Between Black and Sunshine (18 page)

It’s dark this time when I go to the store; the streets lit only by lamps. The faces around me are harder to distinguish. Do they look at me with disgust? Probably, but at least I can’t see it.

When I look into the window there is light but no life. It might not be open. I go to the door, hoping it’s locked tight. Hoping I will not have to see her face, how she’s styled her hair, how she’s applied her makeup.

I push hard, expecting it to keep me out, but it opens and I stumble in. The chime rings but no one comes to greet me. I walk toward the counter, my eyes scanning left to right, looking for her. She’s not out here. At the counter I turn to my right, to the portion of the room that is blocked from the entrance by a wall.

I stare at the exact spot on the floor where Luca held her.

“Hello there, again,” a skeptical voice says. I turn to see Clara standing in the doorway that must lead to the backroom. She looks different. So different, I wonder if it’s really her. Her hair is in a sloppy bun on top of her head, strands falling without purpose; as if she just threw her hair up without a precise style in mind. Her face is bare and the shadows that I recognize from my own face are starting to show under her eyes. She’s wearing a well-worn, baggy t-shirt with a picture of a dog, the word
Pixies
is written above the dog’s head. Her legs are covered in black leggings and a pair of scuffed up ballet slippers are on her feet. “Did you need some makeup?” she asks, like I’m a customer and not some weird girl that is stalking her. I turn back to the spot where she and Luca were and see a low counter filled with different containers of makeup.

“Maybe,” I tell her.

“Sit down, I’ll help you.” Her voice is flat, not the cheery one she used on her other customers.

I walk over to the stool that is in front of the counter and sit down. I stare into the mirror that’s in front of it. The vanity lights surrounding it make my ugliness undeniable.

“You’re the girl that came in here the other day, right?”

I don’t answer.

She shifts her focus to the tubs of creamy things. She turns me away from the mirror and towards her face. “This is concealer,” she tells me. “It will help cover the dark shadows under your eyes.”

I close my eyes and feel her sure, gentle finger dabbing something cool and creamy under my eyes. It feels good. No one has touched me since Piper hugged me goodbye. Clara’s touch is soft. I inhale a deep breath and memorize her fingers on my skin.

When her finger leaves me, I open my eyes and see her looking intently at my face. “I don’t think you need any more base. If you get some sleep you wouldn’t need any at all.”

I don’t know what to say to her. I never planned on talking to her. I never imagined she’d stoop so low to talk to me. How did I end up in a chair, with her touching me?

“What’s your name?” she asks me.

“Blanca,” I say, the word coming out of me without though. I hear it float in the air between us.
Blanca
; a C name, an A name, an L name… like Luca and Clara.

“Blanca,” she muses. ”Blonde, pure, white…right?”

I nod at her. I don’t know if she’s right though.

Of course she’s right… it’s Clara.

“I’m Clara,” she tells me. “Bright, famous. That’s what my name means.” She lets out a sarcastic laugh like that name doesn’t suit her. “You live around here?” she asks, taking out a large brush and another tub. She begins to brush it softly against my skin. I close my eyes again. “You look familiar… have I seen you around here? Besides the other day, when you came into the store?”

“No,” I tell her. “I don’t live in this neighborhood.”

Her brush stops moving and I open my eyes to see her concentrating, once again, on my face. She sets the makeup down and picks up another brush and tub; both smaller this time. “Are you in high school?” she asks.

“No. I’ll be nineteen… what is the date?”

“It’s October third, sweetie,” she tells me like I’m a child who needs constant reminders to perform basic human tasks.

It’s October.
Jesus
. How long have I been in that studio? “I’ll be nineteen,” I almost say in three weeks, but then I remember that I’m not Jude. “Next month. November twelfth.”

“Libra,” she tells me, “love to be loved. Close your eyes.”

I do, feeling a soft brush carefully move across my eyelids. I can feel Clara’s breath on my mouth, her face so close to mine.

The door chimes.

“Oh, shit,” she mutters to herself. “I forgot to lock up. Hold on a minute,” she tells me, setting the makeup down and going to the front of the store.

I turn and look at myself in the mirror. My skin is all evened out and pink in the right places. It looks wrong. Too nice. Too plain. I hear Clara talking, making apologies and the door chimes again.

How strange that that girl is allowed to stay when the normal people are asked to leave. Why is she keeping her there?

“My brain isn’t working today,” she tells me, coming back and picking up a mascara wand. “I thought I had closed down a half hour ago… but then again you made your way in here. It’s totally fried. Look down.”

I do. Clara places her finger on my jaw, her thumb on my cheek, to steady my face as she moves the brush back and forth across my lashes. I can’t get over how her hands feel on me. It’s not loving, necessarily, or even friendly. But she is taking care of me in a way. My face is in her hands. A calm sensation runs through my body.

“Look up,” she instructs. “Almost done,” she tells me running the wand across my bottom lashes. “You’re eyes are beautiful.”

“Thank you,” I whisper.

She stands back again, smiling at me. She shuffles through the makeup, coming back with a tub full of pink. I keep my eyes open as she touches my lips, pressing her fingertip into every part of my lips. Her face close to mine again. “You have nice lips,” she says quietly. I don’t say thank you this time. I just hold my lips open for her.

She steps back and turns me towards the mirror. My face is transformed back into acceptable. “What do you think?” she asks.

“It looks nice,” I tell her. “Thank you.”

“Yeah,” she says. “No problem.”

We stare at each other in the mirror. I know it’s the time when I should get up and leave but I just stare at her reflection.

“I feel like I should apologize to you,” she says to my reflection.

My heart stops beating. She knows who I am, she knows that I’m the girl that Luca cheated on her with and she’s going to tell me she’s sorry for what he did to me.

“When you were here the other day, I judged you. I thought you were going to steal from the store, even before you disappeared behind the jewelry and then ran off. I’m sorry. I know better than to make assumptions based on…..” She looks away from me, uncomfortably.

“It’s okay,” I say turning to her now, my body filled with relief because she doesn’t know who I am. She thinks I’m a homeless shoplifter.  “I know I look like a person who would need to steal. I don’t usually look this bad. I’m just going through some stuff… I’m between places and I don’t really have a proper way to wash my clothes… and things, where I’m living right now.”

Clara’s eyes look at me with purpose, she shifts from one foot to the other, as if she’s not sure what to say to that. I should go. I stand, but she puts an arm on my shoulder to stop me. I stop and her hand goes back to her hip. “I don’t want to make assumptions again, but I just went through my closet and I have a bunch of clothes upstairs in my apartment that I was going to donate. If you want to come look through them, you can.”

Is Clara inviting me to her apartment?
Why would she do that?

“Sorry, that’s rude. I don’t think you’re a charity case… I mean, I just figure we’re about the same size and…”

“Yes,” I tell her abruptly, stopping her from her uncomfortable monologue. “That would be nice.” I hear myself telling her. Blanca tells her.

She smiles at me and her body visibly relaxes. “Okay. Well, let’s go.” She turns and walks to the back of the room, using a set of keys to open up a door that reveals a set of stairs.

I follow her. As I’m ascending the stairs all I can think is,
this can’t be real.

Clara’s apartment feels like I thought it would, but all of the details I imagined in my head were wrong. I watched her and Luca having coffee in the sunny kitchen. I saw them watch old black and whites in the living room. I witnessed them making love in the bedroom… in all the rooms. I looked over Luca’s shoulder as he watched her apply her makeup in the bathroom.  None of the exact details are right, not even the layout of the place is how I was sure it was. It throws me off at first.

But it feels like Clara. I can see Luca here.

The walls are old and cracked but painted in shades of gray and teal. The small entry has a teak umbrella holder and coat rack. The small hat with the lace veil that hangs there looks like a prop, but she probably wears it.
Did you see that adorable hat she was wearing? She looks just like Jackie O.

A large mirror hangs next to it and when I look at it I don’t see my reflection, but Clara, checking her lipstick, Luca behind her… smiling at her.

“So this is it. Home sweet home. I don’t have people up here that often… in my space.”

“Thank you,” I tell her, following her through the living room and into the kitchen. “For having me here. I haven’t been anywhere but my place for a while.”

Clara is opening the refrigerator, but she stops to look at me, burrowing her eyes into mine. “You don’t get out much?” she asks.

I clear my throat. I tell myself I’m not Jude, but Blanca. But who is Blanca? “Not lately,” I tell her. “It’s just a phase I guess. A funk I’m in. I’m not usually such a recluse.”

“I need a glass of wine, I’m having an exceptionally shitty day. Then we can go look at the clothes.”

“Okay.”

She grabs a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses in her hands and I follow her out into the living room. I watch as she sets everything down on a kidney shaped coffee table before taking a seat on the floor. I look at the peach colored, tweed couch, but sit down next to her on the cream colored, shag rug. She uncorks the bottle of red wine with ease and pours us each a glass. “You want a glass right? Seeing how you’re in a funk and all.”

“Yes.”

She smiles at me then raises her glass. “To being down and enjoying the wallowing,” she says.

I smile for the first time since moving into the studio. Maybe that’s not true, I feel my lips curling up in bitterness or cruel irony quite often, but this smile is a smile of happiness. A feeling of comradely. A feeing of victory – I have somehow eased my way into Clara’s life.

“I’m just gonna take a wild guess and say the reason you’re in a funk is because of some man?” she says, taking a sip from her glass.

“Is that always the reason?” I ask, easing my way into Blanca’s skin.
Pure. White.
“I mean, is this always the way you end up feeling after falling in love?”

“Oh, sweetie. Say it ain’t so? You didn’t, did you? You fell in love?”

“Yes,” I tell her, my voice sounding shy and sweet.

“And he broke your heart?”

“Yes. I mean, technically, I guess that’s what happened,” I answer, sipping from my glass looking up at her through my lashes.

“I don’t want to break you; you seem like the sweet, romantic Libra type, but as far as I can tell, that’s how it goes. Men, boys… they aren’t wired like we are. They want to tell us what to do, but they think they can go on doing whatever the hell they feel like. They want us to worship them but they need to leave a door open, just in case a better opportunity shows itself. At the very least, there is always something in their lives that they care about more than us.”

I stare at her blankly.
What is she talking about?

She’s appeasing the girl, taking pity on her. Clara can make any man fall in love with her. Luca will never hurt her.

“You’ve never been in love?” I ask her. “You’ve never had someone love you… in a good way?”

“Don’t listen to me,” she says quietly, shaking her head. “I’m just a bitter old lady. I’ve seen the worst of it. My ex-husband was the worst example of the male species. And the only man in my life at the moment? He’s the reason I’m a wreck right now. But it’s really not his fault. He’s got a good heart. Every man has one huge flaw and unless he sees it and tries to fix it, he will end up destroying you. Unless you find that one guy worth saving, you will be destroyed.”

“And you found that one guy… the one worth saving?”

“Yeah, I did. But don’t get your hopes up. He’s just as fucked up as the rest of them.”

“But you love him?”

“More than anything,” she tells me, a sad smile on her face.

Clara is so good, so nurturing and understanding. She would never give up on Luca just because he made a few mistakes. All men make mistakes. All men are uncontrolled beasts. You are naive if you think otherwise. It takes a good woman like Clara to tame that beast, to forgive him and help him become a better man. A man worthy of Clara.