A Little Change of Face (14 page)

“Give me your number,” I said, all Scarlett. “I'll call you sometime.”

“You'll…? Whoa, little lady! Isn't that a bit strong for a…for a
librarian?
”

“‘Whoa, little lady?' Who are you supposed to be, John Wayne?”

From the look on his face I could see that, clearly, he had not been privy to my earlier
True Grit
fantasy.

Whatever.

“Fine,” I said, all business, taking a pen from my sensible bag and scrawling my name and number on a bar napkin, putting the napkin in his hand. “You call me then, if you want to be old-fashioned about it.”

He looked at the napkin, looked up at me. “Scarlett Stein?”

“Oh…here,” I said, blushing furiously, grabbing the napkin back as though this were somehow all
his
fault. I scratched out Scarlett, replaced her with the woman I was now supposed to be.

“What can I say?” I wince-explained. “I get a little confused sometimes.”

“Well, uh—” he let out a little explosion of breath “—sure,
Lettie.
Whatever you say.”

I moved to rejoin my friends, feeling Pam's leash tighten. But not before throwing over my shoulder, “Don't forget to call me. You won't be sorry.”

D
espite my seemingly cocky throwaway line to Saul Waters, I woke the next day with a feeling of dread.

I'd never worried once before that some man I wanted to call me might not call me.

Not once, Scarlett?
you ask, understandably skeptical.

“Not once, Lettie,” I answer.

Yes, well, er, um, it does get confusing sometimes, knowing just whom I'm talking to.

Anyway, I woke the next day, certain that Saul would never call me, not even if he were desperate and I was the last librarian on Earth. I mean, I didn't even do the “Do you think he'll call me? I don't think he'll call me. But he could. What do you think?” nervous dance I'd seen other girlfriends do from time to time. I was simply dead certain that I'd seen the last of him.

(But who knows? Maybe he'd call.)

Feeling thoroughly depressed by this novel state of affairs,
not to mention feeling unpleasantly wine-headed, I lurched at the first opportunity to cheer myself up; upon arriving at the library, Jane mentioned needing to go to the post office to send some things down to a few of her grandkids in Florida. What was wrong with her family? Didn't these people know that the kids were supposed to stay up here and
she
was supposed to move down there?

Whatever.

In order to cheer myself up, I offered to take Jane's package across the street to the post office.

“But there's really no need…” she said.

“It's no problem,” I said, smiling as I held the large package out in front of me, jauntily backing into the glass door with my butt to open it rather than pushing the automatic door opener. “I'll even treat. Really. I love going to the post office.”

And I did love going to the post office.

Okay, so maybe I didn't love the physical act of going to the post office, but I liked playing post office.

And okay, by “playing post office,” I don't mean what you think I mean, but I still liked doing it.

Playing post office was something I'd been doing for years, ever since I turned thirty. It was a little game I played—a contest, if you will—with, well, whatever other women happened to be in the post office whenever I happened to walk in.

 

Rules of the Post Office Game:

Okay, okay, I do realize that this doesn't sound very nice, but I swear I'm not the only woman who does this. (Who knows? Maybe you do it, too.) I used to feel guilty about this little game until one day, during a conversation with Best Girlfriend—I forget which one of us introduced the subject—one of us made an allusion that made it clear she played the game and the other said, shocked, relieved, “Omigod! You, too?”

And somehow, as so often happened, Best Girlfriend made me feel better about some human smallness of mine.

“It would be one thing,” she'd said, “if you gloated afterward. Gloaters don't deserve to get that little extra lift that can only be achieved by realizing that you're still outpacing over half of the woman race. But so long as you keep it to yourself, so long as you leave the post office as humbly as you entered, then yes, it's perfectly fine behavior to count how many people you're better-looking than while you're picking up stamps.”

And, anyway, it wasn't like I was so vain that I played this game everywhere: I didn't do it at Super Stop & Shop, didn't do it at the movies, didn't do it at Chalk Is Cheap. Really, for some reason, the only place the game was played, because it was the only place the game worked, was in the post office.

When I walked into the post office, there were already four people waiting on line: two teenagers with low-slung jeans and Britney waists (no way was I going to beat them), plus a woman, about my age, who looked like she lived in the gym (shitshitshit), and a man (which meant he didn't count in this particular contest, but damn, he looked better than me, too).

I stood there with Jane's package in my arms, convincing myself there was still hope. Right up until I stood at the counter paying for the shipment, anyone who came in behind me would still count as contestants.

For once, I prayed for a slow-moving line. This was a contest I'd never lost before, it was a harmless game that had always made me feel better about myself; I was determined that this time should be no different.

I heard footsteps on the dusty linoleum behind me, indicating that someone else was getting in line. Resisting the temptation to turn around and check—was the new person in line better-looking than me? Or, please God, worse?—I decided that I would keep my eyes peeled on that gray counter until I laid Jane's package down on it in order to pay. Only then would I allow myself to turn around and see who the new contestants were.

I heard four more sets of footsteps behind me before it was finally my turn. Stepping up to the counter, I put Jane's package down and steeled myself in preparation for looking over my shoulder. The way I figured it, I needed to beat all five of the sets of footsteps, since beating only four would put me into a tie with the people who had been ahead of me in line, whether I counted the guy or not. Of course, anything less than four, or if a couple of the new people turned out to be guys, would mean sure defeat.

Finally, I looked over my shoulder, and saw, looking down the line…

Two old ladies. Yes! Yes! Gray power! I practically pumped my arm in the air to show my solidarity. There just weren't enough old people in the world. Old people should be
everywhere.
It really was a shame they couldn't be fruitful and multiply themselves.

And I was better-looking than they were.

Behind the two old ladies there was…

A really old lady! Yes! Yes! Everyone should live to a hundred! If everyone lived to be a hundred, the world would be a better place for me, me, me! Well, at least until I got older.

Still, I had her beat by a sixty-year mile.

I was now running neck and neck: I was worse-looking than three of the people who had been in line ahead of me (I'd decided definitely not to count the man because he was a man and, besides, he was better-looking than me and threw my net score off) and better-looking than three of the five people behind me. Just two more to go. I was sure I could do it.

Behind the really old lady there was…

A man.

Bzzz.

But, I decided after my initial disappointment, that was okay. Since I was much better-looking than this man, who had a nose where most people had a face, he officially and fairly canceled out the good-looking man from before.

Just one more to go; just one more and I would be home free.

I craned my neck to see behind the two old ladies, the one really old lady and the man's nose. Well, mostly I just had to crane to see around the nose.

But I couldn't look just yet. I was beginning to think it might not be such a bad thing if the last person turned out to be a man. So if it turned out to be a draw—how bad was that? A draw at age thirty-nine wouldn't be such a demoralizing loss.

I realized that I couldn't put it off any longer. I had to look. Hopefully, it would be another old lady.

I looked.

The fifth person who had gotten in line behind me was a woman. She was under thirty, about five-and-a-half-feet tall, with perfectly nice breasts, narrow waist, tight jeans over decent hips. She had honey-colored hair, long and parted on the side, clear skin, green eyes, and when she smiled—yup—all her teeth. She looked like a glamorous author photo on the back of a book, the kind of pic that would make cynics ask, “Who'd she sleep with to get published?”

A few months ago, I could have easily given her a run for her money, despite the advantage she had by being ten years younger. But now? In my present incarnation?

Earlier, I'd been anxious, experiencing the uneasy feeling that I was starting, at long last, to lose the game.

But this was worse, much worse. Because, as long as there had been anxiety, there had still been a weird kind of hope of winning that had run concurrent with it.

But now?

Now I was filled with a deadening dread, for I was no longer merely losing the game. I had, in fact,
lost
the game.

“Excuse me,” asked the postal clerk behind the counter, “but would you like insurance for this?”

“Oh, who the hell really cares,” I said dejectedly, for the first time in my life swearing in front of a sister public servant other than Pat. “It's not even my package.”

 

I walked across the street from the post office to the library, feeling depressed. When I got to the parking lot, I saw a familiar figure locking her bicycle to the metal bike rack. It was Sarah, the reluctant chicken pox giver. She had on a long-sleeved purple T-shirt in honor of the slight nip in the air. Underneath the T-shirt, it was impossible to ignore the fact that she was sprouting breasts; I'd been right in my prediction. She also had on faded jeans with holes in the knees. I didn't look closely to see if they were still hairy, but somehow was sure they still were.

“Hey,” I said, “what are you doing here? Aren't you kind of far from home?”

“Not really,” she said. “We live off of Shelter Rock Road.”

The street she named wasn't far from where I used to live, was on the Bethel side of Danbury, so only about two miles from the library. Not such a long ride after all.

“Oh,” I said, brilliantly.

“We have the day off from school,” she said, “some Catholic holiday.”

“Oh,” I said, again brilliantly.

“So I thought I'd come visit you.”

“Oh!” I brightened. “Well, I do have to go back inside now, but if you want to come with me, maybe talk for a bit…”

I walked with her into the building, figuring we'd be safe until the shifts changed and I exchanged nice Jane for not-nice Pat.

Once inside, I started to walk around the corner of the Circ desk, while Sarah just kept on going toward the door that led upstairs to Reference one floor up and the Chil
dren's Department and staff offices above that. We were like a small train whose cars had suddenly broken apart. When she realized she'd lost her caboose, she turned around.

“Don't you work up in Reference?” she asked.

I shot a nervous glance at Jane, who was seated on one side of the twin tables that served as our work area when we weren't working at the actual desk. “Uh, no,” I said. “I work here.”

“Why would Lettie work in Reference?” Jane asked, puzzled. Then, without waiting for an answer, she added with a smile, “Besides, I always like to keep the good ones here with me.”

Bless her grandmotherly heart, I thought, the woman liked me.

I pulled up the two high swivel chairs we used when we were working at the desk, which was really as high as one of the bar tables at Chalk Is Cheap. “Here,” I offered Sarah, “sit.”

Then I pulled out some new card applications and began the process of entering the information into the computer system before making up the plastic cards themselves.

“You can talk to me while I work,” I said, hoping the conversation wouldn't distract me so much that I'd make mistakes, like making a six-year-old boy a sixty-year-old man or anything Dewey-decimal cataclysmic like that.

“So, tell me,” I said, “what's up?”

“Up?”

“Well, you didn't come here on your Catholic holiday off from school just to watch me work, did you? And what holiday did you say it was again?”

“I didn't.”

“Oh.”

I studied my work seriously, as if I might actually be serious about it, figuring that if she wasn't worried I was looking at her, it might be easier for her to tell me whatever it was she wanted to tell me. And I was sure she wanted to tell me something.

“My mother won't let me shave my legs!” she blurted out.

“Ah,” I said, waiting for more—there's always more—and I could almost hear Jane's ears perk to attention behind me, like a happy schnauzer. Well, it had to be more exciting than going through computer printouts of patrons with overdue books.

“And there's a Sadie Hawkins dance coming up!”

Oh, to be ten again, when every utterance required an exclamation point. But wait a second. Wasn't ten a little young for dances?

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Twelve,” she said defiantly. “How old did you think I was?”

Well, I sure wasn't going to tell her I'd thought she was ten. So maybe my certainty that she was a mini-me had been a bit off. After all, at ten I'd already needed…

“Hello? Lettie? Are you still there?” she asked.

“Sorry.” I blushed. “Where were we?”

I saw her start to look preteen irritated and cut that short with: “Right—hairy legs and dances. Go on.”

“The kids call me Monkey!”

Now I was on familiar territory.

“And I want to ask Jeff Polanski!”

“But he calls you Monkey, too?” Jane couldn't resist asking.

“No,” Sarah turned to her in disgust. “But his friends do!”

Ouch.

“And,” Sarah added quietly, looking down at her budding breasts, “when they don't call me Monkey, they call me Jiggles.”

Double ouch.

“When's the Sadie Hawkins dance?” I asked.

“A few weeks,” she said dejectedly, “on Halloween.”

“Then we have time to think of something to do,” I said positively, not having a clue as to what that something might be.

What I really wanted to do was to tell Sarah that none of this mattered—the hairy legs, the budding breasts with no bra, the kids that were too stupid or too jealous or just too plain ill-mannered to know any better. I wanted to tell her that she was a special girl, of course she was. Hell, I even liked her, and she'd given me the chicken pox! I wanted to tell her that this was all surface bullshit; ten, twenty, thirty years from now, none of this would matter. She'd be so far ahead of anyone who was giving her grief now that none of it would matter. And instead of wanting to shave, she'd probably hate to shave! But of course, looking at her, I realized I couldn't say any of that. Because of course it mattered. To her, it mattered.