Grief

Two weeks ago, using my chronic dry skin as an excuse, I dressed up and went to the Nordstrom’s downtown to be close to you. Unfamiliar with the store, I entered through the Men’s department and was winded by the semblance that line up of cashmere sweaters, ties and socks has to the men’s department entrance we used at the Bloomingdale’s at the Riverside Mall in New Jersey where you brought us on school holidays, and when, feigning sick, you encouraged us to play hooky. I can still remember the gleaming Clinique counter where you bought my four best friends in the fifth grade soaps and bath salts and a loofa wrapped in cozy Christmas packaging.

At Nordstrom’s, I nervously circled the make-up counters, lingering in departments like Jewlery, where we never went. At Trish McEvoy, foundation, shimmer, highlighter sticks, eyeliner, shaper and blush brushes, colors like "natural," "sheer polished pink," "warm honey," and "golden beige" would conspire to conjure your perfect face, so for a while I fingered expensive leather bags that you would have offered to buy me and wondered what happened to the small brown Prada satchel that I used little persuasion to get in high school. I passed mirrors to notice your Chanel bag on my arm, and, catching sight of my dirty Converse sneakers wondered whether, if you were here, people would see immediately that I was your daughter. You would have died laughing had you heard what the nurses on 8 Hudson North whispered to dad about the dusty backpack I brought with me to your hospital room everyday. “Has she always been crunchy, or did that happen in Seattle?” Even when you were bald, weighed eighty pounds with atrophied legs, and donned a soiled hospital gown, your skin was radiant, and everyone knew just how far the apple had fallen.

With a growing sense of the idiocy of my mission, and of the regret my purchases would later inflict, I headed toward Trish, where I so badly hoped to find someone like Lori, who gave us seasonal makeovers, who we trusted to give our faces a lift, who died several years ago from breast cancer.

“I don’t have a mother,” I considered using as an appeal to the matron I would find behind the counter. “Please do something to my face that will make me feel better.” But the woman I longed to meet was temporarily away on a conference call. The gay man from Chanel filling in blotted my skin with translucent oil, covered the dark half moons beneath my eyes with concealer, and told me that I looked as if I had just taken a nap. “That’s good,” I said. “I don’t really wear make-up.”

“I can tell,” he said rather matter-of-factly.

When the Trish lady came back from her meeting, she had acne caked with orange foundation, and she was nearly morbidly obese. She checked my color palate, and I bought the $50.00 bottle of lotion, the $40.00 concealer wand, and a $40.00 compact of silk foundation that would have to be shipped from another store. Then I fled Nordstrom’s, horrified by my dire need for you, and by your failure to arrive, calmed by the notion that maybe, by acting like you, I could learn to take care of myself the way you took care of me.