Shaken and Stirred

by Joan Opyr

  “What about Dad?” I asked. Lucky Eddie was asleep on the sofa, his feet propped up on the armrest.

  “Never mind him,” she said, spraying his feet with the air freshener.

  My father sat up. “What the hell . . .”

  “Avon lady,” my mother explained. “Your feet smell like dead animals. Why don’t you go sleep in the bed like a human being?”

  “Jesus Christ,” said my father, lying back down. “Take her into the kitchen.”

  “I was planning to.” The doorbell rang. My mother gave the room at large a generous spray, tossed the can and the unused vacuum back into the closet, and opened the front door.

  “Hello. You must be the new Avon lady.”

  Karen Rostenkowski looked like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to be a prostitute or the head of General Motors. She wore a beige linen suit and a shiny red halter-top. Her high heels, which were also red, were a shade lighter than the halter-top but darker than the plastic headband that pushed back her blonde, wispy hair. As she stepped through the front door, she trailed a cloud of perfume so strong that it overwhelmed the pine spray. She introduced herself, smiling brightly.

  My mother’s answering smile was polite but cool. I’d seen her use it on Avon ladies before, as well as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. It said that she was willing to look but that she wouldn’t be doing much buying. “I’m Barbara Koslowski, and this my daughter, Frances.” She gestured apologetically in the direction of my father. “Don’t worry about that body on the sofa. We’ve called the undertaker.”

  Lucky Eddie opened one eye and prepared to roll over. Then he caught sight of Karen. He sat bolt upright.

  “Sorry, I was just having a little nap there. I work nights.” He stood up and extended his hand. “I’m Eddie,” he oozed, “Eddie Koslowski.”

  Ordinarily, my father couldn’t be blasted off the sofa with dynamite. It didn’t matter who knocked on the door—the Girl Scouts, his mother, or a SWAT team—Eddie woke up for no one. He was skilled in the art of interpersonal avoidance.

  By the time Karen Rostenkowski arrived on our doorstep, Eddie had long since moved out of my mother’s bedroom and taken up permanent residence in the living room. He came home from work at six o’clock in the morning, kicked off his shoes, and slept on the sofa until five-thirty. Then he ate a TV dinner, took a shower, and went back to work. His routine never varied, and there was never any conversation. Eddie and my mother spoke to one another only when it was absolutely necessary, and, apart from yelling at Jack and me to get the hell out of the house and go play quietly somewhere else, he and I didn’t talk. The man who was now grinning like a fool and enthusiastically pumping the Avon lady’s hand was a stranger to me.

  I looked at my mother, who looked pointedly at Karen’s hair.

  Lucky Eddie followed us into the kitchen. My mother offered Karen a seat at the table, and Eddie pulled out her chair for her. I abandoned my plans to meet Jack and sat down to watch the spectacle. I was not disappointed. For the next half-hour, Eddie was all over Karen Rostenkowski like a cheap suit. He made jokes, lit her cigarette, and offered her a mixed drink.

  My mother, her face perfectly placid, said, “Don’t you think it’s a little early for cocktails?”

  “Sun’s over the garden,” Eddie replied, opening the refrigerator.

  “Yardarm,” I said.

  Eddie held up a jar of pickled onions. “We’ve got gin and vermouth. How about a dry martini? Shaken, not stirred, ha, ha.”

  My mother took a deep breath. “It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, Eddie. Miss Rostenkowski is here to sell Avon. You use olives to make a martini, you use onions to make a Gibson. Why don’t you go back to sleep?”

  Eddie grinned broadly. “It’s midnight in France, Barbara. I was just showing some of that Southern hospitality you’re always on about, and I’m not tired. You want a beer, Karen? We’ve got Budweiser and Pabst. You could be a model, you know—has anyone ever told you that? You’re a double ringer for that Cheryl Tiegs.”

  “Dead ringer,” I corrected.

  “I wish someone were dead,” said my mother.

  Karen smiled weakly. “Yes,” she said. My father handed her a beer. “I mean, no. I don’t want anything to drink. But I am a model. I’ve done some local work, department stores, that sort of thing. I’m just getting started.”

  “Really?” Eddie was all agog.

  “Really,” echoed my mother. “Now, if you’ll just . . .”

  “Do you have a portfolio?” Eddie continued, ignoring her. “If not, I’d be happy to do one for you. I’m a professional photographer. My studio’s out back. I’ve got a full set up, lights, backdrops, you name it. Reasonable prices.”

  My mother rolled her eyes. My father worked as a press operator at the Ford stamping plant. Photography was merely the latest in a long line of expensive hobbies that had come and gone—rock climbing, skiing, scuba diving. His studio was a space in the garage behind a disassembled motorcycle and a rusty bass boat. He had a light table, a Pentax, and a box of business cards that said Photography by Edward in loopy italicized script.

  He took one of these from his wallet and handed it to Karen. “Thank you,” she said, glancing at it quickly before dropping it into her handbag. “I’ll certainly keep you in mind.” Fixing her gaze firmly on my mother, she opened up her sample case. “Avon has several new products I think you’ll be interested in, Mrs. Koslowski. Lipstick, perfume, moisturizer . . .”

  My mother feigned interest in a bottle of foundation. She didn’t really need makeup. She had perfect skin, and she didn’t work outside the home. From time to time, my father would suggest that she “do something with herself,” but this was only the prelude to a fight.

  Eddie sat down at the table, beer in hand, and lit a cigarette. “Of course, I’m also ‘Have camera, will travel.’ We wouldn’t have to do the portfolio in my studio. I could come to your place. Sometimes a subject feels more comfortable in her own home ambience.”

  “Environment?” I suggested.

  He leaned across the table and pointed the cigarette at me. “No one likes a smart ass. Shut up or go to your room.”

  My mother pushed the sample case back across the table. “I don’t believe I need any Avon today, Karen. Why don’t you leave me a catalog, and I’ll call you later?”

  “Come on now,” Eddie objected, sitting back and smiling again. “We can’t let her leave empty-handed. Maybe you could use some of this.” He picked up a white plastic compact. “What is it?”

  “It’s pancake,” said my mother.

  “Oh yeah? What do you do with it?”

  “You eat it.”

  Karen closed her sample case and stood up. “My name and phone number are on the back of the catalog. If you want anything, Mrs. Koslowski . . .”

  “Call me Barbara,” my mother said. “I’d prefer not to be Mrs. Koslowski.”

  My father laughed. “And you can call me Eddie. Let’s dispense with the formalizations.”

  “Formalities.”

  “I warned you,” he said, taking aim once again with the cigarette. “Twelve years old and you think you’re a goddamn genius. Go to your room. Now. The adults want to have some adult conversation.”

  “About Avon?” I asked incredulously.

  I shoved my chair back from the table just in time. Eddie’s hand missed me by inches and slammed against the wall, flattening the cigarette.

  For a long moment, no one moved. Then my mother made a clicking sound with her teeth and tongue, a noise like the pin being pulled out of a grenade.

  “You,” she said to me. “Go wait in the car. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  I stopped just long enough to take the keys off the hook by the back door. Once I was safely ensconced in the passenger seat of my mother’s station wagon, I switched on the ignition and rolled the windows down. Five minutes ticked by. Jack came over and leaned in the window.

  “What’s going on?” he s
aid. “I thought you were coming over to my house.”

  “My mom’s inside murdering Lucky Eddie. She told me to wait out here.”

  “Oh.” He opened the door and sat down. “Plenty of room in the way back for a dead body.” He opened the glove box and pushed the trunk release button.

  “Go shut that,” I said. “You know I’m not allowed to play with it.”

  “That’s because of that time you opened it going down I-94.”

  “Just shut up and close it before she comes out here.”

  “God, you’re a crab,” he said. “If you’re not coming over, can I get the mini-bike frame out of your garage?”

  “Go ahead.” I turned on the radio. John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John were singing “You’re the One that I Want” when Karen Rostenkowski came out, walking so quickly that her sample case beat time against her thigh. She walked right past me without even looking. Then she got into her car, a brown Mustang with rusty rocker panels, and drove away.

  A few minutes after that, my mother stepped onto the front porch. She was carrying her purse, the cat, and a cup of coffee. My father stopped just behind her and stood in the doorway.

  “Goddamn it, Barbara . . .” he began.

  The coffee cup smashed against the doorframe above his head. He stood for a moment, brown liquid dripping from his hair onto the welcome mat. Without another word, he turned on his heel and went back in the house.

  My mother dropped the cat onto my lap. “Ramada, Howard Johnson’s, or the Velvet Cloak Inn?”

  “We don’t have a Velvet Cloak Inn.”

  “No,” she replied, “but Raleigh does. Buckle up.”

  Chapter Three

  My mother ran out of steam in Columbus, Ohio. We had long since run out of 8-track tapes. We spent the night at a hotel on the edge of town with the cat curled up between us on the bed. The next day, we slept in late and ordered room service. At noon, we drove back to Michigan.

  There was a receipt on the kitchen table for $258 worth of Avon. My father had ordered a boatload of makeup, every shade of foundation, eye shadow, and lipstick available. My mother called him at work.

  “Just what the devil is this?” she asked. “You know I don’t wear makeup. Can’t you send flowers like a normal man?”

  “What are you talking about?” he said. “That stuff isn’t for you. If I’m going to be doing model portfolios, I need a full makeup kit.”

  After explaining that models who really were models used their own makeup, my mother told Lucky Eddie that she and I were leaving. We were going to North Carolina to live with her parents. She also told him that she would be back for her things, that she would bill him for the U-Haul, and that, in case he’d ever wondered, he was indeed the prize prick of the universe.

  We spent the next two days packing the back of the station wagon. I said goodbye to Jack and gave him the mini-bike frame and the lawnmower engine. I wished him luck. He cried. So did Jane. My father didn’t come home, and he didn’t call.

  We drove the eight hundred miles to North Carolina in just under sixteen hours.

  When she opened the front door, Nana said, “What in the world,” and then, “Why didn’t you call us? I had no idea you were . . . where’s Eddie?”

  “Don’t know and don’t care,” my mother replied. “I’ve left him.”

  Nana leaned against the doorframe, shaking her head in disbelief. My grandfather sat just behind her at the dining room table, shelling peanuts. He popped two into his mouth and crunched them loudly.

  “It’s about time,” he said. “Eddie Koslowski is a no-good sorry Polack bastard.”

  My mother got a job as a clerk at the Olivia Raney Public Library, and we settled into my grandparents’ house. She took possession of the bed and the bedroom she’d had as a teenager. I got the hide-abed sofa in my grandmother’s sewing room. In a few weeks, we rented a U-Haul and drove back up to Michigan to collect our things. My grandfather and his younger brother, my great-uncle Fred, followed behind us in my mother’s car.

  We spent the night at Smiley’s Motel in Charleston, West Virginia. My mother refused to share a double room with Hunter and Fred. Instead, we got our own room with a Queen-sized bed. In the morning, we had breakfast at Bob Evans and drove the rest of the way straight through, stopping only for gas and bathroom breaks. It was six-thirty when we pulled into the driveway. Jane ran out of her house to greet us, rivers of mascara-stained tears running down her face.

  Lucky Eddie didn’t have sense enough to stay away this time. He opened the door with a smile on his face and offered everyone a beer. No-one said anything except Fred, who said, “Don’t mind if I do.” The rest of us got to work.

  When Eddie wasn’t sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette, he hovered around the edges, watching the proceedings with a disinterested eye. Eventually, he made a friendly offer to help us pack. My mother, also friendly, suggested that he pack his head up his ass and roll down to hell.

  He left the house then. Jane, still crying, laughed so hard she choked.

  It took me less than an hour to empty my room. Most of my clothes were already in North Carolina; I just needed to pack up my comic books, my Nancy Drews, and the old pieces of pipe, wire, and nuts and bolts that I kept stored in mayonnaise jars on the top of my dresser. These I put on the front seat of the U-Haul. Then I went to find Jack. He was in his garage, sitting on the mini-bike frame, rolling back and forth. He said he’d had no luck with the lawnmower engine.

  “I can’t figure out how to mount it,” he said. “It needs to go on there sideways so the gears will be right, but then the engine mounts are in the wrong place. Maybe I need to weld something. My mom is pissed because it leaked oil on the floor.”

  I said, “Let’s put some newspapers under it and see what we can do. My dad has a stack in his garage.”

  The newspapers were against the back wall, behind the light table. The studio had become a more formal space since we’d been gone. A new expanse of dry wall separated it from the boat and the motorcycle. Umbrella lights were arranged to shine down onto a black chaise lounge that sat in the middle of an oriental rug. As I gathered up an armload of newspapers, Jack flipped the switch on the light table.

  “Hey,” he said. “Come check this out.”

  Karen Rostenkowski reclined on the chaise lounge. She had clothes on in most of the pictures but not all of them. Jack and I examined each slide closely using my father’s loupe. Without saying a word to one another, we each took one of the nudes and slipped it into our jeans’ pockets.

  When my mother finished packing the U-Haul, I told her about the rest of the slides. She looked at me for a moment, but she didn’t say anything. She went into the kitchen and made bologna sandwiches, which we ate in silence at the kitchen table. After she’d cleared our plates, my mother opened the big garage door and dragged out the barbecue grill. One at a time, she dropped the slides into it. Jack and I watched, mesmerized, as she doused them with lighter fluid and set them ablaze.

  Hunter and Fred sat on the back steps and drank up all of Lucky Eddie’s beer.

  For a while, I carried the slide around with me like a talisman. I looked at it only when I was sure to be left alone, and I remembered to take it out of my pocket every night and hide it in my underwear drawer.

  I’d seen my mother naked hundreds of times, but Karen was a revelation. She was slender where my mother was round, tall and gently curved where my mother was compact and muscular. One of the walls in my grandparents’ bathroom was covered with mirror tiles. Sometimes I held the slide up to the light fixture and compared the image with my own figure on the wall opposite. It was disappointing. I wasn’t built like my mother, and I wasn’t built like Karen. At five-foot eight, I was taller than either of them, but I was muscular all over, completely lacking in curves. My shoulders were broad, my waist was straight, and my hips were narrow. One day, I overheard Nana telling my mother that I looked like Lucky Eddie in a traini
ng bra.

  “And feet like gunboats,” she added.

  I stopped looking at the slide after that. I grew careless with it. One day, Karen wound up in a pulpy mass at the bottom of the washing machine.

  Living with my grandparents proved to be a challenge. As the only child of their only child, I found myself under intense scrutiny. My mother withdrew into her books and her work, and Nana took over much of my day-to-day maintenance. She declared my Michigan wardrobe—ragged jeans and flannel shirts—unfit for a Southern girl. It looked sloppy, and, even worse, it was unfashionable. I didn’t argue with her. She knew more about it than I did, and I was nervous about starting school, anxious to make a good impression. I’d had the same friends since kindergarten. I wasn’t sure I knew how to make new ones.

  Also, I’d begun to notice something about Southern girls—they all seemed smaller, prettier, and somehow better assembled than I was. The youngest teenager applied makeup with an expert hand, and they all seemed to smile and laugh and be charming and confident. Michigan might have been crawling with beautiful women, but six months out of the year they were swallowed up in parkas and toboggans. In Raleigh, there was no escape from sun-kissed loveliness. The girls I’d seen out and about in my new neighborhood made me feel even more gawky and awkward than the slide of Karen. And, to top it all off, I was now under the thumb of the former head cheerleader of Broughton High School, Class of 1941. Nana wore a girdle even when she was mowing the grass.

  It was with deep reservations that I agreed to spend the Saturday before school with her, clothes shopping. Nana’s taste ran to the floral and frilly; mine ran to the boy’s department. I’d already tried on and rejected several outfits when she appeared in the dressing room doorway carrying a blue cotton dress with a white Peter Pan collar.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “No way.”