Unburying Hope (4 page)

“Why do you wear fabrics that could double as
scrubbing materials?
 
You’re not
the back of a sponge.”

“I like those clothes,” she had pouted.

“That’s your problem.
 
You never outgrew those itchy Catholic
school sweaters.
 
But that’s not
inviting, Missy, and we want men to look at you and want to run their fingers
over your clothes.
 
And then
eventually not over your clothes.”

Jeanne looked from Frank to Celeste.
 
“You two, all you think about is sex.”

“What else is there?” Frank asked languidly.

Celeste cringed when Jeannie looked at her
with disdain.
 

“There’s being responsible,” Jeannie said,
“church, kids in school, homework, gardening, weekends.”

“I hate kids.” Celeste said.

Frank guffawed.
 
“Me too.”

Jeannie sneered, “Both of you are going to be
parents some day, knee deep in spit up and sticky hugs.”

“Yuck”, Frank said, “I don’t think I’m father
material.”

“I could never have a kid,” Celeste said.
 
”All they do is fidget and they’re
always bored.
 
They’re foul mouthed
and a pain in the ass.”
 

Jeannie pulled out her purse and reached for
her wallet.
 
She opened it to a
photo and showed it to Frank first, and then Celeste.
 
“I’ve got two kids.
 
One’s in Middle School and one is six months old.”

“Awkward.”
 
Frank winked at Celeste.
 
“Cute kids, but Celeste and I aren’t cut out for home life.”

“Speak for yourself,” Celeste said.
 
“I want to settle down.”
 
She looked down at the photo and
wondered what you say when someone’s baby looks like a mushroom top.
 
“Nice kids”, she said flatly.

Frank laughed, “Then we’d better tramp up your
clothes, honey.”

“Not here at work.”

“Especially here at work,” Frank motioned for
her to pull her sweater off her shoulders.
 
“Let’s shop at lunch today, you just need one or two things
to light a fire under your ass.”

Jeannie looked uncomfortable.
 
“Being slutty isn’t going to get you a
man,” she looked right to left.
 
“Either of you.”

“I’m not slutty,” Frank protested.
 
“I’m just not interested in having a
second date.”

“And I’m not slutty”, Celeste said, “I just
never meet the right man.”

“Well, stop sleeping with guys you meet in
bars,” Jeannie said.

“Hey,” Frank said, “keep your house-frau
energy in your own cubicle. ”

A bell rang and Frank walked out into the
lobby, unlocking the street door to let in a few customers who were waiting on
the sidewalk.

“You don’t need a hookup, you need a good
man.
 
The marrying type,” Jeannie
said as Frank sat down again, pointing her finger at Celeste.
 

Celeste and Frank rolled their eyes at each
other.
 
“Jeannie’s version of the
Holy Grail,” Frank muttered.
 

Celeste reached for her phone and texted Frank,
“Yeah, and look where that got her, two fungi-faced kids and a garden.”
 
She shook her head and looked up at her
first customer.

Chapter Five

She blushed a deep red.
 
“Frank!”
 
But a few seconds later, she held the sweater’s fabric
within her fingers, smoothing the delicate knit over the hanger.
 
It felt flimsy, compared to the thick
wool she usually wore.
 
“I’d be
showing too much in this.”

“What?
 
You wear clothes thick enough to repel bullets.”
 
Frank rolled his eyes and reached thru
the store racks for another sweater, a green cashmere v-neck.
 
“Try this on, it looks like the V goes
deep, which means some cleavage will show!”

“You are entirely too giddy about this,”
Celeste dismissed, holding the feathery light emerald sweater to her chest,
looking at herself in a mirror at the side of the aisle.
 
“Do you really think I could pull this
off?”

“You were born to flaunt, Missy, but you keep
hiding your light under a bushel.”

She held the sweater tight against her
heart.
 
“Funny, my mother told me
to do just that.
 
She said you hide
your light under a bushel and you come out to shine when you get married.”

“That’s crazy,” Frank said.
 
“You miss out on all the joy in life
that comes from being your best self.
 
Besides, we need you to tap into that billowing pissed-off inner voice
of yours, before you paint at the train station.”

She smiled wanly.
 
“That’s why I love you, Frank.”
 
She’d spent a weekend carving out new stencils, able to
expand her graffiti to larger places with Frank’s eyes on lookout.
 
No one was ever patrolling,
though.
 
That was the
heartbreaker.
 
It felt like there
was no percussive after-effect, even though she saw photos in online blogs and
heard talk on the radio about her, the unknown tagger leaving wishful messages
around the city.
 
The heartbeat of
the city was registering a reaction but it was so feeble, so powerless against
the utter poverty that had hit Detroit like a tsunami.

“Don’t go trying to seduce me with that
honeyed voice of yours, nothing could bring me to your team.”
 
He smoothed the sweater against her
breasts, touching the threads, pushing his hands against her body to size it to
her frame.
 
“Well, maybe this
cashmere could,” he laughed, “but I’d want to wear it myself.
 
That green is alive.”

She pulled the sweater over her head, over her
white cotton blouse.

“You’re bastardizing the sweater by putting it
over that grade school peter pan collar,” he pouted.
 
“Get naked and put that sweater on properly.”

Celeste wandered over to a dressing room, a
large space about half the size of her bedroom.
 
There was a shuttered door that closed behind her, giving
her privacy.
 

She ignored Frank’s low register plaintive
begging outside the door, he wanted to come in, but she laughed and said no,
she’d be right out.
 

She pulled her blouse off over her head,
seeing and not ignoring the threadbare spots under the arms and at the
elbows.
 
She usually covered them
up with her heavy sweaters, or retired the blouse every Spring and Summer so
its age wouldn’t be visible to a world that always wanted new, new, new.
 
She pulled the deep green sweater over
her head and stepped back.

Frank opened the door a few inches, sticking
his head around it, and whistled at her.

She instinctively crossed her arms over her
bra, forgetting that she was relatively covered up, wearing her skirt and the
sweater.
 
But the v-neck was deep,
it went all the way down to her white cotton bra.

“Good god, woman, what is that thing holding
your breasties?”

She hunched her shoulders forward,
embarrassed.
 
“It’s my bra, bozo, you’ve
probably never seen one.”

“Oh, I’ve seen bras, honey, tons of them.
 
That is not a bra, though.
 
That’s a battleship.
 
That thing has more steel in it than
the Ford assembly line.”
 
He pushed
his way into the room and grabbed at the sweater, pulling the V down
farther.
 
“That’s for old ladies
with pendulous breasts.
 
You should
be wearing a black lace bra.”

“I could never wear this sweater to work, it’s
too low cut.”

“You’d wear this to work?”
 
He dabbed imaginary tears from his
eyes, his voice hopeful.
 
“My
little girl/old grandma lady is growing up.
 
Well, you can wear a plain camisole underneath, it would
cover up the lace.
 
When we go out
after work, you can hit the bathroom and do a strip tease, pull the cami off
and hide it in that piece of luggage you call a purse.”

“Christ, Frank, I don’t want to do that much
work, wearing layers, taking them on and off every few hours.”

“Then you don’t know the fun of seduction,
Missy.
 
It’s all about the smoke
and mirrors.
 
Except you’ve got the
goods, you really do.”
 
He patted
the cashmere, molding it to her figure.
 

She knew she needed a change on a deep level
and if putting on jewel tones in a ceremonious way each morning would jumpstart
her heart, alright, she’d do it.

He stuck his head out the dressing room door
and she heard him call forth a sales woman.
 
It felt foreign, but she let him tug at her bra strap,
showing the woman the horror that he wanted replaced.
 
He helped her quickly pull the emerald sweater off and
reached behind her to read the size tag on her bra.
 
With hands waving, he sent the sales clerk off in search of
a black lace bra to highlight her cleavage, with matching bikini panties.
 

She laughed that he rattled off her sizes so
easily, and she barked, “and make sure you bring a plain black camisole in my
size, with NO lace, please.”

She blushed when Frank wouldn’t leave the room
when the lingerie came.
 
It looked
lurid on the smaller hangers, two black lace bras and two black lace panties
with less than an inch of fabric at the hips.
 
She forced him to turn his back to her, waved off his ‘like
you have anything I’d want to see’, and whipped her ugly underwear off and
gingerly pulled the new dainties on, then tapped him on the shoulder.

“Good god, girl.”
 
He whistled again.
 
“Straight up and down hot, you are.
 
Look at that.
 
Why have you never bought this kind of thing before?
 
You can really rock it.”

She stood solid, not knowing how to move in
the foreign bits of fabric.
 
She
turned sideways, as though she were chasing a tennis ball, but the awkward
movements forced laughter out of both her mouth and Frank’s.
 

“Okay, I can see this is a huge step for
you.”
 
He stood behind her, looking
over her shoulder into the mirror.
 
She could feel his chin as he lay his head cocked sideways on her
neck.
 
“What does it feel like to
be so pretty?”

She shook her head, not knowing how to inhabit
this person she saw looking back at herself in the mirror.
 
The girl’s figure was healthy,
attractive, curvy.
 
She patted her
firm belly, her shapely hips.
 
“I
like to hide in my clothes.”

“From what?”
 
Frank looked at her through the impersonal witness of the
mirror.
 
“What are you afraid of,
Missy?”
 
His voice was low and
kind.

“I work, I have my apartment, but I’ve always
lived in the shadows here, ever since I was a kid,” she said thoughtfully.

“Well, this is a good start for you, I’d say.
 
Detroit has gotten too gray, it’s time
for us to move somewhere near the ocean where it’s bright all day long.”

She languidly pulled the emerald sweater back on
over her head, her lips parting in a gracious smile.
 
The lace was barely visible.

She fingered the plain black camisole that the
saleswoman had brought.
 
Yes, she’d
definitely want this on to cover her décolletage during work hours.

She reached for the price tag in the sleeve of
the sweater and read the price, gasping audibly.
 
“No way!”

“Um, yes, way, it’s cashmere.
 
I know you can afford it, you’ve just
never treated yourself this well.”

“It’s the price of a village of goats!
 
I cannot spend this much on one
sweater.
 
It’s more than I spent on
clothes all last year.”
 
It had
been easy being frugal when her apartment building had lost a few tenants,
people moving from furnished studio apartments out onto the streets of the city
if they didn’t have family to help them.
 
Spending money on herself had felt selfish.

“And that went pretty well for you, didn’t it?”
he teased facetiously.
 
“The ten
dollar sale at the Dearborn Wal-Mart?
 
Honey, you can’t catch a man with cheap clothes.
 
Men are tactile, they like to touch
soft things.”