Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [81]
I rolled up to the counter to check out with the reissue of Pavement’s Brighten the Corners and Mark Kozelek’s The Finally LP, but before we left Amoeba, there was one stop for us to make—a photo I had been meaning to take. Near the shop’s entrance was an elevator that nobody ever used. There were fewer than twenty steps between the store and the parking lot, so I had never even looked inside it until I had to get a baby and stroller up the stairs. I felt as though I had discovered some secret art space. The elevator was just filled with graffiti. I mean, literally, floor to ceiling, covered in graffiti. I grew up in Minnesota. I didn’t go to record stores with my parents. We didn’t really go anywhere that had graffiti. It thrilled me to share my tastes with Madeline and to give her a different—though not necessarily better—childhood than I had. The elevator was so fucking cool-looking, and I thought it would make a great photo, just a little baby in this room full of the scrawls of thousands of unidentified people. I took her out of her stroller, placed her on the floor, and backed into the opposite corner to click the shutter a few times. The resulting photos were great. Madeline looked like she was completely alone in a place where a child shouldn’t be at all. I knew she was going to love to see it someday.
Instead of going straight home, I stopped in Los Feliz to take Madeline on the kind of shopping trip her mom would have taken her on—a venture I would have stayed completely out of if Liz had been around. I couldn’t help but worry that with me as her only parental influence, Madeline would be missing out on all the things her mom loved and planned to do with her, so I tried to keep it on my mind all the time. I didn’t think, How should I dress Madeline? I probably would have had a kid wearing hand-me-down flannel shirts fashioned into onesies. Instead, I thought, If Liz were here, how would she dress Madeline?
There was a great a little boutique there that had gorgeous clothes for girls. The prices were astronomical, but I didn’t really care. If Liz had ever bought an expensive dress for Madeline, I would have lost my shit. Kids grow fast and every move they make creates a mess, so to spend any more than five dollars on an outfit seemed outrageous to me. But doing so would have made Liz really happy—not so much because she was spending a lot of money on our child, but because she was doting on her.
I loved that I had discovered this place on my own, without a recommendation from a friend, a blog reader, or even from Liz. I likely wouldn’t have even noticed a kid store if Liz were alive, but now I shopped at this place all the time. On this particular day, I saw an absolutely beautiful dress in the store. It was khaki colored, with jewel-like buttons and an ornate circular pattern running up and down the seams and around the arm and neck holes. Absolutely gorgeous. I knew that Liz would have loved it, would have bought it, no matter what. So there I was, a bearded man who looked like he should have been on line to buy tickets for the National, standing in a fancy children’s clothing store shopping for dresses with a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed cherub.
“This is beautiful,” I told the woman behind the counter.
“It’s Chloe,” she said.
I almost said, “I’m Matt and this is Madeline,” but then I realized she was gesturing at the label.
“Of course,” I said, like I had known that already. In my head, the sarcasm was rampant. Who gives a fuck if this is a Chloe dress? Who the fuck is Chloe, anyway? I’m wearing a Sears shirt for which I paid six dollars eight years ago at a thrift store in Chicago.
But I knew that Liz would have cared. And to be honest, now I cared. I wanted to do for Madeline what her mother couldn’t do for her, but I also felt that if I could dress my daughter properly,