His friend’s face turned red, Geof told me later, as if saying the word felt vulgar now when said between two grown men than it had between boys “back then.”
“When you were at Judy’s house,” Geof said, “did you ever meet an older guy by the name of Dennis Clemmons?”
“Oh, yeah, Denny. Scruffy guy, about ten years older than us, right? Didn’t I read where he just died recently, some terrible accident or other? Didn’t surprise me. Denny was a hard-luck kind of guy. You know he went to prison, don’t you?” The man suddenly laughed, remembering that Geof was a cop now. “Oh, right, of course you know that. What I remember is that Denny hung out with Judy’s mom a lot, so he was over at their house a lot. I think she paid him to do errands for her. She had some kind of little mail-order business, and Denny made the deliveries for her. Or sometimes one of us kids did. It was great; she’d pay us a quarter to run things over to people’s houses on our bikes. But we couldn’t stand Denny. He was always trying to hang out with us, with Judy’s friends, I mean, and he had a crush on her that was kind of disgusting, him being so much older and all.
“Lousy, what happened to Ron and Judy,” he ended up saying to Geof before they parted at the Buoy. “Didn’t they have a kid?”
When Geof related the story to me that evening, I said, “That helps me understand better about the scrapbook.”
“Why?”
“It’s more of a piece with her personality, it’s … I don’t know … consistent. A woman who’d go on and on like that about a house, so obsessed with it, and who’d keep a hope chest and who’d also keep all those other photo albums, she’d make a scrapbook like that, it would be like her to do something like that.”
“Sounds a little intense, doesn’t she?”
I raised my eyebrows. “You said it.”
“I don’t remember that about her.”
“Oh, well,” I scoffed at him, “you weren’t looking at her personality.”
David never returned to Port Frederick High School that week, and Geof couldn’t find where he’d gone. His relatives said they didn’t have him; he wasn’t hiding out in his parents’ house (Geof checked) and the next-door neighbors said they hadn’t seen him; his landlady called to say she was worried—“Where is that boy?”—nobody at McDonald’s had seen him since he was fired; Geof even checked the farm a couple of days later but found no trace of boy or motorcycle.
“How worried are you?” I asked frequently enough to annoy him.
“Not very,” he said at different times in varying ways. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. “The kid has proved he can take care of himself. He probably heard about his stepfather’s death, and it was just one more thing to upset him, even if he hated the guy, and so he took off.”
“That’s awfully … understanding … of you.”
“What’s that crack supposed to mean, Jenny?”
“I’m just thinking about what it would feel like to be David watching that videotape of Clemmons’s confession. If I were a kid and I saw that, I’d take off, too, preferably for some other planet where the inhabitants didn’t behave that way. Either that …” I tried to make my face expressionless as I gazed at my husband. “… or I’d kill the son of a bitch.”
“It still looks like an accident, Jenny.”
“I know, I know.”
I was the first to break the stubborn silence that ensued.
“So you think he’s riding the highways somewhere?”
“Or camped out around here, who knows?”
He seemed nearly to insist by all that he said and did that week that this would, by God, be a period of nearly boring normalcy in our lives, and he bristled when I took exception to that point of view. We locked and unlocked our doors without comment. The air conditioner hummed on without surcease.
The illusion began to work, even for me.
The days began to feel so humdrum that I was half glad to inject some novelty into our lives on Saturday.
24
ILLUSIONS, SAID THE SIGN OUTSIDE THE PHOTOGRAPHY studio.
For Geof’s joke birthday portrait of me, I had settled on this rather discreetly named business. The single other glamour portrait studio in our town was listed in our Yellow Pages as Hot Shots.
My choice was located in a strip mall, with a bookstore on one side of the studio and a shoe store on the other. I parked in front, then walked right up to the door, boldly going where none of my friends had ever gone before.
The window display stopped me cold.
It featured framed portraits of several women, all of them looking like movie stars, at least from a distance, an effect that was encouraged by the fact that their photos had been pasted to great big glittery gold stars that stuck out from their faces like sunbeams. Up close, however, they looked like ordinary mortals made up to look like movie stars.
I stepped up to the window and peered more closely.
A couple of the women in the pictures looked like they were having fun when their photos were taken; there was a flirty angle to the way they held their heads, a bold, comehither look in their eyes, their shoulders thrown back. Those two looked as if they’d really gotten with the program; but when I peered closely at the others, I imagined a wistful, shy glance in their eyes, as if they were a little worried that a certain somebody special might see through their disguise and might even make fun of them.
I quickly glanced away from those.
This was going to be hilarious, I told myself.
And if life kept on traveling down its current path toward delinquent parenthood, it seemed to me that Geof and I might need a few good laughs. Maybe a glamour shot of me would do the trick. For I, Ms. More or Less Yuppie Businesswoman of the Nineties, was here to shed my clothes and my inhibitions, drape satin and fur around me, pose provocatively, and get a mug shot. Mug and gams, perhaps.
“I have an appointment,” I said forthrightly to the receptionist inside. “Jenny Cain.”
“Jenny Craig?”
“No, that’s the diet people. Cain.” I was always getting that, to the point where I joked to Geof that if all else failed, maybe I could sell diet food.
She seemed to shout my real name: “Jenny Cain?”
“Yes,” I whispered, cringing. This was, I thought, a little like going to a drugstore for the first time to buy condoms. What if somebody saw me?
“Have a seat, Jenny,” she said in that same tell-the-world voice.
“Thank you”—I checked her nameplate—“Margie.”
While I waited, amidst stacks of Cosmo, People, Good Housekeeping, McCall’s, and Woman’s World magazines, I lectured myself. Silently. Don’t be a self-conscious ass. Nobody’s looking at you. Which wasn’t actually true. Both of the teenage girls waiting in chairs across from me were definitely staring as if they were trying to figure out what in the world the old broad was doing here. Or maybe it was the way I looked: windblown, no makeup, frazzled. Maybe I symbolized hope to them; maybe they thought that if these people could make me look glamorous, they could make anybody look good. I gazed back at each of them in turn until they looked away, and then I continued my lecture to myself. Consider this an adventure. Try to remember you’re here to have fun, for a joke, to make Geof laugh.
“Ha,” I said under my breath, “ha.”
One of the teenagers got called by a young woman who looked about their age and was wearing bouffant hair and a pink smock, and her friend went with her, both of them starting to giggle.
I wished I had thought to bring a friend to giggle with me. God knew, Sabrina would have laughed her ass off.
When it was finally my turn, I followed the bouffant hair and pink smock into a shocking pink room that boasted racks of clothing and fabrics, an array of jewelry boxes, a couple of dressing rooms with curtains dividing them from the rest of the room, and two makeup tables with white frosted lights encircling their mirrors.
“My name’s Betsy,” the person in the smock told me.
Her smile was nice, friendly, if a little bored.
She waved toward the walls lined with before and after photographs of ordinary women all done up to look glamorous. I would never in a million years have confused most of them with professional models, however, even though that seemed to be the idea. Some of them looked cute in their after photos, others pretty, one or two were naturally beautiful to begin with, but most of them had a self-consciousness about their expressions, a stiffness to their poses, that gave them away as strictly amateurs. It all struck me as a little sad, or maybe it was my mood and not those pictures in particular. These “models” all looked as if they were hoping that somebody seeing their photo might exclaim, “What a beautiful woman!”
Why was this depressing me instead of cheering me up?
“You won’t put me up on the wall, will you, Betsy?”
Betsy looked surprised. “Not if you don’t want us to.”
“No. Please.”
“Well, we’ll see. You wait. You’re gonna love yourself so much when we get through with you that you’ll want everybody else to see you like that, too.” Her smile was suddenly sweet, genuine. Then she switched into professional high gear; even her voice rose half an octave. “As you can see from these photographs on the walls, you can have practically any kind of picture taken that you prefer, Jenny. You get four poses in four different costumes—”
“Four? I don’t want four! Can’t I just do one?”
“Well, yes, I guess.” Betsy looked surprised but willing to go along with this eccentric customer. “Okay. Well, then, if you want romantic, then I’d suggest a Victorian photograph with lots of pretty lace and maybe a floppy hat with ribbons. Or if you want Foxy Lady, we’ll go with satin and a low neckline, very sexy, something like that—” She pointed to a photograph of a plump woman, thirtyish, who had been stuffed into red satin. She was leaning in toward the camera, her lips glistening hopefully, her breasts bulging and powdered, her eyes moist.
“Maybe … not,” I said.
“One of our other favorites,” Betsy continued, not at all dismayed by my lack of enthusiasm for the choices so far, “is Night on the Town, which is all black satin and fur and diamonds. It’s really glitzy and glamorous. I think that’s the one for you, Jenny.”
“Really?” Why did I feel suddenly flattered?
“Really,” she assured me.
But why not Foxy Lady? I wondered, plunged into sudden self-doubt. Didn’t I look sexy to her? Well, hell. And why not Romantic? Did I look tough, hardboiled? Damn. I let my gaze land on the photos that showed the Night on the Town look and realized she was right. God knows why, but she was right on.
“Yes,” I said and started to laugh. “Oh, yes.”
“Goodie!” Betsy clapped her hands and bustled into action. “Time for your complete makeover! Wardrobe, jewelry, makeup, hair, lights, camera, action! Oh, this is going to be fun, you’re going to love this! Who are you getting it for … ?”
And so she chattered and kept me chattering—except when I had to keep my mouth shut while she applied lipstick liner to it—while she draped fabrics and teased hair and dabbed colors onto me. In spite of myself, I was impressed: For as young as she was, her work was quite professional and hygienic, complete with fresh brushes and sponges. When Betsy was finished with her masterpiece, I gawked at the mirror, admiring myself.
“Wow!” said Betsy, bless her sweet heart.
“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.” I smiled at her in the mirror.
“Yeah,” she admitted with a laugh. “But it’s always true.”
It was a nice me, smiling there, it was the me the Prince would have returned the glass slipper to, it was the me that somebody would have climbed a rope of hair to reach in order to kiss me in a tower, it was the me that long black limousines would screech to a halt for in front of the Plaza Hotel in New York City, it was the me that was meant for diamonds and satin and fur. Or at least the top half of me was. The bottom half was still plain old Jenny in shorts and sandals. But in the mirror I saw shiny black satin draped above my waist to look like an evening gown with a bodice slung low in front; a feathery black boa artfully arranged around my upper arms, soft black gloves to my elbows, the glitter of rhinestones at my collarbones and dangling from my earlobes, my hair piled high and curly on top of my head, my face painted like a movie star.
“Fabulous,” Betsy pronounced.
“I’ll do one movie,” I said, “but I won’t sign for two.”
She laughed, enjoying my pleasure in my own image.
“And I want a cut of the gross, not the net!” I pivoted on the bench, admiring all my sides, and then I snapped my glove-clad fingers at my image. “Call my agent!” Betsy was giggling, but when she caught me starting to laugh with her, she yelled, “Stop! Don’t laugh! You’ll ruin your eyes!”
Well, now … we couldn’t have that, could we?
I swept into the photographer’s studio like Greta Garbo onto a cinema sound stage, half expecting somebody to yell respectfully, “Places, everyone! Ms. Cain has arrived on the set!”
“How’d you hear about us?” the photographer inquired.
His name was Ken, which nearly undid me when he said it, because I felt just like Barbie. This was Ken thirty years later, however, with balding scalp, a paunch, and a sweet manner that encouraged his subjects to trust him just enough to make fools of themselves in front of his camera. As I was doing.
“From a woman named Judy Mayer,” I said.
“Moisten your lips again. Good. Lovely. Say ‘seduction.’ Perfect. Again.” He clicked, clicked, clicked, I licked, licked, licked. “Judy Mayer? That name’s familiar …” Suddenly he stopped and stared at me over his camera. “Oh, my word, is that the woman who was shot by her husband? It is, isn’t it? Do you know she was in here just a week before she died? I’m not kidding, and I want to tell you that it was unforgettable to me even if she hadn’t gotten killed later on. Was she a friend of yours? I don’t want to offend you …”
“No, no, I didn’t even know her.”
“But you heard about us from her?”
“Yes, in a way, because I saw the photo you took of her. What happened when she was here? What did you mean?”
He propped an elbow over his camera and we both forgot our task. “Well. I’ve never had anything like this happen before or since. I was taking her pictures just like normal, everything seemed to be going along okay. She had the white fur, didn’t she? And the red satin? Right, I remember. And some physical problem, what was it? She was in a wheelchair, I remember, and we had some trouble getting her in place for the shots, she just couldn’t get comfortable. But that’s no big deal, it’s not that unusual. What was unusual was her emotional response to the whole thing. At first, I didn’t notice anything except that she was a little nervous, so I was trying real hard to put her at ease. Telling little jokes, complimenting her, just trying to get her to relax and feel good. And then I got behind my camera, and before I know it, what I’m looking at through my camera lens is that her eyes look real moist, which is good, you know, for pictures. So I get some real quick, ’cause I’m seeing real emotion in her face. It’s good, I like it. But then I’m looking through my camera and I see tears! Little by little, they’re starting to come down her cheeks. Just ruined her makeup, I’ll tell you. So I stop. Naturally. And I ask her what’s the matter. And she says she doesn’t know! And I bring Betsy in here to try to fix the damage, but the poor woman can’t stop crying! Before I know it, she’s just downright sobbing, and of course the photo opportunities are ruined, and her makeup’s ruined, and Betsy and I are scared to death the fur is going to get ruined, and this woman … Mrs. Mayer … she’s apologizing all over the place and saying she doesn’t know what’s come over her.”
“Did she ever say?”
“Well.” He thought it over. “Yes and no. I mean you can bet I thought about it later after I saw in the paper what happened to her, which was like maybe only a
couple of days after I brought her pictures to her ’cause she said it was too hard for her to come in to pick them up. She didn’t want to look at the video of them, she said I should pick the best one and do it up and bring it over to her and even pick out a frame for her. So that’s what I did. And then when I saw the news, I had this little paranoia, it sounds dumb, but for a minute I almost worried that it was my photograph that put her over the edge! But I knew that was crazy. She was plenty unhappy before I ever delivered it to her. But it upset me enough I almost called the police about it, but I thought, well, no, it only goes to show that maybe her husband did the merciful thing, I mean if you believe in mercy killing and all that. I’m not sure I do. But … she really was that miserable, I guess, and she really did want to die, I guess.”
“But what did she say to you … about why she was crying?”
He shook his head, frowning. “Just that she was remembering things she hadn’t thought about in years. That what we were doing here—her posing, me taking her picture—that it was bringing back terrible memories.”
“She said ‘terrible’?”
“Bad. Terrible. Horrible. Something like that.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“Yeah. She said she wished she’d never been born.” He looked at me challengingly, as if he felt I wouldn’t believe him. “She really did. She sat right there where you are, she sobbed like a baby, and she as much as said she wished she was dead.” He shrugged, but there was nothing callous about it. “And then she was.”
My surprise was ruined; I was going to have to tell Geof about this.
After a moment’s silence, I said, “I thought the picture you took of her was very nice.”
“Thank you. I selected one of those where her eyes were moist. It made her look real, she looked nice and genuine and kind of pretty, I thought.” He glanced kind of shyly at me. “What did you think?”