Some Old Lady

Some old lady, she calls herself. She is old and a lady, but the moniker is camouflage. Marianne has mystique. There are rumors. A lover who was the son of Maria del Carmen. One hundred shares of Coca-Cola at its 1919 IPO, inherited from a spinster aunt. Dirt on a Hearst. It’s a big stick, whatever it is, but she’s conservative with it. She doesn’t strut around like she’s Darryl Strawberry waiting to hit the roof in Montreal.

I changed my evening walk route to pass by her house as she sat on her porch drinking out of a coupe glass, feathery bobbed hair shifting in the breeze. Eventually, she invited me up, and now my evening walks are always punctuated by an hour spent on her porch.

There’s an ashtray on the porch table tonight, though she doesn’t smoke. It’s green glass, and for all I know, Depression-era, made with uranium. I rub my hands together as if I can rub away the future cancer cells.

“More Diet Coke?” Marianne asks, tapping my empty glass with an eggplant-colored fingernail. She claims she prefers the artificial taste over the real stuff.

“Hit me.”

“It’ll rot your brain.”

“But not my teeth. Cheers!” I clink her glass with my own.

This earns me a wry smile.

Marianne shifts in the wrought iron chair. I’ve asked her why she doesn’t put cushions on the seats. I’m thirty years younger than she is and after an hour I have red welts all over my ass.

“Want to come to a party?” she asks.

I almost choke on a partially melted ice cube. Marianne’s parties are legendary, clogging the street with taxis from the airport and chauffeured Alfa Romeos. The guest list is secret, but her neighbor swore she once saw a famous reclusive movie star on Marianne’s porch. As if Marianne would let someone famous enter by the front door and not the side entrance …

I try to play cool. Marianne’s no fool, she must know what a boon an invitation like this is to a thirty-something whose main effect is a tiny beige apartment with a balcony that smells like cat piss. But I won’t betray myself, thin as my veneer may be.

“What day?” I ask.

“Next Friday. There’s someone I want you to meet. His name is Arnold.”

When I get home, I have a hard time calming down. Excitement and possibilities are fizzing through my veins, keeping pace with the two glasses of Diet Coke I drank. Questions like Who will be there? What should I wear? Why in the hell does Marianne think I’m cool enough to mingle with her friends? And who is Arnold? flash across my mind in rapid succession. I look around my living room as if the answer is lurking in the flat couch cushions or the fake oriental rug hiding a hole in the carpet.

I hope Marianne’s invitation isn’t a pity invitation, or that she’s trying to set me up with this guy Arnold. I wouldn’t blame her if it was either. Marianne’s life is the antithesis of my own. Travel. Money. Friends everywhere. And a savoir-faire (when she isn’t watering her begonias in the buff) that makes Audrey Hepburn look like a middle-schooler who call their teacher “mom.” I’ve been out of the country once, am in debt, count the mailman as a friend, and have had few social encounters I feel confident about afterward.

“Just be grateful,” I tell my reflection in the mirror that night. I have mascara and makeup remover smeared around my eyes, making me look like a depressed raccoon. I’ve only recently started wearing mascara again. When my last boyfriend situationshiped me after three years of dating, I didn’t want to draw attention to myself with streaks of mascara running down my face. A well-used tube of Rum Raisin sits next to the faucet. Marianne gave it to me a few months ago. “The 90s are back,” she said, tearing into a double pack. One for her, one for me. It felt peculiar knowing we would be wearing the same shade; like if I tapped my heels together or chanted in the mirror, we would switch bodies. I might find myself in Milan buying a silk scarf. Marianne would find herself frantically googling cancer symptoms on a Friday night while wondering if it’s too early to take a melatonin.

I turn on The Planets and skip to “Neptune.” I worry this is an affectation to give myself confidence. But it’s eerie and reminds me of the last lines of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” so it must be a legitimate affinity. I don’t bother putting on a waterproof bonnet or removing the dark smears on my face. Water is a great eraser, carrying away everything from the concealer that covers an old scar on my nose from when I tried to do a backflip, to the eyebrow pencil that masks years of overplucking. What I wouldn’t give for the hot water to wipe away the less tangible things in my life. I would watch my low-paying job, narcissistic ex, and social paralyzation whirlpool down the drain, soon to become someone else’s problem.

When I emerge from the tub, hands and feet crinkled by osmosis, at least my makeup is gone. Maybe the drain’s suction isn’t strong enough for the other things, or it inherently knows to reject the problems of others.

#

Next Friday, I am sitting in a Zoom meeting, not even pretending I’m interested in our weekly progress report. KPIs, geofences, and A/B tests float past me like springtime cottonwood tree fluff, probably accumulating in the grooves of the keyboard and the seams of my faux leather desk chair. I’m game-planning for the night ahead.

Everything I can control is locked down. Outfit, makeup, the Uber back and forth, just in case. It’s the things I can’t predict; what I can’t prepare for that has made me reapply my deodorant twice today. Never a people person, in social situations I vacillate between red-faced smiling and panic blurting out some inane comment that makes everyone around me retreat to the bar. And since this is my first time meeting Marianne’s friends, I can’t prepare relevant pith.

Someone on the Zoom call (I think her name is Helen) asks for my input. I quickly manufacture something about our recent click-through rates. Everyone nods thoughtfully, which could mean my comment was on point, or that no one else is listening but wants to look like they are.

The Uber driver is someone from my old high school. He was a year behind me and still has the same long, greasy hair. He’s wearing a Megadeath T-shirt with aesthetic safety pins hanging from the hem and sleeves. I send up a silent prayer thanking whomever for a much-needed confidence boost.

Marianne’s street is choked with cars. A few neighbors stand on their porches watching people in long sequined gowns, Hawaiian T-shirts, and leather pants disappear through the front door. One spectator’s mouth hangs open as a trio parks their Harleys on Marianne’s lawn. They tote a large paper sack between them.

The Uber driver turns around in his seat. “You’re going to this party?”

I smile and get out of the car. It’s probably foolish to sashay up the sidewalk to the porch where the bikers are now sharing something hand-rolled, but I don’t care.

#

Inside Marianne’s, it’s standing room only. Her green couch, coffee table, and wingback chair are thronged with people so that only bits of green velvet, black walnut, and chintz are visible. I don’t see Marianne; everyone is engaged in conversation and has that relaxed body language, which means they all know each other. A few glance my way, but no one talks to me. I begin searching for the bar.

Marianne is juicing limes and shoveling ice. I should have known; the bartender is always the center of attention.

“You made it!” she says as I sidle up.

The other people at the bar, who include a priest, make no attempt to hide their surprise that Marianne knows someone so blatantly ordinary. She hands one of them a drink without looking and comes around the bar, leaving everyone to fend for themselves.

She guides me back through the throngs of people, dropping insights along the way.

“Her name is Fanny,” she says, pointing to a woman whose purple lipstick is smeared all over her teeth, “in the British sense of the word.”

“Nickname?”

Marianne smirks. “Not if the rumors are true.”

“And that guy,” she says, turning me around so I’m facing the staircase and pointing to a man in a corduroy vest, “was arrested twice for skimming from his own company.”

“He’s been to jail?”

“Oh, no. He was never convicted,” Marianne says.

“But they aren’t who I want you to meet,” she says, leading me into the living room. She expertly steers me around a black lacquered folding screen and a fringed ottoman to a man sitting in the corner with a full plate balanced on his knees.

“This,” she says with a flourish, “is Arnold.”

“Please, Marianne, you know I hate that name.”

He extends a hand, “Please call me by my middle name, Edward.”

Marianne produces a chair from where I don’t know and slides it under me so that I’m sitting across from Edward

“Back to the bar,” she announces before dashing off.

Edward gives what I can only describe as an exasperated smile, followed by a cringe when someone begins blasting country music. He overbalances the plates on his knees, sending little squares of cherry cheesecake smearing across Marianne’s rug.

“Don’t worry,” he says as I bend over to help clean it up, “the rug is acrylic.”

Edward tips a cup I thought held plain water over the stains. The rug fizzes as Edward blots the stains with a paper napkin. At that moment, a small group begins line dancing right next to us.

“Let’s go outside,” he says.

We find a couple of wrought iron chairs. I raise my eyebrows at the quilted cushions adorning the seats. Marianne has pulled out all the stops for this party.

The neighbors across the street are unabashedly staring at us. I wave at them and motion for them to join us. They frown at me and march into their house.

Edward chuckles. “Having fun is one of the most offensive things a person can do. I think that’s why Marianne throws these parties.”

“Just to tick off the neighborhood?”

“Well, that, sure,” Edward says, looking over the porch railing where the bikers have set up a course of croquet wickets. “But I meant it more in a cosmological sense,” he says, waving his hands toward the sky.

I must look unconvinced or confused because Edward frowns.

“I’ve known Marianne since kindergarten. And even though she is sixty-five, never married, and lives alone, she’s always carried on like a millionaire flapper debutant. She hasn’t slowed down, (God knows when she sped up) at least not in any way that matters. It goes against the natural order of things,” Edward explains, making air quotes with his fingers.

I understand now. I always thought it was the rumors that made me walk an extra five blocks so I could pass her house. But Marianne isn’t the only wealthy well-connected person, even in this town. But I’m willing to bet she is the only one with a bunch of leather-clad Hell’s Angels playing croquet in her front yard. Or the only one making triple Rob Roys for a priest. Or the only one who took pity on someone so uncool compared to everyone else here, it’s not funny.

“Feels nice to be collected instead of being the one to do the collecting,” Edward says.

I shiver, though no breeze is blowing.

“Did she collect you?

Edwards laughs. “Isn’t obvious?” he asks, looking down at his cheesecake-stained trousers. “Mrs. Fisher’s class. Finger painting. Marianne said she would show me how to draw something that would make the class bully cry. She did.”

I want to ask what it was, but knowing would ruin the magic. Like the first time I saw Goofy’s side zipper at Disneyland.

“She didn’t collect me,” I say, embarrassed at the catch in my throat.

“No? How did you meet?”

I briefly explain the change in my walking route that resulted in me meeting Marianne.

“Would you have kept walking past her house if she hadn’t been sitting on the porch every evening?” Edward asks, one eyebrow raised.

No. I wouldn’t have had the courage to knock on her door.

Edward smiles at me knowingly. “I would never have drawn a picture of a disemboweled zombie.”