I thought about the way she’d complimented me last night, and how good it had felt. How crushing it would be to see her do a double take, to watch as her eyes filled with confusion, to imagine her wondering if maybe the lighting had been much darker than she’d thought, or if her wine had been stronger.
Without letting myself think about what I was doing, I walked back into my bedroom. It would take me two minutes to change, another ten to put on a little makeup. This didn’t mean anything, I told myself as I pulled off my suit and hung it back up. I’d change back to myself again right after I met with May.
I put on my new black bra and matching panties, then slipped into my Rock & Republic jeans and black turtleneck. The turtleneck looked simple and classic from the front, which made the flash of bare skin in the back all the more unexpected. And my jeans hadn’t gotten any looser since yesterday. I squatted and squeezed and shimmied my way into them, working up a light sweat. On the bright side, if I wore them often enough, I wouldn’t ever have to go to the gym. (On the not-so-bright side, I might be developing multiple personalities. But hey, at least
one
of my personalities would be skinny!)
The MAC woman had packed my makeup in glossy black bags lined with pink tissue paper, each as beautifully wrapped as a birthday present. I found her chart and began digging through the bags, pulling out concealer and eye shadows and lip glosses and laying everything out on the bathroom sink counter, like a surgeon preparing for a tricky operation.
“Okay,” I told my reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Time to get to work.”
It wasn’t that I’d never worn makeup before. I had a pale pink lipstick I slid over my lips when I thought about it, and sometimes, when my dark circles were especially bad, I dug around in my medicine cabinet and found my crumbly old concealer. But I’d never
played
with makeup. For me, putting on lipstick had always been about as sensual as putting on deodorant. I’d never used the back of my hand to blend together foundation and a shimmery gold powder, considering different proportions until I decided which looked prettiest. I’d never brushed satiny-feeling eye shadow over my lids like an artist filling in the colors of a flower petal. I’d never known makeup could be so malleable and tactile and fluid. I’d never known putting it on could be as much fun as finger painting.
I used my new lip brush to swirl color from two lipsticks and lightly brushed it over my lips. The makeup artist had been right; I did have strong lips, I thought, stepping back from the mirror to examine them. Funny how I’d never really thought about it before. I lined my upper eyelids with a soft gray pencil, then I smudged the line with the tip of my pinkie until it looked smoky, just as the MAC woman had instructed. I put on a coat of mascara, using the end of the wand to prevent clumps, then I slicked on a light layer of clear lip gloss. I studied my face in the mirror, then dusted a tiny bit more of my rosy blush on the apples of my cheeks.
Eye shadow was the trickiest part for me. How was it pos
sible that the MAC lady needed three different shades to make it look like I wasn’t wearing any eye makeup? I faithfully followed her chart, putting Wedge in my crease and highlighting with Brulé, and after a bit of blending with a brush shaped like the world’s tiniest spatula, my eyes looked unbelievably sultry. If I didn’t know better, I’d be shocked by what I was thinking.
I tested it out by trying to remember a recipe for pancakes: Still sultry. I did a few quick multiplication problems in my head and thought about the weather: Still sultry. Makeup was a miraculous thing.
I let down my hair, brushed my bangs to the side, and stepped back from the mirror. Amazing. I barely recognized myself. In the space of a few minutes, I’d been completely transformed. Now I knew how Cinderella felt, carrying around her secret. Was it just the glass slippers and new gown that made her beautiful, or was it something else, something that couldn’t be bottled or sold? Because I felt like a completely different person had slipped inside my skin. One who was bolder, and who smiled more often. One whose features looked like mine but whom I didn’t even recognize. One whose boobs were a full size bigger (okay, technically that could be bought for $39.99 at the Miracle Bra counter).
I turned away from the mirror and folded my suit and pumps into an empty shopping bag, along with a few tissues and the bottle of makeup remover I’d bought from the MAC lady. Then I picked up my keys again and headed for May’s house.
“These are amazing,” May said, staring at my ads. They were spread out in front of her on her kitchen table, like a hand of poker.
“If you have any friends or family members who can pose for
you, you won’t even have to hire models,” I said. “You’ll save a ton of money that way.”
“I just can’t believe you’re doing all this for me,” May said. “Why are you being so kind?”
“It isn’t much,” I said. “I love doing this kind of stuff.”
The teakettle began to shriek, and May stood up.
“I wish I could do something for you,” she said as she moved around her cozy yellow kitchen, fetching clunky earth-colored teacups and a pot of orange blossom honey. “You helped me yesterday, and now you’re helping my business. I feel like you’re my secret fairy godmother.”
She put some chocolate-chip cookies on a plate, and I bit into one while a scruffy little dog stared hopefully up at me. Mmmm. Homemade, with bits of sticky toffee.
“These cookies are my reward,” I said. “They’re incredible.”
“I love to bake,” May said. “I used to dream about opening up a bakery.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked. I could just picture her in a big white apron, her curly hair tucked under a cap, rolling out piecrusts. She had that nurturing vibe.
“I love to sleep late more,” she said, and I laughed.
“I’m not the kind of person who could get up at three
A.M.
to bake bread. So I load up all my friends with cookies and pies instead,” she said.
“What made you get into matchmaking?” I asked.
“I was really lonely in my marriage,” she said.
She looked down at her hands, which were wrapped around her mug of tea, then she looked up at me again.
“I could tell you what I tell most people, which is that I saw a good business opportunity,” she said. “Or I could tell you my marriage had fallen apart and I wanted to throw myself into something to take my mind off of it, which is part of the truth. But the real truth is, I was deeply unhappy. I desperately needed
to believe true love really existed, if not for me, then for other people. Starting this business was an act of hope for me. Every day I’d see people who were coming out of a terrible divorce, people who’d had their hearts broken, people who thought they’d never love again . . . and I
helped
them. I helped them feel better about themselves, and I helped them find hope again, and then I helped them fall in love again. And eventually, when I had enough hope gathered up, I filed for divorce.”
“Wow,” I said.
Then I burst into tears.
May didn’t act all flustered or embarrassed like people usually do when someone cries; she just handed me a napkin and put her hand over mine.
“I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my face. “I never cry.”
“All the more reason to let it out,” May said simply.
“Oh, shit,” I said, looking down at the stained napkin, which had a rainbow of colors smeared across it. “I forgot about my makeup.”
Then I started laughing as I sat there in the kitchen of a woman I barely knew, me in my too-tight jeans and my collages made from my mother’s ancient
Good Housekeeping
magazines—me, who used to wear nothing but Donna Karan and Armani, and oversee teams of art directors and photographers and graphic designers—and I completely lost it. I laughed harder and harder, clutching my sides, with tears streaming down my face, and suddenly May was laughing right along with me.
And when I finally stopped laughing and crying, I told May everything.
“So let me get this straight,” May said an hour later.
By now the cookies were gone and I was wondering if I could find a way to discreetly unbutton the top button of my jeans.
“You think Bradley has a crush on Alex,” May said. “And you’re worried she’s flirting with him.”
“Not flirting with him, exactly,” I said. “Just making him fall in love with her.”
“But she’s engaged,” May pointed out.
“You haven’t met Alex,” I said. “Guys don’t care if she’s available. They fall in love with her anyways. Girls, too. In high school, whatever Alex wore to school became what all the other girls wore the next day. Complete strangers come up to her all the time to tell her how beautiful she is. Little woodsy animals and songbirds scamper around her.”
May raised one eyebrow at me.
“Well, they would if she ever went into a forest,” I said.
“But you’re beautiful, too,” May said.
“I’m nothing like her,” I said. I hated the bitterness that crept into my tone; it made me feel so petty, like I was a jealous three-year-old. “I don’t usually wear makeup or anything. I don’t even know why I bought all this stuff. It isn’t me.”
“And fooling around with that guy—Doug, is that right?—that isn’t you, either,” May said. She reached down to scratch the ears of a black Lab that had wandered into the kitchen. Exactly how many dogs did she have? I wondered absently.
“
So
not me,” I said emphatically.
“So what happened?” May asked.
I dropped my head into my hands as her question seemed to echo in the kitchen, bouncing off the walls before coming back to hover in front of me. What
had
happened? Why had I fooled around with some guy I didn’t even like? Why had I sabotaged my job in New York? And why, once my life seemed like it might be getting back on track, had I rushed out to go shopping for clothes that had no place in my new life? Then there was that white-hot flash of fear at Givens & Associates, the one that had left me breathless and shaky in the ladies’ room.
I’d thought coming home again would ground me. So where were these strange new feelings springing from? Why had I cried myself to sleep last night, when I never, ever cried?
May waited patiently while my thoughts tore through my mind, smashing into each other and creating traffic jams and honking and giving each other the finger. She sat there at her simple wooden kitchen table amid the comfortable clutter of a cookbook opened to a butternut squash soup recipe, stacks of newspapers and magazines, and the chunky teacups she kept refilling with Red Zinger. Everything in her house seemed to fit together as seamlessly as the pieces of a puzzle: her chenille couch and the old Lab who’d wandered over to doze on it; the bunches of dried lavender framing her kitchen doorway; the stacks of soft-edged paperbacks on the coffee table; the racks of spices in tiny stone-colored jars by the stove. This was a woman who liked to cook, liked to be at home, and prized comfort. It was clear who May was, and what she held dear.
I’d been like that just a few weeks ago; I’d been crystal clear in what I wanted out of life. But now, I felt like a wild assortment of loose ends and jagged edges.
“I have no idea what happened,” I finally said.
“But your family thinks you’re still working for the advertising agency,” May said.
I nodded miserably.
“That’s a lot of pressure on you,” May said. “You don’t want to disappoint them.”
“It’s not just that,” I said.
May had been brutally honest with me, and now I owed her the same honesty. Or maybe it was myself I owed it to.
“It’s also that I like being the smart daughter. I like it when Mom and Dad ask for my advice about stuff. I like feeling capable and successful. I like”—here my voice dropped—“feeling smarter than Alex.”
“Of course,” May said gently. “Who wouldn’t?”
“And that interview I told you about?” I said. “For some reason every time I think about it I get scared. I think about plunging back into that world, and working all the time, and suddenly . . .”
I had to gulp air; I couldn’t even finish the sentence.
I forced myself to continue. “This is the first time in my life I’ve ever taken a break, and now it’s like all these doubts and fears are flooding in. I’m doing stuff I never thought I’d do in a million years. I spent three hundred dollars on makeup yesterday, and I don’t wear makeup. Not ever. God, what’s wrong with me?”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you,” May said. She got up, refilled our teacups, and sat down again. “But can I tell you what I saw last night?”
I nodded.
“I saw a woman who was confident and smart and kind,” May said. “First you scared off my ex-husband. Then you invited me out for a glass of wine because you saw how shaken I was. How many other people would do something like that for a complete stranger? And the way you took control at the bar. You took a group of rowdy people, and you managed to get their attention and make them focus on your questions. You were . . . breathtaking.”
I sat there, basking in the glow of that word.
“But it wasn’t me,” I finally said. “That’s the thing. I don’t do stuff like that.”
May looked at me and smiled.
“Well, whoever she was, I kind of liked her,” she said gently.