Girls In White Dresses (18 page)

They struggled through the lunch and chatted with all of the women. They cleaned up balls of wrapping paper and stray ribbons, helped clear the plates and glasses, and then carried all of the presents to the car while Kristi thanked her guests. Abby told them that she had an appointment in the city that she had to get back for. “Go,” they all told her. They almost pushed her out the door. “Get out while you can.”

Mary arranged the presents in the back of the car. “It’s almost over, right?” she muttered to herself. “Please tell me this is almost over.”

Kristi asked them to help drive the presents back to her parents’ house, so that they could unload. Then she insisted that they all come inside so that she could show them pictures of what the centerpieces were going to look like. They sat on the couch and tried to admire the pictures. Lauren leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Isabella was sure she was sleeping.

“So, we should probably try to get the next train,” Mary said, as though it had just occurred to her.

“You guys aren’t staying?” Kristi said. “I thought we could all have dinner and hang out.”

“Oh, I guess we didn’t realize that,” Mary said. “We were planning to get back to the city tonight.”

“It’s just that it’s my shower,” Kristi said. She sounded wounded, like she had just told them it was her last day on this earth and they were leaving anyway. Isabella could see Lauren and Mary start to panic.

“I know you two have stuff to get back for, but I could stay,” Isabella said. She hoped the other two appreciated her self-sacrifice. Mary perked up right away.

“We really do wish that we could stay, but it just doesn’t seem like it will work out,” Mary said. Isabella wondered if she was the only person who could hear the joy in Mary’s voice.

“Could you stay over?” Kristi asked Isabella. “I have a fitting tomorrow and you could come along.”

“Sure,” Isabella said. “That would be fun.”

Kristi showed Isabella a tape of the band they had chosen, and then they sorted through some of the shower presents, and discussed whether Kristi should have the band announce the wedding party or not. Finally, they got ready for bed in the room where Kristi had grown up. Isabella lay in one of the twin beds and looked at a picture of Fred Savage that was still taped to the bedside table.

“Iz, are you awake?”

“Uh-huh,” Isabella said.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you think Lauren is acting weird to me?”

“Not really. Weird how?”

“It just doesn’t seem like she’s happy for me,” Kristi said.

“She’s happy for you,” Isabella answered.

“I don’t know. She seems a little distant. I guess maybe it’s just hard for her to understand.” Isabella didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to be in this conversation.

“I mean, Abby’s not really into the whole bridesmaid thing, but she has her reasons,” Kristi said. “But what I don’t get is why Lauren’s being a pain.”

“Lauren seems fine to me,” Isabella said.

“It’s just, you know, sometimes I worry about her,” Kristi said.

“Why?”

“I just feel like she’s lonely, you know. Like she’s not meeting any guys and it seems like the way she’s going, she won’t.”

Isabella was quiet for a few moments. She didn’t know how to answer.

“Well, the thing is that you don’t meet someone until you do.” Isabella started off talking slowly. “And the older we get, the harder it is. And maybe not all of us will meet someone.”

“Well, you can’t think like that,” Kristi said. “Look at you and Harrison. You found each other.”

“But who knows what will happen? And what if it ends and I don’t meet anyone else? What if Lauren never meets anyone else? Is that the end of the world? People live, you know.”

In college, Kristi’s boyfriend cheated on her almost every week and Lauren was always the first one to comfort her. One time, she planned a bar crawl just to cheer Kristi up. Isabella could still remember the way they rode their bikes from bar to bar, with Lauren and Kristi leading the way, swerving and laughing. Isabella was always jealous of Kristi and Lauren in college. They were so close that sometimes they seemed like one person instead of two.

“Well, I’m just glad that you have someone,” Kristi said. “It makes me happy when my friends can finally understand how great it is to have someone, you know?”

“Yeah,” Isabella said. “I do.”

When Kristi got married, she and her husband stood under a chuppah. “We’re not having a traditional Jewish wedding,” Kristi told them a million times. “We’ll have a priest do the ceremony. But I don’t want Todd to feel completely left out, so we’re having a rabbi up there too.”

The rabbi explained how the chuppah represented the new home the couple was starting. Then she had the family drape a cloth over their necks. “With this cloth, we are creating a chuppah within a chuppah,” the rabbi said. “This is to symbolize that Kristi and Todd will be bound to each other in a way that is special only to them.” Kristi and Todd stood with their shoulders touching, wrapped in the cloth. It reminded Isabella of the way that Lauren and Kristi used to huddle together, whispering and laughing at jokes that only they understood. “A chuppah within a chuppah,” the rabbi said again. Lauren sighed and rolled her eyes at Isabella. Isabella tried to smile, but for the first time that day she felt like crying. She watched Lauren fidget in her bridesmaid dress, and watched Kristi and Todd smiling together, their faces almost touching. “A chuppah within a chuppah,” she thought. Isabella felt tears come to her eyes, but just as she was about to cry, Todd smashed the glass with his foot and everyone yelled, “Mazel tov!”

S
hannon knew the first time she saw him. His voice was soft and smooth and lulling, his build was fit and strong. As he spoke, her eyes went in and out of focus and she couldn’t make herself look away. He was on TV, but it seemed like he was in the room, talking only to her.

Dan sat next to her on the couch, staring at the TV screen, his eyes still and his mouth open. He shushed her when she started to say something. “Do you know who that is?” he asked her. His voice sounded hushed, like he was speaking in a church. “That’s our next president.”

“Do you really think?” Shannon asked. She rubbed the back of Dan’s neck. “It would take a lot for him to win.”

Dan finally turned away from the TV. He looked disappointed as he shook his head. “You’ll see, Shannon,” he said. “Believe me, you’ll see.”

Later, Shannon would tell everyone this story. She would explain the way Dan’s voice changed when he spoke, the way it made a little hop of worry enter her chest. Her friends would humor her. “I’m sure on some level you did know,” they would say. “Hindsight’s twenty-twenty,” they would add. It didn’t matter. Only Shannon knew how she felt that day when she first saw the Candidate. Only she knew that his voice made her start sweating, made her heart beat fast, the way an animal reacts right before it’s attacked.

Dan had always loved politics. He was a cable news junkie who yelled along with the left-leaning political pundits as they got enraged about the state of the government, the failings of the current administration. He talked policy at parties and argued laws at bars. Shannon met him watching the 2004 presidential debates at a dive bar on the Lower East Side. Over Miller Lite drafts, he explained the details of the Swift-boating. Shannon nodded drunkenly and thought, “This guy is smart.” They stood outside and smoked cigarettes and talked about the ridiculousness of the last election. “It turned this country’s electoral system into a joke,” Dan said. And then Shannon kissed him.

Her friends approved. “I get it,” Lauren said. “He’s hot, in a nerdy, political way.”

“He’s nice,” Isabella said. “A little intense, maybe. But nice.”

Shannon didn’t care that he was intense. He was hers. Right after they met at the debates, they started dating and volunteering, urging people to get out and vote. For days before the election, they sat in the volunteer center and made phone calls until Shannon’s fingers felt numb from dialing. “I think we can do this,” Dan said. Shannon had never found someone so attractive in her life. They made out in a closet in the back of the volunteer center for ten minutes and then went back to their calls.

That night, they drank and watched as the Democratic candidate lost. “Four more years of this,” Dan said. “I don’t know if I can take it.” Shannon took his hand and held it in her lap. She wasn’t as upset as he was, but she tried to look like she was. “I’m so glad that I’m with someone who understands,” Dan said. Shannon just nodded.

Shannon and Dan moved in together and hosted dinner parties for their friends where political talk ruled the conversation and lively debate was encouraged. Dan sat at the head of the table and quoted articles he’d read, pulled out old
New Yorker
s to back up his point. He talked and lectured, raising his glass of wine when he made important points, as though he were their leader. Sometimes Dan almost crossed the line—like the time he called her friend Lauren ignorant, after she admitted that she’d voted for the Green Party candidate in 2000 because she’d felt bad for him—but most of the time, the dinners were free of fighting and full of wine, and Shannon was happy.

Dan worked in advertising, but his heart wasn’t in it. He sat around all day, writing catchy copy to accompany ads. “I want to do something that matters,” he always said. Shannon would nod in agreement. “I want a job I care about,” he would say, and Shannon would groan in sympathy. She thought it was just talk, just something people say to get through their day. But the more the young senator from Illinois showed up on TV, the more Dan talked about his discontent. He complained about his hours, his pay, his mindless duties. He slammed dresser drawers in the morning as he got ready for work, and drank a beer each night as he sulked in front of the news. And then one day he came home and announced that he was going to volunteer for the campaign.

“Do you have time to volunteer?” Shannon asked.

“The question is,” Dan answered, “how do I not make the time?”

Dan organized rallies and trained volunteers. He went door-to-door making sure people were registered to vote. He skipped three days of work to attend a volunteer training camp in Chicago.

“I asked you last week if we could go on vacation, and you said you couldn’t take any days off,” Shannon said.

“This isn’t vacation,” Dan said. “This is our country.”

He came home from the volunteer camp with a graduation certificate and newfound energy. “This is it,” he kept saying. “This is the time.”

“The time for what?” Shannon muttered.

“What?” Dan said.

“Nothing,” she said.

At night, all they talked about was the election. Dan analyzed every word that came out of every candidate’s mouth. He sat no more than two feet from the TV, so that he wouldn’t miss a thing. “Did you hear that?” he asked, pointing at a face on TV. “Did you hear the tone she used when she said his name? Unbelievable.”

Shannon learned how to knit and sat on the couch twisting yarn into rows as Dan muttered to himself. “How can you knit at a time like this?” he asked her once. He looked at her like her yarn was the reason his Candidate was down in the polls.

Dan pored over newspapers, websites, and right-wing blogs to see what the opposition was saying. When Shannon asked him if he wanted to go out to dinner, he just shook his head no. They ate takeout in front of the TV almost every night. More and more often, she found him asleep on the couch in the morning, his computer propped up next to him and
CNN
chattering in the background. He’d wake up and rub his eyes, then immediately focus on the latest news. “I can’t believe I missed this,” he’d say. He’d turn up the volume. “Shannon, can you move?” he’d ask. “I can’t see the TV.”

Dan applied for every job the campaign had. “How much does this one pay?” Shannon asked once.

“Does it matter?” Dan asked. “You don’t get this. I would do it for free.”

“It would be kind of hard to pay rent then, wouldn’t it?” Shannon asked.

Dan walked away from her and turned on the TV, to
CNBC
. Shannon followed him into the room, but he didn’t look at her. “I was kidding,” she said. “God, don’t be so sensitive.”

“This matters to me,” Dan said.

“I know,” she said. “It matters to me too.” Dan raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything more. Shannon sat down on the couch next to him and watched the wild-eyed political commentator scream. It was the blond man, the one who interrupted his guests and got on her nerves. “He spits when he gets excited,” she said. And then they watched the rest of the show in silence.

When Dan quit his job, Shannon was supportive. “It will be hard,” she said. “But if it’s important to you, it’s important to me.” She was pretty sure she meant what she said.

“I’ll be traveling a lot,” Dan said. “But it’s what I always wanted to do.”

“Of course,” Shannon said. She didn’t really know what she was agreeing to, but her answer made Dan happy.

Later, Shannon explained it to her friends. “It’s too good to pass up,” she said. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“Well, you knew this about him when you met him,” Mary said. “I guess this doesn’t come as a huge surprise.”

“It just sucks for you,” Lauren said.

“Yep,” Shannon said. “Yep, it really does.”

At first, Shannon still saw Dan about once a week. Then his trips started to overlap with each other and he didn’t seem to have time to come home in between. Soon, he was flying from stop to stop with barely enough time to call her and tell her where he was going. Shannon realized that if she wanted to see him, she’d have to go to him. And that’s what she did.

Shannon shivered in New Hampshire while Dan arranged an outdoor rally. She attended a fund-raiser in Chicago and then took a bus to Iowa and painted campaign signs in a high school, while a snowstorm raged outside and Dan worried that the old people wouldn’t be able to drive to the school. Shannon painted poster boards red, white, and blue. She painted the Candidate’s name in fancy block letters, and made signs that said “Davenport for Change.” She painted “Hope” over and over again, so many times that the letters started to look funny and the word lost its meaning.