Pink Smog Page 5

  Then I saw two people I recognized—Mimi Jones and Carla St. Clair from my building, so I followed them. They were hurrying along in their high heels, laughing and carrying shopping bags. They looked so happy and I wished I had a best friend like that. Then I was standing in front of the tall art-deco building that housed the Hollywood Museum—Carla and Mimi had gone inside. I looked up at the green marble facade and suddenly I understood.

  Factor’s fairest.

  Max Factor.

  The building had once been the place where famed Hollywood makeup artist Max Factor worked his magic on all the stars. Bette Davis, Jean Harlow, Rita Hayworth, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland.

  As I walked into the pink-and-white marble lobby decorated with potted palms and chandeliers, I wondered who had sent me here. And why?

  There were individual little boudoir-style rooms for blondes, brunettes, brownettes, and redheads, filled with photos of actresses and painted to go with the appropriate hair colors (blue, mint green, rose, and peach, respectively). There were glass cases displaying the makeup the actresses used and wigs they had worn, like Billie Burke’s blonde Glinda curls and Marlene Dietrich’s twenty-karat gold-dusted wig. The blonde room was best, of course, because of Marilyn.

  On the upper floor there were dresses she had worn in movies including a pink one from Let’s Make Love, giant photos of her, including the famous Playboy nudes where her skin was like breathing marble, and even the last check she had signed. It made me want to cry to see her handwriting. It made her seem so real and so gone.

  I had been here before, with Charlie and my mom, but I hadn’t thought about it in years. Now everything in the building seemed to come alive. I could hear the whispers of the stars and smell their perfume. Satin and lamé swished and shimmered. Lights and gold dust twinkled in my brain.

  I didn’t know why I had been sent here but I felt better for having come. I felt hopeful like I’d just woken up from a beautiful dream I didn’t quite understand.

  I never found Mimi or Carla. I was starting to doubt I’d really seen them go into the museum at all.

  As I was leaving I ran my fingers through my new haircut and asked the petite redhead at the desk what room I belonged in. She peered at me over her rhinestone-studded cat glasses, frowned crossly, and said, “We don’t have a mousette room.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Mousette. I didn’t mind. It sounded unique. Besides, the redhead’s hair was the color of burned tomato sauce and I had been called the fairest of them all. By someone, at least.

  I headed for the door but Tomato called me back.

  “Wait a second.”

  She sounded angry and I wondered if I had touched something I shouldn’t have or just offended her with my tasteless hair color.

  I went back to her. “Yes?”

  “I think I have something for you. What’s your name?”

  “Weetzie,” I said.

  “Weetzie. What kind of a name is that?”

  I didn’t really think it was any of her business but I said, “A diminutive of Louise. Like Brooks.” “She would never have hair that color,” the woman said. “She was a true brunette!”

  “What were you going to ask me?” I asked.

  Grouchy handed me something from a drawer. It was a shiny envelope with my name written on it.

  “For you.”

  “Who gave you that?”

  “I’m not to tell. Now go on.” She shooed me toward the door. “And don’t come back until you’re an actual shade of something.”

  Rude, but I didn’t care. I jammed my finger under the flap and shimmied it open. There was another piece of paper and when I unfolded it, more glitter fell out. Luckily, I was on the sidewalk by this time so the red terror wouldn’t yell at me.

  The note read, in cutout letters:

  Fee Fi Fo Fum

  I smell the bones of an extinct one

  Be she live or be she dead

  I’ll pay homage to her head

  Now this one was kind of creepy. I felt a little sick to my stomach. Who was writing these? The man with the turban? The red-haired lady? Winter? That last one made me get a fluttering feeling in my rib cage. And how were the notes getting to me? And what did this one mean? It didn’t make any sense at all.

  But I wasn’t going to let that ruin my mood. Whoever had written the first note had sent me to the Hollywood Museum and I was happy about that. Maybe the second note would take me somewhere special, too. I needed to think about it.

  On the way to the bus I pretended I was a starlet on a date, waiting to be discovered, even with my mousette hair. This made me walk differently and my skin felt warm and shivery at the same time.

  At home I put the note with the other one in my ballerina box and then went to swim some laps in the pool as the sun was setting. The water was still heated and all my muscles relaxed, flowing into blue light. Then I lay in a lounge chair, letting the breeze tingle my skin and watched the sky deepen from light blue to light pink to dark pink to purple, shades Max Factor would have admired on even the drabbest mousette.

  At school the next day Lily found me.

  “You look all glowy,” she said as we walked to our new lunch spot.

  “I took myself on a date.”

  She grinned. “They say in magazines you are supposed to do that to cheer yourself up.”

  “Exactly. It kind of worked. But I was practicing for when I get to hang out with you.”

  Bobby bounded up behind us.

  “What’s this about hanging out? I want to come.”

  Lily and I exchanged a secret smile. She was glowy now, too.

  “Weetzie went on a date,” she said.

  “With who?”

  “With myself!”

  “Cool! But next time you better invite us.”

  So the next afternoon, Bobby and Lily and I took a bus to the Santa Monica Pier. The sky was grayish blue and the waves were steely teal. It was colder than normal and the air smelled starkly of salt. We walked along past the kids playing pinball, the vendors selling straw hats and beach toys, the fishermen brave or desperate enough to eat fish caught in the bay, and the stand-up cutouts of Marilyn and James Dean through which you could peek to have your picture taken. We played a game in the arcade and almost won a giant Pink Panther, but didn’t.

  “I think those games are cruel to plastic ducks, anyway,” Lily said.

  “And Pink Panthers are an endangered species,” I added.

  Bobby and I got ice-cream cones but Lily didn’t want one and I didn’t push—she looked as if I were going to stab her with my swirly pink-and-white confection when I held it out to offer her a taste. To take her mind off it, I suggested we ride the carousel. We waited in line with the little kids. The horses were painted glossy colors. They had carved saddles and wild eyes and flared nostrils. I remembered coming here with Charlie and how I made him stand beside me so I wouldn’t fall off, the feel of his hands around my waist and the flash of his smoky grin. I realized that even though I missed him I was having fun without him and I didn’t need anyone to hold me on anymore.

  DREAM INVADERS

  STARRING HYPATIA WIGGINS

  I was feeling almost happy the next day when I skated home from school. I wasn’t even thinking about my dad. The day was beautiful and brushed with gold. Palm trees rustled restlessly in the Santa Anas. Afternoons were almost as good as Saturdays. School was over and night had not come yet with its memories and ghosts and dreams.

  But when I got home I found my mom crying on the couch.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She pointed to the TV. On the screen a woman in a silver jumpsuit with her hair in a high ponytail, the kind only the very beautiful and very confident can pull off, was cavorting for the camera. It was my dad’s sci-fi movie Dream Invaders, based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and it had been a big flop. I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid.

  I stared at the woman. The movie was black and white but I recognized th
e shape, if not the color, of her eyes. Suddenly, I realized why the woman in number 13 looked familiar.

  “Who is she?” I asked.

  “Hypatia Wiggins,” my mom hissed.

  “What kind of name is that?”

  My mom took a gulp of her drink and pointed at the TV. “No one just leaves,” she said. “There is almost always someone else involved.”

  Then I remembered hearing the name—Hypatia Wiggins, how could you forget?—batted back and forth between my parents as they stood by the pool with the sky blooming toxic pink around them.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked my mother.

  “You can find out.” She turned to me and her eyes were fierce. “Find out what happened. Why he left me.” So, that afternoon, instead of just relaxing and basking in the fact that I actually might have made a couple of friends, that I might be feeling all right even without Charlie, I went and knocked on the door of number 13 where the mysterious lady lived.

  No one answered so I knocked again. I almost decided to leave—what did I think I was doing? But then I pushed really gently on the door and it opened.

  I stood waiting for the dogs to come running but everything was quiet.

  “Hello?” I said. “Anybody home?”

  Silence.

  I peeked inside. The condo had almost the same floor plan as ours, just smaller. It was dim and the brocade drapes were pulled closed. I whistled, waiting for the dogs to attack, but they didn’t seem to be around. I slipped inside and locked the door behind me.

  I wondered if I was making a mistake. Would this only make things worse? But maybe I’d be proven wrong. Or, at the very least, I might be able to find something to help my mom move on with her life.

  The whole place smelled of incense like a fabric store in the Valley. Joy Grier used to take me and Skye and Karma there to buy fabric from bolts of cloth in bins collaged with magazine cutouts of naked ladies. The front room of the condo was sparsely furnished but the bar was stocked, even better than ours. There was a purple velvet sofa that my mom would have loved, a glass coffee table, and an entertainment center with a TV. Three matching brocade dog beds were on the floor. On the walls were framed modeling photographs of the woman wearing false eyelashes and elaborate hairdos and family photos of her with her arms around two children. The boy was fair and tall and the girl was thin and dark-haired. I recognized both of them.

  None of them, in any picture, were smiling. Not in one single picture. I felt a chill along my shoulder blades.

  I went to the first bedroom. On the door was a painted sign that said, Annabelle’s Room. Keep Out! I didn’t. The walls were painted an aggressive shade of pink and there was a fancy dressing table with a ruffled skirt and a large oval mirror. On the walls were pictures of movie stars from the 1950s. There was a huge collection of Barbie dolls scattered around the room. Most of them looked endangered, with blindfolds over their eyes, ropes around their wrists and ankles, tape over their mouths. Some had pins stuck into them or were missing limbs or even heads. Some had jewelry made out of what looked like tiny bird bones. I felt as if the dolls were watching me with their startled, always open, blue-shadowed eyes, asking me for help.

  “Sorry,” I told them, and ran out of the room. I was covered in a film of cold sweat as even as perfectly applied sunscreen.

  In the room next door there were piles of skateboard magazines and unwashed clothes. A stereo stood in what appeared to be a place of honor and there were Doors, Beatles, Dylan, and Hendrix posters on the walls. The room smelled like dirty socks but there was something comforting about being there in contrast to the rest of the place and part of me wanted to stay, to snuggle into the unmade bed and sniff the sheets.

  Instead, I went into the master bedroom. There was a waterbed with a red velvet bedspread. I jumped onto the bed and looked up at the mirrored ceiling. I saw myself floating on a bloodred ocean, thin and pale and seasick with dis-ease.

  I flipped over on my stomach. There was a framed photo on the bedside table.

  And I saw it.

  It was a picture of Hypatia Wiggins wearing a red dress, her long dark hair piled on her head. She was leaning into the arms of a tall, thin man with a five o’clock shadow and dramatically high cheekbones.

  I hadn’t inherited those cheekbones but I knew them very well, sharp when I kissed them.

  The man was my father. It was possible that he had been cheating on my mother with Hypatia Wiggins all this time.

  That was when I heard the sound of keys in the lock and the dogs barking and scrambling at the door.

  But this is what I knew: I knew the layout of the condo because it was just like mine. Here would be the main bathroom off the master bedroom. Here would be the small bathroom window. It was not painted shut. I stood on the toilet seat and opened it. My body was just small enough to slither through and jump onto a bench on the walkway before the three bears got home. Here would be safety, momentarily at least.

  My father was gone and his photograph was on our new neighbor’s bedside table. What did it mean? Had my dad been cheating on my mom? Is that why she drank so much, had changed so much? And what did that say about my relationship with Charlie? If he had been lying to my mom the whole time, what other lies did he tell us? I must be less important to him than he said I was if he could betray our family like that. If it was all true, he had also betrayed the woman he was cheating on us with, leaving her and running off to New York. I had been deluding myself the last couple of days. Charlie didn’t have a crystal ball. He didn’t care if I was good or bad, what I did or didn’t do, how I dressed, if I left dirty dishes in the sink or even broke into strangers’ homes. I didn’t matter to my dad as much as I had thought. I didn’t even really know who he was anymore.

  That night I snooped through my dad’s stuff looking for a picture of Ms. Wiggins or some sign of her. There were black notebooks filled with sketches and notes for the films my dad had worked on and boxes of dusty sci-fi screenplays. There was a collection of glass paperweights, including one of the Empire State Building. The snow inside had turned yellowish. I wondered if my dad was looking at the real Empire State Building right then.

  I found an enamel pillbox with my dried-blood-spotted baby teeth and a lock of pale hair.

  There was a black shoe box with a few black-and-white photographs of my dad and his sister, Goldy, with their parents in Brooklyn. In one he was standing in a bucket of water wearing a diaper and grinning. In another Goldy was holding him in her arms like he was a doll. Aunt Goldy had visited us in the cottage when I was born but my mom said she was judgmental and turned up her nose at the food my mom made so she was never invited back.

  I saw more photos, too. There were some of me as a baby looking very bald and surprisingly fat with chub bracelets around my ankles and wrists. There was a wedding picture of my parents like dolls on a cake. It was shocking how young and beautiful and in love they looked. There was a photo of my dad’s grandmother. Her children had to leave her behind when the Nazis came. She was too frail to travel and she made them go. Charlie always said that he hoped she’d died before she was taken but no one knew for sure. My great-grandma’s eyes were hauntedly sad as if they knew what was coming.

  I didn’t want to see her eyes. What was I looking for? A copy of the picture I’d seen? Had I really seen it at all? Did missing my father so much and being so angry at him at the same time make me see it? Or was the affair with the purple-eyed woman real and my father had just covered his tracks, maybe taken any evidence of her away with him, tucked in his coat pocket, nearer to his heart than I might ever be again.

  I put everything away and went to check on my mom who was sleeping in front of the TV in the same yellow negligee. It made me so sad to see her like that, in that shabby nightgown. I remembered the way she would only wear natural fabrics like silk or real cotton, the way she would paint her toenails like the tiny, shiny, pale-pink shell fragments we found on the beach. I remembered the dresses sh
e made for me and the doll dresses she made from the scraps. Petal Bug still had one of them on.

  I went into my room and found Petal Bug under the bed. The dress she wore had pink and purple flowers all over it. I could remember the skirt my mom made for me out of that fabric. It had burned in the fire.

  Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming desire to make something pretty. But just as quickly I changed my mind. What was the point? The most beautiful thing of all—love—could change into two people screaming at each other and one of them driving away forever.

  I climbed into bed and jammed Petal Bug under one arm and Mink under the other and thought about being in Winter’s room without him knowing, being able to smell him when he wasn’t there. I imagined him coming into my room in the dark and sitting at my bedside, stroking my forehead with his hand, whispering fairy tales the way my father used to, his blue eyes like night-lights.

  After I’d fallen asleep I thought I heard the phone ring, a muffled sound, far away across the land of Nod. That’s what my mom used to call it. By the time I reached it the caller had hung up.

  THE BLOWS

  The next day proved that I was right about not spending time on making something pretty to wear as a way to distract me from the realization that my dad had probably been cheating on my mom for years. When I got to school my scruffy jeans and sweatshirt didn’t matter. No one was looking at my outfit but they were looking at me.

  A low, ominous hum met me as I went up to the front gate. It was hundreds of voices whispering in unison at me.

  “Blow blow blow blow blow.”