Now I flicked her.
“So that fancy footwork shit that you pulled on Marie the other day—that was him?”
“You mean the chop?” I grinned. I was getting really good at that.
Tina flicked me again. “That’s for keeping your secret weapon a secret. Show me how to do that and we’re even.”
“Deal,” I said, then pointed to a guy in a pickup truck who’d just pulled in. I grabbed a fresh rag and fluffed my hair. “Let’s go make some money.”
We ended up washing cars for more than two hours past the time we’d planned to be outside. I was pretty sure at least one woman slipped Bobby her number and another one had given him what looked like panties. His shirt was wet and clinging to him, and he had a red lipstick mark on his cheek from a grandma type who’d told him what a nice boy he was. When all was said and done, we had more than four hundred dollars, most of it thanks to Bobby.
But when he counted the last bill, he just said, “We did it, team! We’re going to Wisconsin!”
We were cold and wet and our waterproof mascara hadn’t held up, but none of it mattered as we let out a whoop so loud that passing cars honked in support.
Fourteen
I spent the day after the car wash catching up on homework and babysitting Kevin, this four-year-old who lived on Keating and always made a point of telling me that his previous babysitter had been prettier, and that was probably why she had been caught by his parents for having her boyfriend over when they weren’t home. Still, Kevin was better than Randy the Terrible, and the money I earned by not entirely neglecting Kevin would help pay for some new pajamas for the trip. On the off chance Bobby saw me dressed for bed, I did not want to be wearing my holey Barraco’s Pizza T-shirt and the shorts from my old gym uniform.
On Monday, in the midst of a detailed dream in which I had a yellow Gran Torino and Bobby washed it carefully while wearing a tight mechanic’s jumpsuit, my mom knocked on my bedroom door. “Susan, did you forget?”
“Forget what?”
“Dresses, with Polly. I need to drop you at Donna’s Bridal on my way to work,” she said.
“I didn’t forget, but . . . it’s Columbus Day.” I moaned. “He discovered a whole continent—can’t I stay in bed?”
“Correction: He found a place to park his ships—people had already discovered it just fine. And you need to discover a dress.” Mom came into my room and found a pair of jeans and a clean shirt, which she threw at me. “Polly’s treating you, so you can at least be on time.”
Mom seemed edgy in the car, and she was still wearing her jeans and a plain blue blouse. “I thought you had to work?” Normally, she wore slacks or a calf-length skirt to work, with a pair of stacked brown loafers that she got resoled once a year.
“Late start,” she said. “I’ll go change after I drop you off.”
When she pulled up in front of Donna’s, I hopped out of the car. “I bet dusty peach is going to make me look more like a moldy peach.”
“Be nice,” Mom said. She raised an eyebrow. “What goes around comes around.”
“Not bridesmaids’ dresses,” I said. “They follow you to the grave.” But seeing the elegant mannequins in the store’s window did make me the slightest bit excited. The last time I’d gotten a fancy dress had been eighth-grade graduation, and that one had had a Peter Pan collar.
As soon as the tinkling bell chimed on the glass door, Polly rushed toward me, partially wearing a wedding dress that hadn’t been fastened up the back yet. She held it against her chest with one hand as she hugged me with the other. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I’m trying a few on early. I’m coming back with my mom tomorrow, and I want to have the choices narrowed down before she sees anything. My mother is . . . very opinionated.”
“That one’s nice,” I said of the long-sleeved lace dress that was askew across her chest. I really couldn’t tell with it only half on, but with her shiny hair and long neck, she resembled a bride on a cake topper.
“You’re too sweet, but I think it will give me too much cleavage,” she said, lamenting a problem I couldn’t imagine having. “I’m going to try something with a higher neck.” She went back to the dressing rooms, and I wandered deeper into the store, unsure what to do. I saw some dresses on a rack, but nothing that looked dusty peach.
“Can I help— Susan?” Dawn Murphy came out from the dressing room area and squinted at me. “You’re not getting married, are you?”
“Uh, no. . . .” I pointed toward where Polly had gone. “I’m with Polly. You never said you had a job.” It sounded like an accusation, even though I hadn’t meant it to.
“Well, it’s not like we’re friends,” she said. Dawn’s words were direct, but her tone wasn’t cruel. Our not-friends status was stated as a plain fact, same as if she’d told me it was Monday.
Still, it bugged me, because we should have been friends, shouldn’t we? We played on the same team. Though, if I thought about it, my only real friend on the team was Tina, and if I went down the roster, most of the girls were people I just saw at soccer, not people I shared secrets with. Plus, I never really said all that much to Dawn even at practice, probably because of the baby rumors. I immediately felt like a jerk; the right thing to do would have been to ask her, but there was no good way to ask someone to confirm or deny gossip about themselves.
“I guess I mean that after tryouts, you’ve never missed practice to work or anything,” I said.
She shrugged. “I took more weekend shifts once I figured out Bobby was serious about practice.”
“Oh.” I hoped Polly would emerge soon, because I was just about out of things to talk about with Dawn. “Do you like working here?”
Dawn peered around as if looking to see who was nearby. “Not really,” she said. “But we get commission, and it’s kind of easy to make sales since we’re the only bridal shop in Powell Park.”
“That’s cool,” I said. “I still just babysit. The kid I watched yesterday made me listen to him sing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ seven times and I still only got two bucks an hour.”
Dawn laughed. “Kids are the worst.”
“I know, really,” I said before I caught myself. If she had a kid, that wasn’t the nicest response. “Some kids are okay, though.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and made a clucking sound, then turned away from me to start organizing a rack of dresses sandwiched between white jewelry cases carved with swirly designs. A prickly heat covered me. I’d totally said the wrong thing.
“I mean some kids are fun, if you get to know them . . . ,” I rambled.
“If you want to know if I have a baby, you can ask me,” Dawn finally said. She pushed several dresses on the rack to the side, making space, then spun around to retrieve several putrid green dresses hanging on a hook nearby and clicked their hangers onto the rack. “I know what everyone says about me.”
“I didn’t . . .”
She held up a hand. “I know, and I don’t care,” she said. “But I don’t have a baby. My dad ran out on us last year. We had to go live with my aunt in Michigan while my mom figured out what to do for money. Then my dad came back, and my mom’s with him again, but I’m working. My mom thinks he’s sticking around this time, but I’m not going to be screwed over again by relying on him. Or her.”
I wandered toward a bowl of Jordan almonds on a white desk in the middle of the store. I took a green one, turning it over in my hands instead of eating it. How did you answer that? “I didn’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure people would understand.”
“Maybe. But I would rather people make up stories about me than know my dad’s a deadbeat and my mom thinks she can’t do any better,” Dawn said. “Plus, the rumor only makes sense if you’re a raging sexist. Like, who’s the guy who knocked me up? Why didn’t he get sent away? Where is he in all these stories? Oh, yeah, no one thinks about that, ’cause he’s a guy.”
“It’s not really fair, though, to you,” I said.
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“I don’t care. It’s kind of made me think. Like, doesn’t it bug you that girls are supposed to be ashamed if we have sex, unless we have plans to, like, marry the guy or something?” She made a broad gesture to the store full of white dresses. Her point struck me hard, and I realized that the rumor about Dawn had also made me assume she wasn’t very smart. I was an asshole.
“I don’t know if people feel that way,” I said.
“They do. All that It’s the seventies! Women can do anything a man can!” Dawn said, her tone fakely enthusiastic. “Bullshit.”
“Well, we can have sex, as long as we don’t enjoy it too much,” I joked.
“Yeah, and as long as we’re not frigid and holding out, either,” Dawn said with a laugh.
“Hey, but if we have sex, we can get a boyfriend out of it,” I said.
Dawn put a hand over her heart. “I’d love to score a meathead boyfriend, but I’ll only want to have sex when he wants to. I don’t want him to think I’m a slut.”
I helped her clear some space on a rack for a froofy wedding dress she was trying to rehang. “Yeah, why is it that only boys can want things?”
“Oh, we can want things, as long as it’s having a house and looking super pretty for our man,” Dawn said. “Just ask my mom.”
Maybe I wasn’t the only girl who fantasized about something better than the gropey, dopey guys from Powell Park. But a bridal store was no place to compare masturbation techniques. “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t ask you what really happened last year. It wasn’t fair of me.”
“What is fair?” Dawn pulled a few orange-looking dresses off the rack and handed them to me. “You’re dusty peach, right?”
“So I’m told,” I said. “Thanks.” I took the armload of dresses, half dumbfounded. Maybe Dawn didn’t care about the rumors, but next time I heard someone whispering about her, I could say something—“You don’t know that for sure,” or even, “Who cares if it’s true?”
The dresses were heavy, and they lay limp across my arms like a dead body. “You found some already! You’re the perfect maid of honor,” Polly said, lifting the fabric of the top dress, which seemed to have four hundred skirts piled on top of each other. “Which one do you like?”
I looked down at the dusty peach pile, not sure where one dress ended and the next began. “I guess I need to see them on,” I told her. “And what the other bridesmaids like.”
Polly squeezed my arm affectionately. “It’s your pick. I have two cousins in the wedding from out of town—Mother’s orders—but I’ll ship them what you choose so they can get alterations. Why don’t you go to the dressing room?”
Dawn appeared at my side, taking the dresses from me. “This way, miss,” she said, and smiled in a friendlier way than she ever had before. As soon as we’d stepped away from Polly, though, she relaxed. “Good luck with those,” she said as she put me in a fitting room. “Taffeta can make anyone ugly.”
She wasn’t wrong. The first dress clung to my midsection but drooped around my boobs. “I look like what happens when summer commits suicide,” I said aloud to myself, but when I came out, Polly exclaimed in delight.
“You’re a vision! A harvest miracle.” She came up and zipped the dress the rest of the way, and it looked slightly less bad.
I went to the mirror at the front of the store, pulling up the fabric pooled around my feet, when the door chimed again. “Susan, you left your purse in my car,” I heard my mom say, and I spun around.
“You look nice,” we said to each other at the same time. Only the way she said it to me was complimentary, and the way I said it to her definitely sounded surprised. My mom wasn’t in her usual somewhat frumpy work clothes—she had on a straight skirt slit to just above her knee, and over it, a belted blazer and a creamy silk scarf at her neck. The color and fit worked to make her look taller, like she’d had the suit made for her. The outfit had to be new, like the black heels she wore over black pantyhose. Her hair was done and she had on red lipstick. My mom was normally a Lip Smacker person, like me.
Polly poked her head out of her dressing room, “Oh, Dierdre, you look wonderful. I love that jacket on you. Good luck with the interview!”
The interview? What interview? And why did Polly know?
“Thanks so much, Polly,” Mom said. “Fingers crossed. And good luck with wedding dresses.”
As Mom set my purse down on a white upholstered chair, I asked, “Were you going to tell me you had a job interview?”
“I was, but after it happened.” She reached out and fixed one of the flounces around my shoulders. “I’m superstitious.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, and the ruffle over my boobs instantly enveloped me to my elbows. “You told Polly. Is it good luck to tell your ex-husband’s bride?”
“Susan, not now. I have to go.” She leaned in to kiss my cheek. “That one’s nice, but see if they have something with a simpler bodice.”
She pushed out the glass door and walked down the street, looking like someone I didn’t recognize.
Dawn’s manager was talking to Polly about how long it would take to alter a wedding gown. Dawn, who’d been pulling more dresses from one of the racks along the wall, took down an empire-waist gown with spaghetti straps. “That must be awkward,” Dawn said. “Having your mom and stepmom be friends like that.”
“They’re not friends,” I said. “They just, like, get along.” Could they be friends, though? I pictured coming home one day to Polly and Mom at the kitchen table, having coffee and talking. Talking about me, maybe. It wasn’t normal, but it was abnormal in a way I couldn’t exactly be mad at. It was infuriating, my parents being so reasonable. The only response they’d left me was to be agreeable, to flatten any rough edges and slip smoothly into my new role as everyone’s daughter, to be dressed up and lied to and posed happily in photos. Had anyone even asked me how I felt about all this? Dad got a new wife, Mom and Polly got new friends, and I got passed around among them.
Everyone got something out of the divorce but me.
Dawn handed me the dress she was carrying. “This is pink,” I said.
“It comes in dusty peach,” she said, and walked me to the mirror, where I held it up against myself. “I thought the straight line would be more flattering for you, and your arms are skinny, so they’ll look good in the spaghetti straps.”
I tried it on, and Dawn was right. It was still a bridesmaid dress, but I looked taller because of the way the column of fabric flowed over my body.
“Thanks,” I said to Dawn. “This one’s actually okay.”
“That’s what teammates are for,” Dawn said.
I sat down on the velvety cream couch in front of the mirror and picked up one of the magazines to flip through. It was Brides, and it was boring.
“I have a favorite, but I’ll have to show my mother. She’s picky,” Polly was saying to the manager, then turned to me. “Susan, I saw a really pretty dress with a sweetheart neck that might be nice.”
“I like this one. It comes in dusty peach,” I told her, not standing up. I kept my voice flat. My pity for her was gone. Was my mom somewhere in her bridal wish book? Maybe they could go get their nails done together, so Mom would have another way to be too busy for me. I didn’t have to pretend every second that everything was easy, even if my parents and Polly thought it was. At that moment, I wanted to be annoyed, and to leave. “And I have to go.”
Polly must have seen the look in my eyes, or registered my irritation. “You know, you’re right,” she said. “Simple is best.”
Fifteen
Joe lived in a two-story yellow house with red trim. It was one of the smaller ones on that block of Lynwood, but it stood out for how neat it was, with a lawn that was fading but still green even in October. It was the second time I’d thought of something of Joe’s as not matching his punk persona. Though I guess the house really belonged to his parents, and I doubted they were punks.
I knocked, and a girl, maybe tw
elve, with Joe’s same dark hair flung the door open instantly. “Joe!” she yelled, before I even introduced myself.
I heard footsteps clattering down stairs I couldn’t see from the entry, and then Joe emerged from a small hallway that led to a living room with new-looking furniture and a long bookcase. “Hey, come in,” he said with a wave. He had on his usual soccer clothes. “Well, come through. We’re going out back.”
The girl, his sister, I guessed, cleared her throat loudly. She had her hands on her hips, and though the gesture was one of annoyance with him, I could tell instantly that she liked her brother.
“Oh, this is Rachel. Rachel, this is Susan. She’s a soccer player.”
“Hi,” I said, as Rachel made no attempt to hide that she was looking me up and down.
“Thanks for acknowledging my existence,” she said in a dry but pleasant enough way. “Your shoe’s untied.”
“She’s got to put on her cleats anyway,” Joe said. He pointed at Rachel. “You’re on music duty.”
“Then I get to watch Laverne and Shirley tonight,” she said, with her chin stuck out.
“But WKRP in Cincinnati is . . .”
Rachel glared at him.
“Fine,” Joe said, and she bounced away. “Sorry, she’s a pain in the ass.”
“I like her,” I said, tying my cleat. “How was the movie?”
“It was the same as the last five times I’ve seen it,” he said. “Lizzy hated it. She’s more into horror movies. How was the rest of the car wash?”
“We made enough for Wisconsin,” I said. I tried to think of something else to ask about Lizzy, but in my head, every question sounded like I was asking about his dating life in a way that could be taken wrong.
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