I wasn't sure what there was about her that didn't look quite right. Nothing obvious - no squint or limp or blotch or unnatural color in her hair. No loud jewelry, no overt smells of cigarettes, booze, sweat or too much perfume. She made her way around the store quietly, picking over some things in a desultory way before putting them back.
Her wavy brown hair fell to her shoulders; her blue eyes were highlighted with (I thought) too much inexpertly applied eyeshadow, and she wore a little blush and lipstick, but nothing obtrusive, flashy or of questionable taste. she wore dark blue cotton pants, brown leather shoes and a cheap top made of polyester, with horizontal stripes in varying shades of plum and pink, which made me think of the color of boysenberry yogurt.
She was just a tubby little woman, a little mousy, out for an afternoon's change of scenery. She didn't strike me as a local; the locals who come into the store are either the wealthy second-home owners who dress with muted ostentation and walk with an air of haughty carelessness, or the natives, multi-generational Vermonters who come in to look but not usually to buy. Encouraged to work in the shops, the natives are usually incapable of paying the prices for stuff they - we - have to sell.
This woman seemed to be from Away. Her two companions' appearance confirmed this for me. The elder had on too much makeup and wore her brass-blonde hair in fat curls that looked fresh from the hot rollers. The younger one - daughter of one of them, I assumed - scuffed along behind, sullen and bored and lonesome, her unkempt bleached hair hanging in her eyes, no doubt sticking in the gummy mascara. She chewed a piece of gum with her mouth open, looking not nearly as sophisticated as any member of the herd of cows on the outskirts of town. Her low-rider jeans crinkled in pale-blue faded lines on her slim hips, and flared out over her worn sneakers to trail in a damp and ragged fringe at her heels. Her pink-flowered nylon shirt didn't quite reach her jeans, exposing a pale stripe of belly with a bit of gold winking in her navel. Over this fetching ensemble she wore an old denim jacket several sizes too large, drooping off her shoulders and hiding all but the tips of her fingers, Sparkly magenta nail polish, candy-pink glossy lipstick and and a small pewter death's-head pendant around her neck completed the outfit.
The girl and the hot-roller-curly-haired woman (who was utterly nondescript aside from her hair) bickered quietly and constantly (the girl was bored, the woman wanted to shop, the girl was tired, the woman wanted to shop, why can't we, because I said, etc. etc.), while the dark-haired woman wandered placidly around the store, paying no attention whatsoever to the skirmishers in her company. The mother and daughter (must have been!) finally left, griping at each other all the way, while the woman in the striped shirt continued her rounds of the store.
Something still seemed "off" about her. Was it her placidity in the company of a brewing storm? Most people I know would have told one or both of them to shut up, told the girl to go put on some clothes that fit, and comb her hair, for god's sake, and would have told the woman to stop dragging the girl around, and let her be by herself, and ask whether she could remember being sixteen...
I could not figure out what was odd about the woman. It wasn't that she was tubby; I've seen lots of rotund people before, from pleasingly plump, to comfortably solid, to amazingly obese. She was none of these. She was... tubby. That was the word for it. Like I girl I'd known in grade school, who went by the nickname "Tubbles".
And then it struck me - that was it. This woman, whose face showed at least four decades of care, laughter and worry, had the same body-shape as a tubby little third-grader. A bit larger all around, of course - she was at least five-foot-three - but the same cylindrical upper body, hardly any bosom.
The usual comfortably solid matrons I've seen are just that - matronly, with a bosom like Margaret Dumont. This woman... well, I dunno.
--
Then there was the tall woman who looked like a misplaced character from a fantasy novel. No, not one of those curvy, wicked enchantresses from comic books and sword-and-sorcery, but a lovely, kind face and blue eyes that were gemlike not in color or quality, but in depth and humor and wisdom. (I am elaborating and exaggerating, of course, but she really did have a very nice way about her.) Dressed in unremarkable clothes, she stood looking aver a shelf of towels.
Long, dark, wavy hair, some caught in a silver clip, some braided, some hanging loose, reached to the middle of her back, and was tinged here and there with gray. She looked like a Sage, a Sorceress, a Wise Woman, and Elder.
But for all I know she may have been an investment banker. Or a truck driver (I kind of doubt this). Or a timeworn picker-up-after-other-people's-children.
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