Watch Me Disappear

by Diane Vanaskie Mulligan

  The things she pulls off the racks! Maybe I should be flattered that she thinks I can pull off low-cut, clingy dresses, but honestly there is no way. Eventually, in a store called Upscale Consignment that Maura insists we check out, Mrs. Morgan produces a black sleeveless number that falls shapelessly to a drop-waist, with a ruffled skirt down to mid-calf. She also finds a sequin headband that I can wear flapper style. I feel like a little kid on Halloween as I pull it on. In it, my body is an undefined blob, but at least I can both sit and stand in it without fearing indecent exposure.

  “That’s cute,” Maura says, taking a turn at sitting outside the dressing room. Although it was her idea to check out the store, she got bored with it quickly. “I mean, it fits the theme really well.”

  I am surprised that she bothers to comment. “You think so?” I ask.

  “Mmm. Doesn’t do much for your figure, though.”

  I know she’s right but I don’t like hearing her say it.

  “And all that black washes you out,” she says, chewing on one of her cuticles and not looking at me at all. “Maybe if you had the right makeup. And some highlights in your hair.”

  The initial compliment just turned into the suggestion of a total makeover. I go into the dressing room to change.

  “Wait,” she says. She dips into her purse and comes up with a makeup bag. “Watch.” She instructs me to pout and paints some color onto my lips. Then she has me close my eyes and I feel a soft brush tickle my eyelids. She brushes blush over the apples of my cheeks and tells me to look at myself. She stands behind me at the mirror, pinching the dress in a bit at the waist. “See?” she asks.

  She hasn’t put much makeup on me, just a touch, but I don’t look so pasty and dull.

  “If you just have the dress taken in here, that’ll get you a better fit,” she says.

  I nod.

  “That’s nice,” my mother says, coming over to see what we’re up to.

  “Very cute,” Mrs. Morgan adds.

  “Don’t you think she’d look cute with a little bit of blonde highlights in her hair?” Maura asks.

  “She’d look like she spent the summer at the beach,” Mrs. Morgan says.

  “I’m always telling her to give that hair a little more style,” my mother says.

  I take off the dress and my mom pays for it while I put my own clothes back on. I stand for a moment in the dressing room taking in the makeup Maura put on me. I’m not sure why she is being so nice. Maybe she is just that bored. Maybe she pities me a little. I wonder how she’ll react if I ask her about the makeup.

  Maura has amassed quite a hefty load of “birthday presents” by the time we head back to the car. I wish my mom would let me pick out my own birthday presents. I guess the heat and all the walking wore us out because none of us really talk on the drive. We stop at the rest stop on the Mass Pike for frozen yogurt at Maura’s request, and then we are home. After we locate my two bags in Maura’s dozen, I start across the lawn to our house but Maura stops me.

  “About the other week,” she says.

  I wait for her to go on.

  “You didn’t say anything about that to your parents, did you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Good,” she says.

  She might have said “thanks” but she didn’t.

  “It was just a really bad day, you know?” she asks.

  I nod like some head-bobbing dummy.

  “Okay,” she says.

  I start to walk away but then I stop. “Hey, Maura?”

  She looks at me expectantly.

  “I was wondering, do you think you could help me some more with the makeup stuff? I never really wear any, but what you put on me at the store was nice.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Yeah, I can help you out. We can go to CVS or something one day this week.”

  I thank her and walk across her yard to mine.

  * * *

  Tonight when I called Missy and told her about the day and how Maura is going to teach me how to wear makeup, she had a fit of hysterical laughter.

  “Can I come, too?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” I said, but she told me she had just been joking.

  “So she isn’t as bad as we thought?” Missy asked.

  “Well, she wasn’t today,” I answered. “Oh, and Mrs. Morgan told me that she’d be delighted to include you in the party,” I said. I thought to ask her in the morning while Maura was asleep. My mother shot me a dirty look when I did, but Mrs. Morgan thought it was a great idea. After all, she said, she hated the thought of a kid starting a new school senior year.

  Missy and I made plans to hang out the next afternoon. She thought she could put together an outfit for the party using some of her mom’s stuff. When I hung up the phone, I went upstairs and looked at my dress again. I am starting to get my hopes up for this party, and even for the start of school, just a few weeks away.

  Chapter 6

  The first time I meet Missy’s mom, she is in her studio painting. Her studio is an airy room on the second floor—a spare bedroom, really—with enormous windows that flood the room with light. There are potted plants everywhere, a wind chime mounted just outside one of the windows tinkles in the breeze, and the gauzy blue curtains flutter. She is working on a still life of broken pieces of pottery arranged on a table near the window. Missy inherited her hair and her height from her mother. She stands at her easel with her back to us, an enormous men’s oxford shirt as her smock, bare feet peeking out of flowing, wide-legged pants, the image of some serene goddess at work. We watch her quietly for a moment, and then Missy taps at the doorframe. Her mom turns around to reveal the round swell of a pregnant belly. Before I can react, she’s embracing me.

  “Lizzie!” she says. “You are exactly as Missy described you. I’m so happy to meet you.” Her stomach feels hard against mine as she puts her arms around me.

  “It’s great to meet you, too, Mrs. Howston,” I manage to say.

  “Oh, no! You have to call me Anna,” she says. “Mrs. Howston is my mother-in-law.” She laughs. “So you two are putting together a flapper costume today?” she asks, stepping back from our prolonged hug.

  I nod.

  “I think you’ll find everything you need, although you’ll have to do some rummaging. A lot of that stuff hasn’t gotten unpacked, and I feel less inclined by the day,” she says, patting her belly. She sighs and turns toward her canvas. “What do you think, Mis? Better?”

  Missy walks over to look at her mother’s painting. “Hmm. I do like the way you’ve brightened the colors,” she says after a moment.

  “Missy is my consultant,” Anna says, casting me a smile. “Well, I have some more to do here, and then it’s time for my midmorning nap.” She fakes a yawn and then turns back to Missy. “How do fajitas sound for lunch?”

  “That’s great, mom,” Missy says.

  “Ok for you, Lizzie?”

  They eat fajitas for lunch. I love it. We don’t eat Mexican food ever at my house. My mother thinks it’s too fattening and low class. “Yeah, that’s fantastic,” I say.

  In the attic, Missy moves boxes around, but I am still distracted by the news that Anna is ready to pop any day now.

  “You didn’t tell me your mother was pregnant,” I say.

  “Really? No. I must have told you,” Missy answers.

  “I think I would remember.” I wonder if Missy hasn’t mentioned it because she’s embarrassed or something.

  “Well, I guess I’m so used to her being pregnant now that I didn’t think to tell you.” She moves aside a few more boxes. “When she first found out, I told everyone.”

  “Wow. So how do you feel about it?” I know how I would feel. I would be pissed. I mean, my mom barely has enough affection for two kids. If she had another baby, I’d end up being a full-time nanny. Not that it would ever happen anyway, because my mom had her tubes tied right after I was born. In her words, two are enough.

  “Are you kidding? I’m so excited
! I’ve always wanted a sister or brother.” She looks at me and I can see from the smile on her face that she is sincere.

  “But did your parents plan this?”

  “Oh, yeah. My mom has wanted this for years, but she didn’t want to do it while my dad was still in the army. I guess it was pretty hard on her when I was little and he was deployed, and anyway, with a war going on, it was just too scary. But as soon as he got out, they got busy. Hey, I think I found the right boxes,” she says, kneeling down and pulling open the top of a large box labeled “Costumes.”

  “But how old is your mom?” I ask. However nonchalant Missy is about her family situation, I’m having a hard time taking it in.

  “Thirty-seven,” she says, pulling various pieces of clothing from the box. “Look at this!” She holds up a leather vest with fringe on it. “My cowgirl vest! I wore this to school every day in the third grade.”

  “Wait, your mom is only thirty-seven?”

  “Yep. She was a child bride.”

  “She had you when she was twenty?” I ask, trying to sort out the math in my head.

  “Yep. My parents were childhood sweethearts, but my dad is a few years older than my mom.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know, right? Makes me wish I had a childhood sweetheart. I guess we’ve missed the age cut-off for that, though.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Shoot! This box is just kid stuff. Somewhere over here there’s a box of my mom’s dress-up stuff, costume jewelry, stuff like that.”

  I haven’t been very helpful. I kneel down beside Missy and start combing through the boxes she set out. I want to hear more about her parents’ romance, but I don’t want to seem too nosy, so I drop it. Eventually we find a couple of boxes full of Anna’s old dresses and random adult-sized costumes. By the time we emerge from the attic for lunch, Missy is wearing a gold lamé dress that drapes at the neck and falls to the floor with a slit up to the middle of her thigh, elbow-high black gloves, a black boa, an enormous rope of fake (but convincing) pearls, a “hat” made of black feathers mounted on a hair comb that sits slightly askew on her head and looks like some wild bird—Anna tells us at lunch it is a cocktail hat that she wore to a wedding in England—and strappy black stilettos. She also found one of those long cigarette-filters that you see women holding in old movies.

  “I’m going to have to practice if I want this to look natural,” she says, balancing the filter between her fingertips and bringing it up to her lips.

  I think the hat is too much, but Missy is in love with it. That’s the thing about Missy; she doesn’t take herself too seriously. I mean, take away the hat and she looks like Nicole Kidman going to the Oscars. Add the hat and she looks like a cross between a celebrity and a lunatic. Missy tries to dress me up, too, but I only wear the wacky bits of apparel long enough to humor her, and then I put them back into the boxes where she found them.

  “Come on! Live a little!” she says, when I take off the bowler hat she placed on my head.

  I roll my eyes.

  She pretends to pout. “You’re no fun,” she says.

  She’s right. I’m not much fun. I put the hat back on. “There. Happy now?”

  She smiles. “You should wear hats. You look good.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say. But I am flattered by the compliment. Actually I do think I look good in hats, but I’m not brave enough to wear them because I’m afraid people will think I’m trying to look cool or be too stylish or something. Even in the winter or at the beach, I resist wearing hats, which I realize is foolish—think how much warmer my ears would be, how much less sunburned my face and neck. I just don’t want to draw attention to myself.

  We eat lunch with Anna in the small backyard. It is all fenced in, but the landscaping is a crazy, overgrown tangle of flowers and leafy plants. The picnic table on the patio is under a pergola covered in climbing roses. It’s magical, and I say so.

  “We’re lucky,” Anna says. “I’m not much of a green thumb, but this garden was a major factor in choosing this house. I can’t tell weed from flower, so it’s getting out of control, but I like it.”

  We eat chicken fajitas and drink limeade and breathe in the scent of roses. I never want to leave.

  “So Missy tells me there was some excitement at the concert the other week,” Anna says after we eat. She leans back in her chair and rests her hands on the shelf of her stomach.

  “Uh, yeah,” I say. Of course Missy told her mother about Maura and that whole affair. She probably tells her mother everything. Missy and Anna actually have the relationship my mother wants with me and Mrs. Morgan wants with Maura.

  “I have to say, I can’t understand why you two want to go to that girl’s party,” she says.

  “Mom,” Missy says, half-whining, “everybody is going.”

  “My parents are making me go,” I say.

  “Ah, yes. And I hear your parents are also eager to meet us.”

  “Yeah, it’s a policy they have. I had to beg to come over here today. They want to know my friends’ parents.”

  “Well, that’s smart,” Anna says. “We love to know Missy’s friends’ parents. Besides, that’s the only way old geezers like us meet new people. You become a parent and suddenly all of your friends are the parents of your kid’s friends. That’s how it works.” She laughs.

  “I guess soon you’ll be making a whole new round of friends, then,” I say, nodding toward her belly.

  “We’ll be the old folks at all the kiddie birthday parties and school events. All the young couples will seek out our sage advice,” she says, laughing some more.

  “Oh please,” Missy says. “No one will believe you’re old enough to have a seventeen-year-old at home. And then they’ll be jealous. You have a built-in babysitter.” Missy turns to me. “Everyone always thinks we’re sisters.”

  Anna does look young, until you look closely around her eyes and mouth. Besides, the age difference between Anna and Missy is only slightly greater than the age difference between Missy and her new sibling will be. It isn’t hard to imagine them passing as sisters.

  “I don’t know, Mis. I feel old.”

  “Well, then,” Missy answers, “we’ll take care of cleaning up and you go rest.” She starts gathering plates, and I happily assist.

  Back inside, I finally get a chance to look around. The entire house is as enchanting as Anna’s studio and the backyard. Over the kitchen sink is a beautiful stained glass window. Houseplants and knick-knacks from their world travels decorate every corner and cubby. Books line shelves, nest in piles by the sofa, and cover the coffee table. It is my dream house.

  After cleaning up, Missy and I settle in on the couch in the living room. It’s soft, worn-in, old brown leather. We sink into the cushions and Missy talks about the developments in her burgeoning romance with Wes. They went to a matinee on Sunday and then out for coffee. She talks to him on the phone every day.

  “Last night, we talked all night,” she says. “And I’m supposed to go with him and his friends for a hike tomorrow.”

  “That’s cool,” I say.

  “Yeah, but here’s the thing. I don’t think he’s ever kissed anyone.”

  Neither have I but I don’t say so. I wait for Missy to continue.

  “I don’t know how to initiate that, you know?” she says. “And I think maybe he’s too shy.”

  I think about Missy’s braces and the merciless teasing of kids who had braces back in middle school. I had been convinced that people with braces couldn’t kiss anyone. I have since learned otherwise, but still, kissing a mouth full of braces just doesn’t sound appealing to me. Maybe Wes feels the same way.

  “Yeah, but on this hike, his friends are going to be there. It’s not like you’re going to the woods to make out,” I say.

  “We might be alone sometimes.”

  “I guess you just have to see how it goes,” I say. I hear a clock chime in the front room. “Damn! What time is it?”

&n
bsp; “I think it’s 2:30,” Missy says.

  “I’m late.” I push myself off of the couch. “My mom’s probably waiting at Gram’s house.”

  “Oh, right,” Missy says.

  I make a mental note to wear a watch when hanging out with Missy. It is easy to lose track of time with her. The last thing I need is to give my mom more reasons to dislike her, especially now that I’ve been inside her house. Whatever my mom thinks, Missy and her family are exactly the kind of influence I need in my life.

  * * *

  “Your grandmother was just telling me how lovely Missy’s family is,” my mother says when I come rushing, somewhat out of breath, onto the porch.

  “You’ve met them?” I ask, confused.

  “Oh, yes,” she says. “And that house belonged to an old friend who was devastated to have to sell it after thirty years, but then she met the Howstons, and she was happy to have such a nice family moving in. She’s in one of the high rises now.” Gram says, rocking back and forth on the glider.

  “The Howstons apparently had a meet-and-greet when they first moved in,” my mother says. “Gram says they invited the whole neighborhood.”

  “It was very nice,” Gram says. “Has she had the baby yet?”

  “Uh, no,” I say, wondering if Gram already told my mother that Anna was pregnant and if so how she took the news. “I guess she’s due in like three weeks.”

  “Ah. That’s nice.”

  “Well,” my mother says, “we’d better get home. You’re late, you know.”

  I had hoped she hadn’t noticed. Gram, like my dad, can be a great distraction to my mother.

  “See you in a few days,” my mother says to Gram.

  “All right.”

  “Don’t fall asleep out here.”

  “I’m old, Beth, but I’m not an idiot.

  My mother wastes no time with her reprimands once we’re in the car. She doesn’t like my new habit of lateness. She isn’t sure she likes the idea of my hanging around with someone whose mother will be too busy with a new baby to pay attention to a teenager. She will not be letting me go to Missy’s again until she’s met her parents. And why haven’t I mentioned how tired Gram is looking?