Makeovers by Marcia

by Claudia Mills

  Lizzie’s mother drove them. Mrs. Archer was different from the other West Creek moms. An English professor at the university, she had long hair like a college student’s, only now turning gray. All her clothes were about twenty years out of style, if they had been in style then. She wore no makeup at all. Marcia was sure that Lizzie’s mother had never attended a Jay-Dub party and never would.

  “Good evening, Marcia,” Mrs. Archer said when Marcia slipped into the back seat next to Lizzie. “How’s eighth grade so far?”

  That was the standard question all the parents asked.

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “What have you been reading lately for fun?”

  That was the kind of question that could only have come from Lizzie’s mother.

  Marcia strained to remember the title of the last book she had read. She couldn’t come up with anything. “I mostly read magazines. Seventeen. Glamour. Cosmo.”

  Had Mrs. Archer cringed? What would she have done if Marcia had told the truth, that she mostly read catalogs?

  An awkward silence descended on the car. Marcia wished Lizzie’s mother would give up, but she knew Mrs. Archer would make another strained attempt at conversation. Sure enough, she asked one last question. “What clubs will you be in at school this fall?”

  Lizzie was the star of the math team and the new editor of the literary magazine, and she played flute solos all the time in the orchestra. Marcia and Sarah had always thought it was dorky to get involved in dumb school clubs. If the middle school had had a cheerleading squad, Marcia might have tried out for it. “Give me an A! Give me an L! Give me an E! Give me an X! What does it spell? ALEX!” But cheerleading didn’t start until high school.

  “I’m not into clubs, exactly.” Marcia had to think of something else to say. She couldn’t bear to have Lizzie’s mother thinking she was a complete and total zero. “I help my mom in her business sometimes. And—um—I’ve been walking a lot. And I’ve been doing some drawing.”

  “I didn’t know you liked art,” Lizzie said.

  Was it going to turn out that Lizzie was also an accomplished artist who had her work on display in the Denver Art Museum? Was there anything Lizzie Archer couldn’t do? Actually, Marcia knew that Lizzie wasn’t good at sports. And until last year she hadn’t had very many—any?—Friends. Marcia still remembered how mean she herself used to be to Lizzie, back in sixth grade.

  “It’s not like I’m good at art, or anything,” Marcia said uncomfortably. “I just like drawing things.”

  “Do you want to give me something for Creek Dreams?” Lizzie asked. “We publish art, too, you know”

  “Maybe.” Marcia couldn’t imagine submitting one of her drawings to Lizzie. What if Lizzie said it wasn’t any good? It was bad enough being sneered at by Mr. Morrison; it would be intolerable to be rejected by Lizzie Archer. Besides, no one Marcia knew read Creek Dreams, except for the parents of the nerdy kids who had stuff in it.

  “You girls are in for some interesting experiences at the Manor,” Mrs. Archer said then.

  Interesting? It wasn’t the word Marcia would have used.

  “I know,” Lizzie said. “I’m a little bit scared. I hope—Well, I hope it won’t be too sad … these people in wheelchairs, who were once so active, living out in the world, who had families and friends, and now have nobody to visit them. All they have is their memories. If they still have their memories. That would be the worst thing—to have hardly any future, and such a dreary present, and then to lose your past, too.”

  Lizzie was starting to sound distraught. She was always the emotional one, who cried real tears over some sad book in English class that Marcia hadn’t bothered to finish. But Marcia felt uneasy about the nursing home, too. It was bound to be depressing to see all those old people sitting there.

  “At least they’ll have you two to visit them now,” Lizzie’s mother said.

  When they reached the nursing home, Mrs. Archer dropped the girls off at the front entrance and drove away. Marcia and Lizzie looked at each other.

  “I’m scared, too,” Marcia admitted.

  Inside the lobby, a pleasant-looking, not-old woman greeted them. “Are you girls here for the orientation? It’s in the dining room. Straight down this hall, and then turn left.”

  The nursing home was attractively decorated. On the freshly painted pale green walls were pictures of cheerful landscapes showing gardens overgrown with roses in full bloom and sailboats drifting on sunny seas. It had a funny smell, though, a harsh odor of antiseptic mixed with … Marcia hoped the other smell wasn’t old people’s pee.

  The hallway was vacant, except for a sad-eyed lady standing silent in her doorway and two old men parked in their wheelchairs near the nurses’ station. Marcia felt shy as she approached them. Should she say hi, or not?

  “Pretty,” one old man croaked to them. Marcia forced a smile. “See you later, darlin’s,” he said, and winked. Marcia fought the urge to turn and run back out to the parking lot. There were worse things in life than failing social studies.

  “He’s just being friendly.” Lizzie sounded as if she was trying to convince herself as much as Marcia.

  “I know,” Marcia said.

  Everything felt different once they reached the dining room. A dozen West Creek eighth graders were already talking and laughing by the refreshment table. Marcia checked: Alex wasn’t there yet.

  “Do you want some punch?” Lizzie asked, holding the ladle over an empty paper cup.

  “No thanks,” Marcia said. “I’m on a diet.”

  “You’re on a diet?” Lizzie almost shrieked. “You don’t weigh anything!”

  “I bet I weigh thirty pounds more than you do,” Marcia shot back. It was easy for Lizzie to say that Marcia didn’t need to lose weight.

  “I’m practically a midget,” Lizzie said lightly. “Everyone in the world weighs more than I do. But you—you’re perfect. You’re beautiful. You don’t need to lose a single ounce.”

  “Well, I’m not hungry or thirsty right now,” Marcia said.

  “I’m hungry and thirsty.”

  It was Alex. Lately he was always materializing out of nowhere at inconvenient moments. Marcia hoped he hadn’t heard their conversation about dieting.

  Alex crammed a couple of cookies in his mouth, washed them down with a long gulp of punch, then said, “Did you see those geezers in the hall? One of them whistled at a girl walking ahead of me. I think they’re looking for dates.”

  “Maybe one of them will go with me to the eighth-grade dance,” Marcia said. Instantly she was sorry she had said it. It made her sound pathetic—the Girl Without a Date. It was true that nobody had a date for the dance yet. But this sounded as if she didn’t expect ever to have one. Also, it sounded as if she was fishing for Alex to ask her, right then and there, to save her from going to the dance with geezers. Not that he could ask her in front of Lizzie.

  “You’d better brush up on your Charleston,” Alex said.

  Marcia refused to laugh.

  “West Creek students!” a tall woman with a beehive hairdo called out. Marcia had never seen a person with a beehive hairdo in real life before. The staff at the nursing home might need makeovers, too. Marcia’s fingers itched to wash the hair spray out of the woman’s teased-up hair and let it fall naturally around her face. She’d have to do something about her eyebrows, too. The natural brows were gone—plucked out? The painted-on ones were shaped to give the woman’s face a look of perpetual surprise. She wasn’t that old, either; she could be passable-looking with a little help.

  “Please find a seat, and I’ll run the video,” the lady said.

  Marcia, Lizzie, and Alex sat down at the closest table. Alex took the seat next to Marcia, rather than the one next to Lizzie. That was something.

  The beehive lady turned on the large-screen TV and switched off the lights. The video began. It made West Creek Manor sound like the best nursing home in America. The grounds looked like an extensive park,
though Marcia hadn’t been all that impressed when Mrs. Archer drove in. The hallway that Marcia and Lizzie had walked down looked longer and more spacious, and no leering old men loitered there. The residents shown were busily engaged in craft projects, singing at a party they called the Oktoberfest, boarding buses in their wheelchairs for excursions to the mountains. Everyone was smiling.

  When the video was over, the beehive lady switched the lights back on and began explaining the rules for student volunteers. All volunteers had to sign in and sign out and wear an official VOLUNTEER badge. They were to be given a list of residents to visit for that day and were to enter only the rooms designated on their list. Many of the residents were on special diets, so no food gifts were to be given to anyone without permission. Appropriate behavior toward the residents was to be observed at all times. Anyone failing to follow any of these rules would not be allowed to continue as a West Creek Manor volunteer.

  “Boohoo,” Alex fake-sobbed to Marcia.

  “Any questions?” the lady asked. “Oh, Ms. Williams told me one of you wants to interview the residents for an oral history project. That’s wonderful, but do ask permission before tape-recording or photographing anybody. And one of you wants to do—I believe it was beauty makeovers for our residents?”

  Someone laughed. Marcia sank lower in her seat to make herself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

  “That’s fine, too, but do make sure you don’t upset the residents in any way. You might want to check with the staff about the particular preferences of individual residents before you offer your services.”

  Or you might want not to offer your services at all.

  “Any questions?” the beehive lady asked again.

  Nobody had any, not even Alex, though under his breath he whispered to Marcia, “Like, hey, lady, what happened to your hair?” He made a low buzzing sound, in apparent imitation of a swarm of bees heading home for the night.

  “If there are no more questions, well, then, thank you for your kindness in volunteering to help us this year. We’ll see you back here next week.”

  Marcia didn’t feel all that kind. None of them wanted to be there, not even Lizzie. They were there because Ms. Williams was making them come in order to pass eighth-grade social studies.

  “My mom’s probably here by now,” Marcia told Lizzie. “It’s five past eight, and I told her I thought we’d be done by eight o’clock.”

  The girls started back down the hallway, ahead of the others, who had stopped to grab one last cookie. The old men were gone, thank goodness. But the sad-eyed lady was still standing in her doorway. Had she been standing there the whole time?

  “Girls,” she called to them softly.

  Marcia and Lizzie stopped walking.

  “Do you have a minute? I have some special things I want to show you.”

  Marcia was glad that Lizzie answered for both of them. “We can’t right now. But we’re coming back soon, to visit lots of people. I hope we can visit you then.”

  “It will only take a minute.”

  The beehive lady had told them the rule: don’t enter any rooms except those designated on the day’s list. And Marcia’s mother probably was waiting. And if there was anything in the world Marcia didn’t want to do, it was see whatever the lady had to show them.

  Then, in a small voice, Lizzie said, “Okay.”

  “Lizzie …” Marcia hissed at her warningly. But when Lizzie entered the room, Marcia had no choice but to follow.

  The floor of the room was bare linoleum, and the bed was a hospital-type bed with an ugly metal frame, but the quilt was bright and colorful, and every wall was covered with framed family photos.

  “This is my son, Robbie,” the woman said, pointing to a picture of a young man in a military uniform. “Here he is as a baby.” The picture showed a chubby toddler with a sticky face and a big smile.

  “Where does he live now?” Lizzie asked.

  “He was killed in Vietnam,” the lady said. “October eighteenth, nineteen sixty-seven. That was the day he died. ‘Friendly fire,’ they called it. Shot by mistake by his own side.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lizzie whispered. Marcia tugged at Lizzie’s sleeve. She didn’t think she could stand being there an–other minute.

  The beehive lady appeared in the doorway. “Mabel, these girls need to go home now.”

  “We’ll be back to see you again,” Lizzie promised faintly. Marcia hoped Lizzie was wrong.

  A tear rolled down the woman’s cheeks. “I still miss Robbie every day.”

  “Come, girls,” the beehive lady said gently.

  Out in the hall, Marcia waited to see if they were going to be fired as West Creek Manor volunteers, given that they had broken one of the most important rules on the very first day. Please fire us, please fire us, please, please, please!

  “We knew we weren’t supposed to go into the residents’ rooms,” Lizzie said. “But she looked so sad. And she said it would just take a minute.”

  Marcia saw Lizzie’s eyes fill up with tears.

  “I know,” the beehive lady said, putting one arm around Lizzie and the other around Marcia. “There’s a story in every one of these rooms that can break your heart if you let it. Good night, girls. West Creek Manor is lucky to have both of you.”

  It was lucky to have Lizzie, maybe. But if Marcia had her way, she’d drive away from West Creek Manor that night, and never ever come back.

  six

  Two days later, Sarah and Marcia were standing beside their lockers after school when Travis Edwards stopped by.

  “Hi, Sarah,” he said. And then he stood there, grinning like—well, “like an idiot” was the expression that came to Marcia’s mind.

  “I was wondering …” he said.

  “Wondering what?” Sarah asked with the coy little smile she had learned from Marcia.

  Then one of Travis’s friends came along and yanked him away.

  “Wondering what?” Sarah almost shrieked to Marcia after Travis was out of earshot. “Do you think he was wondering what I think he was wondering?”

  “Well, I don’t think he was wondering if you’d done the math homework yet,” Marcia said, trying to look happy for her friend. But if Travis asked Sarah to the dance and Alex didn’t ask Marcia … It couldn’t happen. Marcia simply couldn’t bear for it to happen.

  The next day, Travis stopped Marcia in the hall when she was on her way to math; he wasn’t in any of her classes. “Hey. Marcia. How’s it going?”

  “Okay,” Marcia said. She didn’t think Travis wanted details about her weight, her first visit to the nursing home, or her relationship with Alex.

  “I was wondering—” Travis began, and then broke off.

  More wondering? There was the same shyness in Travis’s eyes that had been there when he had stopped at Sarah’s locker yesterday. Was he now going to ask her, Marcia, to the dance?

  Instantly Marcia was on the alert. She would never deliberately take a boy away from any of her friends, but if the boy came crawling up to her, of his own free will … Still, it was Alex she wanted to go to the dance with, Alex and no one else. But she wasn’t going to wait forever for him to ask her, either.

  “Yes?” Marcia knew her large blue eyes were her best feature. She opened them wide and glanced up at Travis through long, dark lashes.

  “The eighth-grade dance?”

  “Yes?” She let her lips curve into an encouraging smile. Travis really was very cute. His light brown hair, a little too long, hung down over his eyes.

  “Do you think … ?”

  Travis stopped again. Marcia tried to hold her smile, but she was beginning to feel the way she did when her dad called out “Say cheese!” and then fiddled with his camera for another five minutes.

  “If I asked …”

  Come on!

  “Do you think Sarah would go with me?”

  Marcia could feel her face crumpling into visible disappointment. Quickly she slapped a new smile into
place: the knowing smile of a wise, secure, more experienced, but still extremely attractive older woman, giving advice to foolish young lovers.

  Now Marcia had to think of what to say. Sarah certainly did want to go to the dance with Travis, every bit as much as Marcia wanted to go with Alex. Sarah wanted to go to the dance with Travis more than anything in the world. But Marcia couldn’t say that.

  “I think …” Marcia said slowly, as if considering the question for the first time. “Yeah, I have a feeling … I mean, if you asked her the right way.”

  “Would you do it? Ask her for me?” He grinned at her confidentially.

  So Marcia, who had no date for the dance yet, was supposed to bustle about arranging Sarah’s date for her?

  “I think she’d be more likely to go if you asked her yourself.” She tried to keep the impatience out of her voice.

  “I will. But could you just sort of … ask her if she would go with me if I did ask her?”

  “Okay.” She forced herself to give the secret smile of one conspirator to another.

  “Great. You’re going with Alex?”

  Marcia squirmed. What was she supposed to say to that? A lie was too dangerous; the truth was too humiliating. “Who knows.”

  “You girls.” Travis shook his head in obvious despair and admiration.

  The bell rang. Marcia was officially late for math. Old, decrepit Mr. Adams always gave extra homework for tardiness.

  Thanks a lot, Travis Edwards.

  Marcia sat in French class later that morning, trying not to think about her weight or the dance. It was hard.

  Marcia had seen T-shirts that said, “So Many Books, So Little Time,” intended for people like Lizzie and her mother. Marcia’s T-shirt would have to say, “So Many Grapefruits, So Little Weight Loss.” She had been taking every extra step she could, as measured by her pedometer, and she had lost one more pound. But one pound wasn’t enough. One pound was nothing.

  Maybe the acid in the grapefruit stopped working after a certain point. Or maybe she shouldn’t have eaten that whole entire large bag of potato chips last night, after she had decided she couldn’t live another minute without the wonderful salty crunchiness of potato chips in her mouth. Her mother never bought potato chips, but Marcia knew her father had a brand-new bag inside the little cupboard in his home office.