My Life as a Doormat (in Three Acts)

  What was it? And on what dish in my life did it belong? Was it there intentionally, or had it been put there by mistake?

  “I think I’m going to call for the chef,” Edward said.

  “Edward.”

  He looked up. “Yes?”

  I gazed at his delicate face, his amazingly beautiful eyes, his blond, curly hair. How could I tell him all that I was feeling? How could I explain that once in a while I wanted to have dinner on Wednesday and eat hot dogs at the park? Could this simply be about food?

  “Leah, are you okay?” He set down his fork. “Is something wrong? You’ve been acting strangely all night.”

  “It’s just that . . .”

  His eyebrows rose, his lips pursed in an expectant manner.

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s about . . .”

  “Yes, Leah? What is it?”

  I sighed. Who was I kidding? “I think I taste that spice in my food too.”

  He beckoned Joel.

  Chapter 2

  [She turns, examining herself.]

  I met Elisabeth Bates six years ago. She lived in the apartment across from mine, and we instantly hit it off. We spent hours together watching movies, decorating each other’s walls, shopping, and complaining about other tenants.

  Then she met Henry Jameson. Now she has three children under the age of six. She’s always called herself a forward thinker, refusing Henry’s last name, wearing her wedding ring on her left middle finger (which somehow was supposed to represent balance), and naming all of her children after people she’s forgiven in her life, two of them being former boyfriends. She swears it never creates an awkward moment. Maybe not for her.

  So, what with her being a forward thinker, I always considered it amusing that she had a bad habit of referring to her nondeceased mother in the past tense. She told me it helped her say nice things. For the longest time I actually thought her mother was dead.

  And Elisabeth is one of those mothers who doesn’t understand how important the basics of parenting are. Conventional mothering—things like discipline and social instruction—aren’t relevant today, she claims. But in my view Danny, Cedric, and little Amelia are the reason more and more parents are deciding to homeschool their children.

  My apartment door opened as I hid my last piece of valuable decor. Elisabeth never, ever knocked. I greeted her with a hug, looking behind her. No trailing children. “Where are the kids?”

  “At my neighbor’s,” she said, throwing her bag on my couch and looking around. “Leah, your place is so dull. It wouldn’t kill you to have a nice crystal vase sitting around, you know. And I’m not a knickknack person, but in your case, I’d go for it.”

  I laughed. I didn’t want to, but it was one of those crazy, instant reactions, like gagging or swatting at a fly around your face. “Have a seat,” I said.

  “Thanks.” She sat on the end of the couch and looked at me. “You look good. Vibrant. Life is treating you well?”

  “It is.” I took a seat in my oversized leather chair, just catty-corner to Elisabeth, pushing the ottoman to the side.

  Four weeks had passed since I’d talked to Elisabeth. I never could quite understand what it was that still drew me to her after all these years, but I’d finally decided it must be the familiarity of the older days. I hadn’t seen those days in a long while, but they were vivid in my memory, and maybe I always hoped they would be back.

  “How are the kids?”

  I expected the usual answer, which consisted of detailed descriptions of each of their latest and greatest accomplishments, such as wiping their own bottoms or graduating from bottle to sippy cup. I waited, but then I realized she wasn’t answering. She was staring. At my carpet. Then I expected a quip about how I should add more color to the living room and get rid of the grays. But she was still staring. I stared too. Was there a stain? A crumb? A faux pas of some other sort?

  “We’re all fine.” Dullness filled her voice, a tone that suggested exhaustion. And as I studied her, I found other signs. Dark circles that hadn’t seen the light of day since her last child was a newborn. The top of her hair pulled back unevenly with a rubber band. Top-lip fuzz that could’ve used some bleaching cream. Though her children usually looked like extras in the cast of Annie, Elisabeth had always taken pride in appearing polished.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I read a review of your last play.”

  I cringed.

  “It wasn’t bad.”

  “It couldn’t have been good.”

  “Critics. What do they know?”

  “The best way to make a playwright suicidal.”

  “She actually said something good about it.”

  I looked up. “Really?”

  “She said had the dialogue been any more predictable, she might’ve signed up to be a psychic.”

  I blinked. “That’s not a compliment.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Dialogue is not supposed to be predictable.”

  Elisabeth frowned, staring at the carpet again. But then she raised a finger. “Wait. I know she said something good about it, because she used a word like clinched. It was clinching dialogue. That’s good, right?”

  “Are you sure she didn’t say clichéd?”

  Elisabeth looked blank.

  “Was there an accent over the e?”

  “Yes, but I thought she was just trying to be fancy. I could’ve sworn I saw an n in that word.”

  Maybe the critic did say clinched, describing the way her jaw was set while she was watching it. I didn’t ask, but I knew the woman was probably Dora Mendez, other-wise known around the theater community as Dora the Exploder. She had a tendency to take out her frustrations with her personal life on anything that came with a playbill.

  “So what are you working on now?” Elisabeth asked. That was unusual. She was hardly ever interested in my plays. She would come to see them, more out of obligation than interest. That was actually one of the things that had drawn me to her in the first place. She was a nice vacation away from the relentlessly aesthetic theater world that I seemed to live in 24/7.

  “It’s a romantic comedy.”

  “Oh! Like a Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks kind of thing?”

  Well, no. In fact, it was really more an antiromantic comedy. I was calling it a “romanti comedy,” leaving off the c in order to form the word anti. I thought this descriptor very clever until I discovered that it took a good ten minutes to explain it to everyone. And even then I’d get vague nods and hear whispering as people walked off.

  In all actuality, Jodie Bellarusa, the main character, was about as close to a Meg Ryan type as Cher. She wasn’t perky. She wasn’t blonde. And she didn’t like men who continued to be in romantic comedies long after they were considered adorable.

  You’re going to do it, aren’t you? You’re actually going to nod your head. Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks—repulsive and completely unrealistic. Look, you know I respect you. You created me, after all, and who wouldn’t respect their creator? But I have to question this relationship sometimes. I mean, I’ve been in some unhealthy relationships, thanks to you. But what good is a relationship when you can’t be real? That’s what I’ve been preaching since I came into existence! Forget the romance. Forget the flowers. Let’s all be real here! Be real!

  “Sure. Wouldn’t I be lucky to get Meg Ryan?” I lied.

  “I’d kill for her curls. And her body. And her money.”

  “Speaking of no curls, no body and, well, no money, I need your help. Your fashion help.”

  That perked her up. “Oh?”

  “I’ve got to go to this thing with Edward tonight. It’s a semiformal outdoor dinner party, but the real challenge is the company I’ll be keeping. Physicists. And some other scientist-types.”

  “So that low-plunging number won’t do.” Elisabeth was being facetious. By low-plunging, she was referring to a scoop-neck dress I wore to one of her parties. For me, it was risky, because I didn’t like
my neck exposed.

  She followed me into my bedroom where I opened my small closet. She let out a laugh. I did too. Again, a regrettable fly-swatting moment, and I could sense Jodie Bellarusa’s disapproval.

  “How do you get by?” Elisabeth lamented. “And why is everything black?”

  “It’s an artist thing.” It wasn’t. It was actually an insecurity-about- color-and-the-attention-it-drew thing, but I kept mum.

  “None of these will do,” she finally said after scooting every hanger contemptuously down the line. “We have to get you a new dress.”

  “New? In case you haven’t heard, playwriting isn’t the lucrative business it used to be for me.”

  “Come on. I know where to find all the bargains.”

  How ridiculous. I didn’t need a new dress. Any of these would suffice. “Okay.”

  Glavier had a deceivingly fancy name. Inside it looked more like a warehouse that had potential for conversion but hadn’t been converted. The dressing room, I noticed immediately, was a sheet strung from one empty clothes rack to another.

  “Don’t worry,” Elisabeth said. “I know it looks a little scary, but I’m telling you, one of these days you’ll hear about Glavier in all the best fashion magazines. Kitty has a real vision for what’s in style.”

  “Kitty?”

  “She owns the place.”

  In place of a meow, the petite, middle-aged woman came around the corner and greeted us with an exquisite politeness. Elisabeth got busy explaining my desperate need for a new dress. But Kitty seemed more interested in me.

  “Is this outdoor or indoor?”

  “Outdoor,” I said.

  “How nice. Evenings in the spring are usually very cool, but it’s been unusually warm this year, and it’s going to be warm tonight.” She took me by the hand and guided me toward a collection of dresses. I didn’t see anything black. I was seeing a lot of pastels. She pulled me along, and with her free hand gathered four dresses and then took me to the suspended sheet.

  She pulled it to one side and hung the dresses on what looked like a meat hook attached to the wall. “Here you are.”

  “They, um, they have spaghetti straps.”

  “Yes.”

  “Unfortunately I’m on a low-carb diet.” Kitty didn’t get my joke. She was staring at my waistline.

  I looked at the dresses. Not one resembled anything I would ever dream of wearing. But as she pulled the sheet again in an attempt to create a place for some modesty, I realized that I was lying to myself. These were the kinds of dresses I’d dreamed of wearing. Many times. I fingered my way through each one, feeling the fabric, trying to imagine myself by Edward’s side. Trying to imagine the looks on the other professors’ faces.

  I pushed the sheet aside and stepped out, only to be greeted by two eager faces.

  “I’m sorry, these aren’t going to work.”

  “Leah, you didn’t even try them on!” Elisabeth said.

  “How do you know?”

  “We can see through the sheet.”

  I knew my instincts were right. It was time to leave. But each woman grabbed one of my arms and swung me back in front of the dressing sheet.

  “Just try them on,” Kitty said. “There’s no pressure. Just see how you feel about them.”

  “I can already tell you how I feel about them. They’re not really me.”

  “How do you know,” asked Elisabeth, “without trying them on?”

  “If you didn’t notice, I don’t have anything mint or pink in my closet.”

  Both of their faces indicated they might die of sorrow if I didn’t give this a shot, so with a sigh I went back in, yanked the translucent sheet behind me, and tried on mint #1.

  “Kitty went to get you some shoes.”

  “Oh. Good.” Mint #1 had some cleavage issues. Actually, I had some cleavage issues, but nevertheless, mint #1 went back on the hanger.

  “I’ve been thinking about your plays,” Elisabeth said, filling the silence.

  This was startling. It actually sent a chill down my spine. My friend who hadn’t been to the theater before she met me had been pondering my plays. Not that I was desperate for approval and attention, even from nonpeers, but I was curious.

  Oh, who are you kidding? You’re desperate.

  I believed Jodie had retreated, but since she hadn’t, I forcibly tucked her away and, in the most casual voice I could manage, considering the topic and the current outfit, mint #2, asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I haven’t been sleeping well lately,” Elisabeth began, which should’ve prompted a why not? but artists can be gracious and loving people until there’s an opportunity to talk about their work, and then they become the equivalent of a pushy first-time mother showing off a baby. That my baby, according to critics, happened to have acne and red splotches, was irrelevant. “And I was thinking of all of your three plays.”

  The Twilight T-Zone, my masterpiece that gave me the title “Most Promising Young Playwright” by Dora the Exploder herself, was about the cosmetics industry, and gave a nice message about our perception of beauty. It was an instant hit, and how I met Jillian Rose Thompson, otherwise known as J. R., the famed agent.

  My next effort, a political satire called Spint, wasn’t as well received. In fact, I believe it was called an “attempt.” I never thought “attempt” was very well defined. Attempt at satire? Attempt at plot? Attempt at character? Maybe they were being nice about it because they really meant all of the above.

  Whatever the case, my third play put the satire to shame. It was called A Day in the Lie, and despite its corny title, I truly thought it would be a sensational drama. It was about the wife of a famous basketball player. Turned out nobody wanted to know what it’s like to be married to a famous athlete. Who knew?

  Elisabeth wasn’t offering up further information, so I asked, “What about them?”

  “Maybe it’s a coincidence, I don’t know, but it seems like something out of all three of your plays has come true.”

  I pondered this while nearly throwing out my back trying to reach the zipper of mint #2.

  “Like a prophet. Think about it. In The Twilight T-Zone, you have a cosmetics company go bankrupt. Just last year Lyla went out of business. Then in Spint, doesn’t the vice president have an affair with his secretary?”

  Yes, and it was dogged for being too unrealistic. Everyone shut up after the Clinton scandal.

  “Okay,” I said. I could see where she was going.

  “The third one, two words: Kobe Bryant.”

  I flung uncooperative mint #2 to the ground, then returned it to the hanger. Pink #1 was next, and I could already tell the Lycra was going to be a problem.

  “See what I mean?” Elisabeth said. “It’s like you’re a prophet.”

  Or a victim of pop culture, but she did have a point. I hadn’t really thought of it like that. I had certainly never thought of myself as a prophet, though I was beginning to predict Edward with an accuracy that only a scientist could appreciate.

  Elisabeth went on, presumably to distract me from the fact that this dress was fitting tighter than my skin.

  “Doesn’t it freak you out that everything you write comes true?”

  “What’s freaking me out is that I feel like I need to be in an aerobics class to wear all this Lycra.” And flab.

  “You have one more, don’t you?”

  I pulled pink #2 on. It was just above knee length and, all straps considered, fairly modest. The neckline was square and high, and the back didn’t even reveal a shoulder blade, to my surprising disappointment.

  I stepped out. Elisabeth gasped. Kitty, a pair of heels in hand, smiled with pleasure. But so far I hadn’t seen a mirror. Kitty rectified that situation by turning me to the right. I gasped too.

  Elisabeth pulled my hair up and out of my face, and Kitty slipped me into a pair of strappy silver heels. I began to understand that Kitty was quite talented, because so far I hadn’t revealed a single one of
my sizes.

  “Leah! You look amazing! I never knew you could wear pink.”

  “Me either,” I said, looking myself up and down.

  “It looks like it was made for you,” Kitty said.

  The dress put a particular innocence on me and took about ten years off my age. I found myself grinning and spinning and imagining Edward gushing at the sight. It wasn’t exactly pastel, but it stopped short of being hot pink.

  After a few moments, Elisabeth asked, “How much is it?”

  “Three hundred and forty dollars,” Kitty said.

  “Whoa,” Elisabeth said. “Oh well. Listen, Leah, surely we can find something similar that will fit your budget. Kitty has a lot of different dresses and styles and—”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “You will?” they both asked.

  “And the shoes too.”

  Elisabeth’s mouth was hanging open.

  I turned to Kitty. “I’m going to need a handbag.”

  Chapter 3

  [Walking beside her, he doesn’t notice.]

  Each of my hands cupped the opposite shoulder, my arms creating a large X across my body. I sat in the passenger’s seat of Edward’s Volvo station wagon, waiting for him to walk around the back end to get into the driver’s side. He always went around the front. Today he went around the back.

  I’d spent two hours getting ready. I actually curled my hair and wore it up. The last time I tried that was at prom. I carefully applied makeup and chose a dark pink lipstick that coordinated perfectly with the dress. I wore earrings that dangled past my jaw and a pink-jeweled bracelet I’d borrowed from Elisabeth.

  The last fifteen minutes before Edward arrived I spent pacing my apartment, walking in front of mirrors and anything else that would supply a reflection. I turned on some music to see if there was a chance I could dance in heels.

  Edward was right on time, and my body trembled when he knocked. I opened the door as wide as the grin on my face. I was prepared for the shocked look. I knew Edward would’ve been expecting my black blouse with the black and gray skirt. I’d worn it to several events, only changing the brooch. And Edward always wore the same suit, only changing the tie.