Luna (28 page)

At the centre of the hall three men appeared, dressed like women. They wore ridiculous wigs—platinum blonde, carrot red, and black—and their faces were painted like rag dolls—exaggerated red lips, rouged cheeks, swaths of green and blue eyeshadow, and foundation cream that barely covered their five o’clock shadows. They wore shiny, sequined dresses that came to their knees, leaving their hairy legs exposed, and their big feet were stuffed into high-heeled shoes. Their bare, muscled arms and hairy chests looked ridiculous emerging from those flashing dresses, as did the big fake bosoms and fat fannies made out of pillows. They were pretending to sing, miming a recorded top forty song that all the young women in the hall seemed to know. Some of the women were laughing, swaying in time to the music, some had dropped their heads as if they were embarrassed by this display, and a few were watching, holding their faces very still.

How many times had she seen men dress up like women? At mock weddings, at Hallowe’en, during Christmas skits and in parades, and at private parties. It seemed for every occasion some of the men dressed up like women, and now, suddenly, she wondered why.

Is that how men see us? she wondered? All bodies? All wigs and paint, all phoniness and artificiality? Are they ridiculing us? No, she said to herself. No, that’s not it. Maybe it’s a kind of admission of our beauty, a tribute.

The three men were almost at the end of their song. They rocked back and forth in unison, did a few, careful, mincing steps forward, then turned, wagging their behinds, and finally stepped back and threw their arms out in each other’s face to the last notes of the song. All the women began to clap and shout.

“Didn’t you like it, Selena?” Diana asked, an amused smile on her face.

“I don’t know,” Selena said, staring back at her, wanting to say something, but not knowing what.

“I don’t see what everybody thinks is so great,” Laverne said.

“They really had to practice to get that right” Lola said, a trifle indignantly to Laverne.

“It’s just a joke,” Phyllis said, although she wasn’t laughing.

“But if we dressed up like them,” Laverne said, “they wouldn’t think it was so funny.”

“It wouldn’t be funny,” Rena said. “There’s nothing funny about men. Ask Ruth.”

“You could imitate their deep voices,” Phyllis suggested, grinning. She was having trouble separating her words. Too much wine, Selena noticed. “And the way they walk. That would be funny. I’ve seen people do it.”

“Maybe they envy us,” Diana suggested. Everyone stopped talking and stared at her.

“Envy us!” Lola said. “Are you kidding?”

“Well,” Diana pointed out, “they’re always dressing up like women. At twenty-fifths, every time we put on a skit, at Hallowe’en, in the parades. I can’t even remember all the times.”

“They mean it as ridicule,” Rhea said, but her voice lifted at the end of her sentence as though she wanted to hear what this would evoke from Diana.

“They may think they mean it as ridicule,” Diana responded immediately, “but you only ridicule people if you secretly envy them, or if you’re secretly afraid of them.”

“Oh, who cares,” Laverne said, lifting her wine glass and drinking. “This is a party, a celebration, it’s for us women, and we shouldn’t waste it talking about men.”

The women laughed uneasily, their eyes thoughtful, and Diana murmured, “They’re up to something, even if they don’t know what it is themselves.”

The fashion show was beginning, and everyone set their chairs in new positions to see it better. One of the women who had organized the evening took the microphone and began to talk about the dresses as the models paraded slowly by, pirouetting now and then so everyone could see all the details of each garment. The waiters, husbands of some of the models and guests, leaned against the bar, sipping drinks, watching quietly, their work done for the time being.

The models weren’t wearing high fashion clothes, just dresses from a local women’s clothing store, and the models were not beautiful, only
attractive, slim local women, but the men watched silently, deferentially. Selena wondered what they were thinking. It touched her to see them like that, she thought suddenly, how good men are, how strong and honourable.

“Oh, I like that one,” or, “That’s too young for her,” or “That would look great on you, Diana,” the women remarked, and clapped as each dress passed by, enjoying all of it, even though most of them wouldn’t think of buying, much less wearing one of the dresses.

When all the dresses had been shown, the woman took the microphone again and announced that they had managed to persuade a furrier from the city to bring a selection of coats and jackets to their Ladies Night Out celebration. Everyone began to clap. This was almost too much. Fur coats! The very best of the models had been selected to show the coats and they began to parade up and down the hall, twirling and holding the coats open to show the rich satin linings.

There were classic dark minks and light minks, foxes, fashionable wolf coats. “Looks like coyote to me,” Laverne whispered, and coats made of two kinds of fur or trimmed with leather. The music was louder now, and the women were almost stunned into silence by the noise, the liquor they had drunk, and the riches they had seen. Finally the last coat was shown and the furrier announced that all the coats were available for trying on backstage immediately after the program was over.

“And that marks the end of the evening, ladies,” the woman said, back at the microphone. “Thank you all for coming, and don’t forget those coats are for sale, and you can try them on now.” Everyone clapped, then began to stand and move around to talk to each other.

“Should we try them on, Lola?” Phyllis asked, grinning. Lola giggled.

“There’s no way I can afford one,” she said, “but let’s. Come on,” she said to the others. Selma shook her head, no, and began to talk to a relative who had been sitting at another table. Rena had already left.

Rhea said, “I’ll wait here,” and Laverne said, “Me, too.”

“Come on, Selena,” Diana said. “We came all this way, we might as well get our money’s worth.” Selena rose and followed her to the stage door.

“I’ll never in my life be able to own one,” she said to Diana’s back, “I can’t imagine why I should bother to try one on.”

“You’ve got the height to wear one,” Diana said. “It’ll be fun just to see how they feel.”

In the crowded space backstage the furrier stood protectively by his rack of expensive coats.

“Gently, ladies, gently,” he said, as one by one they were peeled off their hangers and women helped each other put them on. There were squeals of pleasure, and murmurs of awe.

“Here, Selena,” Diana said, and before Selena could protest, Diana had taken the full-length dark mink off its hanger and was putting it on Selena. She began to protest, but as the cool satin slipped over her bare arms and the thick fur of the collar settled against her hair, neck and chin, her words slowly died, and she was left standing by herself, feeling the weight of the coat, its scent, the silkiness of the fur. She felt as though she had never known such softness, such luxury, or been so close to such a world of grace. For a second, all the things she would never have, would never even know about, all the spoils of the feminine world came flooding over her and she felt loss, and sorrow at that loss.

She felt poor, poverty-stricken, small and without significance in this larger world she had glimpsed. Almost in tears, her face still buried in the sleeve, she tried frantically to think of what she had.

What came to her were the faces of her children, and the prairie that she knew so well, that surrounded their small ranch. And she felt a little better.

“Here,” she said to Diana, “you try it on,” pulling if off as fast as she could. She wanted only to leave, go home. Diana slipped the coat on, but it was obvious that she had little interest in it.

“I forgot about Phoebe!” Selena said suddenly. “I have to phone, I have to …”

“Take it easy,” Diana said, taking off the coat. “Jason or Kent would have phoned if she had gone in labour.”

“You don’t know how Jason can sleep,” Selena said, as the two of them squeezed past the other women on their way out into the main hall. “And Kent’s not all that reliable. If he and Tony get talking …”

“We’ll be home in an hour, Selena,” Diana said. She pushed open the
door into the hall. It was half-empty now, the waiters clearing tables while women stood in groups here and there and talked.

The main doors at the far end of the hall opened and a man came through and stood looking around. His parka was covered with snow. He was joined by a second man, also snow-covered.

“Oh, no,” Selena wailed.

The first man began to speak, then raised his voice to be heard. Everyone in the hall stopped talking.

“There’s a bit of a spring blizzard out there,” he called. “It’s not too bad yet, but I wouldn’t hang around if you’ve got far to go.” He stopped, apparently not wanting to be seen as giving orders. The women’s voices rose again in dismay or annoyance. It was nothing to the town women, and most of the country women had friends or relatives they could stay with if necessary. But Selena thought of Phoebe.

“I’ve got to get home!” she said, hurrying toward where Rhea was rising now from her place, where she had been waiting. They went together to the cloakroom, and searched for their coats.

“I’ve got a funny feeling,” Selena said, as she found hers and put it on. “I had it before I left. I knew I shouldn’t have come.”

“What’s gotten into you?” Diana asked, annoyed. “Kent’ll be with her by now. I’m sure she’s just fine.” She shrugged into her coat, then reached under her collar to pull out her long hair. It fell in a shiny cascade onto her shoulders. Selena looked at Rhea, who was being helped into her coat by a woman who happened to be standing near her.

“Haven’t you ever heard of women’s intuition?” Rhea asked Diana, her tone half-amused, half-serious. Diana hesitated for a second, looked at Rhea, then Selena. She turned then, and led the way to the door, which she held open for them.

Swirling snow greeted them, whirling down the street past the power poles, over the banked-up snow on the sidewalks, whipping around their nylon-clad legs and up into their faces. They pulled up their collars and shivered.

“I’ll go get the car!” Selena shouted, her words swept away in a gust of wind. She hurried down the steps, slipped in the fresh, wet snow and
almost fell. It’ll be bad out in the country, she thought, if it’s this bad here, and that man said it wasn’t bad yet!

She was already starting the car as Diana and Rhea climbed in, and she pulled out of the parking place against the curb as the first of the other women emerged from the brightly-lit hall into the storm. A blast of snow billowed up, glittering in front of the car, then was swept away like a ghost.

“I hope those women who drank too much don’t try to drive home,” Diana said.

“There’s a time for drinking,” Rhea said cryptically, and then was silent.

Already they were passing the last buildings in town, starting out down the snowswept grid toward home twenty-five miles away. As soon as they left the protection of the buildings snow began to whip across the hood, driven by the wind with such fury that sometimes she could see a few hundred feet ahead, and sometimes she could see nothing at all.

“Look at the ditches,” she said. “They’re almost full. It must have started to snow right after we went inside.”

“At least it isn’t cold,” Rhea said. It was true, the temperature had barely dropped, but the snow was wet, hard to get through where it had drifted across the road.

“I didn’t even bring slacks,” Selena said. “The sky looked perfectly clear,” and of course, Rhea laughed.

“Put your lights on dim,” Diana suggested. Selena struck the button with her foot and found she could see a little better.

“Just go slow,” Rhea said complacently, “and you’ll be all right.”

“This damn country!” Selena said, aware she was quoting Kent, and then went on in her own words. “Sometimes I hate it!”

“Now, now,” Rhea said. “You don’t mean that. It’s spring moisture for the farmers.”

“Fuck the farmers,” Selena said, and Diana laughed. She laughed so hard she sounded as if she was choking and they could hear her rolling around in the back seat. Selena had to laugh, too.

“For heaven’s sake, calm down,” Rhea said. “It won’t help any if you drive us into the ditch.”

Diana stopped laughing and settled into silence.

“How did you like Ladies Night Out?” she asked, after a bit.

“I liked it fine,” Selena replied, hunched over the steering wheel. “I’ve never in my life done anything like it, and I’ve begun to think, just now, as we’re talking, that it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, only I didn’t know it. It was good. It felt good.”

“Funny,” Diana said. “It was so different from the things you do in the city.”

“What?” Selena was torn between straining to see the road, and listening to what Diana was saying.

“It was all about … pretty things,” Diana said. “About the things we women seem to yearn for, or need, maybe. Our kind of women, anyway, who don’t have much more than the necessities.”

“It was a celebration,” Rhea said. Her tone gave the word some special meaning Selena couldn’t divine. Diana was silent.

“Oh, God, I wish Kent was here,” she moaned, braking again. They were ten miles from town and the storm was getting worse. “We could end up spending the night on the road.”

“No,” Rhea said. That was all, just
no.
The wind screamed against the car, plastering snow against the windshield and then blowing it off again.

“My turn-off should be coming up pretty soon,” Diana said.

“You might have to get out and walk in front of the car to find it,” Selena said. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the road, or what she thought was the road, for miles now and her eyes were blurring from the strain. She blinked hard a few times and they cleared. A wall of white descended in front of her, she braked, then touched the gas carefully again when it passed.

“Never mind her turn-off,” Rhea said. “You’ll get us lost trying to find it. Just keep going.” Selena expected Diana to protest, but she said nothing. They kept inching forward, finding, when the wind tore rents in the sheet of white, that sometimes they were on one side of the road, and sometimes on the other.