Watch Me Disappear (8 page)

“We started this when she was in middle school,” Mrs. Morgan said, sipping her tea. “Maybe we’ve let things get too elaborate, but it is her eighteenth birthday. She wants to have a Roaring Twenties theme, so that’s what we’ll do. Last year it was
Gone with the Wind
. You should have seen the gowns the girls showed up in!”

“Wow,” my mother said, but I could hear the judgments she was making in her head about the way parents spoil their kids these days. I don’t know what it is about Mrs. Morgan that has her so enthralled. It’s like she thinks this is her chance to be one of the cool kids.

“Anyway, there’s a lot of shopping involved,” Mrs. Morgan said. “I think half the reason Maura has kept it up is to have my undivided attention. Since Billy was born, she’s been obsessed with her birthday parties. She decided on this year’s theme about a week after last year’s party.”

My mother nodded. Then she glanced over at me. I’m sure she was getting suspicious of my lurking in the kitchen.

“Why don’t you and Lizzie come with us on Sunday? We’re going into Boston to shop for outfits and favors. It’ll be fun.”

All I could think was that it would not be fun. I hate shopping and Maura hates me. If we go, the day will surely end in disaster.

Mrs. Morgan turned around on the couch where she was sitting so she could see me in the kitchen. “What do you say, Lizzie? A day of shopping? It’s about time to do some back-to-school shopping anyway.”

I stood frozen on the spot, butter knife dripping peanut butter in one hand, trying to think of how to respond.

“Lizzie isn’t much of a shopper,” my mother said. “But it might be fun, huh, Lizzie? Maybe you’d like shopping if you had someone your own age to give fashion advice instead of just your old mom?”

The cheerful act my mother is always putting on in front of Mrs. Morgan is so frustrating. She and I had barely spoken since the night of the battle of the bands, but with Mrs. Morgan in the room, suddenly we were chums, pals, the perfect mother-daughter duo.

But as I stood there trying to come up with a reasonable way out of shopping with the Morgans, I had to concede that my mother often tries to lure me into shopping trips, and I almost never give in and go. She wants to be the sort of mom who takes her daughter to the mall and gossips, and I don’t let her. Besides, she and I do not have the same taste. Usually I just let her buy me things and then I convince her nothing fits or I stick the stuff I don’t like in the back of the closet. Lately she’s been more willing to let me order stuff from catalogs. I think she’s just glad I’ve taken an interest.

“I’m just not sure,” I said.

“Let me check the calendar with Greg to make sure he won’t miss us,” my mom said.

On the one hand I was glad she had just rescued me from having to answer. On the other hand, I knew this meant she was going to get her way. Once Mrs. Morgan was gone, she’d tell me in no uncertain terms that we were going and I was going to like it, and that would be that. I put my snack on a plate. I wasn’t even hungry, but I’d made a pretty big project of putting a snack together, so I had to keep up the show. I took it to the den, where I could call Missy in relative privacy.

*          *          *

The second time I heard about Maura’s party was from the birthday girl herself. She wasn’t talking to me, but she was talking so loudly I hardly think she was trying to keep her conversation private. I was out on the deck with the last of my summer reading books when I heard her.

“Whatever, my mother can’t stand the idea that I might have outgrown theme birthday parties,” she said. “The upside is I’m going to get an amazing dress out of it… Yeah, the challenge is going to be avoiding the adults… Uh-huh, John is bringing it… He says you can’t smell vodka, so that shouldn’t be a problem… If it’s anything like last year, my mom will be so lit up she won’t have a clue what I’m up to... Nope, she doesn’t give a shit… Mr. Recovering Alcoholic? He’s not my father. He knows he can’t control me. Hang on, I got a beep.

“Hey… No… Yeah, I’m talking to Jess… Do me a favor, don’t tell her about the pre-party stuff, ok?... No, she’s just been driving me nuts lately… Uh-huh… Okay, see you at six.

“Jess?... I gotta go… Okay, tomorrow.”

A minute later I heard the slider open and shut and I was left with the quiet of the neighborhood. I wonder whose account of Maura’s elaborate theme birthday parties is true. Mrs. Morgan said Maura insists on keeping up the tradition, and Maura said her mother keeps it up. For some reason, I’m inclined to believe Mrs. Morgan. Enormous parties at which she gets to dress up and be the center of attention sounds to me like Maura’s lifeblood.

I wonder if Maura knows her mother invited my family to the party. There will be enough people at the gala event that she can ignore me without much effort, so I hope she doesn’t care that my mother will be dragging me along. Really the more pressing question I have is if I can get my invite extended to Missy. It will be easier to go with a friend at my side. I’m hoping that maybe somehow I can snag Missy an invite during our big shopping outing, but it will have to be during a moment alone with Mrs. Morgan. There is no way I can ask Maura for anything.

My mother, as predicted, insists we go on the shopping trip. Besides the fact that it will “be fun,” she also noted that I have absolutely nothing to wear to a “Roaring Twenties” party. We will have to go shopping, so we might as well go with our neighbors. Missy thinks it’s fantastic that I’ll be spending the day with my arch enemy. She can’t wait to hear all about it. Although Missy and Maura have not officially met, the night in the park was enough to grab Missy’s interest. That and the Facebook group devoted to hating Maura. So it’s settled. I will spend half the day cooped up in the car with someone who hates me and who I’m not too fond of either, and I will spend the rest of the day feigning interest in fashion and being scrutinized by my mother.

*          *          *

When we first get in Mrs. Morgan’s car for our shopping adventure, I can barely hide my shock at Maura’s appearance. While I am used to her skimpy apparel—the sundress she has on is no exception—it is the rest of her that catches me off guard. She looks like she just rolled out of bed, pulled the dress on, and walked out the door without even running a brush through her hair or washing her face. Without makeup, her features look soft, sort of blurred and undefined. Actually, I think that her eyes look bigger without the dark liner she usually wears. Without any makeup, they stand out strikingly.  Her hair looks straggly and greasy. I wonder if she was out partying last night. Maybe she hasn’t even changed clothes.

As soon as we pull out of the driveway, she leans against the door and falls asleep until the stop-start motion of the car at a tollbooth wakes her. The ride is quiet, Mrs. Morgan and my mother chatting, everyone ignoring me. When Maura awakes, the first thing she does is scold her mother for not waking her sooner so she could get ready. Then she begins rummaging through an enormous bohemian-style bag at her feet. In moments, using a small handheld mirror and unshaken by the motion of the car, she manages to put on a complete face of makeup. Out of the corner of my eye I watch as she blends foundation all over her face, pencils in her eyebrows, draws a dramatic line of charcoal around her eyes, sweeps not one but three colors across her eyelids, brushes mascara over her lashes, sucks in her cheeks to find the perfect placement of a rosy blush, and finishes with a swipe of gloss over her lips. I am surprised by just how much makeup she wears. I knew she owned a lot of makeup—I saw it in her room—but I hadn’t guessed (even seeing her without any makeup) that she wears so much at once. She instantly looks older, her face thinner, her cheekbones more pronounced.

“Ma, do you have any gum?” she asks, when she’s happy with her look. Mrs. Morgan hands her a piece, and once she’s chomping away on that, she digs through her purse some more until she produces a brush, some hair clips, and a gauzy scarf. She moves around in the seat until she can see herself in the rearview mirror and arranges her hair into a messy pile on top of her head. Then she ties the scarf around her head to hide her greasy roots. She looks effortlessly lovely and fresh. I am so jealous I can barely keep myself from staring at her in disgust. My only small measure of comfort comes from the fact that since she woke, she’s ignored me completely.

I cannot believe the dress Maura buys. It is a shiny silver thing with a deep-v neck that plunges to her belly button and deep-v back that plunges almost to her butt-crack. The material is so slinky you can see the shape of her belly button, and the hem—I assume this is the flapper connection—has several rows of fringe. She also buys strappy silver shoes that buckle at the ankle. She completes the outfit with gloves that come up above her elbows and a jaunty little hat with a white feather protruding from the side. I watch her posing in the dressing room mirror, pretending to bring a cigarette to her lips. Not satisfied with her appearance, she rummages through her purse and finds a tube of red lipstick. She’s right. The look is not complete without it. I have to give it to her—she looks like a 1920s starlet.

Every now and then I catch a glimpse of my mother’s expression when she thinks no one is looking. I can tell she is appalled—I mean, the dress requires double-stick tape to remain in place. And then there is the expense; you would think she was buying her wedding dress. Meanwhile, every store we go in, I look for some place to sit down and spend much of the day yawning. At some point after lunch, when Maura moves on to back-to-school clothes, Mrs. Morgan realizes that I haven’t tried anything on yet. Maura’s dress bought and bagged, she turns her attention to me.

The things she pulls off the racks! Maybe I should be flattered that she thinks I can pull off low-cut, clingy dresses, but honestly there is no way. Eventually, in a store called Upscale Consignment that Maura insists we check out, Mrs. Morgan produces a black sleeveless number that falls shapelessly to a drop-waist, with a ruffled skirt down to mid-calf. She also finds a sequin headband that I can wear flapper style. I feel like a little kid on Halloween as I pull it on. In it, my body is an undefined blob, but at least I can both sit and stand in it without fearing indecent exposure.

“That’s cute,” Maura says, taking a turn at sitting outside the dressing room. Although it was her idea to check out the store, she got bored with it quickly. “I mean, it fits the theme really well.”

I am surprised that she bothers to comment. “You think so?” I ask.

“Mmm. Doesn’t do much for your figure, though.”

I know she’s right but I don’t like hearing her say it.

“And all that black washes you out,” she says, chewing on one of her cuticles and not looking at me at all. “Maybe if you had the right makeup. And some highlights in your hair.”

The initial compliment just turned into the suggestion of a total makeover. I go into the dressing room to change.

“Wait,” she says. She dips into her purse and comes up with a makeup bag. “Watch.” She instructs me to pout and paints some color onto my lips. Then she has me close my eyes and I feel a soft brush tickle my eyelids. She brushes blush over the apples of my cheeks and tells me to look at myself. She stands behind me at the mirror, pinching the dress in a bit at the waist. “See?” she asks.

She hasn’t put much makeup on me, just a touch, but I don’t look so pasty and dull.

“If you just have the dress taken in here, that’ll get you a better fit,” she says.

I nod.

“That’s nice,” my mother says, coming over to see what we’re up to.

“Very cute,” Mrs. Morgan adds.

“Don’t you think she’d look cute with a little bit of blonde highlights in her hair?” Maura asks.

“She’d look like she spent the summer at the beach,” Mrs. Morgan says.

“I’m always telling her to give that hair a little more style,” my mother says.

I take off the dress and my mom pays for it while I put my own clothes back on. I stand for a moment in the dressing room taking in the makeup Maura put on me. I’m not sure why she is being so nice. Maybe she is just that bored. Maybe she pities me a little. I wonder how she’ll react if I ask her about the makeup.

Maura has amassed quite a hefty load of “birthday presents” by the time we head back to the car. I wish my mom would let me pick out my own birthday presents. I guess the heat and all the walking wore us out because none of us really talk on the drive. We stop at the rest stop on the Mass Pike for frozen yogurt at Maura’s request, and then we are home. After we locate my two bags in Maura’s dozen, I start across the lawn to our house but Maura stops me.

“About the other week,” she says.

I wait for her to go on.

“You didn’t say anything about that to your parents, did you?”

I shake my head.

“Good,” she says.

She might have said “thanks” but she didn’t.

“It was just a really bad day, you know?” she asks.

I nod like some head-bobbing dummy.

“Okay,” she says.

I start to walk away but then I stop. “Hey, Maura?”

She looks at me expectantly.

“I was wondering, do you think you could help me some more with the makeup stuff? I never really wear any, but what you put on me at the store was nice.”

“Oh,” she says. “Yeah, I can help you out. We can go to CVS or something one day this week.”

I thank her and walk across her yard to mine.

*          *          *

Tonight when I called Missy and told her about the day and how Maura is going to teach me how to wear makeup, she had a fit of hysterical laughter.

“Can I come, too?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said, but she told me she had just been joking.

“So she isn’t as bad as we thought?” Missy asked.

“Well, she wasn’t today,” I answered. “Oh, and Mrs. Morgan told me that she’d be delighted to include you in the party,” I said. I thought to ask her in the morning while Maura was asleep. My mother shot me a dirty look when I did, but Mrs. Morgan thought it was a great idea. After all, she said, she hated the thought of a kid starting a new school senior year.