Marjorie was shopping for control top pantyhose in Nordstrom on the Saturday she became Monica. Because she was feeling a little puffy, she thought she’d try the Spanx but worried about where the compressed flesh would go. Would it bulge over the top of the waistband? Would it constrict her organs? What happens to organs when they’re mashed together like people in a mosh pit? Not that she had ever moshed. But she had seen pictures of the flailing arms and upended legs, the sea of faces with the same expression. A violent blur. That wasn’t for Marjorie. She had her own brand of anonymity. Dishwater blonde in a gray Anne Klein suit with a crisp white shirt and black pumps. Lost in the worker bee cloud. And that was fine with her, really.
Just across the street from this mall, in the old Hutzler’s tea room where Marjorie had celebrated her seventh birthday with a vanilla ice cream soda, Marjorie’s mother had told her, “You may pick out one new dress. Pick out something colorful, dear.” Her mother had looked at the murals of hunters in red jackets, cracking whips, galloping on their horses after foxes, the hounds yapping at their tails, and then at the women in their pastel Chanels and large diamond rings, drinking tea poured from silver pots. Her eyes had swept Marjorie before she went rummaging through her handbag for her compact. “Perhaps pink. You’re such an easy child to lose.”
Marjorie knew that her mother didn’t mean this in a mean way. She had discovered at an early age that she was nondescript. Like being born with blue eyes, or in her case, muddy hazel. Poring over her second-grade class picture with a magnifying glass, family members thought that she was probably the head next to the American flag. But no one could confirm this, not even her second-grade teacher, Mrs. Kimball, who was still teaching and had been consulted. In any case, everyone had concluded that it wasn’t worth worrying about. So Marjorie didn’t, either.
Instead of a pink dress, Marjorie had convinced her mother to buy her several outfits for her doll, among them, riding breeches and jacket with a shiny black top hat, a fuchsia and hot pink ensemble for dancing, and a navy blue suit and frothy blouse, complete with a teeny tiny calculator. She would lose herself for hours, unsnapping and slipping the ensembles off and on, changing the plastic tippy-toe shoes, slipping her own soul in and out of the small ensembles like tea from a Hutzler’s teapot.
Lost, lost. Marjorie glanced down, then spun around. Darn. Her name tag. Marjorie patted the breast of her jacket. Her name tag with “Claremont Hotel” etched into the brass rectangle, with the easily removable “Marjorie” label, was gone. Double darn. She patted herself down from lapels to hem, thinking the pin had slipped from the clasp and caught in the weave of the wool. Maybe, just this once, she would get lucky and catch her name before it dislodged and was kicked into the recesses of counters and racks. The Claremont would not be happy with her. They had already replaced two brass nameplates she had lost. She hitched up her suit skirt and squatted until she was level with the bottom rack of pantyhose and face to face, or face to legs, with back seam hose in a Betty Grable-ish pose. Poking a bottom at Marjorie’s face. If the model had a head, she’d be thumbing her nose at her.
She swept her hands under the rack. Nothing. Dust. Her name tag could be anywhere from Activewear to Wedding Suite by now. Departments her Easy Spirit size 8’s had never entered. No use looking further. She would have to knock on Mr. Meerschaum’s door at the Claremont and, humbling herself, request a new nameplate.
She rose and lifted the Spanx package from the rack and studied the headless model in the black control top and black bra. The model’s hands were on her hips, and she looked comfortable in her sheer stockings and spike heels. Confident. A torso ready to conquer the corporate world in Swiss dots on a field of black sheers. Marjorie envied her. Ms. Torso. She couldn’t imagine being that comfortable in Spanx and spikes, even headless.
Except for green eyeshadow and red lipstick, her traffic light expression, her mother may as well have been headless. That’s all Marjorie remembers of her mother’s face, although her mother was anything but nondescript. She remembers the ensembles, with names like Roman Holiday and Gay Parisienne. But before the assembling of ensembles and accessories, there were the complicated underthings—and how easy she made all of them seem. The snaps, hooks, garters, girdles, straps, padding, wires, the nylons stretched to the breaking point. Mrs. Torso. There was also Mr. Man in the Mirror, with the jacket shoulders a little larger than seemed necessary, watching her become his ensemble. Marjorie saw them, but they didn’t see her. Her mother was right. She was easily lost. But this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. This fluidity. This slipping in and out. So much to see from the behind draperies, without being seen.
As Marjorie studied the A and B size grids on the back, looking for the intersection of her height and weight, a package of the Cougar-pattern sheers held by a large male hand appeared over her shoulder, and a deep voice near her ear said, “Baby, those little pokie dots are too tame for you.”
She flinched, then regained her composure. “Just browsing, thank you.” Talk about pushy salespeople. And shouldn’t a woman, not a man, be working in hosiery, only steps away from panties and bras? Marjorie turned from the Cougar print legs kicking near her face and hunkered over the pantyhose package in her hands.
“Hey, Monica. Earth to Monica.” So not a salesman. The man holding the Cougar print pantyhose came around to face her and semaphored his arms in front of her face. “Come in, Monica. Do you read me?”
“Sorry. You’ve obviously mistaken me for someone else.” She smiled apologetically. “I get that a lot.”
He squinted at her, lifting one eyebrow, then grinned. “Ah, that game. So who are you today, Monibuns?”
She looked down at her lapel, where the brass nameplate had been, then up at this strange man. “Not Monibuns.” Could there be someone else as nondescript as she? A twin in nondescriptness? She had taken some comfort in her unique nondescriptness. It was not a bad thing.
Earlier, out in the mall, looking in the Bubbles hair salon at the women with their hair in twists of foil and glop, she had considered her dishwater blonde hair in the glass, entertaining the idea of change. Which way to go? She had several dusty shades on her head, and it probably best to go with one of them—but how to pick? Wasn’t one one-color blonde indistinguishable from another? She thought of the blondes on the People magazine “Who wore it best” pages, all wearing the same Pucci dress. Elisha, Naomi, Scarlett, Hayden, Hilary, Taylor. Hold the magazine at arm’s length, and they were indistinguishable blurs of cheekbones and fan-blown hair.
Maybe it was best not to be all one color. Better to look one way in fluorescent light and another way in sunlight, or candlelight or twilight, depending on how you tipped your chin. How you wanted to be seen, or not seen. So she had walked away from Bubbles and the myriad shades.
The man had “Frankie” sewn into his jacket, like an auto mechanic’s, only a cleaner version. He was a composite of the males who were fellow students in her freshman Acting I class fifteen or so years ago. Dark wavy hair, good-looking in a typecast way, of ambiguous sexuality. Like a younger Will from that TV show, “Will and Grace.” Attentive to his queen bee. But she was no Grace.
“OK. Monica.” He rolled his eyes. “Somebody doesn’t have any sense of humor today.” He waved the cougar print hose again and growled. “Cougar. Get it?”
“I’m sorry”—she glanced at his sewn-on name again—“Frankie. But I am not Monica. You must not know Monica very well. Or you would know that.” A cougar? She got it. “And I may be older than you, but hardly old enough to be a cougar. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
He looked hurt, puzzled. “Hey, look, I’m sorry, Mon. So you’re two years older than me. It was a joke.”
There was something sweet in that hangdog face. “Look, Frankie—”
“Matt.”
“Matt.” So much for the permanence of a stitched-on name. “My name is Marjorie.” She thrust her hand at him for a handshake. “I work for the Claremont Hotel, and I have to finish my little errand and get back to work, or my boss and my VIPs will be very upset with me.”
“VIPs?” Understanding dawned on his face. “VIPs! Perfect. Is this for your one-act for Thursday?”
“My one-act?”
“For Directing. Who else did Melanie cast? Tell me she hasn’t cast the VIP. I want to be the VIP. An actor. I know—Edward from Twilight. Or do I look more like a Jacob?” He squooshed his eyebrows down and together, narrowed his eyes, and with a flurry of fingers smoothed his hair. “There. Am I the perfect Jacob or what?” Oh. The teen werewolf from People. She had never seen the movies. “And you’d make the most perfect Bella ever!”
Bella was a brunette. That much Monica remembered from People. Was she a brunette, now, in this light? She touched her hair, feeling along the part. “My hair isn’t that dark.”
“Well, it was.” He looked at her quizzically. “Nothing a bottle of Clairol Nice ‘n Easy won’t fix.”
Unlike Elisha, Naomi, Scarlett, Hayden, Hilary, Taylor, Marjorie was never an real actress, and she never would be. She dressed dolls, VIPs. She brought them their accessories. She was background.
“I’m fine with being me—Marjorie.” She clutched two packages of the control tops close to her chest and looked around for someone in a security uniform.
“Marjorie. Is that the Claremont Hotel lady I’m hearing?”
“Yes, I work for the Claremont Hotel.” With what she hoped was an authoritative voice, she said, “I’m the Guest Relations Officer.”
“Nice, Your Moniness. Dang. You don’t fool around when you’re feeling your way into a part. Really. Tell Haggerty you’ve cast me as your VIP.”
“Haggerty?” Was this someone with the hotel chain? A test.
Frankie-Matt rolled his eyes. “Yes.” He stood up straight, lifted his chin high, and pretended to puff at a pipe. “Haggerty.”
“Oh, yes, Haggerty.” Wasn’t it so much easier this way? Marjorie felt something give way inside, slip off stage. What was left could play along. “Of course. Haggerty.”
“Cast me, Monikins?”
The lines came to her. “Sure, Frankie.”
“Jacob.”
“Jacob. You’re my VIP. And I am Marjorie, Guest Relations Officer of the Claremont Hotel, and it is my privilege to ensure that you have an enjoyable stay. A split of champagne. Chocolates. Extra bath towels. A view of the river. A view of downtown. A view of the river and a view of downtown.”
“Why, thank you, Marjorie. And bowls of M&Ms. Only the red ones.”
“Done. Done.” She waved an invisible wand. “And now, Frankie—”
“Jacob.”
“—my lunch hour is ending. This has all been terribly fun, the most fun I’ve had at the mall in I-don’t-know-how-long.” This was true, she thought, at least since her mother had let her substitute three doll ensembles for one pink dress in her size. “But now it’s time to say goodbye.”
He took the Spanx from her hands and handed her the cougar print hose, as if the package were a silver platter. “But these are so you, Your Moniness.” The cardboard point of the package jabbed her at the place her brass nameplate had come unclasped.
“So, Frankie—” A spot of pain began there, on her breast.
“Matt.” He tore the package open and pulled out the hose, letting the animal legs unravel, swooning.
“Matt.” Was she placating him enough? Would Haggerty be happy? Who was Haggerty? “How are these so me?”
“Silly Monikey. Grrr. Sit. Put them on.” The softness in his eyes had gone hard, the teen Jacob turned wolf. But she was no Bella, no Monica, no Elisha Naomi Scarlett Hayden Hilary Taylor. He kicked the leg of a padded stool nearby. “Sit.” She sat, and she could smell the unpackaged nylon. The legs were that close to her face. Hose legs. His legs.
“Make my stay as comfortable as possible.” He opened his mechanic’s jacket wide to hide her. But his jacket only came to his waist. It would only hide her head. “Just act natural.”
He pushed the hose into her hands. “Put them on.” He put one hand on her shoulder and pressed down.
She tried to stand.
“Put the hose on, Monica.”
She looked up at his face but recognized no one there.
Slowly, so as not to snag the nylon, she rolled one leg up into an opening, shucked her shoe, and inserted her toes.
“Not over top your old ones. Take those plain ones off.”
She would have to reach up under her skirt. Everything would be exposed. “I can’t. People will see.” This, in a stage whisper. Little was left of her voice. Lost. Lost.
He put his free hand on the top of her head and pressed. “Just be yourself, and no one will notice.”
His head turned to the right, and Marjorie looked past him to see what he saw. There was the man in the mirror, his shoulders askew, one arm holding the left side of his jacket open, and at the end of that hand, a glint of brass. A flash of her eyes. The muddied green. Red lips. Not so nondescript. Then his right arm swung the right side of his jacket open, and there was nothing to see. A torso.
