Age of Consent

by Marti Leimbach

  “Makeup?” The woman sounds confused.

  June says, “I’m thinking eyeliner to begin with. Have you tried eyeliner before?”

  The bald woman seems surprised. “As it happens, I have a lot of trouble with eyeliner,” she admits.

  “Let me guess,” says June. “You’re using a drugstore brand that drips down your face the minute you blink your eyes.”

  The woman laughs. “It runs in thirty seconds and I look like a mime. But that’s really not the reason I’m here.”

  June studies the woman’s face. In order to frame her eyes, the woman would have to pencil a coal color on the edges of her eyelids, just above where her lashes should have been, but were not. To be effective, she needed to use quite a bit of the stuff.

  “Actually, I’m here about another matter—”

  “Hang on, let’s sort this one out first!” June says. The woman wears a light foundation and a L’Oréal lipstick. June recognizes the lipstick because she is wearing it too. She tries not to notice the exact angle of the woman’s ears, so exposed on the bare skull, or the subtle division in skin where forehead meets scalp. She looks instead at the carved nose, the slightly asymmetrical lips, the open inviting eyes. At a beauty school in Newark, she was once trained to recognize skin hues and face shapes and she tries now to think about these things and not about hair. Or lack of hair. The bald woman’s complexion has undertones of blue, with small pores that would take foundation well. June studies the face with its big cheekbones and small chin, deciding it is a diamond.

  “I’d go with Chanel,” June says. “The chocolate liner, not pure black, not with your”—she was about to say hair. What was the matter with her?—“coloring,” she adds quickly. She tries to fasten onto another part of the woman’s appearance, unrelated to the head. The woman has a long neck, a long torso. Strapped around her middle—twice—is a thick belt in fake rattlesnake skin. June tells herself to look at the snake, not the head. Think about skin, not about hair.

  “Really, it doesn’t matter,” the woman says. She is smiling, but two little frown lines appear between her large eyes. “There’s something else I’ve come to discuss—”

  “Oh, but it does!” June says. “It does matter when you don’t have—” Oh God, she’d nearly done it again, nearly said the word hair! “—when you don’t have the right product. But you’re going to love this,” June says, uncapping the tester pencil. She draws a little arc on the back of her hand, softening it immediately with a few swipes from a wedge of sponge. She waits, then rubs the line with her finger before raising her hand to show how it has not lost its soft, perfect shape. “Impressive, huh?” June says.

  The woman stares, a look on her face as though she’s just witnessed a magic trick. “That’s a good pencil!”

  “Shall I ring it up for you?”

  “Well, perhaps we’ll get to that in a moment. It’s just that I have another problem—”

  June knows all about the problem: baldness. “Let’s do something about the eyes first, dear,” she says.

  “Do I really look that bad?” The woman smiles as though there is something funny about June’s assessment of her.

  “Not at all—” June begins. What surprises June most is that the woman’s appearance, taken as a whole, is not altogether marred by her baldness. She has beautiful skin with a kind of luminosity as though whichever way she turns, she is looking into the sumptuous glow of a flattering lamp. It was possible to see the baldness as amplifying her beauty, as water, passing over decorative stones, causes them to shimmer and enlarge. “You’re a peach!” June says. “And you’ll love this pencil! I’m not just saying that. You really—” she was about to say need it. Oh God! She was about to tell the woman, You really need it! “You should always buy the best,” she says, “especially when it’s near the eye.”

  The woman touches the corner of her eye and smiles. June admires what she has achieved, adding back in makeup and jewelry and clothes what the lack of hair has taken away. It is as though she has designed herself, painting a self-portrait onto a blank canvas. The look is impressive, and not only because of the artistry involved but because, as June imagines, there is a recurring despair that needs to be overcome in order to begin afresh each morning.

  “I’m not really here for eyeliner,” the woman says.

  Now June very much wants the woman to have the liner. She grabs a bag from behind the counter. “Don’t make a decision today!” she announces brightly. “Give some thought to the liner. Let me give you some freebies. You won’t believe what I’ve got back here!”

  The woman looks surprised as June fills the glossy black bag with samples of moisturizer, of toner, of exfoliating pearls and day cream. She begins to protest but June insists, adding tiny vials of perfume, a travel lipstick, a sachet of night cream, and an oval blusher the size of a fifty-cent piece.

  “You can do a lot with a matte brown powder,” June says, still moving. “I’ve got a sample here and it comes with its own brush.” She rummages further, finds a compact containing a trio of gold tones from Estée Lauder, and flashes it at the woman like an ID card. “Nice, huh? And look, some mini Dior…”

  These last items aren’t strictly speaking free samples. They are testers, designed to be fitted into their respective places on the counter display for anyone to try. You weren’t supposed to give testers away, but June had a lot of them cluttering the drawers. And she feels such a strong urge to contribute to the effort the bald woman has made. It is as though she is cheering on a marathon runner, that she is an essential voice calling from the sideline.

  “I couldn’t,” the woman says.

  “It’s no trouble!” June says and then, secretly, in a gesture to which she gives little consideration, she tosses the eyeliner into the sample bag as well.

  The woman holds up her hand, refusing the bag. “It’s just that I have another reason for being here. An additional reason.” The woman has grown quiet, and quietly serious. She is looking directly at June as though trying to make a decision. Not about makeup but about June.

  “Yes?” June says. She takes the bag, replete with product, and hands it to the bald woman, who reluctantly accepts it, smiling a thank-you.

  The woman says, “I want to know something about your husband.”

  It is the last thing June expects to hear. “My husband,” she says. “Why do you want to know about my husband?”

  “I am sure you were relieved when he was acquitted,” the woman says.

  With the word acquitted a barrage of images fills June’s mind. Of meetings in law offices and policemen at the door. She is about to tell the woman to turn around and get the hell out of the store, when she hears: “But I’ve been asked to be his defense attorney in this new trial.”

  The words seem to blur in June’s mind. “What?” she says helplessly. “A new trial? We just finished with the other one.”

  “This is off the record. I’m sure you already know that as Craig’s wife you cannot be made to testify if we should ever get as far as the courtroom. But I’d like to know if we can talk sometime, privately. I need to know everything that can be known—” The woman stops, pausing to study June’s face. She leans toward her, a breath of hesitation on her lips. “I thought as much,” she says. “He hasn’t told you, has he?”

  June stares. “Told me? Told me what?”

  There was the pretty smile again. “Mrs. Kirtz, you need to know that your husband, Craig, has been accused of a third-degree sexual offense.”

  “Sexual offense?”

  The woman nods. “And I am his counsel.”

  June has already been through the awful ordeal with another girl (her name was kept out of the press, even though Craig’s was dragged through every local paper), who rang the radio station one night in order to request a song. She claimed that Craig got into a conversation with her and arranged to meet after his show. The girl eventually told her parents this, and confessed to them, too, that he was having
regular sex with her.

  June hadn’t known anything about the girl. To her relief, that trial had come to an abrupt close. Craig had been left alone.

  “Obviously, the more information I can get,” the bald woman is saying, but June cannot follow. Her stomach is buzzing; her mind is chaos. June thinks the woman is from the police and all she can focus on is how there is eyeliner at the bottom of the bag in the woman’s hand, shielded by the wealth of samples June has provided. She has broken the law. This woman—police or lawyer or whatever she is—will soon know. June decides she will claim it was an accident. She will say it was a slip. Because the woman had scared her with these accusations against Craig and not identified herself with a badge or anything.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” June says. “This is all crazy.”

  “I thought he might have already discussed this with you—”

  “Are you the police?” June says.

  “I’m a lawyer. Your husband’s lawyer.” The woman puts her hand out and touches June’s arm. “We will talk later. Meanwhile, you should call your husband.”

  “Call my husband,” June repeats. She knows she is acting strange. She steps back from the counter, crossing her arms in front of her, and is relieved when the woman takes this as a signal.

  “It was wrong of me to come like this,” she says.

  “Craig hasn’t done anything,” June says. “He is innocent.”

  The woman smiles again, that big reassuring smile. “I’m sure he is.” She tells June she had better go now. “We’ll talk again soon,” she says. She steps away and then turns again to June, holding up the bag. “Thank you for this.”

  June watches as the woman moves off, the bag looped over her elbow. The words third-degree sexual offense burn in her mind.

  The woman passes through perfumes, her scalp reflecting the ceiling lights like a mirror. All the way down the aisle, the woman walks in a relaxed manner while June, watching, grows increasingly anxious. She is confused about who this woman is, whether she is going to help Craig or hurt him. She feels a swell of anxiety that seems to go in all directions. Third-degree sexual assault. What was that? She clutches herself with both arms, craning her neck toward the ceiling, then back to the woman, who moves with punishing slowness along the glossy aisles away from her.

  She needs the woman to leave, to leave now. The woman bends over her handbag, removing a pair of sunglasses with big dark lenses, and June is glad for the sunglasses, for the fact that the woman is hiding herself from the scrutiny of other shoppers, from the onlookers who seem all at once in abundance. She can’t bear this woman being in her store. It is painful—to June it is painful. For a moment, she considers pulling the fire alarm so that the store will be evacuated quickly, ending at once the awful encounter, the accusations against Craig, and the chance, however slim, that there is a security tag on the liner box which would cause an alarm of a different sort at any moment.

  The woman begins moving again, floating through the aisles and reaching the exit, her naked head held aloft, tilted back, the sidepieces of the sunglasses slashed across her pale temples. June thinks at last she is leaving, but then, out of the dark recesses of men’s coats, arrives a security guard.

  He is wearing a dark blue jacket, a navy tie. His shirt is perfectly ironed and his stride, so determined, makes him seem taller than he is. June feels a thud in her belly as though a rock has landed there. She knows what will happen next. She has seen it before with those who, deliberately or by sheer oversight, reach the threshold of the store’s big glass doors with unpaid goods and are stopped by this same guard. She cannot bear to watch as the woman is asked to open her bag and produce a receipt, nor the inevitable scene that will follow.

  She does not know what to do. She wills herself to rush out to the woman and declare with great apology that she has made a mistake with the bag. She can see herself standing beside the guard, laughing and shaking her head. She really needs to be more careful. I really need to be more careful! she would say. But she does not move. When it comes right down to it, she has no guts.

  She busies herself with a spray she uses on the glass countertops. Bending down, she rubs like mad the clear surface, all the while telling herself to do something to help the woman, do something now. Her husband has been accused of a sexual offense; she has planted stolen eyeliner on his lawyer. The woman will be arrested and she is doing nothing about it. Not one thing.

  Finally, because she can bear it no longer, she gathers up her courage and opens her mouth to shout out to the security guard. But just as she is about to speak, she realizes he is no longer there. He has vanished. She searches the store and sees him finally off in a corner, checking his watch. She looks for the bald woman and finds her at last, moving through the exit doors, leaving the store. Nothing has happened. The guard is now waiting for his lunch break. The woman is on her way out with the bag.

  June stares at the woman, at her insouciance, at her confidence. Nobody was ever going to stop her. And this woman has never been afraid of one damned thing, while June has been afraid all her life, it seems. Looking at her now, June sees the sunglasses that she’d imagined as a means of camouflage are not on the woman’s nose. They are not hiding the bare eyes, the brow bone without eyebrows. She has placed them high on her forehead to adorn the skull, concealing nothing.

  June had forgotten, or possibly she had never understood, that there are people in the world who are this confident, this sure of things, and who drift through life in a regal fashion, winning at everything. She sees at once the power of this woman, and the fact that if Craig aligns himself with her, chances are that he will come to no harm.

  Suddenly, June rushes from her station at the makeup counter, walking, then running out of the store after the woman, who has disappeared through the glass doors.

  The stabbing afternoon heat meets her abruptly as she exits the store, her throat feeling full as she shuffles across the parking lot. She catches up with the woman just as she is settling into the driver’s seat of her sports car.

  “Yes?” the woman says, surprised.

  June leans against the car, but the metal is hot and she lurches back from the stinging burn, still trying to get her breath. “Tell me what the charges are again,” she says.

  The woman sighs. “Inappropriate sexual contact with a girl under fifteen.”

  The girl’s age glides into June like splintering glass. She looks around to see if anyone is within hearing distance. But the parking lot is nearly empty, its white grid of divided bays like a giant fish skeleton baking in the inordinate sunshine. “I can’t believe that,” she says. “Craig would never—”

  The woman hesitates, then adds, “Mrs. Kirtz, this is your daughter we are talking about.”

  “My daughter? My daughter is forty-five years old!”

  “In the state of Maryland there is no statutory limit to child sex crimes.”

  “What does that mean, statutory limit?”

  “It means that alleged crimes from even years back can be tried as though they happened today. If your daughter convinces a judge that she was the victim of a sexual crime when she was under the age of consent, it will be as if that crime took place today. Well, almost. I’m giving you a very general account and…”

  The lawyer is still talking but June can make no sense of what she says. Why is she speaking of her Bobbie? She has not seen Bobbie for thirty years. What would she have to do with any of this?

  “We can only hope there isn’t enough evidence that your daughter—”

  “Bobbie hasn’t lived with us since she was a teenager! She hasn’t even visited. And I have no idea where she lives—”

  “I think that is the point, Mrs. Kirtz,” the woman says evenly. “She was a teenager—”

  “No.”

  “If it happened at all.”

  “It didn’t!”

  “She claims that she left home for this reason—”

  “That i
s ridiculous!” June can’t hear one more word.

  The woman gets out of the car. She stands in front of June, almost a foot taller, looking at her with her large eyes. “I’m sorry. I hate being the one to tell you this. I did try to call you but the phone was never answered.”

  “Craig doesn’t like the phone. He worries fans will find him at home so we don’t answer it. And there has been such a lot of trouble since the last crazy girl accused him—”

  “I need to ask you about something. It could really help us. Your daughter says—”

  “You’ve been talking with my daughter?”

  “She gave a statement. She claims she was in a car accident in September 1978 in which Craig was driving. Do you know about this?”

  “About the accident, yes. Of course I do. He lost his eye.”

  “And your daughter was with him? She’d have been fifteen.”

  That was impossible. How could Bobbie say such a thing? How could she expect to be believed?

  “My daughter would be dead if she’d been in that car!” June says. “So that is a lie.”

  She notices how the woman looks at her, how she seems suddenly to question her judgment, perhaps because she has just called her own daughter a liar.

  “I think the court will agree with you that it is unlikely she was in the car, which would perhaps discredit her. If there isn’t enough evidence, the judge may not even hear the case in the first place. Just to be clear. You don’t remember her being involved in any sort of accident?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “She wasn’t in the car?”

  “I know she wasn’t.”

  The attorney raises her eyebrows. “How do you know? This is important.”

  “Because I was at the hospital hours after the accident. Craig was brought in and no other person was in the car or at the scene. The police were very thorough. It was—what do you call it?—a pivotal moment in my life. I’ll never forget.”