Second Chance. Elizabeth Wrenn

passersby.

      No one noticed.

      No one saw me.

      Good.

      That was good. Wasn’t it?

      I sat heavily on a nearby bench and took the stick from my teeth. When had I … disappeared? Somewhere along the line, a cloak of invisibility had dropped down and covered me from head to toe. It wasn’t just here in the mall, I realized. I was invisible in the grocery store, in my neighborhood, to my family. When had this happened? My forties? My thirties?

      Maybe I wasn’t just invisible. Did I, Deena, even exist anymore? Not Deena mother or Deena wife but Deena, formerly Hathaway, formerly a person with thoughts, feelings, dreams and a life ahead of her. That Deena?

      I looked around again. The crowd bustled by; no one met my eye. I looked back toward the storefront again. It was probably because I’d moved a few feet, so the light was different here, but I could no longer even see my reflection in the window.

       THREE

      I wandered toward Victoria’s Secret, feeling physically struck by my newly acknowledged lack of existence. But if you want to challenge the notion of invisibility, try heading into a Victoria’s Secret in the body of an overweight, middle-aged woman in dingy sweats.

      I tried to appear as bored as if I’d been in here just yesterday. In fact, I wasn’t absolutely certain I’d ever been in a Victoria’s Secret. I’m more the Sears type. Highly convenient to get your Cross Your Heart and Crock-Pot in the same trip. I stepped over the threshold feeling like I was slipping into a brothel.

      ‘Can I help you find something?’ the teenaged wraith asked, her dark eyes looking me up and down. Was she wearing black contact lenses? She continued to once-over me in a way that used to alternately flatter and infuriate me (sometimes in the same moment) when young men did this to me a lifetime ago. Now, I just felt blood pulsing into my ears.

      I almost turned and skulked out right then, but a sign at the back of the store caught my eye. A single word, in passionate red. The most seductive word in the dictionary: ‘Clearance.’ It made me swallow my pride and embarrassment long enough to quietly respond, ‘Just looking, thanks.’

      I strolled past the bins of confetti-colored underpants, most looking roughly large enough to tie a tomato plant to its stake. I couldn’t help but think my tomatoes would get a kick out of that. I could sell them at the farmer’s market this summer. Thong Beefsteak. Scanty Panty Early Girl. It would give vegetable cultivation a whole new image.

      I continued on through the middle of the store, past rack and bin islands of lacy, shiny, slinky things. I stopped to finger a gorgeous jade-green negligee and cover-up combo. That’s what I needed: a negligee with cover-up. Talk about an oxymoron. I lingered to see if they had it in a large, not that I was seriously interested, but I felt the eyes of Phantom Girl on me so felt compelled to look like I was looking. I tried to back far enough away from the tag sewn in at the neck while still holding it, but my arms were not long enough for me to make out the small letters. It occurred to me that if you need magnifying glasses to read a lingerie tag, it’s probably God’s way of delicately informing you that you’re too old for this. But I did it anyway. I dug through my purse again.

      With my brown half frames perched on my nose, I finally found an ‘L.’ Would that be big enough? I pulled it out and held it up, also at arm’s length, too self-conscious to hold it against me. Close. Probably it would fit, but maybe not. The pounds had been creeping on with the years, each tiptoeing on as if I wasn’t looking.

      It wasn’t that I was obese. At five eight and weighing about the same as my five eleven husband, I was probably the American average, but larger than I’d ever been in my life, almost as heavy as I’d been for each of my three pregnancies. But the currents of middle age had carried me past caring. That and various Oprah shows about loving your body. I’d gotten as far as not hating my body. I’d reached the dubiously successful stage of ignoring my body.

      But maybe I could love my body in a green negligee. I put the large back on the rack, and, glasses still perched on the end of my nose, found that there was indeed an XL lurking in the back. A forgotten, adolescent kind of thrill ran up my spine. Wouldn’t this be fun! Neil would be beside himself, delirious with shocked joy!

      A pause in the thrill. If I bought this, it would probably lead to sex. Well, of course it would. That’s what this store was all about. Women bedecking themselves as sexual beings. For someone else. But I just wanted this for me. I wanted to take a long, hot soak in the tub, dry myself off with a fat new bath blanket, those obscenely huge towels that are practically a load of laundry in and of themselves. Then I wanted to put on this little Green Goddess number and lounge on satin sheets, sipping a nice merlot and then, well, then I’d slip under the covers, very slowly, very gracefully. When the heat of my body had taken the chill off the sheets, I’d reach toward it, my hand sliding across the satin. Then, and only then, would I pull toward me the object of my desire: that Barbara Kingsolver novel I’d been wanting to read for ever so long. I think it’s about a woman who lives by herself in the woods.

      I let out a slow, resigned breath. Fiction had replaced foreplay in my life. Solitude was way more seductive than sex.

      So, maybe I could wear this some weekday – an unsuspecting Wednesday, perhaps – when everyone was at school and work. I reached for the dangling price tag, peering through my half frames: $89.00. I gasped, lodging my Doublemint way too near my esophagus. I began a coughing and gagging fit of extra-large proportions.

      Phantom Girl glided over. ‘Are you okay, ma’am?’ She seemed not so much concerned as alarmed that I might keel over, leaving her with a big pile of frump in the middle of her store to clean up. Flushed and panicky, I nodded, grinning like a fool. I wheezed, ‘Fine! Fine, thanks!’

      I hustled over to the clearance area and buried my crimson face in the terry robes that hung there. They were thick and deliciously plush, and I kept my face between the sleeves till my gum had come up and my color down.

      It was nice in there. True, it was sort of ostrichlike, hiding my head like that, with the vast majority of me taking up most of the aisle. But I felt safe with my head in those robes. And almost alone.

      What was I thinking over there, anyway? This was much more my speed. I was a terry-cloth-and-flannel kind of gal. I’d momentarily been lost in the dark and seductive Satin Forest but had stumbled home finally to Menopause Meadow.

      After a long minute, I pulled my head out and looked the robes over. This time, I started with the price tag. At the very bottom was a crossed-out $110.00. Above that was a crossed-out $89.00. Above that, a crossed-out $59.00. Finally, written in red pen, $24.99. Clearly their final offer, otherwise why the 99¢? Talk about sexy! I found final markdowns very attractive.

      They were down to just a few odd colors in only large and extra large (evidently my kind didn’t venture in here all that often), but they were like no other robe I’d ever owned. It seemed like the kind of robe they’d have hanging in your closet at a fancy resort, waiting to wrap its sleeve arms around you and take care of you for a change.

      I decided I deserved this little indulgence. Even at a clearance price I still felt that way: I was indulging myself. Between growing up on a farm, us getting Neil through med school, then using his one income to support us, save for both our retirements and three college tuitions, and add in trying to make sure the kids got most if not all the things they ‘really, really, reeeeally needed’ – well, it meant that I lived pretty low on the hog.

      I was trying to decide between the soft but odd pink called Little Girl Dawn (how absurd to have a robe in a plus size with a name like that!) and a pale, and also slightly odd, dusty purple called Violet Haze, when Lainey and Nan suddenly appeared beside me. I dropped the robe sleeve I’d been holding as if I’d been caught masturbating.

      ‘Lainey! Hi, girls! What’re you doing here?!’