Diane Davidson - Killer Pancake

“Arch, I don’t care what anyone says, you are attractive.”

“Uh-huh. Remember the Valentine’s Day dance I went to at Elk Park Prep this year? My first and last dance at that school?”

“But I told you, when you’re older you should try again—”

He waved his spatula for me to be quiet. “There was an artist there. The school hired him for, like, entertainment. An artist who makes people look like cartoon characters, you know? What’s that called?”

I sighed. “A caricaturist?”

“Yeah. He drew caricatures of all the kids. Instead of dancing, we stood around watching him work. He gave each person’s … caricature … titles like Class Hero, Class Brains, Class Beauty. He would exaggerate each kid’s appearance, so that they would be flattered, you know?”

I nodded, unsure of where this was going.

“So then he did me. He exaggerated how thick my glasses are, how dark my freckles are, the way my chin goes in and my hair sticks out. He wrote in big letters at the bottom Class Nerd. Everybody laughed. So please don’t tell me I’m good-looking, when you know and I know and everybody else knows that I’m not.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, sometimes the people at that school just make my flesh crawl—”

“Don’t worry, Mom, the guy, the artist, apologized when the dance was over. Everybody was gone by then, but he did say he was sorry. The dance would have been awful without that happening anyway.” He waved his spatula dismissively. “Looks like all the cookies are done.”

I took his spatula and mine and placed them in the sink. Embarrassed by his revelation, Arch stood up to leave.

“Wait, hon, please. Sit down. I want to tell you something.”

The air outside was heating up, and with all the cooking, the kitchen was even hotter. Arch threw himself into one of the kitchen chairs while I poured us both some lemonade.

“You know I lived in New Jersey during most of my growing-up years.”

“Mom, so what? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Have you ever seen the famous Miss America pageant? It’s held in New Jersey. In Atlantic City. When I was growing up, we used to watch it on television. The neighborhood kids, I mean. It seemed like it was our pageant because it was held in our state.”

Arch sipped lemonade. “I think that pageant is stupid. Todd and I always watch horror movies when it’s on.”

“Listen. When I was fourteen, I was the oldest girl in our group of neighborhood kids. That year, I remember, we all watched the pageant and ate lemon Popsicles. At one point the announcer said this and that about the contestants, what they had to do to enter, blah, blah, and that young women had to be eighteen. So one of the kids in our little group piped up, ‘Gosh, Goldy, you’ve just got four years to go!’”

Arch furrowed his brow. “So is that supposed to make me feel better about being called a nerd? That your friends wanted you to enter the Miss America contest?”

I reached out for his hand, but he pulled it away. “You don’t understand. All the eyes of my friends turned to me. Expectantly. I wasn’t long-legged and skinny and I never would be. But that’s the problem. Whoever said girls should be expected to be in beauty contests? Why should anyone expect it? And that’s what I’m trying to say. They called you a nerd. Whether or not you believed it, you accepted it. What I realized at age fourteen is that everybody was counting on me to want to be in a beauty contest. But it was a contest that I had no intention of ever, ever entering.” I took a deep breath. “The problem is, if you’re a woman, and maybe if you’re a man too, when you get to be a teenager, it seems as if your whole life is going to be absorbed by a long series of stupid beauty contests, and I’m not just talking about Miss America. I’m talking about the way people judge you when you walk down the street. Or walk into a class. Or go to the gym. And the only solution is to say, ‘I’m not going to play this game! I quit the beauty contest! Now and forever!’”

Arch waited to see if I had finished what I was going to say. He took a careful sip of his lemonade. Then he said, “May I go check on Julian now?”

I exhaled, suddenly exhausted. “Sure. I’m going to see Marla.”

“Okay. I’ll let you know if Julian comes out of the bedroom.” He paused, then said, “I don’t think he’s crying because Claire was so beautiful. I think he’s just feeling really empty.”

“Yes, Arch. I’m sure you’re right.”

Feeling disoriented and exhausted by my diatribe, I gathered up my purse and keys. That was when Arch did something that surprised me. He walked over and gave me a hug.

At the hospital, a new receptionist referred me to the CCU nurses’ station.

“We don’t know when your sister will be back, Miss Korman,” a nurse informed me. “They just wheeled her down to the cath lab.”

“Will the angiogram take more than an hour?” I asked.

“It shouldn’t, but you never know.”

The thought of waiting in that hospital for an indeterminate amount of time seemed unbearable. I looked at the clock: three-thirty. Courage, I said to myself. She’s your best friend, and you’re going to be there for her .

“Thank you. I’ll be back in an hour.”

I still had to get my check from Prince & Grogan, so I drove over to the mall. A larger group of demonstrators was massed at the outside entrance to the department store than had been the previous day. Because of the accident, I doubted the police would let them back into the garage that day to wave their signs at the other entrance. Afraid that Shaman Krill might catch sight of me, I parked the van at the edge of a nearby bank parking lot. As soon as I got out of the car, I could hear the hoots and chants of the activists. Most of them were wearing white sweatsuits. As I came closer, I could see the chanting white-clad group wore blindfolds. Hip, hop! I can’t see!

Hip, hop! Wha’ja do to me?

Scores of hand-held placards denouncing Mignon Cosmetics’ animal-testing practices bounced up and down above the crowd. I looked around helplessly for a way to get into the store that did not involve trying to slip past crowd-restraining sawhorses. A thin stream of shoppers was headed for a nearby pasta place. I followed.

Once inside the mall, I ran up a chrome and polished granite staircase and entered Prince & Grogan on the second level. Bright lights and mellow piano music—coming not from speakers but from a real piano player in the center of the store—took me off guard. After a moment of attempting to get oriented, I saw a far-off neon sign, OFFICES. Someone there, presumably, would have my check.

I negotiated a labyrinth of sparkling crystal and china displays, blaring audio equipment, whirring small appliances, and large, blank-faced mirrors. These were not like Tom’s quasi-antique mirrors with their charming, wavy glass. These were oversize, glaring department store looking-glasses, the kind the ad maven surely had in mind when he said, Make a woman insecure enough and you can sell her anything . I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see myself in my denim skirt, white T-shirt, and sneakers; I just wanted to find the department store office.

Eventually, I was successful. The Prince & Grogan personnel, security, billing, credit, and customer service departments were grouped together in a section of the second floor that was still being renovated. After several misdirections I finally ended up sitting in a tiny office across from a straight-haired woman named Lisa, who claimed she handled accounts payable. Lisa shuffled through papers and files with no luck, however, and went off mumbling about finding someone from security.