Rachel Glaser - Paulina & Fran

“Oh, wow!” Fran exclaimed. Marvin put the mouse in the fishbowl where he kept his colored pencils.

“I was going to dip their feet in paint and have them run around on the canvas,” he said. “But first, I wanna put costumes on them.”

“I have costumes for them!” Fran said, rushing to her studio. “Last semester I got these kids’ gloves with Wizard of Oz finger puppets.” She dug in a box of corroded paint tubes. Marvin caught another mouse.

“If you can’t find them, I have pipe cleaners,” he said. Fran threw aside some sketches she’d done of the Norway trip. One of them had her and Paulina dancing on top of a cake. She hadn’t realized its lesbian undertone until her classmates happily pointed it out in crit. I was just being surreal, she told them again in her head.

“Found them!” Each finger of the glove was a different character. The Dorothy finger had little braids of yarn. The Tin Man had a shimmery metallic hat.

“These are perfect,” Marvin said. They went to his studio and cut the fingers off the gloves and the tops off each finger. “It’s like a tube top,” he said, forcing a costume on each squirming mouse. Marvin is a natural born artist, Fran thought, everyone else is just a kid at art school.

“They look amazing,” Fran said.

“The Dorothy one is ridiculous!” he said. Fran wanted to lean against him. As he scratched his head, Fran could see a few exhilarating inches of his stomach and the hairs that grew there. She wouldn’t have minded being one of those hairs. She would have been good as one of those hairs, she thought. She would have been silent and still, and moved in the wind, and gotten flattened in the shower, and caught in the waistband of his pants, and smoothed by the hand of a girl. . Fran leaned toward him until her leggings touched his jeans. Inside the bowl, the mice clawed at each other’s costumes. “Let’s give them their freedom,” Marvin said.

In the field by the canal, the baby mice scurried away in their costumes. “I bet the other mice will worship them,” he said.

“They will radically change mouse culture,” said Fran. With Marvin, she felt she was playing with the world in the right way.

“They’ll be the first mouse celebrities,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t get to them.”

He’s childish, but in a sexy, home-schooled-by-wolves way, thought Fran. She felt destined to be alone with him in the night. She struggled to remember which bra and underwear she was wearing. On Ridge Street, they leaned in different directions. His mind seemed dazzlingly blank.

“Can I walk you home?” Fran asked Marvin. The words sounded outrageous to her. They dangled gaudily in the silence.

“Why?” Marvin asked, laughing.

“I don’t know,” Fran said, blushing. She had made the wrong moment. But she was wearing her good bra. Her hair looked good too; she could see it in the windows of parked cars. It didn’t matter. All her looks and artistic talent, and other qualities people had liked— your so dreamy, someone had written in her high school yearbook — none of it mattered. The your so dreamy guy had probably completely forgotten about her. She tried a smile to conceal what was happening behind her face.

“Okay, bye!” Marvin said. Tears burned her eyes. She watched the back of him as he walked away. His cool, uncaring back.

Paulina walked dreamily toward the Furniture Studios. Sex with Tim continued to be one of the more disappointing experiences of her life, but chasing Tim was electrifying and occupied her like a job. She touched her hair and liked how it felt. She must have had more than a dozen hair clips keeping it up, but the clips were dark and blended in with her hair. She passed the student store and the slick, new Graphic Design Studios. She passed high school skaters and spiritless adults.

It was one of those glorious days when Paulina had charmed the registrar into dropping her incompletes, and she felt high above the system. She did little actual work, but the scholarship of a dead art historian kept her funded. In the corner of her eye, she saw Sadie and Allison coming out of the mail room. She had neglected them these last few weeks, but now was ready to embrace them.

“Hello, beauties!” Paulina cooed while mentally chastising their fashion choices. Allison was wearing a bag-like dress. She should really use a leave-in conditioner. Still, Paulina walked toward them with open arms. Sadie glared at Paulina.

“I didn’t see you at my apparel show,” Sadie said. “Were you in the back or something?”

“Sorry, doll, I got caught up,” Paulina said. Something was different about Sadie. Her bangs were swept off her forehead. She was growing out her bangs! Paulina applauded the move.

“You should have seen her dress,” Allison said. “You missed out.”

They stood on the mail room steps, staring at a disappointing clothing sale on the sidewalk. Paulina studied Allison’s vacant face, and remembered befriending her in Foundation Drawing. Back then, Allison dressed like a Depression-era newsboy and read The Stranger during breaks. Allison didn’t speak, in class or out of class, and her roommate made jokes about it. Her classmates called her the Stranger, but Allison didn’t seem to care. Paulina wanted to open up Allison like a dusty, locked chest and hear whatever oddities hid inside her.

Stoned in Paulina’s dorm room, Allison told Paulina what she thought of everyone in their class, and how her favorite romance wasn’t one of her own, but between Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. When Paulina expected her to smile, Allison’s lips merely twitched. It was an accomplishment to make her laugh.

Allison painted abstract oil paintings. Anytime something figurative emerged from the mess, she blotted it out. She examined the paintings for hours, making sure none of her marks had mistakenly formed any conceivable face. They were chaotic paintings with jarring color choices. The paint was so thick in places it took years to dry. Paulina remembered dragging Sadie to Allison’s studio sophomore year and watching Sadie tense up, afraid of getting paint on her clothes. Back then, Allison thought Sadie a total flake, and Paulina did nothing to defend her.

“Were you with Fran?” asked Allison. A headache spread behind Paulina’s eyes and there was a wild burn in her chest.

“This isn’t about Fran,” Paulina hissed. “It’s about her stupid dresses.”

“Why are they stupid? Because they have nothing to do with you?” Sadie’s voice rose to a troubling pitch. Sadie was the first real friend Paulina had made at school. Many times they’d gotten dressed in Sadie’s dorm and survived the walk to the goth club in heels.

“Keep it down,” said Paulina. “You sound like a malfunctioning hair dryer.” Freshmen hovered around the clothing sale. A girl tried on a long green sweatshirt and declared it her “soul outfit.” A cloud of hatred exuded from Allison and Sadie, but Paulina pretended she couldn’t feel it. “Fashion here bores me,” Paulina said. “It’s always a dress made out of recycled bottles and cans, or something ‘inspired by nature.’” Telling them off was exhilarating. It felt like cutting the sickly branches off a magnificent tree.

“You’re being cruel,” Allison said, pulling her lifeless hair behind her ear, “as usual. First you ditch Julian and now us. Just admit you’re in love with Fran!”

Allison never stood up to Paulina like this. It created bad lines in her forehead.

“Your new work looks like a sad child’s finger painting,” Paulina told Allison. “I just thought you should know.”

“That means a lot, coming from a sad child!” Sadie screamed. The three had fought before, but never with this much contempt, and never in front of the mail room, where people had gathered to watch.