Here's Lily

by Nancy Rue

  “Wow—that looks good!” Marcie said. “Can you do me, please?”

  “I’m not finished with Lily yet,” Kathleen said. “Would you mind a little lip gloss, Lily?”

  A little? On these lips, you’re going to need a whole container.

  Kathleen seemed to be watching her closely. “You have incredible lips, you know. Women all over America are going to plastic surgeons to get lips like yours.”

  “Nuh-uh!” Ashley said, and then clapped her hands over her mouth.

  “It’s true. We’ll apply some gloss just to play up that wonderful mouth, okay?”

  Lily nodded and then closed her eyes while Kathleen put something smooth and cool on her lips. When she opened her eyes, she saw Reni smiling from one earlobe to the other.

  “Lily!” Marcie said. “You look good!”

  She sounded like that was the surprise of the century, but Lily didn’t mind. The girls were all murmuring to each other and casting the same kinds of glances at Lily. She was dying for a mirror.

  “Now,” Kathleen said, “you will notice that we haven’t done anything to change Lily’s appearance. We’re just enhancing what she has. Do you know what enhancing means?”

  Ashley stuck up her hand. “It means making something look good that didn’t look that good before.”

  “Absolutely not correct,” Kathleen answered briskly. “Anyone else?”

  It took a minute before anyone else raised her hand. Lily was surprised when Kresha Ragina put hers up. Kresha didn’t speak English that well—she was Croatian—so she hardly ever answered in class.

  Kathleen nodded in her direction. “Yes, pretty lady.” Frankly, Lily had never thought of Kresha as pretty. She seldom combed her tangle of almost-blond hair, and matching colors was obviously something they didn’t worry about too much in Croatia.

  Wow, Lily thought, Kathleen really does look for each person’s own beauty.

  Kresha cleared her throat. “It mean . . . to make you notice . . . what—what . . . um . . . what is beautiful already.”

  “Beautifully put,” Kathleen said. “And exactly right. Caking on a bunch of makeup doesn’t make you beautiful. You are already beautiful. If you wear makeup, it is only to make people notice your best qualities.” She turned back to Lily. “Now, another way to do that is with color. Lily, would you mind if I put something over the top you’re wearing?”

  Lily looked down at her black T-shirt and shook her head. Kathleen reached into her classy bag and pulled out several scarves in different colors.

  “I’m going to hold each one of these up to Lily’s face,” she told the class, “and I want you girls to tell me which one brings out Lily’s beauty the best.”

  By now, almost everyone had scooted to the front of her chair, eyes glued to Lily. Kathleen held a yellow scarf over Lily’s tee, and only a few heads nodded. With a red one, heads shook. When blue, just the color of Lily’s eyes, covered her, Lily thought Marcie McCleary was going to spring out of her chair.

  “That’s the one!” she said.

  “What do you think?” Kathleen asked Zooey.

  “That’s it,” Zooey said.

  “I totally agree.” Kathleen knotted the scarf casually in the front, and then finally she reached into her bag and pulled out a mirror. “Take a look at yourself, Lily,” she said. “See if you like what you see.”

  Lily gazed into the mirror, and she saw her eyes go wide. It’s me, all right, she thought. Only it’s like a different degree of me.

  “Do you like yourself?” Kathleen said.

  “I do.”

  “You should. You are a lovely young woman. Now—”

  “Do me!” Marcie cried. Surely she was going to burst a blood vessel any minute.

  Kathleen gave a sly smile. “Did I say I was finished with Lily yet? Now then, Lily, stand up for me. Everyone stand up.”

  They all scrambled to their feet, buzzing to each other, and Kathleen told them to stand with their arms at their sides, to place their feet the same distance apart as their shoulders, and to focus on an eye-level spot on the wall.

  “Concentrate on your backbone,” she said. “Pretend those vertebrae in there are Legos. Stack each one neatly above the one below it.”

  There was a lot of giggling and whispering from the other girls, but Lily put her mind to her Legos, snapping each one carefully into place. She was amazed at how different she felt.

  “Excellent, Lily,” Kathleen said. “Everyone look up here.”

  Necks stretched again.

  “Lily looks so elegant and confident, doesn’t she?”

  Ashley and Chelsea both shrugged, but some of the others nodded. Reni, of course, dimpled all the way through.

  “How do you feel, Lily?” Kathleen said.

  “I don’t feel like a giraffe right now.”

  Ashley spewed out a laugh that sprayed everyone in front of her, but Kathleen ignored her.

  “Good answer,” she said, “because you certainly don’t look like one either.”

  Kathleen showed them how to walk without falling over their own feet and how to stand and not feel like they didn’t know where to put their arms, keeping Lily at the front to use as an example. The rest of the class went way too fast as far as Lily was concerned.

  By the time the workshop was over, Chelsea had stopped laughing at her. Ashley had too, but she’d also quit listening to Kathleen and was yawning and looking at the clock and re-braiding her hair. By that time, Lily had pretty much forgotten all about her.

  When Ms. Gooch came into the library to get them, nobody wanted to leave, and Kathleen had to help her shoo everybody toward the door. But when Lily went up to give Kathleen her blue scarf back, Kathleen took hold of her arm.

  “Can you stay for a minute, Lily?” she asked. “I want to give you something.”

  “You don’t need to give me anything,” Lily said. “It was fun helping you.”

  “It’s not a thank-you gift.” Kathleen opened Lily’s hand and pressed a cream-colored card into it. “This is my phone number at the agency. You’re model material, and I’d love it if you would tell your mother I said that and have her call me. We’ll be starting a new class soon, and I’d like to have you in it.”

  “Me?” Lily felt her face doing that blotchy-red thing again. “Oh, this is because I was your example. Really, it won’t hurt my feelings if you give it to Reni or even Ashley. They’re way prettier—”

  Kathleen laughed her feathery laugh as she pressed Lily’s fingers closed over the card. “No. I’m giving you this because you are the one I’d like to have at my agency.”

  It was way too hard to believe. That was why when Lily got outside the library, and Reni said, “What did she say to you?” Lily just said, “She thanked me. Come on. We better hurry or we’ll get our names on the board.”

  Then Lily tucked the card into the pocket of her jeans—and tucked the warm glow she was feeling into the back of her mind, where she could bring it out later and feel it again.

  Three

  Lily did think about Kathleen and the card later, when she was setting the table for dinner. The thoughts were nice, but they didn’t drown out the usual commotion that was going on in the kitchen.

  “Outside with that, Joe,” Mom told Lily’s nine-year-old brother, who was bouncing a basketball on the tile and rattling the dishes in the cabinets in the process.

  “Hey, Art, go for a lay-up!” Joe called out. He motioned toward the hanging onion basket and tossed the ball to Lily’s older brother.

  Art looked up from the basket he was dropping bread into and smacked the ball away. It bounced off the corner of the counter and hit Lily squarely on the right fanny cheek.

  “Mo-om!” Lily said.

  “Mo-om!” Joe echoed her.

  “Joseph.” Mom spoke without raising her voice or even looking up from the salad she was dumping out of its plastic bag into bowls. “I said take that outside.”

  “Good shot,” Joe said to A
rt as he dribbled the basketball toward the back door.

  “That wasn’t a shot,” Mom said. “It was pure luck, and it would have been bad luck if you’d knocked those glasses off the counter. Speaking of which, Joe, after you get rid of that ball, come back in and put milk in them.”

  “It would have been bad if he’d knocked the glasses off with the ball, but you don’t yell at him for hitting me with it?” Lily said.

  “He got you in the rear end,” Joe teased. “Not that there’s much of it, Stick Girl.”

  “Mo-om!” Lily wailed again.

  “I’ll give him twenty lashes after dinner,” Mom said. “Check the casserole, would you?”

  Still mumbling to herself, Lily opened the oven and peered in. “What’s it supposed to be doing?”

  “The polka.” Art started out of the kitchen. “Call me when dinner’s on. I’ll be in my room.”

  “Stay here. We’re close,” Mom told him. “If you go into that cave, we might not see you for hours.”

  “I could play a whole song before Klutz even gets the casserole to the table.”

  Lily almost opened her mouth to protest, but it was then that she thought about the card in her pocket. For a moment, she thought she could actually feel its warmth in there. She wasn’t a gangly giraffe. Kathleen had said so.

  “Lily, how come you’re smiling into the oven?” Joe said from the doorway.

  “Because she’s weird,” Art said. “Just call me, okay, Mom?”

  Mom tilted her head back and shouted, “Art! Dinner’s ready!”

  “You’re so witty, Mother.”

  “Did somebody say dinner?” Lily’s father poked his head into the kitchen, a book dangling from one hand and his glasses from the other. Like Lily’s, his red hair was standing up on end, but his blue-like-Lily’s eyes weren’t sharp and intense at the moment. They had that foggy look to them they always had when he’d been off in book-land. Which was usually.

  Joe squinted his own brown doe-eyes. “False alarm, Dad,” he said. “Mom was being cute.”

  “Oh.” Dad started to leave, putting his glasses back on, already halfway into the pages of his book again.

  “Sit down at the table, hon,” Mom told him. “It’s all but ready. How’s it doing, Lil?”

  “I don’t know,” Lily said.

  “So ask it,” Joe said.

  “Is it bubbly and turning brownish on top?” Mom said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then it’s a done deal. Art, come back here and take that out for Lily.”

  Art gave an exaggerated sigh from the doorway he’d almost sneaked out of. “Why can’t she do it?”

  “Because I asked you to do it. Joe, wash your hands. Lily, don’t forget salad dressings.”

  “No, it’s because she’s a klutz.” Art snatched the pot holders from their hook.

  Lily flung open the refrigerator door—making the wipe-off calendar, with October already filled up, swing on its little hook—and almost started wailing for her mom. But then she patted the card, poked her head inside the fridge, and pulled out the blue cheese and the ranch in silence.

  “Watch it, Dad,” Art said as he set the bubbling casserole on the table. “She’s in a mood.”

  “Who, Lilliputian?”

  “Who else? I think her hormones are getting ready to kick in.”

  “Arthur, enough.” Mom still didn’t raise her voice, but her brown eyes said about as much as a whole website as she cut them in his direction.

  Art just grinned and parked himself in his chair at the table.

  “Why do you call her that anyway?” Joe said from the sink, where he was going through the motions of washing his hands.

  “Call who what?” Art said. “Lily, pass the salad.”

  “After we all sit down and after we ask the blessing.” Mom turned Joe back to the sink and handed him the soap, then got out the milk and set it soundly next to his elbow on the counter.

  “Okay, okay,” Joe said, barely moving his lips.

  Lily put the salad dressing bottles on the table and slid into her seat next to Dad. It was going to be at least another five minutes before everybody did everything they were supposed to do and got to their places. She used that time to study her family.

  What would Kathleen do with them? she wondered.

  Mom had her brown sugar–colored hair pulled up on top of her head in a ponytail, and there was definitely no makeup on her big brown eyes or her tan face or her twitchy little mouth. Lily’s mom didn’t smile that much, but she wasn’t serious either. She said funny things with a straight face, and her lips were always threatening to burst into a laugh but almost never did. Lily was sure Kathleen would have replaced the gray Cedar Hills High School Coaching Staff sweatshirt with one of her scarves—if she could have gotten the shirt off Mom. She was pretty proud of her girls’ volleyball team.

  Lily shifted her attention to Dad, who was reading the back of the blue cheese dressing bottle. He was a taller, male version of Lily, except that he wore glasses and wasn’t clumsy. Of course, Lily didn’t think a person had to be too coordinated to teach English literature to college students.

  Art, she decided, looked like the two of them too, only he had Mom’s brown-like-a-deer’s eyes, and his hair was brown with just a tinge of red instead of looking like a bumper crop of carrots. His was also wild-curly, but he kept it cut very short so no one ever accused him of looking like he was about to take flight. Lily had often almost wished she could shave hers off the way he did, but after today with Kathleen, she was glad she hadn’t. Her hair might not be so bad after all.

  Joe and Art haven’t said anything hateful about it all afternoon, she thought. I bet they’ve noticed that there’s something different about me, only they can’t figure out what yet.

  Joe finally finished filling the milk glasses and got them and himself to the table. Lily surveyed him carefully. He was definitely the best-looking one in the family. He had Mom’s smooth hair and her big brown eyes and her golden-bronze complexion. He’d gotten Dad’s huge mouth and full lips, but they kind of worked on him, maybe because his face was wider. He never looked as if his smile were going to go off his face and meet in the back of his head, the way hers did.

  Except Kathleen said I have a great mouth and great lips, Lily reminded herself.

  “What are you starin’ at?” Joe said. “Mom, make Lily quit starin’ at me. She’s weirdin’ me out.”

  “Your turn to ask the blessing, hon,” Mom said.

  They all held hands, and Dad thanked God for the food and for their family and asked Him to guide them through life. Lily added her usual silent, And please help my brothers not to pick at me, and then put in, And thank You for Kathleen.

  “Amen.”

  “Lilliputian,” Dad said, “is a reference to the book Gulliver’s Travels.”

  They all looked blankly at Dad.

  “What’s he talking about?” Art said to Mom.

  “Joe asked why I call Lily Lilliputian. It’s a literary allusion.”

  “Great,” Art said. “Pass the salad.”

  “In the land of the Lilliputians,” Dad went on, “Gulliver found the people to be extremely small.”

  “Then I still don’t get why you call her that,” Joe said. “Lily’s, like, way tall.”

  “She’s a beanpole,” Art said. “What do I have to do to get the salad around here?”

  “You have to stop being rude,” Lily said. She was trying to think about the card in her pocket and not let Art make her yell, but it was getting harder. “And I am not a beanpole.”

  “What is a beanpole anyway?” Joe asked. “I don’t get that.”

  “Something tall and thin like your sister,” Mom said. “Elbows, Joe.”

  Joe removed his elbows from the table and smiled at Lily like a little imp. “Does it have a big mouth?”

  Lily gritted her teeth.

  “Did he just ask if a beanpole has a mouth?” Dad asked, blinking behind
his glasses.

  Mom’s lips twitched. “It isn’t that Lily’s mouth is so big. It’s just that her face is so small.”

  Art stopped pouring ranch dressing onto his salad to look at Lily. “Nah,” he said. “Her mouth’s just big.”

  “Mo-om!” Card or no card, Lily couldn’t help herself.

  Dad put his fork down and reached over to squeeze the back of Lily’s neck with his warm Daddy-hand. “Ignore them, Lilliputian,” he said. “You know we love you no matter what you look like.”

  Lily shook herself away from her father and scraped her chair back from the table.

  “You know what?” she said as she stuck her hand into her pocket. “You’re all wrong! A lady from a modeling agency came to our school today, and she said I was model material!” She pulled out the card and shoved it into Art’s face. “So there!”

  Four

  Art snatched the card from her. “This is fake.”

  “It is not! Mo-om! Make him give it back.”

  Somehow Mom got the card from Art, and Dad made him and Joe “cut Lily some slack” for the rest of the meal, and both her parents promised they would talk about Kathleen and the modeling agency later.

  Since “later” had been known to stretch into “never,” Lily brought it up again as soon as the kitchen was cleaned up, before Dad could disappear into his study. She caught them both in the family room, where Mom was folding laundry and Dad was looking for a pen, and told them all about it.

  “Sounds like it was fun for you,” Mom said when Lily was finished. “I personally would have hated it, but then you’re nothing like me—and that’s okay,” she added quickly. “You know we want you to be exactly who God made you to be.”

  “So will you call her?” Lily said.

  “Why exactly does she want to talk to your mother?” Dad held up a blue pen. “Ah, here it is! How did it wind up under somebody’s sweatpants? Whose pants are these anyway?”

  “She says she wants me in her next class,” Lily said.

  “I see.” Mom scowled at some unpaired socks. “Does that dryer eat our socks, do you think?”

  “So can I?”