Going inside, she made herself look straight ahead. She marched past rows of bright colors, trying not to see them out of the corners of her eyes, and she didn’t stop until she reached the back of the store. There in a blinding blizzard were the plain white cotton briefs. Next to them were the plain white bras with the single rosebud in the middle. Audrey dug into a pile, a snowbank of warm cotton in a center aisle bin, her fingers recoiling despite the soft fabric, and she looked only for her size, coming up with seven sets. Clutching them, she could already feel the stranglehold of the elastic band. The underclothes were marked down, of course. As Audrey headed toward the cash register, she felt marked down.
She wanted her pile of plain all tucked quickly away in a brown paper bag, out of sight. And then she realized the clerk was male.
Male! In a women’s foundation store! In Freddy’s, it worked, the leer added to the shopping experience, but here…Audrey wished the brown paper bag could go over her head as well.
“Ah,” the clerk said. “I see you’ve found…everything.”
Audrey nodded, mute.
The clerk fingered the unmentionables. “Well…” he said and stopped. Then he leaned close to her, his silk tie draping a bright splash of purple on the brown counter. He whispered, “Are you sure you want these? We have so much more to offer. Are you sure you don’t want some more time to shop?”
Audrey blushed. “Oh,” she said. “I…” and she turned to look. She immediately saw a fantastic candy apple red crushed velvet thong with matching push-up bra, both trimmed in the richest of black.
Thong. That name twanged in Audrey’s ears and her bottom burned. “No, thank you,” she said quickly. “These are fine.”
The clerk sighed and shook his head, but he wrapped her unbearable unmentionables in tissue and tucked them into a bag. It wasn’t brown and paper, but a pretty pink, a plastic bag with handles. She thanked him and practically sprinted her getaway. The pathetic clock in the vestibule seemed to reach for her with arms covered with wrinkles and dangling skin as Audrey whipped through and out the revolving door. The clock gonged after her, its voice trembly and melancholy, calling her back. Back to the land of white, of no color, no sparkle, no Wow.
At the office, Audrey slipped into the ladies’ lounge and put on her new things. They nestled comfortably around her waist, her thighs, under her breasts. The extra-wide straps didn’t even cut into her shoulders. She sighed for a moment and let herself relax, but then she looked down. Plain white. Plain white covering her most exotic parts. No longer exotic, she thought. Get ready for a plain white life.
I
n her apartment that night, Audrey prowled from room to room. She wore only her bra and briefs and she tried to recapture that feeling of freedom, of airiness and innocence. But it just wasn’t there. She snapped the waistband and she heard her mother. She looked in the mirror and she saw her mother.
Oh, no, she thought. Oh, no.
She cried and put all of her old unmentionables into three paper bags. Then she pulled on her robe, silk at least and an iridescent coral, and carried the bags to their final resting place: the dumpster behind her apartment complex.
She slept in the nude that night, the worn unmentionables on the floor next to the hamper, victims of a wild and angry throw, and a new set folded and waiting on the dresser.
But in the morning, she just couldn’t force herself to put them on. “This is ridiculous!” she said out loud. “They’re all I have to wear!” But every time she lifted a leg and approached the brief, her skin crawled and her knee locked. Finally, she just dressed over bare skin again and threw the plain white cotton briefs and rosebudded bras into the pink plastic bag with handles. She carefully smoothed out the worn set, folded it neatly, buried it at the bottom. She still had the receipt.
DeAnne was already at the office when Audrey showed up, clumsily trying to hide the bag under her coat. But it was no use; yesterday, she got back before DeAnne and managed to slip the bag into her file cabinet until it was time to go home. Now, DeAnne was eagle-eyed and she frankly stared at the pretty pink plastic bag when it dropped from under Audrey’s coat to the floor.
“Not Frederick’s?” DeAnne said.
“Oh, DeAnne,” Audrey moaned. “Just don’t ask.”
DeAnne wisely obeyed. But once, when Audrey came back from getting a cup of coffee, heavy on the sugar just for today, she found DeAnne peering inside the pink plastic bag. “DeAnne!” she cried.
DeAnne quickly stepped away. “Oh, Audrey,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She looked back at the bag. “I’m so sorry.”
Audrey slumped into her chair and drank thick coffee until lunch.
A
udrey ducked into the Foundation Emporium, giving the girdled grandmother clock a wide berth as she went by. It chortled the quarter hour and the passing of time and Audrey barely resisted the urge to flip it the finger. She looked around the store and found the same male clerk at his post beside the cash register. Today, his tie was orange. He smiled at her and she liked the way his smile looked, poised over the orange tie, a shocking stripe in the middle of his crisp white shirt. She quickly shoved the pink pretty bag back across the counter to him.
“I need to return these,” she said. “I never wore them.”
He looked down at the bag, tweaked it, then looked up at her. “We don’t take returns, but how about an exchange? I’m sure we could find something you’ll like.”
Audrey took in again the candy apple red crushed velvet thong. She stepped toward it, touched it, relished the cat’s-tongue bristle of the material between her fingers. But then she turned away and held her hands out to the clerk. “But I can’t…” she said. “I can’t wear those…anymore.”
“The thong?” He smiled, then gave her a slow wink. It was the slowest wink she ever saw, nothing like the flash-fast blur of skin and eyelashes she encountered at the coffee bars, the sushi bars, the video store checkout. With this man, she had time to see the thick black lashes lower and linger, then lift like a stage curtain. “We have so much, so much more. Look.” He waved behind her, a gesture as grand and gentle as a conductor’s at the start of a great symphony.
She looked and she saw briefs. Briefs and bras, everywhere, paired and separate, folded and splayed. But not plain white cotton. There was silk and lace, leather and satin. A jungle of animal prints ran across a felt green table, electric oranges and reds and blues vibrated from headless mannequin torsos. In a shadowed back corner, there was even a small section of scratch’n’sniffs and nipple-cutouts.
“Oh!” Audrey breathed.
The man tucked the pretty pink plastic bag under his counter. “Go shop,” he said. “Take your time. Then we’ll tally up.”
Audrey went through the racks and the tables and she surrendered. She gave in to the briefs and the bras that were to support her breasts and buns, not squeeze or separate, uplift or enlarge them. But she felt that the flag of surrender wasn’t white at all, and it certainly wasn’t cotton. It was leopard print in neon purple and it was satin.
As she paid her bill, happily giving over the extra amount, the clerk asked her what she was doing that night. Audrey swallowed and looked up.
He played with the end of his tie. “I thought maybe dinner and a movie.”
Audrey thought again of the rising curtain wink, the soft wave of his arm as he introduced her to a new but familiar type of unmentionable. “Okay,” she said. “And we can have a drink at my place after, if you’d like.”
“Well…maybe,” he said. “Maybe on our second date. There’s no need to rush.” He straightened his tie, tucking the tip into his waistband.
Audrey trembled. Then they agreed to meet after work. Heading through the vestibule, the grandmother clock began to moo. Audrey told her to shut up. She told her mother to shut up. She told every commercial and ad that whispered
demure
and
simple
and
quiet
to women reaching a certain age to shut up. To wake up and smell the scratch’n’sniffs.
Audrey couldn’t wait to pull on her new unmentionables. She debated over which set, trying to decide on texture, color, and material. But she knew they would all be good.
As for Samuel, for that was the clerk’s name and Audrey thought what a fine silky-soft name it was, he was right about no need to rush. These new briefs and bras called for a slower unwrapping; not even an unwrapping, but an unveiling. A soft, supportive, sensual unveiling.
With just the right amount of Wow.
A
nd so you’re never quite easy around people. It’s hard to trust them, believe them, see them as benign. And it’s about more than your mother, isn’t it? It’s about more than a woman who treats you as a bad, bad dog. Treats you in such a way that if you were a dog, the humane society would surely object and step in, removing you from the home, sending your mother to jail.
If you were a dog. But you aren’t. Where is the humane society for children?
What about all these people around you while you are growing up, the teachers, the principals, the counselors and the kids? Those who look at your face and never see a smile, who never see your blue eyes because they are always cast to the floor, who don’t seem to notice the slumped posture, the long sleeves hiding bruises, the turtlenecks even in May to hide collar burns? How can the teachers not notice the extended absences from school, days on end when your mother forgets you down in the root cellar? When you return, you always mumble the same excuse. “Flu.” For five days? Four times during the course of one semester?
They all don’t seem to notice. Or they all look away.
Imagine.
And you look at them from under your downcast eyes and you seethe. You can’t talk, you don’t dare speak, because somehow she would know and the collar would tighten and the doors would bolt and you’d never see the light of day again.
How can they not see your hurt? Sometimes, you give out the smallest of whimpers. You “carelessly” leave a sleeve rolled up, or stretch your turtleneck collar to scratch a nonexistent itch, and the colors are there, the marks, the dents, the artistry of abuse, and yet somehow, no one ever admits to seeing. Realizing. Widening their eyes to reality and then sweeping in to save you. It’s what you imagine.
It never happens.
And so it was amazing that James got through school at all. But he did. Because even though he was always alone, it was different than being isolated in the root cellar. It was an escape. There was noise and light and movement. And even as he walked on the periphery of human existence, he needed them. Other people. He needed them all.
And so James seethed. Because sometimes people could hurt without doing anything at all.
I
n the evening, up to his elbows in dish-washing water, James stopped for a moment to listen to the dwarf tall clock Cooley touched that morning. That clock had a wonderful alto voice; he always pictured her as an opera star, standing in the spotlight, her eyes closed as if she almost couldn’t bear the richness of her own talent. She warbled off the full four parts of a Westminster chime; it was the top of the hour, eight o’clock. Then she fell silent and James shut his own eyes, picturing her on the stage, mahogany skin gleaming, slipping down into the most regal of curtsies.
When James found the grandmother clock, he was in Des Moines, planning to attend a weekend flea market. He got there on Friday night after closing down the Home for the weekend, an apologetic note taped to the door. The town council was forever after him to get someone to fill in when he was gone, but he just couldn’t do it. The thought of someone else tending these clocks, even for a weekend, was unbearable. As long as James was around, only James would be the clock-keeper.
With the flea market event not opening until morning, he wandered around downtown Des Moines. A lot of stores were already closed; it was after nine o’clock. But one store’s lights rolled onto the sidewalk like lava and he walked toward it to see what was happening.
It was a store closeout. Everywhere, signs shouted, “Everything Must Go! We Won’t Go Home Until The Last Thing Sells!” Inside, James saw women digging through bins, pulling things off racks. Lacy things, tiny things; those things he saw only on and off Diana and didn’t understand them even then, when they were on a living, breathing woman. James blushed, stepped back and looked up. The store’s marquee read, “Foundation Emporium.”
The only open store in town and there was nothing that he wanted. James started to turn away when he heard the chimes. An alto, huskily feminine voice sang the third part of the Westminster chime; it was three-quarters past the hour. Shoulders hunched, James quietly slunk into the store and looked around. He felt horribly out of place, but other than a few stares and raised eyebrows, the women ignored him. James closed his eyes and listened closely. Gradually, coming through the canned music, he heard the steady tick. Tilting his head and turning his body, he opened his eyes when the rhythm came through loud and clear.
The clock was set aside, tucked into a back corner of the room. At first, James could only see her face and it was extraordinary, the copper filigree faded but still beautiful. The hands were deeply black, making James wonder if they were replacements, and they brushed smoothly past gracefully curved roman numerals.
It wasn’t until he pushed aside the rack that he saw what they did to her. Her longcase, a rich reddish mahogany, was painted over into some kind of lady’s garment. She was stripped to her underwear. James wanted to throw his coat over her.
“That clock was the store’s mascot,” a clerk said as he hurried by, trailing a new tape for his cash register.
“But is she for sale?” James asked.
The clerk dipped his head in a nod, then bolted for his counter where women waited in line, ten deep. From there, he called to James over his shoulder as he began running underwear through his scanner. “It’s a neat clock. The store’s original owner painted her into a Lacy Lady BodyEnhancer Bra/Girdle Combination, by Francois. We featured the clock in our ads when the store first opened…Support For The Passing of Time, it said.” The woman waiting to pay rolled her eyes.