by Wendy Wax
“Thank you. It’s nice to be back.”
“You need to come home more often. Right, Brianna?”
“Um-hmmm,” Bree says with a polite smile that is decidedly noncommittal. As I pay for the Aleve and hand sanitizer, both of which I saw this morning in my mother’s medicine cabinet, I warn myself that however far I wander down memory lane it doesn’t eliminate the distance between Bree and me.
At the dry cleaner’s Mrs. Humphrey congratulates me on my engagement, gives Bree a hug, then hands over an ancient wool blanket that’s been wrapped in plastic for storage until next winter. It’s clear there was no hurry in retrieving it.
Back outside I wait while Bree puts the blanket and other unnecessary items in her car. I shift from foot to foot as I stare into the display window of the Attic Addict.
Some of my favorite clothes came from this consignment store. I played dress-up here as a child while my mother cleaned it. Adele Martin, a round, fleshy woman who had a big-city past she often alluded to but never really talked about, owned the store. She referred to herself as a “chocoholic” before the word existed and would slip me Snickers and Milky Way bars and set aside outfits she thought would look good on me as soon as they came in. I loved tottering around in high heels and making up stories to go along with the more exotic articles of clothing so much that it took me a long time to realize that my mother was trading her cleaning services for used clothing because we couldn’t even afford the basics at Davis’s Everything to Wear. Later Bree and I shopped here together for prom dresses and funky scarves and accessories. Adele claimed to know the history behind each article of clothing, but Bree and I entertained ourselves creating our own.
Bree steps up beside me and I see her reflection join mine in the store window—me tall and angular, her short and curvy. For a moment I see the two of us as we once were. Let myself remember how we could lie on our beds or on the living room floor reading for hours in total silence or talk nonstop for what felt like days at a time. How as teenagers we called each other bitch and it was a term of endearment.
“Do you remember the stories we used to make up about the clothes we tried on and who they used to belong to?” she asks.
“Are you kidding? I still have that trench coat that once belonged to Mata Hari. And the rhinestone necklace that we were certain had been designed by Paloma Picasso.”
“Adele’s funeral was so beautiful,” she says quietly, staring straight ahead. “Mount Olivet Church was packed. Everyone wore bright colors and some piece of clothing or jewelry that she’d chosen for them. Afterward, at the reception, there were tables and tables of chocolate desserts—all of them made by hand. Kendra brought her beignets with chocolate pot de crème, and I ate so many I thought I’d get sick.”
We both stare at our reflections and, I think, our past. The musky scent of Evening in Paris that clung to Adele and her clothes teases at my memory. I banish a dull ache of loss as we walk into Paramount Office Supply, where we pick up—I kid you not—an individual block of sticky notes. This is when I remind myself that I could have been out showing Spencer around or walking with him on the beach. Hell, I could already be trying on THE DRESS.
My grumble is automatic but I hear my mother’s plea for us to mend fences, and I keep the grumble mostly under my breath as I follow Bree to the bookstore. A bell jangles as she pushes open the door to Title Waves.
For a brief second I take in the store, the tables that display bestsellers (including my own) along with local guidebooks and tomes on Outer Banks history. The floor-to-ceiling shelves. The whimsical artwork. I haven’t been in for a while and either she’s remodeled or I’ve forgotten (or possibly blocked) how warm and cozy it is. The store has flooded more than once—you can’t be this close to the bay and not deal with the threat—but as far as I know this store is not going anywhere.
Then there are shouts of “Congratulations! You did it! Woo-hoo!!” And a group of women pop out from behind the walls that separate this side of the store from the side that houses the extensive children’s section and register area.
I run into Bree’s back with an “oof.” When I detach myself and look over her shoulder, I see the women who are whistling and applauding. All of them rush forward. Digital flashes go off, and I close my mouth because I can feel it gaping. I take a step back from the onslaught and only then do I notice that it’s Bree, not me, that they’re rushing toward, Bree that each of them hugs.
Mrs. McKinnon steps from behind the desk and sails toward us. I was slightly in awe of her as a child and not only because she rapped my knuckles more than once when I grabbed more than my share of snack at Sunday school. As she puts her arms around Bree and crushes her to her breast, I vaguely remember my mother telling me that she’d recently lost her husband to whom she’d been married since God was a boy. It’s clear that she’s the one who organized the surprise celebration. I can’t remember the last time anyone made a big deal about my finishing a novel—that’s just part of what’s expected—let alone threw a party.
“We are all so proud of you!” Mrs. McKinnon tells Bree. “We knew you could do it and none of us can wait to read your novel once it’s published.”
I clamp my lips closed even more tightly as another flash goes off and only just manage to stop myself from snorting at their assumption that just because someone finishes a manuscript a publisher will want to buy it. I wonder uncharitably how anything written over such a long period of time can be at all cohesive. But then Bree glances over her shoulder at me, and I realize she knows what I’m thinking. Or at least knows very well that things don’t work that way. As they shower her with obvious love and affection and—yes—admiration—I remind myself that I once greatly admired her and her writing talent, too. The only time Bree ever stuck her head in the sand was when it came to Clay.
I’m reintroduced to a woman named Leslie Parent, a tall, pixie-haired woman in her fifties who is the founding member of the B’s, which is apparently short for “books, broads, and booze.”
They all smile at me and offer congratulations on my engagement, but their real enthusiasm is showered on Brianna. It’s obvious how much she means to them, how highly they think of her. I feel an unexpected tug of envy for the community she’s built, the friends surrounding her. But this time instead of allowing the envy to reignite the flame of hurt and anger I’ve been stoking all these years, I feel a wave of longing for the friendship we once shared.
“May I get a photograph of the two of you?” Mrs. McKinnon asks. “And then one of the whole group right over there next to the sign? We could include it in the book club newsletter for those who couldn’t be here today.”
“Of course,” Bree says as we’re herded into position, though I sense she’s more interested in pleasing Mrs. McKinnon and the assembled book club members than in having a picture that documents my presence.
Nonetheless I give my best smile for the camera and tilt my head to its most flattering angle as Bree and I slip our arms gingerly around each other’s backs, a move that once would have been instinctual and welcome. I keep smiling as everyone piles in around us and Leslie, who lays claim to the longest arms, attempts to include the entire group in her selfie.
As we’re led to the celebratory punch and cookies, I try to shake off the sense of loss and regret swirling inside me. I know I need to replace it with something positive. Something concrete. Like the fact that I didn’t even have to ask Leslie to send me a copy of the photo or tell Bree about the fifteenth-anniversary edition of Sandcastle Sunrise.
As I drink a glass of punch and answer questions about the “exciting” life of a bestselling author, I realize that although I’m not about to say so, I’m not entirely angry at my mother for sending Bree and me together on her made-up errands.
Seventeen
Kendra
The Sandcastle
I’m not exactly hyperventilating, but I
’m not anywhere near calm, either. In fact, I’ve been pacing the house since everyone left. At the moment, the pool of dread inside me feels as deep and unpredictable as the Atlantic. I haven’t been this anxious since the morning I left Aunt Velda’s with my four-day-old baby, afraid that if I lingered too long my father, who could be frighteningly persuasive, would show up and somehow convince me to give Lauren up.
I unwrap THE DRESS with clumsy fingers and lay it gently on my bed. It came to me shortly after Aunt Velda’s death just as her will stipulated, accompanied by a handwritten note from her asking that I continue to make it available to any Jameson bride who wanted to wear it. I suspect it was her attempt to bring Lauren and me back into the family fold. It arrived along with things that had belonged to my mother. My baby book that she’d meticulously filled in, a silver brush and comb set engraved with my initials, and the portrait of my mother in THE DRESS that had always hung above my parents’ bed. My father refused to forgive me or allow my mother to see me up until the moment he drove the two of them into a tree one wintery night after suffering a heart attack behind the wheel.
My hands shake as I arrange THE DRESS on a padded hanger and hook it carefully over the top of the open closet door. I take my time positioning the train in a perfect swirl on the floor and place a pair of satin high-heel pumps next to it. Half of me can’t wait to see Lauren in it. The other half is afraid I won’t be able to bear it, given the confession that will follow.
I stand next to the dress and stare into the dresser mirror on the opposite wall, taking in my ramrod-straight back, the careful way I’m holding myself, the look of terror on my face. If an artist were to paint me in this moment the work would have to be titled Woman Awaiting Doom. Or perhaps more succinctly, Impending Doom.
I turn my back on the mirror and look instead at THE DRESS . . . What can I say about the dress? Only that it’s still beautiful. And that whatever happens next will not be its fault. Any more than it was to blame when I turned and ran. As far as I know I gave it its only black mark. Plenty of women have worn it all the way through their ceremonies. Many of them have lived happily ever after. Or at least happily enough.
Not for the first time I let myself wonder if my mother was ever happy.
Pictures of her as a girl show her with an uncertain, tentative smile. After she married my father her face looked increasingly serious, ever more careful. Pictures of her holding me as an infant show her pinch faced and anxious. The only time I remember her laughing out loud were those rare occasions when she was with her sister and my father was nowhere in sight.
* * *
Bree
Lauren doesn’t say much as we get in the car for the drive back to Kendra’s and neither do I. I’m too busy thinking about the celebration we just left and whether Kendra wanted Lauren to witness it or was only bent on throwing Lauren and me together.
Of course, I might have been able to enjoy the celebration more if I hadn’t been so aware of what Lauren must have been thinking of making such a big deal of such a small accomplishment compared to hers. And if I hadn’t recognized the too-careful expression on her face.
That’s the problem with knowing, or having known, someone so well. You’re forced to recognize the truth whether you want to or not. It’s easier not to think about Lauren or miss the friendship that once meant everything to me when she’s not here as a reminder. I’ve spent a lot of years trying to let go of her, but while I’ve met, liked, befriended, and even admired lots of women, I’ve never gotten that close to any of them. I think that kind of effortless bone-deep connection comes along maybe once or twice in a lifetime if you’re lucky.
I guess that’s why what she thinks still matters to me. And why I cringe when I imagine how she must see me. How silly that “party” must have seemed to her. Lauren’s actually accomplished the things I only dream about. And I’m not stupid. The chances of Heart of Gold ever getting published are probably about the same as Clay never looking at another woman.
I almost snort at the thought, but manage to stop myself in case Lauren is watching. In fact, I feel her gaze flicker over me. Am I just imagining that the silence feels different? Or is it the result of letting myself remember how much she used to mean to me? How much we meant to each other.
Uncomfortable with the silence I can’t quite identify, I flick on the radio. There’s a commercial for a new restaurant in Kill Devil Hills, a public service announcement for an upcoming 5K run, a sale at Miss Lizzie’s boutique. And then out of nowhere, the opening drum licks of Ray Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” fill the car.
Lauren and I turn to face each other. We don’t speak or comment or ask what the odds are of “our song” playing on this particular radio station at this exact moment. Our heads are already bobbing to the beat. We turn our eyes back to the road as the opening guitar riffs come in, but our heads continue to bob. Our chins get involved. Our chests. Our shoulders. We sway and bob from the waist up.
We hit the first line, “Pretty woman, walking down the street,” right along with Roy and we stick with him word for word, phrase by phrase. We bob the whole time, doing double bobs and shoulder-drop sways in the exact spots we once choreographed them. The beat and the music and the memories swell inside me.
Lauren’s eyes close. Her hands go up. Her bent arms move to the beat and I know she’s seeing us dancing together in my grandmother’s living room, filling its empty silence in the same way she and this song helped fill the emptiness inside me.
I keep my eyes mostly on the road but my brain reenacts each step, bob, bump, and sway. My lips stretch into a smile that mirrors Lauren’s. Her fist goes up like a microphone and I automatically lean toward it. Our past slams into the present as we shout/purr “Mercy!” in unison. We do the same on Orbison’s signature “rrowwwwllll.” We do not miss a single word or nuance. We’re at a stoplight when we shout the final words of the song together with identical emphasis, “Oh, ohhhhhh . . . pretty woman!”
We turn into Kendra’s driveway moments later in shocked silence.
“Wow,” Lauren finally says. “I don’t guess there’s any way my mother could have arranged that?”
“No, but she would have if she could have.” I pull to a stop in front of the Sandcastle, where I stare out the windshield. “That was so . . .”
“Bizarre?”
“Yeah. Completely crazy.”
The car’s still running and we’re both trying to come to terms with our musical blast from the past. I’ve decided I’m not going to be the one to suggest that the universe is trying to tell us something when Kendra comes out the front door and leans over the porch railing. “Come on, you two. I’ve got champagne. THE DRESS is waiting.”
I turn to Lauren and summon the courage to be direct, which has never been my forte. “It’s your call. I don’t want to intrude if you’d rather share this moment with Ken . . . with your mother.”
Our eyes lock. I brace for a pithy put-down or a nasty send-off, but for a second or two I see the Lauren I once knew better than anyone.
“I always pictured you standing beside me while I tried it on,” she says so quietly I think I might be imagining it. I catch my breath in surprise. Her face tells me she’s surprised, too.
Lauren wasn’t here when I tried on THE DRESS, but she did come back for our wedding. She came back angry and bitchy. Acting as if my decision not to go to New York was a huge hardship and betrayal of our friendship. But she did serve as my maid of honor even if it was grudging. Still, I’m not about to take a chance that I’ve misunderstood. “Which means?”
She takes a deep breath then lets it out slowly. Her face still says she’s as surprised by her invitation as I am. Then in a friendly tone I haven’t heard in twenty years and thought I’d never hear again she says, “It means let’s go inside and drink some champagne, so I can try on THE DRESS and make my mother happy.”
* * *
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br /> Lauren
When we both get out of the car and join my mother on the porch, her face, which looked a little bit like a dog’s expecting to get kicked, breaks into a smile. Although she’s flashed her teeth numerous times since Spencer and I got here yesterday, this is the first true smile I’ve seen.
Her ridiculous ploy has worked. Somehow—and I know I’m not the only one of us who wonders how—made-up errands, a short ride in a car, and a series of short, unexpected sprints down memory lane have, at least for the moment, lessened the hostility between Bree and me. I have no intention of examining this temporary cease-fire closely or counting on it too heavily, but in this instant I feel lighter than I have in a long time. As if I put down a heavy suitcase and only realized how much it weighed after I no longer had to carry it.
When we enter the living room it’s clear my mother has been busy since she shooed us out of the house. She’s spent that time setting the scene for my “trying on of THE DRESS” and for a minute I’m sorry Spencer isn’t there to admire her stagecraft. Classical music floats from the Amazon Alexa I gave her for Christmas, each piece light and airy and romantic. Three champagne flutes sit on a silver tray on the cocktail table. Bree and I don’t throw our arms around each other or anything. But neither of us is scowling or trying to get farther away from the other as my mother fills the glasses.
We clink rims and raise them to our lips. I’ve never been a huge champagne fan but the bubbles tickle my nose like they’re meant to and there is something about champagne that elevates whatever you do while you’re drinking it.