Elizabeth is standing in front of the bathroom mirror in her black half-slip and black push-up bra, auditioning a look.  Had it not been for the whole drawn-out, depressive disaster that is COVID-19, her 20th high school reunion, the most recent one, was supposed to be a week away, and she's trying to decide whether or not to draw a beauty mark above her lip for the occasion. It wouldn't be entirely false; she does have a freckle there, but it's faint, hard to see.  She just wants to enhance what already exists, nothing wrong with that; It's de rigueur if you're a woman, and it's becoming more common in men, too.  Wrong as that is.  Elizabeth would never have anything to do with a man who wore makeup or dyed his hair in the colors of Skittles or carried a purse or wore a girdle or used the ladies’ room on purpose or did any of those womanly things men are appropriating as though it's their God-given right. No. She prefers an All-American, red-blooded male who is not a jerk. Someone who knows what cuff links are for and isn’t afraid to use them.  They are hard to find, but she holds out hope that maybe this boyfriend could be The One, the most meaningful relationship of her life, before it is her time to be scattered into the elements.
 
She regards herself in the mirror, tilts her head this way and that. Yes, a beauty mark would be fun, kind of playful. She pencils in the mark gingerly, then steps back to size herself up. Not bad. Not bad at all. Sexy. Just like she wanted. Hello, Marilyn! She pictures her high school crush looking up from his table full of jocks when she walks into the hotel ballroom with her smart, hunky boyfriend on her arm and saying, Va va va voom!  And then, Liz? Elizabeth Hamhock?
 
“Uh huh,” she will say, lightly, musically, and walk right past him, though she will walk close enough to him for him to smell her perfume. Also new. One hundred and ten smackaroos. She got perfume, not cologne, even though her personal belief is that there is no difference. She'd asked the counter woman about that. She leaned in confidentially and asked, “Now come on. Tell me, really. If you were my best friend would you tell me to get the perfume over the cologne?” And the woman had looked her right in the eye and said, “Yes.” Elizabeth was a little miffed, because the woman had acted as though she had affronted her dignity or questioned her ethics or something. Like the time Dr. Burge was telling Liz to get a certain  ($437!!!) blood test and she’d said, “Would you tell your wife to get it?” And Dr. Burge had drawn himself up and quietly said, “I would.” She had been all set to give him an affectionate little punch and say, “Oh, come on now; don't be so prissy,” but then Dr. Burge had added, “If she were still alive,” and that had just ruined everything.  It wasn’t her fault the woman had died! She had been going to refuse the test no matter what, but when he said his wife was dead, well, then she had to get it. Those dead people had more power than they knew.
 
Liz had only ever been to one other high school reunion. She'd been newly married when they had the first one, which was just an informal get-together at the VFW, and who wanted to bring that guy to a reunion?  With the second one, her ten year, she went ahead and brought her husband, even though she dreaded every minute of being in the car with him alone.  Now she is going through a divorce, plus she saw that movie about saying yes to life. She steps closer to the mirror and raises her chin so her Turkey neck disappears. She'll hold her head like this when she walks by her high school crush. Later, when he asks her to make out in his car, it will be dark, and she won't have to be so vigilant. In high school, her crush had a four-on-the-floor metallic green GTO, and Elizabeth always wanted to make out with him in that car.  But she never even got to sit in it.  She bets he has something like a red Lexus coupe now.  And she bets at the reunion he’ll watch her for awhile, then come up to her and say, “Hey, Liz.  Wanna take a walk?” Of course, she will say a firm ‘no’ when he asks her this.  She’ll say, all innocent, “No, thanks. I’m here with my boyfriend,”  because she really loves her boyfriend and besides, she has never been a cheater.  And he’ll get a little flustered and say something like, “You know, it’s just a walk…to get some air,” probably offended at getting a dose of his own medicine. Oh, sure, she hopes he drives to the reunion; she happens to know he lives a mere three and a half hours away. She knows his exact address, in fact; and she Google-Earthed him a few years ago, which was very exciting.  One of Elizabeth’s friends has a high school daughter who actually suggested to her that if this scenario should indeed take place, that Elizabeth should go for it.
 
“But I would never do that to Tyler! I would never, ever go for it!” Elizabeth exclaimed.
 
“Why not? It’s the style these days to be mean to guys.  Get with the program, Lizard,” she’d snorted.  She advised you do it just at the beginning and then every so often, just to keep up a level of intrigue, like immunization shots. And it must work, too, because when her friend’s daughter started doing it, wasn't she given a promise ring in what seemed like 10 minutes!?  They are both seniors and plan to go away to college together, live in University apartment housing after they do time apart their first year.  They've got it all planned out, too. They’re going to get married in Bora Bora just after Freshman year, and her friend thinks it's a wonderful idea, the destination wedding.
 
“Thank God Mike is going to pay for everything,” her friend had said, rolling her eyes heavenward.  Liz had only shrugged.  Poor he was not. She supposes he'll bring his new wife to the wedding, and pander to her every single second.  Holding her hand as though they were teenagers. Bringing her drinks as though the woman is incapable of doing anything for herself. Staring into her eyes like the secret of the universe is written there. To some, it's nauseating the way they behave, anyone would probably say so, but Elizabeth thinks it's sweet and chivalrous and downright groovy. Her friend’s daughter calls them The Magnets, though she might only do that to offer some kind of support to her mother, who lives alone now and must take out the garbage and figure out whom to call for repairs and check the locks at night and kill centipedes in the basement and everything else. Liz suspects the truth is, her friend's daughter actually likes her stepmother. She hasn't said so directly, but she did say she's happy for her dad, and wasn't that just like nails on a chalk board! Elizabeth remembers her friend did the noble thing and said yes, she was, too.
 
Liz had nodded in agreement, like Uh huh, yes, he did seem happy now, but when she and her friend’s eyes locked she knew her friend wanted to throw up.
 
Mike is a doctor. A proctologist, specializing in the wonderful world of buttholes and rectums, but still.  Back when Elizabeth's friend and Mike were still married, she was working up to asking the question that—come on!--must occur to everyone to ask him: What exactly made you choose this line of work? When Liz tried to ask her friend about it, all her friend did was get mad. It is true Elizabeth could have used a more sensitive approach--what she'd asked her friend was “Why in the wide wide world of sports would he ever want to look up people’s asses all day?”  Still, she doesn't see why her friend had to take such offense. One of their other friends had suggested something like perhaps she should consider the fact that preventing and treating cancer is a pretty noble goal. But that still didn't answer the question, did it?
 
Her friend thinks it was a book that her daughter read that taught her about being mean to men. Who knows, if Elizabeth had been mean to her crush in high school, they might have gotten married. They went out once—before either of them could drive—so it technically wasn’t a date in the books of many, but her dad did drive them both to Pizza Hut where they both nervously ate a slice of cheese pizza, cracker thin crust, and then her dad appeared an hour later and drove them back to Elizabeth’s cluttered and smoke-filled house where they watched movies in her bedroom, door open of course.  But if they had gotten married, they probably would have gotten divorced, and then she wouldn't be looking forward so much to going to her 20th high school reunion. Apart from a few of her closest friends from high school, she's really only going to see him. And, to be honest, to show off her recent weight loss. That was the one nice thing about going through divorce: during the grief part, before she realized how much better off she was without her husband, she lost 10 pounds. She bets she'll look better than the other cheerleaders, and if she really wants to dream big, even better than Candy Ogden, who had been Queen of Everything. She knew candy would be there. Liz  had been one of the class representatives alongside Candy, who was President, and it was always the President who got to head-up all the reunions.
 
She turns and views herself from the side. Not bad.  Not bad at all. The bra, bought yesterday on her final stop for putting together a killer outfit, is doing what it promised; her breasts are hiked up and perky, rather than hanging down so low they appear to be engaging in conversation with her belly button. Sixty-five dollars for a bra!  At least it's French. Elizabeth always likes it when things are French. In the dressing room she'd sniffed that bra to see if it smelled like Chanel or something, but no, it smelled like rubber. Not for long.  Elizabeth will have everything perfumed when she goes to that reunion, maybe even her you-know-what. But she'll have to remember to pat it on down there; last time she sprayed she gave herself a urinary tract infection and, oh, it's a good thing she likes cranberry juice.
 
She steps back from the mirror, then leans in again to darken the beauty mark. Now it was perfect! She should take a picture of herself to remember to do it just like this on Saturday night. They’re having a Saturday night dinner followed by a dance, complete with a DJ who is supposed to be really good and not tacky, and then there's a Sunday brunch. Two times for a final try at glory.
 
The doorbell sounds.  She slightly jolts, and immediately returns to present-day.  There, in front of the bathroom mirror, she sucks in her tummy and stands up tall and straight.  Oh, how she wishes she’d never started to slouch in the first place!  Few people had ever been in her life to remind her of the imaginary string suspended from the ceiling and with which her spine should be aligned naturally, gracefully.  Why, it is a rather unattractive habit of hers, one of which she tried to be mindful but the truth is it didn’t occur to her to do it enough to make it a not a habit. She leans in closer to the mirror, pulls down her cheek to examine her eyelids for that healthy pink color.  She thinks they look okay.  She uses the back of her right hand to taptaptaptap at her turkey neck, hopeful at the thought of a sudden miracle cure, this exercise her GrandMaud had once shown her to get rid of her double chin.  The hair she had tried to curl hangs down as limp as a noodle, though; never ever had her hair been able to pull off a curl!  She didn’t WANT to be the woman with hair that refused to curl.  She didn’t WANT to be the woman whose body seemed to move in dumb and disjointed ways when she knew people were watching.  And, Elizabeth didn’t want to be the type of woman whose heart thrills at being mean to people, especially her man.  She figures people who mistreat one another in relationships usually crash and burn.  And even though she believes she learned that in her marriage, even though she knows she should sit up nice and straight and proper, old habits are certainly hard to break, and those biting, intermittent insecurities that stem from past relationships are a bitch to overcome.