Amanda Bright @ Home (26 page)

“No—” Susie hesitated. “Well, I did, but he wasn’t there.”

“Who answered?”

“Just the housekeeper. She said they had gone away for a couple of weeks.”

“Thank God. Is it possible he didn’t see ‘The Ear’?”

“Somehow I doubt it. I’m sure someone would have brought it to his attention. It’s not like Jim not to call or return my messages or—not to tell me he’s leaving town. What am I going to do?”

“What
is
there to do?”

For the first time Susie seemed to register Amanda’s impatience. But rather than grow defensive, which was her customary reaction to anything less than total agreement, Susie simply looked wounded.

“I don’t know. I thought maybe I should write to him, to let him know how I feel—and remind him of some of the things he said to me.”

“Amanda returned Susie’s hurt look with one of amazement. “And what would that accomplish?”

“He might call.”

“Or not. And I think the likelihood is not. Susie, don’t you see that he doesn’t
want
to call you? That by making this public you embarrassed him? He obviously didn’t want his adultery exposed—”

“Don’t call it that,” Susie replied, eyes flashing. “That’s such an ugly word. And it wasn’t like that. Jim—Jim said he could honestly imagine falling in love with me. That he
was
falling in love with me.”

Amanda was too disgusted to enter into a debate over the nuances of Hochmayer’s feelings. She only felt foolish for being drawn—once more!—into Susie’s emotional shell game.

“Okay, call it what you like. But I’d appreciate it if you could manage to leave other people out of it this time.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean like us. Bob and me.”

“You? How does this affect you?”

“Susie, where have you been? Have you thought at all about what that ‘Ear’ column did to Bob? Did you see the
Wall Street Journal
editorial? Did you hear Mike Frith’s testimony at the hearings? It’s on the fucking cover of the
National Standard
!”

“I don’t read that magazine.” Susie took a sip of her coffee and glanced about as if she were afraid Amanda was making a scene.

Amanda lowered her voice. “Well maybe you should—this week anyway. Bob might lose his job.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Susie said, disbelieving. “There was nothing in that ‘Ear’ column that could possibly cause that.
I’m
the one who’s been hurt by it.”

Amanda traced a pattern of swirls on the table in a bit of spilled foam. “Yes. Yes, you have been hurt by it. But so have we. And so has Jim. And so has his
wife
. Why don’t you think about
her
?” She slammed her hand down. “I’ve got to go.”

For the second time that morning, Amanda found herself walking out on someone.

The sun dazzled her eyes, and for a second or two Amanda was uncertain which direction to walk. Her hands were shaking and her heart pounding, and the dense heat seemed to further constrict her already labored breathing. She felt urgently that she had to get away—but to where? There was the grocery shopping to do, but she could not face that right now. She needed to be somewhere cool, anonymous, somewhere she could sit down and think straight. Amanda climbed in her car again and headed toward a mall. The nearest one was up Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda. Amanda drove slowly, aware of her unsteady nerves; several times cars accelerated up to her rear bumper, only to veer and roar past her in frustration.

She had not waited for Susie’s reaction. Was Susie dumb-founded? Furious? Amanda would probably never know. She didn’t care to know.

The windowless concrete front of a department store jutted out from the mall at an angle, like the massive prow of some futuristic galleon. Amanda parked in the gray dungeon of a covered lot and emerged from an elevator into the mall’s interior courtyard. For a while she just wandered, pausing by brightly lit shop windows advertising clearance sales. Already the merchants were seized with that peculiar midsummer impulse to restock their racks with heavy sweaters and jackets. Amanda bought herself a take-out sandwich and ate it on a bench under the shade of a gigantic potted tree. Gradually she felt her internal meters returning to normal. It was fine sitting here with nothing to do, watching the other mothers haul their wailing infants in and out of strollers.

Amanda finished her sandwich and walked around some more. Eventually she found herself at the entrance to the department store. It occurred to her that she needed a new swimsuit, and that swimsuits would probably be on sale with the rest of the summer merchandise. The purchase of a swimsuit gave new purpose to her outing.

She strode into the store and rode the escalator up two levels. But to Amanda’s disappointment, most of the swimsuits were gone—only half a dozen one-pieces were left in her size. Amanda hesitated over a black, designer bikini. It was the sort of swimsuit Christine would wear. Impulsively, she pulled it off the rack and took it into the dressing room with her more practical selections. She’d give it a go. It might even be funny.

Each suit looked worse than the last. Amanda was baffled by the cross-straps on one; another she couldn’t tug over her hips. And what was it about artificial lighting that revealed new pockets of fat that her critical eye had not yet detected at home? God, her thighs looked like topographical maps! And why was her stomach so bloated? Soon all the swimsuits except the bikini were piled on the floor. Amanda gamely tried it on—struggling with the tiny bottom and hooking the top without looking in the mirror. Then—voilà. Amanda turned around. It wasn’t … funny. It wasn’t bad, either. All her flaws were there, and perhaps more on display than they had been in the other suits, but somehow they seemed less framed. The bikini top lifted her breasts attractively and the bottom triangles barely covered what they were supposed to—could she possibly wear such a thing in public?

Amanda checked the price tag—70 percent off ninety dollars. She could afford the risk. She changed back into her street clothes and took the bikini to a register.

Amanda expected the saleswoman to police Amanda’s purchase—’I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m confiscating this for your own protection”—but the clerk, whose own figure made Amanda feel gratifyingly skinny, merely commented that the suit was “very pretty.” Amanda waited, tapping her credit card on the counter, wondering if she should buy the damn thing after all.

When she stepped back onto the escalator, Amanda began to second-guess her decision. The saleswoman had mentioned that she couldn’t return or exchange the swimsuit. And when Bob saw the bag and suspected she had spent the day idly shopping … Well, whatever—the bikini made her feel good about herself, and that was what was important, right?

Amanda passed into the glittering landscape of cosmetics. Usually she was immune to the siren calls of the clerks and would bustle by their long mirrored counters, ignoring their offers to “try the latest Seduction.” It was all shamanism, she thought, propagated by the high priests of the makeup industry. Today she intended to pass right by them—but a display of pale lipsticks caught her eye. They were similar to the delicate shades Susie wore. Amanda paused—long enough, alas, to catch the attention of one of two saleswomen, both wearing identical gray tunics, chatting a few feet away.

“May I help you?”

“Oh, not really. I’m just looking—”

“We’ve got some lovely new shades. May I show you?”

“Well—” Amanda caught sight of her own naked face in a mirror and compared it unfavorably to the saleswoman’s: she wasn’t much younger than Amanda, and not especially attractive. Her features seemed to have been arranged according to the asymmetrical principles of feng shui, especially her nose, which jutted off to one side. But the woman had skillfully used makeup to highlight her eyes and lips while minimizing the effect of her nose.

Amanda examined one of the testers. “All right.”

“Please, take a seat.”

Amanda sat herself on a tall stool while the clerk busily pulled tubes from their testing slots.

“Have you worn this brand before?”

“No.” Amanda would not admit that she bought her makeup in the pharmacy aisle of Fresh Farms where it had the virtue of being untested on animals, and also the virtue of being cheap.

“Let’s try this one.” The saleswoman brought out a pencil and a little brush.

“First let me line your lips—do you use liner?—and here, this brush helps the color go on smoothly.”

Amanda rubbed her lips and agreed the pinky beige shade suited her.

“But now look how pale the rest of your face looks.” The clerk frowned, and pushed a stray lock of hair from Amanda’s forehead. “When was the last time you had your colors done?”

“I haven’t—”

“May I just try something more—if you have time?”

Amanda made a show of checking her watch. “Not really—”

“It will just take a second.”

“I really only need lipstick.” Amanda had not actually intended to buy the lipstick but could see no other way of extricating herself from the saleswoman’s chair.

“That’s fine, that’s fine. But you’ll be amazed how fabulous I can make you look.”

The other saleswoman was listening to their conversation, and drifted over.

“Oh yes, you must let Gina do you. Gosh, Gina, look at her eyes! You’re so lucky to have such big eyes.”

Amanda, who had never thought of herself as having especially large eyes, wilted under the pressure of the two saleswomen.

“Well—if you can do it quickly.”

“Of course.”

The first saleswoman rummaged under the counter and brought out several trays that resembled artists’ palettes. Then she took some sponges and began dabbing at Amanda’s face as if at a canvas.

“You have such beautiful skin. What do you use on it?”

“Um, soap. A little moisturizer.”

The clerk paused, worried. “My goodness, you need to take better care of it than that! Do you see these little lines?”

Amanda was well aware of them.

“We have a product that takes care of them. I’ll show it to you afterward. Now look—see how well this foundation covers?”

Gone were the circles below Amanda’s eyes, the red blotches on her nose and chin. The other salesclerk watched approvingly until another customer drew her away.

“I’m not finished,” the first saleswoman continued. She produced a case of brushes. For the next few minutes she worked intensely on Amanda’s face, instructing her to look up or look down as she painted around Amanda’s eyes, or to turn her head this way and that as she added color to Amanda’s cheeks.

“Now, look again.” The woman moved the standing mirror closer to Amanda, and angled it so Amanda could see her whole face. “Gorgeous, huh?”

“It’s—it’s very nice,” Amanda replied—untruthfully, for she was astounded by how much prettier she appeared. Her skin—it had that elusive, rich glow of Christine’s.

The clerk stood back to appraise her. “Now if you plucked your eyebrows a little bit, and tied back your hair perhaps—perfect. But my job is done.” She smiled.

“Which cosmetics did you use?”

“Let me assemble them for you.”

“Oh, I don’t think I want to buy all of them—”

“It’s not much. I’ll just get you the products that are essential.”

The saleswoman rooted around some drawers and pulled out a number of small, gold-banded boxes. She lined them up in front of Amanda.

“This is the rouge, the eye shadows, the lipstick, the lip pencil, the eyeliner, mascara, foundation, powder … will you need brushes?”

“Uh, no.”

“It’s important to use the right brushes.”

“I’m okay.”

“Do you want me to show you the moisturizing cream you should use?”

“I don’t think so.”

The woman raised her eyebrows.

“I’m sure.” Amanda’s mind was quickly trying to calculate how much the cosmetics would cost, and what she could ask the clerk to take back without seeming to be unable to afford them.

“All right then. I’ll ring these up,” and the saleswoman took them away before Amanda could protest. When she returned from the register, the saleswoman said, “The total is one hundred ninety-seven dollars and fifty cents with tax.”

Amanda panicked. That would wipe out her housekeeping budget for the next week. How would she explain it to Bob? How
could
she explain it?

“I don’t really need the lip pencil—or the mascara. And I have an eyeliner already.”

The clerk made no comment but removed the offending items. She went away to ring it up again.

“The total now is one forty-nine sixty-seven.”

Amanda could not send anything else back at this point. She either had to tell the saleswoman she would not take anything but the lipstick, or somehow squeeze the money from the household expenses. The woman was beginning to wrap the boxes in pink tissue paper. Amanda bought time for herself by rummaging through her handbag for her wallet. She could probably find a way, she reasoned, if she cooked a lot of pasta and used up the cans of chickpeas and tomatoes at the back of her cupboard. But then the whole sorry predicament of Bob’s job came crashing down upon her—what if he were fired? What if he found out how much she had just thrown away on cosmetics at a time like this?

And yet, and yet—why should she
not
do something nice for herself,
especially
at a time like this? She was not like some wives, always demanding new things. Christine would spend this sum of money without thinking about it. Why couldn’t Amanda indulge herself once in a while, too? And Bob was being so awful to her these days. She deserved to do something nice for herself—

Amanda presented her credit card to the saleswoman and allowed her eyes to rest covetously on the beautifully wrapped boxes, all hers.

The clerk returned with the card. “Do you have another? This one was declined.”

Mortified, Amanda searched through her wallet and pulled out the card she and Bob reserved for emergencies.

The clerk snapped it up and turned on her heels, pausing to simper at an elegantly dressed woman who was examining bottles of nail polish. “I’ll be with you in just a moment.”