Allison Parr - Running Back

I brushed my lips feather-light across his. “Thank you. But I will.”

Carl had waited—not patiently—for Mike and my moment to be over, and as soon as it was, he gestured at one of the seats. “Please.” He didn’t sound like he was begging; it sounded more like a reprimand.

First, he brushed back my hair until it lay tight against my skull, and then wound it all up at the crown of my head. Then he tilted my head back until it touched the wall, had me close my eyes, and had at my face with brushes and sponges and who knew what else.

It didn’t feel so bad. Kind of like going to the hairdresser, where the hair washing felt almost like a massage. Here he rubbed on the moisturizer, the base, all the time keeping up a running patter about my mother. I interrupted at one point. “But was she happy here?”

He paused. “She used to dance in the halls. She was popular with the other girls. She was a hard worker.” He teased almost absently at my hair. “She laughed so much I still remember when she did not, when she talked about her family, who she sent her money to. She was so grateful she could do that.”

I’d never thought about her being grateful. When she talked to or about my grandparents, who had moved to Florida after she moved to the States, it was always with a high degree of irritation.

I’d never thought about her laughing.

Carl’s torture of my eyes was the worst. I stared up into the ceiling light as Carl poked at my lower lid so much I thought I might cry. “The light bothers you?” he asked at one point. I said yes, and he made a hmmph , and didn’t change anything.

“ Fini ,” he said with satisfaction some time later, and turned me towards the mirror.

I looked like her.

Some of it was just tricks—the streamlining and darkening of my brows, the highlighting of cheekbones until they looked sharper than usual, the pink gloss on my lips, when I only ever wore nude and Chapstick. But mostly it came from the way he’d done my eyes, just like he’d done my mother’s eyes, when she was even younger than me. They looked the same, heavily done up in black, the lashes sooty, the shadows silvery. My eyes were huge in a face that looked poreless: huge and strange and familiar. With so much liner surrounding them, they seemed separated from me—this all seemed separated from me.

I spun my chair to look at Mike.

He looked back steadfastly. With anyone else, I might have made a joke about looking ridiculous or how a football player was probably used to glammed up model makeup.

With Mike, I just offered a small lift of my shoulders.

And he smiled that perfect crooked smile. “You look like the goddess of wisdom and war.”

Some strange, deep emotion welled up, something I couldn’t name but that stirred in my chest and made the back of my eyes feel bright with almost-tears. Warm wind seemed to brush the back of my neck.

I reached out a hand to Mike, and he caught it. I swallowed and turned to Carl. “Thank you.”

He smiled. “She was my favorite, ta mere . Light and laughter. You must tell her to come back and visit. Tell her she is missed.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Darling?” I could hear rustling in the background. Was she still in bed? “Good morning. Oh, no, what’s the time over there? Afternoon?”

I only ever heard my mother’s accent in the first seconds of a phone call. Never in person, and never for more than half a minute on the phone. But for those thirty seconds I could hear a faint, lilting mesh of European accents, based on Russian, smoothed over by French. Then she went back to sounding like Mom. “Yeah, it’s almost four.”

“So what are you doing?” More rustling, like she was getting comfortable. “You’re not working today, are you?”

“Uh, no.” I glanced out our hotel window at the courtyard. I couldn’t see Mike, who I knew was snacking down below to give me privacy, but instead saw the pale green roof and a black cat creeping along it. It stopped to stare at me with unblinking yellow eyes, and I thought of the Art Nouveau poster of Le Chat Noir. Remembered it was a cabernet house from the nineteenth century. Wondered if my mother had gone to any of the clubs up in Montmartre. “I’m actually in Paris.”

“What?” Her voice rose, and I heard a door open and close. I imagined her moving into the dining room, settling at the kitchen counter, kept impeccably clean by the twice-a-week cleaning staff. “What are you doing there?”

“Well, uh, I told you about Mike, right? The guy who owns Kilkarten? Well, we thought we’d travel for the weekend, so we’re here.” I swallowed. “Actually, we went to your old housing. I met this guy named Carl.”

She didn’t speak for a long time, and when she did, she sounded absolutely stunned. “Wow, Carl. That brings me back.”

In the dusk, the window slowly darkened. My reflection brightened, a ghost before the alley, my strange eyes limned in the glass. “Actually—it’s sort of funny—he did my makeup.” I laughed awkwardly.

Another pause. “Oh, Natalya. You must look beautiful.”

I swallowed. “Well, you know me. It’s not really my thing.”

“I know.”

My ear hurt, so I switched hands, and tried to keep myself from nervously pressing the phone flat against my head. “I look like you. I always thought I looked more like Dad, but I guess a lot of it’s just how you’re made up.”

Her voice softened. “Do you remember when you were little? And I used to take you to Sherri’s and she would do both of our faces?”

“That was weird, Mom. I was way too young.”

She didn’t respond.

I shifted uneasily. “You know what I mean. I didn’t want to do any of that stuff. The makeup or the dresses.”

“I know. I just thought... You were so beautiful.”

“You’re my mom. You weren’t supposed to think I needed makeup to be beautiful.”

“Oh, Natalie. Oh, I don’t.”

“I know. I just... And then it’s so weird here.”

“Are you crying?”

“No.” I pressed my fingers to the corners of my eyes and tried to soak up the water. “And ruin all of Carl’s work?”

“Will you send me pictures?”

“Pictures?” I laughed shakily. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to see you. I bet you look all grown up.”

“I am grown up.”

“I know.”

“Anyways.” I cleared my throat. “How are you?”

“Good. Good. Nothing new.”

“How’s Dad?”

“He’s working.”

Dad was always working. “Are you being social? Have you got lunch with Linda or Janice lately?”

“Linda and I are meeting tomorrow, yes.”

A silence fell, and I took a deep breath, trying to suck it away, tired of all the silences that always formed. “Mom, I’m really sorry if I didn’t appreciate it when you took me out. I know it was how you bonded. I just—I didn’t know that then. I wanted to play catch.”

“I know. You always wanted to be one of the boys. I never forgave your father for not including you more.”

“Carl was talking about how happy you were here, and I guess—I don’t know, I want you to be happy. Mike’s mom has some—weird issues with her late husband’s old girlfriend, and they’re all messed up, and I don’t want us to be messed up, and I’m sorry if I was judgmental and a bad daughter.”

“Natalie. Natalie, slow down. You’re not a bad daughter.”

“Are you happy? Were you really happy here?”

She was silent for a minute, and when she spoke she sounded far away. “I remember Paris with rose-tinted glasses, so what do I know? But what I remember was wonderful. And that’s enough for me.” She cleared her throat. “Sometimes I worry you like that feeling too. But so much that you move around quickly, so that you can always be looking back at something with fondness.”