Girls in White Dresses
JENNIFER CLOSE
T hi s i s a B orzoi B ook
P ubl i s hed by A l fred A . K nopf
Copyri ght © 2011 by J enni fer Cl os e
A l l ri ghts res erved. P ubl i s hed i n the Uni ted S tates by A l fred A . K nopf, a di vi s i on of Random Hous e, Inc ., New Y ork.
www.aaknopf.c om
K nopf, B orzoi B ooks , and the c ol ophon are regi s tered tradem arks of Random Hous e, Inc .
LIB RA RY OF CONGRE S S CA T A LOGING-IN-P UB LICA T ION DA T A
Cl os e, J enni fer.
Gi rl s i n whi te dres s es / by J enni fer Cl os e.— 1s t ed.
p. c m .
eIS B N: 978-0-307-70041-4
1. W om en— Fi c ti on. 2. Chi c k l i t. I. T i tl e.
P S 3603.L68G57 2011
813’ .6— dc 22
2011003397
T hi s i s a work of fi c ti on. Nam es , c harac ters , pl ac es , and i nc i dents ei ther are the produc t of the author’ s i m agi nati on or are us ed
fi c ti ti ous l y. A ny res em bl anc e to ac tual pers ons , l i vi ng or dead, events , or l oc al es i s enti rel y c oi nc i dental .
J ac k et i mage by M ay er George V l adi mi rov i c h / S hutters toc k J ac k et des i gn by A bby W ei ntraub
v3.1
T O M& D
w i th l ov e
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Rules of Life
Summer Sausage
JonBenét and Other Tragedies
The Peahens
Blind
An Animal Cal ed Ham
Cigarettes at Night
Black Diamond, Blue Square
The Day They Captured the Pigeons
The Showers
Hope
Little Pigs
Placenta
Button
Jesus Is Coming
Flushing Wil ard
Until the Worm Turns
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Reading Group Guide
I sabela’s sister, Moly, was married with ten bridesmaids in matching tea-length, blue floral Laura Ashley dresses. It was, Isabela believed, the most beautiful wedding anyone would ever have. She was twelve.
“More beautiful than Princess Diana,” her mother told Mol y that morning as she helped her get dressed.
“I need more bobby pins,” her sister replied.
Isabel a sat on the bed with her hair in a tight French braid. Early that morning, the hairdresser had teased and twisted her hair back, stuck baby’s breath in it, and sprayed it with an entire can of hairspray. From the side, it looked like a plant was growing out of her head. She kept touching it lightly to make sure the braid was stil there, and every time she did, she was surprised at the crispiness of her hair.
“Isabel a,” Mol y said. “If you keep touching your hair, you’re going to ruin it.” Isabel a put her hand in her lap and watched Mol y fluff her own crispy hair. Mol y stared at herself in the mirror until her face got white. “I feel funny,” she said. “A little sick.”
Isabel a walked downstairs, where she saw her mom running around like a crazy person and her dad walking briskly and trying to look busy so he wouldn’t get yel ed at. “Mol y thinks she’s going to throw up,” she announced. Her mom took the stairs two at a time to get to Mol y. Her dad gave her a little smile with no teeth, and continued his pacing.
The Mack family had been getting ready for this wedding for over a year. It was al they talked about, al they thought about. It was getting tiresome. Isabel a’s parents wanted everything to be perfect. They’d had the trim on the house repainted and the garden redone. “What’s the point?” Isabel a asked. “No one’s going to see the house.” Her parents just shook their heads at her and Mol y rol ed her eyes.
Isabel a’s mother and father went on a diet. They walked every morning and ate fish for dinner. When Isabel a’s dad ordered a steak or put butter on his bread, her mom would shake her head and say, “Oh, Frank.”
“What’s the difference?” Isabel a asked. “No one’s going to be looking at you guys.” As soon as she said it, Isabel a felt bad. She hadn’t realized how mean the words sounded until they were out of her mouth, which had been happening a lot recently. It surprised Isabel a, how nasty she could be without even trying.
Isabel a’s mother hung the wedding picture in the front hal . It was the first thing people saw when they walked into the Mack house. If you looked at it quickly, it was just a blur of blue dresses and big hair. As the years went by, it began to look like something you would see in a magazine, in an article titled “Fashion Mistakes of the Early ’90s.” Even the faces in the picture seemed to change. The bridesmaids began to look embarrassed to be caught in such blue dresses. But there was nothing they could do about it. They were trapped there, framed for the whole world to see.
“Whoa,” Isabel a’s friends would say when they saw it.
“I know,” Isabel a would say. “It’s horrendous.”
Before Isabel a moved to New York, her mom made her clean out her closet. “There are things in there that you haven’t worn in years,” she said.
“Let’s get it al cleaned out and I’l give it to the Salvation Army.” She said it in an upbeat voice like it would be a fun thing to do. “You’l feel so much better when it’s done,” her mother added.
“I real y doubt that,” Isabel a said.
Isabel a sorted through old notebooks and shoes. She threw out T-shirts from high school sports teams and col ages she’d made in junior high. In the back of her closet she found the blue floral beast. It was even worse in person. Isabel a thought the color would have faded over the years, but it was just as vivid as ever. She held it up for a moment and then brought it to the dress-up chest in the playroom. Maybe her nieces would like to play with it. She shoved it in with the pirate costumes and princess dresses and forgot about it.
New York in September was busy, like everyone was in a hurry to get back to real life after the lazy summer. Isabel a liked the feeling of it, the rushing around, and she let herself get swept along the sidewalks. She walked quickly, trotting beside the crowds of people, like she had somewhere important to be, too, like she was part of the productivity of the city, when real y she was just going to Bed Bath & Beyond to get a shower curtain.
Isabel a had decided to move to New York because she didn’t have a plan, and New York seemed like a good one. Her friend Mary was moving there to go to Columbia Law. When Mary announced this, Isabel a was floored. “You got into Columbia?” she asked. “How?”
“Thanks a lot,” Mary said. But Isabel a knew she didn’t real y care. It wasn’t that she thought Mary was dumb. She just didn’t know when Mary had
found the time to make a life plan, study for the LSATs, and apply to schools. Isabel a had barely finished her final photography project senior year.
“That’s not what I meant,” Isabel a told her. She thought for a moment, and then she said, “Maybe I’l move to New York too.” Isabel a hadn’t considered this before, but as soon as she said it, she knew it was a good idea. She had a roommate and a city al picked out, and that was something.
Isabel a told her parents that she was moving to New York. She expected them to ask more questions, to want to know the details of what she planned to do there. But Isabel a was the youngest of six, and her parents were not nostalgic about their children moving out of the house. Each time one of their children left, another one returned, and they had started to think they would never be alone again. “New York sounds great,” they told her. “We’l help you pay rent until you find a
job.”
Isabel a was almost insulted, but she understood. They wanted her out of the house and on her own, so that she didn’t end up like her brother Brett, who graduated from col ege and then moved back home for two years, where he spent most of his time playing video games in his pajamas.
During those two years, her parents had many whispered conversations where her dad said things like, “Five years to graduate from that col ege, and the kid’s just going to sit around here and pick his nose? Not on my watch.”
The apartment that Isabel a and Mary found was barely bigger than Isabel a’s bedroom at home, but the broker told them this was as good as it would get. “For this neighborhood,” she said, “with a doorman, this is the size you can expect.” She sounded bored, like she’d given this speech to thousands of girls just like them, who were shocked at the amount they would have to pay to get their own shabby little corner in the city. The broker didn’t real y care if they took it or not, because she knew there was a long list of girls just like them, fresh to the city and desperate for a place to live.
If they didn’t take it, surely one of the others would.
Isabel a and Mary signed the lease and moved into the apartment, which had gray wal s that were supposed to be white and a crack in the ceiling that ran from the front door al the way to the back windows. When Isabel a stood in the bathroom, she could hear the upstairs neighbors brushing their teeth and talking about their day. They were from somewhere in the South, and their accents made everything more amusing. Isabel a often found herself sitting on the side of the tub, her own toothbrush in hand, task forgotten, listening to one of the girls talk about a date she’d been on.
Sometimes the neighbors smoked cigarettes in their bathroom, and the smoke traveled down the vent, seeping into Isabel a’s bathroom and making the air hazy.
They hung mirrors on the wal s to make the apartment seem bigger, and put up bright yel ow curtains to distract from the grayness. They put up a fake wal to make Mary’s bedroom, a slim rectangle that held her bed and desk and not much else. The wal was thin and Isabel a could hear when Mary sneezed or turned a page. Mary was always shut up in her room working, which drove Isabel a crazy.
“What are you doing?” she’d ask through the wal .
“Studying,” Mary always replied.
“Again?” Isabel a would ask. Mary would sigh.
“Yep. Again.”
After the first month, Mary started to go to the library more. “I’m too easily distracted,” she told Isabel a. It was quieter in the apartment with Mary gone so much, but Isabel a never real y felt lonely. And if she did, she’d go to the bathroom and listen to her neighbors chat, breathing in their smoke and laughing along with them as they said things like “Y’al knew he was a bump on a log” and “Back that train up!”
Isabel a got a job as an assistant, working for two high-level executives at a mailing-list company. She wasn’t sure what they did exactly, but she did know that they cal ed her their “executive assistant” and that her main job every morning was to get Bil a corn muffin with raspberry jel y and to get Sharon a chocolate chip muffin. Bil asked for his muffin, and Sharon did not. This was part of the game. Each morning, when Isabel a placed the muffin on Sharon’s desk, she said, “Oh, I shouldn’t!” but she stil ate it. “I was just getting Bil ’s muffin and I thought maybe you’d want one?” Isabel a would say in response. As long as she did this, they seemed happy.
Isabel a’s days and weeks fel into a routine, but she always felt like there was something else she should be doing, something better that was waiting for her. Sometimes on Saturday afternoons, she and Mary went to the park across the street and ate hot dogs in the sun. Mary always brought her textbooks with her, and took notes and read. Isabel a just stared at people.
“This is the first fal that I haven’t gone to school,” Isabel a said to her once.
“Mmm-hmmm,” Mary said. She turned a page and uncapped a highlighter.
“Maybe that’s why I feel so weird al the time,” Isabel a said.
“Maybe,” Mary said. She fil ed the whole page with yel ow smudges and Isabel a was jealous of her. She didn’t want to go to law school, but Mary had purpose and assignments and for that Isabel a envied her. Al Isabel a had was two bosses who just wanted muffins. And sometimes jel y.
Their friends from col ege, Kristi and Abby, lived in the same building as they did. Kristi was the one who’d recommended it to them. “You have to live in a doorman building,” she’d said to Isabel a, as though it was something everyone already knew. “It’s not safe otherwise.” Sometimes Isabel a went out with them, but they exhausted her. Kristi and Abby always wanted to get dressed up and go out for sushi or go to a party where you had to have your name on a list to get in. They both worked in PR and al they talked about was events and RSVPs, which Kristi pronounced “Risvips” for some reason. “I can get you on the list,” Kristi would often say to Isabel a. Isabel a didn’t want a list. She just wanted to get a drink.
Sometimes, if she was lucky, Isabel a could convince Mary to go out. They usual y just went to Gamekeepers, the bar right down the street.
“Come on,” Isabel a would say. “It’s so close! We can be there in two minutes and have a drink and be home in an hour.” She always hoped, of course, that once they got there Mary would stay out later, but getting her out was the first step.
Gamekeepers was a brightly lit bar, with neon signs on the wal s and a black-and-white tiled floor. In the back room, there was a whole wal of bookshelves crammed ful of every board game ever made. The first night that Isabel a and Mary went there, they stood in front of the wal and stared at al of the games. The bar had al of the big hits—Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly—and some older games too, like Operation, Boggle, Life, and Sorry!
“Whoa,” Mary said, as they stared at the shelves. “This is crazy.” Al around them, people were playing games on long wooden tables, rol ing dice and slapping cards.
“Oh my God,” Isabel a said. She pul ed a box off the shelf. “Look, they have Pig Mania. I can’t believe it.”
“What is that?” Mary asked. She looked at the box.
“It’s this game, from the seventies, I think. You rol pig dice and get scores for different things.”
“Weird,” Mary said.
“The seventies were weird,” Isabel a said. “Come on, let’s play.”
They rol ed the pigs, but Isabel a could tel that Mary wasn’t into it. Two guys came over to join them, which was encouraging at first, but then they started snorting and squealing when the pigs rol ed into any position that looked dirty. “I got Makin’ Bacon!” Isabel a screamed, and they just snorted louder. One of them was so drunk that he kept swaying and bumping into the table, causing their drinks to spil and the pigs to topple.
“I think we should go,” Mary said. She stared at one of the snorters. “I have to get up early to study anyway.”
“Fine,” Isabel a said. She surrendered the pigs to the boys so that they could rol them alone.
“You’re leaving?” the drunk one said. He closed his eyes and Isabel a wondered if he had fal en asleep, and then he opened them and repeated his question. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah,” Isabel a said. Mary was waiting for her by the door. “I have a lot of things to do tomorrow,” she said. “Just a real y busy day.”
Isabel a met a boy named Ben and went on a date. She wanted something to fil her empty weekend days when Mary was studying and Kristi and Abby did things that Isabel a had no interest in, like going to the gym or shopping in SoHo. Isabel a went to the gym with them once, and Kristi wore earrings and a necklace while she ran on the treadmil , which bothered Isabel a so much that she couldn’t ever bring herself to go back again.
“I’ve never been on a date before,” Isabel a said to Mary as she got ready that night.
“You’ve been on plenty of dates,” Mary said.
“No,” Isabel a said. “I’ve been out to eat with
boys who were my boyfriend, but that’s not dating. That’s just paral el eating.”
Mary looked up from her books and tilted her head. “Paral el eating,” she said. “Huh. Sometimes I think you should have been a lawyer.”
Isabel a and Ben starting spending a lot of time together, but he never real y wanted to do anything. He was fine sitting on the couch in their apartment. “Maybe we should go out?” Isabel a would suggest. “To a museum or the zoo or something?” Ben just laughed at her and patted her knee.
She and Ben went to bars with flip-cup tables and jukeboxes that played Neil Diamond. They danced on floors covered with sawdust and drank shots with clever names like Baby Guinnesses and Buttery Nipples. On the weekdays, they’d drag themselves out of bed, get bagels at the corner, and head off to work on different subways. On the weekends, they’d stay in bed for most of the day, getting up in the late afternoon to get brunch.
They mostly stayed at Isabel a’s apartment, because Ben’s place smel ed like ramen and feet and had a sign over the door that said “Beware Pickpockets and Loose Women.” He had two roommates, large looming boys who sat on the couch in their boxers and were always eating huge bowls of cereal and watching ESPN. They didn’t seem to mind Isabel a’s presence, but they didn’t real y notice her either. Any conversation she tried to start with them usual y ended in a grunt, and so she was happy that Ben preferred her apartment.
Ben slept easily in her bed, his mouth open, covers kicked off. Sometimes Isabel a woke up with a headache and hated him for being able to sleep. Sometimes she crept into Mary’s room and got into bed with her. “He’s snoring,” she’d whisper. And Mary would grunt and rol over.
The more Ben stayed there, though, the more time Mary spent at the library. Their apartment, which was cramped with two of them, could barely hold three. Isabel a got the sense that Mary was getting more and more annoyed at her, pointing out that the garbage was ful , saying things like “I guess I’l go get more toilet paper, again,” and shutting her door extra hard when she came home. Once, in the middle of the night, Ben left the toilet seat up and Mary fel in as she sat down. Isabel a tried to make it up to her, cleaning the bathroom and buying candy. She could tel that Mary appreciated her efforts, but the apartment remained crowded, and stil sometimes caused Mary to sigh loudly or snap about the dishes, depending on the day.
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