The Throwback List

by Lily Anderson

“Hardly ever!” Autumn clapped her on the back. “Let’s get through step one! It’s not a sleepover until you’re in your pajamas.”

  “Thank God.” Bianca squirmed out into the hallway and came back with her luggage. “I am in the pinchiest bra.”

  “Is this the non-bounce-house bra?” Jo asked with a curious glance.

  Bee put her makeup case on the shell-shaped velvet chair that matched the plush blue headboard. “Possibly?”

  “Bianca, we have to work on your underpants game,” Jo said.

  “But this is my lucky red bra,” Bee said, plucking at the band and attempting a low-key adjustment that fooled no one. “I bought it for my first Valentine’s Day with Birdy.”

  “The first one?” Jo shrieked. “Are you wearing a two-year-old bra right now?”

  “Three-year-old?” Bianca said in the most sheepish squeak Autumn had ever heard from her.

  “Bianca, no!” Jo cackled. “Your bra should not be in preschool! Love yourself! The bra has been commemorated. It’s time for it to go out to pasture.”

  “During makeover hour, I will let you search the internet for a comfortable—reasonably priced—bra in my size. But I want to hear five glowing reviews before I agree to purchase,” Bee said. “Now everyone clear the room, please. We have to get through step one before moving on to cocktail hour! It’s pajama time!”

  Heart taking wing, Autumn flew down the stairs. If she hadn’t been toting the itinerary scroll, she would have slid down the banister. She didn’t unpack in the downstairs bedroom, just used it as an alcove for a quick change from work-jeans to Lucky Charms pajamas.

  When they were kids, she and Jo would have both slept in baggy T-shirts. There was a brief period in high school when Autumn wore exclusively novelty boxer shorts as pajamas—and sometimes to school; it wasn’t her proudest phase.

  If she’d known she was going to end up a teacher, she would have refrained from attending school with the Grinch on her butt. Who knew how many of her coworkers pictured her as a freshman in Dr. Seuss boxers?

  Maybe that was why Pat treated her like she didn’t have two brain cells. Autumn promised herself that if any of her students ever came back to Point High, she would do everything she could not to hold their teen selves against them.

  Autumn and Jo met up in front of the welcome basket. Jo got to work uncorking the wine. From the grocery bags Autumn had brought in from the car, she set out the bounty of sleepover snacks. Ruffles and ranch dip, peanut M&M’S, many kinds of Cheeto and Dorito, cookies, microwavable brownies, and, of course, a quantity of light beer only Bee could be excited about.

  Cheese pizzas and liter sodas would be delivered during makeover hour. Autumn had already put the order in, an old Cindy Kelly sleepover trick. Pizzas would appear out of the blue right as hunger set in, as if by providence.

  It was, Autumn recognized now, a happiness honeypot.

  Bee appeared in a fluffy blue Stitch the alien union suit, complete with long ears on the hood. A row of white plush teeth appeared to be swallowing her bumper bangs.

  “Oh my God!” Autumn cooed. “You are the actual cutest person alive.”

  “It almost makes me forget about all the fart talk that preceded this,” Jo said.

  “I’ve never been so comfortable,” Bee said. She struck a pose and her sleeve fell away from her wrist, exposing the pale bracelet of her watch tan.

  Autumn couldn’t believe it. She’d written the party rules down almost as a joke, never believing that Jo or Bee would adhere to them.

  Seeing Bianca untethered to her smartwatch was enough to make Autumn want to scream in delight. But she knew better. Any sudden movements would send Bee running back to check all of her alarms. A distracted Bee was a happy Bee.

  Autumn thrust a glass of wine into Bee’s hand. “Let’s take this bottle outside and see the hot-tub deck.”

  “After you, Stitch,” Jo said, following Bee to the french doors leading to the back deck. She glanced at Autumn over her shoulder. “Please stop me from yanking Bianca’s tail.”

  “Don’t you dare touch my tail!”

  “But it’s so squashy and round!” Autumn snickered.

  Outside, the ocean lolled under the mostly set sun. Gold light spilled over the empty stretch of private beach held at bay from the suburb by a strip of black asphalt where Waterfront Covers walked dogs and strollers.

  Above it all, standing in a faded yellow glow at odds with the spring chill, Autumn, Bianca, and Jo sipped Fred Meyer merlot next to a modestly sized hot tub that no one was in a hurry to climb into.

  “Kudos to your father’s wife, Autumn. Even the welcome-basket wine is good.”

  “It must be,” Autumn said. “Because Miss Bianca didn’t even ask if I got any Miller High Life.”

  “That’s Mrs. Bianca,” Bee said with the squiggly smile she got when drinking. “High Life is the champagne of beers. And I am the champagne of ladies.”

  “That’s why there is a case in the fridge,” Autumn said. “I thought about making themed cocktails for each of us. Like Jo’s parents do with the lunch plates at the restaurant.”

  “Restaurant is a strong word. It’s more like a gift shop that serves sandwiches,” Jo said with a haughty scoff. “What goes into a Jo cocktail? Don’t say mushroom tart!”

  “I already had it all planned out. We’re not the same kind of liquor, and it was going to be way too expensive. Everyone can be drinkable cheap red wine and light beer,” Autumn said. She paused and took a sip. “If we were cocktails, I would be frozen rosé because I may be basic but I am refreshing. Jo would be something that looks savory but is really made of syrup—a rosemary old-fashioned. Bee would be a dirty Shirley Temple because she’d really rather just drink light beer, but if you put enough grenadine and rum together, she will consume it.”

  “Wow. I’ve never felt so seen,” Bianca said, touched.

  “That was like a magic trick,” Jo said.

  “The magic of theater casting!” Autumn laughed.

  Jo set her elbows on the railing, watching the ocean like a sea captain hunting for land. “Who looks at all that and thinks I wanna go out there?”

  Autumn looked over at her. “You really don’t want to surf, do you?”

  “I’m dreading it!” Jo groaned. She rolled the stem of her glass between her thumb and forefinger. “When my old mentor was here earlier this week, she found out that everyone in my family surfs except me and put the idea into my mother’s head that me learning to surf could be a whole family thing. Mom, Dad, Eden, and me. In the ocean together. Now they’re all stoked at the idea of being included on a list item, and I don’t know if I should be an asshole and tell them that I didn’t actually invite them. Gia did.”

  “Is this the same Gia who invited you to a job interview at Days?” Bee asked, hopping up to sit on the edge of the empty hot tub. Her tattooed feet swung off the ground. “The night of the cotton-candy milk shake?”

  “Oh,” Jo said, visibly deflating a bit. “That. Yeah, she was in town with her sisters and she had me meet up with them for drinks. Their family owns a liquor distribution company. Gia’s older sister runs their main sales team. In Portland. And she offered me a job.”

  Clammy tendrils of anxiety dampened the edges of Autumn’s happiness. Jo had been back for barely a month. It was too soon for her to be rushing away again.

  “Liquor distribution?” she asked, keeping her voice bright and bubbly. Betraying no sign of disappointment. Jo deserved a million job offers. “That’s pretty different than the job you went to interview for in Seattle?”

  “It would be a different career track, that’s for sure.” Jo sighed. “The sales team get small salaries and big commissions. There are weekly goals and seasonal products to push and a hierarchy of who gets to wear what kind of polo that I didn’t really follow, which all sounds kind of terrible, actually.”

  Bianca tittered. “So then why even consider it?”

  “Because it’s a real job,
” Jo said. “The first job I’ve been offered since I got fired three months ago. And Gia said the orchestra hasn’t called to check on my references, so I don’t know if I can keep hoping for that. Wren thinks it’s because of the pinup pictures.”

  “Your boobies have the power to repel work?” Bee asked.

  “I guess,” Jo said. “I didn’t even know she was following the list, and then all of a sudden she was talking about how being in my underwear online was going to hurt my hire-ability. She said it made me look like an ‘unserious candidate.’”

  “Those seem like very Wren priorities,” Bee said. “She’s like an Oregonian impression of a New Yorker. No nonsense and blunt as hell.”

  “Blunt sounds mean,” Autumn cut in quickly. “Brusque, maybe.”

  “Fancy blunt,” Jo said. “Much better.”

  “Do you think she could be jealous?” Autumn asked. “You guys just reunited and you’re showing off your ta-tas for the ’gram.”

  “I doubt it’s jealousy. We’ve only spent one night together and the morning after she used the phrase we’ll see how it goes about twelve times. Which is fine. I could be moving again any minute. It’s not like we’d be able to keep seeing each other if I’m in Seattle,” Jo said. “And she really just doesn’t seem to understand what I’m getting out of the list.”

  “Just because she doesn’t understand doesn’t mean it’s bad,” Bee said. “If she’s going to stay mad about how you choose to present yourself to the world, she’s not worth your time.”

  Jo gave an unconvinced nod as she sipped from her glass. “She’s Wren. She doesn’t have time for grudges. She made her disapproval clear. I disagreed. She’s coming to have a glitter fight on Sunday afternoon. We might get Thai food after.”

  “Thai food?” Autumn asked. “You’re going back to Forest Grove again?”

  “Wren wasn’t into the idea of people seeing a school administrator on a date,” Jo said.

  “It’s not like she’s a pastor,” Autumn said, confused. “Our contracts don’t come with a morality clause.”

  “They don’t?” Bianca asked with a wicked smile. “Then why have you been totally celibate since you moved back from LA, Autumn?”

  “J’accuse!” Jo gasped, pointing her wineglass at Autumn. “Never have I ever gone two years without having sex.”

  Autumn drained her glass. “I’m gonna need to refill for this game.”

  “Let’s break into the cheeses!” Jo said.

  Bianca hiccuped. “And the face masks!”

  The pizza delivery kid was kind enough not to mention that the drunk women who answered the door at Seafoam Cottage were midway through a makeover montage. Autumn’s nose strip was starting to harden, Bee sported an old-school baby Bianca Boria French braid, and Jo was wearing a decorative tiara found on a bookcase.

  They ate on the floor around the coffee table. The complimentary wine was gone. They cracked into Bianca’s beer. Autumn appreciated its lack of depth. In LA, she had gone through an expensive beer-snob phase during which she pretended to love bitter, artisanal, expensive beers rather than the fruity garbage of her heart.

  “Bianca,” Jo said, chomping and exhaling in an attempt to eat a molten slice of extra-cheesy cheese pizza. “Was Birdy the first guy in your…beehive?”

  “Splort!” Bee choked into her beer. “Spare me the sex euphemisms, please. We’re grown-ups. He has a dick. I have a—”

  “Magic cavern,” Autumn interrupted with jazz hands.

  “And no, Johanna, Birdy is at the bottom of my scroll. In college, I was what the kids call easy. I sowed my oats. Porked my pies. If you catch my drift.”

  “Oh, I caught it.” Jo laughed. “You porked your oats out before you settled down with Dr. Birdy. So why don’t you want kids?”

  Bee made a sour face. “Not you, too, Jo. Aren’t you supposed to be hip and metropolitan?”

  “I’m just Oregon beach trash like everybody else here,” Jo said.

  “Must I worry about kids right this second? I’m not even thirty yet. I have time. We’re not repopulating the world here.”

  “Tell that to your in-laws,” Autumn said.

  “You had to know when you married into a family that size that he’d want kids,” Jo said.

  “I knew,” Bee sniffed. “And I thought I wanted them, too, but—I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Do you want to draft a pro/con list about it?” Jo offered.

  Bee shut her eyes. “I don’t need a pro/con list.”

  Autumn set her hand on the watch tan line on Bee’s wrist. “Because it’s about Lita?”

  Bianca offered a weak nod. “Because it’s about Lita. She’s my responsibility. I moved back here literally just to take care of her. Even working in the shop is supposed to be second to making sure she’s okay. And she’s not. She’s angry and she’s sad and she’s lonely, and that’s all my fault.”

  “Bee,” Autumn interrupted. “No, that’s not fair.”

  “But it’s true!” Bee said. “I’ve done everything to her that she did to me when I was a kid. I leave her at home when I go to work. I tell her not to answer the door if someone knocks because she’ll buy literally everything she has enough cash for. She’s not allowed to use the stove because she forgets about it and sets shit on fire, so I make all her food. I do her hair in a style that doesn’t fall out easily.” She pointed up at her French braid. “I swear to God, if she asked me for a prom dress, I’d probably get it from Thrift Town, just like she did for me. If I can’t be a better mom than this for Lita—whom I love and owe everything to—then how could I take care of a whole new person?” Her voice broke, letting out a wave of tears. She exchanged her slice of pizza for a wad of thin napkins that she shoved in front of her face. “I’m scared of having a baby. I’m scared of getting a dog. I don’t want to fail at anything else because it feels like I’m already failing at everything everyone wants from me.” She flinched apologetically at Jo and Autumn. “Almost everyone.”

  “Bianca, you have to tell Birdy how you feel,” Autumn said, choked at hearing her friend’s confession. She’d never imagined Bianca as a poor parent—to grandparent, dog, or human child. Bianca didn’t fail at anything. Just set her expectations so high that only a superhuman could reach them.

  “Birdy seems like a good guy,” Jo said, reaching over and rubbing Bee’s back. “He’ll understand.”

  “He’ll understand.” Bee sniffled. “But he’ll be so sad.”

  “As sad as this?” Jo asked, ducking her head to make eye contact. “As sad as you? Why does he get protected from this, but you get to be miserable?”

  “I don’t want to be high maintenance,” Bee said meekly. “I already wear a lot of makeup and do my hair for at least half an hour every day, and we live with my family and—”

  “You go on vacation with his family!” Autumn said. She was reminded of elementary school and the way she used to shake Jo by the shoulders, shouting Be nice to my friend! when she caught Jo being too mean to herself. Maybe it was time to bring Tough Love Autumn back. “Everyone has their shit, Bee. Feelings aren’t high maintenance. Self-care isn’t high maintenance. You just have emotions and a stressful life. It’s normal to have a stressed reaction.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bee said, dabbing her damp face. “I shouldn’t be crying at my first slumber party.”

  “What do you think slumber parties are? Crying couldn’t go on the list because it’s unpredictably timed but never fails. Someone cries and then apologizes for ruining the sleepover by crying,” Autumn said.

  “I once cried at a sleepover because I brought the wrong pajama bottoms,” Jo offered encouragingly.

  Bee pushed the tears away from her cheeks with the heel of her hand. “I haven’t scheduled enough time to cry in ages.”

  “Maybe you need to cultivate a life where you don’t have to schedule your feelings,” Autumn said.

  Bee blew her nose into a new wad of napkins. “I hate Birdy’s new o
ffice.”

  “The one he’s so pumped about?” Jo asked.

  “It’s Dr. Banns’s bungalow,” Autumn said. “The one with the bush.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to pay for the landscaping there,” Jo said.

  Bee’s head fell back and she sobbed at the ceiling. “It ruined our honeymoon, and I’ll always hate it for that. I just wanted to have one experience that was, beginning to end, exactly the way it was supposed to be. Engagement party, rehearsal dinner, wedding, reception, honeymoon. But no! We had to put it off. And now I’ll never get it back. All for an office that has a funny smell and needs a new roof!”

  “Will it get him more business?” Jo asked.

  Bee sniffled. “Probably.”

  “And could you reschedule your honeymoon?” Autumn asked.

  “Someday. Maybe.” Bianca scratched her bare wrist with the pad of her thumb. “I should check my phone, make sure he’s okay at home with Lita. My mom was going to stay late after dinner, just in case.”

  “No way, Bee. This is the farthest you’ve been from your phone in forever,” Autumn said, leaping up. “Let’s break into the sour-apple gummies. And the breakfast food.”

  They agreed to turn off the lights in the kitchen rather than confront the tower of empty beer bottles and dip jars, the pancake batter spilled across the counter. The fireplace put out twice as much light as the TV. The snap of logs and torn pages of Jo’s bullet journal scrawled with midnight wishes was almost as loud as the pastel Technicolor of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, a show they had put on ironically but genuinely got sucked into around episode three.

  “I want to lie on our backs in a circle like the Baby-Sitters Club,” Autumn said, leading by example. Pushing aside a decorative chair, she backward dove onto the floor.

  “Did they lie on the floor a lot?” Bianca asked. She slipped down the couch to the carpet next to Autumn. “I was a Royal Diaries kid.”

  “Fake diaries were my shit.” Jo landed on the floor on the other side of Autumn, hands clasped behind her head. “I thought for sure that they found a bunch of real diaries and printed them. I kept such a detailed record of fourth grade, in case someone wanted to print it with a silk ribbon. Then the librarian pointed out the authors’ names on the title page, and my whole world was ruined. Now my journals are shopping lists and encouraging quotes I heard during workouts.”