“So you’d just add a name?”
“Sure, you can do it easy, you just start using it, writing it on all your stuff, and pretty soon it’s like grandfathered in or something. Mom says it’s perfectly legal.”
Angie had been Miss Apple Blossom Festival last fall, and before that Miss Junior Grape, but she and Mrs. Noonenberg, a former beauty queen herself, had bigger things in mind, beginning with Miss Michaelstown next December. “But I don’t understand,” Caddie said. “Why do you need three names?”
“Mom thinks it’ll give me a better chance, either that or being named Heather. There’ve been two Miss America Heathers since ’95. But Mary Ann Mobley’s the most famous of all time except for Vanessa Williams, so we’re thinking three names is the way to go. So which do you like, Angela Ann or Angela May?”
“Angela Ann, I guess. My middle name’s Ann.”
“It is?”
“Catherine Ann Winger.”
“Wow, I never even knew that. Okay, Ann, that’s settled. Okay, listen, you’re gonna be mad at me on Wednesday.”
“Uh-oh.” She held the phone with her shoulder so she could chop a scallion. “I know it’s hard to practice this time of year, everything’s starting to—”
“Yeah, no, not that, I’ve been practicing okay, I mean fairly okay, although this piece is really hard.”
“Slow and steady.” Angie had chosen “Meditation” from Thaïs for the talent portion of the pageant, and it was a challenge for her.
“Right, although how this music could get any slower—but no, remember what we talked about last time? Towards the end? About my fingernails!”
“Oh, yes. You said you were going to cut them.”
“Yeah, but if I cut them now they’ll look lame for the prom. I’ll cut them right after, okay? The very next day, out they go. Okay?”
She cleaned off the cutting board and started on a mushroom. “Fine, but this is a critical time, don’t forget. You’re beginning a new, important piece—”
“Which I already don’t even like.”
“—and you want to begin it correctly. If your nails are too long, you’re going to internalize poor technique and then waste time unlearning it. But it’s up to you.”
“God, I hate when you say that.”
She laughed. “Well, sorry.” Angie had been taking private violin lessons with her for almost four years; there wasn’t much about her dramatic teenage life Caddie didn’t know. “What’s wrong with ‘Meditation’? Last week you thought it was perfect.”
“It is, it’s just so, God, sappy or something. Okay, I gotta go, I just wanted to ask you about Angela Ann, so—okay, ciao.”
“Ciao.”
Students like Angie were what made teaching a joy. Adults could bring a lot of satisfaction, too, but Angie was one of her few students under eighteen or so who came to her voluntarily, not because their parents made them. She might not be a prodigy (if she were, Caddie wouldn’t have anything to teach her), but she had real talent, definite professional potential. All she needed was focus.
When dinner was on the table, Caddie unfurled a napkin, a cloth napkin, over her lap and sat up straight. To me, she toasted, eyeing her reflection in the dining room window. And to Nana. She wasn’t allowed to miss her, but she hoped her first night was going beautifully.
Mmm, the salmon was perfect, if she said so herself, and the dill sauce she’d whipped up without a recipe was superb. She was a good cook, she just didn’t get to practice much. When Nana wasn’t eating macrobiotically, she liked old-fashioned food, fifties food, lots of plain, starchy casseroles made with condensed soup. It would be fun to try some new recipes while she was away.
She sighed, moving a piece of potato from one side of her plate to the other. What was she doing, anyway, sitting by herself in romantic candlelight in the dining room, acting as if she was worth it? Now that she wasn’t starving, she felt silly. And bored. Dinner conversation between her and her grandmother might not be riveting, but they talked about how their day had gone, gossiped about Caddie’s students; Nana always had a peculiar take on something in the news. They’d lived together for almost all Caddie’s life, but they’d never gotten like an old married couple, silent and uninterested, or so in tune with each other’s deepest feelings that words weren’t necessary. Nana loved to talk. And Caddie, who was shy with everybody, wasn’t shy with her, so eventually her grandmother got to hear just about everything she was thinking. In a thousand ways Caddie hadn’t begun to appreciate—but she guessed she would soon—they depended on each other.
Fine, but she wasn’t going to sit here and mope about it. That was the point of this nice dinner, and she was worth it. Dr. Kardashian had harped on that the whole two years she’d been able to afford him. “If you aren’t kind and loving to yourself, Caddie, who else will be?” It all went back to her mother, was his theory, whose abandonment behavior had inculcated a pervasive sense of unentitlement. Too bad he didn’t know a cure.
Except for being kind and loving to herself. Which she decided to put into practice by skipping the dishes, lying on the sofa, and reading her fashion magazines while she ate ice cream out of the carton.
She always felt older than the women in women’s magazines. Not smarter, definitely not, she felt like a twelve-year-old compared to them—but in her outlook, as if she were from a different generation. She didn’t even understand the language. Who were these people who thought about what shade of brown their mascara was? Who studied the ever so slightly different shades of beige in the artful photos of foundation smears and little mounds of powder? Caddie almost always thought the girl in the Before picture looked better than the one in the After.
She was a sucker for the quizzes, though. She took them all, the personality tests, the face-shape tests, the body language tests. She always came out Nature Girl or Miss Sensitive, Best Friend, Mother Earth, never Sex Goddess or Big Flirt or Bitchin’ Babe. Her body mass index was twenty-one, which was thin, but try getting any sympathy for being too thin. You were a voice crying in the desert.
“What is your best feature?” There was always a questionnaire about that. If you thought it was your eyes, you should “play them up,” presumably with new shades of mascara. Caddie thought her large, innocent-looking blue-gray eyes were her best feature on the basis of one comment, “You have pretty eyes,” from a boy she’d gone out with in college. So she’d asked Nana, “What do you think of my eyes?” and she’d answered, “You’ve got Winger eyes. We all look dazed.”
As for her worst feature, she had as much body anxiety as the next person, so the list was long: big feet, veiny hands, freckles, fair skin that wouldn’t tan, dirty-blonde hair that just hung there, small breasts, not enough butt. She could go on. Supposedly men never even saw the flaws women obsessed over, at least that’s what all the articles claimed, and as proof they’d quote actual men saying things like, “I personally like seeing a girl’s panty line, I think it’s sexy.”
She got up, restless. She felt like doing something, changing something, and it was too late to call up her hairdresser and tell her to cut everything off. Not that she would have, anyway. Impulsiveness wasn’t one of her vices; she even corrected people who said “Moderation in all things” to “Moderation in most things.” But she was in the oddest mood tonight to take a positive step toward something.
This room. Nana’s living room. Caddie hated it. She couldn’t sit down on the couch without first having to move Paulo and Francesca, life-size stuffed dolls her grandmother had made on the sewing machine, and she couldn’t let a student in the house without first making sure Nana hadn’t arranged the dolls in suggestive postures. Out. She scooped them up and carried them upstairs. Let them do whatever they liked on Nana’s bed till she came home.
That was easy. The fireplace screen would be harder, because it was the chrome grille of a 1979 Cadillac El Dorado her grandmother had scavenged from a junkyard. It still had dead bugs stuck to it, or the desiccated stai
ns dead bugs had left long ago, and Caddie wasn’t allowed to clean them off because they were the “best part.” The grille was a heavy, awkward armful, she got stuck turning the corner between the kitchen pantry and the basement steps, but she did it, retired the monster to a corner by the furnace. She’d put a big, frilly fern in its place, or some coleus, something light and colorful and alive.
Next: Nana’s paintings, weird sculptures, and religious icons on the walls and tables and on top of the piano. Caddie didn’t have enough things of her own to replace them, but even flowers would be an improvement. And she did have a few pictures and prints she’d bought while she was in graduate school and had her own little apartment. They were in the attic—she went up and got them, dusted them off, and brought them back down. Tomorrow she’d hang them on the off-white walls. Get some pillows for the couch to replace the dummies. Bring in some of the peonies blooming in the side yard. She could see it already, and it was going to be so much better. Luckily the carpet was as neutral as the walls, so the room could accommodate styles as opposite as hers and Nana’s.
But that was assuming she had a style. Maybe she didn’t, or only a style by default: anything that wasn’t Nana’s (flamboyant, attention-demanding, sort of willfully peculiar) was hers (quiet, conservative, so understated it was mute). She had an image in her mind of a scale between them, and it was up to her to keep it balanced. Or a seesaw, and she had to weigh more on her side or Nana would shoot her up in the air, like the big, older kid who tosses you up and you’re stuck there until he grins and flexes his knees and sends you down fast, wham, your whole backbone vibrating from the blow…. Anyway, Caddie’s job was to balance her grandmother’s eccentricity with her ordinariness, and it had been that way for as long as she could remember. Look, the Winger family is okay, because I’m not crazy! She is, but I’m not!
Most women acquired their personal styles by watching their mothers when they were young, then either copying or rejecting their mothers’ styles when they grew up. What Caddie could remember of her mother was skimpy: she’d worn hippie clothes and smoked cigarettes; she’d always tapped her foot or drummed her fingers or jogged her knee up and down; she’d had long blonde hair she let fall over one eye, and Caddie always wanted to pull it back like a curtain so she could see more, unveil the secret. But her mother hadn’t been around much, and she’d died when Caddie was too young really to understand her style. After that she’d had only Nana’s style to observe. She’d rejected it, she was still rejecting it, but she hadn’t replaced it with anything interesting of her own.
But it was early days, and she was making a new start. She didn’t have the knack for living alone yet either, but it was only her first night. The Michaelstown Monitor ran personal ads every Friday afternoon. She got the paper, retrieved her pen, poured herself a second glass of wine—for courage—and sat down by the phone.
The code didn’t mystify her anymore; she knew what a DHM was, a GWF, an SPBM. She read the personals every week, and once in a while she even felt tempted to answer one. She never had, but if she was ever going to, tonight was the night. Action. “I’m all about change,” she told Finney, who twitched in his sleep on her lap. “I am a wild woman.”
Too bad the women always sounded more interesting than the men. Were they just better writers? No question, writing ads was an art form, but it was more than that. The men went on about their height and weight, the height and weight they wanted from the women who responded, the age range they would tolerate, the personality type they had to have. Whereas women seemed kinder and more open-minded. Easier to get along with. Here was an SWF who was “brainy, witty, sensual and spontaneous, loves entertaining, works/plays hard, comfortable in jeans and sequins.” Wouldn’t she make a cool friend? A lot more fun than this guy, seeking “clean SWF with high morals, no dependents.”
Slim pickings this week. This one sounded the best: “Attractive SPWM, self-supporting, good conversationalist, serious but fun, enjoys politics, long walks, old movies. ISO intelligent woman who likes same, with whom to spend time and enjoy life.”
With whom. Wow.
If she thought about this for longer than ten seconds, she’d chicken out. She got her credit card out of her purse—two dollars and twenty-nine cents a minute—picked up the phone, and dialed.
“Hello, this is Byron,” a deep, prerecorded voice said. “Thank you for answering my ad. Please leave a message and tell me a little about yourself. And don’t forget to leave your number so I can call you back.”
Yikes, she was supposed to give her phone number to a total stranger? Well, if that was how it worked…
“Um, hi, I’m Caddie. Hi, Byron. I thought you sounded very nice in your ad. I was hoping we could talk and, you know, see how we, um, are together…I’ve never done this before. Ha, that’s probably what they all say! I guess I should say what I look like, that’s what…” That’s what men always wanted to know. “I’m five eleven. I’m on the thin side. Slim. Slender. I have sort of blonde hair, streaky blonde, down to my shoulders…blue eyes…I have good posture. Oh, I’m thirty-two. I’m also self-supporting, like you, so—and I have my own car. I’m living alone at the moment…I’m easy to get along with, I think, no real…um, demands or anything.” She heaved a deep, silent sigh.
“I’m just looking for a nice guy, you know, somebody to hang out with. Till we get to know each other. And then, well, whatever. Long-term relationship, that would be fine with me. That would be great.” Her laugh sounded nervous and silly. Time to stop talking; she didn’t like the sound of herself any more than Byron was going to. She left her number and hung up.
“Agh!” she screamed, and Finney shot up in the air. She had to catch him and console him before she could resume, in a softer voice, “Agh, agh, agh.”
Never again, she’d rather go to a singles bar. She’d rather be rejected for stupid things like small breasts and no butt than hang herself with her own words. Good posture! “I’m all about personal humiliation,” she told the dog, and took him out for his last walk.
Unbelievably, the phone was ringing when she got back. She raced to it and tried to say “Hello?” without sounding breathless.
The unmistakable voice of Byron, low-pitched and slightly nasal, like an Englishman but without the accent, said, “Hello, is this Cattie?”
“Caddie, yes, hi—Byron?”
“I hope I haven’t called too late.”
“No, no, not at all. How are you?”
“I’m well, thanks. You said this is your first time answering one of the ads?”
“It is, yes, and it’s kind of nerve-racking. I’m not even sure what you do.”
“It’s an artificial socializing mechanism, true, but at the same time it’s pretty civilized, I think. You can avoid a lot of the rough-and-tumble in the beginning, save quite a bit of time.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s true.”
“Dating is intrinsically messy, just an awkward construct by nature. I’ve never felt in any way demeaned by the personals process, never thought it tainted me as ‘desperate’ or anything of that sort.”
“Oh, no, of course not.” Not him, obviously. It was different for her, though, she was desperate. “Have you had a lot of success, then?”
“Well, that depends on your definition of success. If it’s marriage and happily ever after, I’d have to say no.”
“No, I wasn’t—”
“If it’s the quiet companionship of two intelligent, seeking people who may or may not be kindred spirits, then the results have been somewhat more encouraging. So tell me, Carrie, what do you do for a living?”
“Caddie. I’m a music teacher. I teach piano and violin.”
“I see.”
“And what do you do?” She felt giddy from nervousness; she wanted to giggle; she had to stop herself from adding “Brian?”
“I’m in management consulting. I design systems for expenses and inventory control for small businesses.”
?
??Oh. That sounds interesting.”
“What are your hobbies?”
It was like a job interview, but with a black screen between her and the interviewer. “Um, well, music, of course, I love to listen to all kinds. I used to be in the Michaelstown Community Orchestra, I played second violin, but I had to drop out—”
“I enjoy music, but I’m pretty much tone-deaf, you may as well know. Where are you in the sibling hierarchy?”
The sibling hierarchy…“Oh—I’m an only child.”
“I see. I’m the eldest of three.”
“Do you believe in that, birth order and so forth?”
He huffed out his breath. “Most certainly I do.”
“I’ve never thought about it much, but I’m sure it’s very revealing. Of character and…stuff. What are your hobbies?” She squeezed her eyes shut, a habit when she wished she were somewhere else.
“I enjoy antique car shows. I have a barbed wire collection. I play handball and golf. Now, let’s see…” He seemed to be ticking items off a list. “You said you currently live alone?”
She’d felt disingenuous about that, afraid it might’ve sounded as if she were temporarily without a live-in boyfriend. Which would certainly send the wrong message. “Well, actually, I live with my grandmother, but she had an accident and she’s gone to recuperate in a home. For a few months. So I’m on my own now.”
“Ah. You live with your grandmother, and you’re thirty-two?”
She didn’t like Byron very much, might as well admit it, but she particularly disliked the way he’d phrased that question. “How old are you?” she countered. “In your ad, you don’t say.”
“Thirty-nine. Just.”
There was a pause. She didn’t have any other questions, and she was pretty sure he didn’t either.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve found it’s better to make a clean, quick break when there seems to be, as they say, no chemistry, so—”