Second Chance

I almost turned and skulked out right then, but a sign at the back of the store caught my eye. A single word, in passionate red. The most seductive word in the dictionary: ‘Clearance.’ It made me swallow my pride and embarrassment long enough to quietly respond, ‘Just looking, thanks.’

I strolled past the bins of confetti-colored underpants, most looking roughly large enough to tie a tomato plant to its stake. I couldn’t help but think my tomatoes would get a kick out of that. I could sell them at the farmer’s market this summer. Thong Beefsteak. Scanty Panty Early Girl. It would give vegetable cultivation a whole new image.

I continued on through the middle of the store, past rack and bin islands of lacy, shiny, slinky things. I stopped to finger a gorgeous jade-green negligee and cover-up combo. That’s what I needed: a negligee with cover-up. Talk about an oxymoron. I lingered to see if they had it in a large, not that I was seriously interested, but I felt the eyes of Phantom Girl on me so felt compelled to look like I was looking. I tried to back far enough away from the tag sewn in at the neck while still holding it, but my arms were not long enough for me to make out the small letters. It occurred to me that if you need magnifying glasses to read a lingerie tag, it’s probably God’s way of delicately informing you that you’re too old for this. But I did it anyway. I dug through my purse again.

With my brown half frames perched on my nose, I finally found an ‘L.’ Would that be big enough? I pulled it out and held it up, also at arm’s length, too self-conscious to hold it against me. Close. Probably it would fit, but maybe not. The pounds had been creeping on with the years, each tiptoeing on as if I wasn’t looking.

It wasn’t that I was obese. At five eight and weighing about the same as my five eleven husband, I was probably the American average, but larger than I’d ever been in my life, almost as heavy as I’d been for each of my three pregnancies. But the currents of middle age had carried me past caring. That and various Oprah shows about loving your body. I’d gotten as far as not hating my body. I’d reached the dubiously successful stage of ignoring my body.

But maybe I could love my body in a green negligee. I put the large back on the rack, 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 outfits for work, or treat herself to a necklace, or makeup, my old sweats had lasted decades and I treated myself by only very occasionally buying the house something new, and then only on deep discount. A table runner. A colored glass vase. I bought virtually nothing outside of meeting our basic needs for nearly a year so we could buy a new dining table. Our minimalist kitchen remodel meant years of extra saving, since we prioritized college and retirement, living much closer to the bone than Neil’s income might indicate. But it would have cost us money for me to work whatever odd job my un-degreed self could have landed. Just under two years at the University of Wisconsin – one year as a Humanities major (why not just stand on the roof of the chancellor’s office and shout, ‘I have no idea what I want to do with my life!’?) and part of another taking a few art classes – didn’t get a person far. Call it housewife, homemaker, or domestic engineer, there’s still no paycheck, so I always felt like I was spending someone else’s money. My value to my family was my time, like beach sand: warm, inviting, fun to grab big handfuls, squeeze it and let it slip through their fingers before they ran off over it.

Phantom Girl handed me the credit slip. I signed my name and handed it back to her. She stared at the credit card and then at the slip. ‘Ma’am?’ she said, sliding both back toward me again.

I stared at my signature. I had a feeling of shrinking downward and backward through a tunnel, a roaring in my ears. I hurriedly scratched out Deena Hathaway and signed my married name of twenty-three years, Deena Munger.

‘Sorry. Spaced out there for a minute.’ I could feel the damn blood rising in my cheeks again. Lately, if I wasn’t flushed for one thing I was flushed for another. Or welling up in tears. It was a nearly perpetual emotional bath of one sort or another.

‘Can I see an ID, please?’ she asked, her voice tinged with suspicion.

I handed her my driver’s license, the worst picture of me ever taken, just last month when I’d had it renewed on my birthday. I stared at my license after she handed it back, wondering if she would call security. I didn’t even recognize myself in this photo. But she smiled, completely satisfied that the haggard woman with the dazed expression in the photo was me. She handed me my plummy robe in the pink striped bag and with a practiced smile said, ‘Have a nice day.’

At the food court, Matt’s friend Josh offered to bring everyone home later. Prior to my arrival, they’d all decided that after lunch they’d go to a movie, then after that head over to Josh’s for Ping-Pong and pizza. Having suffered the boys’ blatant confused, then amused, stares at my pink striped bag, I escaped without further questioning, or joining them for lunch.

At home, I hung the robe in the back of my closet and stuffed the bag into the trash in the garage. That way Neil would not find it and start asking questions, either about the cost or why buy that at Victoria’s Secret.

I was heading up to the bedrooms with an armful of the kids’ textbooks and papers, which had been strewn about the living room, when I noticed the bouquet on the dining room table. An unusual bouquet, to say the least. Smiling, I set the schoolwork on one of the stairs, a little ray of warmth shining deep within me as I headed back down. There were four colorful new dish towels rolled up and stuck into one of my glass vases, tied up in a bow with one of Lainey’s hair ribbons. Neil must have taken a nearly unheard-of hour off – even on a Saturday – to bring them home to me. A piece of junk mail, pulled from the recycling basket, no doubt, a note scrawled on the back, was taped to the vase.

Sorry about the dish towel, D. I got these at the dollar store, two for a dollar, a good deal, I think.

Thought maybe we could have lunch but you weren’t home, and nothing was prepared, so I left. Meet me for dinner – we’ll splurge, go get some pasta at Guiseppe’s. It’ll have to be late, I’m meeting a guy from the Washington Square Health Foundation at 6:00 for drinks. I’ll meet you at 7:30 at G’s. xo N.

I suddenly had a cacophonous orchestra of emotions playing in me. A trumpet of delight to be asked out on a date by my husband; a sweet flute trill that he’d shown and expressed remorse, especially in such a creative way. But there was also an entire off-tune strings section that he’d called attention to the price, and didn’t ask so much as inform me of dinner plans tonight. A certainty that I’d have no plans. I shrugged off the strings. I didn’t have plans, and Neil hadn’t made a gesture like this in a long time. I smiled again, picturing him picking out the dish towels, debating whether to spend the extra dollar on ribbons or bows and deciding he could use one of Lainey’s. Ah. I remembered now that Dollar Mania was right next to Guiseppe’s. That was probably why the evening plan had occurred to him.

I started getting ready at six p.m., showering, styling my hair as best I could, given that the cut was about four months overgrown. I even tried to put on a bit of mascara, but the tube was mostly dried out and came out in clumps, which I had to pull off with a tissue, pulling out several eyelashes in the process. I slid a pair of tan slacks from their hanger in the closet and was stepping into them when I saw my blue dress, probably the only dress I owned that would still fit me. Neil was always complaining that I never wore a dress anymore. I rarely had call to, plus, pants were more comfortable. Especially elastic-waist pants. I fingered the dress, navy blue with big white flowers, a little tie in the back. Hopelessly out of fashion. But he’d made a big gesture; I wanted to make one back.

I wondered if it was still warm enough out to wear it without hose. I hated hose. I looked at my stubbly white legs. It didn’t matter if it was eighty degrees out; I shouldn’t inflict these legs on the gentle patrons of Guiseppe’s, not that the restaurant was at all fancy, but still. I dug around in my drawer and found an old pair of stretchy blue tights. They’d do. I hung the slacks back up and took the dress off its hanger, laid it carefully on the bed. I pulled on the tights, the elastic waist loose to the point of being scalloped. Not exactly reliable-feeling, but way more comfortable than hose. I slipped the dress over my head. It was even tighter on my stomach than I’d thought it would be, and it made me look older than my not-quite-fifty years. Sighing, I spritzed on some ancient White Shoulders, wrote the kids a note in the kitchen, and headed out.

I got to Guiseppe’s at 7:15. I sat listening to the radio, debating whether to go in or wait in the car. Despite my recent craving for solitude, I hated to be at a restaurant alone, conspicuous and uncomfortable. But as I watched a couple go in, I thought I’d better put our names on the list.

At the door, though, I stopped, my hand on the wooden door handle, greeted by a large handwritten sign in bright red marker, misspelled and apparently randomly capitalized.

SpeciaL: Tonight onLy! ALL ouR Terriffic

spaGhetti You can Eat: $3.95 aduLts, $1.95

kids Under 12.

Another little sigh escaped, and I immediately chastised myself – it didn’t matter that the bargain was what had made Neil choose this restaurant. It was the thought that counted.

Unfortunately, Guiseppe’s was not terribly crowded and the hostess seated me straightaway at a table for two. I ordered a glass of Chianti, and while I waited for it, I sat trying not to look as uncomfortable as I felt, sitting all alone. I wished I’d brought a book. I studied the menu, just to look like I was doing something besides waiting, although I wouldn’t dare suffer Neil’s silent recriminations by ordering anything other than the ‘Terriffic’ Saturday special.

My wine arrived and I sipped it, looking out the window. There was really nothing to look at. A bleak little strip mall with a bleak little parking lot, yellowed weeds growing up through cracks in the asphalt along the edges. Then a girl about ten, walking a dog, crossed the street. They came into the parking lot. It was a funny-looking curly black mutt – maybe cocker spaniel and poodle. Suddenly it was sniffing the ground almost maniacally, hot on the trail of something, pulling the girl this way and that; she willingly let it, laughing. I smiled, watching them zigzag their way across the parking lot, my head twisting till I had to turn in my seat to watch them disappear down the sidewalk.

I looked at my watch: 7:40. I reminded myself that my wait was long only because I’d been early. Plus, my watch might be fast.

At 8:03 I called his cell phone. I hated when people talked on their cell phones at restaurants, so I turned toward the window and murmured to his voice mail, ‘Neil. I’m at Guiseppe’s. It’s after eight. I hope everything’s okay. Please call me on my cell.’ The waitress stopped by as I hung up, and, more out of embarrassment than want, I ordered a second Chianti.

If Neil’s meeting was running late, surely he could break away long enough to call me. He probably figured he was on his way anyway, why pull over to make a call? I did admire that about Neil: he would not talk on his cell phone while he drove. Being a doctor, he saw and heard about plenty of tragic consequences from that practice.

At 8:30, after I’d left two more messages on his cell phone and was feeling too tipsy to drive after two Chiantis on an empty stomach, it was now clear to the waitstaff, to the few patrons scattered around the restaurant, and most of all to me, that I’d been stood up. But I had to eat something before I drove home. When the overly sympathetic young waitress returned yet again to check on the poor old woman in that ugly blue dress with the crotch of her blue tights nearly at her knees, the old woman ordered the spaghetti special, and more than got her money’s worth from the three platefuls she packed away.

Neil met me at the door. His excitement ran headlong into my anger. And my dyspepsia.

‘Did you stay for dinner?!’ he asked, surprised, but not waiting for an answer. ‘That’s good. I’m sorry I didn’t make it, Dee, but it looks like we’re going to get the last of our funding from these guys! I stayed to celebrate the partnership with them!’ He was almost jumping up and down. Neil had so fully thrown himself into this cause, he was truly clueless that he’d thrown over his family. Or me, at least.

‘Neil, why didn’t you call me?’ I said, staving off tears. I wanted to stay angry, but my stomach hurt and I felt miserable, inside and out. But more than anything, I didn’t want to cry again.

‘I did try, but I couldn’t get a signal. I didn’t want to leave the meeting to go traipsing all over looking for a pay phone. Look, Deena, you’re a big girl. I figured you’d realize what was going on. I was at a business meeting, after all.’ He held out his arms. ‘Sorry, but I figured you’d understand.’

I bolted into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me, thinking I was going to throw up, but didn’t. I flipped on the loud bathroom fan, sat on the closed toilet and cried. I did understand that Neil was working, not just to support us, his family, but also for a very good cause. I was hurt more than angry, and what hurt me the most, what really got to me, was not being stood up. It wasn’t even the lack of the simple courtesy of a phone call. Nor was it Neil’s inability to apologize without a ‘but’ to excuse it all. What really hurt, especially after three plates of spaghetti, was his calling me ‘a big girl.’

FOUR

‘You got that at Victoria’s Secret?’ Neil had an almost sick look on his face. ‘That?’

I’d just pulled off my new bathrobe, having worn it for the first time and gotten exactly the reaction I’d feared. We were dressing for the O’Keefes’ party, and, as much as I didn’t want to go, a sense of duty drove me. And, I believed in the clinic – there were too many people for whom health insurance was an impossibility. Besides, I wasn’t ‘You-zing’ my life; the least I could do was support my husband in using his.

I hung the robe on the closet hook. It now looked more prune-colored than purple to me. I sighed. ‘Yes. It was on clearance.’

‘But, Dee, you, in Victoria’s Secret?’ He chortled. ‘The one time you go and that’s what you get. Of all things.’

Neil, in worn but clean undershirt and briefs, looked at the robe, and he too sighed. ‘You could have gotten something for me, if you know what I mean.’ I knew exactly what he meant, and I didn’t even come close to having enough energy to explain to him that I was tired of always doing and buying and being for someone other than me. I said nothing, and Neil went into the bathroom to shave.

I sat on the bed and slipped my thumbs down into one leg of a pair of suntan panty hose, gathering it up as I went. I placed my toes inside. Sitting there on my bed I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d worn panty hose. It could well be that the pair in my hand were more than fifteen years old. Ten minutes earlier I’d excavated them from the back of my underwear drawer and taken them out of the sealed package. When I’d gotten out of the shower that evening, Neil, predictably, had begged me to wear a dress to the O’Keefes’, rather than one of my ubiquitous pantsuits. ‘You used to look so good in a dress and you never wear them anymore,’ he’d said. ‘This may be our only opportunity to really dress up till one of the kids gets married.’

‘I had it on the other night, you know,’ I muttered, too low for him to hear in the bathroom, as I spread the dress out on the bed. It was somehow even less stylish than it had been six nights ago.

I sighed. I didn’t want to go to this soiree at all; it wouldn’t matter if I was unhappily there in a pants outfit or unhappily there in a dress. ‘I tried to call Sam again today,’ I said, staring at my foot. I was sitting with my ankle on my knee, still with only my toe in the hose, waiting for the motivation to pull them up.