by Ann Hood
The man had one of those mustaches, a Fu Manchu, and shaggy brown hair in need of a trim. He smiled, and Libby was happy to see his teeth were not perfect.
“Maybe you saw it?” she said. “On TV?”
He shook his head. “Sorry.”
She kept ringing up his items. Eggs and milk and bread, the basics. She noticed it was normal bread too, no special grains, just good old Wonder. Tammy passed in front of the windows, on her way to her car and success. Libby had never noticed before that Tammy was swaybacked. That would be a definite minus.
“I’ve been really disappointed in Spielberg movies lately,” Libby said. “He’s slipping, in my opinion.”
Mentally she started to construct a letter to him. Dear Mr. Spielberg, You have brought my family and me many hours of joy. However—
“Well,” the man said, “he’s never been one of my favorites anyway.”
“Is that right?” Libby said, and she nodded. “Interesting.”
“As a screenwriter, I’m trying to achieve something else. Something more. A deeper level of understanding of the human condition.”
She nodded again. “What a treat,” she said. “I’ve only been out here a little while and it just seems that everyone is so materialistic. Kind of shallow, though I hate to stereotype.”
Perhaps, Mr. Spielberg, instead of hiring swaybacked young girls for your films, you should try to better understand the human condition.
He was buying an awful lot of wine, she noticed. Beer was always Tom’s drink. She had grown to hate the smell of it. There was something special about a man who bought wine. Ten-dollar bottles, no less.
“That’ll be eighty-three seventy,” Libby said.
She watched as he pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet.
“Do you like Kurosawa?” he asked her.
“Mmmmm,” she said.
“Because his new film is playing tonight and I thought you might like to go.” Then he added, “With me.”
“Why, yes,” Libby said. She looked around to see if anyone was seeing this screenwriter ask her on a date, to see the new Kurosawa, whoever that was. No one seemed to notice.
She could still remember the day Tom Harper walked up to her in front of everyone and asked her out. Those girls had almost fallen over. That was to a movie too. Butterflies Are Free. Goldie Hawn and Ingrid Bergman. Libby smiled. She felt she had come far after all.
He wasn’t a real screenwriter. Or at least he’d never sold anything. “Because Hollywood doesn’t want to hear the truth,” he told Libby. He worked building sets. That was why he had such strong arms, she thought, trying not to stare at the thick biceps peeking out from the sleeves of his black T-shirt.
She loved that his name was Jeremy. “Like from that old TV show,” she told him. “Those three brothers up in Seattle? They’re all lumberjacks and they have these great names. Jeremy, Jason, and Joshua. What was the name of that show anyway?”
Jeremy didn’t know what she was talking about. He had no sense of pop culture at all. “Where did you grow up?” she asked him. “Mars?”
“Close,” he said. “Here.”
Libby was glad that she had time to go to the library and read up on Kurosawa. Then she raced to the video store and rented Ran. She got to watch half of it while she got ready for the date. This guy, she thought, was a real artist. So she wore her black tights and an oversize black sweater, like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face.
It had been hard to stay awake during the movie. Reading those subtitles was just awful. But she’d managed, and now they were eating dinner in Santa Monica and through the big restaurant windows Libby could see the waves and an almost full moon.
Sometimes things turn around in a flash. It already seemed a million years ago that she had been watching Tammy flaunt her success, feeling like a failure herself. Now here she was with this deep, smart man, sharing a plate of calamari and looking at a full moon. And, she reminded herself, she had done a floor wax commercial. People back home had probably seen her. She smiled imagining it.
“What?” Jeremy said. He covered her hands with his.
“I was just thinking,” she said. She took a breath and hoped she’d gotten it right. “Kurosawa said that Ran was human deeds as viewed from heaven. That’s kind of what you’re after, isn’t it? In your writing, I mean.”
He looked at her across the table, then leaned over and kissed her, right on the lips. “You’re amazing,” he said.
Libby smiled at him. Thank God for that Pauline Kael book. People really should use the public library more, she thought. Maybe she’d write a Letter to the Editor about that. Jeremy was talking about King Lear. Libby tried to concentrate. She nodded and smiled some more. Then it popped into her head. The name of that show with those three brothers in Seattle. It was Here Come the Brides. She would keep that to herself.
On Saturday nights, Tom started going to Tiny’s Tavern. A place he used to think only desperate people went to. Now he knew it was where people went on the nights Arsenio Hall wasn’t on. When there was nothing keeping them at home.
Whenever he saw Sue there, she ignored him.
So did Dee-Dee Winthrop.
Except the first time when she’d grabbed the new roll of fat around his middle and said, “Putting a little on, asshole.” She’d pinched hard too.
What Tom did on Saturday nights was sit on the last bar stool, way in the corner, and methodically drink dollar drafts. He had no opinions. People around him would scream about the Patriots, the Red Sox, Saddam Hussein. They’d complain about taxes, the school superintendent, their kids. And Tom had nothing to say about any of it.
Then one Saturday night, working on his ninth or tenth beer, he happened to glance up at the television. Usually it was tuned to ESPN here, but tonight it was on a regular channel and he looked up and saw his wife smiling down at him while she mopped a fucking floor.
Someone behind him said, “Harp, that’s your wife.” And the guy’s voice was filled with awe. As if it was something good, something special, having your wife walk out on you and mop floors on TV.
It was the same one: She has moved into a new house and finds a grimy kitchen floor. The family is devastated. They stop everything and just stare at that dirty floor. But Libby knows exactly what to do. She grabs a mop and some floor cleaner and suddenly fucking stars are leaping off the floor. It’s that shiny. And the family is happy. And Libby leans close to the camera and smiles right at him. See? she seems to be saying. See?
It seemed to Tom that Tiny’s got completely silent. But he did not look around. He just finished his beer and the bartender, a guy named Marty, put another one down in front of him and a shot of tequila next to it.
“Here, man,” Marty said. “On me. On the house.”
This guy had some terrible past. Got screwed up in Vietnam. All sorts of problems.
“Thanks,” Tom said.
Sue came and sat next to him. “You’re drinking too much,” she said.
Tom motioned for another shot. Tequila, unlike beer, burned all the way down your throat, right into your gut.
“I work. I feed my kids. I watch television,” he told her. “I deserve a little something.”
He didn’t look at her. He was thinking about Mitch. How, during sex, Mitch could pick her up by the waist with both hands, she was that little.
“That sounds like a bad movie,” Sue was saying.
Tom shrugged. He could get to like tequila, he thought as he downed the second shot.
“I watch a lot of bad movies,” he said. Then he added, “We’ve got cable.”
“Come on,” Sue said. “Let me drive you home now.”
Tom turned toward her. “Did you know all along?” he asked her. “Did you know she was planning on leaving?”
Sue said, “Yes.”
Marty had a long ponytail streaked with gray. “I’ll make sure he gets home all right,” he told Sue.
Tom was glad to see her go.
“You can’t t
rust anybody,” he told Marty.
Waldenbooks was nestled between Filene’s and CVS at the mall. Walking into that bookstore made Tom feel strange. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for. He walked up one aisle and read the titles of the books there. They were the kinds of books he had to read in school. That wasn’t what he needed.
He stood in the middle of the store and tried to figure out a plan. That’s when he saw her. Renata Handy. She was standing behind the cash register, reading a book, looking a little bored. He did not want her to see him. But no sooner did he think that than she looked up and right into his eyes.
She looked startled.
Tom smiled at her. How could he tell her that he was here for help? That people who had written certain books were always on Oprah and Donahue, telling the audience that their books could save you. How could he tell Renata Handy that he drank too much? That he fucked a Future Homemaker of America right on his desk? That his wife sold floor wax that made stars shoot out from the kitchen floor?
“You look confused,” Renata said.
She was wearing an African print tent dress that made her seem even more exotic.
“I am,” Tom said. He glanced around the store. “I’m looking for …” He looked at Renata again. One of those writers on Oprah had a book about healing a broken heart. He couldn’t tell Renata that. “A book,” he said.
“Well,” she laughed. “You’ve come to the right place.”
His eyes settled on the rack of books in front of him. They were travel books. Let’s Go Spain. Let’s Go Italy. Let’s Go Great Britain.
“Are you going somewhere?” Renata said.
He looked at her, puzzled.
“Oh,” she said, and she laughed again. “You were looking at the travel books.”
“Yes,” he said. “I thought maybe I’d go to Spain.”
Renata brightened. “Spain. I’ve heard Barcelona is something else.”
“Me too,” he said. He picked up Let’s Go Spain. “This should be helpful.”
Renata started to walk back to the cash register. He watched her big feet. She had on those sandals that Libby used to call granola sandals. And red knee socks.
“Anything else?” Renata said.
There was another book, written by a rabbi, that was supposed to give new meaning to your life. It was an inspirational book.
Tom sighed. “No,” he said.
“How about a bookmark?” Renata asked him.
“Sure,” Tom said. “Why not?”
Even though it wasn’t yet Thanksgiving, the mall was decorated for Christmas. Santa’s Toyland was built, the little mechanical elves continuously hammering and sawing. Renata decided to make this Christmas the best one yet. Not, she reminded herself, because it might be Millie’s last one, but because they were here, in New England, and because in the past she had practically ignored the holiday, claiming atheism or commercialization as the reason.
Already, on her lunch breaks from the bookstore, Renata shopped for Christmas gifts for Millie. She hid them in her bedroom closet when she got home, all professionally wrapped in shiny foil paper with perfect bows. Sometimes, when she and Millie were sitting together watching television, Renata would break into a smile imagining Millie’s face as she opened package after package on Christmas morning. It was that image that led Renata through department stores and toy stores searching for the best stuffed animal, the brightest fingerpaints, the happiest puzzles and coloring books.
Today, she was buying miniature ponies with hot pink and lime green manes when she saw Tom Harper again. Renata started to wave like crazy. Ever since she had walked away from Dee-Dee Winthrop’s, she felt braver somehow. From time to time, someone she’d known in high school came into the bookstore for a new Jackie Collins or Danielle Steel book. They always wore too much hairspray and bright lipstick. They mumbled something about her brave dead husband. And Renata looked them right in the eye, knowing they would not meet her gaze. Sometimes she’d say something especially weird so they’d have something to talk about at their next meeting.
And now here was Tom Harper, back from Spain, she figured. She imagined him with Libby topless beside him on a beach on the Costa del Sol. Or sipping sangria at a sidewalk cafe. It was hard even now not to think of them without seeing a kind of glow around them, a special aura that assured them their place in the world.
Tom seemed to look right at her then.
She gave him a big smile. After all, she had a place in the world too, didn’t she?
And then, Tom Harper walked away. No hello, no wave, nothing. As if she didn’t exist. Suddenly, Renata was at every basement church dance, every school lunch, every horrible embarrassing moment of her life in Holly when boys like Tom Harper passed her by, ignored her, ridiculed her, and took girls like Libby Holliday and Dee-Dee Winthrop and Cathy Communale into their arms and hearts. In that moment Renata realized with an awful sharp pain in her chest, right where she assumed her heart nestled, that you really never do get over those hurtful days, when every hour, every moment of smiles not returned and insults whispered and giggles covered with hands and downcast eyes cut into you, left scars that do not go away, even years and years—lifetimes, really—later.
Even as she walked slowly back to work the feeling remained. In New York, she had blended into the scenery. She had been as anonymous as a nondescript building. She had almost forgotten what it was like to have someone look away, pretend not to see you.
The mall was not a big one. Renata was sure if she looked hard enough she could find Tom Harper and tell him to grow up. She would walk right up to him and tell him exactly what she thought about him. She would tell him he was getting fat.
Millie attended the same elementary school Renata had gone to, an old two-story building with wooden floors and walls lined with bulletin boards decorated for the season—construction paper leaves falling, smiling witches on broomsticks, turkeys shaped from children’s hands. Already Millie had been elected the blackboard monitor, in charge of washing the blackboards at the end of each day and going out to the playground to clap the erasers clean.
All of the teachers there were young. They dressed in pastel jumpers and wore sensible shoes and white blouses with Peter Pan collars. The old, blue-haired, droopy-breasted teachers from Renata’s childhood had all retired, taking their smell of lilac talc with them. For this, Renata was especially happy. No one would be comparing Millie to her mother’s terrible schoolchild days.
One of the teachers, Mrs. Donahue, stayed after school to watch the children whose mothers worked. She gave them craft projects to keep them busy. She fed them graham crackers and apple juice. Mrs. Donahue, who was ten years younger than Renata and less than half her size, made Renata want to sit down in one of the child-size chairs and be taken care of—read to and fed and taught to make wreaths out of elbow macaroni.
When Millie saw Renata at the classroom door, she waved excitedly. She was wearing a new wig, from the Oprah wig line. It was big and fluffy and jet black.
“Millie,” Mrs. Donahue said, “why don’t you finish gluing the macaroni to that plate while I talk to your mother a minute.” Her voice sounded like a cartoon character’s, all high and squeaky.
She motioned for Renata to walk down the hall a little way with her. Renata could smell the shampoo Mrs. Donahue used. It smelled like piña coladas. Her hair was shiny, some of it held back with a bright red barrette.
“Mrs. Handy,” Mrs. Donahue said.
Renata shook her head. “Renata.”
Tiny creases appeared on the teacher’s forehead, then disappeared. “It’s about Millie,” she said. Quickly she added, “Everyone loves her. She’s darling.”
“But?”
Mrs. Donahue considered what she was about to say very carefully. Her eyes were rimmed in bright blue liner, her lips covered with clear gloss.
“Those wigs,” she said finally, raising her eyes to Renata. “Why does she wear them?” Then, softer, she added,
“Some of the children make fun of her.”
Renata looked right into Mrs. Donahue’s blue-rimmed eyes and said, “She got a bad haircut and she’s embarrassed.”
Those creases reappeared in the teacher’s forehead. “A bad haircut,” she repeated, rolling the words around in her mouth like marbles. Again she seemed to be considering her words. “I thought she was sick,” Mrs. Donahue said. “A few years ago, it was my first year teaching in fact, we had this darling little girl named Christie who had leukemia and lost all her hair from chemotherapy. She used to wear a hat. A beret. It was the saddest thing.”
Renata laughed, too loud. “Millie,” she said, “is terrific. She’s fine. I mean, I’m really sorry about this other little girl, this—”
“Christie.”
“Yes. Christie. But Millie isn’t sick.” Renata held up her shopping bag. “I just bought her these Christmas gifts,” she said.
Mrs. Donahue did not look relieved. Her forehead was bunched and wrinkled. But she slowly nodded. “Well,” she said. “I’m glad it’s just a haircut.”
“Astor Barbers,” Renata said again, laughing. “One of these punk haircut places in New York.”
Mrs. Donahue nodded again. “What a relief,” she said. She smiled.
Her teeth, Renata thought, were as small as a kitten’s.
“Then,” Millie explained in the car, “when all the glue dries, we’ll spray-paint the macaroni gold.” She leaned back and sighed, happy.
“Millie? Have the kids at this school been nice to you?”
Millie nodded.
“Have they asked you about your wigs?”
Millie smiled at her. The radiation had turned a few of her teeth black. When you grow up, Renata had promised, we’ll have your teeth bonded. You’ll have an Ultra-Brite smile. “They like the Tina Turner one,” Millie was saying.
“Good,” Renata told her.
“But I was thinking in a few weeks, maybe I’d stop wearing them. I’ll look like Sinead O’Connor.”
Renata did not ever want people to laugh at Millie. Thinking that now, she remembered the way Tom Harper had looked away from her at the mall. How he had averted her eyes and hurried past.