Read Online Stuffed by Patricia Volk - Free Book Online Page B

too: “If you lose ten pounds, I’ll buy you a dress,” Ma says.
    “You’re at an age now where you can’t go out without makeup anymore.”
    “Get a face lift when you’re young, before you need it.”
    Under the fluorescent lights in the supermarket, comparing pretzels, she notices a color anomaly in my hair. “I’m laughing so hard”—she grabs the display—“I think I cracked a rib!”
    What she wants for me is an even cleaner, thinner, happier life than she has. Mom made me, and now she will make me better. I’m unfinished, something she can’t stop sculpting, something it’s her job to complete. It’s a sign of her abiding love that she never gives up. It’s a sign of my mental health that I never give in. For as long as she’s my mother, I am her work in progress. There should be a yellow traffic diamond over my head with the silhouette of a woman with her hands on her hips: DANGER— MOTHER AT WORK.
    “You’re still wearing that watch?” she says. “You should have a good watch.”
    I try to explain. “I don’t want a good watch, Ma. Someone will steal it. Remember Nana’s watch Ilene stole? Remember when you lent me your Lucien Picard for a blind date with Barry Goldwater’s nephew, and I left it on the sink at the Playboy Club? Didn’t I just lose my watch on a plane? I never want a watch I care about again.”
    Then we go to the theater. The play is slow. I press a little button on my Timex Indiglo, and it lights up green. “Nineteen ninety-nine at Ames, Ma.” I whisper, “You can’t do this with a Rolex.”
    Once, I said, “Ma, don’t you ever wonder why I never criticize you?”
    She looked shocked. “What could you possibly find to criticize about me?”
    Where to start! How to begin! That I think you criticize me too much? I look at her carefully. I am stunned by her expression. She looks like the smartest kid in class, ready to absorb whatever information I can give her and act on it immediately.
    “Well”—I think hard—“sometimes in the morning after you brush your teeth, there’s still a little toothpaste on the corner of your lip.”
    “What? There is? Is there any there now?”
    Mom looks in my closet. “You have no clothes,” she says, then adds, “Your sister thinks so too.”
    The next morning my sister calls from Florida. “You have no clothes,” she says. “You need more clothes.”
    What’s puzzling is some of the things Mom thinks are wrong, she winds up doing.
    “When are you getting carpet?” she asks me. Now she lives in a house with no carpet.
    “These windows need drapes,” she says. “Aren’t you afraid of people looking in?”
    Now she lives in a house with no drapes.
    “Only Gypsies pierce their ears.”
    Now she has pierced ears.
    As I come out of the shower, my mother asks me if she can fix my hair.
    “Sure,” I say, and hand her the comb. Then I sit on the bed, like I used to once a week when I was little, on the night she sterilized the combs and brushes with Clorox, and we got our shampoos and she “did” me. It occurs to me that I have never had a Cloroxed comb and brush since then. That I’ve never Cloroxed for my kids either. Now she’s “doing me” again. She’s hard at it. The word “gusto” comes to mind as the woman whose hair looks perfect climbing out of a pool attacks mine. I feel like I’m five. It feels good.
    She parts my hair, steps back, furrows her brow, studies me, parts it a new way, fluffs the ends with the comb, experiments with bangs, wipes it behind my ears into two letter C’s, squints, sets a wave with a chop from the side of her hand, slicks it all back, starts all over, reparts, rechops, refluffs, steps back again.
    “See?” She yanks my chin toward the mirror. “It’s a look.”
    Alfalfa stares back at me. Should I tell her that when it dries, it will frizz and go crazy and mash down when I sleep? Doesn’t she know that yet? Who on earth knows my hair better than my beloved mother?