IF I ADORNED MYSELF TO REFLECT MY HEART, WHAT WOULD I WEAR?
The look
this year is blood-soaked bandages —head to foot! What sets this
season’s catwalk apart is the addition of smiley-face tee shirts
on the older, scrawny models. This couture of contrast reflects the designer’s
fascination with the healing properties of time. The entire line of bandage
and tee shirt ensembles is called appropriately, This Too Shall Pass.
ALONG FOR THE RIDE
I didn’t think she could sit through all of the feature film— Three Kings—a smart but noisy action picture set during the Gulf War. I thought she’d fidget and get antsy about how long it would take to get from Brookline to Somerville, find parking and be early enough to get a seat at ZuZu. She wanted me to hear a singer named Micah. She said I’d like his voice and the songs he writes. I understood that it meant a lot to her that I did. To my surprise, not only did she not fidget, she kept leaning across the armrest to whisper, "This is great!" She was clearly riveted. I’d underestimated both the pull of good storytelling and the sexual magnetism of George Clooney.
As we walked through the theater, the aroma of hot popcorn pervaded the lobby. The spontaneous combustion of conversations, also popping, kept me inside a few more moments than I needed to be. It was lively and comforting. I didn’t want to step into the frigid dark of the wintry parking lot, slipping and sliding to my car. And I really didn’t want to drag my weary old body all the way to Somerville. But I knew I couldn’t disappoint her. It was so nice to have moved past the adolescent "Better Dead than Bred" years when voluntarily spending an evening hanging out with a parent was beyond the pale.
"Oh Mum, I forgot to ask you if it’s okay if we pick up Vernon? He wants to come to this show and doesn’t have a way to get there."
"I don’t know. Who’s Vernon and where does he live?"
"He’s Slick’s roommate. He’s a security guard too, but I think he works in a different store. You’ll like him —he raises rabbits."
"Mmm…now I’m really curious about where he lives."
"Charlestown. That’s on the way, right?"
All that money spent on a private education where her creativity and specialness were nurtured, and she still has not the slightest idea how to differentiate north from south, east from west. Still, her sweet enthusiasm was worth the detour.
Vernon was a man of few words. Physically, he was what my mother would describe as "a tall drink of water" although there was nothing at all fluid about his movements. He perambulated towards the back seat of my VW Beetle as if pulled on a platform with rusty wheels. He made stiff, jerky movements from the waist up to his odd rooster articulated neck, but he somehow still seemed to glide. I couldn’t actually see his feet walking.
I turned to smile at him when we were introduced, as he was lowering himself into the cramped seat. I caught his beaky profile and was struck by his Adam’s apple, the size of Rhode Island. I imagined him startling shoplifters rather than apprehending them.
All the way to ZuZu, as Emma prattled pleasantly, Vernon spoke only twice. Once he said, in response to nothing at all, "I’m out of gum." As we pulled into the parking lot behind the club, he offered rather wistfully, "I gotta get to Hoboken."
DEAD SOLDIERS I
On Saturdays when my father picked me up for his court-ordered visits, he would show me photographs of dead Japanese soldiers. They were in an album he compiled from his WWII days as a US Marine in the Pacific. Leafing through the pages with their neat black photo-corners, he’d point to a particularly gruesome image, "There’s another dead Jap," or, "Look, he got it right between the eyes." I was eight. I wanted more than anything, for my daddy to spend time with me. If this is what he wanted to do, then I was going to find a way to look at the decaying bodies with their grotesquely stiff limbs and faces shot away and nod with interest rather than recoil or shut my eyes. I just wanted to fit in, to be part of what was normal here. I would sit at the formica and wrought iron kitchen table in his apartment, my feet dangling from the turquoise cushioned chair, drawing pictures on a pad of lined paper, waiting for my father to get off the phone, I would design gowns that had billowing shirts that trailed behind, the front parting like curtains to reveal a white lace crinoline beneath it. The sleeves were always very long and ended in a point that reached the middle finger. The headgear was some version of a steeple cap with flowing scarves coming out of the top. Definitely princess-wear. Sometimes I’d design my dream house, with plenty of rooms for my mom and servants. I decided we’d live very luxuriously. Even though the house would typically be shaped like a California contemporary—long and low—it not only had a swimming pool, library, formal dining room, dressing rooms, music room, screening room, rooms for pets of all kinds, but always, always, a moat. I’d be lost in my sketches, thinking about colors and textures when the nasal whine of my father’s new wife, Barbara, would invariably pierce my daydreams:, "Tony, does she have to sit on the chairs?" I didn’t know how to make myself any smaller or less trouble.
My father would tell me it was time to leave and we’d go out to the Jolly Roger on Sunrise Boulevard for lunch. I’d have a hamburger or hot dog, but I was really only interested in the milk shake. I liked coffee milk shakes. They weren’t as sweet as vanilla or strawberry and I wasn’t a big chocolate fan. The only food my father would eat beside Italian food was steak. No vegetables, ever. Sometimes a side of eggs, but no vegetables. When he took me for Chinese food, he’d order pepper steak. That was his concession to the exotic.
After lunch, sometimes we’d go to the movies. That was my favorite thing. I liked to sit in the front row, with no one else between me and the screen. I wanted to be surrounded by the world of the movie, to be in it. We went to see "Love Me Tender." I thought Elvis Presley was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. When he cried in the story, he looked like an angel.
On the days that we didn’t go to the movies, we’d spend the afternoon with some of my father’s friends. They all had little boy names like Petey, Johnny, or Billy. Mostly they’d sit around drinking and smoking cigarettes in a dark restaurant or bar where there were never any other customers. When the friends told stories they used words that I knew were Italian, that sounded like "vafongool" or "mamalook" or "bootana" but unlike my Italian-speaking grandparents and their friends, these guys looked so American—they looked like people on television. They drove convertibles. They dressed "sharp", in two-tone shoes or shiny jackets and contrasting shirts with big collars that were open at the top. They had pinky rings and medallions around their necks. When they laughed at my father’s jokes, their teeth and their jewelry all flashed at once.
They often laughed about women, who never seemed to have names, just "that one of Charlie G’s" or " the redhead broad at the diner." Sometimes my father would talk about my mother. He never called her the kind of names she called him, but he’d talk about how she was letting herself go or how she was a "real ballbreaker." I thought that must have something to do with sports, which didn’t seem at all like my mother, but since I was the poster child for being seen and not heard, I didn’t ask any questions. I tried to fit in.
Once upon a time
Once upon a time there was a cobbler’s daughter who believed she was a princess. From the time she was a little girl, Esmeralda felt that her true, royal family would someday come to claim her. What joy she’d feel when she was taken back to the palace —a beautiful, refined setting, where her own delicate appearance would fit in. She took comfort in the thought that she’d no longer have to endure comments about her looks, hinting that such beauty was something for which she should surely be punished. These crass, unsolicited comments always filled Esmeralda with dread and shame.
To cheer herself up, she’d go over the story in her mind, about how she must have fallen out of the royal carriage as it rolled along the bumpy road as it traveled through the countryside. Probably before the royal family had a chance to notice that she was missing, Ethel and Herman Grimly, a poor and thoughtless couple with no children of their own, found her whimpering by the side of the road and took her back to their village in the far north of the neighboring kingdom
Esmeralda had no doubt that her shocking disappearance broke the heart of her real parents. Naturally, they would have done everything they possibly could to find their precious baby daughter and bring her back. If only the Grimlys had stop to think about the pain their rash action had caused. But then again, the Grimlys never stopped to think.
Esmeralda was not allowed to go to the village school. The Grimlys thought it would put ideas in her head that would make her want more —and then where would it end? Instead, Esmeralda, from the moment she was tall enough to see over the wooden table top in the cold and leaky stone cottage, was forced to spend all day, every day, helping the Grimlys mend shoes —mostly wooden clogs—and you know how hard they are to mend. The shoes belonged to the farmers, laborers, and shopkeepers who paid their hard earned pennies to the Grimlys to give new life to these old soles.
The only time Esmeralda was allowed to be outside with other people was on market day, once a month. The Grimlys set up a makeshift stall and put up a gaudy, misspelled sign advertising their services. "Shuz R Us" it said. It really didn’t matter about the sign, though. Everyone knew they were the only cobblers within a three-day walk, and that was walking with comfortable shoes.
On market day, Ethel and Herman took turns taking orders from the customers while the other sat on a high burlap-cushioned stool in front of the stall, making a big show of the artisanal qualities of their work. Usually this marketing technique paid off. At certain times of the day, a great clogless crowd would gather round to gawp while the Grimlys gave demonstrations of bespoke cobbling, holding fine silver nails clamped between their lips as they tapped or filed the wooden shoes in their hands.
At these times, and only these times, Esmeralda could sneak away, free from the hawk-like scrutiny of the people she thought of as her foster parents. She’d search the market area and beyond, if there was time, for signs of anything that would lead her back to her true family and the life she was meant to lead.
And it was only in these fleeting moments, which she experienced once a month, that her magic power could be used.
To be continued…
