A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

Sex Appeal

Bella Lynn was my cousin, and just about the prettiest girl in West Texas. She had been a drum majorette at El Paso High and Miss Sun Bowl in 1946 and 1947. Later she went to Hollywood to become a starlet. That didn’t work out. The trip started off badly because of her brassiere. It didn’t have falsies in it, but you blew it up, like a balloon. Two balloons.

Uncle Tyler, Aunt Tiny and I went to see her off. In a twin-engine DC-6. None of us had ever been in an airplane before. She said that she was a nervous wreck, but she didn’t look it. She looked just lovely in a pink angora sweater. Her breasts were very big.

The three of us watched her plane, waving at it, until it was way off toward California and Hollywood and then it disappeared. Apparently at about that time it also reached a certain altitude, and because of the pressure in the cabin Bella Lynn’s brassiere blew up. Exploded, I mean. Fortunately, no one in El Paso heard about it. She didn’t even tell me about it for twenty years. But I don’t think that’s why she never became a starlet.

Her picture was always coming out in the El Paso paper. Once it was in it every day for a week … when she was dating Rickie Evers. Rickie Evers had just divorced a famous movie star. His daddy was a millionaire hotel owner and lived on top of the Hotel del Norte in El Paso.

Rickie Evers was in town for the National Golf Open, and Bella Lynn was bound and determined to go out with him. She made reservations for dinner at the Del Norte. She said I should come along, that eleven years old wasn’t too young for me to get some lessons in sex appeal.

I didn’t, in fact, know anything about sex appeal. Sex itself seemed to have something to do with being mad. Cats acted pretty mad about the whole thing, and all the movie stars seemed mad. Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck were downright mean. Bella Lynn and her friends would slouch in the Court Café under pompadours, blowing smoke from their nostrils like petulant dragons.

They were all excited about the National Golf Open. “A gold mine! An oil well right in our own backyard!”

Wilma, Bella Lynn’s best friend, wanted to come with us to the Del Norte Hotel, but Bella Lynn said Nix. A basic principle of sex appeal, she told me, was always work alone. No matter if the other woman was pretty or ugly … it simply delayed and complicated any operation.

* * *

I dressed up in what I thought was the most wonderful dress I had ever seen. Lavender dotted swiss with puff sleeves and a crinoline. Aunt Tiny did my hair in French braids. I didn’t wear lipstick yet, but I put some Merthiolate on my mouth. Aunt Tiny made me wash it right off. She did pinch my cheeks. Bella Lynn wore a mean-looking brown crepe dress with big shoulders, mean dark makeup, and black high heels. We got to the hotel early. She sat in a high-backed chair in the lobby, wearing dark glasses. She crossed her legs. Black silk stockings. I told her that the seams were crooked, but she said slightly crooked seams had sex appeal. She gave me a quarter to go buy a soda, but instead I just went up and down the stairs. A beautiful wide curved staircase carpeted in red velvet, with a curved banister. I’d run to the top and stand beneath the chandelier, smiling regally. Then I’d walk very slowly and graciously to the bottom, my hand lightly brushing the mahogany rail. Then I’d run back up. I did this over and over until finally it seemed that surely it must be time to eat. She said she had postponed the reservation because Evers hadn’t shown up yet. I bought an Almond Hershey and sat down a few chairs away. She whispered to stop kicking the seat. She smoked Pall Malls, only she called them Pell Mells.

* * *

I recognized the famous Evers and his millionaire father the minute they came in. They went into the dining room with some other men. All in Stetsons and boots, except for Evers, who wore a pinstriped suit and no hat. But I would have known it was them just by how nasty Bella Lynn was looking, using a cigarette holder now. She took off her dark glasses and we went in. Bella Lynn told the head waiter that her escort had been unavoidably detained. That there would only be the two of us to dine.

I wanted chicken fried steak, but she said that was too tacky. She ordered us prime rib. A Manhattan for her and a Shirley Temple for me. Only she ended up with a Shirley Temple too, because she was only eighteen. She told the waiter she must have misplaced her driver’s license. How inconvenient.

The men had a bottle of bourbon on the table and except for Rickie Evers, were all smoking cigars.

“So how are you going to meet him?” I asked her.

“I told you. Sex appeal. Just as soon as I catch his eye I’ll have him over here and buying us our little old prime rib dinner.”

“So far he hasn’t even looked this way.”

“Yes he has, but he pretended not to … that’s his sex appeal. But he’ll look over again, and when he does I’ll just look at him as if he was the lowest-down, mangiest old hound dog I ever saw.”

Rickie Evers did, then, look over at her, and that’s exactly how she looked at him, like how did they ever let him in? In two seconds he was standing behind the empty chair.

“May I join you?”

“Well. My escort has been unavoidably detained. Perhaps for a few minutes.”

“What are you drinking?” he asked.

“Shirley Temples,” I said, but she said Manhattan. He told the waiter to bring me a Shirley Temple. Manhattans for him and the lady. The waiter didn’t say anything about her ID.

“I’m Bella Lynn and this is Little Lou, my cousin. Sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” she said, although she knew perfectly well what it was.

He told her his name and she said, “Your daddy and my daddy play golf together.”

“Will you be at the Golf Open tomorrow?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. The crowds are so excruciating. Little Lou has her heart set on it though.”

They ended up deciding to go to the golf tournament the next day so I wouldn’t be disappointed. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but by tomorrow they had forgotten how much I was supposed to want to go anyway.

They drank their Manhattans and then we had shrimp cocktails before our roast beef. Baked Alaska for dessert, which I thought was amazing.

After dinner they were going nightclubbing in Juárez, and there was the problem, over crème de menthe, of how to get me home. A taxi, Bella Lynn said, but he insisted that they could drop me off before they crossed the border.

Bella Lynn went to powder her nose. I didn’t go, didn’t know yet that you’re always supposed to go, to assess the situation.

* * *

When she was gone Rickie Evers dropped his gold cigarette lighter on the floor and when he reached down for it he ran his hand up my leg, stroked the inside of my knee.

I took a bite of the Baked Alaska and said I wondered how they ever managed to do it. He picked his lighter up and told me I had Baked Alaska on my chin. When he wiped it with the big linen napkin his arm brushed my breast. I was embarrassed, I still didn’t even wear a training bra.

Bella Lynn came back from the powder room sauntering in her crooked seams, pretending not to notice all the men staring at her. The whole dining room had been staring at Bella Lynn and Rickie Evers throughout the meal. I think the Mexican busboy saw what Evers did when he dropped his lighter.

* * *

I sat between Evers and Bella Lynn in the big black Lincoln. The windows rolled up and down when he pushed a button, even the back ones. There was a cigarette lighter, and he would brush my leg as he pushed it in, and my breasts again as he reached across to light her Pell Mells.

We pulled up in the driveway.

“How about a good-night kiss, Little Lou?” he asked. Bella Lynn laughed. “Why, she’s not even sweet sixteen.” While she was getting out he bit my neck.

Bella Lynn went in with me to get her wrap and her atomizer of Tabu.

“See what I told you, Lou, about Sex Appeal? Easy as pie!” I went in to listen to Inner Sanctum with Uncle Tyler and Aunt Tiny. They were pleased as punch that Bella Lynn was going out with the ex-husband of the most beautiful movie star in the world.

“How did she ever manage that?” Uncle Tyler wondered.

“Why, Tyler … you know our Bella Lynn is the prettiest thing west of the Mississippi!”

“No. It was Sex Appeal,” I told them.

They glared at me.

“Child, don’t you ever let me hear you use that word again!” Aunt Tiny said, real mean. She looked just like Mildred Pierce.