After she had cleared away the dinner dishes and returned the kitchen to order, Sarala made her way the few blocks to her neighbor’s house. “You should come,” Carol had said that morning with an encouraging smile.
As she walked, Sarala noticed the new sensation of cold around her neck and found her fingers drawn again and again to the ends of her newly short hair.
It seemed strange to Sarala, upon arriving, to find the driveway full of cars when she knew that none of the women there lived any farther from Judy’s house than Sarala did.
“Look at you!” Carol exclaimed when Sarala came through the door. “You look fantastic!” Carol embraced Sarala, then stepped back to take in the transformation again. “I absolutely love it,” she announced.
Judy’s living room felt crowded, full of overstuffed sofas that looked, to Sarala, as though they might burst were she to sit down on one. In the center of the room, a floral area rug sat on top of the wall-to-wall carpet.
“Her husband got a huge promotion last year, and she’s just redone her living room,” Carol confided to Sarala. “That’s really the only reason she’s hosting. She just wanted to show it off to everyone.”
Around Judy’s dining room table, Carol had arranged pink plastic trays into which she placed Styrofoam inserts, disposable wands for mascara, and sponge-tipped applicators for eye shadow. Beside each of these place settings sat a pink terrycloth headband, a sales ticket, and a pen. A pink runner marched down the center of the table.
The women had congregated in the living room, where they sat, tiny plates of appetizers balanced on top of their wine glasses, trading in neighborhood gossip.
Sarala watched as Carol, from her spot at the head of the dining room table, opened her pink case, its tiny compartments unfolding to reveal lipsticks, perfume samples, and eye shadow.
“Ladies,” Carol began, her voice ringing out over the chatter. “Let’s come find a seat when you’re ready.”
Mirrors attached to the trays reflected the women’s faces back to them as they took their seats, each woman’s place indicated by her name written out in a flourishy cursive on the sales ticket that sat beside each tray. Carol began to speak once the women had taken their seats.
“Everything begins with skin care. Whatever problem you have with your skin, we have something that can help. Oily skin, we have something for that. Combination skin, we have something. Even for those of you whose skin can’t quite make up its mind,” here she winked at one of the women, who laughed. “Now, let’s begin.”
The women put on their headbands, their carefully arranged hairdos pulled back from their faces, and began to remove their makeup. Sarala had no makeup to remove, but she did as they did, slipping the terrycloth headband over her dark hair, applying cold cream to her cheeks and forehead, wiping a cotton ball dipped in eye-makeup remover over her lids.
“Now, I am not here to sell you anything.” Carol continued with a gentle stream of talking points that Sarala found strangely soothing to listen to, Carol’s voice warm and inviting. “I’m here to teach you about good skin care. I don’t want to be your sales consultant. I want to be your best girlfriend who, when you run out of mascara on a snowy morning and don’t want to load the kids into the car to run to the drugstore or the mall, you can call me, and I will bring it to you. All I want tonight is for you to let me pamper you.”
Once they had removed their makeup, the women around the table began to practice putting on their faces again, following Carol’s careful instruction.
“And how is everyone’s face feeling?” Carol made the rounds of the table with tubes of foundation, assessing skin tone—“Lenore, I’m thinking you’re a beige number one”—and dispensing squirts of the appropriately matched foundation into the small indentation in their Styrofoam trays. “Marjorie, I’m thinking ivory for you.”
At Sarala, Carol stopped, went back to her case, rummaged inside for a moment, and emerged with a darker tube of foundation than the ones she’d offered the rest of the table. Compared to the other well-used tubes, Sarala noticed, this one was nearly untouched. Carol squirted a bit into Sarala’s tray. “I think this will be just the thing,” she said.
Carol moved around the table dispensing guidance, making adjustments, as one might to someone learning a new yoga pose. “You’ll want to hold the brush like so.
“Now here,” she continued, “is a new lipstick that’s just come out for the spring season. I think of this as a very wearable red. You see reds all the time that look great on the shelf, don’t you? And then you bring them home and think, why on earth did I buy this? I can’t go out in public like this! And this is another one of the benefits of Mary Kay. We let you try it all before you buy it, so while it may cost a bit more than the drugstore brand, you’ll always go home with something you love and can wear the next day. Now Marjorie, you look skeptical.”
Sarala’s eyes followed Carol’s to the woman beside her.
“I guess I’m just not much of a red lipstick lady,” Marjorie said sheepishly. In contrast to the other women at the table, Sarala had noticed that Marjorie had comparatively little makeup to remove when the party began.
“Until tonight!” Carol said, dabbing a bit of the new color onto Marjorie’s Styrofoam tray. “What do you say ladies, can Marjorie be a red lipstick lady?”
“Try it!” they encouraged. Even Sarala found herself nodding along in encouragement.
Marjorie applied a small bit with the tip of her finger, then studied herself in the mirror. “It’s not as bad as I expected,” she decided.
“Not as bad as you expected!” Carol laughed. “You look gorgeous! Your husband will be chasing you up the stairs tonight when you come home!”
Sarala hadn’t before seen Carol as she presented, and it was mesmerizing. She was polished and well spoken, and she worked the room like a pro. For a moment or two she would engage in small talk, neighborhood gossip, and then, almost unnoticed, would swing back around to the latest shade of eye shadow or the fabulous deal on toner and night cream going on only for a limited time.
Sarala had seen Carol, on show nights, emerging from her house in a dress coat and high heels, her pink totes in hand. Tonight she watched Carol from up close, her skin so smooth it might have been polished, navigating the table in her high-heeled, pointy-toed shoes.
Sarala tried not to count how many of the women there had signs in their yards opposing the collider, but with the public hearing only a few days away, the whole thing felt a bit like the elephant in the room, an idiom Sarala had come to appreciate.
Upstairs in her room, Meena relished the quiet, working methodically, peacefully through her pre-calc homework, calmed and encouraged by the careful process through which, if she followed each step precisely, she would arrive at a reassuringly correct answer. Lately it seemed her ears were filled always with Lily’s chatter about the Academy and her constant questions about Meena’s own application, which were becoming tiresome and increasingly difficult to deflect.
“You should have your father help you with it,” Lily suggested.
But Meena said she didn’t want to bother her father while he was so preoccupied with the super collider.
“I’m sure my mom would be happy to help look over your essays, like she did for me,” Lily offered.
“No, that’s okay, I’ll be fine on my own,” Meena assured her, but the truth was that Meena’s letter about the Academy was by now buried deep in the Nicolet landfill.
Lily’s other recent favorite topic of conversation was the issue of the super collider, and for Meena, their conversations on this matter were even less enjoyable.