Girls in White Dresses

by JENNIFER CLOSE

  On the inside of the card it said, “We’l miss you at this zoo!” Isabel a moved to the floor above and didn’t see any of them much. Sometimes she found herself at the bakery downstairs about to buy muffins before she realized she didn’t have to do that anymore. She thought of Sharon saying,

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” as Isabel a placed the muffin on her desk, and she hoped the new girl understood the rules and remembered what to do.

  Mary started her summer internship at a law firm downtown, but at least she was more wil ing to go out at night. At Gamekeepers, over a game of Scrabble, she told Isabel a that she’d be moving out in the fal .

  “I need my own place,” she said. “I love living with you, but I have to study al the time. Plus, I should live closer to campus. And you don’t want to live al the way up there.”

  “I know,” Isabel a said. “I’m distracting.”

  Isabel a found a one-bedroom apartment on the West Side. She was sad not to be living with Mary anymore, but the new apartment had screens, so that was something.

  The last night in the apartment, Isabel a and Mary went to Gamekeepers with Ben and his roommate Mike. They played Connect Four and Sorry!, and then Ben pul ed Life off the shelf. “How about this one?” he said. “A good old-fashioned game of Life.”

  They spun the spinner and gathered jobs and paychecks and children. Isabel a hadn’t played in a long time, and she found it sort of boring. Mary and Mike lost interest and got up to order new drinks at the bar.

  “You know,” Isabel a said to Ben, “when I was little and my family played Life, we had this rule. If any of the pegs fel out of your car, then you lost them. It was considered a car accident and the plastic peg was dead. You had to give it back.”

  “Real y?” Ben sounded bored.

  “Yeah,” Isabel a said. She’d told that story before, and usual y people at least laughed a little. Ben just looked around the bar.

  “Don’t you think that’s kind of a mean rule?” Isabel a asked him.

  “I guess,” he said. He rattled the ice in his glass. “I have to go to the bodega to get smokes.”

  “Okay,” Isabel a said. When he left, she pul ed one of his pegs out and laid it down right next to his car.

  The dead-peg rule had always made Isabel a cry. Somehow, her little pegs never seemed to stay put, and they always popped out. “That’s the rule, Izzy,” her brother Marshal always said to her when she tried to protest. It was so rotten, Isabel a thought, the way that everyone squealed and laughed when someone’s peg fel out, the way they al clapped at that person’s misery and misfortune. Mol y would always pat Isabel a’s back when this happened and say, “If you can’t fol ow the rules, then maybe you shouldn’t play.”

  Ben came back inside, but he didn’t notice his dead peg.

  Isabel a went to the bar and ordered shots for herself and Mary. “Here,” she said, handing it to her. “No excuses. This is a time of mourning.

  We’re never going to live together again.”

  “Don’t say that,” Mary said.

  “It’s true,” Isabel a said. She could feel herself getting sentimental, which she always was. Sometimes she missed people before they even left her, got depressed about a vacation being over before it started.

  “Wel then, cheers,” Mary said. They clinked the glasses, touched them to the counter, and drank.

  “You’re going to miss me,” Isabel a said. “There won’t be anyone to blame for the dirty dishes in the sink.”

  “I don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink,” Mary said.

  “Exactly,” Isabel a said.

  Ben and Mike came over and suggested another bar. “This place is beat,” Ben said. He leaned back and stretched his arms.

  “We can’t go anywhere,” Isabel a told him. “We stil have to finish packing. The movers are coming early.”

  “Okay,” Ben said. “Talk to you tomorrow.” Isabel a noticed that he didn’t offer to help her move, but she didn’t say anything. She and Mary had another drink and headed back to the apartment, which was ful of boxes and stil had stuff al over the floor.

  “What is this stuff?” Mary asked.

  “Crap,” Isabel a said. “It’s just al crap.” She kicked at a pink hand weight. “When have either of us ever lifted weights?” she asked.

  “I think I bought those thinking I’d lift weights in my room,” Mary said.

  “How did that go?” Isabel a asked.

  “Not great,” Mary said. “I think that’s why they were underneath the couch.”

  “Here,” Isabel a said. She reached into her pocket and took something out. “I stole these for us.” She opened her palm and showed Mary two pink peg people from Life and two pigs from Pig Mania. She handed Mary a peg person and a pig. “They’re us,” she said. “Roommates always.”

  Mary laughed. “Who’s the pig?” she asked.

  In her new apartment, Isabel a glued the pig and the peg person on a piece of cardboard and hung it in a frame by the door. People always commented on it when they walked in. “Hey, look,” they’d say. Sometimes they recognized the peg from Life, and some people even knew where the pig was from, which usual y made them laugh. When the glue wore out and the peg person or the pig fel down, she didn’t throw them out.

  Instead, she glued them right back on and said a silent prayer that they were the only critters in her home.

  O ur friend Elen dates ugly boys,” Lauren used to say. She said it al through colege. She said it to warn attractive boys who were interested in El en. “You’re not her type,” she’d try to explain. “It’s weird, I know, but you’re far too good-looking for her.” Most of the time, these boys didn’t listen.

  They’d just nod and keep staring at El en, thinking about how they were going to approach her, as Lauren insisted in the background, “Our friend El en dates ugly boys.”

  Al of El en’s friends accepted this. They weren’t surprised when she introduced them to boys with receding hairlines and mild cases of rosacea.

  They didn’t laugh when she picked out the one guy in the bar with braces and said, “Look at him!” When she got breathy and excited about someone new, they al mental y prepared themselves to meet a guy with a creepy carnival mustache and a mean case of dandruff. Even in first grade, when the only acceptable boys to like were Jon Armstrong and Chris Angelo, El en announced that she liked scabby Matthew Handler. It was just who she was. El en dated ugly boys.

  It was surprising, mostly because El en was pretty—and not just your average, wel -groomed and wel -dressed kind of pretty. She was the kind of pretty that people noticed, the kind of pretty that made people watch her walk by. She had long eyelashes and skin that didn’t seem to have any pores. There was a glow about her, something that always drew boys to her side. If she’d been anyone else, Lauren might have been too jealous to be her friend. But it never mattered, because El en would look at al of her admirers gathered round, and point to Mr. Fatty and say, “I choose you.”

  Lauren got to keep the rest of them.

  Some friends are gossips and some are sloppy drunks. If you like them wel enough, you ignore this trait and continue to be their friend. And that’s what they did with El en—they tolerated her taste in men.

  Once, in col ege, El en kissed a guy who lived down the hal from them. They cal ed him the Wildebeest because he was portly with wild curly hair and he snorted when he laughed. He was the guy who got drunk at parties, stripped naked, and did the worm on the floor in a pool of keg beer.

  They al knew him. They al liked him wel enough. And they were al shocked when El en announced that she’d kissed him the night before when he’d walked her to her door.

  “Hold on,” Isabel a said. “Please back up. You made out with the Wildebeest?”

  El en shrugged. “I didn’t plan it,” she said. “He offered to walk me home and he’s so funny.”

  “Of course he’s funny,” Lauren said. “He’s a Wildebeest. Wildebeests are supposed to be funny. B
ut Wildebeests are not for making out with.”

  El en was unashamed. She just smiled and shrugged and went back to her room. Al the girls stared at each other and shook their heads.

  “Making out with a Wildebeest,” they whispered to one another. “What wil be next?”

  For the most part, El en’s boys were harmless. That’s not to say that they al had sparkling personalities or quick wit to make up for their appearance. No, some of them were truly blessed with nothing. But stil , the girls never real y objected to El en’s choices. “Different strokes for different folks,” their friend Mary always said whenever El en brought home another one. And they al laughed and let her be. “What harm could it do?” they asked each other. And so they let El en have her ugly little fun.

  But then she met Louis. And Louis was awful.

  Louis weighed about ninety pounds, had soft, wispy blond hair, and wore the same pair of rust-colored corduroys their entire junior year. He was pretentious and social y awkward and El en was crazy about him. Louis sat in their apartment and chain-smoked cigarettes while he ignored al of them. Once, when Lauren asked El en for an opinion on which shirt she should wear out that night, Louis weighed in. “It can be dangerous to care too much about clothes. It makes you shal ow,” he said. Then he reached into his pants pocket, took out a paperback copy of Why I Am So Wise by Nietzsche, and started reading.

  “I hate that guy,” Lauren said later that night. “He’s such a dick.”

  “Relax,” Isabel a said. “It won’t last. They never do.”

  The first time Louis dumped El en, they silently cheered. But a week later, the couple was back together, and Louis showed up again in their apartment, smoking cigarettes and making comments about how sil y girls were in general. Louis broke up with El en over and over again, and she kept going back to him. None of them understood it.

  “He looks like Ichabod Crane,” Lauren said once. “I mean, what I think Ichabod Crane would look like if he wore the same pants for a year, you know?”

  “I just don’t understand when he has time to wash those pants,” Mary said. “He wears them every day. That’s just so gross.” They al agreed.

  After graduation, Louis broke up with El en again. He told her that he couldn’t be tied down, that he was going to travel through Europe alone and needed his freedom. “Please let this one stick,” they said to one another. Sure, El en was devastated now, but she’d meet someone else, someone who would make her happier. They were sure of that. It was al for the best.

  They al spent a year after graduation living with their parents in their respective suburbs, saving money and looking for jobs. It was miserable, sleeping in twin beds in their childhood rooms, sending out mil ions of résumés, and trying not to get annoyed when their parents said things like

  “What time wil you be home?” and “No drinks upstairs.”

  Lauren, El en, and their friend Shannon al moved to Chicago that summer. El en had gotten a job offer in Boston but had turned it down, claiming that she had always wanted to live in Chicago. “It’s such a fun city,” she said. “The lake is so great.” Lauren and Shannon rol ed their eyes at each other. They knew she was lying about the lake. Louis was from Chicago and El en was just hoping he’d come back there soon. It was sad, real y.

  Even a little pathetic, they thought.

  But they didn’t real y care that much. One year after graduating, they were final y on their own. They rented an apartment on Armitage with two and a half bedrooms, one tiny bathroom, no air-conditioning, and a giant deck. It was almost like col ege, except they had to get up and go to work every morning.

  It was so hot that summer that no one could stay inside. They tried (for the sake of being grown-ups) not to go out every night. They sat on the deck in ponytails and shorts, reading magazines and painting their nails, trying to imagine a breeze from Lake Michigan. Eventual y, someone would suggest having a beer or a glass of wine. They’d sit awhile, and someone would suggest going to the bar below them, just for one drink, just to sit in air-conditioning for a while. And before they knew it, it was two in the morning and they were listening to Karen, the crazy bartender with missing teeth at Shoes Pub, tel them about Craig, the asshole who broke her heart.

  Lauren blamed the weather for a lot of what happened that summer. It drove them out of their apartment, to bars and street fairs and concerts. It made them restless and irritable while they waited for something to start. They al knew they ought to feel different in their new lives, but they felt the same and it put them on edge. Hot and impatient, they fidgeted in the heat, grumbling and asking each other, “What next? What next?”

  El en was at a loss without Louis. She hadn’t so much as flirted with an ugly boy since he’d left for Europe. He sent her postcards from Paris and Florence that said things like Be yourself or be nothing and Live humbly but live true.

  Lauren and Shannon snatched these cards from the pile to read them before El en did. It was one of their greatest sources of entertainment.

  “Live humbly?” Shannon said. “Uh, yeah. I’m pretty sure his parents are paying for his humble trip around Europe.”

  They always put the cards back in the mail so that El en could take them to her room and read them over and over again. They knew she was pining over him in there.

  “We’ve got to get her over this,” Lauren said. So they dragged her to bars and scouted for unattractive men. A few times she even met some homely boys, let them buy her a drink, and talked to them for a while. But when the girls got close, they heard what El en was saying to these guys.

  “He real y broke my heart,” she’d say. “I just real y miss him.”

  “What can we do?” they asked each other. They shook their heads in disappointment. Why couldn’t she just let it go?

  They al got tickets to a concert at the old steel factory down the street, to see a young, handsome singer who wrote tortured love songs and whined about the troubles of being twenty-five. Their friend Isabel a was visiting from New York, and she came over before the concert to drink beers on the porch, but al she did was wander around and say, “This place is huge. Your apartment is huge.”

  “Yeah, we like it,” Lauren said.

  “No,” Isabel a said. “You have no idea. You should see my apartment in New York. It’s teeny. And expensive. This place is a mansion.”

  “Then move here,” Lauren told her. “Move to Chicago!” Isabel a just smiled and continued to look around in wonder.

  Lauren and Shannon were in a fight that started when Shannon cal ed Lauren a slob. “Isabel a, don’t you think it’s disgusting when someone leaves Q-tips on the sink?” Shannon asked. Isabel a shook her head and kept quiet.

  “You’re the one who sits in that bathroom for an hour and plucks your hairy eyebrows,” Lauren said. “If anyone’s a pig, it’s you.”

  Isabel a just smiled and looked happy that she didn’t have to weigh in. Now Lauren and Shannon were sitting on the porch, sighing and scoffing to let everyone know that they weren’t speaking to each other.

  El en was in the kitchen pouring wine when Isabel a asked her, “So, have you seen Louis since he’s been back?”

  It was like a movie: El en spil ed her wine, Isabel a jumped, and Lauren and Shannon forgot they were ignoring each other and looked at each other with wide eyes.

  “Louis is back?” El en asked.

  “Yeah.” Isabel a made a face. “Sorry, El en. I thought you knew.”

  El en shook her head and swal owed some wine. “No,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

  “Sorry,” Isabel a said again. “I just assumed he would have cal ed you. I saw Phil last weekend and told him I was coming here for the weekend and he mentioned it. He just got back a couple weeks ago. I’m sure he was going to cal you.”

  They al looked at El en, who was now calmly drinking her wine. Lauren could tel that she wasn’t upset. Surprised, yes. But not upset. They’d known El en long enough to be able to read her mood by the way s
he held herself, and right then, she was as straight as a pole, alert, and excited.

  “Fuck,” Shannon said softly.

  “Yeah,” Lauren answered. “I know.”

  They went to the concert, where Lauren and Shannon made up, then got in a fight again when Shannon forgot to watch the Porta-Potty Lauren was in, and let a man open the door, which had a broken lock. “Everyone in line saw me with my pants down,” Lauren screamed.

  “So what’s new?” Shannon asked.

  They went to a bar cal ed Life’s Too Short near the old Cabrini-Green buildings. The whole area was under construction and the streets were lined with half-built condos and shel s of townhouses. Because nothing was around it, the bar paid no attention to the city’s rules about shutting down by four a.m. The bartenders let everyone stay in the bar’s outdoor area. Nothing good ever came of this, but they kept going back.

  They sat in a corner of the patio where they could see everyone that walked in. They were fascinated with watching Margaret Applebee, a girl

  they knew from col ege. She’d always been kind of fat, but had dropped about forty pounds that year and was, according to Shannon, “whoring it up al over town.” She was talking to their friend Mitch McCormick, pressing herself against his arm, and they were al waiting for him to tel her to go away.

  “Who does she think she is?” Shannon asked. “Like Mitch would ever be interested in her. It’s so embarrassing.”

  “She’s persistent, though,” Lauren said. “You gotta give her that.”

  “I don’t even recognize her,” Isabel a said. “She lost forty pounds? She’s a whole different person.”

  None of them saw Louis walk in. They were al so focused on the Margaret Applebee fiasco that they didn’t notice him until he was standing at their table saying, “Hey, El en.” El en tried to smile and then immediately burst into tears.