Isabel a was surprised to find that she could do her job in a constantly hungover state. She wasn’t sure if this was a wonderful discovery or a sign that she should run. Either way, her performance reviews were superb.
“Stick with me for one year and you’l go places,” Bil always said to her. He had a big stomach and ate Greek salad for lunch every day, which made him smel like onions, always. Isabel a knew that he thought the Greek salad was super healthy, and for that she pitied him. She also wished he didn’t smel like he did.
Sharon was less direct. “I got a run in my panty hose,” she would announce. Then she would stand and stare at Isabel a, making a face that said, What should we do about the pickle we’re in? until Isabel a offered to go get her new ones.
Standing in Duane Reade, picking out someone else’s panty hose, Isabel a thought, “This is real y happening.” She chose a control-top package and went to the counter to pay.
In late October, Isabel a’s sister, Mol y, brought her two girls to the city for the day. They came on the train from Philadelphia, wearing matching plaid jumpers and clutching American Girl dol s. Mol y insisted that they come to Isabel a’s apartment so that she could see where she was living. They al stood in the TV room and looked around. Missy and Caroline used the bathroom and sat on Isabel a’s bed.
“It’s very efficient,” Mol y said, and gathered up her things to go.
As they walked down the street, Missy, the older one, told Isabel a about their trip in. “There was a man sleeping outside the train station,” she said. “He made some bad choices in life.”
“Real y?” Isabel a asked. She looked at Mol y out of the corners of her eyes.
“Yeah,” Missy said. She grabbed Caroline’s arm and started offering advice. “Watch out for dog poop on the sidewalk,” she said. “Don’t look at anyone, or they’l take you.”
“Missy, no one is going to take you guys,” Isabel a said. Missy, who was nine, shook her head like Isabel a was stupid. “They told us about it in class, Auntie Iz. There are kidnappers everywhere, but especial y in New York.”
Al of Isabel a’s nieces and nephews cal ed her Auntie Iz, a ridiculous nickname given to her by her oldest brother when he had his first baby. It made her sound like some wicked aunt in a fairy tale, like a forgotten character from The Wizard of Oz.
Missy stood there with pursed lips and wide eyes, as though she wanted to warn Isabel a of the dangers of New York. Missy was a clone of Mol y, and sometimes, even though she was only nine, it was hard to like her. Isabel a bent down to Caroline. “No one’s going to take you,” she whispered in her ear. Caroline smiled.
They trekked around American Girl Place, watched a movie, bought some new outfits, and had tea with the dol s. Caroline’s dol had a Mohawk
in the front, where she had tried to cut the bangs. “I wanted her bangs to be gone,” Caroline explained. She touched her forehead. “Like mine.”
“That’s why she’s not al owed to get another dol for at least a year,” Missy said. She fed her dol some tea. “Because five-year-olds don’t real y know how to take care of them.”
After tea, Ben met them in Central Park and chased the girls around like a monster, while Mol y and Isabel a sat on a bench. “He looks like a keeper,” Mol y said. She elbowed Isabel a. “Maybe this is the one?”
Isabel a sighed. Mol y had been trying to marry her off since she was in seventh grade.
“You know, Isabel a, you need to make sure that he stil respects you. The only thing a girl has is her reputation.”
“Oh my God,” Isabel a said. “Mol y, please stop.”
“You can listen to me now or learn it on your own later,” Mol y said.
“If you talk about the cows and the milk, I’m done,” Isabel a said. “You sound just like Mom.”
Missy came running up to them, her hair escaping from her ponytail and her cheeks flushed. She looked adorable, and for a moment, Isabel a wanted to grab her in a big hug. Then Missy said, “Ben is so funny.” She turned and smiled at Isabel a. “I hope you marry him.”
Missy leaned in close to Mol y and whispered something. She looked concerned, but Mol y told her not to worry. Missy ran back to Ben, who raised his arms and started stomping toward her. She squealed and ran.
Mol y said, “Missy just asked me if you were poor. She asked if you needed to move in with us. She said she’s never seen a place to live that’s so smal .” Then Mol y tilted her head back and laughed and laughed with her mouth open so wide that Isabel a could see her fil ings.
Isabel a had always thought that New York would be devoid of animals, but that wasn’t true. They were everywhere. They were just the kind of animals you didn’t want to see. “I read somewhere that in New York you’re never more than five feet away from vermin,” Mary said. This knowledge haunted Isabel a. The building posted a sign-up sheet once a month for exterminators, and each time the list went up, it was immediately fil ed with capitalized, underlined descriptions of what people needed to get rid of. “MICE!!!” the list read. “ROACHES AGAIN!!!” it said.
Isabel a and Mary could hear scratching between their wal s, and they were sure it was a mouse, although they’d never seen him. “I hear it,”
Isabel a would say. They named him Brad and pretended he was the only mouse in the place. When he scratched at night, it made Isabel a squirm in her bed. If she heard him, she wouldn’t get up until it was morning, afraid that she’d run into him on her way to the bathroom. Even if she had to pee, she’d wait. The mouse was probably giving her a bladder infection.
Because their apartment was approximately a hundred degrees on any given day, the sliding windows had to be left open. They had no screens, so very often Isabel a woke up to the butt of a pigeon facing her. They cal ed the pigeon Pete, and tried to figure out why he only came to Isabel a’s window. Pete perched there almost every morning and cooed and pooped on her windowsil . It was possibly the grossest thing she could imagine.
“Pete, get out of here!” she would scream.
“Don’t yel at him,” Mary would say. “You’re going to scare him and he’l fly into the apartment.”
Isabel a thought she was overreacting, until one morning when she screamed at Pete and he flew backward into her room. She ran to get Mary, who grabbed a broom and slammed Isabel a’s door shut. She was always good in these types of situations.
“Okay,” she said. “When we open the door, you run to the window and open it as far as it wil go. I’l shoo him out.”
“You’re so brave,” Isabel a told her.
It took almost an hour and a lot of screaming, but Pete found his way back outside. They stood sweating and panting, shaking their heads at each other. “I never thought there’d be so much wildlife in New York,” Isabel a said.
“Me neither,” Mary said.
Ben took the train to Philadelphia with her for Thanksgiving. He ate turkey and played with the kids and was charming in a way she hadn’t known he could be. Isabel a’s mom insisted on wrapping up loads of leftover pie for Ben. They took the train back together and he rested his hand on her thigh the whole way. The week after, she didn’t hear from him once, and she wondered if she’d imagined the whole holiday.
It got colder, but their apartment stil hovered around a hundred degrees. In Rockefel er Center, families of five came to see the tree, and walked around holding hands in a line, forcing Isabel a to dart around them on her way to work. It was like one big game of Red Rover, and Isabel a felt sure that she was losing.
Isabel a went home for Christmas alone, with two bags of dirty laundry. The night before she left, she and Ben went out to get drinks. They laughed and had fun, and as they stopped for pizza on the way home from the bar, Isabel a began to think she was wrong to imagine that there was any trouble between them. Later that night, as Ben played with her hair in bed, she let out a happy sigh and he said, “My ex-girlfriend used to make me play with her hair before she fel asleep.” Isabel a pul ed away from him, b
ut his fingers were tangled in her hair and he ended up pul ing out a few strands.
“What?” Ben asked.
“Nothing,” Isabel a said. How could she explain what he did to her? She let him lie there, holding the hair he’d torn out of her head, and think about it.
Christmas at the Mack house was loud and busy. Stuffed reindeer peeked out from the corners, and Scotch tape and snickerdoodles were everywhere. Al of the grown-ups played board games while the kids ran around upstairs. It was safer that way, Isabel a knew. Mack board-game nights weren’t for children.
The night before Christmas Eve, they played Scattegories, and things were already getting messy. Her brother John was mad because he’d brought Cranium to play but had been overruled. “I don’t think we should play anything that involves clay,” Brett said.
“Yeah,” Isabel a said. “It might get physical.”
There were twelve players, so it was impossible to tel if anyone was cheating. Isabel a’s partner, her sister-in-law Meg, chugged appletinis al night and taunted the other teams. “Whooo!” she kept squealing. “Wooohoo! We are going to kick your asses.” Then she held up her hand and made Isabel a give her a high five.
Isabel a’s mother had banned al premade pitchers of drinks after the pomegranate martini incident of Thanksgiving 1998, but someone must have forgotten. When Isabel a had walked into the kitchen that night, she’d seen a big pitcher of unnatural y green liquid. “Appletinis,” Meg had said brightly. “Do you want one?” It was the last complete sentence she said that night. Isabel a’s brother Joseph quietly ignored his appletini-loving wife, leaving Isabel a to high-five her alone.
Brett had barely spoken since he’d tried to submit “whore” in the category of “things that are sticky.” Isabel a’s mother had exclaimed, “Sweet Jesus” and closed her eyes in horror. Never mind that the letter for that round was H, and Isabel a’s mother should have been concerned that her twenty-seven-year-old son couldn’t spel .
Mol y talked about Ben, and Isabel a regretted ever introducing him to her family. “He was so cute with the girls,” Mol y was saying. “Just real y adorable.”
Isabel a saw Caroline run by in a flash of blue, and soon al of the kids were rumbling downstairs from the playroom. Most of them were in costumes, and carrying plastic teacups for reasons they never explained. Scattegories was forgotten. Mol y suggested that al of the kids could sleep in Isabel a’s room, as a treat, but only if Isabel a agreed, of course.
“Can we, Auntie Iz?” they asked her. “Can we sleep in your room?”
Isabel a looked at Mol y, who didn’t look back. “Sure,” Isabel a said. “You can sleep in my room.”
Caroline cheered, then tripped herself on the long blue dress she was wearing and started crying. Isabel a picked her up and held her in her lap.
Caroline had always been her favorite. When she tried to whisper, she talked right into people’s mouths. Last Thanksgiving, when she’d dropped a drumstick on the floor, she’d said, “Fuck it.” And when Mol y had asked her where she’d learned that word, she shrugged and said, “Grandma Kathy.”
“Did you get me a present, Iz?” Caroline asked.
“Caroline, that’s rude,” Missy said. She patted Isabel a’s arm. “Auntie Iz doesn’t need to get us presents.” Missy, stil worried about Isabel a’s possible poverty, treated her like a homeless person that the family had taken in.
Mol y looked over at her girls, and her eyes narrowed at Caroline’s costume. “Is that my bridesmaid dress?” Mol y asked.
“No,” Isabel a said. “That’s my bridesmaid dress.”
Mol y rol ed her eyes up at the ceiling. “You know what I mean. Caroline, where did you get that?”
“In the dress-up chest,” Caroline said.
Mol y turned to Isabel a. “How did that get in there?”
“What else was I supposed to do with it?” Isabel a asked. “Goodwil wouldn’t take it.” Brett laughed from across the room and Mol y narrowed her eyes.
“They were very in at the time,” Mol y said. “You don’t remember, but those dresses were the thing to wear.”
“I’m sure they were,” Isabel a said. “That dress has been in the dress-up chest forever, by the way.” Caroline watched Isabel a and Mol y talk, turning her head as each one spoke.
Isabel a could tel that Mol y wanted to say more, but she turned away and took a sip of her wine. Isabel a took the kids upstairs to get them settled in her room, and she heard Mol y talking in the kitchen. “So, Missy thought that Izzy was poor,” she said. She laughed loudly. “I know! Do you believe it?”
There were so many bodies in Isabel a’s bed that she was afraid it would break. Little kid limbs were everywhere. Four of her nieces were shoved into the bed, and Isabel a kept waking up to feet and hands flying through the air. When she final y fel asleep, she woke up less than an hour later to screaming. Her nephew Connor had been locked in the closet. “You guys,” Isabel a said, but she couldn’t get enough energy to real y yel at them.
Her nephews were blobs of shadows on the floor, and after she rescued Connor, she told them al to be quiet and go to sleep.
In the morning, al of the kids were gone except for Caroline, who sat on the bed talking to her orange teddy bear, explaining how Santa got into the house. Isabel a smiled at her. “Where is everyone?” she asked.
“They went downstairs,” she said. “I didn’t want you to be alone.” Caroline touched the top of Isabel a’s head with her chubby baby hand, and Isabel a wondered how Mol y had been able to produce such a sweet child when she was such a horrid person.
There was a missed cal on her phone from Ben, but he hadn’t left a message. Isabel a had thought it would feel better to be home, away from him. But it didn’t. She cal ed him back and he didn’t answer. She didn’t leave a message.
On Christmas Eve the whole family went to St. Anthony’s to watch the pageant. Caroline was a nervous-looking cow, and waved her hoof as her mother snapped pictures like a spazzy paparazzo. The church was noisy, ful of chattering and shuffling, until a pint-sized Jesus and a mini Mary walked out to the manger, and then the whole place became quiet.
Isabel a stil remembered being chosen to play Mary in fourth grade. Her teacher asked her to bring a dol for the baby Jesus, and she took the job very seriously. She went home and, after careful consideration, picked her Cabbage Patch Kid Rosco. She apologized to the others, and explained that Rosco was little and bald and right for the part. He would make a great Jesus.
Every night, Isabel a would wash Rosco’s head in the sink and then careful y dry it. She would dress him in his blue terry-cloth pajamas and tuck him into bed next to her. “You’re going to play Jesus,” she would whisper to him. “Don’t be nervous,” she would say. “You’re going to be great.”
The night she played Mary, she felt holy, as though she were a saint of some kind. “It was my holiest Christmas,” she wrote in her diary.
On the altar, mini Mary said something to Caroline and then petted her as though she were a real cow. Caroline stared at the dol in the manger and Isabel a felt something like jealousy. After the pageant, they al walked out into the cold air, their breath making white clouds as they wished everyone they saw a Merry Christmas, and Isabel a thought that it didn’t feel like Christmas at al . Al the kids went to their own houses to wait for Santa, and in her bed that night, Isabel a missed the sound of other people’s breathing.
Back in New York, everything was cold and slushy. “At least the snow was pretty for a minute or two, right?” Isabel a asked Mary. Mary just shook her head and closed her door. She had a head cold and new classes to deal with.
Ben was around less and less, and when they were together they seemed to squabble. “Don’t put al your chickens in one pot,” Kristi advised her.
“That boy wasn’t for you anyway.” She said it with such authority that Isabel a almost believed her.
Isabel a got knee-high rubber boots to wear on her walk to work. W
hen she’d first seen people wearing these, she’d thought they were just trying to be cute, but now she realized they were necessary for the three-foot-wide puddles of dirty, cold water that surrounded the curbs and gathered in the streets.
Sharon had decided to go on a diet for New Year’s, and so the muffin game got more complicated. “Are you sure?” Isabel a would have to say. “I can’t believe you’re on a diet,” she would sometimes add. The one morning she didn’t get a chocolate chip muffin, Sharon made her file clients by their Social Security numbers. Isabel a never made that mistake again.
Even with her boots, Isabel a’s feet always felt wet and cold. The heat in their apartment was on ful blast, and there was nothing they could do to turn it down. They had to keep the windows open to avoid suffocating, and Isabel a was always afraid that the pigeon would come back. At night, she woke up in the apartment sweaty and dehydrated, flapping her arms to protect herself from imaginary birds.
It seemed like spring would never come, but it did. And mysteriously, Ben started appearing more and more. He offered no explanation of where he had been al those nights when she’d tried to cal him. He just showed up al the time again, wearing his white basebal hat, smiling and laughing, buying her drinks, dancing, and waking up in her bed.
“What do you think happened?” Isabel a asked.
Mary shrugged. “Maybe he was hibernating,” she suggested.
Isabel a was promoted at work, and a new assistant was hired to get muffins for Bil and Sharon. When Isabel a was training the new girl, Bil said to her, “You have some big shoes to fil . This one here was a dynamo.” He put his hand on Isabel a’s shoulder, and she could smel onions. She hoped the odor wouldn’t stay on her sweater. Sharon wished her luck, shook her hand, and gave her a card that had an office ful of monkeys on it.
Girls in White Dresses Page 2
