A Little Change of Face

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  “Would you like some coffee?” Roland offered Kelly, just Kelly.

  “Here, I’ll get some for you,” Pete said, before Kelly had barely had the chance to get the entire one-syllable “yes” out of her mouth.

  Jeez, I thought, you’d think those two had never seen a woman before, as if there weren’t seventeen other women in the room. At my very first staff meeting, nobody had fallen all over themselves trying to get me a cup of coffee.

  Roland turned on the tape machine to record the meeting. Later, Celia, his administrative assistant, would transcribe the notes and put them in a permanent binder so that anyone who’d missed the meeting could find out what was going on. For more immediate reference, the department heads—Diane from Children’s, Susan from Reference, and Kathy from Circ—all took notes so that part-timers not coming in until later in the day or week would know whatever relevant details they needed to know.

  It seemed early in the year to be talking about the annual Holiday Can Drive—collecting cans of food for disadvantaged families—but Roland felt like talking about it, so we did.

  “I think that’s wonderful,” said Kelly, “that you give something back to the community on top of the public service you perform daily here.”

  Roland was so pleased, his glasses steamed up.

  Other than the “yes” to coffee, these were the first words I’d heard Kelly speak and I discovered that her voice was uncommonly lovely; if she weren’t working here maybe someone would offer her a contract to sing the soundtracks for Disney movies or something.

  Diane wanted to talk about story time in the Children’s Department.

  “It’s going great,” Diane said, “and is a very popular program. There’s just one problem. Occasionally we get a parent who thinks we’ve offered to babysit his or her child for the hour. The parent leaves the building, goes out for coffee or to run an errand, and before you know it, that’s the one child we’re having problems with and we can’t find anybody.”

  “Oh, how awful,” Kelly sympathized, as though she’d never heard of such a thing. “Perhaps if you put a note on the flyer,” she gently suggested, “something along the lines of ‘Program only available to children able to sit quietly without their parents, however one parent must remain in the building at all times’ you could avoid that situation?”

  Diane was writing furiously. “What a fabulous idea!” she said, as if no one else had ever thought of the idea, as if there weren’t already a similar sentence on all the flyers about story time in the library.

  Then Kathy wanted to discuss how, with the colder season upon us, it got chilly for the workers in Circ, the station being right next to the front door, which, naturally, kept opening and closing.

  Celia, whose desk was upstairs in front of Roland’s and thus far from the draft, got a little acerbic with Kathy.

  “Gee,” said Celia, “isn’t the whole point of a public library to have the public use it? Don’t we want the front doors to be opening and closing a lot?”

  Naturally, the staff offices where Celia worked were upstairs, and, since heat rises, the area where Celia worked was always way too warm in the cold season, a fact she was quick to point out.

  Before Roland could speak up to mediate, Kelly stepped into the breach.

  First, she turned to Kathy: “Perhaps you and your staff could wear layers to work? If you don’t have enough, I have some sweaters I knitted I could bring in.”

  Then she turned to Celia: “And couldn’t you wear layers to work and then take some off once you get here? Sure, it’s too hot upstairs now for a sweater, but I’ll bet a nice cool Oxford shirt would be just the right thing.”

  Celia, who was preppy in the extreme and who had never met a J. Crew catalog she didn’t like, was clearly pleased with the idea.

  “What kind of yarn do you knit with?” Kathy asked Kelly, leaning across the table. “I’m allergic to one-hundred-percent wool, but if it were a blend…”

  Oh, jeez, I thought, why not just let Ms. Gorgeous Whiz Kid run the whole place?

  Then Susan wanted to talk about a problem they were having in Reference and, of course, Kelly had the solution.

  “Wow,” said Susan, slumping back in her chair. “I should just take my month’s vacation now and let you run the department.”

  See what I mean?

  And the most annoying thing was that Susan didn’t even look peeved when she said it. She looked grateful!

  Still, I didn’t think Susan should take it so lightly. From the look on Roland’s face, he’d have loved nothing more than to be able to lay Susan’s job at Princess Kelly’s feet.

  Roland looked at his notes, then looked around the table. “Well,” he said, “I’ve got everything covered that I wanted to talk about today. Anybody else?”

  There were no takers.

  “More coffee, Kelly?” Roland asked.

  Kelly shook her head, which kind of surprised me, since she seemed like the kind of woman who just looked for opportunities to let men do things for her. She probably even carried her own supply of suicidal hankies, so she could surreptitiously throw one on the ground and wait for a man to pick it up, always relying on the kindness of strangers.

  “Wonderful!” he said. “I’ve never had a staff meeting go so smoothly.” Then he turned to Kelly. “Thank you so much for all your insightful input. I can see that adding you to the staff was a wise decision.”

  The meeting adjourned.

  Five minutes later, the room cleared of the rest of the staff and the front door opened for business, Jane and I were at our stations behind the Circ Desk.

  “So what’d you think of her?” Jane asked.

  I knew who she was talking about right away. I tried not to make a face, failed, grimaced. The most charitable thing I could think of to say was: “She seems to be trying too hard.”

  “You think?” asked Jane, clearly astonished at my response, which was clearly different from hers. “That girl’s the bee’s knees, and then some.” Then she paused for a moment, considering. “I wonder what color sweater she’ll give me?”

  The impossible had happened: Saul Waters called and asked me out, the sheer wonder of it immediately ejecting all concerns over Kelly Seaforth out of my head.

  Phone pressed to my ear, having passed through my initial reaction, which was to hold the phone away from myself in shock upon realizing who was calling me, I was nearly dancing with glee in my kitchen. It was all I could do to keep from saying what I was really thinking: Are you fucking nuts? Why in the world would you want to go out with me?

  “So, I was thinking…” he said.

  You were thinking that you’re fucking nuts and that you’ve changed your mind? my mind continued to taunt.

  “I was thinking,” he said, “that we could go to Bethel Cinema, maybe grab a bite to eat afterward. That is, of course, if you’re not busy tonight.”

  How could I be busy on a Saturday night now that I was Lettie? Well, of course I’d told Pam we’d do something. But she’d understand. Having seen Saul the night I’d met him in Chalk Is Cheap, she’d understand.

  And, oh, how this would vindicate me. After all, this gorgeous man had met me as dowdy Lettie and he still was asking me out, he still couldn’t resist the woman underneath. I’d been right all along: it was me that men had been attracted to all my life, not the surface packaging that rendered me as one of life’s swans.

  I was so busy stroking my inner crow that I nearly missed the details involving what movie we’d be seeing, something either produced or directed by Clint Eastwood. Whatever. Just so long as he wasn’t taking his shirt off—Clint, that is, not Saul. Saul could take his shirt off. And the only reason I didn’t want Clint to take his shirt off wasn’t that I was ageist but because I was sick of a system in which it was acceptable for a seventy-year-old man to take off his shirt in front of millions of people, but if a seventy-year-old woman did it…

  Well, actually, that’s the point: a seventy-year-o
ld woman wouldn’t be allowed to do it, and probably wouldn’t even be in the film.

  Be that as it may…

  “Pick you up at seven?” Saul asked.

  “Perfect,” I said, thinking, What kind of adult asks a woman out for a first date at a movie theater? I hadn’t been on one of those since before I turned twenty.

  I couldn’t wait to call Pam, tell her the news.

  “So,” she said, and I had the weirdest sense she was angry, like I could see her with one arm crossed defensively under her breasts, the back of her hand propping up the elbow of the hand that held the phone, as she beat an irritated tattoo with the toe of her high-heeled boot against the floor.

  Just a hunch.

  “So,” she said, “that gorgeous guy you met at Chalk Is Cheap actually called you up and you’re actually going on a date with him tonight?”

  “Actually? Yes.”

  I don’t know what I was expecting. Perhaps that a woman I considered to be one of my closest friends, my Default Best Friend, would be happy for my good fortune?

  I tried to brush off the feeling that every time I succeeded, my Default Best Friend died a little death.

  “Yes, Pam, he actually did and we actually are…and I’m so excited! I’m trying to decide what to wear. If I go with jeans, I’ll feel too casual. But if I go with a short skirt, I’ll feel like I’m pushing it, since it’s getting cold out, so why would I be wearing a short skirt, unless I was trying to let him see—”

  “You can’t wear jeans or a short skirt.”

  “I can’t?”

  “No.” And now I thought I heard her smile. “You have to wear your uniform.”

  “No!” I practically shouted, horrified. “Don’t make me!”

  “But you really do have to, Scarlett. After all, how will you know if he really likes you for you?”

  With a sunken heart, I realized that, of course, Pam was right.

  If Saul really wanted to go out with me for me, it shouldn’t matter to him if I didn’t go to any extreme measures to look better than I had when we first met. With that in mind, then, I did the best I could, given the confining rules of the game I was playing: I put on a fresh shapeless long dress, rust-colored this time, wiped off the lenses in my glasses, washed my face and washed my short black hair.

  Well, at least I was clean.

  For good measure, I put some lip balm on my lips. Surely, taking that single measure as a preemptive strike against looking like Linda Blair in The Exorcist must be permissible under Pam’s stringent rules.

  When I opened the door for Saul, I was perversely relieved that he’d taken no efforts to look any different during this, our first planned date meeting, than he had on our first accidental meeting. He still was committed to the idea of black being the color that suited him best. And it did.

  “Great place,” he said, poking his head into the living room. “It’s so cozy in here. I’ve never been much good at doing the cozy-home thing myself.”

  “Yes, well…”

  I looked around, taking in the room as he must be seeing it: the table I’d added next to the rocking chair, piled high with books waiting to be read; the couch with the overstuffed cushions; the delicate curtains letting in the early evening light; the Halloween decorations I’d already put up around the big fireplace. I was tempted to tell him that I’d never been much good at doing the cozy-home thing, either, that this was all Lettie’s doing.

  But I couldn’t tell him that.

  “Ready?” I smiled brightly.

  When we got to Bethel Cinema, I fished my wallet out of my big bag. Even though it had been months since my last date—a longer dry spell than any I’d had since hitting puberty—I still remembered my own etiquette of offering to pay my fair share until I knew the lay of the land.

  But Saul wasn’t having any.

  “Put that away,” he said, smiling. “I had a good week at work. It’s my treat.”

  Okay, so maybe I’m archaic, maybe I’m the kind of woman who needs someone else to burn a bra on her behalf—well, I certainly can’t go braless—but I’ve always been charmed by men who insist on paying. I don’t mind carrying my financial weight, not at all, but I like men who don’t go through life with mothballs in their wallets, I like men who hold doors for you, pull out chairs.

  “Popcorn? Candy?” he offered.

  I said no to the popcorn, figuring the last thing I wanted were popcorn kernels stuck in all my teeth when it came time for him to kiss me later.

  “M&M’s,” I finally said, figuring they were the perfect non-messy thing for the occasion. How is a girl like a green M&M, indeed?

  Apparently, Saul wasn’t at all concerned about the prospect of popcorn kernels interfering with our kissing later on, since he ordered himself a large bag with butter and a bottle of water.

  As we sat in the darkened movie theater, I tried to concentrate on the movie—was there a murder? was there a river? and where the hell was Clint Eastwood?—but I just couldn’t force my mind to focus on it. I was too busy wondering about the more important things in the world, like, should I lean my shoulder far enough to the right so that it made contact with Saul’s, thus hopefully inspiring in him the conditioned response of putting his arm around me? Was his thigh resting against mine a conscious effort on his part or was it the natural result of his having long legs and needing to do something with them in a small space? And where the hell was Clint Eastwood?

  I hadn’t felt this rattled, this insecure, this completely and totally first-date heebie-jeebie weird since…since…I’d never felt this way!

  By the time the credits rolled, I honestly couldn’t have said if I’d been watching Sean Penn or Elmer Fudd.

  Saul looked like he’d enjoyed himself, so I said, “Wow, powerful stuff,” hoping I’d hit the mark. For good measure, I added, “I really liked the director’s use of the color blue,” since the one lasting impression I did have was that the film had had a lot of blue in it.

  He looked at me strangely, then smiled. “Would you like to go get a coffee and some dessert?”

  I wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, except for maybe once or twice a year; I couldn’t imagine he was still hungry after downing that whole thing of popcorn; and I certainly didn’t need more dessert to go on top of the M&M dessert I’d just had, but I was grateful he wanted to extend the evening. I mean, sure, I was anxious for our first kiss to take place—oh, how I wanted him to kiss me!—but we hadn’t really done any talking yet, other than about my decorating skills, who was going to pay, what we were going to eat and the director’s use of blue. Surely, he was right: we should do some more talking before we got to the kissing.

  As Saul pulled his blue Lexus into a spot out front of Mister Caffeine, I experienced an immediate sense of nervousness, half expecting to find Steve Holt in there as Saul held the door, all covered with Steve’s Halloween painting.

  But there was no Steve inside, just other after-movie people and a half-dozen teenagers, waiting to be old enough to go to a proper bar on Saturday night rather than a coffee bar.

  Remembering the rule that states that even if you’re not hungry or thirsty, if your date is interested in eating and drinking you must engage in same, because otherwise you look weirdly ascetic or like a potential eating disorder and most men really don’t want a girl who is no fun or who they have to visit in the hospital while she’s being force-fed through an IV, I ordered a small black decaf and a slice of mudcake I could fork around my plate. He ordered a large mocha-something and apple pie, which seemed like a strange combo to me, but what did I care? He was going to be kissing me soon. First dates always ended in kisses at the very least. I’d never had one that hadn’t.

  Perhaps, feeling overly enthusiastic and anxious about the kissing yet to come, I blurted out, “I can’t remember the last time I was on a first date that involved going to see a movie! I was probably fifteen the last time—”

  Something about the way he dropped his pie fork c
ut me off mid-anecdote.

  He reddened slightly, looking unsure about what to say. Then: “You thought this was a date?”

  “Well, I…” I became flustered, no doubt reddening some myself.

  “When I called you up and asked you what you were doing tonight, you assumed I was asking you out on a date?”

  “Yes, well, that usually is the way that…”

  “I’m sorry, Lettie,” he said, looking more embarrassed now for me than for himself as he covered my hand gently with one of his beautiful hands. “This isn’t a date.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s just that…”

  “Just that what?”

  “When I met you at Chalk Is Cheap, you just seemed so lonely, like you could use a friend.”

  “Oh, I see. You just had a free night and figured you would, oh, I don’t know, do me a favor.”

  “Don’t make it sound like that. It’s not like that at all.” He paused, perhaps looking for the right words to explain what it was like. “I like you. I really do. And everyone can use friends. Even me. I just thought we could be friends, you know, do things together occasionally. You seem like the kind of woman who’d make a great friend.”

  It’s hard to remove your hand from someone else’s without appearing either dismissive or wounded, but I decided to risk giving both of those impressions as I disengaged my hand from his.

  “That’s okay.” I forced a good-natured laugh. “Did you think I was serious before about that first-date stuff? Well, I wasn’t. I was just joking around, that’s all.”

  And, in order to salvage my pride, I proceeded to spend the next hour being the best sport I could be. I encouraged him to talk about himself, about his work, his family, his favorite sports teams, smiling at everything he said, all the while thinking on the inside, When the evening’s over, when he takes me home, he’s not going to kiss me. Of all the things that might happen tonight—a fender bender, a falling star landing at my feet—the one thing I know for sure that is not going to happen is that he is not going to kiss me.