Girls in White Dresses

by JENNIFER CLOSE

  He shook his head and smiled. “No,” he said. “When you see her, you’l know. And you’l die.”

  Ben hadn’t official y moved in, but he was in between apartments and his stuff was overtaking Isabel a’s place. When the lease was up on his old apartment, she’d told him he could stay with her until he found a new place. They hadn’t talked about it since. That was three months ago.

  “I can’t believe he’s stil staying with you,” Lauren said one night. “You only let me stay with you for two weeks.”

  “I never kicked you out,” Isabel a said.

  “Yeah, but you made me sleep on the couch after the first two days,” Lauren said.

  “That’s because you licked me in your sleep,” Isabel a said.

  “I told you, I was having a dream,” Lauren said.

  “That doesn’t make it okay,” Isabel a said. “Anyway, I’m sure Ben wil find a place soon.”

  “Maybe you should ask him,” Lauren said. But Isabel a didn’t want to, which she knew probably meant that she real y should. Instead, she decided she wouldn’t worry about it for a while.

  Ben sold medical supplies for a smal company based in Tennessee. Isabel a wasn’t sure what it was he actual y did. He didn’t go to an office. He worked from his computer at home, and then drove around in his car, delivering products and doing presentations. His workday lasted from about

  eleven a.m. to three p.m., when he returned home to watch The Simpsons and smoke a joint.

  Isabel a was home sick when she discovered this. “Why are you home so early?” she asked. For a second she thought he’d come back to take care of her. Maybe he’d brought her soup or ginger ale.

  “I’m usual y done around this time,” Ben said. He settled himself on the couch and Isabel a sniffled into a tissue. She stood there waiting for him to ask her if she needed anything. “What?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “Nothing.” She took a NyQuil and went back to bed. She had fuzzy dreams until Ben turned on the television in the bedroom and woke her up. Isabel a stared at Ben that night while he slept and tried to figure out how he’d gotten there.

  Isabel a and Ben fought al the time. They even fought the first night they met, when he cut in front of her to go to the bathroom at a bar. She yel ed after him and continued to yel at him through the door. “Sorry,” he said when he came out. “It was an emergency.” Ben was tan with messy hair and a white smile. Isabel a forgave him and went back to his apartment that night. He had black lights and a gravity bong. He reminded her of the boys she’d been in love with in high school, relaxed and impossibly sure of himself.

  The fights they had now were much worse. Isabel a had never fought like this with anyone before. With Ben, she had al -out, drunken marathon fights that lasted for hours. She was sure the neighbors thought they were crazy.

  Isabel a woke up the morning after these fights with a sore throat from yel ing and swol en eyes from crying, sure that she had done damage to her insides. Ben was an asshole, a jackass, a dick. But just when Isabel a thought the end was near, she felt a little hole of panic open. He was also funny, and could be sweet. Was she real y ready to let that go? Wasn’t she partly to blame for the fight?

  The ceremony was a ful mass and Ben shuffled his feet and breathed loudly through most of it. Isabel a kept turning to give him a look. She gave him these looks often, the kind that you give to smal children to let them know their behavior is inappropriate. Usual y he just ignored her.

  After the wedding, they al stood outside the church waiting for the bride and groom to make their exit. Ben smoked a cigarette and talked to some friends, and Isabel a watched the clouds and tried to calculate how much longer it would be before they were at the reception and she could get a glass of wine. She was interrupted from her dreaming by Ben’s voice. “Hey!” he said. “Look who it is.”

  Isabel a saw Ben slapping the hand of his friend Mike, giving him a half hug–handshake–pat on the back. “Mike, you remember Isabel a?” Ben smiled at her and she smiled back. Ben almost never remembered to introduce her. He was just excited for her to meet JonBenét.

  “Yeah, definitely. How’s it going?” Mike nodded to her. “And this is my girlfriend. You guys have met, right?”

  Isabel a watched the tiny girl emerge from behind Mike. She was a pixie! Isabel a hadn’t even noticed her standing there. Al of her features were teeny; her hands and fingers were almost childlike. Isabel a stared at her. She couldn’t help it. It was JonBenét, and no one had been exaggerating about the resemblance. If anything, they hadn’t prepared her for this. Isabel a got goose bumps just being near her.

  “Hi, Ben.” JonBenét had a raspy, breathy voice that made her sound like she’d just been running. “Wasn’t the wedding beautiful? I told Mike in the middle of it that if one more person from his fraternity gets engaged before us, I’m done!” She laughed and turned to Mike. “Right, baby?”

  Mike ignored her. “You guys want to get over to the reception? It’s not supposed to start for another hour, but maybe we can convince the bartender to get us some drinks.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Ben said. “You guys want to ride with us?”

  Isabel a gave Mike shotgun so she could sit in the back with JonBenét. “Mike just got a new car,” she said to Isabel a. “And I said to him, What’s that? I can’t wear that on my finger.” She laughed and waved her left ring finger in the air.

  Isabel a laughed and caught Ben’s eye in the rearview mirror. They smiled at each other.

  The reception was at a country club in some New Jersey suburb. Isabel a felt like she’d been to a mil ion of these weddings. By now, they al blended together in a blur of fabric-covered chairs, pink napkins, and crab cakes. Isabel a looked around. The centerpieces made her sad.

  “Isn’t this beautiful?” JonBenét said to them. She sounded dreamy, like she couldn’t believe her eyes. Mike put his hand on her back and she smiled up at him. He didn’t look at her. Isabel a had once seen a TV show cal ed Tarnished Tiaras that exposed the truth behind child pageants. It focused on one mother who offered spray tans to the little girls to make some money. She stared at JonBenét and wanted to ask her if she ever got a spray tan. But she stopped herself.

  The bartenders were stil setting up. They looked up warily when they saw the four of them approaching. “Hey, man,” Ben said to one. He lifted his chin in a nod and the bartender did the same back. Isabel a was always amazed at how people just liked Ben immediately. Strangers in bars and people on the street treated him like an old friend. They welcomed him wherever he went. Isabel a didn’t even think he noticed. It was just the way things always were for him.

  “You got any Red Bul ?” Ben asked. The bartender shook his head.

  “Ben,” Isabel a said. “You can’t order that.”

  “Why?”

  “What are you, fifteen? We’re at a wedding.”

  Ben rol ed his eyes. “Relax,” he said. “They don’t have it anyway.”

  “But you can’t drink that at a wedding,” Isabel a explained.

  “You have a lot of rules,” Ben said. “I’m going out for a cigarette.”

  Isabel a ordered a white wine and stood by herself on the side of the room. She watched the bride and groom arrive and hoped that they wouldn’t come anywhere near her. They had no idea who she was.

  When Ben final y came back, about ten minutes later, he was carrying a brown paper bag and smiling a proud smile. “What?” Isabel a asked.

  “Red Bul ,” he said. “I got it at a convenience store down the street. Now I can just order vodka on the rocks. Pretty smart, huh?”

  Somewhere after the dinner was served and before the cake was cut, Isabel a lost Ben. Everyone at their table was up dancing and mingling.

  Isabel a sat there and drank wine. She felt like a fool.

  JonBenét smiled at her from across the room and then walked over to the table. “Hey, Isabel a.”

  “Hey,” Isabel a said. She was happy not to be
sitting alone.

  “Where did your date go?” JonBenét asked, smiling.

  “Oh, I don’t … I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “He’s probably off somewhere with Mike getting into trouble. Boys can be such shits sometimes, right?”

  Isabel a laughed. JonBenét was being very kind, but Isabel a found it hard to look at her straight on for too long. It made the hair on her arms stand up. She thought about the JonBenét footage that showed her in the swimsuit competition of the beauty pageant. She wished she had never seen that part of the documentary. It haunted her.

  “So, how did you and Ben meet?” JonBenét asked.

  “In a bar,” Isabel a said. Sometimes she tried to make the story a little better, to embel ish it with details. But she didn’t feel like it right then.

  “Mike and I met at a wedding,” she said.

  “Real y?”

  “Yeah, his cousin married one of my friends from col ege. It’s funny, isn’t it? The way things happen?”

  Isabel a nodded. “Yeah, it is.”

  How she met Ben could have been a cute story, Isabel a realized. If they ended up together, she could tel people, “That Ben! So impatient, so impish!” But for that to happen, Ben would have to be a different person. And he wasn’t. He was just a cocky boy who didn’t want to wait his turn.

  That was al . He had to go to the bathroom. That was their story. The next time someone asked, “How did you meet?” Isabel a could say, “Ben had to pee.”

  JonBenét chattered on about the different people at the wedding. She talked about her friend’s wedding that she was in next month. “The bridesmaid dresses are beautiful,” JonBenét assured her. Isabel a had never met someone so in love with weddings. She tried to picture JonBenét as a bride, but she kept seeing the real JonBenét, overly made up in a poofy dress.

  Ben came back about twenty minutes later, and JonBenét stood up. “I should go find my prince.”

  “Where have you been?” Isabel a asked. “I’ve been sitting here by myself for almost an hour.”

  “Whadya mean, by yourself? There’s people al around.”

  “These aren’t my friends, Ben. You just left me alone. Everyone’s been staring at me. I was sitting al by myself before she came over here.”

  “So what? Are you mad because you had to hang out with crazy JonBenét?”

  “She’s not that bad, Ben.”

  “She’s crazy,” Ben said, like it was a fact. Like it was something everyone knew.

  Isabel a felt bad for JonBenét, the way that everyone at the wedding was talking about her, like she was some kind of freak show. No one knew what went on in her relationship with Mike. No one even real y knew her. Maybe she loved Mike more than he liked her. And wasn’t that horrible?

  Wasn’t that sad? But people forgot about that. They didn’t see a tragedy, just a good story. To them, it was just some girl they could point to and say, “Wel , at least my life isn’t as fucked up as that.”

  “So what if she wants to get married?” Isabel a asked. “Why is that the worst thing in the world? It’s not such a crazy thought. She and Mike have been dating for a while. Isn’t it weirder that Mike is avoiding it?”

  Ben shrugged. He took the straw out of his drink and downed the rest of it. “Why do you care?” he asked.

  “I just think it’s mean the way that you and your friends treat her. I mean, what about Mike? If he doesn’t want to marry her, then why doesn’t he just break up with her?”

  “Not everyone is dying to get married, Isabel a.”

  “I’m not saying that everyone is. But she clearly wants to. And if he doesn’t want the same thing, then shouldn’t they just break up?”

  “Why are you fighting with me?” Ben asked. She hated when he did this, when he turned things on her. He could act however and say whatever he wanted, and if she cal ed him on it, then she was the bad person who’d instigated the fight.

  “I’m not fighting with you,” Isabel a said. She knew that the night was already gone. It was ruined. They should just leave now instead of indulging in an evening of arguments and accusations.

  “Real y, wel , that’s what it feels like. I need a new drink,” Ben said, and walked away.

  Ben loved this stupid game show cal ed Deal or No Deal. He loved the part when people had the chance to walk away with a ton of money and then made the wrong choice and left with nothing. It made him laugh out loud.

  “Don’t you feel bad for them?” Isabel a would ask.

  “No,” he always said. “They’re stupid. They deserve it.”

  When Isabel a watched him laughing at those people, she felt like she was sitting next to the cruelest person in the world.

  Less than a week after the wedding, Ben moved out. They had final y broken up, and it was just as awful as Isabel a thought it would be. She couldn’t sleep and so she stared into the darkness every night. She was alone, and she felt the aloneness in everything she did. But that was just at first. It went away after a while, or maybe she just stopped noticing it.

  She never ran into Ben, although she always thought she saw him in a crowded bar or walking down the street. Her eyes played tricks on her everywhere she went. But that, too, went away and then the only time she real y thought about him was when she smel ed pot.

  The weird thing was that long after she got over Ben, Isabel a thought about JonBenét. She couldn’t even recal the girl’s real name, and stil she entered her mind with alarming frequency. Isabel a remembered how she had laughed at JonBenét without real y knowing her and how kind the girl had been to her that night. She thought about how everyone gossiped about her behind her back and wondered if she knew. And mostly, Isabel a wondered if JonBenét was final y engaged or even married by now. She almost e-mailed Ben once, just to ask. Isabel a wished for JonBenét when she threw pennies into fountains, when she blew on eyelashes, and when the clock read 5:55. She wished for her that she was married. She wished for her that she had a beautiful wedding. She hoped she was happy.

  A bby’s family was weird. She had, on some level, always known this, but as she got older it became much more clear. When Abby was four, her dad’s uncle died and left them al of his money—and there was a lot of it. Instead of using it to buy a house or a boat, like normal people, her parents bought a farm in Vermont and spent their days smoking pot and refurbishing antique furniture. Sometimes her dad cal ed her mom Lil’ Bit, and sometimes they let their friend Patches park his trailer on their property and live there. Yes, Abby’s parents were weird, her sister was even stranger, and the whole lot of them together was sometimes too much to bear.

  Abby didn’t try to hide this information. In fact, it was usual y the first thing she told people. “My parents are weird,” she’d say, as soon as the topic of family came up. “They’re hippies,” she’d add. A lot of times, the people she was talking to would nod their heads like they understood and say, “I know, my parents are total freaks too.” If this happened, Abby had to explain further. “My parents grow pot,” she’d say. “My mom raises chickens for us to eat.” If this didn’t get a rise out of them, she’d say, “My dad once kidnapped the neighbor’s peacocks.” That usual y shut them up.

  Abby wasn’t complaining when she told people this. She just wanted it out there. It was better, she’d learned, to tel people right up front, instead of waiting for them to ask questions like “What line of work is your dad in?” and having it al come out like that.

  When Abby was thirteen, her parents sent her to boarding school. They talked about sending her to the local high school, they even entertained the idea of enrol ing her in the hippie high school that took place on a VW bus and drove around the country, to teach kids through real-life experience. But in the end, her parents decided on Chattick, a real y wel -known and snobby boarding school in Connecticut, where al the kids had parents who were lawyers or bankers, and everyone bought their chicken in grocery stores.

  At boarding sch
ool, Abby learned to study. When she arrived that first year with a canvas bag of clothes and a homemade patchwork quilt for her bed, she knew she had her work cut out for her. She studied hard, taking notes on the silver link bracelets al the girls wore and the bright patterned duffel bags they carried home at the holidays. She made lists and bought these things for herself, quickly and quietly, so that no one remembered that she hadn’t had them before, no one knew that she looked any different than when she’d first gotten there. Sometimes she thought she should have been a spy.

  By the time she was a freshman in col ege, she had it down. When she met her freshman roommate, Kristi, she appeared total y normal. But stil , she told Kristi about her family as soon as it was acceptable. Abby had perfected her five-minute rant about her parents, and she performed it wel .

  Kristi laughed in al the right places, and Abby was sure that they would be friends.

  And stil , Abby tried to keep her friends at a distance. She was quieter than the rest of them, always listening, always watching to see if there was something she was supposed to be doing. It was exhausting, but she knew the alternative was worse. By senior year, she had been to stay with the families of al of her col ege roommates. She’d been to Chicago and Philadelphia and even California, but she’d never invited anyone to Vermont.

  She also discouraged her parents from coming up for Parents’ Weekend. “It’s no big deal,” she always said. “No one is real y coming.” This was a lie, of course, and she felt bad about that, but she didn’t have a choice. It was one thing to hear about her family. It was another thing to see them.

  Kristi was the one who brought it up one weekend when most of their friends were out of town for one reason or another. “I’m so bored I could die,” Kristi said. She rol ed over onto her back and sighed. “I could literal y die.”

  Their friend Isabel a laughed. “Don’t be dramatic or anything.”

  “I’m serious,” Kristi said. “We can’t stay here this weekend. There’s nothing going on. Let’s do something.”