A Little Change of Face (21 page)

“No, why? Were you on the phone?”

I didn't answer, preferring to dive right into my request.

“Of course I'll be happy to sit for Delta's kids while you go out with Saul,” she said. “What a question! I'd be delighted.”

“But they are rather, um, difficult.”

“Difficult, schmifficult. I raised you, didn't I?”

Not wanting to know what she was getting at, I set a time and we hung up. I figured that if she arrived early enough, maybe I could just leave her in the house with the kids and go out to meet Saul in the driveway.

Having dispensed with my mother, I punched in the code for voice mail, listened to the message that had come in while I was making my date with Saul.

“Um, hi, Lettie? This is Steve. I know this is incredibly short notice, so I'll understand if you say no, but you did say that you'd be maybe willing to go out with me, and while I've been trying real hard to restrain myself, I was wondering if that maybe could be tonight. I should be in and out, so just leave a message whenever you want. If maybe not tonight, then maybe you could maybe go out with me another night soon.”

He left his number and I took it down, put it aside, not knowing what to do with it since I'd just made a date with someone else.

How bizarre. After the longest drought I'd ever recorded, to be asked out by two different men on the same day for the same night. Hey, maybe having kids was working for me!

 

We spent the entire day pretty much how we had the night before: at the mall, with Mush and Teenie spending dollar bills like they'd been minted to be exchanged for tokens. It may have been the lazy-mother's way out, but it kept them occupied, contained in a relatively small space, and it gave me the opportunity to fantasize to my heart's content about the coming evening with Saul while mastering my skill at saving Venus from getting doused in a bucket of vomit, using only my plastic gun against the screen.

As I rushed them home at the end of the day, I realized that we'd stayed too long for me to have time to do much of anything about my appearance before it came time for my mother and then Saul to arrive. That was all right, though, I figured. After all, Saul had known me to look like this
before
our getting together on Halloween. Certainly he'd still like me like this, now that he liked me, now that he “couldn't get me out of his mind.”

Okay, so maybe my not allowing myself time to change had been a subconscious decision on my part. So sue me.

As luck would have it, my mother, for the first time in her never-been-late-once life, was late.

I had just barely had time to change my dress. Well, I did need to not smell, didn't I? The dress I'd selected was the most daring of my Empire tents, dark blue with silver trim in honor of the Hanukkah season yet to come. I'd washed my face, combed my short hair that never needed combing anymore, wiped the lenses clean on my glasses.

Ding-dong!

It was Saul, arriving five minutes early to my mother's fifteen minutes late.

“Hi—” he smiled when I opened the door, continuing on to what was obviously a preplanned “—you look…” And he stopped. I'll never know how he would have gone on to finish that sentence—would he have continued on to the preplanned “great” or “fantastic” or “amazing”? or would he have dropped back to a more moderate “clean”? or worse, “as bad as you used to”? I'll never know, because it was then that Mush and Teenie made their joint entrance from the kitchen, where they'd been cleaning me out of house and cookie dough.

“Mommy!” cried Mush, hurling his big little self at my skirts.

“Mommy!” cried Teenie, coming up beside me and grabbing on to my hand. “Is this hunk of man your date?”

Saul looked unaccountably embarrassed. I supposed it could be merely Teenie's words that were doing it, but somehow I suspected it was something else.

“These aren't my—” I started to say, only to be cut off by Saul.

“You didn't tell me you had kids,” he said. “Where were they the night of the Halloween party?”

“These aren't my—” I tried again, only to be cut off by Mush.

“Mommy got a sitter for us,” said Mush.

“Mommy wanted a night without the kids,” added Teenie.

This was all very well and true, but Delta was the mommy who'd got the sitter, who'd wanted the night out, not me.

“I understand,” Saul said. “Really.”

Even as I tried to come up with the best way to clear up the misunderstanding, I saw Saul backing out of the doorway.

“I really only came by,” he said, “to tell you I can't make it after all tonight.”

“You can't—”

“Something's come up, something unavoidable. I would have called, but your place was on the way. It just seemed easier.”

He was already at the door to his car.

“Hey,” I shouted. “You never finished your sentence! I look…what?”

He was confused a minute. Then: “Okay. You look okay, Lettie.”

And he was gone.

 

When my mother arrived two minutes later, I was still standing in the doorway, still feeling that hit-by-a-bus kind of stunned. Sure, I'd agreed with Pam that Saul's feelings needed to be tested, but I'd never imagined Mush and Teenie so thoroughly taking things out of my hands and I'd certainly never imagined it going like this.

“I'm sorry I'm late.” My mother bustled past me. “I stopped to pick up some videos for the kids.”

I saw, as she unpacked her schlep bag, that she had three videos—all with either
scare
or
fear
in the title—as well as several two-liter bottles of soda and industrial-size bags of salty foods. Apparently, my mother knew kids a lot better than I did.

“Where's Saul?” my mother asked.

I shut the door behind her. “Been and gone,” I said.

“How…?”

“I don't think that man likes kids,” Mush said, looking glum.

“He left soon's he saw us,” said Teenie.

“He ain't good enough for Scarlett,” said Mush.

I wanted to know why they'd insisted on calling me Mommy in front of Saul, but their support somehow pushed my question aside.

“He sure ain't,” said Teenie, “no how.”

It was touching, really, in its own grimy way.

“Oh, Scarlett,” my mother said, reaching out to touch my arm in a reassuring gesture. “I'm so sorry.”

Being the object of anyone's pity is never a comfortable
thing; being the object of one's mother's pity is its own separate circle of hell.

“That's okay.” I wanted to find a way to make light of it, couldn't.

The next thing I did was not a pretty thing, not by any means. But I was
supposed
to be on a date that night. I'd arranged for a babysitter for the kids, I'd cleaned myself up as best I could under the circumstances. I
wanted
to be on a date.

Excusing myself, I went upstairs, found the piece of paper on which I'd written Steve's number that morning. Before I could second-guess myself, I punched in the numbers, waited, hoping he hadn't made other plans.

“Hello?”

There was his friendly voice.

“It's, um,” I paused, forgetting for a minute who I was supposed to be right now. Recently, I'd been Mommy to the kids, Scarlett to my mom, while to Saul I'd been… Oh, that's right. “It's Lettie,” I said.

“Hey,” he said, and I could hear his smile. “I didn't think you were going to call.”

“I did get your message this morning,” I said, “but at the time, I'd just made plans for tonight. And now…” God, this was lame—rude and lame. It was a lonely, crappy, small-person thing I was doing here.

“And now you find yourself suddenly free?”

“That's about the size of it.” I realized that I wouldn't blame him if he hung up on me. “I know it's—”

“It's fine,” he said. “What would you like to do?”

I had a sudden burst of both energy and inspiration, I felt that good. “I want to take you out,” I said. “I want to show you a good time.”

“Fair enough,” he said, “I like that plan. But just one thing. I insist on picking you up.”

I started to object, thinking of the no-neck monsters downstairs, but then I thought:
Fine. You want to pick me up? Pick me up.
If he turned tail as Saul had done, I'd be no worse off than I'd been before.

 

My mother kept the kids busy just long enough in my bedroom that I had a chance to show Steve around.

He'd arrived more dressed up than I'd ever seen him—khaki pants with a belt, a white button-down shirt so crisp I was tempted to ask him if he'd do my ironing, real shoes with real laces. His hair had that staticky kind of look like he'd tried too many times with the comb to get it just right and he smelled…like a man, naturally giving off that pheromone-infused scent that makes you want to celebrate the other's otherness.

When my mother did finally come downstairs, I could tell she was immediately impressed. “This one seems so
nice,
” she whispered, as Mush and Teenie made their loud entrance, both those things worrying me intensely: my mother's approval and the kids just being themselves.

“Mommy!” cried Mush, hurling his big little self at my skirts.

“Mommy!” cried Teenie, coming up beside me and grabbing on to my hand. “Is this hunk of man your date?”

Steve looked at Teenie, smiled wide. “Yes,” he said, “I guess I am.”

 

He didn't ask any questions about the kids and I didn't say. Instead, I took him to Chalk Is Cheap.

I knew that Delta, if her date with Dave had extended
through the weekend as she'd hoped, would not be there. And I knew, from conversations I'd had earlier in the week with Pam and T.B., that neither of them would be there, either, so the coast was clear.

“You shoot pool?” He smiled his wonder as I put my quarters on the table, marking my coins with the chalk.

“What's so surprising about that?” I challenged.

He thought about it for a minute. “It's not surprising at all,” he said. “It's wonderful.”

I wondered if he'd still think it was wonderful as I proceeded to whup his butt, as well as the butts of the next four guys with quarters on the table.

“You're
good,
” he said, when I returned to the table for a sip of my Chardonnay.

“You don't mind just watching?” I said.

“Not at all. You said you wanted to show me a good time. Well, I'm having one. I like watching someone else do something they love to do.”

“What would you like to do next?” I asked, when I grew tired of beating all comers.

“Your call,” he said.

So I took him to the Danbury Public Library. Of course, it was closed for the night, so we sat outside on a bench in front of the fountain in the cement courtyard.

“I used to work here,” I said, feeling the cold, feeling the wine, staring up at the stars.

“Why did you leave?” he asked.

“I guess I needed a change.”

“So, what—you exchanged one library for another?”

“Something like that.” I could smell him next to me.

“Did you ever think of doing anything else?”

“Not recently. I belong in libraries.” He smelled a lot nicer than a library.

“How's that?”

“It's where the stories that get told are kept.” I didn't want to talk about me anymore. “How about you?” I asked, realizing how little I knew about him. “Is painting shop windows for the holidays the extent of your ambitions?”

“Not exactly.” He smiled. “I've always wanted to be an artist, capital A. I study the works of the masters. It's not very popular these days, where the emphasis is always on the new, but what I want to do is paint big things, like Tintoretto, things with lots of people and expression, realism made better. Of course, there's no guarantee that anyone will ever want to look at my work, much less buy it. Until that happens or doesn't happen, I'm content to do carpentry—which is what I do when I'm not painting windows—and paint the windows to pay the rent. Besides, I like talking to the people who come to watch me work, particularly the kids. It's not possible to get that kind of interchange when I'm working indoors on a big canvas and I need a certain kind of light.” He looked at me. “I'd paint you.”

I looked at him close. “I'm going to kiss you now,” I said, deciding it even as the words were coming out of my mouth. “I hope that's okay with you, because that's exactly what I'm going to do.”

I didn't wait for an answer, moving in closer to him, looking up at his face, placing my lips on his, taking in the soft feel of his lips for a long moment before parting them with my tongue.

I kissed him exactly the way I'd been wanting to be kissed myself for so long, no more, no less.

We stayed like that, connected only by our lips, as the night intensified around us.

“I'd like to take you home with me,” he said, stopping the moment.

I debated with myself, wondering if I could do it. “No,” I finally decided, “it wouldn't be fair to my mother to ask her to stay with the kids overnight.”

“Well, let me at least see you safely home,” he said.

 

At home, the kids were still up. Well, obviously; it was only twelve-thirty. They were glued to the TV so firmly that they didn't even notice that the population in the room had just increased by sixty-six percent.

“They were little angels,” my mother said, putting on her coat, a parka thing that looked like maybe she thought Fairfield County was about to go tundra.

Angels? Who was she talking about?

“You sure you wouldn't like me to stay a little longer?” she offered, nodding her head at Steve. “Maybe you two could, I don't know, talk in the kitchen?”