Sorority Sisters

by Claudia Welch

  Greg is there, looking stiff in the photographs. Why did I never see how stiff and solemn and stern he was? Doug is there, of course, with Diane, and he is still the most handsome man I’ve ever seen. And it doesn’t mean a thing, or nothing important.

  When I think back on the parties, on all the times a photographer was hired and went hurrying through the party, taking photographs as quickly as he could, I think of my date, our dates, the boy/girl-ness of those nights. But when I see these pictures, I realize that it’s us, the women, the Beta Pis hugging and laughing and posing against a dark sky, that dominate the shots. It was us. We were the party; we were the center of it all. The very purpose of the party was to hold us and bind us, to remind us of who we were to one another. We must have known it, deep down, in that silent place where a twenty-year-old girl never looks, because we are all together in these pictures. It’s us. Photo after photo of us, arm in arm, side by side, looking so ready and so prepared.

  “I’ve got it!” Diane yells from the family room.

  “Thank God,” Pi says.

  “Showtime,” I say.

  The microwave beeps; Megan grabs the bag and opens it; Laurie puts the butter in a glass measuring cup and sets it in to melt for thirty seconds.

  “Come on! Where are you guys?” Holly calls.

  “Slaving over a hot microwave!” I yell back. “Popcorn doesn’t just magically appear, you know.” Then I look at Laurie and Megan and say softly, “Except, yeah, it kind of does.”

  Megan chuckles as Laurie stirs the melted butter over the popcorn.

  “What are you doing?” Diane calls.

  “Drizzling!” I shout back.

  “Oh. Okay. Carry on,” Diane says.

  Megan splits the popcorn into six small Fiesta ware bowls, the kind Diane’s mother used to have, because Diane made a point of telling us so, and so we all bought a piece of anything Fiesta ware, just to shut her up, we told her, but really, because if Fiesta ware means so much to Diane, then Fiesta ware will mean so much to me. Between the three of us, we carry the bowls into the family room and pass the bowls out to the girls sprawled in luxurious abandon around the luxurious room. The floors are the same dark-stained oak as the kitchen, the walls are burnt caramel with caramel velvet floor-length drapes to match, drapes that I’ve never once seen closed, and the long, slim sectional is in mocha wool that has a hint of lavender in the weave. The throw pillows are all muted lavender, each pillow a different shape and texture. I love this room. It throws off a great, if silent, cue to snuggle in and relax.

  “I still want my bling bag,” Pi says over a mouthful of popcorn.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say.

  “Is everybody set?” Laurie asks. “Okay, then, this is for you, Megan, from us. It’s a kind of going-away gift, and a graduation gift.”

  Megan is sitting next to Laurie in the corner of the sectional, their shoulders bumping.

  “I still get to keep the diamond studs, right?” Megan asks, nudging Laurie’s shoulder to show she’s joking.

  “Oh, she’s a smart one,” Holly says. “Way to keep your wits about you, kid.”

  “Idiot child,” Laurie says, laughing.

  “Hey, can we just show this thing? You can talk afterward,” Diane says. “I’m hitting play now.”

  The video starts. Diane and Laurie and I did most of it, with a little help from Pi since she is the PR person and has an opinion on things like this. Okay, Pi did most of it, but Laurie, Diane, and I supplied most of the content. Who knew that we were the historians of the group? The title comes up . . . Tales of Megan the Kid; there’s a tumbleweed rolling down an empty street in the background.

  “What is this, a Western?” Diane says.

  “I was going for atmosphere,” Pi says. “Cretin.”

  “I’m calling you John Ford from now on,” Diane says.

  “Down in front,” I say, trying to get them to shut up. I’m sitting next to Megan on the couch, Laurie on the other side; Megan smiles and crosses her legs, Indian style. Getting in the mood and grabbing the theme and running with it, right into the desert.

  The first shot is a photograph of Laurie and Ellen, each of them wearing a black evening gown, their arms bare, their smiles wide, arms around each other in a two-armed hug, cheek to cheek. In fact, that old song “Dancing in the Dark” starts to play, music, no lyrics. As the music continues, there are photos of all of us, usually in black evening wear, always smiling, always hugging one another. One of Missy and Ellen, holding drinks aloft, Missy looking completely plastered. One of Ellen in her senior year, sitting on Mike’s lap in someone’s living room. Then another of Ellen, Diane, Laurie, and me in a semicircle, arms raised, our fingers in the ULA victory sign, and the music switches briefly to the ULA fight song played by the ULA marching band. Then there’s a picture of Sammy Spartan on the white horse, reared on his hind feet, on the ULA Coliseum football field.

  As the image fades, the music continues, softly and strangely melding into “Both Sides Now,” and photos of Ellen’s wedding to Mike. Mike and Ellen cutting the cake. Mike and Ellen walking down the aisle. Ellen with the Exclusives in our wedding outfits; we look so young, so unscathed, which is an illusion. Even then, we had our scars.

  I have to admit, Mike was a very good-looking guy. He really did have that James Dean thing going for him. Of course, that only works when you’re young. Nobody wants a fifty-year-old James Dean loitering about.

  Then the true videos start, the age of photography as the best way to capture a moment changing abruptly to video with sound and movement. A few hours after Megan was born, while Ellen was still in the hospital, and the music switches to “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby.”

  “I look like crap. Put that camera down,” Ellen says to the camera, her hair flat and the whites of her eyes red with broken blood vessels, a shapeless hospital gown hanging askew on her shoulders. She looks young and happy and exhausted. Megan is in her arms, a tiny bundle in a plain hospital receiving blanket.

  “Will you shut up and try to act maternal? Good grief, Olson, I’m trying to immortalize you!” Pi says, off camera.

  Laughter erupts beyond the camera lens and the camera turns. Laurie and Diane and I look at the camera innocently, shaking our heads in confusion.

  “What?” Diane says. “Don’t film me; get the kid!”

  “Do something interesting,” Pi says, the camera shaking slightly.

  Diane flips a double bird to Pi, down at her hip level. “How’s that?”

  Pi laughs and swings the camera back to Ellen and Megan.

  “You keep moving that camera around like that and we’re all going to puke when we watch it,” I say on film.

  The camera starts to move toward the Karen in the film, and I say, “Just hold it still!”

  “She’s so bossy,” Ellen says. “Motherhood has done something to her.”

  “You wait,” the filmed Karen says, laughing.

  The newborn film stops just as suddenly as it started, and a video of Megan and Ellen at Paradise Cove in Malibu comes up, the pier just to the left; the music switches to “Surfer Girl” by the Beach Boys.

  “I love this song,” I say.

  “Shh!” from around the room.

  Megan is about three years old and is wearing a tiny little hot-pink one-piece with double pink ruffles on the butt. She looks completely adorable, her white-blond hair gleaming in the sun. She’s standing on the shore, the foam from the breaking waves just covering her toes, and every time a wave comes up to her, she stamps her feet in the sand, pushing against the foamy water. Ellen is standing at her side and holding her hand, staring down at her, smiling, looking back at the camera once with a big, white grin on her tanned face, then looking down at Megan again, talking to her.

  The Beach Boys keep singing, but it’
s switched to “Little Deuce Coupe” and it’s coming over the car radio. Ellen is driving, her face half-hidden by sunglasses; I’m filming Megan in the backseat, in her car seat, bouncing her legs, her pink Nike sneakers the closest thing to the camera lens, her whole body vibrating to the beat of the music, her little pink mouth in an O of sound as she sings along.

  “Rock on, kid!” Ellen says from the front seat, just before she turns on her blinker.

  I remember that day. We were driving out to Camarillo to visit Diane’s dad.

  The next film cut is Megan getting off the school bus from her first day of school, Ellen whispering as the bus brakes to a stop: “Megan’s first day!” Megan, her little legs negotiating the big bus steps one by one, and then she was down and running across the road, and then from behind the camera, very loud, Ellen’s voice: “Both ways!” Megan jerks to a halt and looks right, left, right, and then runs to her mom, her little face beaming with pride and accomplishment; then the camera jolts and we see only the top of Megan’s head, her arms wrapped around Ellen’s legs.

  I look over at Laurie and Megan. They are holding hands. Laurie is silently and slowly weeping. Megan is simply smiling.

  The music stills and the light fades, and when the focus returns, it’s Ellen behind the camera again and Megan is in the distance, walking away down the street in Encino where Ellen used to live. “Bye, Megan,” Ellen calls out. Megan turns around and glares at the camera. “I’m really leaving, Mom!” she calls back. Megan must be about eight years old, her little body so taut with anger, her hair thin and slightly tangled, the seat of her pants loose and dirty. “Okay, well, take care of yourself,” Ellen calls out. Megan turns stiffly and walks a few more steps. “I mean it, Mom!” she says, turning around swiftly to throw this latest threat. “I know you do, kid,” Ellen says softly to the microphone. “I’m here if you change your mind!” she calls out. Megan keeps marching until she’s lost to the dusk and the distance the camera can manage.

  Megan, next to me, sniffs.

  “How long were you gone?” I ask.

  “Maybe fifteen minutes,” she says. “She didn’t say a word about it when I sneaked in the front door, just, ‘Glad you changed your mind.’ ”

  Then there’s Megan at a swim meet, a row of kids racing down the lanes doing freestyle, all glistening bodies and swim caps, impossible to tell one kid from another, parents shouting from the edge of the pool, the teammates swinging white towels, the timers looking at the kids so seriously, stopwatches and clipboards proclaiming their official duty. The camera swings slowly from one kid to another, trying to focus in on the kid, the one kid that this camera should be paying attention to. The microphone picks up Ellen breathing, “I forgot her lane number!” Then the swimmers touch the wall and look up at the face of their lane timers, panting, asking, “Time?” their faces covers by goggles, water sliding down their bodies as they climb out, a wash of clear water covering them, like walking through a waterfall. Still, the only difference between these kids is the team color of their swimsuits and whether they’re boys or girls. Finding Megan in that pack of eight swimmers is impossible. Then one of the young swimmers comes over to the camera, her goggles pushed up to rest on her cap, impossibly long legs toned and tanned, breasts just starting to bud, and she says, “Did you see me, Mom? Did you see me? It was my best time ever!” And Ellen answers, “I was watching you the whole time. You looked amazing! Like a shark!”

  Then we’re at Ellen’s funeral service and Laurie is speaking about Ellen, about how bossy she was and how much of a fighter she was and how she wouldn’t put up with anything from anyone and was willing and eager to take all comers. And how she transformed and enriched all our lives. It wasn’t very long ago; we all remember so clearly that day and that moment, and we didn’t really need to include it in this video, but it seemed wrong not to include it. It seemed that, if we didn’t put it in, it would be as if Ellen simply disappeared and we just didn’t take note of it. So it’s in. Because nothing could be further from the truth.

  The sound comes up slowly, Pearl Jam’s “Smile,” and there’s Megan, flashing a big grin full of braces, and next to her is Laurie, flashing her own braces at the camera. They stand side by side, arms around each other’s shoulders in front of an orthodontic office, but not Ed’s because he retired in 1995, right after Ellen died.

  The music shifts to “Heartbreaker,” and Megan and Ben are standing in front of Laurie’s fireplace, Megan in her lavender gown, Ben in formal wear and looking more handsome than usual. Ben has a wrist corsage of deep pink roses with a purple ribbon and is putting it on Megan’s wrist. They look solemn and a little nervous, and then Jim says off camera, “You could have had a ’sixty-six Mustang to go with those flowers!” Ben smiles and then I say off camera, “No, he couldn’t!” and then Ben starts to laugh. Megan smiles at Ben, and she leans toward him to whisper something, and Ben grins and looks at the camera. “Are you really marrying a guy called Lavender Barrette?” And then Laurie starts laughing and the camera bounces around a bit, and then Matt’s face appears right in front of the camera, really close, and he says, “No. She’s marrying the Lazy Stalker. There is no Lavender Barrette. There is no Lavender Barrette.” And he makes that move with his hand that Obi Wan did in Star Wars. The power of the force isn’t working for Matt, because to us, he’ll always be Lavender Barrette. And you know what? I think he secretly loves it.

  I hope he loves it because he’s stuck with it.

  The video closes in on the roses of the corsage, fades out, and then fades in on a cluster of red roses: Laurie’s bridal bouquet. It’s Laurie’s backyard and it’s Laurie’s wedding to Matt Carlson. One of the most romantic songs of all time—“If,” by Bread—is playing softly, and there’s Laurie, walking down a grass aisle to marry Matt.

  We’re all there in this video; everyone came. Candy and Steve have just moved back to California from Hawaii, Cindy and Bob from San Diego, Joan and Benedict from New York, Holly and Bill, Lee from Arizona . . . all the Exclusives we see as often as we can, but as often as we can sometimes stretches for a decade or two. My kids are there, Ben, David, and Charlie. One of Laurie’s nieces came, Bond, who’s twenty-three and going to grad school at UCLA, the only one of her family to come. Except for us, of course.

  The video shows us all as we sit under the trees, the pool sparkling off to the right. Megan is standing next to Matt, waiting with him as Laurie comes down the garden aisle. I haven’t seen this video before; it was taken by a professional videographer, and it’s nice to be able to see the wedding from this point of view, almost omniscient.

  Laurie looks beautiful, of course; she is the bride. Matt looks like a guy on his first date, so nervously excited that he looks close to throwing up. He leans in and says something to Megan, and Megan smiles at him. Then they both turn to smile at Laurie just as she joins them at the rose arbor altar. I remember that moment from the wedding, that leaning in, smiling, sharing moment, and it warmed my heart then as it warms my heart now.

  They’ve found each other, these three; they’ve made a family.

  “He looks so happy, doesn’t he?” Laurie says softly, next to me.

  “He does,” I say. “He always did. He was always such a happy guy.”

  “It’s a rare trait. I appreciate it more now,” Laurie says.

  “Words of wisdom there, Megan. Listen up,” I say.

  Megan nods and says, “Mom’s got a good one.”

  Laurie beams at me and presses Megan to her side.

  The music becomes “Brick House,” and Diane says, “Really? ‘Brick House’? That’s what I get for my wedding segment? Who put the fix in on me?”

  “Laurie paid me off in Girl Scout Thin Mints. I’ll never go hungry again,” Pi says, fist raised to the sky.

  “Okay, Scarlett. At least we know your price now,” Diane says.

 
“Hey, at least no one played it at your actual wedding,” I say.

  The camera focuses on Diane at her dad’s house in Camarillo. Diane in a dress of oyster silk, belted at the waist and slightly off the shoulder. She’s standing in the living room, the view of the green hilltops and a distant slice of ocean. Her dad is in a wheelchair next to the stone fireplace and the guests, all thirty of us, are sitting on her mom’s old beige couch and nubby green chairs. (Diane did get her dad to agree to throw out the old blue accent pillows, but Diane and I, on a shopping trip that will live in infamy, chose the same shade of light blue, only with a checked pattern. Her dad was relieved; you could actually see it on his face.)

  Standing next to Diane is her soon-to-be husband, Mac. Captain Diane Ryan met Captain Jeff MacKay in New Orleans, about a year before she retired in February 2000 (we all went, including Megan, and we were all overwhelmed by the Change of Command and Retirement ceremony; I wasn’t the only one who cried). So Diane did, after twenty-five years in the navy, fulfill her dad’s command that she not “shit where she eats.” Megan is standing next to Diane wearing a pale turquoise silk sheath dress.

  “I knew I was being upstaged,” Diane says now. “The kid gets blue and I get been there, done that white.”

  “You reap what you sow,” Pi says.

  “Oh, nice,” Diane says.

  Megan laughs and leans forward; Laurie reaches out and runs a hand down her daughter’s hair.

  Diane’s segment only shows the part where Megan, Diane, and Mac are all standing, Megan taking Diane’s bouquet from her when the rings are exchanged, and then it fades out, taking “Brick House” with it.

  The next photo is of Megan in a two-piece bathing suit, sitting around the pool with three of her high school girlfriends, all of them with earbuds and cell phones in pretty cases, talking to one another and to the thousands of people trapped in their cell phone memory cards. Megan looks at the camera and scowls, “What is it, Mom?”