Second Chance. Elizabeth Wrenn

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СКАЧАТЬ and, glasses still perched on the end of my nose, found that there was indeed an XL lurking in the back. A forgotten, adolescent kind of thrill ran up my spine. Wouldn’t this be fun! Neil would be beside himself, delirious with shocked joy!

      A pause in the thrill. If I bought this, it would probably lead to sex. Well, of course it would. That’s what this store was all about. Women bedecking themselves as sexual beings. For someone else. But I just wanted this for me. I wanted to take a long, hot soak in the tub, dry myself off with a fat new bath blanket, those obscenely huge towels that are practically a load of laundry in and of themselves. Then I wanted to put on this little Green Goddess number and lounge on satin sheets, sipping a nice merlot and then, well, then I’d slip under the covers, very slowly, very gracefully. When the heat of my body had taken the chill off the sheets, I’d reach toward it, my hand sliding across the satin. Then, and only then, would I pull toward me the object of my desire: that Barbara Kingsolver novel I’d been wanting to read for ever so long. I think it’s about a woman who lives by herself in the woods.

      I let out a slow, resigned breath. Fiction had replaced foreplay in my life. Solitude was way more seductive than sex.

      So, maybe I could wear this some weekday – an unsuspecting Wednesday, perhaps – when everyone was at school and work. I reached for the dangling price tag, peering through my half frames: $89.00. I gasped, lodging my Doublemint way too near my esophagus. I began a coughing and gagging fit of extra-large proportions.

      Phantom Girl glided over. ‘Are you okay, ma’am?’ She seemed not so much concerned as alarmed that I might keel over, leaving her with a big pile of frump in the middle of her store to clean up. Flushed and panicky, I nodded, grinning like a fool. I wheezed, ‘Fine! Fine, thanks!’

      I hustled over to the clearance area and buried my crimson face in the terry robes that hung there. They were thick and deliciously plush, and I kept my face between the sleeves till my gum had come up and my color down.

      It was nice in there. True, it was sort of ostrichlike, hiding my head like that, with the vast majority of me taking up most of the aisle. But I felt safe with my head in those robes. And almost alone.

      What was I thinking over there, anyway? This was much more my speed. I was a terry-cloth-and-flannel kind of gal. I’d momentarily been lost in the dark and seductive Satin Forest but had stumbled home finally to Menopause Meadow.

      After a long minute, I pulled my head out and looked the robes over. This time, I started with the price tag. At the very bottom was a crossed-out $110.00. Above that was a crossed-out $89.00. Above that, a crossed-out $59.00. Finally, written in red pen, $24.99. Clearly their final offer, otherwise why the 99¢? Talk about sexy! I found final markdowns very attractive.

      They were down to just a few odd colors in only large and extra large (evidently my kind didn’t venture in here all that often), but they were like no other robe I’d ever owned. It seemed like the kind of robe they’d have hanging in your closet at a fancy resort, waiting to wrap its sleeve arms around you and take care of you for a change.

      I decided I deserved this little indulgence. Even at a clearance price I still felt that way: I was indulging myself. Between growing up on a farm, us getting Neil through med school, then using his one income to support us, save for both our retirements and three college tuitions, and add in trying to make sure the kids got most if not all the things they ‘really, really, reeeeally needed’ – well, it meant that I lived pretty low on the hog.

      I was trying to decide between the soft but odd pink called Little Girl Dawn (how absurd to have a robe in a plus size with a name like that!) and a pale, and also slightly odd, dusty purple called Violet Haze, when Lainey and Nan suddenly appeared beside me. I dropped the robe sleeve I’d been holding as if I’d been caught masturbating.

      ‘Lainey! Hi, girls! What’re you doing here?!’ I asked, trying to sound delighted and loving and motherly, but fearing my tone was more accusing and guilty at the same time.

      ‘More like what are you doing here?’ Her smile was both intrigued and horrified, as though I’d just lifted my shirt and said, Oh, hi, honey, want to see my third nipple I’ve never shown you?

      Suddenly indignant, I shot back: ‘What do you mean, what am I doing here? I come here a lot. Sometimes. I come here, I shop here, from time to time.’ God! Complete role reversal. I was behaving like an adolescent male caught with a Playboy. What was wrong with me? I’m a forty-nine-year-old woman and I can damn well shop at Victoria’s Secret! I’m looking at terry-cloth robes, for God’s sake! I pushed a piece of my overgrown bangs back behind my burning ear and returned my attention to the robes.

      ‘Are you getting one of these?’ Lainey’s tone was soft and genuine now, as she rubbed the sleeve of the pink robe against her cheek in an endearing way. ‘They’re really soft.’ She smiled and picked up the sleeve of the purple one, touching it to Nan’s cheek.’ Feel.’

      ‘Yeah,’ said Nan, relief flooding her face that the mother-daughter standoff was over as quickly as it had begun. I perpetually wanted to put my arm around Nan. When her father had run off with a younger woman last year, Nan, Sara, and their mother, Amy, had had their lives blown up into puzzle pieces. Melba’s too, now that I thought about it.

      ‘They’re so soft, Mommy,’ Lainey said, temporarily losing her armor and gazing at me with loving, childlike eyes.

      I smiled. Little Lainey. My love.

      ‘I know,’ I said, nodding conspiratorially to both girls. ‘I’m thinking about it. Which color do you like for me?’ I lifted the pink one off the rack and held it under my chin, then grabbed the purple one with my other hand and switched. As I did so, my purse strap fell off my shoulder and onto my elbow, its weight yanking my arm down, both robes spilling off their hangers and onto the floor.

      ‘Mah-ahmm!’ Lainey hissed. An eerie ‘she’s baaa-ack’ sounded in my head.

      ‘Oops, sorry. Here, help me get them.’ We reassembled the robes on their hangers, and I put my purse on the floor between my feet and held each one up again. I was going to buy myself one of these damn robes.

      ‘Which do you think is best for me? I’m kind of leaning toward the pink. I’m thinking the purple’s kind of dark – too plummy and … frumpy.’

      ‘Well, they’re both nice,’ she said, again sweetly. A person could get whiplash from teenage tone-of-voice changes. ‘The pink might be a little young for you, though. I think the plummy suits you.’

      Bam! A brick upside my head. I looked up, seeing myself in her eyes. Not the adored mommy of her girlhood, not the cool mom of her preadolescent years, but the alternate-reality mom who was best neither heard nor seen. Certainly not in pink anyway. She was voting for the cloak of invisibility.

      I looked at my watch. Twelve fifteen. I sent the girls to go meet Matt and took the purple one up to the counter, not because I thought plummy ‘suited me,’ but because I was afraid I’d look like a very large wad of bubble gum in the pink. I handed the girl my Discover card, trying to think only of the savings and 1 percent cash back we’d get, not the 100 percent bill we’d get.

      Neil used to proudly say I could pinch a penny till it screamed, and it was true. I knew women who spent forty to a hundred dollars on their hair every couple of months. I waited for a coupon for my local Quickie Clips and went about twice a year. My lack of extravagance in all things personal was why my staying at home as a full-time mom was financially lucrative for us. Where another woman would need nice СКАЧАТЬ