Pretty in Plaid: A Life, A Witch, and a Wardrobe

by Jen Lancaster

  Seriously, I reason, how could I not buy a bag that loops adorably over my shoulder, attractively across my chest, and rests all coy and snug against my now suddenly very narrow hips?

  And those darling little Gs? They quietly identify me as being a Person of Merit . . . they’re so much better than some random Greek letters sewn on the back of my sweatpants, which would probably make my butt look big anyway.

  I want this bag.

  I quickly scan my wardrobe and mentally try it on with everything I own. Yep, it goes fabulously with all my favorite outfits: thick white souvenir T-shirts from fraternity dances, crisp cotton shorts in khaki and navy with knifelike pleats, and the pointy-toed Mia flats that make my legs look muscular and tan.

  I want this bag.

  But I can’t. It costs hundreds of dollars. Four hundreds to be exact.

  I want it.

  No. No, no. Someday I’ll be a grown-up and I can buy all the designer bags I want. Different bags. Better bags.105 Now is not the time. I haven’t worked to earn it and I don’t deserve it.

  And yet . . . how great would it be to sashay into org com with this on my shoulder?

  No.

  What if I got a part-time job? I’m not that busy with class. I could work and still go to school. People do it all the time.

  You’ve had two shitty semesters in a row—is taking on a job that will distract you more than parties and boys already do your best idea?

  Well . . . I guess . . . not.

  I remove the bag from its rightful place on my shoulder and put it on the counter as the clerk grins expectantly at me.

  I tell her, “Thank you for your time.”

  Somehow it comes out, “You take VISA?”

  Funny thing about confidence—when it stems from things, like a new Gucci bag, rather than from a genuine place inside, it can easily turn to arrogance. Which can then turn to a sense of invincibility.

  A sense of invincibility leads to bad decisions, like cutting class for weeks on end, concurrently dating three members of Phi Kappa Tau, and wearing hoop earrings the size of salad plates. The plot to avenge myself veers off course, crashing straight into hedonism.

  But who cares?

  I’m invincible!

  Let’s do shots!

  Which Is an Entirely Different Chapter

  (Not Even My Yellow Argyle Sweater)

  Turns out my actions actually do have consequences. That’s why I’m here, stuck behind a cash register at a Maurices clothing store in Fort Wayne, not even at the good mall.

  While I’ve been busy selling scrunchies and stirrup pants this week, all my friends have been moving back to campus after summer vacation. Everyone’s arriving in their family station wagons packed with milk crates full of cassette tapes and St. Pauli Girl posters lovingly rubber-banded around cardboard tubes since May. The sidewalks in front of Greek houses and apartments and dorms are full of trunks, laundry baskets, and hot pots ready to fulfill a late-night ramen craving. Everyone’s tan and refreshed from a summer away and their bags carry pristine notebooks and new pens and snowy white K-Swiss sneakers, tags still attached.

  Tonight, all my friends are headed to a kegger at the Delta Sig house except for Joanna, who’s going to a Slip ’n Slide party on the hill at the Beta house. I’m scheduled to close the store, so my plans include balancing the register, vacuuming, and if I’m lucky, not removing used tampons from the fitting rooms.106

  Andy and Roni have apartments on opposite sides of an alley on the west side of campus this year. When they stand on their balconies, they can wave at each other. I talked to them yesterday. When I called, Andy’s roommate yelled for them down at the apartment’s pool, where they were browning up in anticipation of classes starting. But they came upstairs to talk to me, Andy in his new living room, Roni on the extension in Andy’s bedroom. They reassured me about how sad they were that I wasn’t coming back this semester. No one asked me if I flunked out, and even if they did, I couldn’t tell them the truth. Shoot, if I can’t admit it to myself, how am I supposed to say it to anyone else?

  As a preemptive strike, I tell anyone who inquires that I’m kind of over school right now, and I’m just working to pay down my credit cards.107 I say that I want to make money and I’m anxious to start my career.

  Truth is, I sit in my bedroom every night after work looking at my crate of books and notebooks, still packed from when I moved out of my dorm, wondering why it was so damn hard for me to just go to class. For God’s sake, I flunked Recreation 100. How did I manage to fail a class on leisure activities?108

  My parents are . . . let’s just say they aren’t proud. Since I failed academically and financially, they’re suddenly convinced I’m twelve years old again and must be monitored constantly. They tell me when I’m having too much ice cream and listen in on my phone calls and open my mail. That’s how they discovered I flunked out in the first place. I tell Dad he’s violating federal law by tampering with my mail. He says until federal law starts providing me with food, shelter, and my very own pool to clean, I’ll be following his law.

  The worst part isn’t being stuck on my feet full-time in the store, or even my part-time gig knee-deep in fish juice back at Subway. It’s that I never even got the satisfaction of a reaction from Janine. She got one look at my new bag and then ignored me the few times I came to class the rest of the semester.

  Wasn’t revenge supposed to be sweeter than this? Shouldn’t I feel good, not fucking awful?

  The greatest irony is I didn’t even keep the Gucci bag for long. I have to wear Maurices clothing when I go to work and my dad won’t let me buy any. I have to sign over every paycheck I receive because he’s taken over the management of my debts. I end up selling my purse to a part-time associate in order to purchase Camp Beverly Hills rugby shirts and leggings for work. My store receives a shipment of faux sorority letter shirts. I don’t buy any of those.

  I’m busy sorting through our new collection of rhinestone jewelry. Should anyone be in the market for sparkly accessories the size of a hubcap, this is the place to get them. Earlier today a customer picked up one of the enormous chandelier-style offerings and asked, “Do those be genuine rhyme-stones?” I couldn’t even begin to explain everything that was wrong with her sentence, so I simply replied, “Yes, they do be genuine.”

  I treat customers with the kind of forced cheerfulness our corporate office requires because I’ll be fired if I get a bad review from a secret shopper. If I lose my job on top of being thrown out of college, I will never, ever be out of trouble.

  A harried-looking middle-aged lady rushes in and before I can even welcome her, she barks, “I have a hold for Miller.”

  “Sure!” I reply in a sunny tone of voice. “Let’s go get it for you.” I turn around and sort through all the hanging items but there’s nothing for Miller. “Hmm, it’s not here. Can you tell me if you held it today?” I don’t recall having seen this woman and I’ve been in the store since opening this morning. “We only keep items on the hold rack until the close of business, so if you held it yesterday, it would have been put back into stock.”

  The customer’s face flushes red and she raises her voice. “Yes, it was today. Do you think I’m stupid? I would remember if it wasn’t today.”

  In terms of being rude, retail customers are second only to hungry diners. I tell myself it’s not really me they’re mad at, but sometimes it gets hard to, you know, not kick a lung out of them. But I’m here behind this counter instead of in a classroom specifically because I let a revenge fantasy take hold. I have to learn to control myself.

  I try to position my mouth into something that’s not a rictus. When I do force a grin, it doesn’t reach my eyes. Hey, I guess I did get something out of rush!

  “Of course, of course, my mistake. Let’s give this another look-sie.” I go through the rack, pulling out every garment separately. “No, I’m really sorry, I don’t have a Miller here. I’ve got holds for Helen, for Heidi, for Marc
y, and for Joan. Is it possible you gave your first name? Is one of these yours?”

  The customer slams her hand on the Formica cash wrap. “No! Go look in the back.” This is not a question.

  Aarrgh. The back. I hate that everyone thinks what they need is in “the back.” The back is a cramped storage area with a mini-fridge, a small picnic table, and a bunch of broken fixtures. There’s a crumbling cork board with this week’s schedule tacked to it, and if our cleaning crew is feeling generous, the dank employee bathroom isn’t too disgusting. We don’t put holds back here because the whole area is repulsive.109

  I’m about to explain this to the customer when I notice her scrunched brows and lips pursed so hard her magenta Estée Lauder is bleeding all the way up to her nose and down to her chin. Instead, I say, “Okey-dokey! Back in two shakes!”

  I go to the back, drink some of my Diet Coke, and reapply my Designer Imposter version of Poison perfume, which smells all yummy like liquefied Jolly Ranchers. I touch up my lip gloss, too. I dawdle because if I come out too soon, she won’t believe I actually looked, even though there’s nothing to look at.

  “Mrs. Miller, please accept my apologies. There’s no hold back there for you. Your garment must have been returned to stock. If you can tell me the size and what it looks like, I’ll find it immediately.”

  “Damn it, why are all you people so incompetent?”

  I attempt to channel my seething rage into something resembling polite conversation. Seriously, I cannot get fired. “They were a pair of jeans, then? Acid washed, perhaps? Lycra stretch? Floral embroidered? Armpit-waisted Z. Cavaricci?”

  “No! It was a sweater! It was a goddamned yellow argyle sweater with pink and green diamonds! And my daughter will have a fit if you lost it and she can’t wear it on the first day of school!” The veins on Mrs. Miller’s temples throb.

  Must kill, I tell myself. With kindness, I reluctantly add. And, really, if we had a yellow argyle sweater, I’d have used my Gucci purse money to buy it for myself.

  Wait. Have I seen this sweater somewhere? I can picture it so perfectly.

  Slowly, it dawns on me that this lady is in the wrong store. “Mrs. Miller, I think you’re talking about a sweater at Ups ’N’ Downs across the hall. Which is a totally different store.”

  “Show me because I am not leaving this mall without that sweater.”

  The part-timers have quietly gathered to listen in. I shrug as I pass them in their miniskirts and maxi-bangs while Mrs. Miller and I exit, cross the courtyard, and enter Ups ’N’ Downs. “Okay, here we are. In this place, which is a different store.”

  She yanks a sweater off a display where a half dozen of them are folded. “Aha! I told you you’d put it back! Is retail really that difficult? I don’t know what’s wrong with you people.”

  I want to tell her what’s wrong with me is that I had a golden opportunity to do something with my life and I lost sight of it because of my pride. I’d like to say what’s wrong is that I’m full of regret over poor choices. And that retail sucks and I’d rather die than face a future full of angry customers and synthetic sweaters.

  What I actually say is, “I guess the problem is that I work in a different store. See, that’s why the music, clothing, and staff are different. And it’s also why we went through that big hallway past the landscaping and the Things Remembered kiosk.”

  Mrs. Miller thrusts her credit card and sweater at me. “Ring me up. You’ve wasted enough of my time.”

  “Alrighty, let me just find a clerk who works in this store, which is different from the store I work in.” I spot an employee I know. “Hey, Kendra? Can you ring this up? I can’t because I don’t work in this store, which is different from mine.”

  Kendra dutifully punches the buttons on the cash register, wraps the sweater in tissue paper, and presents a charge slip. “Here you are, Mrs. Miller, please sign on the line.” Transaction complete, Kendra gives Mrs. Miller her bag. “Thank you for shopping at Ups ’N’ Downs!”

  “And at Maurices!” I add. “Which is an entirely different store!”

  What? I don’t have to be polite if it’s not my customer.

  Kendra turns to me and asks, “What the hell was that?”

  “That was proof that I need to get my ass back to college.”

  “Christ, what a d-bag.”

  “Welcome to retail.”

  Kendra looks at the hold slip she just threw in the trash. “Hey, I’ve got all her information here. Wanna prank her or send her a pizza or something?”

  I consider her offer for a moment. “Nah. Revenge isn’t really my style.”

  I convince my university to readmit me. Never underestimate the power of contrition.110 I enroll at a regional campus. Since I’m paying for classes myself, I have to live at home.

  This is basically a commuter campus and people aren’t as into meeting other students like they are on the main campus. Maybe the other students already live where all their friends are or maybe they’re just too busy trying to juggle work and school and family. I’m delighted to be on the road to higher education again, but I miss the social aspect of the bigger campus. I’m not saying I have to go to a twenty-keg party, but it would be nice not to eat lunch alone.

  Partway through the semester, I discover there are Greek organizations here—they even have a chapter of the best sorority. I decide to give rush one more shot because I’m doing it for the right reasons; I genuinely want to connect with people.

  This time, I really am myself during parties. When I meet the members of the best house, I don’t care what their specific combination of letters can do for me. I sincerely want these girls to be my sisters. I want to wear my shortened prom dress to dances with them. I want to line up at a big wooden table, sip Diet Coke, and be bored during rush with these specific people.

  These are the thoughts racing through my head as I prepare for a rush party in the skeevy Maurices bathroom after my shift. My hair’s a lot longer than it used to be and with careful blow-drying and patient ministrations with a wide-barrel curling iron, I can coax it into bouncy strands with the hint of a flip at the bottom. Tonight’s supposed to be a casual party and jeans are allowed, but I’ve been down that road. I select a forest green turtleneck, jodhpur-cut khakis, and a red and green plaid vest with a black backing. I’m not trying to mimic anyone else’s style; I simply choose an outfit that makes me feel good.

  Yet I can’t help but smile when I get to the party and see members wearing jeans.

  Rush continues for a few weeks and I have a blast. I love the members and I dig the other girls in my rush group. As I leave the final party, I want to slip everyone my number and say, Even if we can’t be sisters, can we at least be friends?

  Those who are invited to join the sorority are supposed to get the call between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. I’m so anxious I call in sick to work. I spend the entire night sitting next to the phone. I keep lifting the receiver to make double sure we’ve got a dial tone. Minutes crawl by. I wait and wait and wait. When the phone rings, I shriek and grab it, but it’s just Joanna checking on my status again. I practically hang up on her in my haste to clear the line.

  It’s nine p.m. and no one’s called.

  Oh, well.

  I’m probably too old to pledge. Probably didn’t get my grades up high enough, either.

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have been honest about my last sorority experience.

  Maybe the real me wasn’t good enough. Wasn’t the right fit. Wasn’t what they wanted. Maybe I laughed too hard when that one member accidentally dropped an f-bomb. Maybe I should have ignored it like the two stuffy girls in my rush group.

  What a shame. I would have taken sisterhood so seriously. Too seriously because I would have appreciated it so much. I’d have worn those letters with more pride than a hundred Gucci bags, because I’d have known I’d earned them. I’d probably be one of those assholes who, even at age forty, still talked about her sorority because it was such a big deal i
n her life.

  And then the phone rings.

  They want me.

  I’m in.

  I’m one of them.

  I belong.

  Right before pledge induction, it dawns on me that not only did I get into this campus’s branch of Joanna’s sorority—hence her frantic calls on Bid Night—I’m also in Janine’s.

  Like it or not, I’m Janine’s sister. She may never know it because we’re on different campuses, but I’m her brown-haired, Indiana-dwelling, middle-class-being, jean-jacket-wearing, retail-working, Congo-bag-carrying sister.

  And I will be for the rest of our lives.

  That’s the best revenge of all.

  Absolute Power? Absolutely!

  (Gold Lavaliere, Part One)

  November 9, 1988

  Hey, Lisa!

  Someone you know has just turned twenty-one . . . so get your fake ID ready because I’m coming down to celebrate with you next weekend!

  I spent the actual big day in South Bend because that’s where Carol works now that she’s graduated. Andy met me up there and we went out on Notre Dame’s campus. I figured it would be fun to go somewhere I hadn’t already been ten jillion times illegally. Then, halfway through the night I remembered I’d been to all their bars during St. Patrick’s Day back in ’85. Whoops!

  Anyway, now that I’m twenty-one, I’m legal to wait tables and serve drinks so my schedule will be more flexible. I’m done getting stuck with Saturday closing shifts at the mall because I got a job at an Italian restaurant!

  The bad news is they have servers sing when it’s someone’s birthday. I’m probably going to be responsible for making an entire generation of kids afraid of spaghetti.

  Later!

  Jen

  That Little Italian Joint, Inc.