Watch Me Disappear

Then she has me close my eyes and I feel a soft brush tickle my eyelids. She brushes blush over the apples of my cheeks and tells me to look at myself. She stands behind me at the mirror, pinching the dress in a bit at the waist. “See?” she asks.
    She hasn’t put much makeup on me, just a touch, but I don’t look so pasty and dull.
    “If you just have the dress taken in here, that’ll get you a better fit,” she says.
    I nod.
    “That’s nice,” my mother says, coming over to see what we’re up to.
    “Very cute,” Mrs. Morgan adds.
    “Don’t you think she’d look cute with a little bit of blonde highlights in her hair?” Maura asks.
    “She’d look like she spent the summer at the beach,” Mrs. Morgan says.
    “I’m always telling her to give that hair a little more style,” my mother says.
    I take off the dress and my mom pays for it while I put my own clothes back on. I stand for a moment in the dressing room taking in the makeup Maura put on me. I’m not sure why she is being so nice. Maybe she is just that bored. Maybe she pities me a little. I wonder how she’ll react if I ask her about the makeup.
    Maura has amassed quite a hefty load of “birthday presents” by the time we head back to the car. I wish my mom would let me pick out my own birthday presents. I guess the heat and all the walking wore us out because none of us really talk on the drive. We stop at the rest stop on the Mass Pike for frozen yogurt at Maura’s request, and then we are home. After we locate my two bags in Maura’s dozen, I start across the lawn to our house but Maura stops me.
    “About the other week,” she says.
    I wait for her to go on.
    “You didn’t say anything about that to your parents, did you?”
    I shake my head.
    “Good,” she says.
    She might have said “thanks” but she didn’t.
    “It was just a really bad day, you know?” she asks.
    I nod like some head-bobbing dummy.
    “Okay,” she says.
    I start to walk away but then I stop. “Hey, Maura?”
    She looks at me expectantly.
    “I was wondering, do you think you could help me some more with the makeup stuff? I never really wear any, but what you put on me at the store was nice.”
    “Oh,” she says. “Yeah, I can help you out. We can go to CVS or something one day this week.”
    I thank her and walk across her yard to mine.
     
    *          *          *
     
    Tonight when I called Missy and told her about the day and how Maura is going to teach me how to wear makeup, she had a fit of hysterical laughter.
    “Can I come, too?” she asked.
    “Maybe,” I said, but she told me she had just been joking.
    “So she isn’t as bad as we thought?” Missy asked.
    “Well, she wasn’t today,” I answered. “Oh, and Mrs. Morgan told me that she’d be delighted to include you in the party,” I said. I thought to ask her in the morning while Maura was asleep. My mother shot me a dirty look when I did, but Mrs. Morgan thought it was a great idea. After all, she said, she hated the thought of a kid starting a new school senior year.
    Missy and I made plans to hang out the next afternoon. She thought she could put together an outfit for the party using some of her mom’s stuff. When I hung up the phone, I went upstairs and looked at my dress again. I am starting to get my hopes up for this party, and even for the start of school, just a few weeks away.
     
     

Chapter 6
     
     
    The first time I meet Missy’s mom, she is in her studio painting. Her studio is an airy room on the second floor—a spare bedroom, really—with enormous windows that flood the room with light. There are potted plants everywhere, a wind chime mounted just outside one of the windows tinkles in the breeze, and the gauzy blue curtains flutter. She is working on a still life of broken pieces of pottery arranged on a table near the window. Missy inherited her hair and her height from her mother. She stands at her easel with her back to us, an enormous men’s oxford shirt as her smock, bare feet peeking out of flowing, wide-legged pants, the image of some serene goddess at work. We watch her quietly for a moment, and then Missy taps at the doorframe. Her mom turns around to reveal the round swell of a pregnant belly. Before I can react, she’s embracing me.
    “Lizzie!” she says. “You are exactly as Missy described you. I’m so happy to meet you.” Her stomach feels hard against mine as she puts her arms around me.
    “It’s great to meet