New Jersey Me

by Ferguson, Rich;

  Mom led me into the kitchen. Gone were all the wonderful cooking smells from my youth. It reeked of stale cigarette smoke and potpourri air freshener. That kitchen was also fiftiesed-out with a vintage Coca-Cola vending-machine-style illuminated wall clock, a black and white checkered floor, a pink Formica table, and matching vinyl-cushioned chairs. “Here,” Mom said. “Sit.”

  As I did so, she grabbed some vodka, tomato juice, and horseradish from the fridge, along with some Tabasco sauce, and other ingredients from the counter. She whipped herself up a Bloody Mary. With drink in hand, she sat across from me at the table. Watched me eye the celery stick in her drink. “Don’t even think about it,” she said.

  Like so many other times, I recalled the first time I’d downed booze. That electric shock of vodka from Mom’s Bloody Mary had gone straight to my six-year-old brain, sent me spinning through the living room—everything a shimmery blur. No more parents fighting. No more only-child loneliness. Only Mom’s voice asking if I was okay. Then everything went dark, and seemed to stay that way. “What about this business proposition?” I asked.

  Mom swished the celery through her drink, took a couple sips, then said: “I want you to help me with Mary Kay.”

  I stomped a black Converse against the floor. “I knew I shouldn’t have come over. No way I’m selling Mary Kay. That shit’s for fags.”

  Mom took another hit off her drink, then cracked open a fresh pack of Virginia Slims. She sparked one up, huffed smoke.

  I snatched the cigarette from her lips. Snubbed it out in the half-filled black ceramic ashtray sitting between us.

  She sparked up another. “About Mary Kay,” she continued. “I don’t want you selling. I want you doing something different.”

  The way she said that last word worried me.

  Mom must’ve detected my concern because she added: “I want you to be my male model.”

  That one confused me. No way did I resemble the fashion model types I’d seen on the cover of GQ and other mags at 7-Eleven. All I had was my mess of shoulder-length hair and wild brown eyes—the kind you’d find on criminals in wanted posters. “Forget it,” I said. “I’m not model material.”

  Mom thought differently. She leaned across the table, launched into a sales pitch so perfect, it seemed as if she’d rehearsed it numerous times before my arrival. “Think of it,” she began. “There’s hundreds of men out there still using products like Aqua Velva and Lava soap to stay clean. Maybe they want to try something new, but don’t know where to turn next. You’ll be the one to show them and their wives the Tribute line of men’s products, along with moisturizers and deep cleansers to help their skin stay fresh and wrinkle free.”

  That was total Mom. While she’d often doubted her skills in the Mothering Department, she never doubted herself with Mary Kay. Spouting company catch phrases like, “You can have anything in this world you want, if you want it badly enough and you’re willing to pay the price,” she always knew what to say and do to make the sale. And while her speeches went over well with new Mary Kay recruits, and the old blue hairs and desperate housewives in town, they didn’t fly with me—especially in that moment. “You got the wrong guy,” I insisted.

  Mom coolly swiped a couple sips off her drink, a cigarette drag, then said: “It all depends on how you look at it.” Then for a kicker, she added: “Honey.”

  But I wasn’t buying her saccharine. It had left a truly bitter taste in my mouth in the past, and would continue to do so long after that day sitting at her kitchen table. “How do you figure?” I asked.

  No way did my question throw Mom off. It was like another one of her well-rehearsed responses. “The way I see it,” she said, “you’ll be a trendsetter. You’ll boldly go where no man around here has ever gone before with skin-care products.”

  Now she sounded like an episode of Star Trek on the Planet Mary Kay. I snorted a nervous laugh. A snot rocket shot from my nose and nailed her white blouse, right below the ruffle-trim collar.

  “Oh shit,” I said. “Sorry.”

  Mom got up, grabbed a napkin. She dabbed it with her tongue, and rubbed out the stain. In a matter-of-fact tone, she said: “I’ve had much worse stuff of yours on me than this.” She balled up the napkin, tossed it into the trash. Then she grabbed a compact sitting atop the counter. Flipped it open, quickly surveyed herself in the mirror. She puckered her lips, did this little left to right movement with her face, picked away some tiny bit of something just to the right of her nose. Once satisfied, she smacked closed the compact, then sat back down at the table.

  She took another drag off her cigarette. Didn’t even have the civility to turn her head to the side to exhale like Baby had done that day I’d first met up with her in the woods behind school. Mom just casually blew smoke between us.

  Like I’d done before, I snatched the Virginia Slims, snubbed it out in the ashtray.

  Both of us sat there quietly observing that dead cigarette.

  As Mom was about to reach for a fresh one, I swiped the pack away, got in her face, and said: “How much you gonna pay me?”

  With a voice sounding more business-like than musical, she replied: “Forty bucks per modeling session. And every time a customer buys over a hundred dollars worth of supplies you’ll get an additional twenty-five percent commission. Plus,” she continued, her voice growing slightly vulnerable, “this could give us a chance to spend more time together.” She took my hand in hers. Even though her hand was cold it still felt good.

  Mom gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “Do we have a deal?”

  For a change, her pitch seemed heartfelt. But I wasn’t totally convinced. She’d left me once. She could do it again. I reached for her Bloody Mary.

  She slapped my hand away, then reached for the celery stick. Not to stir her drink, but to hand it over. Perhaps she was hoping it would make me equally as dopey as when I was six. I took a bite. No go. I eyed her Bloody Mary.

  Mom eyed me eyeing her drink. She shook her head no.

  I just shrugged. Code for: No drink. No deal.

  It went on like that for a while—me eyeballing Mom’s Bloody Mary, Mom eyeballing me eyeballing her drink. Neither of us said a word the whole time. The only sound: the tick-tock-ticking of that Coca-Cola clock.

  Mom finally rolled her eyes, slid the drink in front of me.

  I downed what was left. While it was nowhere near as mindbomb as Jimmy’s killer homegrown, or the codeine cough medicine he kept stashed beneath his pillow, the Bloody Mary offered enough of a mellow shock for me to say: “You got a deal.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  There were three people I couldn’t tell about my new business venture.

  First: my old man. Seeing as he bled police blue through and through, he would’ve killed me had he found out I’d gone pink.

  Next: Callie. She already thought I looked ridiculous in Mom’s car. If she caught me modeling mud masks and moisturizers, I just knew we’d be history.

  Last: Jimmy. If he spotted me lugging around Mom’s cosmetics cases, he’d start asking questions. And though I could be a good liar when needed, I often confused fact and fiction after one too many beers and bong hits. If I let slip my male modeling, Jimmy would call me an even bigger fag. Queerbait. Butt Munch Deluxe. And while they were only words, we had ways of branding each other with nicknames that stuck. Like one time in seventh grade: he thought Duran Duran kicked ass. I told him the definition of kickass was Led Zep. For a good number of months, whenever we got annoyed with each other, I’d call him Rio. He’d call me Moby Dick.

  That’s how I came up with Operation Pretty In Pink.

  Every morning, I’d wait until my old man left for work. Once his tank-tough Caprice had glided out of the driveway I’d count to a hundred forward and backward. That would give him plenty of time to be far from the scene.

  I’d hit the streets. Jog through
my neighborhood of large, well-tended ranch and colonial-style homes complete with Kentucky blue-turf lawns; past Jimmy’s neighborhood of shoebox-sized, aluminum-sided houses with gravel lawns; ending up in Terry’s neighborhood full of run-down shacks with rusted-out cars propped up on cinderblocks in dirt yards. That was the perfect place for Mom to pick me up. Around there, no one woke until after noon.

  But to insure my anonymity, just in case I recognized someone from a Dump party, I’d also wear a John Deere cap, brim pulled down over my eyes. Even after I’d climbed into Mom’s Caddy, all sweaty and stinky, I didn’t remove the cap.

  “Do you know how foolish you look?” she said on that first day of modeling.

  She was one to talk. There she was dressed in her knock-off Chanel suit and fancy black pumps—an outfit she had five copies of back at her place. When Mom did Mary Kay she went all the way: Stepford Mary Kay.

  “Take it off,” she said, referring to the cap. “It’s messing up your hair.”

  “Can’t,” I said. “I gotta stay in disguise.” I cracked open a window to take in the clear pine air instead of the Caddy’s stale cigarette stench, and my BO faintly reeking of my fried Spam breakfast. Then I flipped my Greetings From Asbury Park tape into the cassette player.

  Bruce’s “Blinded by the Light” had barely begun jangling through the speakers when Mom popped it out, and tossed the tape into my lap.

  “Whydja do that?” I said. “It’s getting me psyched.”

  “Figure out another way,” Mom said. She swiped off my cap, threw it to the floor, then clicked on the radio. It was the usual 1986 pop-bubblegum stuff: Wham!, Whitney Houston, and Bryan Adams.

  When Don Henley began singing “All She Wants To Do Is Dance” I tried flipping off the radio, but Mom smacked my hand away. “Don’t,” she said. “It’s getting me psyched.”

  Our sparring went on for days. Often I threatened to quit. More often, Mom threatened to fire me. Neither one happened. That’s how badly we wanted to be in one another’s lives again.

  So we reached an agreement. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Mom begrudgingly allowed me to wear my cap and listen to my own tunes. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I had to go John Deereless while being pummeled by Top-40.

  As for Mom’s customers: none bore Baby’s pedal-to-the-metal sex appeal, or Callie’s quiet charm. Most were splotchy-skinned, dumpy-looking housewives with faint mustaches and coffee breath. Total doppelgängers for the moms that toted their sniveling, earaching runts to the First Lake every summer. They had homes that reeked of Mr. Clean, fish sticks, and Glade Air Freshener. Sported stretch pants, ill-fitting polyester dresses, and variations of the Farrah Fawcett Charlie’s Angels feathered hairdo, a coif that had long died out with disco. I prayed to God that if my old man was dating on the sly, none of those women resembled these.

  Once I’d dragged a comb through my mess of hair, Mom and I would step inside each customer’s home. With her well-practiced smile, she’d promptly introduce me as her male model.

  With those two magic words—male model—the customers’ faces would brighten. “Really?” they’d say. “An actual model?”

  “Sure,” I’d respond. “Formé et tout.” French for trained and everything.

  This one woman, looked to be around thirty-five, sported a midriff branded with the words Foxy Lady in glitter. Her huge hips spilled over the edges of her stretch pants like a fleshy high tide. When she heard those two magic words she flashed me a wink while Mom was admiring a baby Jesus Hummel figurine on the woman’s coffee table.

  I winked back. That’s how much I wanted her to buy Mary Kay.

  Mom continued her pitch. “You’re easy to make look radiant,” she said to the customer. “With only a few products you’re well on your way to being the beautiful you that you are.”

  The woman giggled, flashed me another look.

  I looked away. Stared at the black dog hairs littering her beige carpet.

  “But as you know,” Mom continued, “men are different. That’s why you called me. We both know they don’t take care of their skin like we girls do.” She pointed to a picture perched atop the mantle. In it, a man was standing on a fishing dock, sporting a Kelly green windbreaker, plaid shorts, and boating shoes. His sun-damaged face was more lined and worn than beef jerky. “Your husband, right?” said Mom.

  Eyes downcast, the woman said: “That’s my Paulie.”

  More genuine than rehearsed, Mom said, “He’s a good-looking man. How old is he?”

  “Thirty-nine,” the customer sighed. “But he already looks fifty.”

  This was when Mom was at her best—whenever she spotted a chance to clean up Blackwater’s ill-scrubbed residents. She rested a hand on the customer’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I have the perfect product for your Paulie. It’s a gel that helps reduce the visible signs of aging. It’ll take years off his appearance.”

  While Mom rummaged through her bag for the product, the woman batted her eyelashes at me. They were super-long, hairy awnings perched over small, bright eyes.

  The sight of her looking so aroused, even before I’d modeled any products, made me feel like a super stud, better than Richard Gere in American Gigolo. I licked my lips. If the woman ratted me out and accused me of getting fresh, I’d lie. Say I was removing a piece of my Count Chocula breakfast.

  Again, the customer batted her hairy awnings. This time Mom caught her. But instead of going ballistic like I thought she would, she encouraged the woman. “My son’s handsome. Isn’t he?”

  “Ah, c’mon, Ma,” I said, feeling my cheeks fire up.

  But she’d have nothing to do with my pleading. “Really,” said Mom. “It’s okay.” She repeated her question to the customer.

  The woman blushed. “Yes,” she replied meekly. “He is.”

  Mom pinched my cheek. “You see, honey? I told you my customers would adore you.”

  She sat me down in the customer’s love seat. Grabbed a cotton ball from her bag and applied gel to it. When she reached out to dab my face, I backed away. It didn’t matter that we’d already gone through our routine countless times in her living room, and in other living rooms. I still couldn’t relate to this kind of physical attention from her.

  “It’s okay,” Mom said. “Just relax. This won’t hurt a bit.”

  Maybe it was the sound of her voice right then, or the way she applied the gel to my face—whatever the case, I completely zoned out. Could see Mom’s lips moving, speaking to the customer, but I couldn’t hear her. Instead, I sat there recalling a time when I was seven. I’d just thrown up after hearing my parents fight. In one of her more tender moments, Mom was wiping my face clean with a warm rag, and telling me how much she loved me.

  Mom smoothed more Mary Kay gel into the area around my eyes. Now I was ten. My old man had just smacked me for getting still another D on a math test. I couldn’t stop bawling. “I know you’re hurting,” Mom had said. “But the hurt won’t last forever.” She wiped my eyes dry, eased my lips into a grin. “There,” she said. “Think happy thoughts.”

  With each new application of Mary Kay gel product, I relived more Mom memories. Each one made me more and more wistful for the old days. I bit my quivering lip and gripped the sides of the love seat tighter. My Converse high-tops fidgeted back and forth.

  Mom in the present, which sounded tons like Mom in the past, said: “Easy, honey. Stay still.”

  I did as she said, but it wasn’t easy. I was sweating, heart racing. Get a hold of yourself, I thought. You’re a tough, straight, seventeen-year-old male with a solid track record of getting wasted and making-out. But no matter how much I tried to convince myself of my manliness, it was no good. Being Mom’s Mary Kay modeling bitch seemed a far better trade-off than sitting at home alone, or in the bowels of the Ocean County Library, my head filled with radiation and death.

  Once we’
d left the customer’s house, and were back in the Caddy, Mom said: “I’m proud of you. I told you you’d be great at this.”

  She was right. The customer had purchased over two hundred bucks worth of products—everything from purifying fresheners to age-fighting moisturizers, to most of the entire Tribute line for men.

  “It wasn’t easy,” I said. “That woman was way too K-Mart. I like my ladies Macy’s.”

  That one made Mom smile. “Then you did an especially good job.”

  It was like that everywhere we went. Word quickly spread through the Mary Kay community that Mom and I were revolutionizing men’s skin care. If it kept up, I figured, I’d be LA-bound in no time.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “Well?” Mom said, picking me up one late-July morning. “Ready for a big day?”

  That I was. Since it was Tuesday, I popped The Who’s My Generation into the cassette player, leaned back into the fine, white leather seat, and pulled my John Deere cap down over my eyes. Fresh pine air rushed in through the open window. Keith Moon wailed on the drums, Townsend jangled the guitar, and the soaring harmonies of “The Kids Are Alright” sailed through the Caddy. Everything was pitch perfect until Mom clicked off the stereo, and said: “We’re here.”

  I lifted the cap. Noticed we hadn’t traveled out of town like we had with a number of other customers. We were still in Blackwater, cruising one of its few well-kept streets bordering the Second Lake. “What’s the deal?” I said.

  “We have a big meeting with the local ladies auxiliary club,” said Mom.

  As we neared the customer’s place—a sprawling ranch-style brick home with a gleaming lawn—we passed a baby blue Chevy Impala parked out front. It seemed vaguely familiar. Then it hit me. “We can’t go in,” I yelped. “It’s Jimmy’s mom’s car.”