All Dressed Up (8 page)

Lainie
secretly believed that Brooke could do better in some respects with
regards to the groom and that Angie must share the same opinion,
but she was pretty sure Angie would close right up and deny
everything if Lainie seriously invited her to criticize her future
son-in-law.

It bugged her
that Angie would never confide that kind of thing, that she applied
spin even when Lainie was her best friend and one of her closest
relatives, too. His name was Scott, and he drove large vehicles for
the county engineer’s department. He had a husky, sexy voice and a
big strong body and thick hair, but those were about the best
things he had going for him, as far as Lainie had seen. Oh, and the
fact that he adored his fiancée and his future step-daughter and,
as Angie had said, treated them well. He was shy and silent and not
particularly bright.

“So what’s it
like, Brooke’s dress?” she said instead. “I’d love to see it.”

“Real simple.
Pure meringue white, strapless A-line satin with a semi-cathedral
train.”

Lainie could
picture it. She’d looked through a couple of Emma’s bride
magazines, so she knew the style. Those dresses tended to be a lot
more modest in price than Emma’s had been. Brooke would have bought
the dress because she liked it and because it came within budget.
She was pretty down-to-earth and Lainie was very fond of her.

“With an
accent of gold beading around the top of the bodice,” Angie
continued. “I love it. It’s a real elegant, glamorous gown. It’s
perfect for her.”

Downstairs,
the coffee finished dripping through. Lainie left the dress laid
out on her bed, “until I’ve gotten the garment bag back from
Reverend Mac,” and she and Angie sat at the kitchen table where the
late sun came in. It struck the sides of their faces too harshly to
flatter women of their age.

Angie was
still resolutely blonde. Each fresh cut and color required a
strategic consultation with her hairdresser, balancing age and skin
tone and latest wardrobe. She’d studied her body and what worked
for her since she was thirteen, in a way that Lainie never had. “I
have to make the most of what I’ve got,” Angie had said more than
once over the years.

They talked
about real estate while they sipped their coffee, because selling
houses was what they both did.

Angie had
followed Lainie into it, around fifteen years ago. She had said to
Lainie back then, “Oh, I’m not smart enough for something like
that. I envy you, I really do, because it has to be a great way to
make good money.” She’d sounded wistful, a little needy, clearly
trying not to. They’d both grown up poor. They’d both worked
incredibly hard for years at entry-level jobs that barely paid a
living wage.

And so Lainie
had encouraged Angie, helped her study for her license, and Angie
had discovered, not to Lainie’s surprise, that she was smart enough
after all. She now worked with a very nice agency – a better one
than Lainie’s – and once had been their Agent of the Year. All of
which left Lainie with no-one but herself to blame.

It couldn’t
have been deliberate on Angie’s part. Could it? To hitch a ride on
Lainie’s hard work and then overtake her?

In hindsight,
Lainie might not have helped Angie quite so much if she’d guessed
she was being manipulated in such a way. Except if you make a
pre-emptive strike against an attack that was only ever in your
imagination, it’s pretty clear who is in the wrong.

Not Angie.

But she
definitely looks like she’s older than me now, Lainie thought,
grasping at straws, watching that harsh late sun on her cousin’s
face, wanting to love her in a much more simple way, with far less
questioning and doubt.

“Do you think
there’s any chance they’ll get back together, Emma and Charlie?”
Angie asked.

“You know, I
think there is.” Lainie already felt defensive. She wanted to give
the power opinion, the upbeat one – just like Angie, the spin.
“They seemed so good together.” More honestly, unable to help
herself – she never could, in the end – she added, “But who knows
what goes on, Angie. A relationship is so personal, no-one on the
outside ever understands why it works or why it doesn’t.”

“They won’t,”
Angie said. “It’s too big of a betrayal, surely. Did he cheat on
her?”

“No!”

“That’s
something. That at least makes it possible. Or did she cheat on
him, I wonder? I’m not suggesting Charlie’s the kind of guy a woman
cheats on.”

Angie seemed,
in fact, to be suggesting exactly that Charlie was the kind of guy
a woman cheated on, which was ridiculous.

“Do you think
that’s how it goes?” Lainie protested lamely. “That a woman cheats
because of the kind of guy she’s married to?”

“I can’t
imagine Brooke ever letting Scott cheat on her, let’s just leave it
at that.”

They left it
at that.

But then out
at her car, Angie gave a little cry, reached into the back seat and
brought out a whole tray of pansies in little square plastic pots
and said, “I nearly forgot, I was at the garden center and they had
these on sale. I picked them up for you, I know you love them for
your deck,” and gave her a big, warm, generous hug and Lainie, as
for the past twenty-five years and longer, didn’t know what to
think.

Sarah drove
back to Jersey two hours after Emma did, pressured into it by Mom
who had belatedly – and she was probably right – decided that Emma
shouldn’t be alone in Saddle River tonight, no matter how badly she
might behave toward the person who showed up to keep her company.
Dad would be going back down tomorrow, because he had to work
through the summer and only went up to the lake on weekends. Mom
had a scattering of pro tennis coaching commitments in various
places between now and September, but Sarah, as a teacher, had the
whole summer off. It wouldn’t be the first time this had proven
convenient for other members of the family.

When she got
to Jersey in the fading light, she found Emma sitting on the steps
at the side of the big old Victorian house they’d grown up in. She
was smoking a cigarette. “What are you doing here?” Emma asked.

“Mom sent
me.”

“Oh, suicide
watch?”

“Something
like that. Or weekend detention. For juvenile offenders.” Sarah
looked pointedly at the familiar slender tube of white and gold,
and Emma gave a defensive and defiant shrug but no further reply.
“What are they?” Sarah asked.

“St Moritz
Ultras.” Their old brand from London. “Want one?” Emma held the
packet out. Her eyes begged and apologized at the same time.

Faced with the
choice of lung cancer as a route to her sister’s friendship, or
keeping her distance, Sarah reached out her hand. No contest. She’d
take the lung cancer, and meet her sister half way. She loved her
that much.

Emma lit the
cigarette direct from her own, puffing and drawing to fire up the
tip. Sarah sat down beside her and they smoked silently in the
heavy summer air with the cars swishing past in front of them
beyond the lawn, along the road that cut between the house and the
river.

Sarah’s mouth
and fingers were tentative about it at first, then all those cool,
casual, instinctive teen gestures came back.

“This is bad,”
Emma said at last.

“I’m not
starting smoking again.”

“Neither am
I.” But Emma took out another cigarette, tore the white and gold
paper away, tipped the tangled shavings of tobacco into the cupped
palm of her hand, lifted it to her face and inhaled. She held the
nest of cupped shavings out to Sarah, who inhaled, too. The
shavings smelled delicious, a mix of raisin toast, horse feed and
brandy.

“Maybe I am
starting again,” Emma said. In London, she had smoked to look cool.
Sarah had smoked to get thin. It was good that their motivations
had been different, that they weren’t competing in the same sphere.
Sarah took another drag, and Emma lit up again. “Oh, this is so
bad!”

They both
laughed, which hurt, and then there was almost – almost – a moment
when they started talking about it – London, what went on, what had
happened since, why they loved but at certain times didn’t like
each other very much any more.

Which Sarah
actually would have liked to find out.

She knew why
she didn’t like Emma, whenever she thought about London, but where
was Emma’s reciprocal grievance?

“I’m sorry
about Luke,” Emma said. She meant Creep.

Sarah’s
stomach lurched. “Mom told you we saw him?”

“She called to
check on me. I asked about the Craigmore. She wasn’t going to tell
me about the cake, but I got it out of her in the end. And so of
course she spilled about Luke, too.”

“Of course. Do
you mind about the cake?”

Emma shrugged.
“Yes. I mean, I shouldn’t, I guess. But let’s talk about Luke. I
don’t think I said, or did, or really – ” graceful undulation of
the cigarette hand to indicate unsayable things, “ – anywhere near
enough, anyhow. Because of the invitations and everything. The
timing.”

Oh wow! Oh
wow! Way to go Emma!

Which sounds
like sarcasm but I’m actually grateful and impressed that she’s
said this.

This much.
This awkwardly.

“Oh, I’m over
him,” Sarah lied, while her body ached and stung. Over him? Over
him? Who are you kidding?

“Oh, I know
you are,” Emma said quickly. And cluelessly. Or maybe she’s
generously supporting my fiction. “But I felt… you know… I was
riding this whole juggernaut. All I could see was the wedding. I’d
forgotten how much it hurts, splitting up.”

“Forgotten? So
you felt like this with – ”

The nameless
one. The one in London.

“Are you
kidding me? I felt it to the bone! And my bones were so young! I
was cancerously in love. And it was coming on to winter, and I was
– ” She stopped. She never said the word. In ten years and six
months she’d never come out and said it.

And we all
support the fiction. But I could say it now.

Sarah knew she
wouldn’t. The force field that Emma put up around the whole thing
was too strong. She’d abandoned her wedding gown in the middle of
the church aisle because of it, she was putting herself through
this agony over Charlie, but still the force field remained in
place.

“ – stupid,”
Emma said. Stupid was not the word she never said.

“It’s a course
pre-requisite,” Sarah told her. “You have to be completely stupid
about a guy and cancerously in love with him at least once before
you can even enrolll in Womanhood 101.”

“Well, I got
it onto my transcript earlier than some. But I’d forgotten it feels
this bad.”

“Some days
it’s okay. You get moments of reprieve. Moments of even this… this…
it’s almost an exhilaration.”

“Yeah?” Emma
took a drag.

“Moral high
ground gives it to you. Or pleasure in food. See? I can still eat.
And a kind of bitter appreciation of freedom.”

“Bitter and
exhilarating?”

“It might be
different for you. You might get the exhilaration from different
things.”

“I think so.
Or not at all.”

“Or not at
all,” Sarah agreed obediently, if this was what Emma wanted.

They smoked in
silence.

Emma woke up
the same way Sunday as she had Saturday. The feather rising in the
warm air, the bone-jarring crunch, all of that. This time, however,
she lay in her old room in her parents’ house in Jersey and Sarah
was apparently still asleep, so she had no-one to pretend to, and
there was nothing to stand in the way of all the worst things she
could think of, and somehow she ended up with the
in-hindsight-farcical plan of hiring a private investigator to
steal back the dress.

The decision
gave her an initial illusion that the ongoing agony of the
wedding’s cancelation would be lessened, but this did indeed turn
out to be an illusion. She picked up the phone ready to dial one of
the more reputable looking listings she’d found on-line, and took a
deep, hopeful breath, but the agony stayed the same.

Then Sarah
appeared. “What are you doing?”

“Arranging to
get the dress.”

“From
Charlie’s? All of your stuff?”

“Just the
dress. The rest doesn’t matter.” Everything at Charlie’s was
tainted by their break-up. All the things they’d bought together,
and the things of Emma’s that had begun their gradual migration
from her place to his almost four years ago. They’d met when she
was in her first year of medicine and he was in his last. She was
nearly twenty-eight now. He was thirty-three. “The only thing I
want is the dress,” she repeated.

“Do you want
me to call him? Do you want me to come with you when you get
it?”

“I’m not
getting it myself. I’m hiring someone.”

“No! Emma, let
me do it! What do you mean you’re hiring someone?”

“A private
investigator.”

“Why?”

“I want this
professional.”

“Like a hit?
Like if you were killing him, you wouldn’t do it yourself?”

“Exactly.”

“Is this
because you do want to kill him?”

“No, I want to
cut him out, like a tumor.”

“Professionally. Surgically.”

“Right.”

“Let me do it.
I don’t think this’ll help to cut him out.”

“You think
Charlie is inoperable.”

“Something’s
inoperable, Emma, that’s for sure.”

“Feels that
way,” Emma agreed.

“It’s why you
canceled, isn’t it?”

“Oh, of
course. I guess.”

“It’s why the
whole wedding was a train-wreck for months.”

“More than
months.”

“You’re angry
with yourself. Or maybe Mom and Dad? Not with Charlie. It’s totally
different from London Guy and Luke, totally different thing at the
heart of it, and I don’t think you can – ”