FRESH YARN presents: Avon Calling... by Elizabeth Reynolds

FRESH YARN presents:

Avon Calling
By Elizabeth Reynolds

As a nine-year-old girl growing up in suburban Thousand Oaks, California, I would regularly accompany my mother to her friends' homes. This was not a pleasant experience. Not because I would be outside playing and get hurt. Not because there were other kids around that were bullies, but usually because at this very impressionable age, when I went to visit my mother's "friends," I inevitably got stuck being a second-hand listener to Mom's life story, and continually heard about the great loss she'd suffered, in more ways than one.

Mom's "friends," I should clarify, were actually the new "lady-friend-client-persons" that had ordered cosmetics from her. My mother, a tall striking woman with beautiful auburn hair and luminous skin, was an Avon Lady. And yes, she really did ring doorbells and call out, "Ding-Dong! Avon calling!"

Whenever my mother sold something, the woman who bought the products would then become her new best friend for a period of the three weeks it took from order to delivery. When my mother was invited into her new lady-friend-client-person's home at delivery time, I was usually trailing behind her jingling from the jewelry she placed on me -- her walking model and product presenter -- and sneezing from the strong stench that emanated from the packages, which contained orders of "Sweet Honesty," "Rapture," or "Imari" colognes -- the Eau de la Odor in decorator bottles -- a definite Avon collector's keepsake.

Mom always wanted the client to see what great jewelry was coming out in the next Avon campaign so I would enter wearing strands of multi-colored pearls, a sweet violet convertible pin which, when opened, cleverly contained blossoming cherry lip balm, and in my pony tail, a matching cherry blossom hair clip.

While Mother and her new lady-friend-client-person would sit on the couch and talk, I was de-jeweled carefully by my mother so as not to break any of the pieces I was modeling. She then placed me on the floor at a nearby coffee table with pens and paper, where I would draw and write something that I thought was going to be the next great Broadway Opera.

I'm not sure where I got the idea that Opera was the thing that was done on Broadway, but the sketched-out scenes and plots I'd make up were always very elaborate and ornate. On one of these deliveries, I was particularly proud of a Broadway Opera I'd created. Well, until the end of a visit on one particularly hot summer's day.

Usually, after about twenty minutes of actual Avon chatter, it was inevitable that each soon-to-be-forgotten lady-friend-client-person would ask my mother if I was her only child, or if she had any other children that weren't with her that day. Mom's answer was always the same: "Ahh ha ha heh he, oh…no, nooo one is QUITE enough."

She then would take a deep breath, and almost as though she was whispering a secret say,
"Well, it had to be enough to tell you the truth. I had my daughter at forty, and the doctor told me it would be too dangerous to have any more."

There was always the predictable gasp from her listener, and the typical reply: "Oh my god! Really? You don't look a day over thirty!"

To which Mom smoothly replied, "Ohhh thank you…it's the Avon!" and then follow it with, "I also worked for many years in the entertainment industry and I learned how to stay young that way too!"

Her listener, having become thoroughly intrigued, would ask her to elaborate. My mother MUST share some of her experiences. Had they seen her in anything? Who did she work with? What was it like being an actress? And like clockwork, as the queries fell from the freshly-glossed lips of Mom's latest lady-friend-client-person, my stomach would get tight and my nose would inevitably start to bleed out of nowhere.

Mom, apologizing profusely for her leaky child, was calmed by her hostess who placed me on a nearby couch with a box of tissues and a wastepaper basket, then continued to encourage my grateful mother to share her story. As I held my nose tightly in this stranger's house, I listened along with Mom's captive audience for the next hour while she relived her hard-earned glory days as an actress in Hollywood during the '50s and '60s.

Her story always started off the same -- how she came to Los Angeles from Ohio with her mother, father, and brother in 1952 after a raging flood washed everything away. How she started out as a chorus girl at various clubs around Los Angeles working with this actor or that actor before they really hit it big.

Then the story about having been invited to be one of "Frank's girls" for one of the many Vegas gigs at the Sands Hotel and Casino where the Rat Pack was performing. Then the story always included her huge crush, and three dates with Joey Bishop, and how "It just wasn't going to work out," as well as her brush with political pundits, and her closer-than-close call of being signed to a studio contract in 1959 by Cecil B. De Mille himself. But then how that had gone south when Cecil did. My mother returned to the stage and worked at the Moulin Rouge in Los Angeles with Liberace, and then won the first ever -- and only -- "Miss Los Angeles Fire Department." At nine years old, I wondered if she had to know how to slide down the pole to win that title.

After she shared about being the LA Fire Queen, Mom continued on to explain how she then broke into movies and television. She spoke of her gig as one of the harem girls in Son of Sinbad starring Vincent Price, and then about how in 1965, she was severely injured in a film because of the real life astronaut suit the producers made her wear as a costume. It was for a sci-fi "B" thriller called The Wizard of Mars. And yes, she played Dorothy. The film starred Roger Gentry, John Carradine, Vic McGee, and my mother, Eve Bernhardt. It has since been re-titled Horrors of the Red Planet, known to many "B" film buffs.

I was always fascinated watching Mom's listener's jaw drop open and then hang on every word she shared about her time in the industry. Up to the point where it would always happen. They would ask it -- that question that made me hold my breath and wish so much I could be anywhere in the world other than in that room.

It was no different that late August afternoon with blood-soaked Kleenex on my lap, listening as the axe was once again about to fall.

"But I don't understand," Mom's new lady-friend-client-person said. "You're so beautiful and you had so much success and knew people, what happened?!"

My eyes flicked back to my mother awaiting her response, hoping in vain that maybe this time she would share something that I hadn't heard, something that she'd maybe forgotten about why she hadn't become successful, famous and rich…but most importantly, happy.

Mom took her usual deep breath, clutched her hands tightly in front of her, her Frosted Ruby lip trembled, the traditional tear fell. She looked deeply into her listener's eyes and said, "I had a child. Everything changes when you have a child."

Silence.

Or maybe a long, long pause. I don't remember this part as clearly. But what I do recall was how, on this particular visit, the lady-friend-client person sat back after tenderly passing my mother a napkin, and looked over at me on the nearby chair and said, "Well young lady, I hope you appreciate what your mother gave up for you."

I didn't reply.

I picked up the Broadway Opera I'd been working on the whole time. I'd drawn out a picture that showed the lead diva in a beautiful gown in the middle of a grand stage with roses thrown down all around her. There was a plump stick figure of sorts in the background that was supposed to be Liberace playing the piano, with all his rings brightly reflecting the actresses' image in them. Next to the piano stood my version of Frank Sinatra, and in his hands I placed what I thought was an Oscar at the time, and the actress he was presenting it to was my mother.

I was really excited to show it to her, and I thought that it might make everything better somehow. I imagined my dad, who was a closet poet and writer himself, could help me write the opera part a little better, and then maybe I could publish it and my mother would be happy, feeling like everything she had given up was for a reason.

Getting up from the living room floor amidst markers and paper and still scattered Avon products, I walked up to my mother and tried to show her the picture and story I'd written with it. But, preoccupied with her lady-friend-client-person, she took my Broadway Opera and placed it on top of a box of Cape Cod Glassware she was trying to sell. "I'll look at it later," she said as she directed me back to clean up my art supplies.

I was crushed. It had to be right there and then; it had to be in that moment when she still remembered everything she'd said and done before I was born.

My mother had brought with her an Avon box full of various perfume swabs and mini Lilac Luster lipstick samples. She handed me the box and asked me to take it out to the car, which I did. I then sat waiting in the passenger seat, hoping she was sharing my Opera with the stranger inside.

As my mother came out, she looked as she usually did, her odd Avon-esque delivery personae glowing in the sunlight. It was a hot day and she put the Cape Cod Glassware box she was carrying in the back seat through the open window. My Opera was still on top and, clearly, she had not looked at it yet.

I sat quietly as my mother started the car in silence and we began to drive off down the street and out of the neighborhood. As the car drove up onto the freeway and gained speed, there was suddenly a fluster of wind that came sweeping through the windows, spraying papers and Lilac Luster samples everywhere. My mother shrieked, "Oh my god, my lipstick samples! Damnit!"

Just as she said this, I turned around and looked in the back seat to see my Broadway Opera fly out of the window in a dramatic exit. I stared out the back window as the papers danced around on the freeway behind us. Up and over other cars and onto the side of the road, I saw my answer disappear.

My mother, still frantic about her samples, put up all the windows and asked me what blew out. How many samples did it look like she lost?

"None of the samples blew out the window Mom, only some blank sheets of paper, nothing to worry about."

My mother breathed a sigh of relief putting up the windows and blasting the air conditioning."OK, good, thanks, I have to give those to my customers."

I stared out my window and thought about the Opera that was probably still dancing around the freeway behind us several miles back. My mother turned on the radio. Classical music blared -- a woman was actually singing an operetta.

I remember even as a nine-year-old believing there was no such thing as a coincidence, and as my mother and I drove home into the suburban sunset, it was like an ode to my lost answer that had forever blown away.