Shopgirl

by STEVE MARTIN

  Mirabelle lies back on her bed holding the photos like a gin hand. Each one is a ticket to the past; each reveals a moment, not only in the faces but in the furniture and other objects in the background. She remembers that rocker, she remembers that magazine, she remembers that porcelain souvenir from Monticello. She stares into these photos, enters them. She knows that even though the same people and the same furniture are outside her door, the photo cannot be re-created, reposed, and snapped again, not without reaching through time. Everything is present but untouchable. This melancholy stays with her until sleep, and she loves being held by it, but she cannot figure out why these photos are so powerful beyond their obvious nostalgic tug.

  The next day, she and her dad take a walk in the woods. In Vermont, no matter in which direction you go, you end up in the woods, so they go straight out their own backyard. The snow is crunchy and manageable. Mirabelle wears her mom’s parka, which makes her look like someone has inflated her. Dad is all man in a furry vest and plaid shirt and lambskin jacket. After the “how’s Mom” discussion in which little is said and nothing is answered, Mirabelle produces from her pocket the photographs, and hands them to him.

  “I found these last night. Remember these?” She laughs as she presents them, to indicate their harmlessness.

  After reaching clumsily for his glasses, which are inconveniently stashed under layers of insulation, Dan looks at the photos.

  “Uh-huh.” This is not the response Mirabelle is looking for. She had hoped for a smile or chuckle or flicker of some memory of pleasure.

  “We were giggly,” probes Mirabelle.

  “Yeah, it looks like we are having a lot of fun.”

  He hands the photos back to her. She cringes at his disconnection from the events in the pictures.

  Mirabelle suddenly knows why the photos have such a powerful effect on her. She wants to be there again. She wants to be in the photographs, before Easter, before the shift in his personality. She wants to be hoisted onto her dad’s shoulders the way she was as a child; she wants to trust him and be trusted by him, enough that he would share his secrets with her.

  “These were taken right when you came back from Vietnam, weren’t they?”

  Mirabelle has tried to open this door before. Today his response is the same as always.

  “Not sure. Yeah, I guess.”

  The air bites them as Mirabelle and her father continue to walk. Then, coming to a clearing in the snowy forest, they grind to an uncomfortable halt. Mirabelle pushes a hand deeper in her pocket and fingers the card given to her by Carter Dobbs. The distance from the house gives her courage and she thinks now is the time. “There’s a man trying to reach you,” says Mirabelle. “He says he knows you.”

  She offers him the card. Taking it, he pauses in the chilling snow and looks at it, saying nothing.

  “Do you know him?” Mirabelle asks.

  He hands the card back to her. “I know him.” And the conversation is over. But she had noticed something. When he was holding the card, he took his thumb and traced it over the name, and when he did so, he was powerfully distant from where he is now, in this snow with his daughter, in the woods in his backyard, in Vermont.

  Her mother leaves the house to go babysit for her three-year-old grandchild. Mirabelle goes to her room after watching several hours of television with her now monosyllabic dad. The house is quiet, and she angles the shade on her bedside lamp and browses some of the books of her youth: Little Women, Jo’s Boys, Little Men, Jane Eyre, The Little Princess, Secret Garden, The Happy Hollisters. Nancy Drew. Agatha Christie. Judy Blume: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Deenie. Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. But something catches her ear. Something . . . the sound of a cat? Or an injured animal in the far distance. But her mind keeps recalculating the data, inching the source of the sound closer than the outdoors. This wail, these moans, are coming from inside the house. Wearing her bunny slippers––a gift last Christmas from an aunt who underestimated Mirabelle’s age by fifteen years––she opens the door to her room and steps out into the hall. She does not need to walk far to know that the sounds, which she has now identified as sobbing, are coming from her father, who is behind the closed door of his bedroom. She stands frozen like a deer with bunny feet, then guides the slippers backward into her room, noiselessly. She shuts her door without making a sound, as she had done one night twenty-one years ago after hearing the same cries coming from the same room.

  The moaning has stopped, and now the house is quiet. Mirabelle sits in her armchair and sees her parka, which has tumbled off the foot of her bed and onto the floor. She retrieves Carter Dobbs’s business card. She approaches her parents’ bedroom and lays the tiny business card up against the doorway. Then she quietly slides her way back to her own room.

  Six months pass unnoticed as Ray and Mirabelle live in a temporary and poorly constructed heaven, with him flying in and out, visiting her, taking her to fine restaurants, then back to his place, sometimes sleeping with her, sometimes not. Sometimes he takes her home and says good night. She does not like sex when she has her period. When she feels depressed, sex can sometimes leave her sullen, so during these times there is an awkward domesticity while they wait it out. He takes note of her use of expressions that linger from her adolescence––lazy bones, sleepyhead, early bird ––and is alternately amused and annoyed by them. A toothbrush is set aside for her. Since his house is closer to Neiman’s, she often stays the night with him, bringing an overlarge purse stuffed with a change of clothes so she can go directly to work from his house. When he fantasizes about sex, he thinks of her and no one else.

  Ray shows up one day on Mirabelle’s message machine, saying he is in town and inviting her to an event in New York next month, and yes, she’ll need a dress so let’s go shopping. He takes her to Beverly Hills on one of her floating days off and they spend an erotic day shopping at Prada for something suitable. Ray glimpses her changing behind the flimsy screens, and when they get home, she tries on the dress, and then he fucks it right off her. Over the next several days, Mirabelle plans the trip, makes arrangements to get off work, and silently counts the days until takeoff.

  June

  RAY PORTER CAN’T BELIEVE HOW much she is crying, and he wishes he could take back what he has told her. But the letter is in her hand, just barely, and she looks away from it as she drops it onto the bed. She tilts her head down and sobs like a child. He had written the letter because he wanted to say it succinctly; he didn’t want to stammer or mollify it, he didn’t want to change direction in the middle of a sentence and retract what he was about to tell her because of a vulnerable look in her eye. But she wanted to know; she had asked to know and she seemed to have meant it. So he handed her the letter in person as they sat in his bedroom, at the beginning of the evening, which quickly came to a close hours before it normally would have.

  Dear Mirabelle,

  I suppose the only way to say it is to say it: I slept with someone. It was not romantic or intimate, and I did not stay the night with this person.

  I am not telling you this to hurt you, and I’m not telling you because I want our relationship to change. I am telling you this only because you asked me to. I hope that you can find a place of understanding in you. I am sorry,

  Ray

  With Mirabelle turned away from him, he takes the letter and quickly slides it into a drawer so she won’t have to look at the tangible evidence of what he has done. The letter represents such an awful thing to her, and Ray does right by disappearing it.

  He had debated with himself for two hours while flying to Los Angeles. Tell her, or not? But she had asked him to tell her. She must have meant it. Plus, it wasn’t love; it was a fuck. Plus, she had asked him to tell her. He thought this was a new feminism thing that he is honor bound to oblige; that if he doesn’t, he is a pig. That he will actually come off well by telling her; no one could judge him otherwise. But whatever his thought process was, whatever he told hims
elf was the right thing to do, was false. Because his logic is not based in any understanding of her heart, and he continues to misread her.

  Mirabelle doesn’t ask any questions. She rises up and drags her sweater down the hall, stumbling like a drunk. Ray does not know how to handle this girl. If only she were practical, he would handle her in a practical way, but Mirabelle is in stage one––a child who has just had her heart rearranged by someone she trusted. She mumbles a cancellation of their upcoming weekend trip to New York. He follows her to her car and watches her drive away. The next day, he gets on a plane to Seattle.

  Ray waits a day, then phones her just at the moment he knows she will be walking through the door.

  “How are you?”

  “Okay,” she says in a small voice.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Okay. Can I call you back?”

  “Yeah.”

  And they hang up. Mirabelle lays down her things, takes off her diaphanous Gap windbreaker, and drinks some water. She has been in a daze all day. She never wants to talk to him again, yet she is glad he called. She needs to talk to a friend, an ally, about Ray’s transgression, but Ray is her only friend. She goes to her bedroom and dials area code 206.

  “Ray?”

  “Hang up and I’ll call you back,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  This is a fiscal ritual. Whenever she calls him long distance, they hang up and he phones her back so she won’t have to pay for the call.

  “Are you better?” he says.

  “I’m a little better,” she says, not knowing what she means.

  “Should we see each other?” says Ray.

  “I don’t think so. I changed my ticket from New York. Is that okay? I want to go to Vermont to see my parents.”

  Mirabelle is not going to her parents for comfort. There will be no sympathy from her mother or father, because she can hardly explain the situation to them, especially since her father is guilty of the same act. But there will be solace in her room, in her things.

  “Sure. Of course,” says Ray.

  The conversation stumbles on, and Ray tells her he is sorry he hurt her. And he is, but inside he doesn’t know what he could have done differently. He is determined not to love Mirabelle; she is not his peer. He knows that he is using her, but he isn’t able to stop. And as powerful as their desire for each other remains, their conflicting goals stalemate them, and their relationship has failed to move forward, even the incremental amount necessary for it to stay alive. They mumble some good-byes, Ray knowing it is not yet over, and with Mirabelle unable to think further than her own current pain.

  Prada

  LISA GOT WIND OF MIRABELLE’S Prada visit. For Lisa, Prada is the end-all be-all of courtship. Its exquisite clothes are not only expensive but identifiable. A Prada dress is a Prada dress and will always be a Prada dress. Especially a new Prada dress. A new Prada dress means that the trip to the shop is recent, that fresh money has just been spent, and if Lisa were wearing a new Prada dress, it would signify a big catch on her part. It would show that she has landed money and that her man has spent enough time with her to have escorted her to Beverly Hills and waited till she had tried on each and every, and then shoved a credit card thoughtlessly across the counter without even checking the price tag.

  Lisa comes face to face with the rumor one morning when she sees Mirabelle arrive at work in a sparkling and flattering killer dress. To Lisa, Prada is as recognizable as her own mother, and seeing Mirabelle draped in the perfect Prada shift provokes in her a deep guttural growl. Lisa calls her friend at the store to get the full scoop, and yes, Ray Porter and an unknown miss did roll through. The only thing Lisa can think to do when she hears her worst fears confirmed is trim and coif her pubic hair. This is a ritualistic act of readiness, a war dance, that is akin to a matador’s mystical preparations for battle. It is also done out of the belief that everything natural about her has to be tampered with for it to achieve its utmost beautiful state. Breasts, lip size, hair, skin color, lip color, fingertips and toenails, all need adjustment.

  Lisa sits on the toilet as she shaves, one leg propped up on the bathroom cabinet. She can dip the razor in the toilet when she needs to wet it while she shapes and combs the furry patch to perfection. Lisa is determined to cull Ray Porter away from the Mirabelle mistake. All she has to know is where is he and what does he look like. She can easily glean this from the trusting Mirabelle, probably in one lunch, so she doesn’t worry too much or make plans to connive. After the final dip of the razor in the toilet and a gentle splash of water to the now perfectly shaped lawn, Lisa stands up, stark naked, and looks at herself in the bathroom mirror. She is an hourglass with all the sand at the top. She is white and pink, and her implants pull and stretch and whiten the skin around them so her breasts glow. Her nipples are the color of bubble gum, and the silicone makes them resilient enough to chew like bubble gum, and now, between her legs, is the nicest little piece o’ property west of Texas.

  Mirabelle had told her parents that she was going to New York, so when she calls them and tells them she will be coming to Vermont instead, there is some explaining to do. But she bluffs her way through it, and since her parents never ask too many questions anyway, they are not aware that she can barely hold herself together.

  On her arrival in Vermont, Mirabelle puts on an Academy Award face. She actually manages to appear cheery, though she occasionally retreats into her room to let the gloom from her losses with Ray Porter seep from her pores. She roams aimlessly through the house and sees on her father’s desk the business card she had given him, significantly moved from the bedroom. She wonders if he has made the call that she hoped he would make.

  Twenty-eight hours into her awful weekend, the phone rings and she picks it up. It is Ray Porter, calling from New York. There are awkward “how are you’s,” then, as he approaches his reason for calling, Ray softens his voice, giving the impression that he is leaning into her. He intones his question so apologetically it nearly brings them both to tears:

  “Why don’t you come to New York.”

  Mirabelle wants to be there, in spite of her ache, and there is no hesitation in her yes, as much as she tries to imply it. She has shown him that she is hurt, and now it is over. She wants to be in New York City, and not in Vermont.

  Mirabelle tells her mother that she is leaving today.

  “What on earth for?”

  “I’m meeting Ray.”

  Mirabelle’s mom and dad know that she is seeing someone named Ray Porter, but they pretend their daughter’s relationship is somehow chaste. This of course requires incredible manipulations of reality and enormous blocks and blind spots. Mirabelle, to her mother and father, is simply not sleeping with anyone.

  “Oh, that’ll be nice for you,” her mother says simply.

  At this point, Mirabelle could have turned on her heels, and nothing more would have been said, ever. But 10,319 days have passed since her birth, and today for some reason, explicable only by the calculation of the stress of lying multiplied by twenty-eight years, Mirabelle adds one small truth:

  “I’ll be staying with him if you need to reach me.”

  Catherine continues scrubbing the same plate for the next few moments. “In a hotel?”

  “Yes,” says Mirabelle, and then, just for good measure, “but don’t worry, Mom, I’m on the pill.”

  “Well,” says Catherine. “Well,” she says again.

  Catherine rubs the plate, then in a modulation of voice so loaded with meaning that only Meryl Streep could duplicate it more than once, adds one more “well.” With perfect theatrical timing, her dad walks through the kitchen door and she tells him the same thing all over again, just to feel the same rush of power one more time. But there is no clamor; instead, everyone sits on their churning feelings, and Dan quickly changes the subject, flips on the TV, and is then absorbed by it.

  New York

  SHE CATCHES A PLANE THAT day and meet
s Ray in New York at dusk. Mirabelle doesn’t have her Prada dress with her, but her quick instinct for clothes prevails and with an authoritative sweep through Emporio Armani assisted by a contrite Ray, who can’t wait to atone by pushing wads of money across the countertop, she ends up swathed in a shimmering Armani silver dress that equals the Prada, and that night they head off to a dinner for fifteen hundred.

  After the event, where she looks statuesque and elegant, where a few photographers’ bulbs go off as they enter in spite of their noncelebrity status, where it is so challenging to Mirabelle to be sitting at a table for twelve among hundreds of tables, where she is so enthralled to be at this event that its dullness is not apparent to her, they end up at a small cocktail party for a dozen people at a smart Park Avenue apartment. The group gathers in a wood-paneled library where several Picassos look quizzically down on them. There are white-haired men older than Ray; there are sharp, young saber-toothed up-and-comers who have just cracked thirty. There are also tough businesswomen whose sexuality has somehow been packed away and left in a drawer somewhere and then, as an afterthought, stuck back on themselves and worn like a power tie.

  They are a smart, agile-minded group, but they are not sure what to make of Mirabelle, who sits in the middle of them like a flower. She is the only one wearing anything lighter than dark blue. Unlike them, her white skin is a gift, rather than the result of being bleached under neon all day. Mirabelle speaks quietly and to individuals only. When someone finally asks her what she does, she says she is an artist. This leads to a discussion among the aficionados about current art prices that excludes Mirabelle from the rest of the conversation.

  As the evening loosens, confounding the normal progress of a party, the conversations gel into one, and the topic, rather than jumping wildly from politics to schools for kids to the latest medical treatments, also gels into one. And the topic is lying. They all admit that without it, their daily work cannot be done. In fact, someone says, lying is so fundamental to his existence that it has ceased to be lying at all and has transmogrified into a variant of truth. However, several of them admit that they never lie, and everyone in the room knows it’s because they have become so rich that lying has become unnecessary and pointless. Their wealth insulates them even from lawsuits.