without kids underfoot?”

I shook my head at her rhetorical question as I caught sight of Mush checking out his pecker again and I began to get a glimpse of the enormity of what I'd offered to take on.

“Well, I can't, either!” Delta barked a laugh that was downright scary in its near-hysteria.

“Borrow your kids?”

Three more insane words were never spoken.

A
n hour into my weekend with Mush and Teenie—a whole weekend?—and already I was regretting my impulsive generosity towards Delta. These kids weren't kids; they were monsters!

When Delta dropped them off Friday at six, I already had a home-cooked dinner on the dining-room table, which I'd set with my best tablecloth and serving dishes, figuring that while they were with me, I'd try to provide a nurturing environment. I was sure that under my care, however brief, Mush and Teenie would blossom into the truly great kids they must surely be under all that noise and dirt.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't home-cooked. It was Chinese takeout from Noodle Fun, but don't all kids love takeout?

“You got any peanut butter?” asked Teenie, sullenly pushing her plate away.

“Raw cookie dough?” Mush added hopefully.

“Well, yes,” I said, taken aback. “But peanut butter is for
breakfast,” I rationalized, remembering I'd seen Teenie eating it at that meal, “and the raw cookie dough was supposed to be for dessert.”(All single women keep raw cookie dough on hand. It's one of life's few absolutes.)

“Why wait if you can have it now?” Mush wondered. “I could have a heart attack during dinner, and then where would I be?”

“You don't want us to
starve,
do you?” Teenie demanded, more sullen than ever.

“No, of course I don't want you to
starve…
”

I looked at the two creatures I'd voluntarily invited into my home: Mush with his tousled dirty-blond hair that was definitely more dirty than blond, his mushy jeans hanging low on his mushy eight-year-old hips, his oversize Chicago Bulls shirt stained with a substance I didn't even want to guess at; Teenie, with her mother's bouncy Southern looks, wearing a gauzy top, giving me an unlooked-for look at breasts that appeared to be growing bigger even as I looked at her.

I wondered, in passing, if they'd somehow be more likable if they weren't so visually unappealing, well, okay,
disturbing.

“How old are you, anyway?” I demanded more than asked her.

“Eleven,” she said, all defiance.

“Eleven?” I asked, surprised. She was almost as old as Sarah, and while there was something more…
sexually knowing
about Teenie, she also seemed less mature. “Weren't you playing with Lego when I was at your house a few months back?”

“So? I've grown up quickly,” she said. Then she backed down. “Okay, I'm ten! Eleven's just what I tell my boyfriend. He's in high school.”

“He is not your boyfriend,” said Mush. “She's lying,” Mush then said to me. “Max Wilbur don't even know she exists.”

“Well, he would,” said Teenie, “if you weren't always hanging around with me and my friends, staring at our breasts.”

This was
so
much more than I ever wanted to know about these kids. I excused myself to the kitchen.

“Dessert, anyone?” I offered brightly, coming out with a tray on which I'd put a big new jar of Jif, a spoon, a roll of Pillsbury cookie dough and a knife.

“Cool,” said Mush, ignoring the knife, then poking a hole after much effort in the plastic around the cookie dough using only his dirty thumbnail and scooping out a large mouthful's worth with his pointer and middle fingers.

“We're bored,” Teenie said, about a quarter of the way through the jar of peanut butter, having, like her brother, neglected to bother with the cutlery.

“How do you know that Mush is bored, too?” I asked, oddly offended, trying to enjoy the remainder of my lo mein. Damn, that cookie dough looked good. “Maybe Mush is having a great time, only his mouth is too full for him to say so.”

Teenie looked at me over the top of her jar as though I were the stupidest sow who ever lived. “I know that Mush is bored, 'cause he's started to eat slower,” she said.

I looked at Mush, saw that she was right: he was down to using just one finger, his middle one, and it looked like his heart was no longer in it. I could relate. I'd noted in the past that it was really only the first half dozen or so spoonfuls of cookie dough that were satisfying; after that, it was merely rat-pressing-a-lever-for-cheese kind of behavior until the roll was done and then all that was left was an empty tube with that pathetic little metal thing still tying together the end like a twist on a sausage casing. In really desperate moments, that metal thing could be forcibly removed, the plastic tube cut open so that a person could get to the one
or two millimeters of cookie dough left in the creases. Not that I would know about such a thing.

“Y'all done with dinner?” I said, lapsing into the kind of speech I found myself lapsing into whenever around T.B., Delta or Delta's kids.

“We-all are bored,” Teenie reiterated, sneering a bit to let me know what she thought of my adopting their form of speech.

“We could play a game,” I offered.

“Or we could go to the mall,” Teenie said.

“We could watch some TV,” I said. “I'm sure there must be something educational on PBS.”

“Or we could go to the mall,” Mush said.

“Or,” I said, forcing a smile, “we could go to the mall.”

 

Somehow, I'd always imagined my first time at the mall with kids to be different.

When I'd imagined it in the past, it had always been singular kid, not plural kids, and the kid in my mind had been a newborn baby—mine—whom I would push through the mall as it slept peacefully in its stroller, accepting the compliments of passersby. I'd stop to get a bite to eat—something warm if it was winter, cold if it was summer—and my baby would drift up to consciousness, open her eyes, and we'd cast beatific smiles on each other.

What I got instead was…

Teenie: “Can I have some money for clothes?”

Mush: “I want to go to the video arcade!”

While I could see that Teenie could indeed use a new look, I was worried that if I took her into a clothing store, she'd talk me through my own weakness into buying her something wholly inappropriate, and later I'd have to worry
I'd done something to contribute to an increase in the world's population without even getting any sex for myself out of the deal.

“The video arcade sounds great,” I said.

Of course, it was something less than great, but it was a sight better than preteen pregnancy, and by the time they'd cleaned me out of forty dollars' worth of tokens, I had a headache from all the flashing lights and noise, but at least I'd learned how to kick ass on Planet Puke, a game I'd just as soon not describe.

“I'm hungry,” said Teenie, when I refused to change any more bills into tokens.

“You never gave us any dinner,” Mush accused, “only dessert.”

So I bought them, on request, pizza at Sbarro's, cheesy fries at Nathan's, mocha-chip sundaes at Häagen Dazs and cool-attas at Dunkin' Donuts on the way out to the car.

“I'm kinda full,” Mush burped.

“That's because of all the cookie dough you had before,” scolded Teenie.

I didn't know much about kids, but I kind of had the impression that if the older kid was ten, the parents felt reasonably safe leaving them home alone together for brief periods of time. And yet Delta always got sitters for Mush and Teenie. As soon as Teenie had told me how old she was, I'd wondered why that was. Now, with my own firsthand knowledge gleaned from a whopping four hours in their company, I could see why: if left to their own devices, like goldfish, they'd eat until they blew themselves up.

Not that I'd done anything to try to stop them.

I could see that it was tougher to be a parent than I'd
thought. Well, okay, maybe not tougher to just
be
a parent; anybody could be the bare husk of anything. But I could certainly see where it would be tough to be a good parent, a disciplined parent. After all, it was so much easier just to give in, to do anything to cut off or forestall the dreaded sound of whining.

“You said we could watch TV,” Mush said sullenly when we got home.

“You said there'd be games,” said Teenie.

Thinking it would be better to engage in some form of social interaction, rather than merely plunking them down in front of the TV, but realizing that I probably had no games in the house that they would recognize as such, I fell back on the old standby: a deck of cards.

It was easier than one might think, teaching those two seemingly brain-cell-challenged kids how to play poker—five-card stud to be specific. What was hard was accepting the fact that once they learned, they alternated beating me every time. I could not draw better than three of a kind to save my life.

“This is fun,” said Mush, raking in a pile of leftover Halloween candy, which was what we were playing for.

“Yeah,” said Teenie. “It's like being part of a real family.”

I was charmed with them and charmed with myself for winning them over.

“TV, anyone?” I beamed my best June Cleaver smile. I would have liked to play a little longer, but I was out of chips, which in my case were mini Snickers bars. Tempting as it was to beg Teenie for some of her mini Three Musketeers—she somehow seemed like she'd be more amenable to sharing during a game than Mush—it felt like it would somehow lack maturity to do so.

I put their winnings in a big wooden bowl, then set them up in front of a scary movie with the remote.

When I'd originally extended the offer to Delta, somehow I'd pictured the good-night phase as being me tucking them in, even though I didn't have a spare bedroom to tuck them in to. But they'd absolutely worn me out, no doubt, and if I wanted to have energy to deal with another whole day with them the next day—and I needed that energy—then I was going to have to leave them to their own candy-eating, remote-clicking, sleeping-bag devices.

But there was one thing, despite their relative, um,
uncleanliness
that I had no intention of leaving out.

“Good night,” I said, kissing Mush on the forehead.

“Good night,” I said, kissing Teenie on the forehead.

Teenie looked at me, startled.

“Hey,” she said, looking at me more closely, suspicious. “Didn't you used to look different?”

How long had it been since I'd started changing my looks? Hell, I'd been at their house the other day and they'd seen me then…

Mush yawned at the bad guys on the TV. “She used to have longer hair,” he said, “and she didn't wear glasses. The big dresses are a new thing, too. You can't see her boobs as much in them.” Then he stole his gaze from the TV long enough to settle it on me, a disturbed frown worrying his brow. “You can't see her boobs at all in them.”

It made me slightly uncomfortable in a real squirming-in-my-seat kind of way to think that Mush noticed me…
as a woman.

“Huh,” said Teenie, considering. “Why'd you go and do that? If you saved your hair, I could probably do something with it.”

I hadn't saved my hair, hadn't thought to do so, and didn't like to imagine now what Teenie would do with it. But somehow, she made me wish I had kept some, as a part of a memory of someone I used to be.

“Sometimes,” I answered her, “I don't know why I did it.”

“Weird.” She shrugged. Then: “It don't matter. I like you better like this.”

“You do?” I was surprised.

“Yeah,” Mush answered for his sister. “We're here, aren't we?”

 

Saturday morning I woke to the phone ringing, feeling nearly as bad as I'd felt on the morning after Halloween. This time, I wasn't hungover from too much drink, I was just dreading the day ahead, wondering how I'd keep Mush and Teenie occupied for another whole day and night. Not to mention Sunday, too, until Delta came, hopefully early, to collect them.

“Scarlett! Phone!” I heard Teenie yell.

I scrambled for the receiver by my bed, shocked that she'd actually answered my phone. God only knew what she might have said to whoever was calling.

But I didn't have a horrified moment to spare for that, because who was calling turned out to be…

“Hey, it's Saul,” he said. “I haven't been able to get you out of my mind.”

He had a funny way to show it, I thought, given that more than a week had gone by since our night together, with no word from him. In another incarnation, I would have most definitely said something about this and then I probably would have made him suffer for a bit; not to be a tease, but on general principle. Still, given that I was on
kiddie overload, I was grateful, pathetically grateful, to hear his voice.

“Hey,” I said, feeling twelve.

“That girl answered your phone funny,” he laughed softly. “She said ‘Scarlett Stein's residence.' Wasn't that the name you first wrote on the napkin the night we met? What have you got, some kind of alter ego?”

“I, um…”

But he wasn't waiting for an answer. “Are you free tonight,” he asked, “whoever you are?”

I scrambled around in my brain, wondering how I could make myself free tonight with Mush and Teenie on my hands. Well, Delta had said that she didn't care if I hired another babysitter, and I was sure my mother wasn't doing anything…

“I think I can be,” I said, and we made arrangements before hanging up.

When I picked up the phone again to call my mother, I heard the special dial tone that meant a message had come in on voice mail while I was on the phone with Saul. I'd had voice mail ever since my mother, trying to reach me one night and failing to do so for two hours because I was on the phone with Best Girlfriend, had said, “Get voice mail, dammit. What if I died one day? How would I reach you?”

But I ignored the dial tone, calling my mother first to see if she could sit for Mush and Teenie that night.

“Did you just call?” I asked her.