The Elegant Gathering of White Snows (24 page)

It was nearly three
P.M.
when Merle spun Mitzie around in her salon chair so she came face-to-face with her new self in the mirror.

“Good Lord,” said Mitzie, squinting to make certain that she was actually seeing what she was seeing. “You gals, this is just fabulous.”

In a matter of hours, Mitzie had been transformed into a hip-looking grandmother with short red hair, makeup that accentuated her high cheekbones, and her dark eyes appeared almost luminous under the purple eye shadow and freshly tweezed brows. Mitzie sat in the chair for several silent minutes before she could move, and when she stood up, she really liked how the jumpsuit made her look.

“Can I just buy the jumpsuit too?”

“Well, sure, sugar,” Junanita said. “Looks like it was made for ya.”

The bill for the makeover came to $213, including the jumpsuit, and Mitzie wrote out a check for $350 and told the gals to split the tip. The three women had been working in Havre for over twenty years, and the biggest tip any of them had ever received was ten bucks. They watched with their mouths hanging open as Mitzie gathered up her old clothes, dropped them into the garbage can and then stalked out the door looking like at least half a million bucks.

During her New Day Dawning outing, Mitzie had been so engrossed in starting her new life that she had forgotten to smoke one cigarette. By the time she realized it had been four hours since her last smoke, she also realized she was going to quit. Later she would be glad because the smell of smoke would remind her of the smell of a bar and that would remind her of the smell of George, who always smelled like a bar.

Shopping for new clothes was much quicker than getting the makeover because Mitzie decided she only needed a few things. She picked up one of those little jogging suits that had fringe on the pockets and fit like a hot glove, a pair of baggy carpenter jeans, two blouses that were cut lower than anything she had ever worn in her life, six pairs of black bikini underwear that made her swoon just a bit as she remembered a scene from a Kathleen Turner movie she'd seen months ago where black underwear was a definite theme, a six-pack of brightly-colored socks and a pair of solid leather clogs that she wore to the checkout counter. Back in the shoe department she had taken off her slippers, tucked them under a display stand that looked as if it hadn't been moved in twenty-five years, and walked to the checkout counter like a little geisha because she wasn't strong enough to pull apart the plastic tag that held the shoes together.

By 4:15
P.M.
she had whipped through the new department store downtown and purchased three suitcases, a road atlas, three best-selling novels, and a bottle of Escape, a scent Karen had once worn.

Mitzie wanted to stop at the grocery store, but the van was going to be at her house at 4:30
P.M.
, and she didn't want to miss it. Three guys from the Purple Heart furniture donation center pulled in right behind her, jumped out smiling, and followed her right into the house, with their arms dangling and just itching to lift.

“Listen,” she told them as she threw her packages on the kitchen table. “Follow me from room to room and I'll tell you what I want you to take.”

As it turned out, what she wanted to donate was pretty much everything. The furniture was good for nothing, the books, dishes and knickknacks were now meaningless to Mitzie, and she sure as hell wasn't going to need or use anything that was in the garage. She ended up leaving all the furniture in her bedroom, just in case George came back before his next detox. She also kept a small box of letters and photographs of the kids, a dresser that was her mother's, a set of tall beer glasses that she had always loved, a big oak mirror that her uncle Paul had given to her as a wedding gift and a stack of old coins.

While the men hauled tables and boxes and lamps through the house, Mitzie carefully emptied out the kitchen cabinets and made herself a little keepsake box that included several pieces of ratty Tupperware, her grandma's worn wooden spoon set, two old spice canisters, and a few odds and ends that had always made her happy when she cooked meals for the family who had all but disappeared during the last twenty years.

By 8:30
P.M.
, the men had packed up her entire home, another lifetime really, into their truck. Mitzie stood by the kitchen door, hands on her hips, and could barely believe that the house was almost empty.

“You're done already?”

“The house isn't that big, ma'am,” answered the wiry short guy.

Before the truck had backed out of the driveway, Mitzie had mixed herself up a gin and tonic and called Karen. She asked Karen to come over right away and to pick up a pizza she'd just ordered from Malivika's.

Mitzie should have been ready to catch the pizza when Karen opened the door and got her first look at the new Mitzie. She'd already forgotten that she now had red hair and real clothes and a new face. Karen stopped dead still on the concrete step when she saw her friend and dropped the pizza, right side up, thank heavens. Mitzie could only smile.

“What's happening?” Karen made it only a few steps into the house. Mitzie retrieved the pizza.

“It's those walkers.”

“What walkers?”

“You know, those women in Wisconsin who are out there walking.”

She offered Karen a napkin. “Come in, I'm starving. Here, put the pizza on the table. Do you want some gin?”

“Gin?”

“It's good for you.”

“Fine. Put a lot in my glass.” Karen kept looking at the empty rooms as she sank down into one of the best chairs left in the house.

“Karen, I'm leaving Havre. You'd better drink up and I'll pour you another one.”

Finally Karen was able to focus on her friend without her mouth hanging open.

“Mitzie, you look absolutely wonderful. Is this what you used to look like or something?”

“Oh sweetie, I don't think I ever looked this good before. This is what I look like now, and the way I'm feeling, I think that I'm only going to get better.”

“I guess the gin helps with that, because I'm feeling better myself.”

Karen raised her glass to Mitzie and smiled, thinking about how much she loved her friend. “Tell me, Mitzie, tell me about the walkers and you and what in the world is going on around here.”

Mitzie told Karen about George and that she had decided not to divorce him because he would probably be dead anyway within a year or so. She showed her the check that was in her purse, and mostly for one hour and then another, she told her about the women walkers and how they had inspired her to stop living in a dead zone.

“I can't save George anymore,” Mitzie said, swishing her glass around in little circles. “I guess I never could. He's gone and he's been gone for a long time and frankly, I don't think he deserved me all these years. Not that I was smart or anything to even stick with him, but I never had the courage to do anything else.”

Karen wrapped her fingers around her glass, one of the beer mugs since everything else was packed, and she couldn't stop looking at Mitzie.

“You know, Karen, staying with George was really the easy thing to do all these years. I knew a long time ago that nothing would come of all my trying to help him but it was just simpler, much simpler to plod along.”

This was a rare night in Havre when the wind had decided to take a break. Mitzie left the kitchen window open just a crack all day and even though the night was as chilly as winter in most of the rest of the world, she couldn't bring herself to shut it. Tonight Mitzie wanted to feel as much of everything as she could.

“Aren't you scared?” Karen gulped down the rest of her drink.

“Oh, gosh, no, I'm excited as hell, but I'm embarrassed and ashamed for not having been a better role model for my daughter.”

“She's turned out just fine, Mitzie. She knew that you loved her, and you've always been there for her.”

“Maybe but I could have been more.”

Mitzie hoped she would have the time to set things straight. As she walked Karen through what was left of her house and fished around until she found her a key to the back door, she asked her only friend in the world to keep an eye on it and to come back and collect what was left of Mitzie's things and keep them in her basement.

When the two women returned to the kitchen, Mitzie ran her finger down the lines she had written on the yellow pad of paper until she came to the very last word.

“That's it,” she said, throwing her ice cubes down the sink and setting the glass back into the freezer.

Karen stood by the table, and as much as she wanted to cry, she couldn't bring herself to do it because Mitzie looked so happy. And quite foxy too.

“Mitzie, I'll miss you, miss the lights on in the kitchen and the sound of those God-awful slippers, and those days when we just drove around the hills.”

It had been years since Mitzie had held anyone for more than a second or felt what it was like to have someone put their arms around her, and when she hugged her friend Karen under the kitchen light, she wanted to cry too.

“Karen, I'm going to send a ticket real soon for you to come and spend some time with me because I'll miss you too, honey. Will you come? Will you come visit me?”

“Of course I'll come, Mitzie,” Karen whispered into her friend's ear. “Where you going? You never told me.”

Mitzie pulled back from Karen just far enough so she could look into her eyes, but not far enough so they would let go of each other. Then she sucked in a huge dose of the cool kitchen air and smiled at the thought of a long, winding highway.

“I'm going to California, sweetie, I'm finally going to California.”

The Elegant Gathering: Sandy

People always want to know about the sex part.

“Sandy,” they ask me, just a little breathless as if they are about to come themselves, “what do two women do in bed?”

My usual response: “What the hell kind of question is that?” You would think that a woman of the world such as myself, married three times, mother of two, a flaming liberal with an axe and about forty-nine other things to grind, would not take offense when someone dares to ask me what I actually do when I make love with a person of the same sex. Is this so hard to figure out? Isn't there a movie they can rent or some magical part of their imagination they can tap in to to answer this astounding question?

I suspect people are curious about same-sex relationships because they have either imagined it themselves or tried it more than a few times and need a little expert advice. But I am definitely not an expert at relationships—physical, emotional, or spiritual.

Actually, I've done such a piss-poor job of figuring out who it is that I am that I find it surprising anyone in the entire world would actually consider for more than ten seconds anything that I have to say. The sex question is a curiosity thing, I suppose; people look at me and try to imagine me without my clothes on, which is really something to see, believe me, in some kind of sexually exotic position with another woman. I am certain they would be disappointed to realize the simplistic beauty of making love with another woman is not as complicated as they might think. It is soft and giving and glorious—an act as natural as breathing.

Walking out here in the country, in the sunshine and this unbelievable weather with these fabulous women—is putting everything in perspective. All these hours of solitude and talking and sharing is not unlike walking naked and knowing that no one is going to laugh or say anything foolish when they see you so exposed, see you for exactly who and what you are.

For me, Sandy Plohinski Barnes Balenga, clarifying moments have come few and far between. It took me so long to figure out who I really am, that it was almost too late to do anything about it. Now, this very moment, as the world has narrowed and all of us can focus on just ourselves, these intimate encounters, the closeness of whatever it is we want to talk about and share, it feels amazingly wonderful to be alive and to just be me.

Beyond this group of women who have looked inside of my heart and soul, the other people who think they know me, who would say that I am brazen and sex-crazed and wild and the kind of woman who would try, and probably has tried, anything—those people, they only know half of the story. My life has been and continues to be a wild ride into the unknown. I have filled up one half of myself with enough heartaches to choke a horse, I have tried desperately to be someone I am not, and somehow in all this craziness I have come to be exactly where I belong. I will be the first to admit the journey has not been picture perfect.

This whole thing about sexuality and liberation has been so blown out of proportion, it's very hard to remember back when the world really was not so damn crazy. I was so happy when that sex study was released by a group of female doctors and psychologists, beginning of 1999 I think, that talked about how most of the world is really in deep shit when it comes to having satisfying sex. The book was a kind of in-your-face updated version of Seymour Fisher's
The Female Orgasm
that was published in 1973. Well, what a shock! But not to me—because while it's rumored that I have had physical relationships with half of the free world the sex itself was almost never why I rolled into all those sets of interlocking arms and legs.