Fools Paradise

by Stevenson, Jennifer

  “Okay. You—you made me understand,” she conceded.

  He flashed cow eyes at her and blushed. What if he isn’t in love with me? What if it’s just lust? He might go cow-eyed over her but he definitely didn’t want to marry her.

  Did any of the guys really love her? She suddenly felt sorry for poor little Wesley with his sixteen-year-old thing keeping him up at night, living with a slutty-looking cousin in too-tight low riders.

  She slid her hand out of Bobbyjay’s.

  “I understand now about the clothes,” she said quietly. “You were right.”

  “You said that yesterday,” Bobbyjay said, waving off her apology. “I ain’t makin’ you eat dirt, Daze. We get enough of that from our families.”

  “We do, don’t we,” she said and forced out a laugh. “But I’m glad I kicked Badger.”

  Bobbyjay’s head swiveled around fast. “Why did you, anyway? Don’t tell me he had the nerve to hit on you.”

  She swallowed. “Well, not recently. Not ever, really.” She looked through the front windshield at sweaty yuppies in suits rushing through the intersection in their uncomfortable-looking shoes. “One time.” She was aware of Bobbyjay listening intently beside her. “One time. When I was about thirteen.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Bobbyjay burst out.

  “It’s not what you think. I put on makeup all by myself for the first time. Goomba sent Badger to pick me up from school.” She wasn’t quite ready to say, I wore it for Badger. “And he told me not to wear makeup like that, because guys would want to do something, and I said, What, because,” she gulped. She’d never told anyone. “Because he was always telling me what to do and I—” I had the hugest crush on him. “I was tired of it. So I said, What. And he grabbed me and he shook me around and he stuck his tongue in my mouth and—”

  And Badger had handled her in a way that thrilled her and fulfilled her wildest fantasies, until it went on too long, until he squeezed too hard, until she got scared and squeaked and wriggled.

  “And then he said that’s what, and I had to look like a nice girl if I wanted to be treated like one.” She pulled in a deep breath. “He’s very old-fashioned,” she said dismissively.

  That excuse sounded lame today, after two days of wrestling with the intricacies of journeyman etiquette.

  “You never told Marty Dit?” Bobbyjay said, half a question in his voice. “Naw. Your grandfather would have killed him.”

  “He’s never done it again. Just, he gives me these sarcastic looks sometimes, like, Am I behaving myself.” She wished her crush on Badger had died, after the awful, contemptuous way he’d mauled her, but the horrid truth was, her crush had only intensified. I’m not the kind of girl you love, she thought. I’m the kind you maul. Tears welled up and threatened to spill out. She waited until Bobbyjay was merging left, his face turned away, so she could swallow them down.

  “Huh.” Bobbyjay sounded thoughtful. “On the other hand, if Marty Dit knew all along—” He stopped and sent her a guilty look.

  “If? If Goomba knew?” Her voice rose. “What do you mean?”

  But she knew. She remembered suddenly looking away from a circle of beery, braying stockbrokers’ faces to see her grandfather watching her from across the room. He was just standing there, letting her suffer. Like he couldn’t make himself punish her, but he would stand by and watch someone else do it for him.

  That made her so mad.

  A fire burned through her. She felt a fierce resolve to take them all down a peg.

  She would get good at stagehanding. She would figure out the rules and work them, until all of them, from Pete Packard and Goomba and Badger on down to her cousins Tony and Vince and every bum at the Opera House, was forced to treat her with respect.

  Bobbyjay pulled up in front of the two-flat. He looked at her soberly as if trying to plumb her thoughts.

  “You’ve been great today,” she said, putting her hand over his on the gearshift, wondering how she could use him to teach her menfolk a lesson. “I’ll do better tomorrow, I promise.”

  His hand turned under hers, and he fiddled with the diamond on her fourth finger. “You’re doin’ great, too. Keep your pecker up. We’ll show ’em all.”

  “We?” Her breath caught.

  “Sure. We’re in this together.”

  Goomba’s face appeared at the living room window of their two-flat, and her heart sank. “So we are.” She swallowed. “See you tomorrow morning.”

  “Mañana, babe.”

  She lugged her toolbag out of the back of his Jeep and went inside to start supper.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Thursday, Bobbyjay swapped shifts with Mikey Ray and drove from the Opera House to upper Michigan Avenue, the sacrifice of a whole afternoon’s doubletime. But Daisy had asked. Her mom was freaking her out. He wanted to take Mom Ditorelli aside and tell her to look out for her daughter better.

  He met them in the Bloomie’s bridal salon. Daisy looked mutinous, her mother calm and determined.

  “’Sup?” he said, stooping to kiss Daisy on the cheek. She flashed him a grateful look and he was glad he had come. “How’d you get the day off?” he whispered to her.

  “Asked John Tannyhill. How did you?”

  He didn’t tell her.

  “Bobbyjay,” Mom Ditorelli said, “how wonderful that you could make it. You can tell Daisy how you like the dresses.”

  Dresses plural, he thought. He sagged a little. “Sure, Mom Dit—uh, Fran. Only—” he looked around desperately at white leather easy chairs. White. I ask you. He was acutely conscious of his sooty work clothes and steel-toed boots. There wasn’t a thing in sight he dared touch. “Where can I sit?”

  A dark, foreign-looking woman with a pinched face came up and threw a sheet over one of the white chairs. “Voila,” she said. “Please, be comfortable.”

  The chair was really, really comfy. That boded no good.

  The saleslady brought out a dress the size of the Shubert Theatre’s main curtain. Daisy sat beside Bobbyjay, looking crushed, while her mom jabbered with the saleslady.

  Bobbyjay took Daisy’s hand. “You okay?” he said quietly.

  “Pay attention, love,” her mom said.

  Daisy squeezed his hand and let go, but she tipped her knee over to touch his. That pretty much resigned him to not moving.

  After about a week they dragged Daisy into a back room with fifty-seven dresses. And eventually she came out.

  His tongue stuck in his throat. “Guk.”

  She looked like an angel. Her hair was kind of fluffed up and flying out behind her, and her bosom and shoulders rose out of this foamy white stuff like peaches in whipped cream, and her waist seemed to be about three inches around.

  “You like?” her mom said.

  “Eghk.” He swallowed hard. “Yes.”

  “How much does he like it?” Fran asked Daisy.

  Daisy looked him over critically. “That’s a seven out of ten. Try the next one.”

  He sent her a pleading look, but she disappeared into the back again.

  The next dress was very drapey. He could see the shape of her hips under it. The top covered what the last dress had showed, clear up to her chin. Over a frilly lace collar her face looked severe, like a nun or something. Only—those hips—he licked his lips.

  Fran glanced at Bobbyjay. “Well?”

  “Told ya. Three, tops.”

  “Five,” Bobbyjay croaked, eying the way the curve of her butt came and went as she swanned around the room, glaring behind her at the mirrors.

  Fran raised her eyebrows.

  “He’s a tit man,” Daisy said, and smiled at him over the lace collar.

  He crossed his legs. “Uh, I gotta go back to work in ten minutes.” He folded his hands over his crotch, too.

  “Hold that thought,” Fran said, and dragged Daisy away.

  They squeezed three more dresses into fifteen minutes. Woman-talk flew like bats diving at his hair: ivory lace, bodice pleat
s, goring, plenum, veil, bustle, train. He tried not to flinch. Two more minutes and he would bail.

  “So we like the first dress top with the second dress skirt and a medium train, stiff veil, and a garnet rose coronet with the seawrack hairstyle, chatelaine pearls, no gloves, clocked bone hose, and stacked heels,” Fran said, looking at her notes. “Just out of curiosity, what’s the damage?”

  The saleslady said, “About eight thousand.”

  Daisy choked. “No! I won’t do it!”

  Bobbyjay shut his eyes. We’re on a mission here, remember, Daze? “I can pay for it,” he croaked.

  Fran laid a hand on her daughter’s arm. “Your grandfather’s paying, sweetie.”

  “You can’t ask him for that much.”

  “I will. That much and more. This is for my daughter. It’s the only wedding I’ll ever throw.”

  Apparently Mom Ditorelli was determined to make the old man suffer. Bobbyjay was behind that idea a hundred percent, but not if it was going to upset Daisy.

  “I can help,” he said.

  “NO!” Daisy shrieked. “We’re—we’re getting married but not with all this—I can’t do that to—” She choked again and the saleslady stepped forward swiftly with a tissue before black stuff could run off Daisy’s eyes onto the dress.

  “I think it’s time for lunch,” Mom Ditorelli said to the saleslady. The two of them started stripping the dress off Daisy right there in the showroom. Bobbyjay watched, fascinated, until she sniffed and raised her chin at him.

  He swiveled away in his chair. The view from the mirrors all around the room was even better. It was amazing what real clothes did for her. Usually she looked such a pup in those schoolgirl clothes, trying to be sexy and looking like jail bait instead. But, wow, he thought. If she would stop with the two pounds of makeup, you might see how beautiful she was.

  Their eyes met in the mirror. “Don’t you have to go back to work?” she said.

  Maybe he ought to stay and protect her from her mother.

  “I’ll feed her. She’ll feel better,” Mom Ditorelli said.

  “Go on,” Daisy said. Her eyes were tragic. The saleslady draped a robe around her shoulders just as Bobbyjay was hoping to see her in her bra and panties. “I’ll be fine. Remember. You are not going to help with the money.”

  “Uh, we’ll talk later,” he said to Mom Ditorelli.

  “And don’t talk over my head!”

  Her mom kissed him on the cheek. He beat it before he could get between them again.

  Mom left her alone until they found a restaurant and ordered. “What’s the matter, baby? You aren’t having second thoughts, are you? I really like him.”

  “I do too,” Daisy said miserably. She sucked down so much margarita that her fillings froze.

  “Good, because this wedding means a lot to me. I want you to be happy,” Mom said. “How’s the sex?”

  Daisy choked a piece of ice.

  Mom cocked her head. “Hm. Maybe we’d better have him up to Lake Geneva with us when we go next.”

  “I just don’t want Goomba to have to pay so much. I can get married at the courthouse in any old dress,” Daisy said, forgetting for the moment that the big wedding was essential to the plan to save the grandfathers.

  That distracted Mom from sex, thank God. “No way. He owes you, baby. You’ve got a good man at last. I’d been so afraid you would take one of your loser cousins. I think Marty was afraid of that, too.”

  “Mo-om! I’m not a hillbilly.”

  “Well, you had it pretty bad for Badger for a while there. He’s related to your grandfather somehow—some kind of second cousin or first cousin twice removed, I can never keep it straight.”

  “I loathe Badger,” Daisy said. Her left eyeball still hurt from sucking icy margarita too fast, but the rest of her felt stronger. “He’s a busybody and a snoop. Plus he’s old.”

  “He wants the best for you.”

  “Who fucking cares,” Daisy said crossly.

  “At least your grandfather had the sense to ask him to look after you out there in the Local,” Mom said, and Daisy’s blood pressure shot up a thousand percent.

  “He what!?”

  “He’s worried about you working out there in the theatres. So am I.”

  I should have kicked harder. “Mom, I’m a grownup. I’m legal in all fifty states. I’m very happy with Bobbyjay. So Badger Kenack can stick his—his eye into his everything else.”

  Once Daisy had money, she could move out. Signing a W4 form at the Opera House had raised her hopes that she might actually see a paycheck someday. And an apartment of my own, she thought, feeling like a traitor to Mom.

  “I’m happy with Bobbyjay,” she repeated. “So you don’t have to stay around if you don’t want to.”

  Mom drew back sharply. “If I don’t want to? Darling, what are you saying?”

  “Mom, you told me when I was sixteen, you’re only staying in that house so you can chaperone me around Goomba’s strays. Now Bobbyjay can be my chaperone.”

  “Oh, sweetie, I know your Goomba would never let any of them get out of line.” Daisy was about to explain exactly how good Goomba’s chaperonage was, but her mom laid a hand over hers. “Does it occur to you, maybe I’m more comfortable living there rent-free than I would be paying for my own place? Maybe your Mom’s a bit of a coward, having lived there so long, with the Ditorellis keeping an eye out for us and helping when I need it.”

  She couldn’t blab on Tony now. What if Tony got Goomba to kick Mom out?

  “Keeping an eye out.” Daisy grunted. “C’mon, you’re fearless, Mom. You work for all those lawyers. Look, I know you’re always worried about money. I’m a grown woman and I need a job. I want a job. I want to pay my way finally.”

  Mom looked concerned. “You pay your way all the time. You work like a dog for this family.”

  “Money counts, Mom. Me having my own money will set you free, so you can decide if you really want to stay here or not. How can you really decide, if you feel like you’re still responsible for me?”

  It was Mom’s turn to sound choked up. “I’ll always feel responsible for you, Daisy.”

  “Groovy,” Daisy said cheerfully. “And now I get to feel responsible for me, too.”

  Mom frowned. “You’re responsible for everyone. That’s just wrong. The men in this family! All they care about is work and their income. Marty has buffaloed you with his money worship. He’d love to make you think that only paying work counts.”

  “He’s right.”

  Mom threw up her hands. “I’ve really blown it, haven’t I? Some feminist single mother I am. I divorced your father for being just like them, and then I went and let them brainwash you into this little-wifey thing while I work overtime at the office.” She touched Daisy’s hand. “You have a future outside the home. But what you do inside it is important too.”

  Daisy shrugged this off, wondering if her paying job would be as awful as Mom’s. So far she wasn’t totally adoring the Opera as much as she’d hoped to.

  “I don’t plan to keep house for Goomba and his strays forever,” she said firmly, trying to shore up her courage. “If I can keep the Opera House job.”

  “No, of course not. You’re marrying a wonderful young man,” Mom said. “If I let you think you were unemployable because your grades were poor—if that made you stay with me, doing the housework when you hated it—” Mom sounded guilty and sorrowful.

  Daisy hung her head. “I blew it, Mom. I blew off school. Now I know what happens to you when you do that.”

  Mom’s voice trembled. “Has it been really dreadful?”

  Daisy put her arms around her. “Just boring. And they don’t appreciate me, and—” they pinch me “—and stuff. And I don’t have a boyfriend. And I don’t go shopping with my own money. I don’t even have a car—omigod, did I tell you Goomba wants to buy me a BMW? I had to fight like a tiger to stop him. Goomba gives me his credit card any time I ask. I know how hard he work
s for that money. He says so all the time. I can’t feel comfortable spending it on my own stuff, ’cause it’s his credit card.”

  “That wicked old man,” Mom said with feeling.

  “He loves me. He loves us both. When I think how about hurt he is over this engagement, I almost can’t do it.” If Goomba were to walk into the restaurant right now, she would blurt out the truth.

  “He’s a ruthless old control freak,” Mom said. “He did that ‘so-hurt’ number on me when your father took off with his dancer on that last tour. And I bought it and moved us in upstairs.”

  “He still means it. He wants to keep his loved ones near him,” Daisy said. That was what made this fake engagement so darned hard. “Goomba’s love holds the whole family together. He isn’t always gentle in his love, but he means to be.”

  “Love,” Mom said, “should be more unconditional than that. I’m just grateful he seems to accept Bobbyjay. The way he feels about Bobby Senior—” She stared blankly at a waiter’s behind.

  Daisy licked a tear off her upper lip. “Mom, why did Goomba start fighting with Bobby Morton Senior?”

  Mom turned the stare on her. “Maybe you should ask him that yourself.”

  “Why?” Daisy rolled her eyes. “Because it’ll be good for me, or good for him?”

  “Both of you,” Mom said briskly, signing the credit card slip and picking up her purse. “I hope you’re not too tiddly to shop for shoes, because I need retail therapy now. Nothing wedding, either.”

  Daisy smiled. “I hope you don’t get in trouble at the office for such a long lunch.”

  “Slutty shoes to wear at Lake Geneva for your Bobbyjay, hm?” Mom said. Now she was back at sex.

  “How about some steel-toed boots? I dropped a leko on my foot yesterday and it hurt like sin.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The morning of the fishfry dawned clear and pleasant and Daisy cursed it. Why couldn’t Chicago come across with some of those famous Spring icy showers? Or even some snow?

  Goomba had been up until one o’clock last night erecting a rented canopy, with Wesley’s help. The useless twins, Vince and Tony, had rolled in around two with beer on their breath and a pair of girl’s underpants around Tony’s bicep like an armband. Daisy, of course, was up until two-thirty, rewashing the thawed smelt and then layering them with crushed ice in big bins.