Seeing Colour

by Amber Faucher

  Connie got to his feet, sighing, “Well, I oughtta leave ya to it then.”

  Although he had made it sound like he was going to leave, the man disappeared into the staff room with their empty cups and reappeared with the floor mop. As she reviewed her notes from the meeting with the rep, regarding the frames that she had viewed with him the week prior, Connie went on a cleaning spree. He swept and mopped the floors, then went about wiping down the front windows inside and out.

  Connie’s puttering made Evie anxious. She wondered if he felt she wasn’t keeping the store clean enough or if ‘janitor’ was the role he now filled here at the store for his wife. It made it harder for her to focus.

  The optician had not been able to reach the frame rep, so Evie decided to send him an email, so she could better compose their interest. Words that typically would have come quickly to her faltered with each keystroke. She kept typing and deleting, retyping and backspacing, until finally—after a twenty-five-minute struggle—she was able to click send. The woosh and ding the computer speakers made as the email left her inbox had never sounded so relieving.

  With that task out of her way, she checked the clock in the bottom corner of the screen. It was nearly 4pm. Mara would not be in the next day, because there were no patients booked in. This was the second time since she had started five weeks before that Mara’s schedule was wide open. The disappointment made the back of her neck prickle. They would have to try harder to get more patients through the door.

  Evie considered trying to pull up a record of eye exams from two years before to conduct reminder calls when the prickle transitioned to a tickle. She froze, as the gentle grasp of fingers slid down the side of her bare neck. A warm palm settled there, as she felt pressure drawing her back in the chair until her head tilted upwards, her eyes meeting with the blue-green spectrum of Connie’s bright orbs.

  His mouth was quirked with that devilishly handsome mischievousness, as he softly asked her, “I’m gonna head out. Is there anythin’ that ya need before I do?”

  The question boggled the redhead. She had grown used to the man’s spectre-like disappearing acts. Now he was informing her that he was leaving? She wasn’t sure this was as simple as ‘informing,’ but she did not have time to consider what it really did qualify as, given their employer-employee relationship. Before she could screw anything up, by allowing her pulsating hormones to highjack her body again, she blurted a quick, “Nope.”

  For some reason, this only made his smile widen. Which also made his eyes crinkle and his dimples…dimple. If he didn’t stop, Evie was going to transmute from blissfully stupefied by his visage to out-right drooling.

  “Does Mara have patients tomorrow?”

  On autopilot, with her internal navigation system set to don’t-make-an-ass-of-yourself, she again blurted, “Nope.”

  Realizing how ridiculous she must sound, she tried to make an addition without looking conspiratorial, “When I let her know, she said that she wouldn’t be in tomorrow.” It had sounded innocent in her head, but she wasn’t as sure after hearing it come out of her mouth.

  “Aye, then.” He said, the sound of his voice and the grin on his face a pinch short of triumphant, as he let her neck go. The chair sprang back up, faster than either of them were anticipating, jerking her forward in the seat. His hands caught her shoulders to hold her back as they both gasped in surprise.

  “Sorry!” he rushed to apologize, patting her shoulders.

  Connie let go and backed away, as embarrassed as she was. He skirted out from behind the front desk, embarrassment fading to a cheeky smirk before he turned and walked out through the back lab. Evie watched him make his escape, feeling sorry that he was gone, but she wasn’t alone for long.

  The front door opened a moment later, and the optician was quick to dispel her growing fantasies. She jumped up from the chair behind the reception desk, greeting the visitor with an exuberant welcome.

  The woman replied with a cursory nod, before drifting straight towards the frame boards. Evie came out from behind the desk, approaching slowly to give the customer a chance to peruse their selection. Evie took this time to study her perspective patient, noting that the woman was roughly 40-50 years old, with a bright sense of style displayed in the bold but suiting pattern to the woman’s blouse and the sunshine yellow leather of a trendy purse. She wore a moderate amount of makeup, but what she did wear was done with expertise. The eyeliner widening her eyes and the manicured brows arching gracefully over outdated gold-rimmed frames that did the woman’s complexion little justice. Her dark hair was laced with natural red highlights that gave way to streaks of grey that were slowing creeping upwards from her temples, shaped into a slimming bob that was clipped just under her jawline.

  The woman held herself with an air of confidence that did not seem to benefit her as she slowly gazed over the wall of frames. She took tentative steps as she went along, betraying her palpable unease. The woman was obviously used to making decisions in her work life but fell short when it came to her spectacles.

  After a moment of lingering close by, Evie took a step closer, inclining her head inquisitively as she pleasantly inquired the obvious, “Looking for a new pair of glasses?”

  The woman’s gaze darted to the redhead. Her eyes revealed a measure of relief that was still weighted with apprehension, which usually stemmed from an unfavourable past experience. Yet, her mouth gave a generous smile as the woman nodded her head and affirmed, “Aye.”

  It came out of her in a sigh. A gusted declaration—she was tired and unsatisfied with her current pair and Evie could see why, as the woman lifted a hand to adjust them at the temple.

  They were crooked on her face, slanting upwards slightly to the right. Judging by the woman’s age, this proposed a more significant problem for her vision than it did for her appearance. The lenses were most likely a progressive style lens, which was problematic when misaligned, causing anything from blurred vision to headaches and dry eyes. It could be increasingly vexing for the patient until diagnosed and realigned. The problem was, most people were not appropriately educated on the symptoms and tended to put up with the issues they caused far longer than necessary.

  “I am tired of these old things. I’ve had trouble seeing through them from the get-go. I’d like to get something fresh and new.”

  “No problem. We have lots of great frames here for you to choose from. Have you had your eyes checked recently?”

  “Aye, near six weeks ago now.” The woman replied, her cheerful mood soured. Behind a raised a hand came a conspiratorial whisper, “With that optician you’ve got here. She can be a pure scunner. I swear, she thinks everyone else is a numpty headed idjit.”

  Evie was caught off guard, first by the local term for the optometrist—which she was still getting used to—and then by the woman’s frankness.

  “Well, let me pull up your file on the computer so I can have a look at the prescription before we get started trying on frames.”

  The woman gave Evie her name, and she found the file. Donna McCreedy had come in the week before the redhead had arrived in Scotland, complaining that her eyes felt tired and watered a lot. The woman’s prescription had gotten slightly worse since her previous exam, three years prior. Her prescription was nothing out of the ordinary. She had been presbyopic for some years now, and so was accustomed to using a progressive lens. Evie noted, with some unease, that the glasses she was complaining about had been purchased from their store. She wondered just how long the woman had struggled with the misaligned frame. The girl would try to remedy that before the woman left, choosing to place the priority on the new frame search for now.

  Evie began her frame search as she usually did, asking little questions about what the woman saw herself wearing next and was surprised to hear that she been to many of the other local dispensaries in a futile search for what she wanted. Donna may have stumbled into the gold frame last time, but she was determined now to find what she wanted.


  “Colour.” Donna enunciated the word loud and clear, emphasizing to the girl just how frustrated the woman was with her search for this non-negotiable criterion. “I may be old, but I dinna want to look it. I want something bright and cheerful. None of this thick black mince that the wee ones are all about these days.”

  Evie thought about her own dark frame sitting on the bridge of her nose, just as the woman had described it, and unwittingly glanced at her reflection in the mirror. She had never noticed before, but once pointed out, she was unable to unsee it. The bold blackness of the frame against her creamy skin made a statement alright—it just wasn’t the kind of statement the dispensing optician had always thought it had been. Seeing it now with fresh eyes, she felt that the contrast made her skin look grey instead of white, stripping her complexion of the pink undertones that made her human and making the soft blue of her eyes look more like the blah colour of cement. It was as though the flat matte black was sucking the life out of her. She looked tired and old.

  Why hadn’t she seen this before? She looked wretched in these!

  Donna’s kind voice made a subtle apology and brought the girl back from her rampaging insecurities. “No offence, deary.”

  “Not at all,” Evie nearly cut the woman off, the words rushed out of her so fast. She shook her head, giving a forced smile and moving on with their search, “We have colour. Let me just find something for you.”

  The redhead tracked the boards backwards from her patient with her eyes, scouring the frames selection. As she made it halfway through without a single frame jumping out at her, Evie’s heart began to sink. The collection of nearly 800 frames seemed to blur together into a massive wall of blah! A wave of black, grey, silver, and brown that failed to inspire any sort of creativity. This woman’s fancy had opened the optician’s eyes to the dull world of mass-produced frames, and Evie considered why she had fallen into the trap of becoming a walking billboard zombie like everyone else, duped by the brands whose only difference between products was the name emblazoned on the arm.

  Not about to admit defeat, despite this enormous setback, Evie forged ahead. She grabbed a burgundy hued plastic frame with a squared lens design that would offset the roundness of the woman’s face. When the redhead offered the frame to the woman, disappointment registered in the twitch of her perfectly arched brows. Donna begrudgingly obliged, stepping in front of the mirror.

  The burgundy colour was warm, and gave the woman colour to her cheeks, working slightly to bring out the warm blend of caramel and chocolate spun to make up her eyes, but it fell short in the most essential way. It suited her age. It actually made her look older. Evie had helped many a permed white-haired walker-bound granny into a burgundy frame, and Donna was a whole generation before that, with a flare that suggested she wanted to defy the boundary of age and skip back another.

  Donna was trying to formulate a polite way to say, ‘hell, no!’, when Evie interjected with a simple comment, “That’s not it.”

  She took the frame and put it aside when her eyes happened upon another option. She snuck the elegant rimless frame off the board and brought it back to the woman. Donna’s features didn’t lift in the slightest, but she took the frame and tried in on nevertheless. The rimless frame was light and airy, the titanium arms thin but a brilliant metallic teal that shimmered under the lights. The lenses could be cut in various shapes, but this lens was styled more like a cat-eye, slanting out and upwards a degree. The lens shape worked to slim her face and also highlighted the shape of those meticulous brows, but only if you were standing next to Donna.

  If you stepped back, the frame didn’t disappear, as many people liked to claim. The patient was still obviously wearing glasses, they just didn’t do anything for the woman. They were just there less than the previous pair had been.

  Frustrated, but not vanquished, Evie shook her head and smiled politely at Donna, as she put them back and tried to find something else. Her eye came across another frame with that cat-eye shape that had suited the woman. Not taking the time to even attempt to ascertain her potential for success, the redhead offered it to the woman.

  Donna gave a whistle of appreciation, as she said, “Never seen anythin’ quite like this before,” and slipped the frame on.

  It was another flop, worse than the no-see-um wanna-be. This frame flared upwards in a broad sweep, as though someone had taken a square and pulled the corner way out of whack. The plastic acetate was dark but mottled with varying shades of purple flecks, like quartz, and although the amethyst and violet shades brought out the cooler undertones of the woman’s eyes and hair, the darkness of it sucked everything else up, like a greedy sponge.

  “No,” Donna said emphatically, taking them off. She shuddered as she handed them back to the girl.

  Evie made idle chit-chat as she searched for something else. She needed a Holy Grail to play to save that would save the game. As they talked, Evie discovered that Donna was a pediatric nurse. It had been the kids she treated that had given her the idea to wear glasses with brighter colours. She explained that the kids with colourful frames received more compliments from the staff and visitors than the other kids who wore bland grown-up styles. Being a fan of compliments herself, Donna had sought out to try on similar frames.

  Evie had never thought about it that way before, and as she searched her boards, she could see the logic behind the nurse’s theory. She grabbed a few more frames that all tanked, and soon they had been through about three dozen pairs of eyeglasses that all failed to measure up to this woman’s idea of grandeur. Evie felt the prickle of failure tickling up her spine. She resolutely shook it off. She couldn’t give up. Surely, they had something!

  The redhead had seen colourful and more outrageous frames in optical magazines and conventions, but these sorts of designs usually failed to register in the local dispensaries because the mainstream public preferred to stay more neutral.

  Ah, neutral, the word that made black frames sell by the dozens. Evie thought about how many times she had persuaded someone that their choice was amicable because ‘black goes with everything.’ It was a phrase made for making sales. She had never really stopped to consider whether this sentiment was true or not. She could see now that black was a terrible colour for anyone to wear on their face. It was harsh and altogether unflattering.

  Not willing to fail, Evie moved towards the cupboards behind the workstation, doing a last-ditch mad-dash search for a hidden frame stash that might save the day. It wasn’t uncommon for dispensaries to switch frames out, to keep the boards fresh, or to stash extra stock out of sight. As she opened and closed cupboard doors, Donna thanked her cheerily for her determination and explained sadly how all the other dispensaries had given up when faced with the dilemma. This made Evie’s anxiety spike. The optician was running out of hope that this was the case when she opened the last cupboard.

  These doors were up high, the perfect place to put things out of the way. On the top shelf, she found three cardboard boxes. Her nerve endings tingled with success, as she grabbed the chair away from the dispensing table to use as a ladder. Donna was watching her inquisitively as Evie reached, just barely able to snag a corner of the box with a fingernail. She wiggled it forward enough and snatched the box down, the weight of the box made her hopes soar.

  The flap pulled back to reveal a box filled with extra eyeglass cases. Evie’s sigh of chagrin was nearly as loud as her patients.

  “Check the next one, lass,”

  Evie turned back and snagged the next box down. When she flipped back the flap, she was rewarded. It was brimming with frames wrapped in plastic slips. Evie hopped down from the chair and set the box down on the nearest surface. She was eager to rifle through the frames, like any optician confronted with new stock, but steeled herself to look for what she needed.

  Tentatively she parted the frames, which she quickly ascertained were layered in order of style, forming sets of four alternating colour patterns. All the frames were
colourful! They ranged from bright blue to sage green, to baby pink, cherry red, and even lemon yellow! Evie moved through the smaller frames, knowing she would want a larger lens size to suit Donna’s large eyes.

  Her fingers froze as the redhead came across a lime green frame with a metal underwire, fashioned in the style of 1950’s clubmaster. She instantly pictured Rockstar Roy and his fantastic frames, the same as the one she now held in her hand.

  Donna pointed out a semi-rimless frame with a wide sweeping lens in a flat white. When Evie lifted the frame to remove the slipcover, she saw that the temple joint was wider, fitted with plastic arms that were striped with a marbling of deep purple, lavender, peony, baby pink, and the odd sliver of white. The optician handed the frame to Donna, her fingers twitching with anticipation. Her large brown eyes were sparkling as she studied the intricate colouration on the temples, both slightly different from the other.

  “Oh, sorry, let me take the lenses out for you,” Evie remembered, taking the frame back. As the woman questioned her, the girl explained, “It’s easier to get a sense of what the frame will look like without these plastic cull lenses in. They collect a lot of light and always have a brand name on them.”

  As she said it, the redhead twigged that the lenses were blank. There was no brand name printed on them or the frame. Evie pondered the strangeness of this, as she handed the frame to Donna.

  The frames were nothing short of stunning. The flat white half-rim brightened the whites of the woman’s eyes, the marbled purple-pink tones of the arms brought out the warmth of her caramel depths and brought out a pink undertone to the woman’s skin that made her cheeks glow with a youthful warmth.

  In comparison to the dozens of frames Evie had just seen on the woman, this frame actually accentuated the woman. It brought out everything that made her beautiful and individual, instead of trying to make a statement of its own. And Donna worked it! The woman tilted her head from side to side, looking from all angles at the frames, as she adorably hummed and hawed admiringly at herself.