“Meret,” I say softly, “if you won’t even try—”
“Then no one will think I’m a loser,” she explodes. She turns onto her side, away from me. “I don’t have anything to wear.”
I get up and open her closet, pulling a dress from a hanger. “How about this?”
“I wore that to afuneral.”
“Jeans?” I suggest.
“Mom. It’s adance.”
I pull her up from the bed. “Come on. We’re going to find something.”
Reluctantly, she lets herself be dragged into the master bedroom, the walk-in closet. I remember vividly how, as a little girl, she would sneak in here and try on my dresses and jewelry and come downstairs to give us a fashion show. I pull out a sequined blouse she used to love that was way too expensive for her to be playing in. “Here,” I say.
Meret’s eyes go wide. “Really?”
“As long as you don’t grind in it.”
She smirks and yanks her shirt over her head, turning her back to me. I help her unzip my blouse and settle it over her head. As she pulls it down, the stitches strain under the armpits.
“You know,” I say, “this was always cut weird. Try this.” I yank out a boxy tunic, which floats over Meret’s shoulders with room to spare, and spin her in front of the mirror.
“I’m wearing a tent.”
“Adesignertent,” I amend, but sheisswimming in it.
I go back into the closet, ripping through the hangers. I have a lot of black in my wardrobe, I realize, but then again, I go to a lot of funerals. I hesitate at a couple of dresses, but worry that the zippers might not close. “You know what?” I realize. “These are old-lady clothes.”
Meret blinks up at me.
“But I have killer shoes.”
I reach down into the recesses of my closet. My hand brushes the seam of spackled wall. When I was growing up, my mother hid a baby shoe in the insulation, to ward off evil. I thought it was ridiculous, and then when I moved into Brian’s home, I did exactly the same thing. Still, even when you plaster over something, you know it’s there.
I know we are both a shoe size eight. I hand Meret a pair of heels that are probably too high for her.
She takes them, looking down at the shoes instead of at me. We both know that this is a concession.Don’t say it,she tells me in silence.
I will take her shopping. I will buy her clothes that make her feel beautiful. I will show her what I see when I look at her. But none of that helps in this moment.
“Maybe jeans are okay,” Meret says, and it breaks my heart. She turns to go back to her room, her shoulders rounded. Diminished. It seems impossible that someone so worried about her size can make herself so small.
“Wait,” I say, and I take her hand. I draw her into the master bathroom and sit her down on the closed toilet seat. I pull out foundation and eyeliner, shadow and rouge. When Meret was little, she would watch me put on my makeup, and beg me to make her match. I’d lean into the mirror, swooping the mascara wand over my lashes, and then I’d cap it and pretend to do the same to her. Blush on her cheeks. Lipstick and gloss.
This time I do not pretend. Meret is my canvas. Except I am not creating anything; I am only tracing art that already exists.
I used to hold up a hand mirror when I was finished, and Meret would turn her little face left and right, as if she could truly see that invisible difference.Mommy,she would ask.Am I beautiful now?
I would kiss her forehead.You already were,I said.
—
THE DEAN OFthe faculty, Horace Germaine, lives in a brownstone on Mass Ave that still has its Halloween decorations in spite of the fact that it is summer. Or maybe it’s because his wife, Kelsey Hobbs, is rumored to be descended from a family whose daughter was tried for witchcraft in Salem. Either way, I like her more than I like him. While Brian is sucking up to whoever it is that makes departmental chair appointments, I stand in a corner, nursing my third glass of white wine, feigning interest in a discussion about traffic in Cambridge.
“So, Dawn,” says the husband of an economist. “What do you do?”
“I’m a death doula,” I say.
