Read Online A Little Change of Face by Lauren Baratz-Logsted - Free Book Online Page A

baby.” Then much brighter: “But you know what?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œAt least it’ll give you and I something other than the usual ‘being-a-woman-these-days-sucks-because-the-hemlines-are-too-high’ bullshit to talk about.”
    â€œTrue.”
    â€œNow, then. See her? See that one over there?” And she pointed her finger at the woman I would later come to learn was Delta from the Delta.
    â€œYou mean the one the men all seem to notice a lot?”
    â€œMmm-hmm.”
    â€œYou mean the one with the hair teased so high it practically touches the ceiling?”
    â€œMmm-hmm.”
    â€œThe one with the too-tight capris and the fuchsia chiffon scarf and the really big…”
    â€œâ€¦acres of Tara? Mmm-hmm. That’s be her.”
    â€œWhat about her?”
    â€œShe really talks like this.”
    â€œFor real?”
    â€œNaw shit.”
    â€œAnd ya know somethin’ else?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI actually like her.”
    â€œNaw shit?”
    â€œNaw shit, baby.”
    Â 
    And they were always disruptive.
    Given that this was the first Sunday since getting the chicken pox that I’d been well enough to have them over for a swim, if anything, they were more disruptive than usual.
    It’s always struck me as funny how minigroups of like-situated people tend to cluster together. One of my male neighbors hadn’t married until age thirty-four. Previously, he’d had a group of friends who were all of similar age, all unmarried. Then, when he fell, they fell, too. For the first year or two afterward, he’d still laugh about people he knewfrom work who had kids, their lives all occupied with Little League and ballet recitals. But then his wife had gotten pregnant and, like a row of dominoes redux, all his friends had followed suit.
    Our minigroup’s unifying theme was that we were all currently unmarried. T.B. had been married once and was still on good terms with her ex, Al, whom she even still dated occasionally, and who was in fact the person I’d been referring to earlier when I said she’d been getting laid regularly by the same guy. Delta had been married and divorced a whopping three times already, producing two bundles of mixed joy out of her efforts. Pam, like me, had never even said “I do” once.
    I sat there in my lounge chair, a white beach robe covering my conservative olive tank suit. A sprinkling of faded pocks still marred my face and chest. Dr. Berg swore that they’d disappear completely in time, but I had my doubts. Unused to being blemished, I felt disfigured by the two spots that remained on my face, both on the left side, one just under my cheekbone, the other closer down to my chin. And my chest! Who would have thought that I, who had been previously bugged by all the attention the world paid to my unearned breasts, would be so bothered by having this smattering of flat, pale pinkish-red spots mar the previously creamy terrain? Well, even I was human.
    As I sat there, I listened to my minigroup do the postmortem on their respective Saturday nights. T.B. had gone out with Ex-Al again, this time to a movie she’d badly wanted to see. To me this was a good sign of his earnest intent, since whenever a man consents to see a chick flick rather than a dick flick it means he cares enough to let his woman think Colin Firth is hotter than he is.
    T.B. looked gorgeous in a strapless turquoise swimsuit, her long hair done in cornrows that she’d wrapped together in a matching turquoise scrunchie. I envied her the hairstyle (but knew I’d look like an idiot if I ever tried to imitate it).
    â€œAre y’all possibly going to get back together again?” Delta voiced for all of us, readjusting her ample bosom with one hand to the chest of her ill-advised fuchsia two-piece suit as she knocked back a surreptitious mojito from her suntan-lotion bottle with her other. While I’d