SHE SAID I REMINDED her of Winona Ryder. Or I would once I got the extra weight off. She said I had porcelain skin, if I just wouldn’t go out in the sun and freckle it. Suzanne told me my skin is one of my most positive assets. What she did actually was help me make these two lists: one list of my beauty flaws, the other one with my assets. Every time I listed a flaw I had to think of one asset to cancel it out. Then she showed me all you had to do was learn how to accentuate your positive traits and conceal the negative.
Like for example my eyes. She said saving up for contact lenses was a beauty must. In the meantime I just shouldn’t wear my glasses unless I absolutely had to, like if I was walking down the street and somebody asked me what some sign said three blocks away, or it looked like I won the lottery and I had to read the fine print on my ticket. And I should keep doing my eye exercises, naturally.
My weight was a negative of course. But she said until I lost the weight I could just learn how to conceal my figure flaws. Padded shoulders for instance. Those make your waistline look smaller. She’d take me to the mall and we’d go window shopping sometimes for hours. Trying out different shades of blush. Her telling me what styles were good. Which colors went with my skin.
Sure I felt weird, getting my mother’s gun. It’s awesome if you stop and think about it, how you’re holding something in your hand that has the power to just bam, end a person’s life. One minute they’re walking into their house, just wondering what they’re going to fix for a snack or if there’s a good show on TV. The next minute, they’re just this lump on the floor, and you know they’ll never go shopping or celebrate Christmas or drink a Coke ever again.
But the other way of looking at it that Suzanne told me is everything that happens is just meant to happen. Like she was just meant to get the job at WGSL where we’d get to be friends. And then Jimmy was just meant to fall in love with her. She said that kind of thing was always happening to her. Like one time she went to this Aerosmith concert and Steven Tyler looked right at her, even though she wasn’t sitting in the front row or anything. And that was just when he started playing her all-time favorite song, “Dream On.” I mean, you could say it was just a coincidence, but you’ve got to wonder.
That night at the mall together was weird naturally. I mean, we knew what Jimmy and Russell were doing of course. She’d be taking a pair of pants down off the rack and holding them up to see what they’d look like with her vest, and I’d be thinking, This could be the very second it’s happening. This could be his last moment on earth.
We went into Essence and tried on perfumes. Just for fun. We weren’t actually buying any. We just kept squirting each other, like we were little kids. I mean, I had one smell on my wrist and one on my elbow and one behind my ear. You got so you couldn’t tell them apart. It must’ve been all those perfumes at once, all mixed together that did it, because all of a sudden I started feeling like I was going to throw up. I told Suzanne I had to go to the ladies’ room. I just stood over the toilet bowl for the longest time, but nothing happened. So then we went to get a milkshake, to calm me down.
We were sitting there drinking our shakes. And then I just felt this crazy feeling like, We’ve got to stop it right now. We’ve got to call them up or something, or borrow a car. One way or another, we just had to get back to Suzanne’s house before it was too late. I think it was on account of I was watching this little boy and his mom having an ice cream cone together. I started to think that Larry used to be a little boy like that, and he had a mother someplace that probably loved him a lot. I thought about Patrick Swayze getting shot in Ghost, and how I bawled my head off. And for a second there I got to wondering if Larry really did hit Suzanne or if that was just something she said to make me feel better about the whole thing. He always looked like kind of an easygoing guy to me. I thought about their wedding picture that I used to see on Suzanne’s desk at school and how proud and happy he looked that day, with his hand stroking her cheek like he could hardly believe she was real.
I told Suzanne I thought we’d made a big mistake and we had to do something. She said, “Don’t worry, everything will be OK, you’ll see. It’s too late by now anyways.”
“We could try,” I said, and then I started bawling.
“Shut up,” she said. It surprised me, her saying that. So I started crying even harder than ever. She said she was sorry, but I just had to understand that we were doing the only thing we could, and we couldn’t change now. “It’s not even so important what you do in life, Liddy,” she said to me. “The important thing is following through with what you started. Sticking by your commitment.”
Then we went into Victoria’s Secret. She loved that place, but to tell you the truth I was always kind of embarrassed going in there, and especially that day. Looking at bras and panties, knowing what was going on back at the condo. It had me weirded out. “When you wear really beautiful, good-quality lingerie,” she told me, “even though nobody can see it, you just get this feeling of being beautiful, and it shows in how you act.” She said the first time she ever goes for a tryout for some TV job, she’s coming to Victoria’s Secret first to buy a matching bra and panties set. Real silk.
Then the mall was closing, so we went out to the parking lot. I’ve got this sick feeling, not from the shake, but she’s acting like this was just another shopping trip, no big deal. She says it’s her broadcasting training that does it. She knows how to stay cool under pressure.
We get to the car. I don’t know what I expected to see, blood spattered all over the seat maybe. But everything’s just the same. Just like when we pulled in the parking lot. Then she spots the note Jimmy and Russell left on the dashboard. About how they didn’t do it after all.
I’m so relieved I just about wet my pants. I start giggling all over the place. I just laugh and laugh.
Suzanne, she just buckles her seat belt and turns on the tape player. “We’ll try again in a couple of weeks,” she says. Then she says how she’s got to get this whole mess over with before summer vacation. So she’ll have a chance to go down to Florida. And take Jimmy and me with her.
That made it easier to think about what we were doing. With Larry and all, I mean. Just knowing I’d get to Orlando. I always dreamed I’d get there someday.