Don't Shoot! I'm Just the Avon Lady! Page 5

  The room smelled of sandalwood incense and pot and was so dark and quiet it was like stepping into a permissive church during midnight mass. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I noticed my raven-haired potential customer wore a long silk men’s shirt covered in a pattern of gold and silver cubes, and nothing else. The shirt should have been a good six inches longer, I thought, it’s quite evident she doesn’t dye her hair.

  “Well, um, here’s all three samples! You can have them all, plus the brochure. Um. In fact, I can give you another sample, how about an eye cream?” I dropped the samples on a short wicker table with a glass top and rummaged through my bag, peering into it as if I were looking for a bar of gold, anything to keep me from looking at Lady Godiva.

  “No, no. Sit down. I never heard of the Deep Crease. Is this something new?” She walked to a black leather stuffed chair and I noticed she held a lit herbal cigarette. She sat down and drew a long breath, closing her eyes as she inhaled. “Avon is a great company. We used to have a girl come around but I haven’t seen her in a coupla years.” She blew out pungent smoke in my direction. I sat on the edge of the matching leather couch, my bag in my lap, and I tried to look at her eyes and nothing else.

  “Well, the Avon Anew Clinical Deep Crease Concentrate is a brand new product. I got a bottle at the product expo in Anaheim last weekend. It will be in the Campaign 20 brochure, in about six weeks. But I do have some samples to give to interested customers. It’s like a botox treatment, but you can still move your face afterwards.” I continued explaining the benefits of the serum and opened the white glass bottle and squeezed out a drop onto my hand and showed her how it melted into your skin with no greasy after-effects. My eyes jumped from the bottle to my skin to her eyes, not seeing, not registering the places in the middle.

  “Hmmmmm. Interesting.” She drew on her cigarette again, stubbed it out in an overfilled ceramic tray and leaned back, staring at me with cat-like slits for eyes. She looked vaguely Italian, with a soft complexion and carefully sculpted nails, a Rubenesque figure, an aquiline nose.

  “Well I gotta run, gotta pick up my kids from art class. Nice to meet you! Don’t forget my big yard sale! I’ll let myself out!” I stood up and shoved the Deep Crease Concentrate in my kilt and headed for the door. I didn’t screw the bottle tight, and my kilt smelled like a beauty treatment and pot and burnt herbs and embarrassment as I pinned fliers to telephone poles.

  A few hours later I collected my boys. Eighteen signs pointed the way, stuck into dry sand along two fancy hillside streets, taped to a telephone pole in front of the Vons grocery, written in chalk on the ground by the tennis courts, every place that looked good, that looked like maybe someone nearby might need a good makeover.

  Marty carried a clay sculpture of a moose in the crook of his tiny arm. His blonde hair fell into his eyes and he smiled with just one side of his mouth. Does my birth daughter look like him? Does she have the same brown eyes? The same freckles along her arms? I looked at my older son. His artwork sat in my bag. He walked with hands stuffed into jean pockets, his dark hair as wild as any Einstein. He stared straight ahead with the expression of a Samurai warrior, all intention and focus and deliberate action. His hips swung out one, then the other. Does she look like him? Like me? We turned the corner to find twelve stacked boxes of newly delivered Avon resting on the porch.

  Show and Tell at School, at Train Station

  I packed forty-eight tubes of Moisture Therapy hand cream in three large Avon tote bags that night, sprinkling samples and two crisp new brochures over the top like Parmesan cheese. Avon shorted me two tubes, so I stuffed a conciliatory bottle of Orange Delight bubble bath in one of the bags with a backorder note to my mysterious customer.

  When I was finished packing product, I rummaged through my closet. What does a nearly-middle-aged-momma wear to a biker bar? Velvet? Jeans? Burlap? Something that can handle dripping booze, I guessed. I threw a few outfits into a huge canvas tote and added several pairs of heels and boots. I tried to call Shanna to go over our date details, but got her voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. I fell asleep and dreamed of rocker boys in leopard tights and long black hair, guitars rocking against naked, glistening chests.

  I woke to the sound of my boys swinging and laughing in the hammock outside my window. Louie’s voice boomed through the glass. He described the inner workings of a jet airplane to his younger brother, the way it pitches and rolls, how the wings tip to meet cool air. He sounded decades older, refined, like some kind of strange renaissance time warp traveler. All my friends call Louie the “old man.”

  Last year, Mrs. M taught my son’s fourth grade class. She loved the way Louie offered to erase the board and collect the milk cartons and candy wrappers littering the schoolyard. Some of the kids called Louie a suck-up. But I know better, and Mrs. M did, too. She liked law and order, a neat and tidy room, neat and tidy homework. She let him lead the class to flag assembly and asked him to help restless kids with math problems. Old men are patient. They know how to fix things. They know how to stand tall and explain fractions. They don’t cut corners. They see things as they are. Mrs. M thought my old man rocked.

  Mrs. M called me during lunch break one week. My first thought was that Louie tripped and broke a body part. Old men can be forgetful, can trip over air molecules and run nose first into swinging tether balls and mangy soccer girls in pigtails. But no, Mrs. M said, no, Louie didn’t have a playground accident. This is about Show and Tell.

  “I just wanted to know if this was your idea,” Mrs. M asked with hesitation. Her voice hovered in the air above me as I recalled the frantic morning rush, the slam of peanut butter sandwiches into paper bags into backpacks, the quick fumble way I signed the homework papers and scrounged the couch cushions for milk money.

  “I have to be honest, Mrs. M. I have no idea what Louie brought for Show and Tell. He usually tells me ahead of time because he likes to practice his speech in front of me. What did he bring? Star Trek stuff? His stamp collection?” I scanned the room and noticed his cello still resting against the couch. Well, it wasn’t that.

  Mrs. M cleared her throat. I could hear her gather her wits, try to put them in order, the same silent creeping confusion vine that often attacks those who interact with Louie over any length of time. And in the everlasting millisecond of quiet I perked my ears to listen and discern whether the parrot, dog, cat, guinea pigs and iguanas were still under my control.

  “I warned the students that I had a meeting with the superintendent’s office this morning, and so Miss Linda would be taking over for Show and Tell. I told them no funny business, no animals, nothing that would give her trouble. Everyone knows about last year’s pizza party incident.”

  Oh crap, did he take the iguanas? It had to be the iguanas. I heard the parrot whistle and the scurry foraging of pigs and hamsters. I wasn’t sure about this pizza party incident but I remembered something about a food fight and a secret bottle of hot pepper flakes some troublemaker brought to school. Oh man, what did my kid do?

  “Yes? Just tell me. What did he bring? I have no idea.” My voice sounded six octaves higher than usual. Maybe Louie shared his mild case of athlete’s foot. Or one of the babysitter’s music disks with adult lyrics and coochie mamas on the cover.

  “He brought Avon.” Mrs. M separated the words, accented “Avon” with a psychic drumroll, made Avon sound like rapping coochie mamas with athlete’s feet.

  “He did? Avon? Really? Well, that isn’t bad, is it?” I laughed, pictured old man Louie handing out a brochure to the short girl with the wavy red hair who always picks her nose and eats the evidence. But Mrs. M didn’t return my laughter.

  “It wasn’t just an Avon book or one of those Christmas ornaments. He brought some men’s grooming product. The Pro Extreme Ab-Firm.” I heard her pick up the tube, imagined her adjusting reading glasses to examine the label, read it out loud. This product arrived with my last Avon shipment, a demonstration tube of cream designed to make me
n’s tummies look sleek, ripped, exciting.

  Mrs. M continued her explanation in a world-weary voice. Louie showed the class the silver tube and announced that childhood obesity was a growing problem in the United States. He read about it in the Los Angeles Times, he said, six out of ten kids in the fourth grade have a weight problem, and Avon has something that can help. He opened the bottle, squeezed out a dollop, lifted his shirt and applied the product, reciting a litany of the lotion’s benefits. Get that six-pack girls love! Good for love handles too! Now everyone at school can be trim, he explained, and passed the tube around the class. Miss Linda sat still, a young substitute statue, mouth hanging open, as amazed at Louie’s eloquent discussion of childhood obesity as she was at the product demonstration. She confiscated the tube, held it for Mrs. M to see at lunch.

  “Frankly, I’m happy to see children have an awareness about childhood obesity issues, but your son should not be bringing adult products into the classroom.”

  I apologized, promised I would talk to Louie, make sure it would never, ever, happen again, and hung up the phone. I walked to my Avon storage pile and grabbed a stack of unlined paper and a red marker. Keep Out! Private! Mom Only! No Kids and That Means YOU Louie! I covered my boxes with warning signs. I picked up the new Avon Men’s Catalogue and looked at the Ab-Firm model, tanned flexed abs rippling and oiled, and pictured Louie leading Mrs. M’s fourth grade class to the next flag assembly, shirts raised in solidarity, not a speck of baby fat among them.

  I rolled out of bed and opened the window.

  “Ok, gang, let’s get dressed! We’re making deliveries today!” The boys groaned in unison. Marty stuck out his tongue and I gave him a sharp warning glance.

  We drove to the train station to meet my mystery customer. I wished I knew her name, or what she would wear, or whether she’d wait on the bench or in her car or whether she’d stand, arms folded on her chest, in front of the ticket counter. She sounded delicate and cultured, and I pictured her wearing a slim linen pantsuit with black open-toed heels and carrying a hand-tooled pink leather clutch.

  I wanted to wear my best short-sleeved Asian-print dress, but my forearm still featured a temporary Looney Tunes tattoo thanks to the boys, and I couldn’t wash the blue and red face of Elmer Fudd off in time. I wore long-sleeved black velvet sweats instead, feet in Avon flowered flip-flops, mauve lipstick, and a heightened sense of awareness. The boys leaned against each other in the backseat of the van, eyes rolling from one side to the other as they read comic books.

  I parked under a gnarled cedar and rolled down my window. I stuck my head out to see if Ms. Railway Clerk held ticket window court, but a short young man with a fleshy face and bushy sideburns stood watch instead, the low hum of hip hop rumbling behind him. He read some kind of science and technology magazine, and his eyes traced the full-page illustration of a fantastic flying robot machine.

  I took my perch on the bench and waited, three tote bags of creamy goodness beside me. The boys stayed in the car and every now and then I saw one push the other. At least they weren’t screaming, I figured. I noticed with surprise that the wire Watchtower rack no longer collected dust under the ticket office. I glanced around the station, eyeing the worn paint of the restroom doors, the locked utility closet, the rows of filled parking spaces, the round-about where cars roamed, waiting for tired husbands home from work, harried wives home from work, exhausted children home from the zoo. No wire Watchtower rack.

  Mystery Lady said she would arrive at precisely four-ten, and I waited, fifteen minutes early, watching mothers push strollers down the boulevard, some stopping to rest by the fountain, most chatting on cell phones, all so close to each other but occupying different kingdoms of thought, invisible threads spraying from their phones like the fountain spray, watering the people with news and comfort and indignation. I counted the tubes of hand cream again, making sure I had the forty-eight. The wail of the train pierced my thoughts, and I glanced at my watch. Four-ten.

  The aqua blue Coaster rolled to a screeching stop at the station, a two-level tour train of San Diego business commuters and hot, soiled tourists returning from beaches and ballparks and panda bears and the wet rustle bustle of Sea World. I kept my eyes locked on the entrance to the parking lot, waiting for a Cadillac, or a Lexus, maybe a limousine, at least a Lincoln, but only family cars pulled up to the curb, and a steady stream of train-weary passengers departed once again.

  “Excuse me? Are you Birdie?” A finger tapped me on the back, and I whipped around to see a tall, lithe, barely legal woman in a short orange mini-skirt and a cropped lime halter not quite containing two perfect cantaloupe breasts. Her hair stuck out from the sides of her head in two pixie pigtails fastened with yellow elastic yarn. She wore a purple crystal belly-button ring with a hanging cross, and it swung back and forth, back and forth, as she continued to speak.

  “Here’s your money. I calculated it myself. I’ve done before, so I know the amount, including tax and the customer charge. I’m paying in cash, and I don’t need change.” She held out two hundred dollar bills and a fifty dollar bill with one hand and picked up the three Avon totes with the other.

  “Uh, that’s too much, that’s like thirty dollars extra, but I don’t have any cash on me. We can ask the ticket man over there for change, how’s that? I don’t take tips, we don’t do that in Avon.” I stumbled over my words, the woman wasn’t what I expected, the breasts and lime and orange and purple crystal disoriented me, a kaleidoscope of a grown girl, a mystery of a mismatched voice and body, and I took the money and jumped up to walk to the ticket counter.

  “No, I don’t have time. It doesn’t matter. Thank you!” She turned and ran, ran for the train, jumped on as the last call for departure came, and I watched the train rumble north for Los Angeles, San Francisco, so many places in between. I didn’t remember to tell her I shorted her two tubes.

  I figured this was the end. I put the incident in a file in the back of my Avon mind, wondered why a voluptuous pierced goddess in lime and orange would buy so many hand creams, why she would pay cash, why she would disappear with the seagull sea wind. I thought of sexy illicit reasons why she would need vats of lotion, thought of horny male customers, perhaps, or maybe something innocent, smart, like horse care, or llama research, or art, sweet moisture-rich art. Ah, I’ll never hear from her again, I figured. I was wrong.

  Mullet Madness

  My father played Johnny Cash and Peter, Paul, and Mary records when I was a kid. He sang along with the Irish Rovers, Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, and when I turned old enough to choose my own tunes I picked the punk music I knew my father would hate. I grooved to The Clash, the Vapours, the Sex Pistols, played my saxophone loud and mean, growled my angst into the mouthpiece, let the reed vibrate emotion through the house, just a safety-pin rocker chick in torn clothes and a bad Mohawk.

  Now I listen to the music of my father. And so it goes. My best girlfriend, Shanna, calls it Hee Haw music, and when we drive down to San Diego for Girls Night Out we take turns playing songs on my CD player. I try to pick stuff I think she might like - a little Roger Cline, a little Springsteen. She tries to pick stuff I’ll like - a little Aerosmith, a little Van Halen, and we boogy together down the 5 like spastic teenagers two plus decades removed.

  Shanna loves her metal music. She howled at the moon when she got a date with another Metallica fan, called me eight times the morning of our date. I was out delivering all those hand creams when she left me a breathy voice message.

  “Birdie! Don’t forget mascara! I want to wear dark eyes, ok?”

  I called her back once I fed the boys lunch.

  “Yes, Shanna, no prob. Mascara. I’ll bring the new Avon lash builder stuff. It really gives you that Runaway Bride look.” I waited to hear Shanna laugh, but she didn’t seem to hear me.

  “And Birdie! Bring all your black clothes. We need to look like biker chicks.” I could hear Shanna scratch a list of important things, could picture her standing a
t the Mexican tile counter I watched her install in her kitchen, a no-nonsense yellow legal pad under her arm, workman’s pencil in hand, stained t-shirt, grout-splattered leggings.

  “Black. Check. You got it, girlfriend.” I left the cordless phone resting on the kitchen table and wandered into the bedroom to finish gathering supplies for our date.

  I reached into the closet, wanted to grab something Shanna might like, but stood on my toes instead, felt the top shelf where I hid things from my boys. I pulled down a small photo album covered in fake red leather and rifled through the pages. My parents looked at each other in front of a historic church. They couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. My mom wore her hair in pigtails and she shyly smiled at my dad. A younger sister leapfrogged over another. My first dog waved her bushy tail in a field of sepia wheat. I turned the page, knowing what I would find, but the sight of it stole my breath anyway, the way it always did. I stood inside a metal photo booth – the kind you find at a state fair – smiling, so damn young, pregnant, holding my swollen belly, alone. I touched the photograph, rubbed my fingers over the belly, looked at the only picture I had of my daughter.

  I didn’t know what my future was, if one even existed. I only knew I was stuck in a parallel universe, a place between here and here. I didn’t care if I was stuck, it was all right with me. But I needed to know one thing, just one thing. What’s a mother who is a mother who isn’t a mother?

  All my life I’ve been a mother. I tended to my younger sisters growing up, when my mom had to work and my dad was always away at school. I ran away from home too young, didn’t know a life outside of caring for others. And in the middle of these things I got raped, got pregnant, gave up a baby daughter, handed her over to the Catholic Charities who shuffled her from foster home to foster home until she was two months old and the paperwork was ready for her new adoptive parents. The last time I saw her in person, she was seven weeks old, and I had to sign the final documents relinquishing my parental rights. A foster mom carried her into the room so I could see her, make sure I didn’t want to take up counseling and welfare assistance and take her home. I wanted to back out then and there, wanted to grab her and run across the country, but I took the pen and left my name in a blotchy mess at the bottom of the page. I could barely see my name through my desolate tears. I placed the album back on the shelf and willed it out of my head for just one evening.