White Oleander

Then there was Xavier, my Mexican lover, Mother's Eduardo reconstituted, but more tender and passionate, less silly and spoiled. Xavier spread camellias on the bed, he swore he would marry me if he could, but he had been engaged since birth to a girl with a harelip. It was fine with me, I didn't want to live with his overbearing parents in Mexico City and bear his ten Catholic children. I had a room of my own in the hotel, and a maid who brought me Mexican chocolate for breakfast in bed.

 

The third man was Ray. I met him in secret in big-city hotels, he sat in the bar with his sad face, and I would come in in a white linen suit with black-tipped shoes, my hair back in a chignon, a scarf tied to my purse. "I wasn't sure you'd come," I said in a deep, slightly humorous voice, like Dietrich. "But I came anyway."

 

I heard Marvel calling to me, but she was in another country, too far away. She didn't mean me. She meant some other girl, some drab hopeless thing destined for the army or else beauty school. I lay with my legs wrapped around Ray in a room with tall windows, a bouquet of full-bloom red roses in a vase on the dresser.

 

"Astrid!"

 

Her voice was like a drill, penetrating, relentless. If I had a choice, I'd rather be a man's slave than a woman's. I pulled myself out of bed, stumbled into the living room where Marvel and her friends sat on the flowered couch, their heads pressed together over sodas tinted space-alien colors, hands in the snack mixture I'd made from a recipe on the cereal box.

 

"Here she is." Debby raised her horsey face under her curly perm, eye shadow layered like strata in sedimentary rock. "Ask her."

 

"I'm telling you, the car," Marvel said. "You come back and you're still living in the same dump, still driving around the same old shitbox. What good does it do?"

 

Linda took a hit on her cigarette, fanning the smoke away with a pearl-nailed hand. A blond with blue eyes perpetually wide with surprise, she wore shiny eye shadow like the inside of shells. They all went to Birmingham High together, were bridesmaids at each other's weddings, and now sold Mary Kay.

 

It was the new Mary Kay brochure, illustrating the prizes they could win if they sold enough mascara wands and lip liners and face-firming masques, that they'd been arguing about. "They used to have Cadillacs." Linda sniffed.

 

Marvel finished her soda, smacked it down on the coffee table. "Just once in my life, I'd like a goddamn new car. Is that too much to ask? Everybody's got a new car, the kids at the high school. The slut next door's got a goddamn Corvette." She handed me her glass. "Astrid, get me some more Tiki Punch."

 

Debby handed me hers too. I took them back to the kitchen, and poured Tiki Punch from the big Shasta bottle, getting momentarily lost in its irradiated Venusian pinkness.

 

"Astrid," Linda called, her feet tucked under herself on the flower-print couch. "If you had a choice between two weeks in Paris France, all expenses paid, or a car —"

 

"Shitty Buick," Debby interjected.

 

"What's wrong with a Buick?" Marvel said.

 

"—which would you take?" Linda picked something out of the corner of her eye with a long press-on nail.

 

I brought their drinks, suppressing the desire to limp theatrically, the deformed servant, and fit all the glasses into hands without spilling. They couldn't be serious. Paris? My Paris? Elegant fruit shops and filterless Gitanes, dark woolen coats, the Bois de Boulogne? "Take the car," I said. "Definitely."

 

"Smart girl," Marvel said, toasting me with her Shasta. "You always had a good head on your shoulders."

 

"You know, we should do Astrid," Debby said.

 

Three sets of eyes, all those circles, looking at me. It was unnerving. Invisibility was my normal state in the turquoise house.

 

They seated me on a stool in the kitchen. Suddenly, I was a valued guest. Was the gooseneck lamp in my face too bright? Did I want something to drink? Linda turned me from side to side. They were examining my pores, touching my skin with tissue to see if I was oily, normal, or dry. I liked being the center of so much attention. It made me feel close to them. My freckles were a matter of concern, the shape of my forehead. The merits of foundations were discussed, samples streaked along my jaw.

 

"Too ruddy," Linda said.

 

The others nodded sagely. I needed correction. Correction was important. Pots and tubes of white and brown. Anything could be corrected. My Danish nose, my square jaw, my fat lips, so far from ideal. And I thought of a mannequin I saw once in a store window, bald and nude, as two men dressed her, laughing and talking under her nippleless breasts. One man, I remembered, had a pincushion stuck to his shaved head.

 

"You've got the perfect face for makeup," Debby said, applying base with a sponge, turning me back and forth like a sculptor turning the clay.