A Little Change of Face

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  “We have time to think of something,” I said again.

  Sarah looked woefully down at her chest. “We may have enough time for me to change,” she said, “but I don’t think we have enough time to change my mom.”

  29

  “Roland hired a new woman for Reference,” Jane announced when I arrived late in the morning for my shift, having drowned my sorrows the night before at losing the post office game in one too many glasses of Chardonnay and stayed up too late watching one too many Lifetime movies.

  I’d known that Roland was looking for someone to replace an experienced worker who’d left unexpectedly and I’d been sorely tempted to ask for the job. Reference was my personal love in the library and I would have given…I would have given… Shit, I’d realized. I’d given so much up lately, what was there left to give? Okay. I’d have given my mother’s right arm to get back behind a reference desk. But the key word in Roland’s job description was “experienced.” And I was supposed to be the new girl who didn’t know anything yet, even if I’d been wowing Jane and Pat and even Roland sometimes with everything I seemed to just instinctively know. So I’d let the golden opportunity pass, rather than blowing my cover.

  “What’s she like?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you go see for yourself?” Jane suggested. “I can handle things here. We’re not busy right now.”

  I looked up and saw that the only other people in the room were a patron reading the day’s newspapers and another patron browsing the video racks.

  I decided to take her up on it. I may love being a librarian, but we librarians still need to take our excitement where we can get it.

  Just a half flight of stairs separated Circ from Reference, and in no time I was doing my best Nancy Drew, peeking my head around the corner to get a glimpse of the woman who’d won the job that should have been mine.

  Her back was to me as she worked on the computer, but I could see that she had honey-colored hair and was a little overdressed for our casual library, wearing a sea-green jacket that looked like it was the top half of a suit. Oh, well. People often overcompensate in the beginning, trying to make a good impression. And look at me: I was wearing dresses to work every day. But, of course, that was for an entirely different reason.

  I heard Pete, the part-time Reference guy, say, “Kelly,” just before he came into view, “was this what you were looking for?”

  In his hand, he held out a blue binder. But from where I was standing, I couldn’t read what the spine said. It could have been the binder with staff procedure in it or the binder for volunteer work or just about anything. But that didn’t matter, because at that moment She turned in the chair.

  Yes, that’s right, she was a She with the capital S.

  She half rose from her chair to take the binder from Pete; Pete, who lived at home with his parents, wore his pants too high, and who could never be bothered to answer me if I asked him a question during the morning staff meetings; Pete, who was now smiling at her like he was applying to be her personal lap dog, as her half rising revealed an ultra-short skirt to match the sea-green jacket and a pair of legs that even tempted me. In fact, the legs were so perfect that it took a moment before I tore my eyes away, traveling them upward, only to find…

  Shit! Shitshitshit!

  It was the woman from the post office, the woman who’d come in while I was playing the game, the woman with the green eyes, the woman who’d caused me to lose the post office game for the first time in my life.

  I must have either gasped or at least muttered one of those “shits” out loud, because both Pete and the woman’s head snapped in my direction. Not up to introductions at the moment, like the mouse I suddenly felt like, I scampered back down the stairs and resumed my breathless place behind the Circ desk.

  “Didja seer?” Jane asked, in that two-words-for-the-price-of-one pattern of speech that we New Englanders like to sometimes affect.

  “Yup,” I answered in kind, still stunned.

  “Her name’s Kelly Seaforth. Can you beat that?”

  “It fits her,” I said. And it did.

  “You think a woman like that gets a lot of action?” Jane asked, surprising me.

  “How would I know? I guess. Probably.”

  “Good,” Jane said, “then she’ll fit right in.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, hell, Lettie. It’s only in books where you always see these uptight librarians who are repressed and never get laid. But in real life? Librarians are hot. Hell, we should have our own swimsuit calendar.”

  Everyone likes to talk to the guy who paints the shop windows. It’s kind of like the guards at Buckingham Palace: people like to see if the artist can maintain his focus, his creativity, while being interrupted by all kinds of inane bullshit.

  There I was, walking along Greenwood Avenue in Bethel, minding my own business, asking myself for the gazillionth time: Where did I know him from?

  I was wondering, of course, about the guy who was painting the windows outside of Mister Caffeine, the coffee shop where I was going to pick up my lunch—turkey sandwich on whole wheat, mustard, no mayo—the guy, I realized, was Stephen (Steve?), the guy who himself had wondered why too-alive me had ever chosen to become a librarian, the guy who’d asked me out and whom I’d turned down.

  Ever since that day, I’d been wondering where I knew him from, since he had that oddly unsettling, vaguely familiar look of someone I should know, but not like someone famous, because what would someone famous be doing in Bethel Public Library, unless of course it was Meg Ryan and she were to return to Bethel, but if she did, I doubt she would come to Bethel Library. And, anyway, if I was certain of one thing, it was that he wasn’t Meg Ryan.

  Am I rambling here?

  Now you’re the one who’s probably wondering, “Scarlett, why the fuck did you ever turn that guy down? Sure, he was kind of insulting about your chosen profession. Sure, it was a little bit potential-psychotic-in-the-making, the way he asked you out in such an over-the-top romantic kind of way, but isn’t that what most women want, some kind of authoritarian/sensitive combo platter, a Schwarzenegger/Lauer hybrid?”

  Maybe.

  Maybe.

  I said maybe…okay?

  Of course, if the guy in question has unbelievable legs, legs that look even more unbelievable in cutoff shorts—the kind of shorts that real men used to wear when I was growing up, the ones that show off a guy’s, um, manhood, like the guy with the strawberry patch who used to clean my best friend’s pool when I was ten, not like these too-loose things that the guys have taken to wearing since the entire fashion world has gone insane—and if he wears those shorts even though it’s pretty crisply cool out on a mid-October day, coupled with a bright orange sweatshirt as he paints storefront windows in preparation for Halloween…

  I snapped my fingers. Of course! That’s where I knew Stephen (Steve?) from! He was the guy who painted the windows whenever the seasons changed or whenever a new holiday was coming up. It seemed to me that there had been a time when kids painted the storefront windows and then an adult had taken over, which seemed like an odd job for an adult to have. Why hadn’t I ever noticed him before?

  I certainly noticed him now, as he stood there, palette in hand, painting pumpkins and witches and tombstones with tall grass growing around everything, all the while fending off questions from passersby—teenagers, late-afternoon drunks, early-quitting-time businessmen trying to masquerade as nice people by talking to someone not wearing a tie—himself looking attractive enough to be the subject of an artist’s work as he brushed his brow with the back of his hand, paintbrush poised, brushing a second time in a vain effort to control uncontrollable wavy auburn hair.

  I certainly noticed when he took the time to stop what he was doing to answer the questions of any really tiny questioners, in other words anyone who looked like they were still young enough to go at Halloween without cynicism. God, it was cute, how patient he was with them.


  I certainly noticed—

  Oh, my God—I certainly didn’t want him to certainly notice me certainly noticing him! So, naturally, I did the only thing that any self-respecting librarian in my shoes would do:

  I ducked behind the nearest tree, pressed my back into the bark and pretended to be invisible. Peeking out from behind the tree a moment later, having realized that there was not much point in sticking around if I wasn’t going to actually see anything, I saw him hand his brush to a little girl, encouraging her to use the paint on it to add to a big red-gold maple leaf he’d already started.

  Damn, he was good with those kids.

  But then I wondered: What kind of guy becomes the guy who paints the shop windows?

  In Bethel, it seemed like the windows were always changing and that it wasn’t enough to merely change the displays inside; the outside had to be thematically painted as well. Was this quaintness a New England thing? Did they do it elsewhere as well? Was someone doing it right that second in Boca?

  So many questions, but the one I kept coming back to was: What kind of person does such a thing?

  Years ago, I’d known a mime; not a famous mime, like Marcel Marceau or anything, just a guy who was a mime on weekends—children’s birthday parties, town fairs, that kind of thing. From Monday to Friday, Joe was a mason, a respectable-enough job, if a bit cold in the winter. But Joe didn’t really care about masonry. If it were up to him, if someone would let him design a better universe, he would have had that mime makeup on seven days a week. And, in Joe’s perfect universe, he wouldn’t even get paid for wearing the makeup and white gloves; he’d be independently wealthy, just giving his mimehood away for free.

  I knew Joe from shooting pool at a bar that had been an earlier incarnation of Chalk Is Cheap called Minnesota’s. In Minnesota’s Joe and his mimehood had achieved a weird sort of respectability. You’d think the discipline would be the kind of thing that might make other, bigger guys want to beat him up, but people seemed to take Joe’s hobby like just any other hobby, like weekend softball leagues or paintball or, well, pool. To them, Joe’s thing was just like their thing, only different and with different accessories. Plus, Joe was a helluva mime. Everyone said so.

  And Joe had liked me. A lot. And he kept asking me out. A lot. And everyone kept telling me how cool Joe was, how nice he was, how honored I should feel, how I should really go out with Joe. And don’t get me wrong: I liked Joe, I really did, because he was a nice guy. But…but…but…the guy lived to be a mime! Who does such a thing?

  There was just no way. No way in hell that I could go out with a guy who was voluntarily a mime, someone who sought out mimehood like it was a good thing. To me, miming, with those teary-looking black-and-white clown eyes, was something that a person should only do if they had absolutely no other choice, like if they belonged to the mime family equivalent of the Flying Wallendas or if being a mime would somehow feed Africa. (Not that I’m being judgmental here or anything.)

  So to find out that Stephen (Steve?) Holt was a painter of holiday storefront windows…

  But, I told myself, this was different. For starters, painting isn’t miming—can’t argue with me there. Plus, the kids that were watching Stephen (Steve?) were actually enjoying watching him work, which was a far cry from miming, which, in my experience, always served to make kids, well, cry. And who could blame them? Miming was so creepy; it certainly creeped me out. Painting, on the other hand, wasn’t.

  “Nice leaf.”

  Stephen (Steve?) turned at the sound of my voice.

  “Thanks,” he said, looking surprised, maybe even pleased, to see me standing there.

  “It looks so, um, autumny,” I said.

  “Thanks again.” He waited, as if expecting something more.

  Sucking it up, I thrust out my hand. “Lettie,” I said, “Lettie Shaw.”

  He shook my hand. “I knew that already,” he said.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. When I went in to the library to return my books, I asked after you, and that woman you work with—”

  “The mean one or the nice one?”

  “The mean one.”

  “Pat.”

  “Well, Pat said you were off for some Jewish holiday.”

  “My mother likes me to go to synagogue with her.”

  He smiled. “That’s nice of you.”

  “I guess.”

  “I was a bit surprised. Shaw doesn’t sound much like a Jewish name.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “Steve Holt, by the way,” he said.

  “I knew that,” I said, “from your library card. But it’s good to know about the Steve part. I hadn’t been sure about that.”

  “Would it have been bad if it was Stephen?”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, you said it was good that it’s Steve.”

  “No, either one is fine. It’s just good to know which.”

  The grouping of little kids who’d been watching Steve paint were giving me hostile looks. Apparently, I was interfering with their entertainment. Particularly hostile was the little girl he’d given the brush to. I suspected she’d developed a massive crush on him the minute he’d put that brush in her hand.

  The little girl insinuated her little body between me and Steve, gazing up at him with adoring, if demanding, eyes.

  “Can you paint a witch?” she said.

  “Sure,” he said, getting to work with black and green, “I can paint you a witch.”

  I don’t know what I was expecting, something scary probably, but that wasn’t the kind of witch he painted. Sure, he used the black and the green, but what came out of his brush was a completely unintimidating witch with long black hair that kind of looked like mine used to and a warm smile, laughing eyes. It was the kind of witch intentionally designed not to scare any little kids, however small, who happened to walk on by. I would have liked to have known that witch.

  It certainly wasn’t the kind of witch any mime would paint.

  “Is that good?” Steve looked down at the little girl.

  “It’s perfect!” She clapped.

  Who could blame her?

  “So, um,” I said, “you like Halloween?”

  “Of course.” The little girl gave me an accusing look, a combination of “you’re stupid” and “why are you interrupting my moment with Steve?”

  But Steve seemed to understand that I’d been talking to him.

  “My favorite holiday,” he answered, smiling wide, “that and all the others.”

  An equal-opportunity holiday-lover.

  “How about you?” he asked. “Do you dress up for it?”

  The question struck me as odd, since in a way my entire life had now become a game of dress up, but he didn’t know that.

  “It’s weird,” I said, “but as old as I get, I still love Halloween. My friends and I dress up every year, go out to bar parties or have parties at one another’s houses. As a matter of fact—” I didn’t know I was going to do this until I said it “—I’m planning on having a party this year. Would you like to come?”

  Why did you just do that? the voice in my head demanded. You’re not even sure you like this guy! He’s the guy who insulted your job!

  He smiled at me, a little sadly. “I’d like to,” he said, “but I can’t.”

  The little girl looked at me with smug satisfaction. I could have sworn she was dying to stick her tongue out at me. So there.

  “My older brother’s divorced and has two small kids,” he went on. “He’s got custody. He lives in one of those big houses on Deer Hill Avenue in Danbury.”

  “Wow, he must have money.”

  “Does that matter?” Steve asked abruptly.

  “No.” I shrugged. “Why would it?”

  “Anyway, I promised I’d go over there and hand out candy while he took Tim Junior and Sally around.”

  “Ah.”

  “But,” he brightened, “we could still go out sometime.”

>   I thought the little girl was going to haul off and kick me in the shins.

  “You remember,” he said, “I asked you out once before?”

  Of course I remembered. What I also remembered was feeling at the time as though he was teasing me, mocking me, like he couldn’t possibly have been sincere. No man, I was sure deep down inside in a place I couldn’t admit to anyone, would sincerely want to go out with me the way I had become.

  And now? What did I feel now?

  I didn’t feel like he was mocking me anymore, definitely not that. But, I don’t know, I thought that maybe he was asking me out because he somehow felt sorry for me. After all, what kind of adult woman works in a library, wears shapeless dresses, stops to talk to the guy painting the storefront windows and throws Halloween parties?

  “Um, no,” I said, backing away, letting him off the hook, letting the little girl have the playing field free and clear, “that’s okay. I only asked you to the party because it was going to be an, um, group thing. But we don’t have to…”

  “No, but—”

  “Really,” I said, “that’s okay. But, hey—nice leaf. Really. A mime couldn’t do any better.”

  God, I was an idiot sometimes.

  30

  Kelly Seaforth was making her debut at our morning staff meetings. Seated to the left of Roland, she had on a cherry-red version of the sea-green suit she’d worn the first day. If she’d been a television anchor, it would have been called a power suit.

  Still trying too hard, I thought.

  These daily meetings were held before we opened for business for the day. There were also monthly meetings, more formal, to which even those who had the day off tried to attend. At either the daily or monthly meetings, there was always plenty of coffee going around the group of twenty and someone usually brought in doughnuts or some other sugary snack.