Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [3]
I lay on the floor of the living room, behind the biggest couch, and saw myself playing the piano, adult and beautifully formed. I am wearing a dress I saw on Marilyn Monroe, the sheerest clinging net, with sparkling stones coming up over the tips of my breasts and down between my legs. I am moving slowly across the stage, the wide hem of my sable cape shaping a series of round, dark waves. I hand the cape to an adoring Mr. Klein, slightly improved and handsomely turned out in a tuxedo cut just like my father’s.
My mother stepped over me and then stopped. I was eye to toe with her tiny pink suede loafers and happy to stay that way. Her round blue eyes and her fear of wrinkles made her stare as harsh and haunting as the eyeless Greek heads she’d put in my father’s study.
“Keeping busy, are you, Elizabeth?”
I couldn’t imagine what prompted this. My mother usually acted as though I had been raised by a responsible, affectionate governess; guilt and love were as foreign to her as butter and sugar.
“Yeah. School, books.” I studied the little gold bar across the tongue of her right loafer.
“And all is well?”
“Fine. Everything’s fine.”
“You wouldn’t like to study an instrument, would you? Piano? Perhaps a piano in the library. That could be attractive. An older piece, deep browns, a maroon paisley shawl, silver picture frames. Quite attractive.”
“I don’t know. Can I think about it?” I didn’t mind being part of my mother’s endless redecorating; in the past, her domestic fantasies had produced my queen-size brass bed, which I loved, and a giant Tudor dollhouse, complete with chiming doorbell and working shower.
“Of course, think it over. Let’s make a decision next week, shall we?” She started to touch my hair and patted me on the shoulder instead.
I didn’t see Mr. Klein until the following Monday. I endured four mornings at the bus stop: leaves stuffed down my shirt, books knocked into the trash can, lunch bag tossed from boy to boy. Fortunately, the bus driver was a madman, and his rageful mutterings and yelping at invisible assailants captured whatever attention might have come my way once we were on the bus.
It was raining that Monday, and I wondered if I should walk anyway. I never thought about the fact that: Mr. Klein and I had no way to contact each other. I could only wait, in silence. I pulled up my hood and started walking down Arrandale, waiting for a blue streak to come past my left side, waiting for the slight skid of wet leaves as Mr. Klein braked to a stop. Finally, much closer to home than usual, the car came.
“You’re almost home,” he said. “Maybe I should just take you home? We can go to the store another time.” He looked rushed and unhappy.
“Sure, if you don’t have time, that’s okay.”
“I have the time, tsatskela. I have the time.” He turned the car around and drove us back to Furs by Klein.
I got out and waited in the rain while he unlocked the big black doors.
“You’re soaking wet,” he said harshly. “You should have taken the bus.”
“I missed it,” I lied. If he wasn’t going to admit that he wanted me to miss the bus, I wasn’t going to admit that I had missed it for him.
“Yes, you miss the bus, I pick you up. Lizbet, you are a very special girl, and standing around an old man’s shop in wet clothes is not what you should be doing.”
What I usually did was stand around in no clothes at all, but I could tell that Mr. Klein, like most adults, was now working only from his version of the script.
I sat down uneasily at the little table with the swiveling gilt-framed mirror, ready to try on hats. Without Mr. Klein’s encouragement, I wouldn’t even look at the coats. He didn’t hand me any hats.
He pressed his thin sharp face deep into the side of my neck, pushing my sweatshirt aside with one hand. I looked in the mirror and saw my own round wet face, comic in its surprise and pink glasses. I saw Mr. Klein’s curly grey hair and a bald spot I would have never discovered