Out of the blue, a memory she never knew she had

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

She was silent as I was putting on makeup, standing on a stool, all 2 1/2 feet of her stretching and straining to see my every move.

My granddaughter Charlotte is newly three and is never silent, not even when she sleeps. But last Friday morning she stood in my bedroom miraculously mute and mesmerized. Moisturizer, foundation, blush, mascara, and lipstick. They had cast a spell.

“First a little of this. Then a little of this,’’ I said as I applied each. I turned and smiled at Charlotte. But she was like Snow White before a basket full of shiny, red apples, preoccupied, intrigued, and enchanted.

I had a flashback then, one of those moments where you think, afterward, where did that come from? Why this memory? And can I get it back? Can I press rewind, please?

Think Saran Wrap. Think about the thin, clear, stretchy plastic that sticks to itself — sticking just for an instant to the wrong place before someone yanks it back and sets it right and gets it rolling again. Time is like this. It’s going along, unfurling at its usual pace, and then suddenly it snags on a scent, a place, a look in a child’s eyes.

Last week, while I was watching Charlotte and she was watching me, it got caught on a memory I never knew I had, of my Aunt Lorraine in her house in Stoughton, putting on makeup. And for an instant it was her face in the mirror while I was the child who watched.

She was my mother’s baby sister, but like a big sister to me, 11 when I was born. She had dark, shiny hair and blue eyes and soft skin and red lips that always matched her fingernails, and when I was a child I knew for certain that she was the most beautiful girl in the world.

This moment, which appeared out of the blue, like a misplaced slide in a carousel projector, was as big and clear and real as a slide, too.

There was Lorraine in my mind’s eye.

She was wearing black pedal-pushers, and a white sleeveless blouse, which I’d seen her iron a dozen times, and white sneakers without socks. We were in her bathroom, which was small the way it was before her kids grew up and my uncle did it over. Her makeup sat in a dark flowered pouch on the sink’s edge to her left. I stood beside her on her right. And, like Charlotte, I was mesmerized.

I watched her take something that looked like a push-up frozen treat out of her bag. She twisted it and up came face makeup, which she dotted on her forehead, cheeks, and chin. I had never seen anything like this, makeup that pushed up like ice cream, that wasn’t in a compact, like my mother’s.

She rubbed and then she roughed and then she put on red lipstick and blotted it with a tissue. Then she combed her hair. And then she smiled at me.

How old was I? Not 3 because Lorraine didn’t live in Stoughton when I was 3. I was a lot older, 11, maybe 12.

“So, how do I look? Better?’’ she asked, hugging me. And I said yes, but it was a lie because she could never look better, because she was always beautiful to me.

My aunt young. That little bathroom. A funny-looking tube of makeup. The bathroom shade down but the sun still brightening the room. All this in a blink.

And gone in a blink, too. Except not really. I put some Nivea cream on Charlotte’s face and gave her some pink lip gloss, which she applied like a pro. I let her stick her fingers in a jar of body cream, which she smeared on her arms.

And then I brushed her hair.

“You look beautiful,’’ I told her.

And then we went downstairs and had ice cream and blueberry muffins. And I told her about my Aunt Lorraine.