The Cubicle Next Door (24 page)

Another compliment?

“Otherwise we’d have to use this.”

At that moment, as she held up a metal torture device, squeezing it open and shut, I decided I’d much rather be lucky than good.

“The mascara’s all dried out anyway.” Grandmother was holding up a tube that refused to be opened.

Betty sighed and then picked up a wedge of spongy material and placed it on top of one of the beige-colored bottles and tipped it over. Then she rubbed it across my face.

“She looks kind of pale, doesn’t she?” From the sound of her voice, Adele was hovering near my ear.

“She
is
pale.” If Thelma had said it, then it was probably true.

“She’s always been pale. Remember when she was born? You could practically see the blood pump through her veins.” Betty stopped rubbing. “There. You can open your eyes now.”

I opened my eyes.

“What color eye shadow are you going to use?” Thelma was surveying Betty’s collection.

“Use blue. Blue goes with anything.” But then again, Adele had carrot-red hair and her favorite color was purple.

“Only in the sixties. What color are your eyes?” Betty had put on her glasses again.

“Blue.”

“Then we’ll use purple.”

“Use brown. It goes with blue.” Since when had Thelma had an opinion about fashion?

Betty turned toward Thelma, one hand on her hip. “But her dress is lavender and brown is boring.”

“That’s what I always used.”

Three heads swung to look in Thelma’s direction.

“I didn’t know you ever wore eye shadow.”

“I did until 1979.”

“Well, if we didn’t know you were wearing brown eye shadow to go with your blue eyes, then I don’t think we want to use brown eye shadow to go with Jackie’s blue eyes either, do we?”

It was clearly a rhetorical question because Betty was so very clearly the expert on makeup.

She perched her reading glasses on her nose, looked down at the table with a piercing glance, and then grabbed a fat pencil. She held it up in front of her face as if she were a nurse, checking a syringe. “Pencil sharpener.”

It took everyone a minute to realize she expected us to not only find a pencil sharpener, but also give it to her.

Adele located it and slapped it into the palm of her left hand.

She took it with her right hand, sharpened the plump pencil, hefted the weight, and then readjusted her grip. She leaned in and pulled at the skin beneath my left eye. “Look up.”

I looked up.

Breathing heavily, and with a shaking hand, I could feel her draw a line below my lower lashes. Then she did the same on the other eye.

She stepped back. Took her glasses off, leaving them to dangle. “Good. That’s good.” She put her glasses back on, ordered me to look down and drew lines above my upper lashes. Then she snatched a combination set of four shades of purple eye shadow from the table. They ranged from pale lavender to a smoky plum. She squinted at me from behind those glasses and then squinted down at the eye shadows. She took a small applicator from the set and commanded me to look down. As I did, she drug it along the bottom half of my eyelids.

“Ouch!”

“Just one more side. It’s my arthritis. Sorry.”

She wasn’t really sorry. I could tell. She was taking revenge for all the times in the last 30 years she’d wished I would wear a dress. Do something with my hair. Go out on dates. But I couldn’t leave because I didn’t know how to do any of it by myself.

She took the other applicator from the set, ground it into the pale lavender shadow and then spread it over the top of my eyelids. She put it back, took up the other applicator, and actually made a hole in the plum eye shadow as she loaded it up with shadow. That’s how much force she was using. And then she pressed it onto my eyelids. I’m sure the imprint of the applicator is stamped into my brain. Forever.

After I stopped seeing stars, I realized she had said something to me. And now she was making faces at me. Was that really necessary?

“Like this.”

“What?”

“Make fish lips.”

“Fish lips?”

She sighed and held out a compact toward me. “For the blusher.”

“So she knows where to put it.” Adele was still hovering by my ear.

I looked around at all of them. They were all making fish lips and looking for all the world like a demented school of goldfish. Glub, glub, glub.

So I did it too.

Betty twirled a brush around the compact and then spread it across my cheeks.

Then she took her glasses off again, and searched through the supplies on the table, finally seizing on a lipstick. “Open your mouth.”

I opened it.

“Not that much. Just a little. As if you were exhaling cigarette smoke.”

As if I’d know exactly what that’s like. But I pretended.

“That’s it…” She’d opened her mouth too. And now the tip of her tongue was sticking out the side of it as she applied the color to my lips. “Okay. Now smudge your lips together.”

I smudged.

“Oh, dear.”

“What?”

“It looks as if your lips bleed.”

“They do? Where?” Couldn’t they have left well enough alone? Now my lips were bleeding?

“Here.” Betty handed me a washcloth. “Wipe off the lipstick. We’ll start over with a lip liner.”

“Lip liner?”

“To stop the bleeding.”

I half-rose from the chair. “Maybe I should get some ice instead.”

“For what?”

“The blood.”

“What blood?”

“From my lips.”

“Your lips aren’t bleeding.”

“You just said they were.”

“Your
lipstick
is bleeding. It’s going outside your lip line. That’s why we need lip liner.”

“Oh.” If I’d known Cosmetics was a foreign language, I would have studied harder for the test.

Betty sharpened another pencil and then drew lines around my lips. She colored them in with lipstick and had me smudge again. “Let’s see.” She smiled brightly.

I smiled.

“Perfect.” She drew a tissue from the box and handed it to me. “Now use this to blot the lipstick.”

“Why?”

“Because you want your lips to look stained, not painted.”

I did?

All the ladies were nodding.

I guess I did.

Betty glanced at her watch and then clapped her hands together. “Quick! The dress. The gloves. He’ll be here in ten minutes!”

They rushed me into my bedroom and stripped away my bathrobe, leaving me standing almost naked in the middle of the floor. Did they have no shame?

“You can’t wear that bra!”

“I’ll get your dress.”

“Where are your pantyhose?”

“Do you have a purse?”

“Stop!”

They froze.

“Out!” I pointed at the door.

Call me crazy, but there are some things I just like to do myself. Getting dressed is one of them.

I tried to untangle the contraption I’d borrowed from Betty. The one I had assumed was a bra. Now I wasn’t so sure. “Grandmother? Could you come help me?”

She pushed the door open, Paused when she saw what I was holding.

“What is this?”

“It’s a corselet.”

“And what’s it for?”

“Everything. Here. Give it to me and turn around.”

With some tugging and cinching, she finally had it fastened. She spun me around and handed me a pair of nylons. “Put these on. One on each leg.”

“And how are they supposed to stay up?”

She sighed. She held one open while I stepped into it and then she shimmied it up my leg and attached it to two of the straps. Then she did the same for the other.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting to know how to undo these…?”

“Won’t you be awake when I get home?”

She sighed.

I took a slow step. Testing the contraption. The top of it certainly covered what it was supposed to, but it did it in a rather uncomfortable way. The bottom held my nylons up. In four places. But in between, they had already started to sag. “I don’t like this.”

Grandmother gave me a look. The Look. “Sometimes, Jackie, we have to do things we don’t like.”

“Beauty is pain? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Growth is pain.
That’s
what I’m telling you.” She held the dress for me while I stepped into it, and then she zipped it up. She picked up the rabbit fur and settled it on my shoulders. Then she took it off. “Why don’t we let Joe have the full effect? You can put this on downstairs.” She propelled me into the bathroom. “Take a look.”

Remember before how I said I was intense looking? Well, this was the intense, exotic version of me.

Exotic?

Hard to believe, right?

But somehow true.

I heard the doorbell and then the sound of the front door opening and shutting. The sound of the floorboards wheezing in the living room.

“I don’t want to go.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I really don’t. I won’t know what to do.”

“Now you listen to me. All you have to do is put one foot in front of the other until you get to the bottom of the stairs. And then all you have to do is go into the living room and smile at Joe and thank him for inviting you. And then all you have to do is sit in his car until you get there. And then all you have to do is have fun. Do you think you can do that?”

I looked at her. Opened my mouth to speak.

“It was rhetorical. Don’t answer. Hold out your hands.”

I held them out while she shimmied the gloves up over them.

Then she stepped back and smiled. “Now go.”

I went.

One foot in front of the other until I was at the bottom of the stairs.

And then I forgot what I was supposed to do because Joe was already there. He was waiting. For me.

Men in flight suits don’t do much for me. Men in mess dress? Well, that’s an entirely different uniform. A short-waisted dark blue tuxedo, complete with cummerbund and bow tie. And Joe, with his wide shoulders…well, let’s just say he filled it out. Nicely.

I forgot what I was supposed to say, so I smiled like an idiot.

But then Joe did too, so we were even.

“You look absolutely…stunning.”

If he’d called me beautiful, I would have known he was lying. As it was, he took the cape from Grandmother’s hands, settled it across my shoulders, and tied the pom-poms. But not before bouncing them up into my face.

Then he held the muff for me while I put my hands inside. After that he held out his arm for me to take.

We both laughed when we realized it wouldn’t work with my hands already inside the muff. So he just looped his arm through mine.

I’m not sure if we even said goodbye before we left.

I know I didn’t wave.

Twenty-Four

T
he drive to the Academy was odd.

So different than driving during the day when it was light outside. And when I wasn’t wearing a dress.

Joe concentrated on the road. Headlights bounced on and off his face, throwing his profile into relief. Once on base, he drove up onto the hill and took a tour of the Harmon Hall and Arnold Hall parking lots. They were full. More than full. He decided to park in his normal spot instead. He helped me climb down from the SUV. I almost forgot the muff, but he saw it on the floor and gave it to me.

I pushed a hand through it and wore it like a giant furry bracelet.

We took the elevator up into Fairchild Hall and walked through darkened halls to the north end of the building. We crossed the bridge by the library and walked onto the terrazzo.

It was clear. And cold.

Everything seemed more brittle. The stars. The wind. And my shoes. They weren’t low-tops. And they were sliding.

“Need a hand?” Joe extended his toward me.

I looked at it. Looked up at him. His face was shadowed, his back toward the moon. I grasped it.

It held steady. Even as my heel skidded on the pavement and I started to go down, his arm remained stable, his hand keeping me upright. After I regained my balance, I was hesitant to let go.

It wasn’t a difficult hand to hold onto. His grip wasn’t too tight or too loose.

Stepping out from the protection of Fairchild Hall, we were hit with the full force of the wind. It lifted my pom-poms up and threw them behind my shoulder. I could feel them straining, beating against my back, trying to escape their tethers.

Joe’s hand tightened on mine. He pulled me close to his side. “It’s coming off the mountains.” He pointed with his chin up to the foothills that rose behind the Academy, but I knew he was gesturing farther. Beyond what we could see. That wind was coming from the snow-drenched peaks of the Rocky Mountains, which hid behind those hills.

He stopped and turned toward the hill in the center of the terrazzo. The pull of his hand around mine turned me with him. “They say Spirit Hill was built to break up the wind. It would have peeled the roof off Mitchell Hall.”

That sounded a little far-fetched.

I saw Joe’s dimples. “That’s the rumor, anyway.”

“Sometimes I think this whole place is one big rumor.”

“I know at least some things that are true.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Well…forget it.”

“You can’t start telling me a story and then just stop.”

He dropped my hand. Looked at me. I saw indecision in his eyes. Then he gestured toward Arnold Hall and started walking.

I stood there watching him walk. “What?”

He turned around and walked backward. “Just stupid cadet tricks.”

“Like what?”

“Like…sledding down Spirit Hill on cardboard boxes. Putting bubbles and dye in the fountain. And moving the static displays.”

“The planes?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“If you have enough people, you can do just about anything.”

“You moved the planes? Did you roll them?”

“No. We carried them. That’s why they’re tied down now.”

“To where?”

“The middle of the terrazzo. So if you were marching, you’d have to march around them. Stupid things like that.”

I shivered. Tried to make the fur spread farther down my arms, but the wind tunneled through it and blew it up in back.