Elizabeth's Daughter (2 page)

  He nodded back, grinning, holding a thumb up.

  At home she put the groceries away, alternately feeling embarrassment for herself, and laughing at herself.

  “Serves me right for thinking men were paying attention to me!” She scolded while putting the broccoli and carrots in the refrigerator vegetable bin. “First of all, vanity is a dangerous emotion, or so I’ve been told. Secondly, you have to have something to be vain about.”

  The
Mademoiselle
and cosmetics were in two small plastic bags at the bottom of the big one. Elizabeth had forgotten that she’d even bought them.

  “Speaking of vanity!” She tried to keep her disapproving tone of voice, but excitement won over. She took her treasures to the second floor bathroom, battling them out of their plastic packaging, and, finally, applying them. The lipstick was too dark and the powder too light, but she didn’t care. Maybe it’s a little sad, she thought, to be experiencing at twenty-eight a thrill over cosmetics that I might have experienced years ago.

  She smiled at the small heart-shaped face in the mirror. “At least I’m willing to admit I’m acting out my arrested growth. Grandfather raised me to the best of his ability, even if outmoded by a century.” She had a wild and absent mother to thank for that.

  The dark lipstick made her mouth appear too tiny, and the powder made her already white skin pallid. But the effect of the mascara was transforming.  Curling and defining her thick eyelashes made her big brown eyes sparkle. She’d never dare say, or even
think
herself beautiful, but she considered that she could possibly pass for... rather pretty.

  She took the
Mademoiselle
to her room and sprawled out on the bed, studying the women in the ads, and lost heart.

  “I’m just a pale frump, and there’s no point in trying to tell myself otherwise.”

Chapter III

The next morning Elizabeth woke up when she realized that the annoying noise was the telephone ringing. The ogreish troll behind her in a Mack truck, honking his horn, fell back into the abyss of dream.

  As she stumbled sleepily out of her room she noticed the
Mademoiselle
in the trash. That’s strange, she thought, it’s four feet from the bed, it couldn’t have slipped there. The telephone kept ringing and she couldn’t give the magazine more thought. She ran downstairs to the only telephone in the house, in Grandfather’s study.

  “Hello?” she answered breathlessly.

  “Well, hello yourself, where were you?”

  “Martha!” Elizabeth exclaimed, delighted to hear her friend’s voice. “I was sleeping. I had to run from my room to the phone in Grandfather’s study.”

  “Well, for pity’s sake, girl, get a cell phone!”

  “Oh!” Elizabeth couldn’t imagine it. “I don’t think I can afford it.”

  “Oh, please, Elizabeth, you can afford it.”

  “Really?” Elizabeth hadn’t spent money on anything beyond subsistence, until last night when she bought the magazine and cosmetics. She’d broken two appointments to talk about finances with Grandfather’s attorney. She couldn’t bring herself to discuss Grandfather’s ‘estate,’ which would make his passing so final, even though he
was
gone. And she also didn’t want to find out she had no money to live on. “Do you think Grandfather left me anything besides this big old house?”

  “My goodness, you’re naive,” Martha asked.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth agreed, “I am.”

  “Your grandfather had a highly successful men’s clothing store for fifty years. When he sold both the property and the business he
must
have seen a small fortune, not to mention what your ‘big old’ house is worth. You could probably sell the house, buy a condo and live on the interest from the profit alone.” Martha paused, then continued, “your Grandfather only had you, an obedient granddaughter with straight teeth and perfect health, to spend money on. And I don’t think he made a vice of spending money on you.”

  “No, not much, he didn’t.”

  “So, get some phones already! Anyway,” Martha continued without missing a beat, “I called to tell you about a rug and wall hanging exhibit at the Bower’s Museum. Do you want to go with me?”

  “I’d love to. But I’m afraid I might bore you, droning on about stitches and styles.”

  “That’s precisely my point, dear girl. I want to learn, and you’re my valued resource.” Elizabeth could hear Martha tapping her ipad. “Let’s see, today’s pretty booked. How’s your tomorrow?”

  “All my tomorrows are un-booked,” Elizabeth answered.

  “Agh! Deplorable, Lizzie, that’s got to change! I’ll pick you up at eleven-thirty tomorrow, and take part of the afternoon off. Maybe I’ll get crazy and take the whole afternoon off.”

  “We could wait until Saturday.”

  “No way,” Martha came back emphatically. “You miss my point, I
want
to take some time off. Besides, the exhibit will be crowded on Saturday. Don’t start that ‘oh no, I’m in the way,’ routine of yours. Now I mean it, no guilt, just fun.”

  “Yes Martha. Okay Martha,” Elizabeth recited, “no guilt, just fun. See you tomorrow!”

  Elizabeth went back upstairs, passed her bedroom and continued down the long dark hall to the end room, the room that long ago had been her mother’s. Elizabeth had taken it over for her work room when her mother gallivanted off to who-knows-where the last time the last time Elizabeth saw her, twelve years ago.

  She opened the door. Before her was arrayed her rug-making paraphernalia, several projects in mid-development.

  She remembered how Grandfather used to call to her from downstairs, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden yarn.” She smiled.

  All her love for the soft wool and the solid feel of the weft growing in the warp underhand, even the smell of the wood frames, and wool and jute and raw silk
–
the gorgeous, sensual sight of the hanks of pure colors, waiting to be knotted or woven or stitched
–
flooded over her when she opened the door with a nostalgia as strong as if she were remembering a person.

  In the middle of the room stood the biggest project she’d ever undertaken, a nine-by-twelve-foot latch-hooked rug with a Samarkand-styled pattern of her own design, two-thirds complete.

  She went over to it and and began working as if she’d only interrupted herself for a few moments instead of more than a year.

Chapter IV

Elizabeth managed to wake at nine-thirty the next morning, even after working on the rug fifteen hours, non-stop. Her shoulders and hands were sore and she had a nasty blister on her right forefinger, but it wouldn’t be long and the Samarkand would be finished. She had to admit she savored the aches and  pains. Battle wounds! She couldn’t wait to put the rug on the floor at the foot of her bed where its reds and blues would complement the hardwood.

  She jumped in the shower to get ready for her day with Martha. Martha had first been her mother’s friend. They’d met in a ballroom dance class almost fifteen years previous and soon discovered they had much in common. They became dedicated to the search of more interesting dance partners then the class afforded. Although Elizabeth’s mother, Gloria, was ten years older than Martha, she didn’t look it, and the two of them, to hear Martha tell it, had the guys lined up.

  “And why not?” Elizabeth thought, “they’re two gorgeous women.”

  But the result of the flirtation with night clubs led Gloria off to some more exotic spot on earth. Or so she would have everyone believe. However, that was long ago. Since then Martha had befriended Elizabeth, and every now and then she escaped her frenetic schedule and came up with something for the two of them to do.

  Elizabeth stepped into her gold satin-finish cotton dress with fitted bodice and full skirt. Except, she noticed, it was not as fitted as it used to be, hanging loose and looking almost like one of her shapeless house dresses. She’d lost weight since Grandfather became ill, and she didn’t even know it.

  She brushed her hair hard, trying to relax the awkward curls from the last home permanent she’d given herself. Then she applied mascara and a bit of powder. She looked around for the lipstick, but couldn’t find it.

  “Strange...” She peered into the nearly empty medicine chest. “Where could it have gotten to?” As she looked around on the floor, a prickly sensation crawled up her forearms and down the back of her neck.

  She turned quickly, feeling watched. “What...?” she rubbed the prickles away from her neck, “you’re rattling around too much in this cavern of a house. And now you’re talking out loud to yourself.”

  She looked around the bathroom one more time for the lipstick when the front doorbell rang. She hurried to her room, grabbed a small clutch purse, a note pad and pencil, then ran down the winding front stairs. When she opened the door, there Martha stood in designer sunglasses, a mauve business suit complemented by a gorgeous white silk blouse and simple black patent heels. Elizabeth wanted to run back to her room and never come out again.

  “Ready?” Martha asked.

  “Sure.” Elizabeth screwed up her courage and locked the door behind her.

  Martha chatted non-stop while she drove to the museum. But Elizabeth hardly heard any of what she had to say, answering in monosyllables. She recounted to herself the odd events: today, the
Mademoiselle
in the trash, the vanished lipstick, last night, the strange woman’s reflection in the window....

  “What are you studying out?” Martha finally asked bluntly.

  “Pardon me?”

  “You’re like on some other planet.” Martha pulled down her sunglasses to give Elizabeth a pointed look.

  “Yikes, Martha, eyes on the road!” Elizabeth squealed as their car drifted into the other lane.

  Martha refocused on her driving. “
What
is on your mind? You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”

  “Yes, I have a lot on my mind,” Elizabeth agreed. “With Grandfather... gone, I’ve been... I have a lot to think about.” Elizabeth was about to share with Martha the weird events, but Martha reached over and squeezed her hand.

  “I know kiddo, of course. Sorry, sometimes I forget that things are about other people... sometimes.” She laughed. “It seems it’d be
easier
if everything was always about me, but such is not the case.”

  Elizabeth giggled.  Oh, she felt happy to be with Martha, she had a way of always making her shift her mood to something better. Plus the bright sunny day was so real and normal that the weird events faded away.

  Martha started struggling while driving with flinging her heels into the back seat and pulling on Reeboks at the stop lights. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said to Elizabeth. “I don’t imagine there’ll be anyone at this exhibit I want to impress.”

  “I don’t care what you wear on your feet, just as long as you stay in our lane.” In truth, Elizabeth loved the incongruity of the Reeboks with the designer suit.

  She sighed a sigh of relief as they pulled into the museum parking lot. “We made it!”

  “Of course we made it, you silly girl. I’ve never had an accident.”

  “What a miracle,” Elizabeth breathed as she got out of the car.

  “I heard that,” Martha called back to her, already halfway to the museum entrance.

  That was the one thing about Martha that disconcerted Elizabeth
–
always in such a rush, as if she simply had to get to the next thing. She hoped Martha wouldn’t ruin the exhibit by flying through it, dragging Elizabeth along behind like a trailing kite.

 
But then, Elizabeth had the most amazing realization. She could come again! She could come alone, and she could spend all day. She could take notes and make sketches. She wouldn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to stay all day. And so, smiling, she hurried to catch up to Martha.

  In the museum Elizabeth trotted alongside Martha, nodding in agreement to her intermittent, “oh, pretty, look at that.”

  The exhibit, primarily nineteenth century American hooked and woven rugs, also had a few remarkable Persian, Turkish, and Indian carpets, displayed in showcases on frames allowing their backs to show as well as their fronts. If Elizabeth had her way, she would study each one to the extent of counting knots. And she
would
, she told herself, when she returned on her own.

  “Where’s your running commentary, Elizabeth?” Martha suddenly asked.

  “Running commentary? I don’t want to bore you....”

  “I’ll let you know if you’re boring me. You must know more than these terse little notes: ‘probable construction between 18-something and 18-something.’ “

  “Well, yes, I do,” Elizabeth agreed. “For instance, did you know that the Persians make a small copy of the carpet for the weavers to follow, while the Chinese draw a full-sized replica of the rug design on paper and put it beside the loom for the weavers to copy?

  “But the east Indians have a very interesting system called
ta’lem
. The
ta’lem
writer records the color of every knot, row by row and then a
ta’lem
reader reads this list to a roomful of weavers. Wouldn’t that be a remarkable thing to see? A room full of artisans, hands flying, creating one of these magnificent works of art to the mantra of a list of colors being recited. I can see the sun slanting in on piles of colored wool...” Elizabeth gestured to show the angle of the sunlight, “and the carpet frames and the people sitting side by side, but each in their own sort of transfixed, meditative space, listening to the incantation, obeying it, trusting that every tiny knot will produce a complete and beautiful image.”