My ordering clothing from Macy’s began with what’s called a “Macy’s Wish List,” an online platform that allowed my saving items I might want to purchase later. I read reviews on expensive coats, tops, slacks, and dresses, watching the rise and fall of prices with the same urgency my husband, Rob, watched the rise and fall of the stock market. When prices fell astonishingly low on an item of interest, I added it to my cyber shopping cart in a state of euphoric frenzy. Purchases were shipped to Macy’s Herald Square. When the email arrived on pick-up day, I dressed myself in matching coats, boots, and handbags, my professorial attire, the kind of look I suspected a person who’d shop at a Macy’s might have before making my way to 34th Street.

In the store, I pretended I wasn’t a spectacle carrying too many bags and boxes to heft, moving from the customer service counter to dimly lit dressing rooms. I couldn’t wait to try on purchases in front of special mirrors that boasted a panel of buttons, enabling a person to see themselves in different lighting situations. I pushed the button for the most unflattering night-time light that had me appear shadowed and exhausted first, instead of the bright daytime light that gave me something of a stunning, haloed glow.

I’d long stopped looking directly into my eyes in mirrors, frightened of seeing myself too clearly. My adult son had died three months before, and I despised the woman in the glass for being so pathetically beaten. I examined my face with quick glances toward my chin, my forehead, the dark circles beneath my eyes, and my new, sharp cheekbones courtesy of major weight loss. My breasts had vanished. My bottom had disappeared. Extra, extra small coats hung on my body in a way that made me look like a tacky, weathered scarecrow.

Standing in front of mirrors in manic ensembles made of hideous, neon embroidered sweaters and neon-pink winter coats, still surprised by how I’d chopped off my long, dark hair that before reached the middle of my back, I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, “How the fuck are you, Melissa? Wow! This is so totally fucked!” Instead, I swallowed air in gulps, unable to organize the insanity inside myself against the world outside myself that went on like nothing had happened.

Returning sad, wildly colored clothing became uncomfortable when cashiers began whispering amongst themselves at the sight of me. Whispers that brought to mind my son, Holden, being asked by management not to walk around the Home Depot near his home in Florida, anymore. Hunched over a chicken sub at lunch during one of my visits, crowding it as if to guard it from being snatched off its paper, his large brown eyes darted repeatedly from left to right as he said, “Don’t worry, Mom. There’re other places to walk.”

“Come on. Let’s ride over to the Depot. Let me meet the manager. I’ll let him know you’re fine to hang out in the store.”

“No, no,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to find a new place to hang out.”

The first time I caught cashiers whispering about me at Macy’s I had to find a wall to lean against in another part of the store where no one could see me trembling head to foot with unadulterated rage, desperate to phone the Depot—Do you remember that tall, sandy-haired young man? The sweet, earnest one who never bothered anyone? The one who may have mumbled a little to himself while walking around your store? Well! That young man’s DEAD! And he’s DEAD because you wouldn’t let him walk around the Depot!!!

When I grew tired of trying on clothes at Macy’s, tired of the whispers that eventually turned to pity in cashiers’ eyes when I returned everything I’d just purchased online, again, I moved on to makeup.

I read hundreds of reviews on every high-end foundation I could find. I collected foundation samples like a mad woman at Macy’s Herald Square, taking offense when one high-end company didn’t have a prepackaged sample I felt would match my fair skin tone. The salesperson wouldn’t open different bottles of varying shades of foundation like other makeup brands had, giving me a smidge of product in a tiny plastic cup to try at home. Not wanting to show my indignation to the salesclerk, I contemplated the letter I’d write to the company over the scorching injustice—Is your product really so fucking special?

When sample collecting and trying on different foundations at home became unsatisfying, I began sitting with Macy’s counter girls/women called beauty consultants for half-hour blocks at a time, letting them help me find the right color foundation.

Estée Lauder, Clinique, Elizabeth Arden, no makeup counter was safe from me, or my repeated explorations. Eventually, I branched out, visiting three different Macy’s to keep from being a remembered spectacle by beauty consultants I’d convinced just days before that it was their product that suited me best. I rotated visits between Macy’s Herald Square, the Brooklyn store on Fulton Street, and the Macy’s in Jersey City at the Newport Mall.
Wearing exaggerated smiles, straightening my spine in front of heavy, glass entryway doors, I stepped into each Macy’s speaking gently to exuberant, lovely girls/women who asked me to climb on stools and sit in front of rectangular mirrors they placed uncomfortably close to my face.

“What type of coverage would you like,” they asked, swiping my cheeks, forehead, and chin each time with a dewy cleansing pad.

“Light. I don’t want to look like I’m wearing makeup.”

“Terrific! I have just the foundation for you!”

After cleaning my face, they applied a shade of foundation over my cheek, forcing me to face the mirror so I could decide how I felt about the tint and texture of the liquid, before wiping the sample off again, trying a different shade.

Midway through sessions, my erect spine drooped, leaving me hunched forward. My smile melted into a flat line. Sometimes, I was genuinely surprised finding myself sitting at another makeup counter under the harsh fluorescent lights of another Macy’s.

Eventually, being asked if I felt well, I attempted gathering my act by straightening my spine before purchasing a foundation so the consultant could feel good about the interaction. I returned foundation purchases to a different Macy’s, never convinced I had the right tint or texture.

The search for the perfect foundation held me hours from home, creating more problems between me and Rob. Our six-year marriage had already largely been an uncomfortable, soul-sucking experience for both emotionally immature parties. Rob was Jewish. I grew up “washed in the blood” below the Mason-Dixon Line. Southern. Our “differences,” we decided were to blame for how we just did not get along because this was easier than admitting we were both just damaged people where intimacy was concerned. What I called Rob’s six-year reign of throwing dictionaries in my face to improve my vocabulary, telling me I should be doing something better with my time than playing solitaire, and his staring into my eyes with a flat gaze as stress tears streamed down my cheeks from the pressure of the scrutiny, ended after my son died.

I’d sneak off to the Macy’s, returning without ever saying where I’d been, dodging him whenever I could.

He finally broke from the absences when I texted that I’d be late meeting him for dinner at a burger joint a few blocks from our apartment. A barrage of texts questioning my whereabouts and my ETA ensued. I couldn’t say I was sitting at a Macy’s makeup counter on Fulton Street with a woman who’d just painted each side of my face with a slightly different shade of foundation so I could see how each tint looked on my skin as I moved through the evening.

Purchasing the shade she and I both suspected was best for me, stopping in various shops along the way to meet Rob, I checked out my cheeks in every mirrored surface I passed. A teenage salesgirl caught my contemplative examination of each side of my face in a mirror when I slipped into the back of an Ann Taylor retail store, and for the longest time, agonized with me over the two different shades of foundation before announcing, “Definitely the right side is best!”

Two blocks from the restaurant, right on the street, Rob began, “Where have you been? Where are you going when you leave? What the fuck’s happening?”

“I told you I’ve been walking.”

“Bullshit! You’re not just walking!”

“I’m not having an affair if that’s what you think. If I decide to go that route, I’ll let you know.”

“This isn’t funny, Melissa! You’re disappearing, and that’s not the only unsettling thing about your behaviors!”

“People who’re having affairs make up where they’re going so as not to be questioned. I tell you nothing. Be reasonable.”

“I never accused you of having an affair!”

“Good. Because I don’t have the space for imaginings,” I snapped, wondering what else he felt was so unsettling about my behaviors.

Maybe he meant my new relationship with the show My 600-lb Life. Ignoring Rob, back from the Macy’s, I’d pull out my laptop, plug in headphones, grab a box of Kleenex, and become a champion for overweight people. I cheered when weight loss goals were met. I wept dramatically when they weren’t. But more often than not, I found myself gripping the edges of my laptop, preventing myself from slamming it into the wall, desperate to see it shattered to pieces. No matter what these people did to themselves! No matter how sedentary they were! No matter how much they ate or how large they got, THEY LIVED!

I’d slip into long, unfocused dazes before finally coming to, remembering that Holden had taken his own life, that he didn’t actually have to die. Then I’d have to go to bed because if I didn’t, I’d spend the night into early morning imagining all the ways I might’ve saved him from himself, forgetting I couldn’t undo what’d already been done.

Stepping into the burger joint, taking a booth, Rob nodded to the wait staff that we’d have our usuals before continuing, “Where the fuck are you going when you leave? Just tell me!”

“It’s none of your business!”

“Where’s this going then, Melissa? How far are you taking this? He’s dead!”

I couldn’t look at Rob. I hated him. I also hated his CVS wristwatch he bragged about keeping alive for twenty years that he used to clock me with. And, my son could not be dead, though he was dead, and it was fucking rude for Rob to point out something in a picture I was still making sense of. “I’m walking! That’s what I’m doing! Fuck you!”

“You walking backward, Melissa? Is that what’s happening? It’s been three months. Tell me! Will I be hospitalizing you?”

My fist slammed down so hard on the table that we both jumped before I got up on my knees, pushing my face toward his, confessing my new relationship with Macy’s, trying to help him see the subtle color difference in the foundation on each side of my face, forgetting he was color blind.

Rob didn’t believe me. Rob couldn’t imagine a woman who used to get up and write six hours a day would be able to tolerate such mundane activities for so many hours over such a lengthy period of time. Not being believed caused wild, electric feelings of futility and helplessness to alight my guts just as the waitress set down next to me on the table a basket of almost burnt, skimpy-thin chicken strips.

“WHAT!” I roared, twisting my body toward the terrified waitress who instinctually drew her hands to her chest. “They’re already too skinny to eat! Hard as hickory! Why the fuck would you bring me these? You’ve burnt them! And I want the old chicken strips back! I’m paying the same goddamn money for these fucked-up chicken strips!”

Rob’s body folded around my body as I fought to get around him to the girl being ushered away by the manager.

“What the fuck, Rob! I just want her to know that you don’t serve burnt-up chicken strips! And how many other menu changes must we tolerate? Just last week, they got rid of the snicker-doodle ice cream sandwiches!”

Then, to the whole restaurant of eyes locked on Rob dragging me toward the door, I shouted, “Stop fucking staring! You know damn well I’m just saying what y’all are thinking! There used to be goddamn standards in restaurants in this country! It’s called quality control! I just want some goddamn quality control! One fucking thing to rely on! Is a fat, un-burnt up chicken strip too much to ask?!”

Rob didn’t say a word, pulling me the few blocks home and up three flights of stairs into our apartment. He yanked off my shoes, demanding I get into the shower while he sat on the toilet seat lid. Catching his eyes, I winced. The defeat. The absence of contempt for me in them brought to mind how he flew to Florida to drive Holden’s ashes back to New York with me, and how he took Holden’s ashes from me once he realized I was moving them from room to room, from closet to closet, unable to cope with the absurd transformation.

Relief from the guilt of understanding in a moment what Holden’s death did to Rob’s life came when he shouted, “You’ve got eight minutes! Get to it! Clock’s ticking!”

Hatred refreshed. I hoped the bathroom fog would rust all the internal cogs and wheels in his cheap-ass watch.

The following morning, standing in line across from Central Park West, waiting entry into the Society for Ethical Culture hall to listen to a discussion between Deborah Treisman and Haruki Murakami, I noticed quite a few people glancing my way. I thought it must be the fresh application of the fantastic new foundation I’d kept from the evening before.

After a few more obvious stares, Rob turned to me, beginning to scrutinize my face, before howling in a fearful rush, “Your face is orange! Absolutely orange! Go to the bathroom! Take it off! Stop putting crap on your face! You don’t need it!! And for God’s sake, STOP going to the Macy’s!”
Without a word, I took a moist wipe from my purse, readying myself to do exactly as I was told. Grateful to have been given a moment of structure where I’d found none in a life shaken loose from its hinges.

I clutched the cleansing wipe turned grossly orange with each swipe of my face while standing over a white porcelain sink. I watched water turn so deeply orange it looked like food coloring swirling down the drain. I raised my eyes to the glass, just for a moment meeting them, cringing at the shattered pool of something I witnessed. Something of a new me from a bad dream I feared I’d never wake from. Me running to the kindly funeral director who entered the quietest room in this world. Me shoving toward this man thick black socks I’d spent an hour in my car with pulled over my hands and arms, rubbing the softness of the material over my face while staring through windshield glass at nothing. Me, my body weeping up from my feet. –Me, surprised every second by the circumstance of where I stood. None of what was happening was ever supposed to happen, but it had.

“His feet will be cold,” I said to the funeral director.

“No,” he said, taking my hands and the socks into his, “These are perfect. His feet will not be cold. I will take these and have these put on his feet right now!”

Checking to be sure all the orange was gone from my cheeks, forehead, chin, and the dark circles beneath my eyes, I dried my face with napkins from my purse before tossing the bottle of foundation into the trash.

Taking my seat next to Rob in the interview space, feeling him take my hand when I knew I didn’t deserve it, listening to Murakami discuss his writing life, just for the tiniest moment, I thought, I can live this life. I can do it. And I don’t need any foundation. Fuck foundation! It’s just an illusion anyway.

All I need now, and I’m sure of it, is the perfect moisturizer.

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