Cheapskate in Love

chapter 22





Although it was for a questionable cause, the three women were motivated, and they searched methodically through the clothes to find the ones that would enhance Helen the most in the eyes of Bill. All were equally active in rummaging through the racks for the perfect, seductive outfits that would turn Helen into a woman of a much younger appearance without much modesty. Yet there was a discernible difference in the number of items that each was selecting for Helen to try on. Sandra was pulling out tops, bottoms, and dresses quickly in succession and carrying them to the bed, while Helen and Joan kept rejecting every piece of clothing they looked at. Usually they could see enough of the item as it hung in the closet to shove it aside. A few times, they would take the hanger out to get a better look at the piece and examine it critically, stretching the fabric a bit with their fingers to see how much material there was. But after a few moments they would shake their heads no slowly, while pursing their lips, and put the hanger back. Those clothes accentuated the breasts, showed off the buns, and exposed a lot of skin, but Joan couldn’t picture Helen in them, and Helen couldn’t even begin to conceive it.

When Sandra became aware that they were leaving everything they looked at in the closet, she went and snatched the hangers from them, which they were about to replace inside. Helen had just nixed an evening dress that had a neckline plunging to the waist. And Joan was sending back a coordinating ensemble of a halter-top, which closely resembled a bikini top, and very short shorts, which were barely bigger than some panties.

“Let me have those,” Sandra told them brusquely, taking the clothing from them. “I can see what kind of help you two are.” She went to the bed to lay down the dress.

“But Helen can’t wear these clothes,” Joan exclaimed. “She’s our age. She’s not twenty-five.”

“She can wear these clothes,” replied Sandra, sharpening her voice, as she walked to Helen with the halter-top and shorts. “We’re all in fine shape.”

“Sandy, it was a good idea,” Helen said, trying to appease her. “These clothes are beautiful. But they’re not for me.”

“Yes, they are,” returned Sandra. “Go try these on.” She handed Helen the halter-top and shorts.

After a pause in which Helen looked hard at Sandra, as if she was a cop issuing her a ticket for jaywalking, Helen took the clothes. She raised them high to verify they were as dinky as they seemed. They were certainly made without much fabric. She looked at Sandra again to see if she was serious. She was, so Helen perused the outfit once more in case she had missed something. It was still the same small size, so Helen decided to become serious, too. She turned toward Sandra, shook her head slowly but firmly and attempted to hand back the clothes.

Instead of accepting the clothes, Sandra grabbed Helen by the arm, pulled her out of her daughter’s bedroom and pushed her toward her own bedroom, which was at the end of the hallway.

“There’s a big mirror in my room,” Sandra directed. “Last door on the right. Come back here when you have the clothes on. We’ll be waiting.”

Unwillingly, Helen went to do as she was told, without a smile or a kind thought for Sandra, but that didn’t bother Sandra. She watched Helen go into her bedroom and shut the door. Striding back into her daughter’s bedroom like a four-star general, Sandra sternly informed Joan with her hands on her hips, “No more dillydallying. We have to help her. Bill may be a bozo, a big zero. I think like you do about him. But she thinks differently. Maybe she’s right about him. She knows him better than we do. I doubt it, but that doesn’t matter. We’re here to support her, whatever the outcome.”

The long and close friendship between the two women made this partly scolding speech palatable to Joan. She wasn’t upset at all. “You’re right, Sandy. You’re right. I can’t imagine her with Bill, but that doesn’t mean anything. There are other couples I know that don’t make relationship sense to me either. People are so unpredictable. I thought I knew Helen well. Maybe opposites do attract.”

“In this case, it would be polar opposites,” said Sandra. “Though, now that I think of it, Helen can keep a tight grip on her pocketbook.”

“She’s nothing like him,” responded Joan. “She just likes being economical.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“Oh, not everyone can spend like you do,” said Joan, “or like your daughter. I can’t believe these clothes. She must have spent millions.”

“I don’t want to know the exact figure. It’ll make me feel more guilty than I am about this stuff.”

“It’s too bad the clothes are for a young person,” commented Joan. “They are Helen’s size.”

“Helen will wear them,” said Sandra, firm as ever in her conviction. “You’ll see. Both of you will be amazed at the difference clothes can make. Now let’s get some more ready for her to try on.”

“OK,” said Joan. “I’ll try to keep an open mind, a mind as large and carefree as your daughter’s spending habits. The variety of stuff here is amazing.”

“I wish her mind was a little more closed,” remarked Sandra. “And if she ever started to spend like cheapskate Bill, I wouldn’t complain. It’d be a strange change for her, but I wouldn’t complain.”

In unison, both women began to pull more clothes out of the closet and assemble outfits on the bed in order of their revealing, sexy qualities. While they were busy laying out clothes for Helen to try on, Helen returned to the room barefoot, wearing a plush, white, terry-cloth bathrobe, which she had found in Sandra’s bedroom. She held it closed all the way up to her neck with both hands. Doing her best imitation of Marilyn Monroe, she walked playfully with quick mincing steps to the central viewing point in the room. The entire time, she smirked and batted her eyelids at Sandra and Joan, who were watching her critically, waiting. When Helen reached the right spot, she posed like the Hollywood star with her lips in a pucker, as if a dozen cameras were photographing her. With a shimmy, she opened her arms and let the robe fall to the ground. Sandra and Joan could now see what she looked like in the halter-top and shorts. Helen dipped a little at the knees, with her hands on her buttocks and her elbows flared. Her mouth formed big, lippy kisses, like a fish eating food from the surface of a pond.

“Oo-la-la,” said Joan in surprise and admiration. “Boys, watch out. There’s a new gal loose on Long Island.”

“Bill would be foaming at the mouth, if he saw you,” said Sandra, who wasn’t surprised by Helen’s new look. “He wouldn’t be running from you. He’d be running you down.”

Helen dropped her sexpot pose in an instant, replacing it with a frown. “I feel like a Playboy Bunny. I can’t wear this. Even when I was a teenager, I never wore so little clothing. Unless I was at the beach during the hottest day of summer.”

“But that’s what Bill wants to see,” argued Sandra. “He has no imagination. He wants to see your body.”

“He’s not that bad,” Helen answered. “He’s not some sort of animal.”

“He’s a man, and men are that way,” Sandra insisted. “They’re animals. The part of their brain which controls stimulation and desire is hardwired to their eyes.”

“That’s a simplification,” replied Helen. “Maybe at the very beginning in a relationship that’s true.”

“Aren’t we at the beginning here with Bill?” asked Sandra. “Or is there some past history that we should know about?”

“There’s no past history,” protested Helen. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not being ridiculous,” responded Sandra in a manner that implied she thought someone else was.

An awkward, tense pause was about to ensue, but Joan hurriedly cleared the air. “Really, Helen, you look good. You look great. I didn’t think you could wear these clothes before. I’ve never seen you in something like this. But seeing you now, I don’t see anything wrong. I’m really surprised by how good you look.”

Although Joan’s amazement at Helen’s appearance was sincere, her profession of how good she thought Helen looked in the halter-top and shorts was a bit exaggerated. Helen could wear those clothes in public and maybe even receive compliments because of how well she kept in shape. But the revealing cut of the clothes was unflattering for a woman of her age, and Helen knew it.

“I want a little more coverage, please,” said Helen, addressing Sandra.

From the bed, Sandra lifted a strapless dress and coordinating, iridescent jacket. Handing them to Helen, she said, “The jacket should be carried, not worn.”

Without any reply and the faintest of smiles, Helen took the clothes and went back to Sandra’s bedroom to change.

Sandra picked the bathrobe Helen had discarded off the floor and remarked to Joan, “I think we’re finally making progress here. But it’s as hard as taking a cat for a walk.”