Such A Pretty Face

by Cathy Lamb

  We stood together, right next to the blue water, fishermen in the center of the lake, the sun casting white diamonds on the water. “Can I tell you another time?”

  He turned me toward him, tilted my chin up with his hand. “You sure can, honey, you sure can. Tell me when you trust me.”

  He is so darn sharp.

  And he is such an outstanding kisser. There is nothing better than a kiss at Trillium Lake, with Mt. Hood glowing in the distance, especially when you’re being held firm and warm against a giant of a man, his lips soft and sexy, and you’re melting.

  I corralled a group of men with a cement truck who were working down the street. I told them where I wanted cement, they poured it in a circle, and I paid them in cash. While they were pouring I pounded china plates to medium-sized pieces.

  I placed the pieces inside the circle—biggest pieces in the center—and worked outward. The cement guys stayed for a while. “Are you an artist?” one asked. “I wish,” I told him.

  When I was done, I was crying, my hands were shaking, but I felt…better.

  I was acknowledging what had happened, but in a pretty way, a peaceful way.

  I touched each piece of china.

  They reminded me of the tea parties that me and Sunshine had with our stuffed animals. I let myself think of those happy memories, tried to block out the rest, and sat there, the wind breezing on by, my wind chimes tinkling, a distant lawn mower humming.

  I sat there.

  That night I dreamed of her.

  We were sitting in a cave having a tea party with our stuffed animals, who had come to life. The monkey with the pink polka-dotted dress was, indeed, prissy, lifting her pinkie finger when she drank her tea. The giraffe was a tomboy, elbows on the table, a baseball hat on her head. The polar bear was very scientific and talked about the Arctic ice. We all wore crowns on our heads and ate gingerbread men and women.

  And then Helen came, dressed in black, no expression on her face, and she took Sunshine and stuffed her in the teapot while she sang “Amazing Grace.”

  I tried to pour Sunshine out, but she was stuck. I tried to lift the lid, but it was nailed on. Helen said, “Command Center did it, I didn’t.”

  I could hear Sunshine begging me to save her, then gurgling. She was drowning in the tea. She couldn’t breathe. I smashed the teapot on the table and the giraffe, polar bear, and monkey cried because inside the teapot there was nothing, nothing at all, not even Sunshine, and the giraffe said it was my fault for not saving Sunshine, and I knew she was right.

  I woke up crying, my hands shaking as if they were being electrocuted, my heart pounding.

  Do you ever get over the trauma of your childhood? Is it possible? Does it stalk you forever or are you eventually able to sleep normally?

  I stared up at the Starlight Starbright ceiling and tried to breathe. I needed more than a wish fulfilled. I needed a miracle.

  The next day in Pioneer Courthouse Square I asked Zena if she wanted to go to Lance’s Hard Rock Party.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll come as one of the KISS men. One of them grew up here. I’ll be the female Oregon contingent of KISS. Cool and rad, I’ll be there.” She linked an arm around my shoulder. “But you have to promise me, Stevie, that you’ll join the Break Your Neck Booties roller derby team.”

  “Uh. No.” I handed her some pumpkin bread.

  “Uh,” she mocked me. “Yes. Say yes, Stevie. Say yes.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” She handed me some grapes. “When are you going to dare?”

  “Dare?”

  “Yes. When are you going to dare? Dare to live? Dare to dare?”

  “Soon,” I promised. “Soon.”

  He was so furious, he was speechless.

  How can you hear speechlessness over a telephone?

  I heard it when his voice blistered out, “Stevie, for God’s sake!”

  And then I heard it in the heavy breathing and the stinging, rigid silence.

  “Herbert?”

  He swore.

  “What is it? Is something wrong?” I clunked my coffee cup down. I had been up late working on a chair. I had painted it pink, then painted roller skates on it with flames shooting from the heels. I was going to paint fishnet stockings on the legs and give it to Zena. The chair’s name was Booty. “Is it Aunt Janet?”

  He made some strangled sounds, like a monkey was pinching his esophagus, then seethed, “You know what it is, young lady! Dammit!”

  “I…I don’t…” I searched my mind. What could it be? What happened? The party was planned, the white tents and chairs were ordered, the flowers were coming, I’d been on the phone with the caterer so many times dealing with Herbert’s changing, picky requests, the caterer herself had even muttered, “This party is going to drive me back to drinking,” and Lance told me the invitations were out.

  “This was a simple task, simple. A retarded child could have handled this!”

  I put a hand to my head and held the phone away from my ear for long, long seconds as he ranted. Did I hate the man? I didn’t want to hate anyone. Hate hurts the hater, not the one you hate, but he pushed it, he so pushed it.

  “I called you because of these monstrous, demonic invitations. How could you screw this up so badly, Stevie? This is totally inappropriate! A disgrace to the Barrett family name.”

  I thought of how many hours I had had to spend talking with Herbert about which recent picture he was most handsome in for the invitation. “We had a photo of you and Aunt Janet on your wedding day, on the front, as you requested, and a photo of you two now on the inside of the invitation. You wanted white, we made it white. You wanted gold detail so it would reflect ‘your place in society,’ your words, not mine. So what’s wrong with it?”

  “Young lady, I will not tolerate your insolence. We received an invitation today, and we are thoroughly disgusted. We’re beyond embarrassed. We are livid. Did you hear me?” he shouted. “Janet and I are livid. I should never have put you in charge of this, ever. It was a poor choice on my part, Stevie, but I have learned my lesson.”

  He hadn’t put me in charge of this. I had taken it over for Polly because she couldn’t do it because it made her want to breathe in a bag, and Lance took over because I was doing everything else.

  “You did this to hurt me, to hurt my reelection campaign. Indeed you did this to hurt all law-abiding heterosexual married couples in Oregon. It was a calculated attack on me. You’re campaigning with the Democrats, aren’t you?”

  There was something amiss here. I was not getting this. “Hang on.”

  “Hang on? Hang on?” he shrieked. “Don’t you dare walk away from this phone. I’ll not have it!” I dropped the phone on my butcher block island, grabbed my keys, and hurried out to my mailbox. I hadn’t picked up my mail in days. There was the usual array of advertisements, bills, including the dreaded medical bill statement…. And then, there it was. Lance and I had actually mailed ourselves invitations. It was quirky and odd, but we’d laughed as we’d done it.

  “We should both return the RSVP card and mark ‘Nope, can’t make it,’” Lance said.

  “Sorry,” I chuckled, “I’ll be cackling in a bar in Mexico with a margarita in my hand that night.”

  We’d laughed about it in a rather sick and sorry way at the time.

  I raced back to my house, dropped the mail on a dresser I’d found at an estate sale ($8) and painted green with white stripes, and ripped open the invitation.

  And there it was. Herbert and Aunt Janet’s invitation to the renewal of their vows celebration.

  “Oh. My. God,” I breathed. “Oh. My. God.”

  And then I laughed. I laughed so hard I had to cross my legs. I picked up the phone and told Herbert, “I’ll call you back,” my voice squeaking as he continued his harangue. I shuffled out to my deck, planted my butt in an Adirondack chair and, as Herbert called back, laughed my head off.

  I laughed and laughed.

  I lay betw
een my growing vegetables, on my new grass, under the sun, and called Lance. He hadn’t gone through his mail, either, he’d been so consumed with his blow-up girls. I waited on the phone, still cackling.

  “Ah, Stevie, gal, gimme a second. I haven’t slept in about two days…. We’ve been working our tails off…had to hire three people. They’re all radical. Are you sure you don’t want to work with me? I know how you feel. You’re not taking advantage of the relationship, okay…all right, here’s the invite to the torture chamber.”

  I heard him rip open the envelope. I heard some hard rock music, the song “Big Balls,” and he drawled, “Well, now, shit.”

  And then I heard it: laughter.

  Loud, gasping, sucking-air laughter.

  Oh, I couldn’t help it. Somehow it was even funnier the second time around, especially with Lance’s belly laugh booming in my ear.

  “Lance, I’m wetting my pants, gotta gotta gotta go!”

  That made him laugh all the harder.

  I didn’t even make it to the bathroom.

  I took the invitation to Polly the next day during visiting hours. She was still ticked, still rebellious, still wanted out, out, out, she could handle this herself, herself, herself.

  Polly opened the invitation, then dropped it on her lap, shocked, that “Big Balls” song rumbling from the invite, tiny naked ladies sprinkling out.

  Then she laughed and we laughed together, forehead to forehead, collapsing back on the bed.

  This time, it was Polly who didn’t make it to the bathroom in time.

  Weak bladders must run in the family.

  I propped the invitations to Herbert’s anniversary party and Lance’s Lucky Ladies Hard Rock Party on my kitchen counter for laughs.

  Trixie had somehow gotten the information for the invitations crossed. Switched. Vice versa. Mixed up.

  The wording was correct, so all of Herbert’s cronies and political allies and country club snobby friends knew to come on Friday night, to the house, at six for an anniversary celebration involving Uncle Herbert and Aunt Janet.

  But they received the invitation with the white skull on the front and the silver electric guitar. When they opened the card, tiny pink and purple, glittery naked ladies slid out and a blow-up doll popped up. Then the recorder burst into AC/DC’s hit song “Big Balls.”

  Lance’s Hard Rock Party friends and acquaintances received the invitation with a photo of his parents on their wedding day on the front and their current photo on the inside. The date, time, and location was also correct, and the wording did indicate they were to wear hard rock outfits or they wouldn’t be let in and to be ready to “freakin’ dance all night! An awesome party with Lance’s Lucky Ladies!”

  Lance’s friends, he told me, seemed to think the invitation was very cool. A wild party, with a picture of a “wickedly uptight couple” on the front. “What’s wrong with that woman? Is she a robot? Is the dude a sado masochist? Yeah, Lance, we’re coming. I’m gonna be Def Leppard…. I’m comin’ as Hagar…. I’m going to be Madonna with the pointy bra!”

  Herbert was beyond steaming.

  Aunt Janet laughed. “It’s a sign, Stevie.”

  “A sign of what?”

  “When my anniversary invitations get screwed up, naked purple ladies fall in my lap, I’m listening to ‘Big Balls’ and thinking that these invitations are so much better than what Herbert’s planned—well, that’s a sign.”

  Perhaps it was.

  “I love my Jane Austen class. Did I tell you I got a new haircut? I’m wearing it down from now on. I threw out my blouses, too. Virginia and I agreed that I’m a throwback to a fifties mother with a bosom. We went to the raceway the other night. She got her Corvette up to a hundred miles an hour.”

  As for Herbert’s “friends”? I’m sure they were all scuttling to the bathroom quick as a wink before they wet their pants, too.

  “I called Dad, Stevie. Took the blame. Told him I had arranged for the invitations, not you,” Lance told me the next day.

  I couldn’t even answer him. We both cracked up so hard, we couldn’t speak.

  Should I invite Jake to the parties? To one? To both? What would he think of me when he met Uncle Herbert? Would he hear anything about my prior weight? Should I tell him first? Was it relevant? What about my past? We still hadn’t discussed that, either. I knew that Aunt Janet, Lance, and Polly wouldn’t talk to him about it, and he wouldn’t ask them, out of respect for our relationship….

  Jake took me on a river boat ride at night. I took him to a play in Portland. He took me out to dinner afterward, then to a fancy coffee café where they pour the coffee from three feet above your cup. I made up a picnic and we ate together early Saturday afternoon in the hills above Portland. I dodged his questions about what I was doing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. I could tell it puzzled him; then I could tell he was wondering if I was dating someone else, and I knew he wasn’t pleased about that. I changed the subject.

  Cluck-cluck. Lord, how I did not want Jake to know I was a chicken.

  I had bought a flat of pink and purple petunias, marigolds for a border, and yellow daisies on my way home from work last week to shake off the gloom and stark fear I felt about Polly. I pulled out two stacks of clay pots I’d bought at garage sales for cheap ($1 each). I mixed in dirt and fertilizer and planted pot after pot. Call it flower power without the drugs.

  I put some of the pots on the front porch, others on the back deck, one on a wire table I’d found ($2), two at the base of a trellis, and more on a bench I’d put together with scrap wood.

  So much prettier.

  I do love spring.

  Spring gave me hope.

  Hope that my guilt, guilt for not saving Sunshine, guilt for hating Helen, guilt for the other thing, which was probably caused by my weight…maybe spring would take some of my guilt away.

  Maybe it would be sucked up into one of the tulips that was blooming along the edge of my property, or wrapped up in the yellow petals of the daffodils or the sheen of my tomatoes or the curve of my zucchini. Maybe it would fly up into my pink cherry trees and get lost for good among the branches.

  I hoped. I hoped it would.

  Hope did not take care of my flashbacks or my nightmares. I had a duet that night, so to speak. Before I went to bed I remembered how tiny Sunshine was when she was born and how I felt when she finally smiled at me. Her smile was crooked, I remembered that, but her eyes were bright and shiny. I was the one who taught Sunshine how to hug when she was a baby, placing her arms around my shoulders.

  I read a book about a woman obsessed with gardening until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, turned off the light, then stared at the Starlight Starbright ceiling. When my hands started to shake because my memories came sliding in, I got up and stared at the stars in the night sky, then stared at the darkened corner of my yard where there was a bunch of weeds. I still didn’t know what to do there.

  When I finally went to sleep I dreamed of Helen and Sunshine.

  Helen was eating Sunshine, knife and fork in hand.

  “I even tried painting therapy,” Polly said, waving her hand in dismissal. “And visual therapy. I have a counselor and a psychotherapist and a group leader. I’m supposed to talk in ‘I Feel’ statements. I’ve done all this before. Did I tell you that yesterday I did yoga? Boring. Then I had two sessions with two different counselors to help me modify my behavior. I felt like a rat in an experiment.” She snorted. “Geez. I need to gain a few pounds and I’ll feel fine. I got out of whack again.”

  Still. In. Denial. “You’re still in denial,” I said. “Still. In. Denial.”

  “Not much.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I know I can handle this myself, and I’ll do better if I’m not here. I hate it here—”

  Lance got up and strode to the window of her room, arms crossed in front of his huge chest.

  “Lance?” Polly said, stopping in the middle of another rant. “Is something
wrong?”

  Lance didn’t answer.

  “Lance? What is it?”

  Still silence.

  Then, finally, he turned around. “I’ve been talking to your counselor, Annie Sinclair, and I’m angry.”

  “You’re angry?” Polly asked.

  “Yes. She helped me figure it out. I’m angry. I am angry.”

  “Why are you angry?” I asked. “I mean, I can think of a number of reasons, but which one in particular?” Lance did, indeed, seem angry today. He had been quiet on the ride out to the clinic and hadn’t said anything since the three of us were in Polly’s room together.

  “I’m angry—” He stopped, breathed through his nose, tractor-sized shoulders back. “I’m angry because you two always scare me. I’m angry because, Stevie, you ate so much you almost died, and Polly, you don’t eat so you almost died. I’m angry because I’m tired of worrying about you two.”

  Polly and I glanced at each other, pretty darn shocked. Lance never got angry at us.

  He stuck his chin out. “Since I was a teenager, Polly, I’ve watched you get skinnier and skinnier and I watched Stevie get heavier and heavier. Do you girls know what you put me through? Do you girls have any idea how it feels to watch this semisuicidal stuff going on and I can’t do anything about it? It kills me.” He thumped his chest. “Right there. You’re killing me. Stevie, you’re not killing me so much now, but Polly, you are.”

  “Lance, I’m sorry,” Polly said. She patted her heart. “I don’t mean to, Lance, you know that. I got this when I was so young. I wanted to be perfect, Dad was always making comments about my body, I was depressed….”

  “I know, I get it, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry Dad was such a shit. But you’re an adult, Polly. You gotta get a grip. You gotta take responsibility for this—if not for you, sister, for me. Do you know how long I’ve felt guilty about you two and your eating diseases?”

  “Why have you felt guilty?” Polly asked, clearly distressed.

  “You felt guilty?” I asked, incredulous.