The Art of Undressing

by Stephanie Lehmann

  But I still had a nagging concern. I swiveled back. “Now I feel bad that I destroyed my swans. They turned out very well, you know.” Not that I’d tasted one, but he hadn’t either.

  He shrugged. “If it is the Master Class you are worried about, don’t bother. I will be recommending you. As long as you don’t make it a habit to destroy your desserts before they are served.”

  “Thank you.” I swiveled back to my apple brown Betty. At first, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to enjoy it knowing he was right behind me. But I did. As a matter of fact, I pretty much wolfed it down. As I savored the last bit of ice cream on my tongue, I contemplated what I was going to do the rest of the day. It seemed like years before it would be time to go to Tom’s. How would I fill up the afternoon? There was still Leah’s bureau to empty out. I’d been planning on taking care of that. But I didn’t want to go over there and run into Emma.

  Or maybe I did. We couldn’t stay estranged forever, even if she did think my mother was a whore. Someone had to keep her from being too much under the influence of the Sheriff.

  I called on my cell phone, but no one answered. I decided to take a chance and head over.

  Jean Paul was still sitting there working on a piece of strawberry shortcake. I gave him my Post, and said my good-byes. Just as I was about to head out the door, Coco walked in.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Guess what, Jean Paul is over there.”

  “Where?”

  “That guy at the first booth. Reading the paper. He says he’s going to recommend me for the Master Class!”

  “Congratulations! He’s cute.”

  “You think so?” I looked at him and wrinkled my nose.

  “Do you mind if I go over and introduce myself?”

  I shrugged. “Since when do you ask my permission?”

  Coco was already taking her leather jacket off and making sure her breasts were displayed prominently under her tight green sweater. “Wish me luck.” She strutted on over and introduced herself. Jean Paul stood up, they both looked at me, I nodded encouragement, and turned to push the glass door. She had no idea what she was in for. But then again, neither did he.

  I used my key to get in. Emma was on the couch watching TV. I said hello politely and told her I was finishing up with the bureau. “Would you like to do it with me?” I asked.

  She gave me a stiff “no” without looking away from the TV. Just like old times.

  I got a garbage bag and went back to the bedroom. It was a tall oak bureau, and there was still a tube of hair gel, some nail polish remover, and a jewelry box on top. I pulled open the top drawer. It was really a mess. Leah had junked together all sorts of odds and ends that she probably should’ve thrown out but couldn’t. A souvenir scarf from England with a picture of Lady Di on it, old floppy disks, extra nail clippers, glue sticks . . . The drawer underneath was more of the same. A Swatch watch still in its long narrow box. Family snapshots stacked inside envelopes. And a photo album with pink and red hearts all over the cover, still in its wraps.

  I sat down on the bed and tore off the wrapping. The book still had its nice, new plastic smell. I slid each of the photos into a plastic slot. Almost all of them were of Emma and Leah and Ben, but I was pleased to find a few nice ones of Coco and me, from my high school graduation.

  Then I went to Leah’s jewelry box and pulled out Emma’s drawing. The one I’d found in Leah’s underwear drawer my first day, with the two of them holding hands. I screwed the glue stick out, glad it hadn’t dried up, and mounted the picture inside the front cover. Smoothed it flat. Nice.

  I stood up. Blood rushed to my head from the sudden vertical movement. I stood for a moment waiting for the dizzy feeling to go away, hugging the album to my chest. Then I took a deep breath—surprised to find myself nervous at the idea of facing Emma with this—and made myself go out to the living room to present it to her.

  She was still sitting there on the couch. There was a big, mean pimple on her cheek. You had to sympathize. I wondered how her supply of sanitary napkins was holding out. She was now watching a rerun of Friends.

  “This album was in your mom’s drawer,” I said. “And there were a bunch of loose pictures. So I put this together.”

  I handed it to her. She looked down at it. For a moment I thought she was going to reject it and hand it back to me without a word. But then I saw her nose get red, and the red spread to her cheeks, and I knew she was trying really hard not to cry.

  I sank down next to her on the couch. She opened it up. Looked at the picture she’d drawn. And shut the book.

  For a moment, I felt bad. I’d made a mistake. But then she leaned over and put her head on my lap, curled her feet up on the cushion so she was in a little ball, and lay there, still holding the album in her arms, and sobbed.

  For like twenty seconds I tried not to cry too. I thought I should “stay strong” and let her be the one who needed to be upset. But as I stroked her hair the way Grandma used to for me when I was missing Coco, I had to give in, and let myself cry along with her.

  chapter thirty-nine

  “ a re you hungry?” “Starving.”

  “Good. Because I made a lot of food.”

  I followed Tom into the living room of his one-bedroom apartment on the bottom floor of a small house on a quiet block in Queens. It had only taken about twenty minutes to get here from my subway stop in midtown. Tom met me at the platform and we walked together to his place. The main boulevard leading from the station was lined with Greek restaurants and the usual assortment of newsstands, fast-food places and a King Penny five-and-dime. We turned down a block with rows of smallish houses from the forties with patches of lawn in front. It was surprisingly quiet. You could see the sky.

  “An elderly couple lives on the top floor with their teenage son,” Tom was saying as he led me inside a small white stucco house. His place was simply furnished, very clean and freshly painted white. The table in the living room was already set, with two tall, lit orange candles flanking a vase filled with little yellow baby roses. “They have fights upstairs like you wouldn’t believe. He crashed a car last week and they almost threw him out. Would you like a glass of wine? Dinner is almost ready. I hope you like meat loaf.”

  “Smells great.”

  “I boiled some potatoes. I think they’re ready to mash. You like the skins on or off?”

  “Off.”

  “Me too. And, of course, fresh peas. I shelled them myself.”

  “You did? That’s so sweet! Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Nope.”

  I sipped my wine, watched him mash a pot of steaming potatoes, and told myself it was okay to let him do all the work—Jean Paul was not lurking in the shadows making sure I was staying busy.

  When everything was ready, he led me out to the living room and pulled a chair out for me. “They must teach manners in the Midwest.”

  “Don’t expect this all the time.”

  I remembered when I had said that to him, when I was in the red dress. Was he putting on a show for me too? “You don’t have to do all this, you know.”

  “Relax. I want to pamper you.”

  He served the food while I sat there like a queen. A queen in Queens. I wondered if he had a queen bed. I could be a queen in a queen in Queens.

  The food tasted so good, in a fresh and wholesome way. Even if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered because he made me feel so taken care of, because of little things, like the fresh cube of butter on a little glass dish with its own mini knife. The folded paper napkin under my fork. The plate he set down in front of me that had representatives from all three food groups. The way he looked at me with affection.

  After we were done eating, I couldn’t stand to be served anymore. I took the platter of leftover meat loaf into the kitchen.

  He followed me in with the peas and potatoes. “I thought we could take a walk into town and get some baklava.”

  “That sounds nice
.” I covered the meat loaf with Saran Wrap. “But I’m having a craving. A meal like that calls for brownies, don’t you think?”

  “I think I may actually have some baking chocolate up in the cupboard.”

  We got all the ingredients out. He watched while I melted the chocolate and butter in a double boiler. “Do you like fudgy or cakey brownies?” I asked, when it came time to put in the eggs.

  “Cakey.”

  “Me too.”

  “We’re so compatible.”

  I let him lick the bowl while I put the pan in the oven. Then I took the carton of eggs back to the refrigerator. It was crowded with all our leftovers. As I moved things around to make room, I wondered again if we would transition into lovers that night and how that might go. Would I be able to undress with confidence? Would I be able to pull off any of my mother’s sexy moves? Or would I regress into my usual old modest behavior? He certainly did have lots of food in his refrigerator for a single guy. I was impressed that he had the energy to make things for himself after cooking at school and at work. I balanced the plate of meat loaf on top of a carton of half-and-half and a tub of cottage cheese. That accidentally set in motion a cantaloupe, which rolled off the shelf and landed on a pitcher of orange juice, which then cascaded all over the front of my pants.

  “Oh, god.” I was soaked in sticky orange juice, and there was a huge puddle on the floor. Luckily the pitcher was plastic and didn’t break. “I am such a klutz!”

  “Don’t worry about it. Orange is your color. Or should I say scent.”

  “Funny.”

  “Maybe you should change into a pair of my pants.”

  “They’re probably too small on me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll get you a pair.”

  I followed him into his room. I didn’t really want to have to find out if I had bigger hips than he did. “You know, I’m so sticky. I should take a shower.”

  “Sure.”

  The bedroom was very pleasant. It was in the back, and it had a window that looked out on a garden. A couple would be very comfortable sharing this apartment in Queens that did indeed have a queen-sized bed.

  Tom gave me a clean white bath towel and promised he would keep an eye on the brownies.

  I went into his bathroom, hesitated before locking the door (as if he would just walk in there!), took all my clothes off, and got into his shower. The tiles in his bathroom glistened and the chrome fixtures were shiny. There was a little narrow window, and you could look out the side of the house and see a bit of the street while standing there under the spray. It was sort of novel to feel like you could spy on other people while you were naked. Except, it being Astoria and not Manhattan, there didn’t appear to be another soul on the planet.

  I was using his Suave cherry-scented shampoo and ruminating on how not suave I had been, when he called through the door, “The brownies are ready. I’m gonna take them out.”

  “Okay!”

  As I dried off, I looked forward to my dessert with a tall glass of cold milk, which sounded especially good because I was thirsty from the hot shower. I pulled on his blue jeans, but they were tight. If I sucked in, I could get them zipped shut. Not too comfortable. Plus, the denim felt rough against my skin. I hated getting into clothing when I was still damp. So I took off the jeans and wrapped the thick white towel around my otherwise naked body. You really couldn’t see anything, so there really was no big deal about walking out there naked with just a towel on. So. With the towel wrapped around my naked body, I stood in the doorway of the kitchen.

  His back was to me. He was slicing the tray of brownies and moving them to a plate. He must’ve heard me come in, because he said, “These smell great. I hope they baked long enough.”

  “The hard part is to get the ones in the middle to cook through without overdoing the ones on the edges.”

  “That is so . . .” he said, turning around, holding the plate of brownies, seeing me, in my towel, under which I was naked, “true.”

  “The jeans weren’t really comfortable. Do you have any pajamas I could borrow?”

  “Sure.”

  He set the brownies down. I followed him back to the bedroom. He got cotton plaid elastic-waist pajama bottoms and a blue T-shirt from his drawer and put them on the bed. “These should work.”

  “Thanks.”

  He was about to leave the room. Instead, he looked at me once more—as I stood there naked under the towel—then walked right up to me, put his arms around me, and gave me a hug. As he nuzzled his mouth against my hair and said, “You smell good,” I really wanted to hug him back. But I was holding the towel up.

  “It’s your shampoo,” I said.

  I realized that if I did put my arms around him, the towel would probably stay. After all, I was right up against him. His body would keep it up.

  So I allowed myself to put my arms around him. And the towel, which was wrapped pretty tightly around me, did stay up. He was now looking into my eyes. And I was looking into his. I hesitated. But I had to ask. “Tom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you turn off the oven?”

  “Yes.”

  “We wouldn’t want to start a fire.”

  “No,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to do that.”

  That’s when he kissed me. On the lips. I felt my towel loosen and unravel, so that it really just seemed like it was in the way. Part of me wanted that towel to drop to the floor so I could be right up against him, with his soft T-shirt against my breasts, his coarse blue jeans against my bare legs. But the towel stayed in place, held up between his body and mine. And when he stepped back, my hands automatically went to keep it up. Would he think I was too fat? Too hairy? Too tall? Too gawky? Was I still craving validation? Had I still not learned anything from my mom? Was I still the worst student in the class?

  I let the towel drop to the floor.

  Coco would’ve utterly disapproved of my method. No slow and gradual undraping here. But there was a footnote to her lessons that she’d never drawn attention to. None of those gimmicks were necessary if you were with someone who was already under your spell.

  Tom gazed at me with admiration as he sank down on the edge of the bed to untie his shoes. “You are so . . . beautiful.”

  Even if I was going to stop craving validation, it was nice to get the compliment.

  He took off his T-shirt off, twirled it in the air, and tossed it to the side.

  “You,” I said, “are pretty cute yourself.”

  He unzipped his pants and let them drop to the floor. At that moment, there were a lot of things I didn’t know about my future. But there was one thing I did know. We wouldn’t be having dessert.

  Contents

  acknowledgments

  chapter one

  chapter two

  chapter three

  chapter four

  chapter five

  chapter six

  chapter seven

  chapter eight

  chapter nine

  chapter ten

  chapter eleven

  chapter twelve

  chapter thirteen

  chapter fourteen

  chapter fifteen

  chapter sixteen

  chapter seventeen

  chapter eighteen

  chapter nineteen

  chapter twenty

  chapter twenty-one

  chapter twenty-two

  chapter twenty-three

  chapter twenty-four

  chapter twenty-five

  chapter twenty-six

  chapter twenty-seven

  chapter twenty-eight

  chapter twenty-nine

  chapter thirty

  chapter thirty-one

  chapter thirty-two

  chapter thirty-three

  chapter thirty-four

  chapter thirty-five

  chapter thirty-six

  chapter thirty-seven

  chapter thirty-eight

  chapter thirt
y-nine