by Richards
She held up a suit coat the size of a dump truck.
“Your father’s friend Joe is one mountain of a man.”
That was for darn sure. For the record, I’m not the one responsible for the meat float crew being asked to model. My father proposed them and against all better judgment my grandmother agreed that it was a splendid idea. Clearly, she had missed the parade.
“But he’s also the kindest man I’ve ever met,” she continued. “He brought me flowers as a thank-you when he’s the one helping me out. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone were that kind?”
His bat striking the papier-mâché bunny on the meat float popped to mind. “Uh, yeah.”
Dozens of people visited the store daily to check out the clothing for the show or to ask questions about the event. And not just women, either. Word had spread that men were being included this year. At times, there were more men than women in the store.
“Finally, men are being treated equally,” an elderly man with a silver beard said, checking out the suits hanging next to my grandmother as she worked.
“Oh, yes,” my grandmother quipped back. “Equal rights for men have been a real concern for years. If only you could be given more advantages in life.”
The man gave me a wink.
“She’s got a point there, you know. We’ve been on top for a very long time. But women are the future. You mark my words. Their turn has come, and it’s way overdue.”
That brought a smile to my grandmother’s face.
“All right, you can stand there and appreciate my work.”
“This material is divine,” Diane commented as my grandmother marked the hem of her corduroy skirt.”
My grandmother made one last chalk mark, then stepped back.
“Diane, you’re all good to go. Just leave the skirt on the pile next to my sewing machine after you change out of it.”
Diane remained in place, her hands fidgeting with the corduroy folds of the skirt.
“Everything okay?” my grandmother asked.
A flush crept up Diane’s face as she stared at herself in the mirror next to the sewing machine.
“Are you sure you want people like … me going up onstage? I’m not exactly the shape of your everyday model.”
Aiko stepped close and took Diane’s hand.
“You are beautiful in every way.”
Diane blushed and dabbed at an eye.
“Thank you, Aiko. I’m sorry to be all self-conscious, but I’ve never been asked to model in a show. Or anywhere else. I just don’t want to disappoint anyone.”
My grandmother put down the chalk and took Diane’s other hand.
“My dear, there is no one, and I mean no one, I would rather have on that runway. You are going to be a sensation!”
The three women hugged. It had never occurred to me until that moment that Diane, the sky-blue shopping ringleader who always seemed so sure of herself, could have insecurities. Could it be that everyone, even adults, had moments when they felt unsure? The idea seemed crazy, and yet only days ago I had watched Elsa whimper like a middle schooler. It was enough to make me wonder if anyone ever really grew up.
Near the end of the week, my grandmother pulled me aside.
“Stu, I could really use you and a few of your friends to be in the show. Elsa and Stefan want to include some younger fashions to encourage younger customers to visit our stores. It would help me out if you stepped up.”
There’s nothing worse than being needed by your grandmother, especially when her need forces you to confront problems you’re desperately trying to avoid.
“I’ll talk to them.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
Geez, you’d think the show was only a week away.
“The show is only a week away,” she said as if reading my thoughts. “I’ll give you the weekend, but I need to know by Monday morning. Okay?”
That gave me two days to figure things out with Becca. Or think of a better plan. I could only hope I’d come up with something better.
I spent the evening contemplating my options. Join a passing circus got ruled out early. It was a great plan but required a passing circus. Finding a passing circus required a method of time travel back to the days when passing circuses existed. And that required a mad scientist with a time machine I could borrow. To be honest, I couldn’t even find my new electric toothbrush let alone a mad scientist with a spare time machine.
Option two required asking someone other than Becca to be my partner for the show. Gretchen popped to mind. A fit of gagging left me gasping for breath. So much for option two. That left me with option three.
There was no option three. Really, there was no option one or two, either. My only option was to let my grandmother down gently and accept the consequences. Goodbye, cash-filled envelopes for Christmas.
“Stu, there’s someone at the door asking for you.”
That seemed odd. My mother never announced when one of my friends came over. They usually just tackled me unawares from behind.
“It’s a girl,” she added.
A girl? The zombie warlord woke. I could only think of one girl who had ever set foot on our doorstep. Had she been in the neighborhood and simply stopped by to say hi? Or had she finally worked up the nerve to break the news that she and Jackson were eloping to Canada? The first idea seemed a bit too coincidental. And the second a tad bit paranoid, which made it all the more likely.
I dragged myself downstairs only to stop short at sight of Kirsten standing on our porch. She motioned with one finger for me to step outside.
“I brought you this,” she said, holding out an envelope.
I took it and stared at my name written in neat cursive on the front.
“It’s an invitation,” she continued, “to Becca’s birthday party.”
I opened the envelope and pulled out the card inside. Please join me to celebrate my 13th birthday at Sequim Bay State Park was written in fancy lettering. Crayon-colored balloons floated along the edges above hand-drawn evergreen trees. The invitation closed with Can’t wait! Becca. It all looked just the way we’d planned it that day at Lake Crescent.
“Why are you being such a jerk?”
Kirsten’s words struck me like a punch in the gut. What was she talking about? What had I done? “What—?”
“You know, the way you keep treating her.”
“But—”
“All you do is ignore her.”
“But—”
“You walk past her house without even saying hi. What’s wrong with you?”
What’s wrong with me? Weren’t we leaving out the obvious? She didn’t even like me anymore. She was too busy with her new boyfriend, Jackson, to care about me. “But she and—”
Maybe it was the terror in my eyes, but Kirsten’s angry stare softened.
“You really don’t know anything, do you?” she said slowly, as if speaking to a dim-witted guy who knew nothing about girls.
Now we were getting somewhere.
“But—I thought—”
She shook her head and turned to go.
“She’s not going to wait around forever for you to figure out what you want.”
I stood on the porch watching her march off down the street. Had Becca sent Kirsten to give me that message? Or was it simply Kirsten being Kirsten and sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong? If I believed her, then maybe it wasn’t too late. But if she was wrong, I would look like a total idiot if I asked Becca to be my partner for the show and she said no. What was I supposed to do?
By dinnertime, I had reached a simple conclusion: I would never understand girls and probably die a lonely bachelor after a lifetime wandering the earth wondering how everything always ended up being my fault.
“I hear the fashion show is back on,” my father said between mouthfuls of spaghetti. “And it’s going to be bigger than ever.”
I kept my eyes down, pretending the st
atement had been meant for someone else.
“Stu, is it true that the show is going to also have men’s fashions this year?” my mother prompted.
Honestly, what difference did it make? While I had wasted my summer working at my grandmother’s store some clod with a lone chin hair had wooed my almost girlfriend away.
“Maybe,” I answered.
“Maybe?” my father asked. “Don’t you know?”
Of course I knew. “Yes! The show is with Stefan this year. So what?”
My mother tipped her head to one side.
“Is there something going on?” she asked.
“No, everything’s fine.”
My father slurped a line of spaghetti into his mouth.
“Is it about working at your grandmother’s store?”
It was about everything. But that stupid store didn’t help. “How long do I have to keep working there? I look like an idiot hanging out with dresses, and pantsuits, and stuff!”
My father leaned back and assessed my spindly arms, and birdlike beak of a face.
“I guess you’ve got a point there. Maybe it would be reasonable to see if your grandmother can find someone else to help out after the show.”
I stabbed a meatball and jammed it into my mouth. “I don’t need someone else to take over for me. I’m fine!”
My father gave my mother a helpless look.
“Your father was just trying to help,” my mother said.
Really? The sort of help I needed involved a traveling circus and a time machine.
“I’m fine,” I said again.
“Fine,” my brother repeated, rolling a meatball like a steamroller over his noodles.
“Your moods are a little hard to predict these days,” my mother said.
“It’s like living with an ever-changing weather system,” my father added. “It’s hard to keep up. And your sun breaks seem to be getting fewer and farther between.”
Since when did dinner become a weather report? And what did they know about anything? They sat around every day being all happily married and not having to worry about anything important. My life wasn’t anything like theirs. And they couldn’t possibly understand. It wasn’t like they had ever been kids. I set my fork down and pushed away from the table. “I’m done.”
The look on my mother’s face shifted from mostly exasperated to more than a little worried.
“Are you sure? You don’t want dessert? There’s ice cream.”
The mention of ice cream brought back the memory of Becca and Jackson at the ice cream shop together. I’d never be able to eat ice cream again. “Maybe later.”
Out on the front porch, I slumped down on the steps. Chester, our Labrador retriever, plunked down next to me and gave me the goofy grin he always gave no matter how the world treated him, or how horrible it treated anyone else. Being a dog was the ideal life. Eat, sleep, and repeat. My hand scratched the fur behind his ear. He leaned until his head pressed against me. If only we could trade places, he could be the one fidgeting in his own skin and I could be the one moaning from the simple pleasure of having my ear scratched.
Deep down, I knew exactly what I need to do. March over to Becca’s house and have the conversation I’d been needing to have with her for weeks. Did she like me? Were we going out? Or had I been living in the undead reality of my own fantasy world in which a scrawny kid of average size and intelligence could actually be going out with someone like her? The truth seemed all too obvious. And yet I needed to know. Soon.
The slow walk to Becca’s house reminded me of the slow walk I took in the spring when I had visited to apologize after bleeding all over the back of her head. Those days seemed like an eternity ago. It wasn’t my nose that felt broken this time. That break healed in a few weeks. This one would probably take a lifetime.
Just as I turned onto her street, my father roared up in his truck and swerved onto the sidewalk next to me.
“C’mon, get in!” he shouted.
The shock of his sudden appearance froze my feet in place. “What?”
His arm reached through the open window and slapped the side of the truck.
“I said c’mon, get in!” he shouted again. “We gotta go!”
My father never slapped anything, let alone his beloved truck. The sound of his hand striking the metal snapped me to attention. “What’s wrong?”
He waved at the passenger door.
“I’ll explain on the way. Just get in!”
We spun around and swerved onto the next street before speeding through town without even slowing for traffic lights.
“Is it Grandma?” I shouted over the roar of the engine.
In the distance, a line of smoke rose into the evening sky.
“No, your grandmother is fine. But I’m afraid the show is in jeopardy.”
We swerved onto another road, the same road Diane had used when taking us to visit the Farm Cathedral. The line of smoke grew into a black column up ahead.
“Is that the barn?”
The truck slid sideways as we turned down the long gravel driveway. Two fire engines blocked the parking area. Beyond the fire engines, the barn looked like some sort of fire-breathing monster with flames spurting out a hole in the roof.
“C’mon,” my father said, waving me after him as he ran from the truck.
A small crowd of people had gathered to watch as the firefighters fought the blaze with fire hoses from two sides in an attempt to quench the monster’s thirst. My nose twitched from the smell of burning wood and wafting smoke stung my eyes. On the house’s porch, the woman who had given us the tour hid her head against a man’s chest.
“What happened?” my father asked the guy standing next to us.
He shook his head.
“Don’t know for sure. My guess is an electrical fire. Started about half an hour ago.”
He pointed to a house in the distance.
“Lived there forty years. Never seen anything like this.”
My father nodded.
“One of my buddies is a volunteer firefighter. He called me on his way here.”
He turned to me.
“Your mother is calling your grandmother right now. It’s a bummer about the show. But even more of a bummer for the Wilsons. They put everything into fixing this place up. What a shame for them.”
A third fire engine rumbled down the drive. A police officer moved the crowd out of the way for it to park next to the other two. I could see Mrs. Wilson and her husband still standing on the porch leaning on each other. My problems suddenly didn’t seem quite so important. I couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to have years of work go up in smoke in a matter of minutes.
“Will they be all right?”
My father put a hand on my shoulder.
“They’re good people. It’ll take time for them to recover. Sometimes all you can do is pick up the pieces and start over again. It won’t be easy. But, yeah, they’ll be all right.”
The third firefighting crew joined the first two. Together they battled the fire from three sides. Water poured over the barn roof like a torrential downpour. At last, the flames stopped spewing and the smoke changed from a thick black column to a hazy shroud covering the barn in a smoky fog.
My father put his arm around me, and we headed back up the driveway.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” he said.
Things can turn so quickly. It was hard to believe that such a beautiful place could burn in a matter of minutes. “Everything had finally gotten worked out for the show,” I said. “Now it’s all ruined.”
We climbed back into my father’s truck.
“Don’t be so sure,” my father said. “Sometimes a silver lining is just around the corner waiting to be found.”
Yeah, right.
I arrived at work the next morning to find Stefan, Elsa, Diane, and my grandmother circled around my grandmother’s sewing machine deep in discussion.
“—and we can’t possibly find a
venue that will work with so little time left,” Stefan continued. “Our joint endeavor must end here.”
“But we’ve come too far to give up now,” Diane countered. “There has to be a way.”
My grandmother lifted her cane.
“My friends, the fashion gods have turned against us this year. We’ve all made a valiant effort, but I’m forced to agree with Stefan. The show simply cannot go on.”
“It’s all my fault,” Elsa said quietly. “If I hadn’t messed everything up—”
“My dear,” my grandmother interrupted. “You can hardly fault yourself for an electrical fire.”
Elsa’s shoulders slumped. “I guess so. But if I had reserved the models like I was supposed to, then we would have had the show here and none of this would have happened.”
Stefan held up a finger.
“Elsa makes a great point. If I withdraw from the show, the show can still take place here as originally planned. That is the only reasonable solution. You must go on without me.”
“No!” my grandmother said with authority. “We’ve come too far to toss you out now. Either this show happens in all its glory or not at all. And that decision is not up for discussion.”
Elsa nodded in agreement.
“Why not do the show here anyway?” Diane asked. “Not everyone will get in. And believe me there will be some disappointed folks. But at least the show can still happen.”
“We can’t fit more than a hundred people at best,” my grandmother explained. “We’ve already had over two hundred and fifty people RSVP to attend. I can’t tell them they’re uninvited. I’d rather cancel the show than do that to them.”
“Well, then I for one am getting out of town,” Diane said, dabbing one eye. “I can’t be here the day of the show and pretend everything’s okay.”
Stefan forced a grin. “Yes, perhaps that is what we should all do. Ride off into the sunset on Harleys the day of the show.”
My grandmother pursed her lips. “The idea does have a certain if-I-were-young appeal. But there’s not a Harley on earth that can take the sting from what I’m feeling right now.”
Not a Harley on earth? An idea gnawed its way into my consciousness. Could the solution be that simple? Not that there was anything simple about the solution that had come to mind. If anything, it’d be easier to steal a Harley and ride off with my grandmother and Stefan into the sunset than face the task that I suddenly knew needed to be done.