Amanda Bright @ Home by Danielle Crittenden Page B

say that, Kim. I wish it were true.” Christine arched her neck so the women could examine the sorry decline for themselves. “Look at these banjo strings,” she said, strumming an imaginary surplus of skin below her chin. “And my eyes—these hoods make me look like a lizard.” The women strained forward and shook their heads. “So what the hell? I think of this as an offensive rather than a defensive action. I don’t want to turn into one of those old horrors you see at the club—you know, the kind who show up one day with their faces stretched tight as cellophane.”
    This last observation provoked protests all around—“Oh, Christine, you won’t become one of them,” “Really, you’re beautiful the way you are”—but Amanda also detected a slight unease, as if Christine had just raised the ante among them. Ellen’s hands rushed to check her own neck while Kim discreetly probed the skin around her eyes. Only Patricia seemed unperturbed. “It’s all in the genes, you know. My mother is seventy and looks fantastic. Never had to do a thing.”
    Amanda didn’t know, frankly, what to think. Part of her was too horrified to react. Why would Christine carve herself up to fit some male fantasy of how she should look? Wasn’t this akin to other barbaric practices foisted upon women by patriarchal societies, a North American version of genital mutilation? Yet it was difficult to imagine Christine as being anybody’s dupe when Amanda contrasted her indignant opinions with the composed figure of Christine herself—smiling, inviting them all to join in her plan to triumph over age and gravity.
    At last Amanda found her voice. “Does Brian want you to do this? I mean, is he pushing you to do it?”
    “Oh please.” Christine waved away the very suggestion. “Brian supports whatever I do. He thinks I look great now. He’ll be happy when I look even better. No, I’m doing this for
me
.”
    Christine’s finality of tone hinted that it was time to move on to another topic, but Amanda couldn’t let it go. “Because sometimes women, if they’re insecure—”
    “Oh, honey, I’m
secure
,” Christine said, with a flash of irritation. “My fate doesn’t rest on Brian’s opinion of me. Look, I do the bookkeeping in the family, and let me tell you, if he left, I’d be more than secure. I’ve taken care of that.”
    “So have I.” Kim giggled, and Ellen nodded.
    “Heck, I’ve got an entire investment portfolio that Steve doesn’t even know about,” Patricia remarked lightly. “I built it up when I was working. I think of it as my ‘disaster-relief fund.’”
    “You know, a friend of mine gave me the name of a terrific lawyer—just in case. She just went through a hellish divorce.”
    “I have one, too, but quite frankly, Steve doesn’t stand a chance if he walks out. Not that he would
want
to walk out, of course.”
    “No. But you’ve got to be prepared,” Christine acknowledged. “We can’t be like our mothers’ generation. They went into marriage practically blind.”
    “You can say that again.”
    “A few months ago I walked into a Starbucks, and there was the mother of my best friend from high school—working behind the counter. Her husband left her after thirty years.
Thirty years!
”
    Amanda, subdued by this turn of the conversation, took a cracker from the untouched cheese plate and marveled at her own blindness. For all her professed independence, what steps had she taken to protect herself? When she gave up her job, the thought did cross her mind that she was surrendering what her feminist professors used to call “economic power.” But somehow it hadn’t felt that way. Amanda and Bob continued to divide the household tasks, viewing their new arrangement as simply a change in the form of their partnership. They were still equals, making different contributions to what remained a joint enterprise, the Bright-Clarke household. Or so Bob had characterized it in his typical