Girls in White Dresses

by JENNIFER CLOSE

  “She’s real y drunk,” Lauren said to Louis.

  He took her by the arm and led her away from them. Now they watched the two of them, heads bent together, talking quietly to each other.

  “Oh shit,” Shannon said. “Margaret Applebee is gone. We missed it. Where’s Mitch?”

  El en came back over to the table, crying harder now. She couldn’t real y talk, but they could guess what had happened.

  “He’s a jackass,” Lauren said.

  “He’s not worth it.” Isabel a rubbed El en’s back.

  “You should just forget him,” Lauren said.

  “I think Mitch went home with Margaret Applebee,” Shannon said.

  El en was up and out before any of them the next morning, and she came back to the apartment with Bloody Mary ingredients, a large block of cheddar cheese, and a log of summer sausage.

  “I’m sorry, you guys,” she said. “For how I freaked out last night.”

  “No worries,” Shannon said. She’d already made herself a Bloody Mary and was now cutting off hunks of cheese and sausage to shove in her mouth. Isabel a lay on the couch, listening to the conversation. She was too hungover to move, but made a noise and motioned for some cheese and sausage. Lauren cut some off and brought it over to her.

  “I cal ed Louis this morning to apologize to him too,” El en told them.

  “Why?” Shannon asked.

  “Because I want to be friends,” El en said. “I at least want to be friends with him.”

  “Do you think that wil work?” Lauren asked.

  “I think it’s my only choice,” she said. They were quiet for a few moments.

  “There’s something weird about summer sausage,” Shannon said.

  “There’s a lot of things weird about summer sausage,” El en said.

  “It should be disgusting,” Lauren said. “I mean, you leave it wrapped up and unrefrigerated forever, but when you open it, it’s stil delicious. It’s one of the great world wonders.”

  “I think it’s curing my headache,” Isabel a said. She tried to sit up and then lay right back down. “Never mind,” she said.

  “I think you guys might stil be a little drunk,” El en said.

  Later, they al agreed that she was a disaster waiting to happen.

  Lauren met Tripp at a bar in Bucktown that had maps al over the wal s and pool tables in the corner. He wasn’t much, but she kept seeing him. For her birthday, he gave her gift certificates to the bar downstairs and a dirty romance novel that you buy at a grocery store. “I know you like to read,”

  he told her. The card read Dear Lorin, Happy Birthday. Sincerely Tripp.

  “Do you think he knows he spel ed your name wrong?” El en asked.

  “He didn’t even put an exclamation point after ‘Happy Birthday,’ ” Shannon said. She frowned at the card. “So serious. Happy Birthday—period.”

  “I’m just cal ing because I’m bored,” Lauren explained to her friends when she dialed his number.

  “You must be,” they answered.

  Chicago was smal that summer. No matter where they went, they ran into people they knew: Tripp, Louis, and even Margaret Applebee were always around. If they didn’t see them at Shoes or Kincade’s, then they saw them at Big John’s or Marquee Lounge. And if they didn’t see them at any of those places, they always found them at Life’s Too Short.

  Every once in a while, El en would announce that she wanted to meet someone. She’d talk to the first boy who offered to buy her a drink. They would smile, encouraging her from across the bar. Then Louis would show up and El en would stop talking to the boy and come back to them.

  “Ignore him,” they’d tel her, and she would nod. About thirty minutes later, she’d decide to just say hel o to Louis. “I have to be civil,” she would say.

  She would cry a little and tel him that it was hard to just be friends with him. Some nights he would enjoy the attention, pul ing her aside and talking closely to her. Other nights he would get angry and tel her that he couldn’t deal with her, then storm out of the bar. Almost always, she’d cry back at the apartment, while they drank beer and ate late-night macaroni and cheese.

  “You can find someone else,” Shannon would tel her as she chewed the bright orange noodles.

  “This whole thing is getting real y predictable,” Lauren would say.

  They could have changed their patterns, Lauren thought later. They could have tried to go someplace new so that they wouldn’t see the same people over and over again. It just never real y occurred to them at the time.

  Their new favorite thing to do on Sundays was to sit on the back porch, drink Bloody Marys, eat summer sausage, and talk about the weekend.

  Shannon was mildly obsessed with Margaret Applebee, and wanted to talk about her al the time.

  “Just because she’s not fat anymore, she’s a huge slut? I mean, come on,” Shannon said.

  “Maybe she wants a boyfriend,” El en suggested. “I don’t think she’s ever real y had a boyfriend before.” She didn’t like it when they talked about Margaret Applebee.

  “Wel , she certainly doesn’t have a boyfriend now,” Lauren said. “She probably just has herpes.”

  “Oh, Lauren.” El en looked at her like a disappointed mother and shook her head a little. “What’s going on with Tripp?” she asked, to change the subject.

  Lauren shrugged. “Not much. We see each other when we see each other.”

  Tripp and Lauren sometimes went days without speaking. She kept thinking they would either decide to start real y dating or stop seeing each other altogether. But things just kept going like they had been. Most of the time, she saw no reason to change this. Once, she saw him go home with another girl from Life’s Too Short and it felt like someone slapped her. It was over, she decided. But then a week or so later, she saw him and made no mention of it. She would ignore it, she decided. After al , it’s not like they were exclusive or anything. He was just a good way to pass the time until something better came along.

  At the end of July, their friend Sal ie cal ed to tel them that she was engaged and getting married in a month. And also, one more thing: She was pregnant. They weren’t sure what to say, so they told her congratulations. They couldn’t believe it. Sal ie and Max had dated in col ege, where Max was known for doing keg stands until he vomited and Sal ie sometimes forgot she had a boyfriend and kissed other boys at the party. They were getting married? They were having a baby?

  “I think it’s exciting,” El en said.

  “You think it’s exciting that their lives are over?” Lauren asked her. She was appal ed.

  “But you know them,” El en said. “They’re in love.”

  Lauren snorted. “They’l be divorced in five years,” she said.

  “I hate to say it,” Shannon said, “but I kind of agree.”

  Lauren learned something important at Sal ie and Max’s wedding: You never want to be the first one of your friends to get married. If you are, just resign yourself to the fact that your wedding wil be a shit show. Most people are stil single, open bars are a novelty, and no matter how elegant the wedding was planned to be, it wil wind up looking like a scene out of Girls Gone Wild.

  They almost didn’t make it to the actual ceremony, because Lauren was throwing up al morning. “Please wait for me, you guys,” she kept saying before she ran back to the bathroom. “I’l be ready in just a minute.”

  They had five friends in town for the wedding, camped out al over the apartment on couches and air mattresses. When their guests had arrived the night before, they’d done their best to be good hostesses and show them a fun night, but had ended up staying out way too late. It was al they could do to shower and put on clean dresses.

  “Is this going to be a long mass?” their friend Mary asked. She had gotten ready and then lain down on the couch to take a nap in her dress.

  “You’re going to get wrinkled,” El en told her.

  “I real y don’t care,” Mary said. Sh
e kept her eyes closed.

  El en was the only one who seemed to be excited about the wedding. She hadn’t stayed out too late the night before, and she was ready on time, looking fresh and ironed. She sat on the edge of one of the couches with her ankles crossed and watched as the rest of them scrambled to get ready.

  The wedding was a mess. Everyone stampeded the bar and ordered tequila shots until the bride’s father demanded that the bartenders stop serving them. Their friend Isabel a was one of the bridesmaids, and she informed them that the bride’s mother had been crying al morning. “She kept saying, ‘I can’t believe this is how it’s happening,’ ” Isabel a said. “It was awful.”

  Their friend Joe threw up on the dance floor and it had to be cleared and cleaned before anyone could continue dancing. One of the bridesmaids was found passed out in the bridal suite and had to be sent home. People made out in corners, girls fel down and ripped their dresses, and final y the band stopped playing and everyone was kicked out and decided to go to Life’s Too Short. Shannon kept slurring, “Their lives are ruined, you know. Their lives are ruined.”

  Louis was at the wedding and they al knew this meant El en would cry. Louis and El en danced together at the reception and then sat alone at a table in the bar. They were sure that Louis would stand up at any moment and storm out, but every time they looked over, El en and Louis were laughing and he was touching her knee.

  Tripp was at the bar and when he saw Lauren he said, “Oh, you’re here?”

  “See?” Lauren said to Shannon. “Chivalry is not dead.”

  Tripp didn’t say anything, and Lauren had a feeling that he didn’t know what “chivalry” meant. It was becoming clear that he was stupid. She would have to end it. But before she could say anything else, he walked away.

  “What a loser,” Lauren said. Shannon nodded.

  The night ended when Tripp and Margaret Applebee left together. Lauren started crying, and Shannon and Isabel a decided they should go to the diner and eat. Lauren ordered eggs and corned beef hash, poured ketchup al over her plate, and didn’t eat anything.

  “He’s not worth it,” they said to her. She went home, left her dress in a pile on the floor, crawled into bed, and cried until she fel asleep.

  By the time Lauren woke up the next morning, most of their guests were gone. Only Isabel a remained, sitting on the couch with Shannon. They both

  looked like hel .

  “Where’s El en?” Lauren asked.

  Isabel a shrugged. “She didn’t come home. We think she stayed at Louis’s.”

  “I can’t believe she went home with him,” Shannon said.

  “Who? El en or Margaret Applebee?” Isabel a asked.

  “Both, I guess. But I was talking about El en,” Shannon said.

  “Can we please not talk about Margaret fucking Applebee?” Lauren said. She could feel Shannon and Isabel a exchange a look behind her back.

  El en came home later that afternoon, carrying al of their usual supplies for a Bloody Mary–and–summer sausage picnic. She hummed as she mixed together a pitcher of drinks, and bounced around the kitchen getting glasses and knives.

  “You seem happy,” Shannon said.

  “I am,” El en said. She smiled. “You guys, I had a real y good night. Louis and I decided to get back together.”

  “Oh,” Lauren said. She waited for someone else to be supportive.

  “You can’t date him,” Shannon final y said. “He’s awful. He’s awful to you, and he’s awful to us, and he’s just awful.”

  “He does seem to make you real y unhappy most of the time,” Isabel a said.

  “Do you real y think that?” El en asked. She looked straight at Lauren. “Lauren,” she said. “Do you think that?”

  Lauren had no idea why she said what she said next. Sometimes she thinks back to that moment and imagines that she could take it back. She blamed it on being hungover, on the wedding, on Margaret Applebee, but real y she had no excuse. Because what she said was “He’s just so ugly.”

  El en was cutting the summer sausage when Lauren said this, and they al watched the knife slice right through her finger. Her hand was completely covered in blood before she even looked down.

  “Holy shit,” Shannon screamed. Isabel a ran inside to get a towel, and Shannon cal ed 911. When they answered, she apologized and then spent five minutes on the phone explaining why they didn’t need an ambulance.

  “Come on,” Lauren said. “We’l take a cab to the hospital.”

  El en’s face was white and she refused to take the towel off to look at her finger. “I think I cut it off,” she kept saying. “I think I cut off my whole finger.”

  Lauren assured her that her finger was stil attached. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’l just need a few stitches.”

  They had to wait over two hours in the emergency room. A man sat across from them with his head leaning against the wal . When he was cal ed to go in, he left a bloody headprint behind.

  Lauren and El en didn’t talk much while they waited. El en looked like she was going to pass out any second, and Lauren didn’t think it seemed like the right time to continue their conversation. Maybe El en hadn’t even heard her when she’d cal ed Louis ugly. It was possible, she thought. They sat in silence until the doctor cal ed them in. Lauren walked back to the examination room even though El en hadn’t asked her to.

  The doctor looked at El en’s finger quickly and started numbing it for stitches. “That’s a nasty cut,” she said. “How did this happen?”

  “A knife,” El en said. “It was summer sausage.”

  “Summer sausage bites back,” Lauren said. El en looked at her with her eyebrows wrinkled together while the doctor stitched up her finger.

  Lauren apologized later, but they both knew it was too late. “I don’t know what’s best for you,” Lauren said. “You’re the only one who knows that.”

  El en said she understood. “Lauren,” she said. “I get it. You were just being a good friend. Don’t worry. I’l be fine.”

  When El en and Louis got engaged, Shannon screamed. “Wel ,” she said, after she stopped screaming, “I guess some people just want to be miserable.” They al went to the wedding and tried not to be somber. After al , she was their friend and they wanted her to be happy.

  They lost touch with El en. Not al at once, but little by little, so that they didn’t even notice until it had already happened. Maybe it was hard for El en to be around them, since she knew they didn’t approve of her marriage. Maybe their lives just went different ways—Lauren and Shannon both moved to New York and El en moved to a house in the suburbs. Sometimes they thought that Louis was behind it, that he had forbidden El en to see them. In the end, Lauren thought it was probably a combination of everything, but she knew they would never real y know.

  Lauren talks about that summer a lot. It has a point, a moral of some kind, but she’s not quite sure what it is yet. When people tel her that their friend is marrying a guy they hate, she says, “Have I got a story for you.” When she gets a Christmas card from Sal ie and Max with a picture of their two little boys on it, she shows it to people and says, “You’ve got to hear about this wedding.” And whenever she’s at a party and someone serves summer sausage, she says, “Did I ever tel you about my friend El en?” and if the person she’s talking to shakes their head no, she says, “Wel , let me tel you. We had this friend. And our friend El en, wel , El en dated ugly boys.”

  I sabela didn’t want to go to the wedding.

  They were Ben’s friends. She had never met the bride or the groom, and besides, she was fairly certain that she and Ben were going to break up any day. While she was getting ready that morning, she sat down on the bed and said, “My head hurts.”

  “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Ben said. He was tying his tie and not looking at her. She knew he real y wouldn’t care if she didn’t go and that pissed her off.

  “Your tie is crooked,” she said, and stood
up to finish getting ready.

  They were early to the church, which never happened with them. Ben hated weddings. During the ceremony, he’d rol his eyes or sometimes say,

  “Oh God, ” if the couple read their own vows or started to cry.

  They sat in the pew and Isabel a paged through the program. “You know who’s going to be here?” Ben asked. “Mike’s girlfriend. You know, the one that looks like JonBenét.”

  Isabel a had been hearing about this girl for months but had never met her. A while back, Ben caught her lying on the couch watching E! True Hollywood Story: JonBenét. “Why are you watching this?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing on,” Isabel a said. Little girls marched across the stage with their faces ful of makeup. JonBenét stood in the middle of them, twirling an umbrel a and smiling.

  “This is real y creepy,” Ben said.

  “I know.” Isabel a couldn’t take her eyes off the screen. They were such little girls, but their hair was so big.

  “I know a girl who looks just like her,” Ben said.

  “Like who?”

  “JonBenét,” he said.

  Isabel a turned to him. “You know a little girl who looks like her?” she asked, and Ben shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “You know my buddy Mike? His girlfriend looks just like her. It’s fucking creepy.”

  Isabel a didn’t believe him. “Ask my friends,” he said. “I swear, she looks just like her.”

  Al of his girlfriends confirmed the story. “She’s a dead ringer for JonBenét,” they said, and then they laughed. “Plus,” they told Isabel a, “she’s crazy. She’s obsessed with getting married and talks about it al the time. She introduces herself to people as ‘Mike’s girlfriend and future fiancée.’

  She sends him pictures of engagement rings constantly. She buys bridal magazines and carries them around with her!”

  Isabel a wasn’t sure she believed al of it, but she stil couldn’t wait to meet her.

  She looked around the church for someone who fit the description. “Is that her?” she whispered to Ben, and pointed to a smal blond girl sliding into a pew in front of them.