Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore (9780385538398) (14 page)

I was thinking about that shop while at LeRoy's Chicken and Waffle House eating more calorie-rich food. I ate, wrote these words in my little journal, and reread a few chapters of
Kindred
by Octavia Butler. In between phrases I paused, thinking of the little dress shop.

Hours passed as I sat at the low wall of the outside patio, drinking coffee refills and turning from one project to the next. The waiter made me pay at one point. I suppose he thought I was some kind of thief who would try to get away without paying for the meal.

But that didn't bother me. I was thinking about Marcia and the gray cop, my father's gun and a new wardrobe for a new life.

“Can I help you?” asked a tall white woman in an orange one-piece dress.

The dress was designed for a woman younger than her fifty-something years but she probably looked better in it than she would in more age-appropriate garb.

She had brown hair and like-colored eyes and her teeth were too perfect to be her own. She was thin, almost skinny, and did yoga or Pilates daily, I was sure.

She wore little makeup and didn't give off the aura of sexuality. She strove to be attractive but kept the gate to her garden locked.

I had these thoughts because the woman was checking
me out with the same intensity. She saw my fake breasts and tight body under the fat woman's yellow-and-blue dress. She saw my age and the disproportionate concentration of experience in my eyes. She saw also that my blue bag was a real Thimera, a ten-thousand-dollar accessory that could be purchased only at a single outlet on Rodeo Drive.

“I've always loved this shop when I drove by,” I said. “So today I decided to come in.”

The shop woman couldn't keep the hint of a sneer from her lips.

“Most of my clothes are for older women,” she said. “A young girl like you has less to hide and more to be proud of.”

“You're Phyllis?”

The excitement in my tone diminished the sourness on the designer's lips.

I understood Phyllis in that instant. She came from that very neighborhood, probably went to the high school across the street. She was a smart child and well-heeled. Phyllis didn't want to be just another housewife and was a generation or so too early to have been allowed into the world of high finance. So she decided to be an artist: a clothes designer. But try as she might the world of runways and fashion models was also beyond her. And so her husband … or maybe he divorced her for a younger partner, and so probably her parents bought her this shop. It was a hit among women of a certain age, women who wanted to show off but still had a little something to hide.

Phyllis's designs were craftier than the clothes made for New York and Parisian models. A thirty-three-year-old
mother of two with fifteen extra pounds and less than perfect skin could don one of this shop's offerings and go to a church or temple fund-raiser with confidence and even hints of beauty.

“It's just a small shop,” Phyllis said, trying to figure out if she wanted me to leave or to sit and have coffee.

“My husband died a few days ago,” I said.

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

“Thank you,” I said, casting my eyes around the small, clothes-crowded shop. “It was sudden and very sad, doubly so because we had grown apart and now we'll never be able to resolve those differences.”

“What's your name?” the conflicted storeowner asked.

“Sandy. Sandy Peel, but my married name was Pinkney.”

“You speak so well,” the older white woman said to the young black chick. “You must be well educated.”

“No. When I was a little girl my father read to me and then, when I got older, he'd have me read to him for an hour every night. I think I must have combined the love for my father and reading and so, even though I dropped out before high school, I've always read hard books.”

“Why'd you drop out?” my new potential best friend asked.

“After my father was murdered it was the only thing I could do.”

“Murdered? Oh my God.”

“In a way,” I said, “what's happened with Theon, my husband, was the same as with my father. I cut my hair and threw away all my old clothes and my old life. And I'm here today to get new clothes to go along with my new life.”

“What's that?” Phyllis asked. “What is your new life?”

“I really don't know, Phyllis. A lot of that has to do with you, I guess. I want to be something different.”

“What are you now?” Phyllis Amber Schulman asked.

“I think,” I said, “I think I'm a little lost.”

“Why don't we sit and have some tea?”

“My husband and I lived a kind of wild lifestyle,” I was saying to the clothes designer.

Phyllis had hung a Closed sign in the window of her shop, pulled the shade, and locked the door.

“Drugs?” she asked.

“Everything,” I said. “I can't really go into details but we were way out there.”

“And now that he's gone you see that there was something wrong with your life?”

“No,” I said after a few moments honestly considering her question.

“Really?” Her question contained no value judgment. She seemed truly interested in who I was.

“I loved my friends and their lives before Theon died and I still do now that he's gone,” I said. “It's just that I can see now that I have to move on. Do you know what I mean?”

“I used to have this boyfriend named Gary,” she said. “He was a surfer and I was his girl, at least when we were in the same place. We did a lot of drinking and cocaine. I did things with him in the bed that I would never admit to.

“Gary loved me harder than either of my children, my husband, or my parents ever did. But …”

“What?” I put down my teacup and took this stranger's hand in mine.

“One day I woke up in this shack in Maui. Gary was unconscious from all the coke we snorted, and there were flies buzzing around the sink. I knew right then that Gary would never change and that I had to leave him or go down with him.

“I called my parents and they bought me a ticket. I didn't even leave Gary a note.”

“Did you ever see him again?”

“When our friend Mike died,” Phyllis said, nodding, “eight years later. We bumped into each other at the service. We just said hi and asked how each other was doing. We were both married with kids. He owned a surfboard shop. Still does.”

“Did you feel like you made a mistake leaving him?” I asked. I really wanted to know.

Phyllis shook her head and looked at me with sad eyes. “No. We would have partied our way into early graves. But you know, I've never had anything in my life that felt as good as it did when I was with him. I sit in here sometimes talking to women just like me and I find myself wanting to hurry them out so I can call Gary up and beg him to come back. The only problem is that there's no place to come back to.”

I squeezed her hand.

“So you see, Sandy, I know what you're talking about.”

I left with seven dresses, four skirts, two pant suits and two pairs of pants, nine blouses, various kinds of nonthong underpants, bras, hose, three pairs of low-heeled shoes, two hats, and a crazy wristwatch with a wide red band and garnet stones for the hours. The colors we chose were burgundy, dark gold, navy blue, lime, white, and tan. There were a few flower prints, and some pinstripes, but on the whole the colors were solid and uninteresting. They fit me well enough but the sizes were appropriate to my form. Phyllis held on to the BBW blue-and-yellow dress and the tattered tennis shoes to throw away. I left the store wearing a navy skirt and a shimmery (but far from vinyl) gold blouse. I wore no hose because it was a hot day, and my shoes were blue with hemp-corded wedge heels.

I hadn't felt sexier nor less attractive in years.

Phyllis saw me to the door and said good-bye. I nodded at her and she grabbed me in a passionate hug.

“I'm so happy that you came here to me,” she said after reluctantly letting go.

“Really? Why?”

“Most of the time people come in here to hide something or to make themselves look better than they feel and to feel better than they look. They want to spend some money or talk about their husbands and boyfriends, their kids. I guess I kind of hate them. Here I am trying to make something, to create something, and you're the first customer I've ever had who wants to use my clothes the way I feel about them.”

There were tears in her eyes. I allowed her to hug me again and then she kissed my cheek.

Phyllis made me feel normal. Her story about the debauched surfer and life outside the life she was supposed to live was really very close to my experience. She was a hint, an omen that there was a place for me somewhere else.

I had the big blue bag-holster open and on my lap as I pulled into the driveway of my huge, soulless home. There were no dangers, however, no men lying in wait.

I went straight to the kitchen table and began writing about my afternoon. Phyllis was very much on my mind. She was like a spider who had chosen her permanent corner and from there wove her webs. The crevice she lived in was somewhere in the Garden of Eden but she didn't realize that. Her talent was subtle but exquisite and the world would never know. I was a self-educated thinker but people in my world rarely realized it. And those who did resented me or wanted to fuck me in the rectum.

Phyllis and I were the same in some ways but that wasn't enough for us to be friends. Marcia Pinkney and I had in common an overwhelming pain but we could not really share it.

It seemed that on those small journal pages all I could do was describe a world of closed doors and failed dreams. Everything I was, everything I saw seemed to be its own opposite—why, I wrote, live in a world like that?

The phone rang while I was going over and over this pointless cycle of thought.

“Hello?”

“Deb?” a man said. He sounded as if he'd recently been crying.

“Hey, Jude. How are you?”

“I've been calling for two days.”

“Oh. Sorry, I've been so busy. There's going to be a funeral next Saturday at Day's Rest. I hope you can come.”

“Thank you,” he said.

The value of death dawned upon me at that moment. People rarely meant so much with their words.

How are you?

I'm fine. You?

Getting along
.

Great
.

But when someone dies everyone has deep feelings that come to the surface, wailing and screaming and feeling profound.

Marcia and Mr. Dardanelle, even Lieutenant Mendelson showed sincere deference to me and to my dead.

“Can I do anything for you, Deb?” Jude asked.

“I don't think so, honey. Either everything is done or it's already too late.”

Jude gasped through the line and I felt sorry for him.

“Was he … was he in a lot of pain?” the eternal friend asked.

“No. It was quick, and if I know Theon he was having a very good time before he passed.”

“An accident?”

“A video camera that was plugged into the wall fell in the bathtub.”

“Oh my God.”

He sounded so sweet. I wondered how such a mild-mannered man could be construed as dangerous.

Jude was much smarter than Theon. He was also quite knowledgeable. Whenever the three of us got together Theon would get pissed because Jude was happy discussing D. H. Lawrence or Virginia Woolf with me. He had a college education and his mind moved easily between speculation and substance.

Jude understood what a video camera in the bathtub meant. His silence was another kind of respect. His friendship, though not for me, not exactly, was just the thing I needed.

“Would you like to meet for dinner?” I asked him.

“Tonight?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where?”

When I got to Monarc's Jude was already at a small round table in a partially secluded corner. He stood to kiss my cheeks and press my hands. His trousers were black, shirt gray—he even wore a black beret centered on his head like proper Frenchmen wear them.

“You changed your hair and your clothes,” he said.

“You mean I don't look like a cheap whore anymore.”

“You always had class, Deb. Even on the worst days you rose above the … the shit.”

Jude was a small man. His hairline was receding but he wasn't yet forty.

“He loved you,” Jude said.

“As well as he could. He loved you too.”

I luxuriated in the pleasure Jude took in this secondhand emotion. Tears formed in his eyes and I was absolutely sure that no one in the world would miss Theon more than that little man.

“Sometimes I used to hate you, Debbie,” he confessed. “You know, I wanted to be going home with him but he wanted you. You.”

I didn't know what to say. Jude's ardor was uncontainable. Theon's stupid uncalculated suicide brought out feelings from every corner and depth.