“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know.” She looks sadly up at me.
Mr. Randolph goes out to the kitchen and I start Mrs. Randolph’s bath. This is how we do it now. I do everything but the back part; then he comes and I hold her over while he does her back. He puts lotion on her at the end and she always says, “Oh, that’s nice, thank you, sweetheart.” Every day.
I take off her glasses and hand her the washcloth. This part she can do—she washes her face and I wash her glasses. It makes you feel so tender to see someone wash their face with such trembling hands and then hand you back the washrag, looking up at you like they’re waiting for you to grade them. You want to say, “Great! You did a good job!” but that might make them feel bad that they only get complimented now on how they wash their face. So you just smile. Sometimes Mrs. Randolph has messed up her eyebrows when she washes, and now I am comfortable enough that I can make them lie back down again.
Today, after she hands me back the washcloth, she puts her hand on my arm and says, “Tell me, Katie, do you think you could do my hair for me?”
This would be a true challenge. But I could try pin curls. I tell her yes, and she gets so happy. I guess when you are in bed all day, little things become big. “But I think we have to get you in the wheelchair for that,” I say. “We can bring you out to the kitchen and use the sprayer to wash your hair.”
“Yes, all right,” she says. “Today is good day; I think I can be up for a while.”
I am actually a little excited; I have always wanted to be a beautician for a day. Whenever I see them in the shops, it looks so fun: ratting people’s hair up, spraying when you’re all done so it will stay, taking off their capes with a flourish. I will make a cape out of a sheet for Mrs. Randolph. I will make little curls all around her face. Maybe she has some makeup. We won’t let Mr. Randolph see. “Before,” I will say, and send him to the store. And then when he comes back, I will show him Mrs. Randolph and say, “After.” Maybe we will say it together.
“We’ll get you all fixed up,” I say, and I think she can read my mind because she says, “My niece sent me a new navy blue bed jacket—I think I’d like to wear it today.”
When Mr. Randolph comes to do Mrs. Randolph’s back, I tell him about the plan to get her up in the wheelchair. “I don’t know,” he says, quietly. “Last time didn’t go so well.”
One thing about people who don’t hear well is sometimes they all of a sudden do. “Now, Henry,” she says. “We mustn’t let one bad day ruin all the rest. I want to get up so Katie can wash my hair. In fact, if it’s not hot out, I might just go outside.”
“Well!” Mr. Randolph raises his eyebrows and winks at me. Sometimes I feel like we are the parents and she is our child, and it is so cute. Probably sometimes she feels like that too. And then it’s not so cute. She was a librarian, she told me last time. And he was a teacher. Imagine if she were twenty-one and standing in the stacks in that beautiful churchy light of libraries, and someone came up and said, “You’ll end up bedridden. Your husband and a teenager will help you get washed every day.” I guess it’s good we don’t know our own futures.
“We still read together,” Mrs. Randolph told me that day. “I do one page, Henry does the next.”
“Do you ever read poetry?” I asked, and she said, “Oh, my, yes.” My brain jerked its head up and tried to say, Hey, why don’t you bring her some of your poems? but I wouldn’t let it.
MRS. RANDOLPH LOOKS BEAUTIFUL, if I do say so myself. After we got her hair washed, Mr. Randolph went out for groceries. He’ll be so surprised when he gets back. I put up Mrs. Randolph’s hair with bobby pins, and since it’s so thin, it dried right away. I made little curls all around the side of her face just like I dreamed of and ratted up the back just a little for height. We found some rouge and lipstick in her dresser drawer, and an old cake type of mascara with the little brush. It is one thing to put makeup on yourself, and another thing altogether to put it on someone else. It took me a few times, and thank goodness she had cleansing cream to wipe off my mistakes. One thing Mrs. Randolph still has are the most beautiful blue eyes, a dark blue that I have never seen before. And with the new bed jacket, they were even better. When I was all done and showed her in the mirror, she said, Oh my! and laughed, so I think she likes how she looks.
“How about we wait for your husband outside on the porch?” I say.
Mrs. Randolph puts her hand up to her throat, thinks for a minute. Then she nods and says, “Yes. I would like that.”
As soon as we get outside, Mrs. Randolph gets very quiet. I think she is just taking in the wide world that she hasn’t seen for a long time. “Well, you’re right, it is a very nice day,” she says. “My goodness. Birds.”
And now here comes Mr. Randolph pulling up to the curb and getting out of the car with his bag of groceries. He stops about halfway up the sidewalk and just stares at his wife.
“Hello, Henry,” Mrs. Randolph says. She may be in her eighties, and he may have been her husband for a long, long time, but she is flirting. And her husband is a dead duck. He just keeps looking, and then he comes up slow and kisses his wife on the forehead. “Let me just get the groceries in and I’ll come out here and sit with you,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”
As soon as he goes in, Mrs. Randolph turns to me and smiles. “He likes how I look,” she says, and I say, Yes. She raises one of her trembly hands to feel the curls at the side of her face. And then, “You know, I might not mind a little ride around the block.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll go tell your husband. Are you all right out here alone for a minute?”
“I’m just fine.”
I go inside to ask Mr. Randolph if he would like to come and I am so surprised to find him sitting at the kitchen table, his hands over his face, his shoulders shaking.
I walk slowly up to him. “Mr. Randolph?”
He stops right away and looks up, embarrassed.
“Are you okay?”
“It’s nothing,” he says, and then, “She’s such a beautiful woman, Katie, isn’t she?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Inside and out, all her life.”
“Yes, sir.”
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he says, “People will tell you not to get old. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“No, sir. Not yet.”
“Well, they will, believe me. Someone will one day say that very thing to you. But don’t you believe them. Because every day, no matter what, there’s something that . . . especially if . . . ” He stops, smiles. “Well, I guess I just can’t say it.”
“I know what you mean, though,” I say.
“Do you?”
“Yes, sir.”
For a moment, I get nervous that he’ll want me to explain. But he doesn’t. He understands that the truest things are spoken in silence.
MRS. WEXLER IS DRESSED TO THE nines, which is what they say, although I don’t get it. She’s in a floor-length turquoise formal, little circles of rhinestones at each shoulder. Her hair is up high on her head, and she wears blue eye shadow to match the dress. Her purse is turquoise too, shaped like a long envelope, and it has a rhinestone clasp. But her face is tight and unhappy. “Come with me, Katie,” she says, and I follow her on her blue high heels into the kitchen.
“I bought a few things for you and your friend,” she says. No kidding. On the table are a whole pack of Snickers bars, Jiffy Pop, licorice, two bags of potato chips, a large bag of peanut M&Ms, and two six-packs of Coke.
“Wow,” I say. “Thanks!”
“You’re welcome. The boys are upstairs getting changed. I want them in bed by nine-thirty at the latest.”
“Okay.”
She sighs and sits down at the kitchen table, which looks so odd, you don’t often see someone dressed like that sitting at a kitchen table. “So what do you think you’ll do?” she asks.
“You mean . . . ?”
“You and your friend.”
&nbs
p; “Oh! I don’t know, just talk, and watch TV, probably.”
I am a little nervous, because when I told Cynthia to come over, she said, “Oh boy, we can snoop,” and I’m wondering if somehow Mrs. Wexler found out. But it’s not that, because she says, “Well, I’ll tell you, I wish I could stay here with you.”
I laugh.
“I mean it,” she says. And then she looks up at me like she’s wondering whether she should say this or not. And she decides yes, because she says, “I hate these events. Twice a year, we have to do this with my husband’s company, and I just hate it.”
“Oh,” I say. I don’t know what to do. I look at the spread of treats on the table and wish it were hours later and Cynthia and I were diving into them and I was telling Cynthia how strange Mrs. Wexler is.
And then Mr. Wexler comes into the room, all clean-faced and excited, smelling of a lime-scented men’s cologne, and Mrs. Wexler drags herself out of the chair. “Have a nice time,” I say, and Mr. Wexler says, “Thank you!” but Mrs. Wexler says nothing. Because she’s already said it.
THE WEXLER BOYS AND I are playing Who Can Cheat the Most at Monopoly, a game we just made up. It started when I saw David not give enough rent money to Henry. So when it was time for me to pay David, I gypped him. He didn’t get mad, he just laughed. Now things have gotten so bad we are just stealing handfuls of money from the bank, taking hotels off peoples’ property and putting them on our own, skipping jail even when we get the card that says we have to go, yelling, “Twelve!” when we roll three. I have to admit we are having a good time. Really, Monopoly is not such a good game for these boys, but I prefer it to their usual, Let’s See If Someone Can Get Killed. And luckily, it takes a long time, because now it is almost their bedtime. They each had a Snickers bar and a Coke, and it has made them such live wires I can’t believe they’ll really go to sleep, but at least they’ll be out of the way.
Just as I was saying, “Okay now, this will be your last turn,” the doorbell rings. “I’ll get it, I’ll get it,” the boys all yell, and run to the door. David yanks it open so hard he knocks Mark down, and instead of saying, “Oh, sorry, are you okay?” he says, “Stupid idiot! Get up!” And Mark does, rubbing his elbow, but not really complaining. This is the way of boys.
It is Cynthia standing there, and I see she has a copy of Photoplay. We will have a good time looking at that—we have a routine where we pick a star to be and then see in the magazine if there’s anything about us. No fair being anyone on the cover, of course. Or Elizabeth Taylor. Mostly we say things like, “You be Connie Francis; I’ll be Sandra Dee.” But for now the boys are staring at Cynthia like she is the most interesting thing they ever saw. This always happens at bedtime with kids—everything becomes something they just can’t tear themselves away from.
I invite Cynthia in and say, “Okay, kids, you need to brush your teeth again and go to bed,” but they just stand there in a knot of boys, not moving.
“We’re playing Monopoly,” Henry says. “Want to play?”
“She can’t play now, we’re in the middle,” Mark says, and looks at David to see if he’s right.
“That’s okay, we can start over,” David says, and I say, “No, we can’t. You guys have to go to bed.”
“What’s that magazine?” David asks Cynthia.
“This?” she says, holding it close to her chest. “Nothing.”
“It’s Playboy!” Mark says.
Well, I wonder how he knows what that is and what he thinks a couple of girls might be doing with it. Him saying “Playboy” feels almost like he’s saying a swear.
“Okay. Time for bed.” I start for the stairs, say, “Let’s go,” but no one comes. “Boys?” I say, and Cynthia says, “You have to go to bed, now.”
“What are you guys going to do?” David asks.
“Nothing,” Cynthia says. “Just keep each other company.”
“Ho, you’re going to look at naked women.” David says, and I say loudly, “Okay, that’s it. Upstairs.” Henry comes, and I’m so grateful for this. David and Mark are still glued to the spot, staring at Cynthia.
“How old are you?” David asks, and Cynthia says, “I’m thirty.”
This is a good one, but they don’t laugh; they actually believe her. “You are?” Mark says, and Cynthia says yes.
And then it’s like they feel if she’s that old, they’d better behave, and they start upstairs. I give Cynthia a look of pure gratefulness and go upstairs to supervise teeth-brushing, which consists of each of them trying to spit on each other’s heads. And then they are in their bedrooms and I am free.
In the living room, Cynthia is cleaning up the Monopoly game, which is the kind of friend she is.
“Thirty years old!” I say, and Cynthia smiles. “I wonder what it’s like to really be thirty,” she says. “I’m so sick of being fifteen. Aren’t you?”
“I’m not fifteen,” I say, and Cynthia looks up at me quickly. “You’re not?”
“No.”
“Fourteen?” she says.
Well, I guess we have never discussed this. “I’m thirteen and a half,” I say.
She sits back on her heels. “I thought you were the same age as I am. How can you be thirteen and in tenth grade?”
“I skipped a grade,” I tell her, “and I also started first grade when I was five. My mother thought I was ready. Since I was going to be six in December, they let me.” I feel like I’m in trouble. I feel like suddenly I’m even younger than I am.
“Huh!” Cynthia says, and I think, Here it comes, she won’t want to be my friend anymore. Cherylanne was almost three years older. We really only became friends because we lived next door to each other and it was convenient. Plus I was mostly Cherylanne’s slave and fan club. But then Cynthia says, “Well, you seem like you’re fifteen.”
I have to hold back a smile of relief. “You want to see what Mrs. Wexler left us?” I’ll let her pick what to eat first, to reward her.
THE PHOTOPLAY WAS NOT A good one. I was Debbie Reynolds and I was nowhere; Cynthia was Doris Day and all there was for her was just an ad for one of her movies. The most interesting thing was the Modess ad because Cynthia and I tried to think what came after the because . . . which is always written in such feminine script. “Because . . . you can never tell I have it on,” is what they meant, we decided. You would die if anyone ever knew you had one on. Even though all women have one on several days a month. You just don’t want to think about it. Like everybody goes to the bathroom, but you do not want to think about Marilyn Monroe on the toilet reading a magazine. You only want to think about her in her sparkly clothes with her blond hair a little over one eye. Blue eye shadow.
There is nothing good on TV. We ate popcorn and candy until we were stuffed. Now we are sprawled out on the sofa, just staring straight ahead. “Want to snoop now?” Cynthia asks, yawning.
“I don’t know.” I don’t really think it’s such a good idea.
“Are the boys asleep?”
“Probably.”
“Well, go see,” she says.
I go upstairs and peer into both bedrooms and, miraculously, they are all asleep. There is the sound of some really deep breathing coming from Mark and David’s room; I think they are both junior snorers. Henry is lying with his bear in his arms, his covers all tangled around his legs. I want to cover him properly, but I don’t want to wake him up. I wonder if real mothers ever have this dilemma.
I come back downstairs and Cynthia says, “Well?”
I nod.
“Okay! So . . . where should we look?”
I shrug.
She looks at me. “What’s the matter? Don’t you want to?”
I don’t say anything.
She sighs. Thirteen, I hear her thinking. “What time are they coming home?”
“Around midnight.”
“Well, it’s only ten-thirty! I always snoop when I baby-sit; it’s the only thing that makes it worthwhile. Nothing so private. Just a littl
e.”
“Okay,” I say. “But you lead.”
Cynthia looks around the living room. “I don’t think there’s anything here,” she says. “The good stuff is usually in the bedroom.”
“I’m not going in there.”
“Why not?”
“What if they come home, or the kids hear us?”
“It’s way too early for them to come home. And if the kids hear us, we just run out in the hall and say we were checking on them.”
“All right,” I say. I have a nervous feeling in my stomach, but I guess that’s part of the fun.
We tiptoe upstairs and go into the Wexler bedroom. Mrs. Wexler’s closet is still open, and things are hung all messy in there. The bed is made crooked. Ginger would frown at this. There is a long dresser with a doily on it and some dusty pictures in frames. On a lacy metal tray, there are many bottles of perfume.
Cynthia slides open a drawer and says, “Here’s her underwear.” She pulls out a pair of lacy blue underpants and waves it around. I start laughing and she says, “Shhhh!”
She opens the drawer below, pulls out a nylon stocking, and waves that around, although really it is not worth waving, it is only boring brown. I go to the other side of the dresser and open the top drawer. His socks, that’s all. But there is an envelope pushed way to the back, and I pull it out. It’s a little tan-colored one. There is nothing written on it. I start to put it away, and Cynthia whispers, “What’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Open it!” she says, and then when I just stand there, she takes the envelope from me. Inside is a photograph. She pulls it out, and her eyes widen and she covers her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she says, all muffled.
“What? What is it?”
She holds it up. It is Mrs. Wexler with no clothes on, lying on top of this very bed. You can see everything. She has a smile on her face like she feels a little sick, her eyes are almost closed. You can see everything.
“Maybe this is why her kid was talking about naked ladies!” Cynthia says. “Maybe they’ve found this!”