A Life of Bright Ideas (11 page)

Maybe it was the surprise and joy of having Winnalee back in my life, and the night of pulsing rock music and climbing our magic tree, that made me so bold. Or maybe it was just hearing about a world I wasn’t brave enough to enter, where people gave away their love without embarrassment or fear. Whatever it was, I wrote to Jesse—a snowflake for sure—without second-guessing every word I put down. I told him about the dress Boohoo ruined, and about Winnalee and her return. I told him about what loving a friend meant to me, and that, yes, I’d love to (pen) pal around with him. I even signed the letter, “Love, Evy.”

When morning came, Boohoo was the one who announced it, bouncing on his knees at the foot of our bed and crowing like a rooster.

I grabbed him and pulled him down between us, whispering my best rendition of Foghorn Leghorn—one of Boohoo’s favorite cartoon characters—into his ear. “Hey boy, I say, I say, quiet down, Winnalee’s still sleeping.” Boohoo giggled and squirmed in protest as I popped kisses on his cheek.

Boohoo pushed my head back to stop me. “Aunt Verdella says to get up and come eat because she made a big breakfast … ’cause she’s here,” Boohoo said, jabbing his thumb toward Winnalee. “She’s downstairs.”

“Aunt Verdella is?”

Boohoo nodded. I made the shush sign and lifted Boohoo out of bed. I closed the door almost shut and we headed downstairs.

Aunt Verdella was standing in the spare bedroom, the door ajar. “Good morning, honey,” she said, giving me an affectionate hug. “I’ll bet you girls were up half the night, talking.”

“Yeah,” I said, and Aunt Verdella beamed.

She bent and peered down at Winnalee’s now-perky plants. “What on earth are these?”

“I don’t know. They’re Winnalee’s.”

“Some kind of hybrid tomato, maybe?” Aunt Verdella said.

“Yeah, that’s what they are. Hybrid tomato plants.” We turned to see Winnalee shuffling into the room, yawning.

“Morning, sweetie,” Aunt Verdella said, giving her a morning hug. “That’s what I thought.” She sized up the plants. “Boy, you sure do have a green thumb. These tomatoes are a good four inches taller than ours.

“Uncle Rudy wants to plant this week. Yours can go in our garden, too, Winnalee. Rudy will mark them so you know which ones are yours.”

“That’s okay,” Winnalee said. She turned her back to Aunt Verdella. “This variety does better indoors.”

“Really? I never heard of keeping tomato plants indoors the whole time.”

“Well, these are
special
,” Winnalee said, giving me a sly wink.

And then I got it.

I widened my eyes at Winnalee, then herded Aunt Verdella out of the room.

•   •   •

That morning, Winnalee tagged along to the bridal shop with me. I didn’t say anything about the marijuana plants, even if maybe I should have.

I carried the apricot bridesmaid’s dress, sheathed in a clear garment bag, holding it high so it wouldn’t drag, while Winnalee carried in the box with Jo’s ruined dress. Linda was sitting at the desk, taking an appointment over the phone. I could hear Hazel talking with a customer in the big back room where the sewing machines and fabric were kept, and the gowns hung and the girls got measured. Winnalee plunked the dress box on the counter, then wandered off to inspect the front room. When Linda finished her call, I introduced her to Winnalee, who by this time was at the metal cabinet where the patterns were kept in neat rows, sliding the drawer back and forth as if the smooth glide itself made her happy.

“Oh,” Linda said, “I heard Jewel talk about you and Freeda so often, I feel as if I know you already.”

“Yeah, well in spite of what you heard, I hope you’ll like me anyway.”

Linda laughed lightheartedly, though I wasn’t sure Winnalee was kidding.

When I had no reason left to stall, I sheepishly told her what happened to Jo’s dress. Poor Linda already looked like she hadn’t slept in a week, which she probably hadn’t. This was a busy time for the boutique, with dozens of dresses waiting for final fittings, and more orders coming in. And that meant having to deal with nervous brides who insisted that the waist that suddenly needed to be taken in or let out had nothing to do with nerves that either kept them from eating, or caused them to eat too much. Plus, Linda’s husband, Al, had gotten laid off indefinitely and she was worried about how they’d make ends meet once the store quieted in the fall. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I kept repeating.

Linda’s face contorted with panic, but she instantly tried to hide it behind a tight smile. I opened the lid so we could examine the damage together. “Oh no,” she said. “I was hoping the dirt would be contained to the overlay. Still, Hazel is a wiz at removing stains. She got blood off of satin once.”

The bell on the door chimed and Linda looked up. Her face went wedding dress white, and she hurriedly folded the bodice lengthwise. “Jo,” she said. I grabbed the length of the smudged skirt that was hanging over the front of the desk, and folded it. But it was too late. “Is that my dress?” The excited giggles gave way to
oooo
s. I turned to see Jo Lanski and three of her friends rushing toward the desk. “It
is
my dress. I can tell by the sleeves!”

“Oh, no peeking yet,” Linda said. But it was too late. Jo grabbed the shoulder of the gown and unfolded it.

“My God, what happened?”

Linda and Jo were talking at once then, the bridesmaids gasping. Jo was horribly upset, and Linda was pretending she wasn’t. “We’ll get the stains out, honey, and no one will be the wiser. Don’t you worry. It was an accident.”

“Get them out? How? Stick it in the washing machine?”

“No, no, we’ll spot-clean it.”

Jo was livid, and she turned to me as if I could rescue her, maybe because I was her peer. “I don’t want an already-washed wedding dress. If I wanted that, I would have worn my mom’s dress like she wanted!”

What choice did Linda have but to promise Jo that we’d sew the gown from scratch again? (At least after she asked to use the phone to call her mother.)

“Oh honey, don’t cry,” Linda said after Jo and the girls left, and Winnalee called Jo a “rag.” “Marge is back from Vegas, so—”

“I’ll do it,” I said, blinking. Embarrassed about my watery
eyes. “Marge shouldn’t have to do it. I’m the one who ruined it. Well, Boohoo did, but you know what I mean.”

“That’s okay, dear. It wasn’t your fault. I’m sure Marge won’t mind.”

Everything in me was screaming,
I want to do it! Please let me sew it!
but I knew Linda wouldn’t give me the job. She’d known me since I was nine, and to her I was still a kid, even though I’d moved past “easy” patterns by my twelfth birthday.

“Honey, I think we’ll let Marge handle it. But you’ll have to be on call to get the beading done stat, as soon as she has it finished.”

I couldn’t say a thing. Linda was every bit as old to me as I was young to her, and the thought of pushing for the job made my whole body itch. Plus, I knew Linda thought I worked too slowly. And I
did
when it came to the finishing work that needed precision, so that the long row of buttons lined properly and wouldn’t bunch, and the appliqués would lie smoothly. But I didn’t work slowly when I was cutting a pattern or sewing seams. And Ma herself said that I could hand-stitch a hem faster than she could, and just as neatly. Not that Linda would know this since I worked at home. Sometimes I just wished that Linda—sweet as she was—knew more about sewing. Then she could take one look at the bridesmaids’ dresses I produced and see how perfectly they draped, and how polished the seams were. Then she’d
know
that I was ready to take on the most important gown in the ensemble.

“Did you have any problems with that one?” she asked, nodding toward the apricot dress.

“No,” I said. “It was a cinch.”

“Then maybe you could give us a jump-start on our next project.” She nodded toward the counter to our right, where she had stacks of bridesmaid dress “kits” put together in four stacks (gathering together the pattern, fabric, notions needed
for each dress was Linda’s favorite task). “I was going to give this one to Marge, but she’ll be busy now.”

“I could take all four of them—the flower girl’s, too.”

“Well, let’s just start with two for now. The others are going to need adjustments, but these two—the two size eights—don’t need any.”

As she bagged the kit for me, she asked if I had the pattern for Jo’s dress, or if Marge still had it.

“Marge must have it. But it’s a Simplicity pattern, number 9218. The bride’s dress is a size seven.”

Linda shoved past Winnalee, pulled out the pattern, then went in the back room to hunt for the same fabric.

I went to stand beside Winnalee, who had now climbed up inside the display window and was circling the mannequins who were bent in romantic poses, heads tilted sweetly, virginal smiles on their plastic faces. She scrinched her nose as she pulled out the yellowed skirt of the bride’s dress, then tugged at the boat neckline and boinged the small, stiff bow set at the fitted waist as if she expected it to twirl. “What’s
this
in the window for? It’s butt-ugly and old. Why don’t you guys put a dress in here that at least looks like it came from this century?”

“It’s Ma’s wedding dress,” I said. “The first bridal gown she sewed. She put it in the display window when she opened this place.”

“Well why’s it still here?”

I fidgeted. “Well, because it’s Ma’s.”

Winnalee shook her head. “Your ma had a good sense of fashion, Button. And if she was marrying Uncle Reece today, you can bet your right boob she wouldn’t be wearing
this
outdated thing. She’s probably rolling over in her grave. And who wears elbow-length gloves anymore?”

Hazel came out of the fitting room with a tousle-haired bride-to-be, their chatter interrupting our conversation—not that Winnalee’s comments themselves wouldn’t have ended it,
because to us she might as well have suggested that someone change the way we depict Jesus hanging on the cross.

After the bride left, I introduced Hazel to Winnalee, then had to explain all over again what happened to Jo Laski’s dress. Hazel, tall and bony, gasped, then patted my arm with fingers cool to the touch. “I was wondering what the ruckus out here was,” she said. “But these things happen, dear.”

When we got outside, Winnalee said, “At least you got out of having to make that dress over.”

“But I
wanted
to make it,” I told her. “It’s my fault it got ruined in the first place, so I should
have
to.” In some ways, I suppose it was odd that I felt comfortable telling Winnalee about the vacuum cleaner hickeys, yet couldn’t make myself tell her that the primary reason I wanted to sew it was that Ma always talked about the day I’d sew an entire wedding gown, as if it would be my initiation into womanhood. I wanted that initiation.

“Really?” Winnalee asked, as we opened the doors to my Rambler. “Then why didn’t you tell her you wanted to sew it?”

“I did.”

“It sounded more like an offer to me. And a half-assed one, at that. Come on, let’s go back in there and you insist on doing it.” Winnalee came around the car and grabbed my arm. She tried dragging me back to the cement step, but I dug my heels in tight. “I can’t do that,” I told her. “It’s her store. Her decision.”

Winnalee frowned. “Well, that’s fucked-up,” she said. “It was your ma’s place.”

“But it’s Linda’s now.”

I was glad to get out of there, and eager to get home to start working on the bridesmaids’ dresses. But Winnalee was hungry
and wanted to stop at the A&W first. After we parked, she leaned over and honked the horn—as if that would get the carhops to us any sooner, it being the noon hour and every space in the lot taken.

“Oh my God!” Winnalee shouted, leaning over and looking around me. “Is that Tommy Smithy in that car? Second one over …” I turned and squinted, and saw Tommy’s arm crooked in the passenger window of Brody’s Mustang.

Winnalee jumped out of the car and hurried to theirs. She opened the door and tugged Tommy out, wrapping her arms around his chest for a quick hug. “I knew that was you, you dumb son of a bitch,” she said, so loud that I could hear her—and so could just about everybody else in the lot. “How in the hell are you?”

Tommy’s cheeks might have been pink from his sunburn, but he wore that bloated look guys always get when a girl who looks out of their league gives them the time of day in public.

Brody slipped out of the car and gawked at Winnalee over the roof. She was still staring up at Tommy, asking him if he knew who she was, so Brody took the time to dab at his golden hair. “Course I know who you are,” Tommy said. “You still cuss the same, sound the same, and you’re still a shrimp.” Winnalee socked him playfully in the arm, and Tommy added, “And you still can’t hit hard enough to leave a mark.”

Tommy quieted down some then, so I couldn’t hear his words, but his tone was pretty much the same as when he spoke to Winnalee back in ’61. Like she was a stupid little kid. But he sure was looking at her differently, his eyes dipping for quick peeks at her boobs, which, as he obviously noticed, were naked under her T-shirt, and her tanned legs that were bare under a miniskirt.

“Hey, buddy. You gonna hog all the good-looking girls for yourself, or are you gonna introduce me?” Brody came around the Mustang, grinning, his thumbs dipped in his jean pockets.

The way Winnalee’s body moved as she took a few steps toward Brody made it obvious that she’d inherited more from Freeda than her penchant for cussing. “Hi. I’m Winnalee Malone.”

Brody introduced himself, then eyed Winnalee from head to toe, his tongue jutting out the side of his cheek. “Now aren’t you a sight for Dauber’s sore eyes,” he said. He glanced at Tommy like they had a secret.

That’s when the carhop came to the Rambler. Winnalee called over her order, then yelled at me to join them.

I groaned inside because I was wearing a too-small knitted shirt that Aunt Verdella bought me on a closeout sale so I couldn’t exchange it for a bigger size—she always thought I was smaller than I was—and it was clinging to me like Saran Wrap. Brody would notice, too. I gave the shirt a quick tug, but it just sucked right back to my bra, so I kept my shoulders curled forward.