He shows me the mask quickly, as we move through the house. He is nervous, sweating. It’s hot. He knows already what he is going to say: that things have changed. I do not yet know that I will leave the house shortly, assembling a quickly crafted mask that sits askew, not quite covering things. My mask nothing like the mask that hangs on his wall, with its long, twig-like hair and angular face… Alone in the car, I drop my mask and cry.
The other morning Sally asks me if I’m really her in disguise. I wish, I want to say. I wish. Sally with her gut laugh and funky glasses, her braids, her blackness. Her put-together life across a dirty river from me. It all seems so sane over there… We laughed in the early days of motherhood about how we would fail our children, how the kids would end up writing about us. But that was years ago. And Sally has constructed her life; and me, mine. Suburbia as the shared backdrop, and our manicured lawns. We wear our Masks of the Everyday, Sally and me—our MFAs tucked neatly away in a drawer, in some box—as we do the dishes, make macaroni and cheese, grade papers, laugh. We also wear the Mask of Womanhood, standing naked before the mirror, gathering the courage to look; protective of our bear cubs, our caves. But these days, all my masks have a mirror inside. A sharp, reflective thing that confirms the chaos it finds. I see myself slip, get up, and fall down again. And Sally?
I try not to covet other women’s lives. Like the pretty woman I see sliding summer tops along the rack at TJ Maxx. She holds up a pink thing with ruffles with her long, graceful arm, a bracelet, painted nails. What is behind all that, I wonder, as she examines the blouse. She wears no mask—at just this moment—as she studies the cloth, runs her fingers along the seam, holds it to her shoulders. Then makes the choice to leave it. Digs in her purse for her keys and walks toward the door—and I see the mask come on as she pushes through the glass doors into the afternoon sun.
This morning AmyRuth talks to me about Conflict Theory and Symbolic Interaction—I’m interested and I watch her eyes light up as she speaks. We are relating to each other as symbols, she says—but I think it’s really about masks. About how we market ourselves and are marketed. I am the symbol I’ve constructed—woman, mother, colleague, daughter, lover—and that has been constructed for me. Each of them different, changing, demanding, needy.
And so when he asks me who I really am, how do I know? I am this; I am that—at any given moment. Like you. Just like you…
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