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Audrey is selling Mary Kay cosmetics to my sister, Kristin, and my wife, Amy. Audrey starts by offering them a free make-over. "Don't feel pressured to buy anything," Audrey says. "I just have a quota to reach before my 'exam' next week. You guys would be helping me." So Kristin and Amy agreed.
Cassidy has come along, and she plays with Abby while the three women sit at the dining room table; I watch after the two girls. Amy and Kristin are both given little styrofoam trays mounted to the bases of small mirror-stands. The trays contain rows of little make-up wells, each well labeled in raised lettering: BLUSH, FOUNDATION, etc.. The first thing Audrey has them do is put on a green cleansing mask that makes them both look ghoulish, their teeth suddenly bright, their grins wide.
Audrey, a formally trained actress with a great sense of irony, has a brilliant selling technique: the I'm-new-at-this-and-I-don't- have-a-selling-technique selling technique. After both Kristin and Amy have applied the mask, Audrey says, giggling, "Now this is when my boss said you're supposed to say, 'Doesn't that just feel radiant, girls?'"
They both have to fill out these questionaires about their complexions, the healthiness of their skin.
"I get these red blotches sometimes on my forehead," Amy admits.
Kristin says, "It's different with me every day. Sometimes it's clear, but sometimes my skin gets a little dry and flaky, sometimes I get a zit or two. The only thing that seems to be a constant is that I get these little white spots on the side of my forehead."
"Hey, maybe we could help each other out," Amy says. "You superimpose my red splotches on your white splotches, and I'll put your white splotches on my red ones."
From the living room I call over, "They're trading splotches, Audrey, is that allowed?"
"Splotch-trading is strictly prohibited," Audrey says. A minute or so later she says, "When my boss demonstrated this mask to me she put it on and said, 'I have never felt as fabulous and wonderful as I do right now, ever.'"
The girls are playing with the Little People barn. Cassidy is making one of the fence-posts go down the hay-chute into one of the stalls. Abby is making meowing noises, having the barn-cat hop around on top of the other animals. After they're through with the barn, the girls move over to a large plastic cart full of blocks. Abby dumps out the blocks and gets inside the cart. Abby gets put in time-out for refusing to let Cassidy ride in the cart. The whole time they're playing they both chatter non-stop, sometimes with remarkable clarity and intelligence, sometimes indecipherably. Hearing a toddler speak is like reading a modernist novel, Joyce, say, or Woolf: despite its difficulty, its seeming nonsense, everything signifies, everything follows its own fierce logic, you just have to work hard to connect the dots and figure it out.
Audrey says, "Oh, crap. I always forget to tell my customers that they should only put the mask on one side of their faces, so they can compare the difference in how it feels. Oh, well. Too late now."
I finally get Abby and Cassidy to sit on the couch with me for some "quiet time." I ask them if they want to watch a tape. I give them several choices. Cassidy says, "Toy 'Tory." Abby at first protests, but she smiles widely as soon as Woody pops up on the screen.
Audrey says, "My boss put this blush on me and said, 'You look absolutely radiant!' Corny."
Turns out that from the questionaire she filled out Amy is a neutral color. Amy doesn't seem to be surprised by the news. Amy displays an amiable indifference to the whole make-up thing. I notice, not for the first time, that she is remarkably pretty. The make-up doesn't make her prettier: it merely serves to remind me of its own superfluousness.
In Toy Story, Woody and Buzz are fighting at the gas-station and inadvertently get left behind by Andy and his mother. Suddenly a big semi truck comes barreling up to the pumps, and Woody, since he's a toy, falls limply to the concrete tarmac. The truck nearly runs him over; the front left tire rests snugly against Woody's cheek after it comes to a stop. And I wonder: are these toys so dedicated to not getting caught being alive by humans that they would risk their lives? Or is the falling-limp reaction involuntary?
The girls lie end to end on the couch, their feet touching.
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