Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,54
her waist and upper arm. She stared into the mirror for a long time, and I kept my mouth shut. She would’ve gone through all her school years with the same kids, I thought, and now she’ll go through the rest with an entirely different batch. Fourth grade had been a good year, a happy year. She’d learned that Mars has two moons, and that soap can be made from lard, and that Mount Kilimanjaro was formed by a volcano.
She pulled her hair from her face—we were waiting until just before school started to get it cut—and touched her earlobes. I knew what was coming. “Mom,” she said.
I stood behind her. “Will you be the only one without them pierced?” I said, thinking: would it help?
“Not the only one,” she said.
Dennis had always said we didn’t have to worry about Margo becoming an actress—her expression always gave her away. In the dressing room, her face showed that she was highly alert, like an animal sensing a predator. She wasn’t fearful, exactly—she was anxious, as if she knew in her bones that anything could happen. “I have one condition,” I said.
She started hopping in place.
“You’re not going to like it,” I said. She stopped hopping. “New bras,” I said. “Plus a fitting.”
She considered her options, then reached for her old clothes. “Let’s go.”
As we wound through the store toward the lingerie department, I spotted a pair of jeans made of bright red velveteen. At most, she’d be able to wear them four or five weeks during the winter—but they were adorable. “What about these?” I said.
She eyed the pants and made me move out of the way. “Cool,” she said, touching them, and moments later in the dressing room, admiring her long legs and little tummy in the mirror, I was unable to keep from admitting that I loved them, too.
For the bra fitting, a diminutive older woman prodded Margo onto a platform in front of a triptych of mirrors. To Margo, she said, “Arms up, dear,” and Margo raised her arms while the rest of her body folded in. The woman looped a measuring tape around her torso and muttered a number. When she took the tape away, Margo tugged on her shirt and headed for the exit. If she’d been thirteen, she might have been glad to learn that she’d grown an inch in the rib cage, thereby earning the right to leave training bras behind forever.
“My turn,” I said, stepping onto the platform. I tried to sound lighthearted. For someone my age being fitted was like stepping onto a scale after years: who knows what might have transpired? Margo sighed and clutched a shopping bag to her chest. The woman unwound her measuring tape. “I thought I was a thirty-four C,” I said, “but it couldn’t hurt to make sure.”
When I saw myself reflected in the mirrors, my first thought was that I did not look half bad. I’d lost weight over the past three or four years. It was only about ten pounds, but maybe the fashion of the times flattered me, and maybe height was in style, because my self-esteem was up. That was how I thought of it, how I think of it still: a wave I ride until it abates. I can divvy my life into phases with regard to how I felt about my looks at the time: good years, bad years, so-so years; years of no makeup, years of no jewelry, years of some of each. In good years, I looked at myself in the mirror more often and criticized my body parts—flabby upper arms, too-wide hips—because in those times, the problem areas seemed discrete and fixable, as if all I needed was a few lunges or a few laps in the pool.
But—and here is where I pat my parenting on the back—appearance was not a fourth family member in my house, didn’t pull up a chair and sit with us at mealtimes, peering at our plates. In this, I followed Dennis’s lead: more handsome every year, ten pounds up or down depending on nothing more than whether the Dolphins had made it to the play-offs or how many times he had gone for a run. When he wasn’t working, Dennis wore baggy blue jeans and deck shoes with no laces. He used his fingers for a comb, and when he saw himself in a mirror, he smiled. “Hey, man,” he’d say to his reflection when he passed the full-length mirror that