“Listen to me.” He paced, pulled his rolled-sleeve Tommy Hilfiger shirt away from his long, wide torso. Clarissa stood silent, feeling stupid, a blind anger building. He stopped at the very edge of the porch, looked out over the yard as if he were a king surveying his fiefdom. Surely he was enjoying this, taking his sweet time before delivering his edict. He wiped his giant hand over his face in a gesture that suggested he was struggling with Clarissa’s idiocy. And then the king spoke, that half-smile planted like a cockroach. “You’re going to take this piece of redneck kak back to where you got it. Ne? Do you understand?… Clarissa?”
She stared at the dirt. An acorn, perfectly formed—as if it were the idea of an acorn rather than the real deal—landed by her left foot. She thought about Poor Spot Cemetery and the souls who rested there, how they had been powerless in life because of their gender.
“I don’t want to see this monstrosity in my yard again. And then you’re going to get the truck back and bring it home and keep your stupid, fat American ass in line.”
Both the little girl and the middle-aged woman Clarissa would soon become looked up at him, wondering who in the hell he thought he was speaking to. Fury, frustration, fear, and a host of other words that began primarily with f (fucking motherfucker led the way) coursed through her. She could feel tears rising, but by God, she would not give him the satisfaction. She would, however, no matter the price, find her voice. The words popped, the staccato rhythm creating tiny holes in the hot breeze. She was unaware of everything except her pain as she screamed, “You will not tell me what to do. Not now. Not ever. Never!”
He threw back his head and laughed.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she screamed through gritted teeth.
Arrogance lit his features as if he were made of crystal and ice. “Take the car back, Clarissa. I’m not going to tell you again.” And then he turned and sauntered into the house, calm as dust, as if he’d done one fine job of scolding an impertinent child.
In her mind’s eye, Clarissa fell to her knees and wailed as her mother and husband laughed, taunting her.
“You little fool,” she heard her mother say.
“Have you always been such a dimwit?” her husband chortled.
Clarissa, standing under the oaks, the heat searing her T-shirt to her skin, said to the memories, “No, no, no!” She would not allow the past, her mother’s meanness, her husband’s arrogance, to define her. She had no idea how she would step out of this wasteland riddled with her mother’s bones and her husband’s resentment, but she was determined to find her way.
She was off to a fair start. For instance, she did not consider for even a moment following her husband’s orders. “No way,” she said at the thought of taking the El Camino back to A-One Auto.
As she wiped lifeless mosquitoes off the hood, her unhinged self-pity morphed into something she had control over. Standing in the blistering heat, she understood there would be no slinking back into the house and asking for forgiveness, no crying, no trying to make things right with Papa Bear. She giggled. Papa Bear was a perfect name for him.
She waited by the El Camino for what she thought was two or three minutes—enough time for him to get settled again into his office. Then she went inside, retrieved her purse from its hiding place, fished out her cell phone, and flipped it open.
Bingo! Adams had called. She walked into her bedroom, called him back, checked the time, told him she wouldn’t make it to his reading because her day had gotten a little crazy and she was running late, but that she’d meet up with him at the B and B. They’d have drinks. Get caught up. There would be other people around. She’d enjoy herself. She wouldn’t worry about getting home before midnight. Papa Bear could go fuck himself. She decided all of this in the span of a thirty-second conversation.
“Can’t wait to see you, baby.” That’s what Adams said to her right before they hung up.
Despite the day’s searing heat, Clarissa took the hottest shower of her life. She needed to rid her skin, her hair, her soul, of all of the day’s stink and gunk and funereal dust. The water pooled around her feet. She wiggled her toes, admiring the harlot red lacquer. It had not yet chipped or flaked. She shaved her legs, exfoliated nearly every inch of skin, washed her hair twice, and conditioned it with a cream that smelled of lavender and thyme. The water rushed over her hair, head, breasts, belly, hips, thighs, legs, tender feet. The shadow women, muttering in the soft light of her ovaries, relaxed amid the steam.
Happiness, serenity, and well-being, she told herself as she scrubbed between her toes, was a decision. A goddamn simple decision.
That’s right, Clarissa. Just make up your mind: Be happy. Do not dwell on your fears. Do not let someone else’s insecurities fuel your own. Do not be a pussy. Do not think about bliss. Be bliss… I can’t hear you! The voice in her head had taken on the tonality of a Parris Island drill sergeant who had a thing for Deepak Chopra platitudes and spike Prada pumps.
She reached for the faucet knobs, turned off the water, grabbed the towel that she’d slung over the top of the door, and stepped out of the shower. Thinking that a vigorous drying would stimulate blood flow (and perhaps slough off dead cells, the benefits of which were innumerable) and knowing that healthy circulation helped ward off anxiety and stress (those little demons), Clarissa proceeded to rub herself with her towel—forehead to foot—so enthusiastically that a mole on her left calf began to bleed. “Holy shit,” she said when she noticed. She dabbed off the blood and rubbed Chanel No. 5 moisturizer (“Pour le corps,” she said in a shaky French accent) on the length and breadth of both smooth legs.
Feeling as if the day’s heat were a minor annoyance rather than a life-threatening record breaker, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, combed through her long curls, and plotted. If her husband tried to stop her, she’d simply say, “Too bad!” And if he began to deride her, she’d—without emotion—gather her things, drive the hour to town, and finish dressing in the restroom of, say, that McDonald’s on the parkway. Life was suddenly full of solutions. Optimism wasn’t such a slippery slope, after all. Besides, there was no way he was going to get what he wanted. Not this time.
She combed conditioner through her hair and imagined him up there in his office, sifting through his favorite porn sites (she envisioned him as a giant fly, his right front leg tapping Enter, his compound eyes glowing in the screen’s reflection, his thorax bloated with beer), and then she told herself that it was unfair to assume such a thing. Perhaps he was perusing Dick Blick Art Materials, where he could order online anything from paint-brushes to lead-free glazes. Or checking his e-mail. Or reading the Times. Why was she so suspicious? It was one of her worst traits. Just because he suffered from a porn addiction did not mean that he was whacking off upstairs. Besides, she thought she heard him pacing. Could one whack off and pace simultaneously? Absolutely not. He wasn’t coordinated enough.
She secured her hair with a green ribbon and moisturized her face. Rather than slopping it on as usual, she took the time to massage in the thirty-five-dollar-a-tube goop with her fingertips, using smooth, concentric motions just as the nineteen-year-old Shisheido counter girl had demonstrated.
Olga Villada wafted in, looked at Clarissa’s arsenal of beauty products, and felt a quick stab of regret; what she wouldn’t give to be alive—young and pretty—and trying all those little pots of color for herself. She watched Clarissa bend into her reflection, her image blooming in a mirror Olga Villada had once primped in front of. But that was all over. When her life was taken, her reflection went with it. Bitterness, that old poison, mushroomed through her spectral veins, and she decided it was best if she stayed away from Clarissa’s tantalizing gels and powders and sable brushes and a mirror that for her held only the image of other women: never her own, not ever again. She tossed back her head—she was a proud woman—drifted out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, and down the hall in search of strength; where were her husband and son?
Clarissa studied hersel
f in the mirror, searching, angling to catch a purer light. Jaws. Cheeks. Mouth. Teeth: straight and unremarkable. Thanks to the surgeon’s scalpel and drill and five years in braces, she only slightly resembled the Clarissa of her youth. No one would ever guess that she’d once been disfigured (“deformed” was the word that rose in Clarissa’s mind), that her mother’s often shouted order to “push harder!”—an impossible solution for the wrong problem—bedeviled her like an aural haunting, a maternal curse. For the last fourteen years, she had lived with an ordinary face: no underbite, no overbite, no buck-teeth, nothing to prevent her from operating in the world as if she had every right to be treated with the same respect as any other person. On that hot solstice day—one that had already proven to be extraordinary for Clarissa—she gazed into Olga Villada’s unblemished mirror and realized that the person she was in her head was not the person whose reflection stared back at her.
“Interesting,” Clarissa whispered, surprised by a sudden sense of loss. Would she ever be able to meld the two—the pre-and postsurgery Clarissas? Would she ever rid her consciousness of the Clarissa her classmates had dubbed Bucky? Did she really want to? If she banished Ugly Clarissa, would her life be different in ways noticeable and not? Would she be a better person? Would her husband finally love her? Clarissa closed her eyes and, understanding she had no answers, forced all the images—mental pixel by mental pixel—to dissolve. As her world faded to white, she heard the laughter of a woman and child and decided it was her heart song. Nothing more. She stood quiet and still, nearly a solid minute, enjoying the nothingness. But because life is not composed of dearth no matter how comforting, an image of those peach roses in their cut crystal vase took shape, obliterating her mind’s cool white canvas. How lovely, she thought, how very, very lovely. She opened her eyes.
“Tonight, you are beautiful,” she told the mirror, a cold fury steadying her. “Tonight, you will do whatever your heart desires.” She loved this strange new sensation, loved how it was directed exclusively at her husband. Leashed anger.
She stepped into her bedroom and rummaged through her closet, amazed at the clarifying power of being profoundly yet calmly pissed off. She sifted through her collection of jumpers—oversize numbers that hid her curves and suggested that middle age was a lonely, horrid Sahara desert bereft of plant life, chocolate, and sex.
“Fuck that,” Clarissa said. She turned her attention to her jeans, searching for a specific pair—skintight with a poppy em-broidered up one thigh—she’d bought on a whim two months prior but never worn. She pulled them off the hanger and held them in front of her. Dubious but tempted, she thought, If you can buy yourself an El Camino, you can certainly rock these jeans. She folded them over her arm and tried to feel comfortable with this newfound recklessness. It made her nose itch. She sneezed. Fear and something akin to exhilaration boiled through her.
Despite the sex-kitten jeans and her emerging resolve to allow her real self to come out of hiding, Clarissa reverted to habit, drifting over to her sizable collection of long-sleeved, elephantine tunics. This urge to hide her body was nearly pathological. It had taken root in her early years when her mother prattled nearly nonstop about the evils of men and the need for Clarissa to cover up. To add salt to the old wound, here she was, married to a man obsessed with flesh as long as it wasn’t her flesh. No wonder she felt like a mop. She stood there, holding the slinky jeans to her breasts, wondering if she had the nerve to wear a top that showed off her cleavage, her tight waist.
She went back into her bedroom and waded through her chest of drawers. She was the owner of a collection of chemises she never wore, unless she hid them under something big and blousy. There was one in particular she had in mind. It was coral—a good color match with the poppy—and had thin lace straps. She dug like a dog hunting down a lost bone, tossing silky little squares into the air. They floated, landing silently in a shimmering butterfly pile. Finally, at the bottom of the last drawer, she found the one she wanted; it was balled up like a lonely fist. She unfurled the chemise and held it to the light. “Perfect.”
Other women showed their bodies. Other women were confident and saucy. Her husband—the painter, ceramicist, sculptor, multimedia madman, and photographer of butt-naked women—did not like it when she revealed that she was a woman with fair contours. All the more reason, my dear, all the more reason.
She laid the jeans and chemise on the bed, arranging them the way one would on a mannequin, smoothing and poufing. She stepped back, studied the ensemble, and felt hope’s thick sap rise. But she could not identify what the hope was pinned to. What good was hope if it remained nebulous? Hope was one of those abstractions, like love; for it to be meaningful, it had to be hitched to something real—like a car or a can of good tuna or a decent man.
Clarissa stepped back into the bathroom and once more faced the antique walnut-framed mirror. She had discovered it in the barn underneath a pile of old lumber. She did not know, of course, that the mirror had once held the reflection of Olga Villada and that a spark of that woman’s energy remained, a faint shine, all about the beveled edge. Indeed, when she thought about it at all, Clarissa attributed the mirror’s suggestion of a sparkly outline to the light cast by the bathroom’s pink, frosted-glass chandelier that hung from the ceiling like a frozen, three-armed octopus. Clarissa leaned in close to the mirror and applied two coats of mascara. She rifled through her lipsticks in the vanity drawer and chose a pale coral gloss, betting it would snap up the blue of her eyes and the slow burn of her blond hair that was naturally streaked with tones of amber and red. Because the gloss was a soft hue, she knew it would not compete with the deeper coral of the chemise.
All made up, she returned to the bedroom, pretty, adrenaline flowing, vibrant, and bubbly. She eyed the jeans and knew it was now or never. She sighed, stretched her arms over her head as if she were warming up for a marathon, remembered a girl she went to high school with who bragged that she stuffed herself into her too-tight jeans by lying on her bed, sucking in her stomach, and pulling up the zipper with a pair of pliers. She would not resort to that. No. Not ever. Life should be lived one leg at a time, she thought, grabbing the jeans and pulling them on, an idea of what she wanted to look like plastered in her brain.
As was the case with most women, the idea—fed by a fashion industry intent on glorifying skeletal chic—was far more anemic than the opulent reality. She zipped up—without the aid of pliers or any other hand tool—half squatted to stretch the fabric, and then looked at herself in the full-length mirror nailed to her bedroom door, front and side and three-quarter rear. The horror of actuality versus the folly of hope slammed her down. She had a butt. A real butt. An I’m a Woman with Ample Hips for Loving butt. The Some Men Hate It and Others Can’t Get Enough of It butt. The Size Two Is for Fools and Starvation Victims butt. The Here I Am and I’m Not Going to Go Away No Matter How Much Artificial Sweetener I Ingest butt. The Why Couldn’t My Mother Have Been Twiggy butt. The Could You Please Slide over a Little Bit More butt. The I Clear the Dance Floor Because I’m the Only One Out Here Bopping with a Big Butt butt. The I Shed Tears and Curse the Gods and Feel Deeply Ashamed over My Big-Assed Booty butt.
There it was, sheathed in denim as if it were a peacock in full bloom announcing to heaven and hell that it had a sex drive. Holy shit. She could not go out like this. What on earth had she been thinking!
Deepak, a new and growing voice in her consciousness, having lost his drill sergeant edge, turned on the light in her brain, waved his Prada clutch in her face, and said, “Embrace the butt, my friend.”
Embrace the butt? Embrace the butt?
“Yes, yes! Embrace it, for it is like a beautiful flower your soul sends out into the world for the glory of all the universe.”
Oh, shut up, Deepak. She closed her eyes, then reopened them, hoping something had changed. Nope, it was still there, celestial and proud.
“There is no other butt in the world like it. Yours is unique. It is what
makes you you. Imperfection is the key to beauty.” Deepak’s voice reminded her of incense, wind chimes, and bullshit.
She ran her hands over her hips. In eighth grade, Danny Davis, a kid on whom she’d had a monstrous crush, told her that if she were tall, she wouldn’t be fat. What did he know? He’d flunked out. Didn’t make it past eleventh grade. Jerk. She could be six feet tall and she’d still have a big ass. Maybe little Deepdeep had a point. Other women rocked their butts. Why couldn’t she?
“Exactly! You just have to get used to seeing it,” Deepak said. “A hidden candle offers no light.”
Jesus, where did her brain get this guy? But she was going to try. If no one liked her butt, they didn’t have to look at her butt.
“Just a little confidence goes a long way!”
That’s enough, Deepak Platitude. You’ve convinced me. Hoping she would not regret it later, Clarissa committed to the jeans. She reached for the chemise and pulled it over her head. She wasn’t sure if she dared look or not.
“You must. You are a real beauty,” Deepak said. Like five other men that day and possibly one snake, he winked at her and then dotted a smudge of mascara off his upper eyelid.
Clarissa surprised herself. She sort of liked what she saw. Maybe Deepdeep had a point: It was all about confidence. But she wasn’t used to this woman in tight jeans and a flimsy, flirtatious top. In fact, she was embarrassed. What if she looked like a cow, but her brain was playing a trick on her? What then? What if she walked into a bar or restaurant or wherever she and Adams might land and people started laughing, looking away and whispering? Just like before her surgery? What if Adams was embarrassed to be seen with her? She stared hard at her reflection.
“You’ve come too far to start in with all this negative thinking,” Deepak said, buffing his nails. “My mother always said it is a wise woman who does not backtrack.”
“Shut up!” Clarissa said, only slightly worried that she was talking back to a figment of her imagination. She stared, shoulders slumped. “I’m a fucking disaster.”