A Little Change of Face

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Epilogue

1

Actually, Pam was wrong about a couple of things.

I wasn’t “so goddamned pretty,” and I wasn’t “so goddamned thin.”

(Okay, so maybe I did have spectacular breasts, but still. Besides, that was a whole other issue, and one that even sometimes bothered me.)

Regard my face for a moment, if you would, please, a face that will henceforth be known as Exhibit A: Note the long dark hair, the root color of which currently needs assistance from the bottle it’s been getting assistance from for over a decade, the assistance made necessary by the prematurely gray hair that, rather than being prematurely seductive, had caused coworkers to run shrieking from my path. Note (admittedly pretty) dark eyes beneath brows that have passed their expiration date for plucking. Note the slightly imperfect nose (erring on the side of largeness), the slightly imperfect chin (erring on the side of pointiness), the slightly imperfect chee—

No, actually, that would be a lie. My cheekbones kick butt.

Yes, I do know that this is coming perilously close to tipping into that odiously annoying territory that has been heretofore uniquely occupied by that hair-product commercial that used to run all the time years ago, the one in which the actress says “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” making the viewer long for technology to be advanced enough so that the actress would be able to hear it when viewers everywhere shout back at their TVs: “We don’t hate you because you’re beautiful! We hate you because the you that you are in this commercial is the single most annoying woman IN THE WORLD!” I do know how close I am coming to that awful-awful place, but please bear with me.

Regard the body now for a second moment, please, the body to appropriately be called Exhibit B: Note the lack of significant height (a smidgen below five feet, but just enough to make claiming a full five feet qualify me as a breaker of one of the Ten Commandments), which, when combined with the genetic legacy of good skin, is what makes people always howl, “Omigod! You don’t look that old!” whenever I say I’m thirty-nine. (That and “Omigod! You don’t look that short!” and “Omigod! You don’t look Jewish!” are the three phrases I’ve heard repeatedly all my life. And, yes, my full name is Scarlett Jane Stein; so sue me.) Note, also, the all-American flaw: the slight swell of lower belly that nothing short of lipo and a tuck would ever eradicate.

And, when I say all-American flaw, I really do mean that all American women have that flaw. I mean, come on: After you rule out those who’ve been sucked or sewed, and then you take away the actresses/models/overly wealthy who have had actual ribs removed, who do you have left? Oh, okay. So maybe you have the growing legion of anorexics and anorexic-wannabes; but after them, who do you have left? Answer: the rest of us. You’re left with the rest of us and our, at minimum, slightly swelling lower bellies.

And, yes, I am aware that I have much to be thankful for in that I’m located at the minimum end of the spectrum of swelling.

True, back in high school, I’d had one of those freakish metabolisms that necessitated my going home after school and eating a banana split just so that I wouldn’t get any thinner (Pam would have really hated me if she’d known me then…and I was not bulimic!), but those days were long gone and I had finally joined the female race. If I wanted to still fit into my size 6s, 4s and 2s (which one was always dependent upon mitigating factors like time of the month, emotional need for Ben & Jerry’s, which jeans I was wearing, etc.), and I did, then I needed to walk regularly, press weights regularly and engage for the short term in whatever latest exercise fad came down the pike.

Overall, though, not bad: This was the body that Pilates had built for me.

I guess then that what had rankled so much wasn’t Pam’s implication that I had a reasonably good body, because I guess I did, so much as the undertone that had suggested it was some kind of an unearned perk. I’d done my sweating, I’d done my pumping and, as a result, gravity was yet to become my sworn enemy. Okay, so maybe I hadn’t earned my face, but I’d earned my body.

Time to cut to the chase.

(Besides, we can talk about my breasts later.)

In short, then, while the only runways I’d ever been on had all involved planes, no one on the beach had ever begged me to put more clothes on. Objectively speaking, on bad days, I was acceptable; on good days, I was substantially more than.

The basic building blocks for Exhibit A and Exhibit B, with the exception of the color-enhanced roots and the weights-at-the-gym flab-free upper arms, were what God had started me out with in life. Just like the spectacular breasts, I hadn’t earned those building blocks; they were with me when I arrived. Exhibit A and Exhibit B had been with me my whole life so far.

Exhibit A and Exhibit B were what the world first saw whenever they saw me. (Untrue, that nasty little voice in my head, the one I heard upon occasion, niggled. What the world sees first about you are your breasts. You remember, don’t you? Exhibit C?)

Exhibit A and Exhibit B were the face and body I took to work with me every single day.

2

If you ever feel the need to hide in plain sight, you can do it by becoming a librarian.

I swear to God, sometimes I feel as though I’m some sort of nonwoman forty hours a week. Which is a good thing, in a way, since it gives me a nice bumper of time not to contend with my breasts and how the world sees them. Oh, sure, I still see people registering them first thing when they walk up to the reference desk, but it’s a passing registration, more fleeting than if, say, I were a nurse (people always check out nurses’ breasts) or a go-go dancer (ditto) or a guest star on the Bay-watch reunion movie (no parenthetical aside necessary). Since the public pretty much views librarians as some sort of asexual alien life force, and since the wearing to work of braless tanks is kind of frowned upon by the city that employs us, it’s a pretty safe place for a spectacularly-breasted woman to hide.

Not that hiding my breasts was the original impetus for my career choice, a choice that had ultimately landed me at Danbury Public Library. No, the real reason I had originally gone after my Master in Library Science was that I love books. Duh. And librarians make much more money than bookstore clerks. It just never occurred to me that instead of recommending great books to read, which was the chief joy in working in a bookstore, I’d spend my days called upon to answer questions ranging from, “Where can I find information on the economy of the Galapagos?” to “Why can I never find the books on the shelves where they’re supposed to be?” to “Why can’t I download porno from the Internet on your computers?”

But the pay was good, thepaywasgood, thepaywasgood. (If that sounds like a mantra, it’s because it is, itis, itis.)

Plus, the way I figured it, someone had to be an under-achiever so that all of those overachievers out there could feel superior about what they’d achieved. In a way, I was performing a social function here.

When I had originally declared my intention of becoming a librarian, I got this from my mother: “A librarian?” Like I wanted to be a welder or something. “I sent you to the best schools so you could become a librarian?”

“It’s not like I’m going to be selling crack. I will get to use my mind there.”

“I didn’t name you Scarlett so that you could grow up to be a librarian.”

“Oh, yeah, right. And I’m sure if I became a lawyer named Scarlett, I’d just get a ton of respect.”

“Maybe not.” She’d shrugged. “But the pay is good.”

Seven years into what was now my twelve-year stint at the library (four weeks vacation a year! The pay is good, thepayisgood, thepayisgood!), I’d run into an old high-school boyfriend at a party at Pam’s.

“So what do you do?” He’d leered at me over the vodka punch.

“I’m a librarian.”

“A librarian?” He’d gaped at me as if I’d just sprouted a bun or something.

“Why? What’d you think I’d grow up to be—a welder? a nurse? a stripper?”

“I don’t know,” he’d confessed, looking slightly sheepish. “It’s just hard to picture you behind the reference desk.” His gaze settled on my chest. “It just seems…I don’t know…wrong somehow.”

“Call me when you grow up,” I’d said, walking away.

“He always was a dick,” Pam had said when I found her in the kitchen.

“Yeah,” I’d sighed, “but he was always such a good-looking dick. Too bad he’s so narrow-minded.”

Pam, of course, had never been narrow-minded about my career choice. No, in Pam’s case—Pam, who really was a lawyer—it was downright hostility.

“You have a great brain, Scarlett. So what if your breasts get in the way a little bit? You could do what I do.”

Duh.

(Sometimes, I can’t believe I’m thirty-nine and still saying “duh.”) “Okay, so maybe you couldn’t do exactly what I do— I mean, with those breasts, you could hardly be in litigation—but you could certainly be a tax attorney. Hell, if you became an entertainment lawyer, you’d probably clean up!”

I didn’t even want to know what she meant by that.

“Really, Scarlett, I’m sure that if you just put your mind to it, you could become one of us.” The “us” referring to Pam herself and T.B. and Delta, the two other women that made up our quadrangular friendship.

“I suppose I could,” I conceded, “except for one small fact.”