Mailbox: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness, and Faith. Chapter 1.

Mailbox: Chapter 7, Your Mother's the Most Beautiful Woman

MAILBOX: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness, and Faith by Nancy Freund, Gobreau Press, 2015, Chapter 7 : Your Mother's the Most Beautiful Woman 

This story is from the summer after that trip to New York when I was ten, but it sort of fits here. Anyway, writing a book isn't like a jigsaw puzzle with right-or-wrong pieces that can only fit one way.

There was a lady at the pool with orange-pearl fingernails. She had bright orange swirly-glittery nail polish painted on thick, like special paint for a car with rust. She must have done a lot of layers. I've never seen that lady there before. I kind of hope she comes back, but she might not be a member. Chris says he didn't notice her which is probably true because I don't think boys see really noticeable ladies like grown men probably do. She wasn't talking to anyone. There were no grown men at the pool but if there were, I'm pretty sure they would have noticed her.

She was dark tan, darker than the Coppertone kid whose naked yellow behind is showing where the dog is pulling off her swim suit bottoms on their billboard. That's the worst ad. No one has yellow skin like that. It's sort of yellow like the inside of a peach. It's not skin! And no dog pulls off a girl's swimsuit. Dogs don't do that. And if a dog ever did, you would never take a picture of it happening and put it on your ad because that would be really embarrassing for the girl, and it's also rude. So even though I know that's not a photograph – it's an airbrush painting – that just makes it worse. Someone actually painted it to look like a real photograph. It's one thing to accidentally take a picture of something embarrassing or rude but then not show anyone, but it's really bad to make a picture like that on purpose and put it on a billboard. That Coppertone girl has pig-tails, so she is supposed to be cute. And dogs being silly are supposed to be cute. The whole ad is supposed to be cute. I hate that.

Also, Coppertone blocks out the sun on your skin and makes you NOT get tan, so what kind of stupid ad is that? My mom has suntan lotion that's supposed to make you tan, only it sort of makes you orange. Also, you can see the places where her hands rubbed it in.

The lady at the pool was tan all over, especially her hands, with those shiny orange fingernails. Also, she had puffy, big hair that was brown and gold streaked. I told my mom the lady was pretty.

As soon as I said it, I could tell by my mom's face, it was the wrong thing to say. Maybe that lady wasn't pretty at all, maybe I was wrong about the meaning of pretty. One time we were watching a movie from the 1940s and my mom said the actress had a good figure. I looked at the actress coming down the stairs all dancey step-by-step in her sequin swimsuit thing, with big feathers or angel wings or something, and her legs I guess in pantyhose but they might as well have been naked legs. I tried to memorize what it looked like to have a good figure. Far as I can tell, a person either gets one or they don't. I mean, you can't have a good figure if you get too fat or too skinny or if you walk with your shoulders hunched over and have bad posture. But other than that, it seems like having a good figure isn't really up to you. Anyone can walk down the stairs like they're dancing. So maybe her telling me that actress had a good figure wasn't a lesson for me to learn, it was just an opinion. I guess I hope I'll have a good figure in the future, but if it's just the luck of the draw, who knows? Maybe the lesson is you should go ahead and dance down the steps whatever you look like, and if you're enjoying yourself, that's probably way better than being boring with a good figure.

But I still kept thinking about that lady's orange fingernails, and I wanted mine the same. My mother said no, that lady had fingernail polish all the way to the sides of her fingernails. You should always leave the edges and the cuticle unpainted so your nails look longer. And you should use a neutral color. That is something you should know about being pretty. There are tricks to make your fingernails seem longer, and also your legs. You can wear beige shoes that match your legs, and it makes them seem longer. And your belt should match your pants. Also, she said, that orange was atrocious.

"OK," I said.

The weird thing is my dad suddenly said if you want to know about beauty, there is no one who knows more than your mother. She's the most beautiful woman in the world.

I don't know if that's true. Not all the kids at school think my mom's the prettiest mom in our class, even. But it seems pretty cool to have your dad think so. Obviously not everyone's mom can be the prettiest in the world, but everyone's dad can believe their own wife is the prettiest in the world. Maybe they just shouldn't tell other dads about it or there might be some fights.

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Thank you for reading. ~ your Freund, Nancy