Vanity
Early June 1997
Summer before junior year
“So which rager am I getting ready for?” I said to Casey’s reflection.
Casey was lying on her back, a paperback of Queenie tented over her head. I was doing my makeup at her antique vanity, the one Alex bought at an estate sale in Twaine Harte. I’d never seen her use it; Casey’s beauty routine consisted of scraping a comb through wet hair as she pounded down the stairs two at a time.
“Hmm?” She was absorbed in the book but bouncing her legs along to Sheryl Crow. Her green giraffe, Jasper, by her feet, was bouncing to the beat, too.
“Which party are we going to—Matt Pomeroy’s or Deva Vance’s?”
“What difference does it make? All the parties in this town are the same.”
“True.”
I had The Girl’s Total Guide to Beauty open to the section on eyeshadow. Subsection: The Four-Shade Method. I leaned close to check my work in the mirror. My four shades were Smoky Taupe, Amethyst, Midnight Pearl, and Buff. The book said if you only blended well enough you could make any colors work together.
I loved Casey’s dressing table. But the fine grain of the wood was hidden under papers and books and the dirty mosaic tiles Casey pried out of the gazebo in the park nearly every Saturday night. She had twenty tiles now and tossed them onto the vanity carelessly before we’d climb into bed. I arranged them in a neat grid whenever I came over, but when I returned they’d be disturbed again. I’d redo my work while Casey laughed at my compulsion. (You’re borderline OCD, she’d say. Could you even fall asleep here without doing your tile rows? The truth: probably not.)
“Matt Pomeroy’s in love with you.” Casey licked her finger and turned the page.
“Please.”
“Matt Pomeroy’s throwing this whole party for you. It’s all very Great Gatsby.”
“Matt Pomeroy’s never spoken to me.”
“He said you have the prettiest eyes he’s ever seen. He clearly wanted me to pass this info on to you.”
“He’s never looked at my eyes. He’s never looked above my neck. Boys think if they say they like your eyes it makes them sound deep.” I beaded mascara onto my lashes, stretching my mouth wide. “And that you’ll have sex. You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with them.”
“Girls can be shallow, too.”
“That’s true.” I leaned close to the mirror to study the line where my Amethyst eyeshadow turned into Midnight Pearl. Something seemed a little off. Maybe I just hadn’t blended enough.
Casey stopped bouncing and stared at me upside down in the mirror. “So why are you putting all that goop on if nobody looks at your eyes?”
“Because it’s fun. Because I like it.”
“No, it’s because your mother doesn’t allow it. And it gives you a twisted little thrill that she doesn’t know you’re running around like...like Joanie over there.” She pointed her book at her Joan Jett Bad Reputation poster. Joanie had slashes of hot pink on her cheeks and her eyes were lost inside raccoony black ovals.
“My makeup is way more subtle than Joanie’s. No offense, Joanie,” I said to the poster.
“If your mother saw you looking like that she’d never let you spend the night here again,” Casey said.
“I’m careful.”
“What do you do when you have a date and the guy picks you up at your place?” Casey set her book on her chest and met my eyes in the mirror again, genuinely curious.
I was allowed to sleep over at Casey’s on Saturdays if I got back in time for church the next morning. I was allowed to go on one date a week—in town—as long as the “young man” introduced himself, I kept my grades up, and got home by nine.
I smiled at Casey’s upside-down reflection. “I keep makeup in my purse and put it on in the rearview mirror. They like to watch.”
“Yuck.”
“And I keep makeup-remover pads in my purse. I wipe myself clean on the porch. At two minutes ’til curfew I look like a choir girl again.”
“What if your mom finds your makeup stash? She’s no dummy.” Casey rolled onto her stomach, saving her place in Queenie with her thumb.
“I take extra precautions.” I smiled mischievously and pulled a gray film canister from the lining of my purse, shaking it. “The makeup-remover pads are in here.” I fished out what looked like a magic marker, but was actually a white mascara tube I’d disguised with a purple Crayola sticker and marker cap. I’d slid a pen cap over a short eyeliner. “Everything’s camouflaged.”
Casey sighed and picked up Jasper, flopping onto her back and tossing him up and down. “You get a charge out of the whole thing, admit it. That gunk on your face, your whole disturbingly elaborate system. It’s your way of sticking it to your mother behind her back.”
“Maybe.” I returned my makeup-in-disguise to my purse lining, set the other tubes and compacts and my hairbrush in the vanity’s top-right drawer. My drawer.
Casey went back to her book and I stared at my painted reflection, listening to the radio. I wondered who this Billy character in the song was, the one Sheryl Crow got a good beer buzz with early in the morning. Did Billy look at Sheryl above her neck? He sounded like he might.
“Hey, Case?”
“Listen to this... This person in Queenie keeps a special pillow next to her bed for holding her underwear during sex. A scented pillow. Is this something people do?”
“How would I know? Case?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you think I look slutty?”
“Don’t say that word in front of Jasper. That’s an ugly word and Jasper is innocent.”
“But tell me.”
Casey set her book on her chest and stared at the ceiling. “I think you’re enjoying the attention.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“’Course not. Who got you to throw out your extra-large shirts and stand up straight?”
“Maybe you created a monster.” I studied my carefully shadowed eyes and glossed lips.
“It’s not you. It’s this town. There’s a reason all the girls flirt with some older guy in a silver shirt and roller skates. There’s nobody else to obsess about.”
“You have you-know-who at the café. Syrup.”
“You know what I mean. Ruler-girl obsessions.”
Ruler was our code word for straight. For gay, we said Cheerful, and Scary Sue was always Syrup. Just in case someone overheard.
Few people at school knew Casey liked girls. She’d decided to keep it quiet for a while, maybe even until after graduation. We were going to live in San Francisco together, after college, where it would be easier for her. No more code words.
But the fact that Alex hadn’t clued in baffled me. It had become some sort of test, and every week that went by she was failing miserably.
I’d promised not to say anything, but I worried that if Alex didn’t figure it out soon, one day I’d come over and find that Casey had replaced her candy-wrapper door with a real one.
“This Ruler girl isn’t obsessed with him. Not anymore.”
“Obsessed with who?” Alex whooshed in through the crinkly curtain.
“Nobody, Mom.”
“This college boy who works at the skating rink,” I said. “Who thinks just because he wears his T-shirts too tight and his hair too long and goes to UCLA everyone is automatically supposed to swoon.”
“Sounds fascinating.” Alex had on a silky white blouse and black skirt, with her hair up in a skillful twist, a single red spiral escaping down her temple. She held up two necklaces. “Quick, he’s going to be here any sec. Green or blue?”
“They’re both fabulous,” Casey said without looking. “Stunning. To die for.”
“Laura will help me.”
I touched the long chains of semiprecious stones swinging in her hands. “The green, because the stones go all the way around. It’d be nice with your hair. I like it up like that.”
“You should wear yours up sometime. Show off that long neck.” Alex pulled the necklace on, dropping the other carelessly on the dressing table. She stood behind me and piled my hair on top of my head, evaluating the effect in the mirror.
“You two are out of control,” Casey said. “Now I know why that thing is called a vanity.”
“Who’s your date?” I said. “The guy from your tennis class?”
“He’s waaaay over,” Casey said before Alex had a chance to answer. “Lasted exactly as long as the tennis phase. She dumped him for someone she met at the beach. Then it was some glass artist from Truckee. Then last Sunday some forest ranger picked her up.”
“Completely unfair,” Alex said. She smiled at me in the mirror. “I picked him up.”
“That’s who you’re going out with tonight?” I said.
“Dinner and dancing at the Catamaran. Tahoe.”
I sighed. “That sounds so much more romantic than Deva Vance’s sweaty kegger.”
“You two’ll get there,” she said, leaning over me to rub her teeth, checking for lipstick smudges in the mirror. “I feel it in my bones. Someday very soon one of you’ll kiss a boy and your knees will turn to jelly.”
I winced at the “boy,” working hard not to glance at Casey’s reflection.
“There are no knee-jelly kissers at CDL High,” I said. “Believe me.”
“Well, try to enjoy these years. When I was in high school I would’ve given anything to go to a keg party.”
“Was your mom as horrible as mine?”
She fiddled with her collar and when she finally spoke she didn’t really answer at all. She only tugged my hair and said, “Your mother’s not so bad. Give her a chance.”
I wondered if Alex would be so generous on the topic of Ingrid Christie if she heard the conversations through the heating duct.
“That mother,” my mother had said only that morning, her whisper carrying up the old metal duct as well as any shout.
“So she’s a free spirit, Ingrid.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days? Free spirit?” Spirit came out in a hiss.
“She’s happy, Ingrid. Truly happy. She has a real friend. Don’t kill this for her. She’s a good girl.”
And my father, who trusted me, had won. He didn’t realize that my new preference for the correct T-shirt size was the least of the changes in me. I kept the bargains I’d made—introduced them to my dates, maintained my B-plus average. I was never a second late for church.
But the unspoken agreement? The important one? I’d broken that many times. I’d attended sermons parched and headachy from Everclear. I’d let more than one “young man” delve his fingers inside my underwear at 8:50. Only that, so far. But I knew the truth.
I was not a good girl.
“Gorgeous girl.” Alex held my hair in two ponytails and pulled them out to the sides, Pippi Longstocking–style.
“You two have quite the mutual admiration society going,” Casey said, small and distant in the mirror.
Alex jumped on the bed and kissed the top of Casey’s head. She tickled her until she dropped her book to the floor and curled into a defensive ball, shrieking and gasping, and Jasper bounced off the corner of the bed.
“Say uncle,” Alex said. “Say uncle or I’ll go for your underarms. I’m your mother, I know your weak spots.”
“Uncle!”
As soon as Alex pulled her hands away Casey said, “Is your park ranger going to be wearing the whole outfit, Mom? The Smokey the Bear hat and everything.”
We burst out laughing, and Alex spread her arms, wiggling her fingers in a tickle threat, one hand aimed at me in my chair and one toward Casey on the bed. But she only picked up Jasper and tossed him to Casey as she got up. “Naughty children. And to think I was going to take you to the Creekside for pancakes tomorrow before Laura has to go to church.” Alex kissed the top of our heads and pushed her way through the cellophane curtain.
“We’re sorry we laughed,” Casey called.
“Please take us to pancakes,” I yelled.
I dropped my voice so only Casey would hear. “We have a craving for maple syrup.”
Jasper bounced off my head.
“We’ll see, naughty children,” Alex called.
We listened to her light thumps on the staircase. A few minutes later there was the crunch of a car in the gravel driveway. A masculine chuckle, Alex’s low murmur. Different from the voice she used with us.
“And we’re the naughty children,” Casey said.
I picked Jasper up from the floor and inspected his ear. It was starting to come off, dangling by loose green stitches. Casey was already annoyed, so I felt a surge of guilt as I asked, “Why were your grandparents so strict? Not letting her go to parties, not even letting her learn to drive? I mean, at least my mom is letting me get my permit.”
“You know we don’t talk to them. They were awful to her.”
“Yeah, but. Do you know why they were so awful?”
“I think they were super religious. She told me once if she talked back—or even used a tone her dad didn’t like—he used his belt on her. Real backward, scary stuff. It’s hard for her to talk about.”
“That’s horrible.”
“You can add it to your list of fascinating facts about my mother. For your files.”
She said this in the same light tone she always used to tease me and Alex about our closeness. But as I watched her carefully in the mirror, I realized she wasn’t turning pages anymore.
“Hey. Case.”
I tried to catch her eyes, but she pretended she was deeply absorbed in Queenie. “Did you know this book is based on Merle Oberon, that actress from the thirties?”
“Case.”
“I’m going to get her biography.”
“Hey. Lady.”
She finally looked up, meeting my gaze in the mirror.
“Stop with these jokes that aren’t really jokes. Macaroon?”
Our code word. Our reset button. Macaroon meant I’m sorry, but more than that. It meant we had to take a deep breath before things got ugly. Macaroon meant—remember what’s important. Let’s not fight. Be sweet. Life is short.
We’d come up with it during a party back in October, when I’d wanted to stay and Casey wanted to go. Our only real fight. That was back when the parties, and the boys at the parties who wanted to go off alone with me, were a novelty.
I swiveled my chair so I could face the real Casey instead of her speckled reflection. “Double Macaroon. For Jasper’s sake? He doesn’t like when we fight.” I held him up and swayed him to the radio.
She smiled. “Macaroon.”