>Lucinda’s Secret

>When I left home for college, my mom was all about the empty nesting.

“I just don’t know what I’m going to doooooo without her,” she moaned to her friends on the phone, prompting dozens of sympathetic ladies-who-lunch dates.

“I’m just too sadddddd to go to church this morning,” she whimpered to my father on Sundays, opting instead to loll in bed and watch Little House on the Prairie reruns alone.

“I must shop to keep my mind off of her,” she confided to the Neiman Marcus shoe salesman as he wedged a Ferragamo onto her foot.

It was no small wonder, then, that when I arrived home for my first month-long break from school, my mother insisted that I get a job. A 9-hour-a-day, five-day-a-week job. It would teach me a lesson, she said. And it did. It taught me that she didn’t want me around so much, after all.

Listlessly, I went to the nearest mall and filled out job applications at every acceptable store I could find. A few hours after I arrived home, a well-known lingerie chain called and asked if I could start the next morning. I stifled a sigh and agreed.

At first, the job didn’t seem like it would be so bad. I was assigned to stand in one of the store’s three rooms, asking shoppers if they needed help.

“Can I help you?” I asked a mousy middle-aged woman fingering a lace teddy.

“No,” she said nervously. “No thanks.”

“Okay,” I said, instantly backing off. After all, choosing slutwear was a personal matter. Nonchalantly, I went back to folding lace thongs.

“What are you doing?” the manager whispered angrily, sidling up to me from out of nowhere. “Why aren’t you helping that woman?”

“She said she didn’t want help,” I said.

“Did you ask her if she wanted to open a charge account and get 15 percent off her entire purchase?”

“No.”

“Did you tell her about our buy-two-get-one-free bra sale?”

“No.”

“You need to tell every customer those things!” she growled. “Now get back over there.”

Grimacing, I went back to the woman.

“Would-you-like-to-open-a-charge-account-with-us-today?” I said quickly.

The woman looked up, abashed, and thrust a flimsy red thing on a hanger behind her back. “No.”

“Because-you-get-15-percent-off-your-entire-purchase.”

“No thank you,” she stammered, shoving her lingerie selection back on the rack.

“Did-you-know-about-our-buy-two-get-one-free-bra-sale?” I continued, turning red.

“No!” the woman said, before turning to flee. “No thank you!“

Biting my lip, I turned and looked back at the manager, who smiled thinly and gave an approving nod. “She was probably a shoplifter anyway,” she said. “We get a lot of those.”

I doubt that nervous Nelly was planning on stealing anything, but you’d be amazed how many suburban matrons enter a mall lingerie store and “upgrade” their bras in the changing room. In fact, one of the most hated duties of a lingerie sales person is putting away items that were tried on and rejected. Inevitably, one out of every six or seven tangled designer-tagged bras on the floor is a well-worn Maidenform, discarded in favor of a newer, sexier model. Cringing, we’d report to the manager how many old bras we had found.

“You need to keep a closer eye on women when they’re changing,” she’d say cruelly, holding up the used bras like the head of a guillotined French monarch. “Or these will start coming out of your paycheck.”

Yeah. Keep a closer eye on them how, exactly? I could just picture myself casually sliding my compact mirror around the changing curtain to get a better look at a suspicious shopper. Or perhaps a direct approach would be more appropriate.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I’d say as they came out. “I’m going to have to ask you to remove your shirt.”

Just as disturbing were the couples who picked out merry widows and push up bra and panty sets, then went in the fitting rooms together. I don’t even want to know what all went on behind those curtains, but some of them stayed back there a very long time. And they very rarely actually bought anything. Eww.

As Christmas approached, the window dressing grew more brazen as the men began flocking in to buy sweet nothings for their loved ones. The dynamic of the store changed entirely, from estrogen haven to sex shop.

“Hey, Baby,” they’d say, spying me in the corner. “I need some help finding something for my wife.”

“What does she like to wear?” I’d ask.

“I was thinking something like this,” they’d say, pointing at a cheesy red bustier and g-string.

“Okay, what’s her size?” I’d soon learned that my opinions on what kind of lingerie a woman might want were not needed.

“Well, she’s about your size.”

This was the answer I got every single time. Whether the buyer was 20 or 45 or 70, whether his wife had had 4 kids or gastric bypass surgery, she was ‘about my size.’ I was 18. I weighed 120 pounds. Mmkay.

At the time, their familiarity and their touchy-feeliness humiliated me. Couldn’t they see the budding poet before them? The sensitive soul? The obvious church-going virgin?

Now that I’m fairly wise to the ways of men, their thought pattern in this situation is so obvious. Any young girl working in a lingerie store must. like. sex. It was just that simple.

One day, a familiar face appeared before me.

“Hey, baby. I need some help finding something for my wife.”

It was Lonnie, an old friend of my father’s. I had grown up playing with Lonnie’s children, had run in and out of his house a thousand times.

But that was years ago, and an hour and a half away from here. Lonnie clearly didn’t recognize the adult me.

I helped him choose a tacky red teddy for his wife, who remarkably had lost 100 pounds since I’d seen her; I was told she was just my size. Lonnie was worse than most of the men, squeezing my elbow and getting way too close for comfort. As I led him to the register with his selection, he whispered in my ear, “Would you like to get together for lunch some time?”

I smiled sweetly. “I don’t think that’s going to work for me, Lonnie,” I said. “But I’m sure my father would love to see you again.” As his eyes widened, I turned and walked away. Damn, that felt good.

At last, Christmas came and went. On the 26th, we came in extra early to move the whore clothes in the windows to the sale racks. They were replaced by flannel pajamas and comfy knit wear. When the doors opened, scores of women solemnly filed in, clutching gift boxes to their chests. Sleazy see-through nighties, scratchy fishnets and rhinestone studded bras were exhanged for terry cloth robes, fleece slippers and ankle length nightgowns.

The fantasy that was Christmas had truly ended. And so had my job.

I went back to school not a girl, but a woman. A woman who had helped a perfect stranger find just the right outfit in which to lose her virginity. A woman who’d been propositioned by one of her father’s friends.

I never came home for a school break again.