Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! (6 page)

I plopped face down on my bed and patted the comforter with one hand. Ulak sat on one corner. He rested his hands in his lap. He grunted some kind of response. I tried to pull my mind together. The afternoon sun poked through the blinds, cast horizontal shadows on my stucco wall. I tried to say
Hey, Ulak, I gave a baby up for adoption
. I tried to say it twice. Instead, my mind found some kind of easy common ground, a question Ulak could help me answer.

“Ulak, what’s the right thing for a person to do when she doesn’t know what the right thing is? How can you tell what’s right?”

Ulak didn’t act as if my question was anything other than our usual philosophical banter. He squinted and his hands fingered the lacy trim of my blanket, as if he were searching for good answers among the filigree. He took his time, and I almost fell asleep to the careful meter of his breath.

“Birdie. Istanbul is found by asking and asking along the way.”

Lady Godiva

One mile from the beach as the gull flies, at the top of a steep road carved into the broad side of a mesa during the 1970’s, my house overlooks all the others on my street. It sits at the apex of a short cul-de-sac comprised of small Spanish-style ranch homes and pepper trees. If you sit on the roof you can see an accordion-shaped lagoon stretching into the ocean, watch the sun sink and burp behind the power plant, and in the east on cool summer nights at 9:20 sharp, you can see the bloated fireworks display rising from LegoLand. It’s a nice place to live.

I painted my house a gentle purple, a color that made me think of tropical gardens and the smell of lavender and the silly frilly dress I wore to my first prom. I fly a pirate’s flag from my poor woman’s panoramic rooftop view point, a ripped and faded Jolly Roger, and count construction workers and art teachers and line cooks as my neighbors.

I sat at my computer and thought about ways to boost sales as the morning sunlight crept through the open blinds. My eyes tried to make sense of the words on the screen, but they kept returning to that bloody forest edge two decades ago. I stared out the window, into the cul-de-sac, and saw a neighbor boy chasing his pet Chihuahua. The dog ran under a row of tin-soldier Lombardy pines and stood on his hind legs as if to imitate them, barking from sheer joy.

I have to be gentle with myself
, I thought.
If I decide to have contact with my daughter, this event will be one of the most traumatic and emotional experiences of my life, regardless of what else happens. I know no one else can understand this, can feel this, can ever in a million zillion years touch my mind and pull out the meat unless they’ve been through it themselves
.

How can you be you and not be you? How can you be a good and special Avon Lady and remember to call customers and write thank you notes and smile and laugh when three quarters of your mind climbs the evil trees of long ago? How can you find the trail of breadcrumbs you thought you left though counseling and tears? I think the owls swooped down and ate them. I think I have to make another trail, my own trail, ask for help along the way, just like Ulak said. I don’t know how.

The boy grabbed the Chihuahua and carried him home. A swatch of black hair stood straight out behind his ears as he nuzzled his pet. He opened his front door and tossed the dog inside. He swiped a toy helicopter from an old card table decaying on the porch. The table shivered as the boy slammed the door.
Hmmm
, I thought.
That gives me an idea
. I faced my computer again, and opened a new document.

Avon Wing-Ding-O-Rama!
Free Makeovers!
Free Cookies and Drinks!
See the NEW Avon Products!
Meet a REAL Avon Lady!!!!!

I liked the last line the best. At the bottom I listed my address and the nearest cross street and the date and hours of the event – two weeks in advance. I printed out thirty copies on large paper and a set of rainbow fliers, and spritzed them all with the most ghastly overpowering perfume Avon sold. I drew a scarlet-red lipstick kiss around the prose, as if the invitation floated out of the puckered mouth of a wanton woman. I pressed colored felt-tip markers against sheets of blank labels and printed “13 Hours of Madness” along with my telephone number and the date of the event.

I stood in my front yard as the sun rolled overhead and imagined my Avon Open House Wing-Ding-O-Rama, at the top of the patchwork cul-de-sac with assorted children gun-running lemonade and peanut butter cookies and one lone short grumpy middle-aged bastard of a neighbor three houses down, peering out behind tasteful beige drapes, hoping I’d use too much Avon fade cream and disappear with the orange sun before any fireworks start. I crossed my fingers and hoped at the end of the sale I wouldn’t see him laughing at the sight of me jilted at the Avon altar.

I dropped Marty and Louie at an afternoon community art class and headed for my favorite neighborhood, a swirl of busy cul-de-sacs of identical cream stucco spaces where I would never want to live, but boy, do they buy a lot of Avon. I left a flier with every housekeeper and soccer mom and landscape artist and granny and cook and stray child. I passed out my handmade stickers. One boy pulling a skateboard by a fraying dirty piece of rope took two stickers and stuck them under his board next to a skull and a foul-mouthed television cartoon character.

I rang the doorbell for a house like all the others, pretty behind a stately jacaranda and a brick tiled drive, and a woman opened the door a foot and stuck her head outside.

“Yes?” Her hair cascaded past her shoulders at least two feet, all black and wavy with a few stray grey strands.

“Hi! I never got anyone to answer this door before! My name is Birdie and I’m your local Avon Lady! Would you care for a brochure and some free samples? I’m giving out rose lipsticks and Treselle fragrance and Planet Spa mud masks. Which do you prefer? I can also demonstrate the new Anew Deep Crease Concentrate. It makes you look stunning, not stunned. And that’s not all! I’m holding a huge yard sale – 13 Hours of Madness!” I held the three samples in my left hand and the book and flier in my right and shifted my hip and nodded to show her that my ratty backpack contained amazing beauty goodies, and she opened the door a bit wider and motioned for me to come in and sit down.

The room smelled of sandalwood incense and pot and was so dark and quiet it was like stepping into a permissive church during midnight mass. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I noticed my raven-haired potential customer wore a long silk men’s shirt covered in a pattern of gold and silver cubes, and nothing else.
The shirt should have been a good six inches longer
, I thought,
it’s quite evident she doesn’t dye her hair
.

“Well, um, here’s all three samples! You can have them all, plus the brochure. Um. In fact, I can give you another sample, how about an eye cream?” I dropped the samples on a short wicker table with a glass top and rummaged through my bag, peering into it as if I were looking for a bar of gold, anything to keep me from looking at Lady Godiva.

“No, no. Sit down. I never heard of the Deep Crease. Is this something new?” She walked to a black leather stuffed chair and I noticed she held a lit herbal cigarette. She sat down and drew a long breath, closing her eyes as she inhaled. “Avon is a great company. We used to have a girl come around but I haven’t seen her in a coupla years.” She blew out pungent smoke in my direction. I sat on the edge of the matching leather couch, my bag in my lap, and I tried to look at her eyes and nothing else.

“Well, the Avon Anew Clinical Deep Crease Concentrate is a brand new product. I got a bottle at the product expo in Anaheim last weekend. It will be in the Campaign 20 brochure, in about six weeks. But I do have some samples to give to interested customers. It’s like a botox treatment, but you can still move your face afterwards.” I continued explaining the benefits of the serum and opened the white glass bottle and squeezed out a drop onto my hand and showed her how it melted into your skin with no greasy after-effects. My eyes jumped from the bottle to my skin to her eyes, not seeing, not registering the places in the middle.

“Hmmmmm. Interesting.” She drew on her cigarette again, stubbed it out in an overfilled ceramic tray and leaned back, staring at me with cat-like slits for eyes. She looked vaguely Italian, with a soft complexion and carefully sculpted nails, a Rubenesque figure, an aquiline nose.

“Well I gotta run, gotta pick up my kids from art class. Nice to meet you! Don’t forget my big yard sale! I’ll let myself out!” I stood up and shoved the Deep Crease Concentrate in my kilt and headed for the door. I didn’t screw the bottle tight, and my kilt smelled like a beauty treatment and pot and burnt herbs and embarrassment as I pinned fliers to telephone poles.

A few hours later I collected my boys. Eighteen signs pointed the way, stuck into dry sand along two fancy hillside streets, taped to a telephone pole in front of the Vons grocery, written in chalk on the ground by the tennis courts, every place that looked good, that looked like maybe someone nearby might need a good makeover.

Marty carried a clay sculpture of a moose in the crook of his tiny arm. His blonde hair fell into his eyes and he smiled with just one side of his mouth.
Does my birth daughter look like him? Does she have the same brown eyes? The same freckles along her arms?
I looked at my older son. His artwork sat in my bag. He walked with hands stuffed into jean pockets, his dark hair as wild as any Einstein. He stared straight ahead with the expression of a Samurai warrior, all intention and focus and deliberate action. His hips swung out one, then the other.
Does she look like him? Like me?
We turned the corner to find twelve stacked boxes of newly delivered Avon resting on the porch.

Show and Tell at School, at Train Station

I packed forty-eight tubes of Moisture Therapy hand cream in three large Avon tote bags that night, sprinkling samples and two crisp new brochures over the top like Parmesan cheese. Avon shorted me two tubes, so I stuffed a conciliatory bottle of Orange Delight bubble bath in one of the bags with a backorder note to my mysterious customer.

When I was finished packing product, I rummaged through my closet. What does a nearly-middle-aged-momma wear to a biker bar? Velvet? Jeans? Burlap? Something that can handle dripping booze, I guessed. I threw a few outfits into a huge canvas tote and added several pairs of heels and boots. I tried to call Shanna to go over our date details, but got her voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. I fell asleep and dreamed of rocker boys in leopard tights and long black hair, guitars rocking against naked, glistening chests.

I woke to the sound of my boys swinging and laughing in the hammock outside my window. Louie’s voice boomed through the glass. He described the inner workings of a jet airplane to his younger brother, the way it pitches and rolls, how the wings tip to meet cool air. He sounded decades older, refined, like some kind of strange renaissance time warp traveler. All my friends call Louie the “old man.”

Last year, Mrs. M taught my son’s fourth grade class. She loved the way Louie offered to erase the board and collect the milk cartons and candy wrappers littering the schoolyard. Some of the kids called Louie a suck-up. But I know better, and Mrs. M did, too. She liked law and order, a neat and tidy room, neat and tidy homework. She let him lead the class to flag assembly and asked him to help restless kids with math problems. Old men are patient. They know how to fix things. They know how to stand tall and explain fractions. They don’t cut corners. They see things as they are. Mrs. M thought my old man rocked.

Mrs. M called me during lunch break one week. My first thought was that Louie tripped and broke a body part. Old men can be forgetful, can trip over air molecules and run nose first into swinging tether balls and mangy soccer girls in pigtails. But no, Mrs. M said, no, Louie didn’t have a playground accident. This is about Show and Tell.

“I just wanted to know if this was your idea,” Mrs. M asked with hesitation. Her voice hovered in the air above me as I recalled the frantic morning rush, the slam of peanut butter sandwiches into paper bags into backpacks, the quick fumble way I signed the homework papers and scrounged the couch cushions for milk money.

“I have to be honest, Mrs. M. I have no idea what Louie brought for Show and Tell. He usually tells me ahead of time because he likes to practice his speech in front of me. What did he bring? Star Trek stuff? His stamp collection?” I scanned the room and noticed his cello still resting against the couch. Well, it wasn’t that.

Mrs. M cleared her throat. I could hear her gather her wits, try to put them in order, the same silent creeping confusion vine that often attacks those who interact with Louie over any length of time. And in the everlasting millisecond of quiet I perked my ears to listen and discern whether the parrot, dog, cat, guinea pigs and iguanas were still under my control.

“I warned the students that I had a meeting with the superintendent’s office this morning, and so Miss Linda would be taking over for Show and Tell. I told them no funny business, no animals, nothing that would give her trouble. Everyone knows about last year’s pizza party incident.”

Oh crap, did he take the iguanas? It had to be the iguanas. I heard the parrot whistle and the scurry foraging of pigs and hamsters. I wasn’t sure about this pizza party incident but I remembered something about a food fight and a secret bottle of hot pepper flakes some troublemaker brought to school. Oh man, what did my kid do?