The Eyes and Ears of Love (5 page)

“I got you a pretty fab present,” her mom says, placing the neatly wrapped gold box with a black ribbon on the vanity.

“Wow, mom. Thanks,” she says lowly.

“Open it up, silly goose.”

Dorothy opens the box and holds up a provocative red dress.

“To wear to graduation!” her mother shouts.

It looks like one of the dresses her mom began wearing five years ago and continues to wear now: low-cut, mid-thigh, with a slit in the back. The same dress that permits the easy-access of men between her mother’s thighs.

Dorothy frowns.

“You don’t have to wear it,” her mother says, with a stiff posture. She snatches the box and the dress from Dorothy’s hands and buries her feet in the carpet, stomping for a dramatic effect.

Dorothy pays no attention to her mother’s tantrum. She refocuses on the snow globe and, specifically, the snowman. She remembers her father grabbing their snowman on both sides of its head from behind, forcing his head into the snowman’s facial structure. The button eyes, carrot nose, and coal mouth all fell to the ground. Donna and her mother roared with laughter as they saw his goofy face accompanied by the snowman’s body. Dorothy wasn’t the least bit amused. She was saddened by the mutilation of the snowman she had spent so much time building. She felt that the snowman should have died from natural causes like the sun—not at the hands of her own father. She cried. Her father made sure to recreate the same model snowman to cheer Dorothy up.

Dorothy shakes her head. She wonders why she took that incident to heart. She wishes she would have just laughed at her father’s sense of humor, because now he’s not here, and she’ll never get to enjoy that same sense of humor ever again. Dorothy removes the snow globe from her vanity and places it in her closet. She returns to her vanity to put on her makeup. She then curls every strand of hair and sprays the locks that won’t behave. She puts on a floral dress, one with no cleavage and no slits and falls below the knee. She then puts on her graduation gown over the dress.        

The graduation ceremony is being held at the event arena to accommodate the many guests. Each student is allowed a box of twelve seats for family and friends. At Donna’s graduation, she filled all twelve seats. Dorothy, however, only needs two seats: one for her mom and one for Donna. Weeks before the ceremony, two students who would be in the box neighboring hers nagged her to sell them some of her seats, but Dorothy declined. As much as she was tempted to sell the spots for forty to sixty dollars, she didn’t want to appear to be something she wasn’t. She didn’t have any more family or any friends to invite.

Dorothy sits with her graduating class in alphabetical order; her last name being Monroe puts her right around the middle. The girls wear a royal blue gown and cap with a black tassel while the boys wear a black gown and cap with a royal blue tassel. She observes the body of students, all dressed the same as her. They look conformed, but they are far from the same person as her. They seem so happy, with not a single problem in this world.

Dorothy’s name is finally called to collect her diploma; she can hear Donna and her mom chant and root for her. Only a soft round of routine and polite applause is heard from the graduates and their guests while names called before her received a considerable round of applause and chanting.

Donna almost brought the roof down when she was called to receive her diploma last year. She was the cynosure of all eyes. Her graduating class stomped and screamed for her, echoing an imitation of thunder throughout the arena. Even during Dorothy’s graduation, people were whispering around Donna and approaching her.

Dorothy closes her eyes and takes a deep, purifying breath. She stands self-consciously before the body of people. Halfway up the stage, a student by the name of Brad Montgomery is called and all the attention is redirected at him. She unclamps her fists and wipes the clamminess of her palms on her gown before shaking the principal’s hand and collecting her diploma. 

After the ceremony, Dorothy allows her mom to take a couple of pictures before many of the graduates huddle around Donna with different motives of curiosity, flirting, and hugging. Dorothy leaves to go wait in the car. Overall, graduation was long and boring, but once it was over, it was over; Dorothy could finally close this chapter in her life.

She sneaks out of her house later that afternoon and walks to the children’s playground down the street. The playground is filled with children under the age eight, as they gambol on the jungle gym while their parents chat with each other sitting on the sidelines. Dorothy scampers to the isolated swing set. She kicks her legs in and out on the swing to gain momentum. Soon she is high in the sky, closer to the clouds now. She thinks about how these last four years changed her. She’s an adult now, her mother is no longer her legal guardian. Three more months of summer and then she’ll be out of the town and on her own.

“I’M FREE!” she yells. All the emotions she’s felt in the last four years evacuates from her body with exaggerated laughter.

The parents call their children from the playground and leave abruptly while Dorothy continues to laugh.

Back at her house, Dorothy stays in the night of all the graduation parties. Her mom says she has to buy eggs from the grocery store, and she leaves wearing a black mid-thigh dress and red lipstick.

Donna decides to stay in with Dorothy tonight regardless of all her old high school friends dying to reunite with her. Donna’s logic says that it’s important that Dorothy doesn’t feel alone on her graduation night. They lie on Dorothy’s bed watching Pretty Woman for the second time in a row.

Donna says, “Can I do your makeup?”

“No, but you can go out with your friends! I'm all right; I’ll probably just hit the sack early.”

“I want to be with you tonight, Dorothy,” she insists. “Well, if I can’t do your makeup then what do you want to do?”

“I’m kind of hungry,” Dorothy smirks.

In the kitchen, Dorothy gets out some eggs buried in the refrigerator and uses them to make a chocolate soufflé and cream sauce.

She turns on the kitchen radio beforehand to help cheer her mood. Donna stares, silently admiring her sister’s skills. Donna isn’t easily impressed and tends to talk constantly, so it takes something masterful to shut her up while keeping her engaged. Donna didn’t say a word the entirety of the prepping and baking, keeping her eyes glued to Dorothy’s every movement.

Dorothy makes sure the presentation of the soufflé and sauce is perfect before serving it to her sister.

“You look just like Dad.” Donna devours a bite and moans. “Dorothy, you'll get any man you want if your cooking continues to taste as good as having an orgasm!”

An orgasm, one of life’s most treasured gifts, Dorothy has yet to have. Since her father’s passing, Dorothy shied away from any prospect of male companionship. As a result, she missed out on friendships, on romantic relationships. She is a virgin and she’s okay with it because she’s never met a guy she’s wanted to have sex with. She avoided people in general. People had been friendly toward her -- she had the school’s most popular girl for an older sister, after all. And Dorothy isn’t ugly, she’s actually quite stunning, she just chooses not to put much effort into her appearance because she hides her beauty to avoid the male attention like her sister receives. She rarely wears makeup and she generally throws her hair up in a messy bun, graduation being an exception. But even then, she still looks prettier than most girls who spend hours on their hair and makeup. Both Donna and Dorothy got their looks from their mother. They both inherited the thick and silky natural blonde hair with luxuriant black lashes. The only difference is Donna got her mother’s light crystal blue eyes while Dorothy got her father’s bright emerald eyes. While others have commented on their uniqueness and rarity, Dorothy sees two bug eyes staring back at her in the mirror. Her eyes make her very self-conscious which is why she avoids eye-contact longer than ten seconds. She avoids skin tight clothing as well, she observes her body type to be over dramatic with an hour glass shape. Her curves hug clothes nicely, but without clothes, the cellulite on her butt becomes visible and her breasts have stretch marks webbed underneath. She wishes she could inject all the fat from her butt and breasts into her sides to develop normal love handles.

“God I’ve missed this! The college has good food and all, but nothing compared to this.” She savors another bite. “You know you are going to do great at the university.”

Dorothy looks down and shrugs.

“If you put as much effort into your social life as you do with cooking and baking, you’ll undoubtedly make friends again, maybe even get a boyfriend!”

“I’m happy with the way my life is. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“You’ve learned to do the bare minimum and accept it for what it is.” She bites her lip. “Dad wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”

“That’s not fair.” Dorothy says.

“I feel like you think by being miserable you’re showing dad some kind of loyalty. Do you think because I continued my life that I don’t love dad just as much as you do?”

“No, of course not. I just feel like, like he took a part of me with him.”

“Well, he certainly left a part of himself with you, his infatuation for cooking. You look just like him when you’re in the kitchen. The same green eyes that light up just watching butter melt.” They laugh. “How does mom feel about you cooking?”

“She doesn’t even know. Or maybe she just doesn’t notice.”

“She’s doing the best she can.”

“Don’t,” Dorothy snaps.

“What?”

“Don’t defend her. She doesn’t deserve to be protected. I mean look around.” She holds her arms up. “Do you see her anywhere?”

“Maybe if you would let her in once in a while.”

“If I let her in, then she wins.”

“It’s not about winning or losing Dorothy, it’s about forgiveness.”

“I’m never going to forgive her. I’m moving across the country just to get away from her.”

“I worry about you,” she tells Dorothy, “I don’t want you to go off to college just to get away from Oregon or mom. You could do so much with your life, but you’re content with just moping along.” She hesitates before going on. “I never know how you actually feel. You bottle everything up.”

She is right, and it makes Dorothy angry to know her sister is right. “I’m going to go to bed. Good night.”

Donna sighs. “Good night,” she says while pushing away her plate of half-eaten soufflé.

Dorothy’s passion is cooking and baking and that is what she’ll be studying in college. The kitchen became an artist’s studio to her after her father passed. It helped her feel close to him. Her father was the Master Chef at the Millennium Steak House, a four-star restaurant. He always tried to get his daughters to find an interest in cooking when he was alive, but they never cared to learn. He existed for the art of cooking; he cooked a hot breakfast for the family every morning and made luxurious cold sack lunches for Dorothy and Donna for school lunch. He didn’t just make a sandwich, he made
the
sandwich and instead of a Little Debbie for dessert, it was always homemade flan. After school, he would engage the girls in discussions about food in the little time they would have, as if grasping for the companionship that had been lost during school days and the evenings he’d spend at work.

After her father had passed, Dorothy didn’t bother to be at home while Donna was out with her friends, so she began taking culinary classes at the community center every day after school. She never missed a class in four years. She wasn’t good at first, but the frustration only provoked determination. She became so talented after seven months that the instructor asked if she would teach a class every Tuesday night, to which she gladly accepted.

The summer passes quickly as Dorothy cooks Donna breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. It wasn’t until two weeks after Dorothy began cooking for Donna, that she realizes Donna has been sticking around to watch Dorothy cook rather than just wait around until the food is done. It makes Dorothy feel good and needed. It isn’t something only Dorothy looks forward to, but Donna was right beside her admiring her creativity. This is the first months since her father passed that she feels her and her sister have developed the same friendship that had been lost. They were both gaining a bond from Dorothy’s cooking.

Now it’s August, her room contains white walls and the looming boxes stacked to the ceiling is overwhelming for Dorothy. She’s lived in this same house for eighteen years and now she’s moving hundreds of miles away to live in a tiny dorm room with a roommate who will most likely wear her clothes without asking.

Dorothy begins taping the boxes closed in her bedroom. 

Her mom comes into her room without knocking. She takes a look at the boxes and her daughter, and sobs, “what am I going to do without my baby around?”

“Buy a dog,” she says sarcastically.

Her mother continues, “Time just went by so fast without any recollection, it just doesn’t seem fair,” she cries.

“Then you shouldn’t have had kids because this is what happens.”

“It’s going to be lonely in this house,” she attempts to share a genuine moment with Dorothy.

Dorothy rolls her eyes. Her mom has claimed to be single since Dorothy’s father’s death, but Dorothy knows she’s lying. She thinks Dorothy doesn’t know about the new man in her mother’s life, but she notices everything. Last summer, Dorothy found an unfamiliar pair of cufflinks in the bathroom. Months before that, she’d found a few strands of red hair in the bathtub. With all the evidence gathered, Dorothy realized this is man number thirteen since her father’s passing.