Hang Down Your Head

by Janice Macdonald

  I thought that Denise, who had always bemoaned my propensity to propel myself into dangerous situations, was actually getting bitten by the detective bug herself, and I told her so. She laughed out loud.

  “I will admit that if it comes to trying on clothes and gossiping about the active rich, then I am all over this. Guns and bad guys I will leave to Steve and his pals. I just can’t see Steve in a Chanel suit, though, you know?”

  I laughed, too. All in all, this was not a bad way to spend a free day. I felt like I was tuning into an important feminine wavelength. This wasn’t likely what Gloria Steinem had in mind for me, but what the hey.

  “Speaking of gossip,” Denise broke into my feminist reverie, “I ran into Mary Montgomery again a couple of days ago.” I cocked my head slightly, indicating, in that way that dogs and small rodents do, that this was something worthy of note. Mary Montgomery had been in one of my grad seminars back in my MA days, and I seemed to recall that she and Denise shared an office at one time. She was sort of a rival of Denise’s in that they both wanted full-time security in the English department, but since they were each carving their own way to it, I didn’t think the rivalry was too furious.

  Of course, you never knew with Mary. What she reminded me most of was a Valkyrie, tall and strong and squarely built. She had wild, curly auburn hair that hung down her back, and she strode everywhere purposefully, even when she was merely headed to Java Jive for a cup of coffee. She was blunt almost to the point of brusqueness, but I don’t think that, for the most part, she meant to be rude.

  While Denise had moved into becoming the administration’s darling for running the writer-in-residence program while teaching a full course load, Mary had seen the future as a paperless world and jumped on the bandwagon of the Orlando Project, which was an English department venture to secure under-known and consequently undervalued feminist texts and biographies online in a set-up complementary to the Guttenberg Project. Mary did research associate work for the project all through her PhD work, and parlayed her familiarity with the software program and the project’s templates into a full-time position that turned into an elongated post-doctoral placement. Aside from the fact that Mary hated teaching undergraduates, which was a necessary evil when working in a university environment, she was mostly content with her lot in life as the Orlando Project overseer.

  “It seems Mary’s none too happy with the influx of money for the Folkways project,” Denise continued.

  “What does it have to do with her, though?” I couldn’t see the connection that Denise seemed to think obvious. I could sense her impatience with my denseness.

  “Mary thinks the university should be endowing the Orlando Project with more sustained funding. It’s a proven entity, it’s entirely the baby of the U of A, and her life would be a whole lot easier if she didn’t have to stop every three years and go cap in hand for grants to keep it going.”

  “But what does that have to do with the Finster bequest? It’s not as if the late Mrs. Finster had a crush on Mrs. Dalloway. She wanted to support folk music, not any old university project. And when it came right down to it, she wanted to support something that would fly in the face of her husband and children, from the looks of things.”

  “Feminist literature might fit that bill just as easily as fiddle tunes,” Denise replied. “Anyhow, that’s the way Mary sees it. The thing is, she sounded as if she knew all about the bequest, which makes me think that you and the Ethnomusicology Centre folks might have been out of the loop a lot more than you think.”

  I was a little bemused by the thought that Mary Montgomery might see my job as some kind of an obstacle between her and the accessible funding money she craved. More than just bemused, I was also a little frightened. It didn’t do to get on the bad side of Mary. She might dress you down in public in her precisely enunciated, clearly projecting voice. Or she might tackle you to the ground; you just never knew. Being even taller than me, she was the sort of person for whom the word “loom” existed. The thought of Mary Montgomery seeing me as an obstacle was not a pleasant thought.

  It occurred to me that my job as the shaper of the Folkways online image was somewhat akin to Mary’s job with the Orlando Project. I don’t know why that hadn’t connected for me before. I guess I hadn’t started out thinking of my appointment as any sort of political step or judicious move on the professional ladder, the way I knew Mary thought about her position across campus.

  Denise’s gossip had taken some of the warmth out of the day for me, and I was so preoccupied with what she had said that it was a shock to realize that we were already turning into yet another parking lot.

  The second Barbara Shoppe was located in an otherwise nondescript mall that housed a hair salon, an organic grocery, a dance school, a pet boutique, a wine shop and a Caribbean take-away. The parking lot offered a much more mixed bag of rolling stock than the other location, as well. There were a couple of vintage muscle cars near one end of the lot, and several more minivans. The mall was partly strip, and partly covered, with tall glass doors leading to the interior where one found the dance school, salon and Barbara Shoppe, while the other businesses were located discreetly along the main sidewalk.

  It was a nice touch, having the store there. I was betting all the patrons of the salon and clothing shop dreamed of their lither days as they elbowed their way among the bun-headed ballerinas. It probably worked both ways, with the little girls learning to breathe in the rarified air of Joy perfume before they knew just how much an ounce of it would set them back.

  The same bell system must have been installed in all the stores. We were hardly six feet into the store when a tall, brutally slender woman, who had to be this store’s equivalent of Pia, appeared from the back room. She was dressed in black ballet flats and a knee-length, pencil-thin tweed skirt. She wore a loose smock-styled top over it, and something was scratching at my memory for the look she evoked. It took me a moment, but when she welcomed us in a pseudo mid-Atlantic accent, I almost shouted it out. She was trying for Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face; I’d stake my last five dollars on it. So, we had Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn. This was like a road-tour version of L.A. Confidential. I wondered if Barbara Finster had thought this one up all on her own.

  Denise exchanged pleasantries and I stifled a giggle when she told us her name was Holly. I’d just bet it was. This woman had a serious Audrey Hepburn fixation. Truth was, at her age, she should have been aiming for Audrey as an older Maid Marian, instead of Holly Golightly. I suspected that her name was probably Jane but that she’d changed it legally when she was eighteen, after seeing Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the eighty-seventh time.

  My mind was running along the lines of whether or not Mickey Rooney’s racist stereotype of a Japanese national actually ruined that movie or only partially ruined it, when Denise waved me over to the sales rack Holly-Audrey had led her to.

  There was no sign that said SALE on it. That would have been too easy. Instead there was a grouping of summer weights and spring colours all in one small area, rather than spread around the store. For instance, there was more concentrated pink and white in this rack than anywhere else in the Shoppe. It seemed that pink was on its way out and some sort of olive drab was now the “new black.”

  Denise held up my middy top, to taunt me, or so I thought. I moseyed over to them in time to hear Holly-Audrey say, “We just simply couldn’t match it identically, so that’s the reason for the pricing.”

  Denise held out one of the cuffs to me.

  “Can you spot the button that doesn’t match?”

  I looked. All three buttons seemed to be similar brass buttons with anchors embossed on them. Holly-Audrey placed one long French-manicured nail next to the middle button.

  “The rope on the anchor leads off to the left instead of the right, and it’s not top drawer brass, I’m afraid. It’s the closest we could find.”

  “Holly says that the button went missing the first week the blouses were in
stock, and the manufacturer was out of them. They tried to match it the best they could, but this blouse, and this blouse only, is reduced to reflect the imperfection.” Denise was grinning at me, and nudging me to look at the price tag. My mouth felt a bit dry. I turned the tag over in my hand and read, “Forty-nine dollars.” I could feel my face forming into a grin, and I realized right then that we all have a price at which we are willing to jump. I knew, for example, that my price for silliness at a flea market is three dollars. Anything above that seems too much to me. A good price for a meal is eighteen dollars. If I go over that, there’d better be violins and free valet parking. And now I knew what I’d spend for an impulse piece of clothing.

  “Would you like to try it on?” Holly-Audrey purred, and I suddenly found her affectations endearing rather than pretentious.

  “Maybe I’d better.” I checked over to Denise, who nodded and moved off to look at some silk dresses. Holly-Audrey led me through the portal at the back of the store into a room dominated by a Henry Moore statue. She left me in a changing room more spacious than my own bedroom and once again I fell under the spell of my new blouse. Eventually, although it seemed like just moments, I drifted back out carrying my prize.

  “It’s perfect. I tried it on in your other Shoppe, but it was still out of my price range. This is like a minor miracle for me.” I could hear myself babbling, so I just busied myself with my debit card.

  Holly-Audrey smiled with just a tinge of spite. It made me wonder if there was a quota system organized between the various Shoppes. Somehow, my buying the blouse here, even discounted as much as it was, put her ahead of Pia. I wondered if she liked Pia, or got pitted against her by the boss. I wondered what Barbara was like to work for.

  Denise was on my wavelength and three steps ahead of me. While I looked for my debit card, she leaned on the table where Holly was folding the blouse in tissue paper, with far more delicacy and care than I usually take over fragile Christmas presents to precious people. She obviously loved her job, and I admired her for it. If you are going to do something for a good portion of your life, you might as well put zest into it.

  Holly was ringing through my debit card and being lulled almost into a gossip with Denise, who was admiring the light fixtures, of all things.

  “Are these the same as the ones in the other Shoppe? I thought those had the look of actual crystal. I’m not saying these aren’t very nice, I just assumed there would be some uniformity throughout the shops.”

  Denise had hit a nerve, and it was an old wound, from the sound of it.

  “Miss Barbara had told us that we’d all be equal, but that it didn’t necessarily mean the same. Her idea is that the clientele will be moving from Shoppe to Shoppe, instead of having a loyalty to one particular place. I don’t mean to doubt her thinking, but my ladies tend to be very loyal to this site. I wish we’d received the chandeliers like the west end Shoppe, but Pia had first dibs because she worked in the original Shoppe. Instead, we got the statue in the dressing room foyer.” Her shrug toward the back of the shop was dismissive. “It’s supposed to be something special, but Miss Barbara isn’t the one who has to deal with it day in and day out. You can go back and look at it if you want.”

  Denise lifted an eyebrow to me, and I grinned and nodded. Retrieving my card and accepting my shiny, blue paper-handled shopping bag, I moved toward the changing area with her. I knew what to expect, but was anticipating Denise’s reaction to the Henry Moore nude lolling back on her elbows in pride of place.

  Denise snorted a polite chuckle beside me. “Now I will bet you any dowager seeing those hips is going to feel svelte in comparison! What a great idea.”

  I nodded, noting that Holly had draped a gauzy scarf across the nude’s lap. I might have to give Miss Barbara Finster more credit for a sense of humour than I’d previously considered her to have. Of course, she might have just done it to irritate the help.

  Speak of the devil and she appears, my grandmother used to say, as if I was personally responsible each time her blithery neighbour popped by to borrow her angel food pan or some walnuts. It was uncanny, of course, how Mrs. Archibold would show up usually right after I’d done my impression of her, which was razor sharp in the manner of twelve-year-olds who haven’t yet been stung with cellulite, acne or empathy. It seems I hadn’t lost the touch in the intervening years, though I was hoping I’d become somewhat more diplomatic. As we turned back into the central part of the Shoppe, who should be blocking the doorway to the mini-mall but Miss Barbara in person, looking strong enough to have posed for Henry Moore herself.

  She looked at me with the vague smile we reserve for people whom we are sure we’ve seen somewhere before but can’t place in a different context. I know the look mostly because I tend to use it on old students from two or three years previous. I gave her a noncommittal smile in return, and Denise and I scooted past her and into the relative freedom of a swarm of frothy pink fairies stomping down the mall in tutus, hoodies and hightops, swinging enormous pink gym bags over their slight shoulders. We didn’t talk till we reached the car.

  “So I take it that Maleficent as portrayed by Bea Arthur back there was Miss Barbara herself?” queried Denise, as we buckled up and started toward home. I laughed.

  “I was thinking of her as rivalling the backroom statue, but that’s an apt image, too. There’s just something about her that makes me leery of letting her into a dressing room with me, you know? How did she ever create a set of exclusive dress shops, anyhow?”

  “Oh, I doubt she ever deigns to actually wait on anyone. She just hires these vassals and then looms over them, haunting their dreams and nursing their fantasies. Speaking of fantasies, who do you think the Calgary manager is trying to be, if we already have Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn?”

  I hooted with the release of my own wicked thoughts. “My money’s on either Catherine Deneuve or Lauren Bacall. How could we find out?”

  “I wish I could drive down there, but I don’t honestly have time right now,” Denise sighed. “Maybe we can head down to check her out next weekend? Who knows, you might decide you want to pick up the sailor pants that match your top.”

  “That’s going a bit overboard, I think. This top can go with a skirt for dressy, or with jeans for everyday work. I think it’s a classic. Maybe that is the way to shop, one or two classic pieces in your wardrobe that will last for all time.”

  “Classics are houndstooth, Chanel suits and pearls. A sailor suit is nursery wear.”

  “Ouch, that’s not fair.”

  “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. I’m just saying you have to acknowledge that your concept of style has more to do with the playroom than the boardroom.”

  I thought about the various pieces of Winnie-the-Pooh lingerie in my drawer at home and had to admit that, if nothing else, Denise actually knew me. Instead of feeling insulted, I felt oddly pleased to have been considered by my friend at such a minute analytical level. As Oscar Wilde might have said, there’s only one thing worse than being thought about, and that’s not being thought about. However, given how I was about to be run through the rumour mill, I have come to the conclusion that Wilde is no longer the final word on everything in my philosophy.

  19

  ~

  Denise refused to come in for tea and zoomed away down the alley from the apartment building’s back entry where she’d let me off, waving without looking back. I turned back into the comfortable gloom of the hallway, hugging my glossy Barbara Shoppe bag to me like a guilty treasure. My mother wouldn’t believe that I’d even entered a store like that, let alone bought something. I made a mental note to call my parents, and kicked off my clogs at the door to my apartment.

  The message light on the answering machine was blinking from across the room, and as I neared I could read the numeral four. I clicked the ALL button on my way through to the tea kettle. Every single message, barring one electronic voice telling me my reserve request from the library coul
d be picked up, was from Steve. I didn’t even bother checking the caller ID as I picked up the ringing phone, while pressing erase on the message machine.

  “Randy, where the heck have you been? And when the hell are you going to get a cellphone? I have been trying to reach you all day.”

  “I was out with Denise,” was about all I could squeeze in by way of explanation before he was off on another mini-tirade. He had tried to get hold of me through the Centre, and was told we weren’t holding regular hours because of the crime scene embargo, so he assumed I’d be home at my computer busily doing whatever it was I was supposed to be doing. And now it turned out I’d been out all day with a girlfriend.

  It was beginning to sound a lot like envy rather than worry or censure to me, but I let him vent. Pretty soon, he ran out of steam and I asked him why he’d needed to get hold of me.

  This was apparently not the thing to ask one’s boyfriend, especially not in the aftermath of an attack causing a coma in my fellow worker. Steve had been worried about me and now he was angry with me for having wasted his concern.

  “But I’m delighted you were worried about me! This wasn’t emotion in vain. Play your cards right, and this is worth more than candy and flowers.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Sometimes I think I’m getting close, but then I realize I will never understand women as long as I live.”

  I made soothing noises, and he suggested we go out for supper. I hung up the phone, smiling. It was nice to be worried about. Not that there was anything to worry about. Then for a minute, I began to worry that perhaps he was more worried about not knowing where I was than he was actually worried about me. As in not knowing where his chief suspect was. Ah, worrying could get you into too much trouble.

  I took my new blouse into the bedroom and lovingly pulled it out of its bag. I found a hanger in my closet to slide it onto and pushed the assorted hanging oddments to either side so that it wouldn’t be crumpled settling in among its new surroundings. I then pulled out the tissue and folded the blue bag reverently, thinking it might be good to carry shoes or lunch in when I wanted to impress someone with my fashion savoir faire. I slid it down between my dresser and the wall.