Freddy handed me his spoon. “Dig in, baby.”
“That’s all it took?”
“After tonight’s conversation, yeah. Life can be ugly, sometimes. Friendship’s like me-it makes the world a little prettier.”
33
The next day, I found out what wasn’t pretty. Me. At least, me aged and uglied up via the expert application of latex and makeup by Steven Austen.
It was the day I’d been trying to avert but couldn’t avoid. In two hours, my mother and I had an appointment at Families by Design, where we’d be posing as the world’s worst candidates for adoptive parenthood.
Making me appear older involved adding heavy jowls, deep wrinkles, and an ashy complexion. Steve dulled my natural blondness to a mousy brown, then threw in some gray streaks for good measure.
In the mirror was an unflattering combination of myself, my father, the guy who played the father on Happy Days and Gollum from Lord of the Rings. It wasn’t a good look for me.
Was it convincing? I wasn’t sure.
“I couldn’t go as heavy on the makeover as I would have if we were working on film,” Steven explained. “The camera and lighting can be manipulated to hide a multitude of sins. But this is real life, and you’re going to be meeting people face-to-face. So, I had to be more subtle with the appliance work.”
“What do you think?” I asked Steven.
“I think…” Steven paused, searching for a tactful way to put it, “you look more like someone who’d be involved with your mother than you did before.”
Which I took to mean that while Steven hadn’t managed to make me look quite as old as my mother, I was at least believable as prey for an energetic cougar.
Speaking of which…
“Darling,” my mother cried, entering the room. Steven had done what he could with her earlier; now she was emerging from the rest of her makeover.
Steven had done a better job with my mother than he had with me, proving that subtraction is easier than addition. He’d used putty to fill in the lines in her face and a thick foundation to cover all but her deepest wrinkles. A pinker-than-usual tone in her makeup and thick false eyelashes made her look noticeably younger without being so obvious as to cross her over into drag queen territory.
Further enhancing the illusion was the new hairdo. The beautician had covered my mother’s hair, which she always wore in her signature beehive, with a red wig shaped in a more youthful bob. It was a convincing, well-done job.
Lastly, the show’s stylist, a young straight girl who’d been dying to make my mother look more contemporary since the show’s first day, really went to town. She dressed my mother in a chic cream-colored Donna Karan jacket and matching skirt that was slimming and flattering. It wasn’t obviously flashy or trying-too-hard, but it was somehow much hipper than my mother’s usual matronly pantsuits. It also looked outrageously expensive, which was an impression we were shooting for.
The stylist accessorized my mother’s neutral outfit with bold jewelry and a bright gold belt. They attracted attention without being overly ostentatious. It was a smart move, as anything that drew someone’s eye away from our faces was bound to help.
One of the problems we had was making sure no one recognized my mother as the star of Sophie’s Voice. Her image was getting pretty well known. While having someone-anyone-other than her pull off this sting would have made this easier, she insisted on doing it herself.
“They don’t,” she explained, “give Diane Sawyer an Emmy for someone else’s investigation.”
With her new makeup, hairstyle, and clothing, I had to admit my mother was probably suitably unrecognizable as the Long Island hausfrau hostess. We tried to get her to tone down her distinctive New Yawk manner of speaking, but no matter what we did, she sounded like Madonna after the pop star weirdly acquired an English accent. So, we let that pass.
As for me, I still didn’t know what the hell I was doing there. For some reason, my mother had decided I’d be the perfect person to help her pull off this stunt, and whatever Mama wants, Mama gets. At one point, I pulled her aside to ask if she didn’t think she’d be better off accompanied by a professional reporter (not to mention one closer to her age).
“Darling,” she said, as if my insecurity were the problem, “I believe in you. Remember how you helped me that time with Dottie Kubacki?”
My mother was referring to a debacle of an incident where she’d talked me into spying on one of our neighbors she’d become convinced was having an affair with my father. That little stunt had left me with an almost broken tailbone and an equally painful memory of the suspected adulteress in her three hundred pounds of naked glory.
“Who could I possibly trust more than you, darling?” my mother asked. “You’re always there for me.”
My mother wasn’t perfect. But she loved me unconditionally, and that counted for a lot. Plus, she never arranged to have me kidnapped and brainwashed into being straight. You had to add points for that, too.
Sure, she was high maintenance. But most worthwhile things are.
I let myself enjoy what I was pretty sure were likely to be the last nice thoughts I had for her today.
At least I didn’t have to worry about my accent-with my mother in the room, I rarely got a word in edgewise. Today, that’d work to my advantage.
My mother gave Steven a hug. “You’re a genius, darling. He looks awful.”
She grabbed me by the arm. “Get up, old man.” She dragged us to a full-length mirror mounted on the wall.
I was already in my costume for the day. A conservative Hugo Boss suit with a red power tie. They had it specially tailored to accommodate the padding they strapped to my belly and shoulders, making me look bulkier and out-of-shape. They also had me in elevator shoes, bringing me to a more respectable height of five feet six, an inch taller than my mother.
“Just look at us!” my mother exclaimed. “Don’t we make a gorgeous couple?”
I wouldn’t go that far. Nor did I quite get the whole reverse-Oedipal vibe. But, yeah, we did look close enough in age and style that we could pass as something other than mother and son.
At some point, Andrew must have come into the room, because he was the one who answered.
“You know,” he said, and I could hear he was being sincere, “I think this could work.”
“Of course it’s going to work!” my mother assured him. “We’re going to be the Jewish Woodward and Bernstein by the time this is done.”
I was pretty sure Woodward and Bernstein were the Jewish Woodward and Bernstein. At least, Bernstein must have been. I wasn’t sure about Woodward.
My mother gave us one last look in the mirror, squeezed my hand, and grabbed her stylist. “I think,” she said, “we’d better go find me a purse. The right purse will be key.” They hurried out of the room.
Andrew took her place by my side. Seeing that everyone had pretty much fled the room as soon as they could, he leaned over and whispered hotly into my ear.
“Wanna know how good that Steven is? I can honestly say if I were meeting you for the first time, looking as you do now, I would not, at this moment, want to fuck you.”
“Gee,” I gushed. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Of course, knowing that’s you under all that, I’m kind of turned on in a perverse way. It’d be like making it with you and not making it with you, all at the same time.”
“Well, you’re going to have to keep that nauseating three-way as a fantasy,” I said. “Mustn’t smear my makeup and all that.”
