“Birds do,” Jess’s mom said.
“Is she still flunking English class?” Jess called.
“Shhh!” Her mom looked around; we were in our own alcove, sure, but around us were other dressing rooms and mirrors and mothers and daughters sitting on tufted velvety benches. “Keep your voice down, Jessica, if you don’t mind. We’re not in a barnyard.”
“Well, is she?” Jess stage-whispered.
“The teacher says she needs at least a B-plus on next week’s test on Hamlet, though I don’t think she’s even read it,” Jess’s mom said, slightly leaning away from me. “It’s going to be summer school, what with the math and all those absences in biology. And gym class. She just doesn’t go. All she has to do to pass is show up, and she won’t.”
“‘If I only had a brain,’” Jess sang out.
If I only had a heart, popped into my head, but I didn’t dare say it in front of Jess’s mom, though I was sure Jess would laugh.
“Your sister is plenty smart,” Jess’s mom said. “She just needs...”
“Let’s see if any colleges think so next year.” Jess sighed dramatically. “It’s so very, very hard being the good daughter, loved by all, including English teachers. ‘To be, or not to be... that is the question.’”
Jess’s mom’s face turned bright red. “Let me see that dress,” she said. “I’m not paying for anything I don’t see.” She glanced over at me and mouthed a word that looked like “sorry,” though I wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for when Jess was the obnoxious one. Bobbie had busied herself sorting a rack of dresses, waiting to be returned to the sales floor. I suppose good salespeople knew how to pretend they weren’t listening.
“Don’t like it,” Jess said. “Neckline for a nun.”
Her mother sighed as two of Bobbie’s girls returned, arms loaded with dresses for the three of us, and there was all that to sort out, Bobbie nodding after every opinion Jess’s mom offered, and I was sent to a dressing room with a Linda-might-like-this stack and a you-might-like-this stack. I didn’t have to lift a price tag to know that I wasn’t wasting time with that second stack. Jess’s mom slipped into her own curtained room, and a certain relaxed silence settled as we shed garments, flung clothes we didn’t have to hang up properly, tugged carelessly at zippers and buttons, wanting to see only how good we looked and that the fit was perfect.
Bobbie chattered away squirrelishly—did we need other sizes? did we need heels? her friend at the costume jewelry counter could set us up, and on and on. It was like Jess’s mom had wound her up and she’d keep running until we bought dresses and left, and I felt that pressure building, the question of who would outlast the other, Jess’s mom, who had to try on everything in the store, or Bobbie, who had to compliment something every two seconds.
The plan was that if we liked something, we’d gather at the big mirror to consult. But I had no idea what Linda might want to wear: Puffy sleeves? Who liked puffy sleeves except five-year-olds? A high waistline? Or too much like the girl on my Pride and Prejudice paperback? I liked asymmetrical hems... would Linda? Jess’s mom complained at lunch that all Linda ate anymore was peanut butter sandwiches cut diagonally, so I decided to assume yes on the asymmetrical hem and said, “This might work,” and left my curtained room to step onto the platform. Naturally Bobbie over-gushed that I looked stunning, and she handed me sample black pumps, simultaneously frowning at my brown knee socks and keeping up the nervous-tic nodding. The dress was simple, so maybe a leftist high schooler flunking English and skipping gym wouldn’t mind it: crooked hem, severely straight neckline, dropped waist, royal blue. Not a boob dress or a leg dress, but if I saw someone wearing this dress, I wouldn’t mind meeting her.
Jess’s mother emerged from the cocoon of her dressing room, wearing a raw silk suit with a simple, straight cut. “That looks great,” I said, as Bobbie nodded, hands clasped rhapsodically against her chest.
“It’s all wrong,” she said. “But let’s look at you.”
I stood on the platform, wobbly in the wrong-sized pumps, and she prodded and poked and pulled as if I were a Barbie doll. She and Bobbie debated the cut of the hemline, which Bobbie called “fresh.” She told me to lean forward to make sure the neck didn’t gape, which it didn’t, and she rubbed the fabric between her finger and thumb and scrunched it in her fist to see how badly it would wrinkle. Then she hiked up the skirt, digging for the care tag, which made her brow furrow. She never once flipped over the price tag. Then Jess came out in her regular clothes. “I hated them all,” she said, and Bobbie shooed the minions back out to the floor for another round (the third? the fourth?) of black dresses. “Actually,” Jess said. “I don’t know about Linda, but this dress looks good on you. Minus the knee socks.”
“Huh,” Jess’s mother said, stepping back to assess. Her eyes narrowed, making it hard to know what she was thinking. I stood very still as I pretended to look at myself in the mirror.
“It’s a great dress,” I said. “I’d love if my mom came home with this for me.” Fat chance of that ever happening, which I didn’t mention.
“Linda doesn’t love much of anything these days,” Jess’s mother murmured.
Jess said, “Good luck even getting her to that wedding.” And she sighed, her lips screwed up in a tiny grimace in the mirror that her mother acknowledged with a slight nod.
Bobbie stood by silently, her eyes roving to other dressing rooms, to other women, to less problematic places.
“Probably I should just take you to the wedding,” Jess’s mom said to my reflection, with a gloomy little laugh.
I looked at the three mes in the mirror, front, side, other side. I lifted my arms above my head, then lowered them, as Jess’s mom directed, imagining myself at the country-club wedding, sipping champagne from a crystal flute, gossiping as we stood side by side in the ladies’ room slicking on lipstick, complaining how banquet fillet was always overcooked, which was something Jess’s mom had said at lunch, that she “just knew” the menu would be surf and turf because it was most expensive, though “everyone” agreed the club did a much better job with the prime rib. “Hahaha,” I would go in my new bubbly laugh when something was meant to be funny, and I’d exclaim, “No, really?” in a pert voice at the end of the story. I’d know which fork when. Everyone would think I was the one supposed to be there all along. Someone would call my smile dazzling.
“It’s a nice dress,” Jess said, sidling in close to her mother. “Anyone would like it, even dopey Linda. And what you’ve got on, Mom, is fantastic. Look at your own gorgeous self in the mirror. You look totally thin.”
I stepped down, and Jess’s mom stepped up in her own heels and hose; she wasn’t dumb enough to wear knee socks. The gold watch with diamonds glinted along her wrist—“Never leave your good jewelry in the dressing room,” she reminded us at lunch, as if I had good jewelry to worry about—and her hair wasn’t at all mussed from dresses going on and off. She rubbed her lips together and examined her reflections. I didn’t know what she was seeing, because she quickly frowned and stepped away, saying, “This ivory washes me out. No. Absolutely not.”
Several more black dresses arrived for Jess, and she returned to her dressing room with them, and Jess’s mom told me to set aside the dress I was wearing, that I was being extraordinarily helpful. Then the three of us tried on a hundred more dresses, or what felt like a hundred more dresses, always with something wrong: too young, too old, too short, too long, too chalky, too blah, pouf in the wrong place, not enough of a waist, cuffs on the sleeves when there shouldn’t be or no cuffs when there should be, too bright, too drab, gold buttons not silver, buttons not a zipper, a zipper that looked cheap, too scratchy along the neck, too tight, too loose, too wrinkly, too poochy, “no one can carry off pleats,” and every other reason why this wasn’t the dress—but that maybe the next one would be. It felt like every single dress Marshall Field’s sold passed through Jess’s or her mom’s hands. Bobbie smiled and nodded and tos
sed out compliments like handfuls of confetti. The man who had started the store was famous for saying, “Give the lady what she wants,” and Bobbie was following those directions to a T.
“It’s so hard to find the perfect fit,” Jess’s mom said, and Bobbie agreed, telling Jess’s mom that she had a very sophisticated eye.
Finally, there was a black dress Jess liked that her mom agreed wasn’t trashy, and there was a long conversation about control-top hose, and Bobbie had suggestions about which brands she preferred and so did Jess’s mom and so did Jess. I pretended to be sad when I told Bobbie that none of the dresses in the pile for me had worked, unfortunately, and when I handed them to her, she had to know I hadn’t even tried them on; they weren’t rumpled like Jess’s discards. Bobbie smiled brightly and perked out, “That’s a darn shame,” and Jess’s mom called, “Better to go home with nothing than something not perfect,” and I expected Bobbie to nod her usual staccato of agreement, but she let out a tiny, accidental sigh instead, because of course my going home empty-handed wasn’t at all better for Bobbie, who probably worked on commission, whose time was ticking away with us.
Jess plopped next to me on the tufted bench. “Sorry she’s so crazy,” she said. “I’d be dying if you weren’t here. And Linda totally would freak, which would make my mother panic, and then there’d be all that to deal with.” She slumped hard against the wall and did a very dramatic fake-dead-person face with her tongue lolling out. “Literally. I would die. You’re saving my life with her, like usual. Keep it up, and you’ll replace Linda as precious, beloved daughter numero uno.”
I shrugged. “She sure likes shopping, doesn’t she?”
“I’m pretty into shopping, but my mom really likes shopping lately, like really likes it. This is totally bad.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Bet she doesn’t even buy anything today.”
There was a short silence. I understood suddenly that Jess’s mom was a very unhappy person. The realization startled me, and I looked at Jess guiltily. This seemed like something she should know. When her eyes slid away from meeting mine, I understood that she did know already, of course, but that we were pretending she didn’t.
Another armload of dresses came for Jess’s mom, but none of them worked. Then she told me to try on the dress set aside for Linda one last time, for the final decision. I returned to my dressing room, and as I was changing I heard Jess’s mom tell Bobbie to look for one more in the same size. “It fits her perfectly,” Jess’s mom said, “like it’s made for her. Should I offer to buy it? One for Linda, one for her?”
Yes, I thought, but in the abrupt silence that followed, I flipped to no, imagining Jess rolling her eyes, shaking her head, her face tightening as she begrudged me this single dress, this nice thing that could be mine, that her mother could buy as easily as breathing. I didn’t even need it. I didn’t need it, I reminded myself. I could do without.
I stood exactly still so they wouldn’t remember how close I was. Jess’s mom said, “Your father can certainly afford a dress for your friend. And he owes me. He owes me whatever I want to buy.”
“No,” Jess said sharply. “She can buy her own dress if she wants to. Stop it.”
“Stop what?” Her mother’s voice shook. “Stop trying to be nice?”
Jess mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear. Actually, I didn’t want to hear. It sounded like “Mom, she’s not your kid.” Said nicely, not meanly, as if it mattered. Another mumble, then: “Anyway, buying more stuff won’t”—something—“you don’t”—something. My heart thudded in my ears.
“But this I can fix,” her mother said, too loud. “Giving something nice to a girl who dresses like she’s been through someone’s attic.” Rustling, maybe rooting through a purse.
“It’s not that simple,” Jess said. Or her mom? Suddenly I couldn’t tell them apart.
“This one thing is. Just this one thing.” And that was Jess’s mom. “She has such simple little problems that I can fix if you let me.”
Tearful sniffling. The rustling had been for Kleenex. No way could I go out there; plus, did they really think I couldn’t hear them? Of course no way could I stay in here either. I imagined the store lights dimming, Bobbie’s manicured fingers stabbing through the curtain; “Dear?” she would prod in an understanding, patient voice. I stared at myself in the narrow mirror centered on the wall. The dress washed me out, or it was the lighting, or it was that I felt pale or that I’d caught Jess’s mom’s infectious unhappiness. Seemed like a hundred years ago I was thinking about frilly toothpicks. I’d never thought of myself as simple, but of course I was.
There was no answer to this problem, letting her buy me the dress or not letting her buy me the dress. No one could be happy now, and anger sparked up: Jess couldn’t keep her stupid mouth shut for once. I hadn’t even wanted the dress, had I, until I thought it might be mine, until it fit. It was for Linda, Linda’s dress, though it felt doomed now, and I lost confidence that Linda would like it or even wear it. Instead the dress would droop limply at the back of a closet, eventually getting jammed into a box for the church rummage sale or the Goodwill, and end up finally mine for five dollars a couple of years from now, out of style and smelling of damp cedar, something old and unwanted trickling down to me.
Bobbie’s brisk footsteps came at the same time as her announcement: “That’s the only one here in size six. But I’ve got a girl calling the Field’s in Water Tower and Old Orchard, so don’t you worry. We’ll track down another.”
“How kind of you,” Jess’s mom said. I imagined the fake smile, the glitter of tears framing her eyelashes; Jess’s face averted, fumbling in her purse for more tissues, attention lasered on extending that task as long as possible; Bobbie talking down into the carpet, desperate not to lose the sale. I stared into the mirror, at the blurred edges of my figure sharpening into hard, taut focus.
I watched myself slowly reach for the zipper, snaking one arm along my side at my hip, but instead of edging the tab up with a tidy ratchet, I clenched two hands at the bottom of the zipper and pulled the two sides wide, hard, harder, yanking, stretching, and wrenching apart the fabric, splitting the dress along the seam. The relief of it, the simple relief. The dress was ruined. I had ruined the dress. And I had solved the problem, not that I expected to be thanked. “Uh-oh,” I called out to the waiting women, making sure to sound appropriately sorrowful.
What happened in the end was that Jess got her slinky black dress and also a couple of polo shirts in spring colors, a red ribbed silk sweater, and a pair of plaid shorts that matched the red sweater. We all got makeovers at the Estée Lauder counter, and Jess’s mom bought a gift set of White Linen perfume and powder for herself and a jar of facial scrub for Linda. Jess’s mom decided she would drive to Skokie to the Old Orchard Shopping Center next week to pick up Linda’s size six on hold, and also see what Lord & Taylor had, and maybe the Field’s out there had different stock, so she might as well check there for her own dress. Jess got three pairs of control-top hose to go with the slinky dress and also regular hose, because she complained she was always running hers, but really she didn’t like to hand-wash in the disgusting dorm sinks, so she threw away hose when they were dirty but still good. Jess’s mom picked up a box of Frango mints for a hostess gift for a card party on Sunday afternoon. We checked the wedding registry and looked at the china pattern the country-club bride had chosen (Westchester by Lenox), which Jess’s mom deemed “ostentatious,” noting gold edging was overdone and utterly unnecessary, especially inch-wide, pretentious rims like that, and Jess and I said we absolutely agreed. While we were in that section of the store, Jess’s mom decided to buy a “darling” tiny oval crystal picture frame, though she laughed that she didn’t need it. We trudged into the men’s department for dress socks and handkerchiefs, because Jess’s dad always could use more of those, and she also bought a navy-blue V-neck sweater that Jess said he’d never wear. On a whim, she led us through the bed and bath shop, picking up a
set of green towels on sale. All the things Jess’s mom bought got rung up on her Marshall Field’s charge card, the bill for which Jess’s dad would get in the mail on the fifteenth and for which he would scribble out a check, simply paying the total, without asking if the day had been fun, without asking what all had been bought, without even knowing anything at all about this shopping trip.
After Linda died, I tried not to think about this afternoon and how Linda’s absence that day now yawned into a greater, longer, vaster absence. Linda had been the favorite, according to Jess. Now she was gone. Only Jess was left, and a gaping hole, and a family smashed into pieces.
I tried not to think of Jess’s mom rolling a silky hem between her finger and thumb, raising a faded T-shirt to her nose to inhale her missing daughter’s inimitable scent. I tried not to think about Linda at all, though of course I did, and the clothes left hanging in the closet, the sweaters in the drawer, all of them my size, all of them with the potential to fit me perfectly.
Strategies for Survival #3: Silence
(fall, junior year)
It was cool on campus to talk about the Tylenol killer. Even at the frat parties I still went to, though I was a junior and should have outgrown them. I liked being there, especially alone, standing near the keg or the garbage can of punch, eavesdropping. The things I heard. “That pathetic dork,” a girl would say to another, “telling me about his parents’ honeymoon in Maui. How dare he think I care about Maui?” Or the girl going a mile a minute to her friend, “My boyfriend, you know, like totally is pissed because I like said Ronald Reagan was cute, you know, like for an old guy. I mean, I know I like said ‘for an old guy,’ you know.” Or the guy who lifted his beer cup and toasted, “Here’s to you and me and all the children in Africa!”
Now it was all about the killer on the loose, the murderer among us. Psych majors buzzed importantly with terms like “antisocial personality disorder” and “DSM-III.” A freshman girl explained that no way was she using Johnson & Johnson baby powder until the killer was caught because nothing was stopping him from contaminating that, too, and her friend said, “You don’t eat baby powder,” and she said, “We don’t know half the ways poison infiltrates.” A group of drunk premeds argued about why the capsules contained ten thousand milligrams of cyanide when half a gram would do it: Simple sloppiness or purposeful misdirection away from a scientific suspect? Student government and poli-sci types round-robinned blame on Reagan, the CIA, Cuba, Brezhnev and the goddamn Politburo, the Trilateral Commission, and anarchists. “The Mafia, obviously,” a voice behind me murmured, but when I spun around no one was there. Journalism students were certain the cops were protecting someone, but who? The religious studies students pondered the existence of evil.
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