Julia stopped, looked back. I pulled on her arm. She resisted.
“Thanks,” Julia replied. I could see she wanted to talk to him, though I couldn’t fathom why. “How are you?” she asked. I huffed audibly.
“Fine. Good. You know . . .” he replied, his voice dripping with self-pity.
Unhappy that she had stopped, but content that they were now ten feet apart, I gave her some space.
“I’m gonna get a to-go container,” I said, and started toward the counter, eyes locked on Tyler, warning him not to get any closer to her. They kept talking.
Julia and Tyler started dating the first week of senior year in high school. Tyler, a heady brew of clean-cut good looks and imposing brawn, was a consensus all-American on the field as well as a straight-A student, and that fall he graced the cover of Texas High School Football Magazine—a sure step on the path to sainthood. The students voted Julia homecoming queen, and as proof that she was more than a pretty face, she gave a commencement speech as the salutatorian in a class of six hundred. Awash in scholarship offers, inseparable, and in love, they were the envy of the school and pretty much every parent who knew them. They chose SMU together, and it was widely assumed they would reign there as before until they graduated, married, and went off to end world hunger.
The first year went according to plan, but last fall Tyler tore his ACL, and during the long rehab he grew moody, often downright angry, and month by month began to shut her out. By May their relationship was on the shoals. Desperate, sure something bigger was going on, she confronted him, begged him to let her in, to trust her, confide in her. For an answer he grabbed her by the shoulder, shouted “Leave me the fuck alone!” and slung her away. Her journey across the room stopped when her head connected with his bedroom door.
Both in tears, they showed up at our apartment and woke me. After one look I screamed at him to get away, then drove her to the ER. The doctor sewed the three stitches, and I pleaded with her to press charges. She refused, but did break it off with him. That was four months ago, and as far as I knew they hadn’t seen each other since, though they texted occasionally and he had called a couple of times.
I returned with my to-go container, dumped everything with calories in, and closed the lid.
“. . . so, I don’t know, maybe we could get a coffee sometime,” Tyler said. Then he went all misty. “I miss you . . . I’d really like to see you, just—catch up.”
“Thinking it’s gonna be hard to squeeze you two into a booth big enough for the restraining order,” I said, again moving between them.
“Megan—” Julia said, but Tyler interrupted.
“Same old Megan,” he sneered. “How’s your love life?”
“Anxious about prison?” I responded, not giving an inch.
“Megan, let’s go,” Julia said. I didn’t need to be asked twice.
“Look.” Tyler softened, casting back to Julia. “I just really care about you, and I don’t want to lose touch. Okay?” His eyes pleaded his case.
“We’ll see,” Julia offered.
“Okay, then, fun catching up,” I said breezily, and pulled Julia firmly toward the door.
“See ya,” Tyler called after us.
“Hope not,” I whispered, to myself but loud enough for Julia to hear.
Outside, I marched Julia to the car.
“Are you insane?” I asked. “That maniac sent you to the hospital, remember?”
“He feels terrible about—”
“He should. And he got off easy.”
“I just hope he finds a way to turn this into a positive. He’s really a good person.”
I looked at her. She meant it.
“You’re the good egg, Julia.” I held her by the shoulders. “And I know that you want to think the best of him, but trust me when I tell you that Tyler did a very bad thing and deserves whatever grief comes his way. Promise me you won’t see him alone?”
“Promise.” I hugged her, and she hugged me back.
“I love you and I don’t want to see you hurt. Ever.”
“I know. I love you too.”
We got in and I started the engine. Glancing over I noticed the slump in her shoulders, her downcast eyes. The last few months had been tough on her, and seeing Tyler clearly brought back the misery.
“Hey, this deb thing is gonna be great for you,” I said, brightly. “Four months of shopping, dates, and parties . . . just what you need to forget all about him.”
Tyler had done us one solid. He was responsible for our awesome two-bedroom apartment less than a quarter mile from campus. When two football players, Quinn and Brady, had pulled a midnight move, Tyler gave us the heads-up, and we ran over, checkbook in hand. We found it a wee bit less than awesome when we opened the door.
“Oh God!” Julia screamed. She stepped back as the stench hit her.
Picture this: an enclosed space where two large offensive linemen and their copious clones ate frozen pizzas and Chinese takeout, drank Lone Star, and never cleaned the bathroom or really any surface for two years. Add in various native bugs and fetid laundry cooked by seven months of summer, multiply by a thousand, and you have a filthy crockpot of stale and crusty testosterone—aka our new home.
“I can’t,” Julia said.
“But we can stay three years,” I pleaded.
We called the landlord and set off for Home Depot, where we bought rubber gloves, industrial cleaner, sponges, a bucket, a mop, bug bombs, and a box of paper masks. We bombed every room, then scraped food from the baseboards, washed the walls, the floors, the windows, and even the ceiling fan. Quinn’s bedroom was empty and in need of nothing more than the same routine we’d given the living room. Brady’s was a post-apocalyptic toxic waste site doubling as a location for Mad Max: Fury Road.
“This is your room,” Julia said, sniffing the air.
Two contractor bags to the Dumpster later, and we were nearly done. The last item was a futon, which rested on the floor. We hiked up the rubber gloves and each grabbed one side and lifted. Gasping, we heaved it toward the door, and that’s when we saw it: the March 2015 issue of Pistol magazine hiding underneath.
“Is that . . .” Julia asked, staring at the cover. A very muscular and very naked man stared up at us. In one hand he held a pipe wrench, and in the other . . . well.
“Oh my,” I said, dropping my end and bending down to pick the magazine up.
“Don’t touch it!” Julia screamed, but I ignored her. I was wearing rubber gloves, after all. I leafed through a few pages.
“Brady, Brady, Brady,” I said, thinking of the football player who had lived here. “What a naughty boy you are.” I offered it to Julia but she declined.
We manhandled the futon down to the Dumpster and shoved it in, along with the magazine.
Julia shuddered. “We will never speak of this again.”
“Agreed.”
After an IKEA run with Dad, we bought linens and a woven rug at Target, hung some pictures, and put Fiestaware in the cabinets, and the place felt like ours. That first night we were watching TV and I noticed Julia looking all sad.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I feel bad for him.”
“Who?”
“Brady.” The gay football player. “He must be so . . . lonely.”
Like I said, Julia’s the good egg.
The night we saw Tyler at Cafe Express, Julia came and stood by my bed.
“Still thinking about Tyler?” I asked.
She nodded so I moved over and she crawled in and we lay there, back-to-back, each lost in our own thoughts. I had been thinking about him too. Not about what a dick he was, but about his snide comment regarding my pathetic love life. I would never admit it, but it burned.
I liked boys. I just had no idea how to attract them. Flirting was an absolute myst
ery to me. I was categorically incapable of the unspoken communication that drew boys in, piqued their curiosity, or flat out turned them on. I had several theories for this. The first was that Mennen Speed Stick deodorant, which I slathered on because it actually worked, neutralized female pheromones.
The second was that boob tissue actually imparted the ability to “speak boy,” and if you didn’t have enough, it left you somewhere between a nasty speech impediment and positively mute. Mine were decidedly on the lean side—perky, but they lacked real heft, a pair of plums vying for attention in a market bursting with oranges, grapefruits, and ripe melons. I sometimes worried that a decade of lashing them in sports bras had stunted their growth.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be right there with you,” Julia said, reading my mind.
“I’m not worried,” I replied way too quickly, unsurprised by her clairvoyance.
“Uh-huh.” Julia was unconvinced. More than any other person, she knew that fathoms beneath my surface bluster lurked a gushing vent of anxiety about dating, boys in general, and the now-looming debutante season, which would be the ultimate public test of my femininity.
Spectacular failure is by far the most likely outcome.
Six
In Which Megan Proves Sir Isaac Newton’s Second Law of Motion
WHEN MOM ADDED “SHOW DOG” TO MY OTHER identities as “college junior” and “Division I athlete,” my already busy days became a nonstop sprint of workouts, classes, shopping, practice, dance classes, shopping, homework, games, and—oh yeah, shopping.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays began at five o’clock in the a.m. with breakfast—a cup of oatmeal loaded with blueberries, peanut butter, and honey. Then I rode my bike to the gym, where I lifted weights and did box jumps until drained and often dizzy. After showering, I downed two chocolate Muscle Milks for second breakfast on my way to my eight o’clock class. With no workouts on Tuesdays and Thursdays I slept in till the luxurious time of 7 a.m.
Because of my soccer schedule, I only took morning classes, and though that semester I took the required twelve hours for my scholarship, I went light on substance—my only real course was History of Ancient Rome, and I padded with electives in Mayan Art, theater set building, and personal finance. After class I crammed in a few thousand calories at the athlete’s cafeteria, and then had practice five days a week from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m.
After an early dinner (never forget food!) the second half of my day started. Monday and Wednesday nights were reserved for homework, and Tuesday and Thursday nights for a month, Julia and I waltzed around the Studio 22 dance floor. There were eight of us in the Intro to Ballroom class—two middle-aged couples looking to rekindle the pilot light, and a wedding couple nervous about that first dance.
Ernesto and Gloria, our instructors, had four weeks to get us on our feet. The women wore dresses and heels, the men slacks and leather-soled shoes, and the first time I stepped onto the waxed floor in my pumps I immediately concluded that walking in those shoes on the dance floor was not for the faint of heart, and dancing in them was downright perilous. For two weeks I clung to Ernesto, terrified he would let go and I’d spin off like a rogue planet into the outer galaxy—or worse, out the door, over the railing, and into the parking lot below.
Julia, a veteran of ballet and jazz from childhood, and a stalwart in heels, used that month as a tune-up, and several nights after class she led me around our living room slowly counting the steps. With her help and a lot of encouragement, sometime in week three it clicked. I wasn’t going to win Dancing with the Stars, but I was capable of moving in a gentle circle around a room without careening into the furniture. It would have to do.
On the weekends we shopped—relentlessly. Julia and I met Mom and her Chase Platinum card promptly that first Saturday at quarter to ten, before Northpark Mall opened.
“I’ve hired a stylist,” Mom announced as we stood outside Neiman’s. “She comes highly recommended.” I cringed. Recommended by whom? I wondered, and then recalled my Debutante Bible. No doubt our stylist featured prominently in there.
Mom seemed harried and distracted, like a young mother at the grocery store trying to push the cart, read her list, find the Cheerios, and keep an eye on a couple of toddlers. She eyed her watch again. “She said she’d be here at ten.”
“Still five till,” I offered, but in Mom’s world five minutes early was still late.
“She charges a fortune . . .” Mom said, and sighed.
I was now on the lookout for a severe, heavily made-up woman past fifty, a bloodless vulture in a black knit dress and pumps wearing little glasses on a chain. Her eyebrows, long since tweezed away, would be drawn on with eye black, and her pursed lips would be as wrinkled as scrunched-up aluminum foil. Once squired away in the sanctum sanctorum—the ladies’ dressing rooms at Neiman’s—she’d examine us with a cold and calculating eye like we were sweaters on a sale rack, and behind her back Julia and I would speculate that she enjoyed spanking naughty men and made extra cash as a dominatrix on the weekends. Her name would be Doris.
A dusty brown Vanagon, circa 2005, squealed into the parking lot sporting Minnesota plates and a faded Widespread Panic bumper sticker. It stopped with a jerk, and a very tan white chick emerged. She was in that gray area between thirty and forty. Her hair was a nest of dreadlocks, and she wore heavy, horned-rimmed glasses, an Irish flag wife-beater, shapeless jeans, and the clunkiest green shoes I had ever seen. She flung a nylon, caution-yellow Marmot backpack over her shoulder and slammed the door, but it didn’t close, so she slammed it harder until it shut, then locked it with the key, which she shoved in her front pocket. Probably stopping by to stock up on patchouli, I thought. But when she saw us she walked straight over. Mom stiffened as she approached.
“Mrs. McKnight?” she asked. Her voice was very low, raspy, and she spoke in a heavy French accent. She probably smokes cigarettes! I thought. And weed out on the lawn during the summer tour. Cool!
“Yes?” Mom answered unhappily.
“I’m Margot Jaffe.” She stuck out a hand and we all saw she had full underarm hair. Mom was torn between pointing and falling to her knees in shock.
“Oh,” Mom managed, trying desperately not to stare at her unshaved pits, and Julia and I shared a look. If Mom was looking to score backstage passes to Coachella, she’d hit the jackpot. For cocktail dresses and gowns to wow a Dallas debut crowd, maybe not so much.
“You must be Julia.” Her pronunciation of Julia was so exotic I half expected a plume of blue smoke to come out of her mouth.
“Yes—so nice to meet you,” Julia said, holding back an impish smile. As they shook hands we both enjoyed Mom’s obvious discomfort. She was absolutely mesmerized, and probably a little queasy, that Margot didn’t shave her underarms and had the brass to wear a tank top in broad daylight to go shopping at Northpark with clients.
“I’m Megan—great to meet you!” I said, delighted to keep Mom squirming.
“Megan—enchantée.” She said my name with a long E—Meegan—then looked at Mom without a speck of discomfort. “Bon—allons.” When nobody moved, she said, “Shall we go?”
“Yes, of course,” Mom answered distantly, and Margot held the door for us. We entered in the cosmetics department, and the poor saps who lived there were just opening the shop. They looked wan and thirsty in the harsh daylight. At the second counter a tall black woman with square shoulders smiled when she saw Margot.
“Margot! Ça va?” she asked, waving like she was on a float at a parade.
“Ça va, cherie. Et toi?”
“Comme ci, comme ça,” the woman said, shrugging her enormous shoulders. “À bientôt.”
“À bientôt,” Margot answered.
In a strange way this worked to establish Margot’s bona fides, and Mom mulled her next move as we worked our way past handbags toward the couture stuff.
“So y
ou helped Claire Munson’s granddaughter Mackensie with her debut last year?”
“Oui,” Margot said. “She’s a real doll, no?”
“Yes, she is—her pictures were absolutely fantastic,” Mom answered. And that would have to do for Mom’s interview, though clearly she harbored reservations.
“Now, we won’t need white gowns for the final ball. My sister and I are taking the girls to New York for those with their cousin . . .”
Julia and I exchanged a look. Shopping trip to New York? Perk!
“But both girls will need cocktail dresses and gowns for the other balls, and many have themes, so we’ll need to be aware of that. And what the other girls are wearing, of course. And then they’ll need shoes and handbags and—”
“Mrs. McKnight,” Margot interrupted, and stopped in the aisle. Mom faced her.
“Lucy, please.” Margot tilted her head down and looked up, so she could see Mom above her heavy glasses.
“Lucy. Let us just start with measuring them. We must let our eyes and minds be open to their natural beauty, and then hope that will tell us their style. Later, we will discuss exactly which parties and which dresses. Okeydokey?”
Margot waited while Mom absorbed all this.
“Okeydokey,” Mom answered, and smiled for the first time.
In the dressing room Julia and I stood in our underwear. Of course Julia was wearing a matching bottle-green silk set, while I had gone with my habitual Hanes cotton bikini and a gray sports bra. We were similar but never exact copies, and the years had pushed us further apart. Julia was slender, feminine, all gentle curves. I was more—uneven.
Margot removed an orange tape measure shaped like a snail and a box of pins from her backpack and went to work. First she measured Julia—precisely, to a sixteenth of an inch.
“A perfect size four!” Margot exclaimed to no one in particular, and then took a pink Sharpie and began making notes in a brown Moleskine notebook. “Five foot seven inches, breasts thirty-four B, waist twenty-seven, hips thirty- five.” Now she walked back and looked at Julia from ten feet. Mom went and stood next to her, and Margot had a stream-of-consciousness dialogue with herself. “Alors, blonde hair, wonderful complexion, warm eyes, green with yellow, neck long, legs slender—well, we can do practically anything with her, but I think we should first stick with the classics. She will look fantastic, of course, but the clothes will speak about her, tell everyone who she is, and not just what she is wearing.” She turned to Mom.
The Season Page 5