Girls In White Dresses (2 page)

“I’ve never been on a date before,” Isabella said to Mary as she got ready that night.

“You’ve been on plenty of dates,” Mary said.

“No,” Isabella said. “I’ve been out to eat with boys who were my boyfriend, but that’s not dating. That’s just parallel eating.”

Mary looked up from her books and tilted her head. “Parallel eating,” she said. “Huh. Sometimes I think you should have been a lawyer.”

Isabella and Ben starting spending a lot of time together, but he never really wanted to do anything. He was fine sitting on the couch in their apartment. “Maybe we should go out?” Isabella would suggest. “To a museum or the zoo or something?” Ben just laughed at her and patted her knee.

She and Ben went to bars with flip-cup tables and jukeboxes that played Neil Diamond. They danced on floors covered with sawdust and drank shots with clever names like Baby Guinnesses and Buttery Nipples. On the weekdays, they’d drag themselves out of bed, get bagels at the corner, and head off to work on different subways. On the weekends, they’d stay in bed for most of the day, getting up in the late afternoon to get brunch.

They mostly stayed at Isabella’s apartment, because Ben’s place smelled like ramen and feet and had a sign over the door that said “Beware Pickpockets and Loose Women.” He had two roommates, large looming boys who sat on the couch in their boxers and were always eating huge bowls of cereal and watching
ESPN
. They didn’t seem to mind Isabella’s presence, but they didn’t really notice her either. Any conversation she tried to start with them usually ended in a grunt, and so she was happy that Ben preferred her apartment.

Ben slept easily in her bed, his mouth open, covers kicked off. Sometimes Isabella woke up with a headache and hated him for being able to sleep. Sometimes she crept into Mary’s room and got into bed with her. “He’s snoring,” she’d whisper. And Mary would grunt and roll over.

The more Ben stayed there, though, the more time Mary spent at the library. Their apartment, which was cramped with two of them, could barely hold three. Isabella got the sense that Mary was getting more and more annoyed at her, pointing out that the garbage was full, saying things like “I guess I’ll go get more toilet paper, again,” and shutting her door extra hard when she came home. Once, in the middle of the night, Ben left the toilet seat up and Mary fell in as she sat down. Isabella tried to make it up to her, cleaning the bathroom and buying candy. She could tell that Mary appreciated her efforts, but the apartment remained crowded, and still sometimes caused Mary to sigh loudly or snap about the dishes, depending on the day.

Isabella was surprised to find that she could do her job in a constantly hungover state. She wasn’t sure if this was a wonderful discovery or a sign that she should run. Either way, her performance reviews were superb.

“Stick with me for one year and you’ll go places,” Bill always said to her. He had a big stomach and ate Greek salad for lunch every day, which made him smell like onions, always. Isabella knew that he thought the Greek salad was super healthy, and for that she pitied him. She also wished he didn’t smell like he did.

Sharon was less direct. “I got a run in my panty hose,” she would announce. Then she would stand and stare at Isabella, making a face that said,
What should we do about the pickle we’re in?
until Isabella offered to go get her new ones.

Standing in Duane Reade, picking out someone else’s panty hose, Isabella thought, “This is really happening.” She chose a control-top package and went to the counter to pay.

In late October, Isabella’s sister, Molly, brought her two girls to the city for the day. They came on the train from Philadelphia, wearing matching plaid jumpers and clutching American Girl dolls. Molly insisted that they come to Isabella’s apartment so that she could see where she was living. They all stood in the TV room and looked around. Missy and Caroline used the bathroom and sat on Isabella’s bed.

“It’s very efficient,” Molly said, and gathered up her things to go.

As they walked down the street, Missy, the older one, told Isabella about their trip in. “There was a man sleeping outside the train station,” she said. “He made some bad choices in life.”

“Really?” Isabella asked. She looked at Molly out of the corners of her eyes.

“Yeah,” Missy said. She grabbed Caroline’s arm and started offering advice. “Watch out for dog poop on the sidewalk,” she said. “Don’t look at anyone, or they’ll take you.”

“Missy, no one is going to take you guys,” Isabella said. Missy, who was nine, shook her head like Isabella was stupid. “They told us about it in class, Auntie Iz. There are kidnappers everywhere, but especially in New York.”

All of Isabella’s nieces and nephews called her Auntie Iz, a ridiculous nickname given to her by her oldest brother when he had his first baby. It made her sound like some wicked aunt in a fairy tale, like a forgotten character from
The Wizard of Oz
.

Missy stood there with pursed lips and wide eyes, as though she wanted to warn Isabella of the dangers of New York. Missy was a clone of Molly, and sometimes, even though she was only nine, it was hard to like her. Isabella bent down to Caroline. “No one’s going to take you,” she whispered in her ear. Caroline smiled.

They trekked around American Girl Place, watched a movie, bought some new outfits, and had tea with the dolls. Caroline’s doll had a Mohawk in the front, where she had tried to cut the bangs. “I wanted her bangs to be gone,” Caroline explained. She touched her forehead. “Like mine.”

“That’s why she’s not allowed to get another doll for at least a year,” Missy said. She fed her doll some tea. “Because five-year-olds don’t really know how to take care of them.”

After tea, Ben met them in Central Park and chased the girls around like a monster, while Molly and Isabella sat on a bench. “He looks like a keeper,” Molly said. She elbowed Isabella. “Maybe this is the one?”

Isabella sighed. Molly had been trying to marry her off since she was in seventh grade.

“You know, Isabella, you need to make sure that he still respects you. The only thing a girl has is her reputation.”

“Oh my God,” Isabella said. “Molly, please stop.”

“You can listen to me now or learn it on your own later,” Molly said.

“If you talk about the cows and the milk, I’m done,” Isabella said. “You sound just like Mom.”

Missy came running up to them, her hair escaping from her ponytail and her cheeks flushed. She looked adorable, and for a moment, Isabella wanted to grab her in a big hug. Then Missy said, “Ben is so funny.” She turned and smiled at Isabella. “I hope you marry him.”

Missy leaned in close to Molly and whispered something. She looked concerned, but Molly told her not to worry. Missy ran back to Ben, who raised his arms and started stomping toward her. She squealed and ran.

Molly said, “Missy just asked me if you were poor. She asked if you needed to move in with us. She said she’s never seen a place to live that’s so small.” Then Molly tilted her head back and laughed and laughed with her mouth open so wide that Isabella could see her fillings.

Isabella had always thought that New York would be devoid of animals, but that wasn’t true. They were everywhere. They were just the kind of animals you didn’t want to see. “I read somewhere that in New York you’re never more than five feet away from vermin,” Mary said. This knowledge haunted Isabella. The building posted a sign-up sheet once a month for exterminators, and each time the list went up, it was immediately filled with capitalized, underlined descriptions of what people needed to get rid of. “MICE!!!” the list read. “
ROACHES
AGAIN!!!” it said.

Isabella and Mary could hear scratching between their walls, and they were sure it was a mouse, although they’d never seen him. “I hear it,” Isabella would say. They named him Brad and pretended he was the only mouse in the place. When he scratched at night, it made Isabella squirm in her bed. If she heard him, she wouldn’t get up until it was morning, afraid that she’d run into him on her way to the bathroom. Even if she had to pee, she’d wait. The mouse was probably giving her a bladder infection.

Because their apartment was approximately a hundred degrees on any given day, the sliding windows had to be left open. They had no screens, so very often Isabella woke up to the butt of a pigeon facing her. They called the pigeon Pete, and tried to figure out why he only came to Isabella’s window. Pete perched there almost every morning and cooed and pooped on her windowsill. It was possibly the grossest thing she could imagine.

“Pete, get out of here!” she would scream.

“Don’t yell at him,” Mary would say. “You’re going to scare him and he’ll fly into the apartment.”

Isabella thought she was overreacting, until one morning when she screamed at Pete and he flew backward into her room. She ran to get Mary, who grabbed a broom and slammed Isabella’s door shut. She was always good in these types of situations.

“Okay,” she said. “When we open the door, you run to the window and open it as far as it will go. I’ll shoo him out.”

“You’re so brave,” Isabella told her.

It took almost an hour and a lot of screaming, but Pete found his way back outside. They stood sweating and panting, shaking their heads at each other. “I never thought there’d be so much wildlife in New York,” Isabella said.

“Me neither,” Mary said.

Ben took the train to Philadelphia with her for Thanksgiving. He ate turkey and played with the kids and was charming in a way she hadn’t known he could be. Isabella’s mom insisted on wrapping up loads of leftover pie for Ben. They took the train back together and he rested his hand on her thigh the whole way. The week after, she didn’t hear from him once, and she wondered if she’d imagined the whole holiday.

It got colder, but their apartment still hovered around a hundred degrees. In Rockefeller Center, families of five came to see the tree, and walked around holding hands in a line, forcing Isabella to dart around them on her way to work. It was like one big game of Red Rover, and Isabella felt sure that she was losing.

Isabella went home for Christmas alone, with two bags of dirty laundry. The night before she left, she and Ben went out to get drinks. They laughed and had fun, and as they stopped for pizza on the way home from the bar, Isabella began to think she was wrong to imagine that there was any trouble between them. Later that night, as Ben played with her hair in bed, she let out a happy sigh and he said, “My ex-girlfriend used to make me play with her hair before she fell asleep.” Isabella pulled away from him, but his fingers were tangled in her hair and he ended up pulling out a few strands.

“What?” Ben asked.

“Nothing,” Isabella said. How could she explain what he did to her? She let him lie there, holding the hair he’d torn out of her head, and think about it.

Christmas at the Mack house was loud and busy. Stuffed reindeer peeked out from the corners, and Scotch tape and snickerdoodles were everywhere. All of the grown-ups played board games while the kids ran around upstairs. It was safer that way, Isabella knew. Mack board-game nights weren’t for children.

The night before Christmas Eve, they played Scattegories, and things were already getting messy. Her brother John was mad because he’d brought Cranium to play but had been overruled. “I don’t think we should play anything that involves clay,” Brett said.

“Yeah,” Isabella said. “It might get physical.”

There were twelve players, so it was impossible to tell if anyone was cheating. Isabella’s partner, her sister-in-law Meg, chugged appletinis all night and taunted the other teams. “Whooo!” she kept squealing. “Wooohoo! We are going to kick your asses.” Then she held up her hand and made Isabella give her a high five.

Isabella’s mother had banned all premade pitchers of drinks after the pomegranate martini incident of Thanksgiving 1998, but someone must have forgotten. When Isabella had walked into the kitchen that night, she’d seen a big pitcher of unnaturally green liquid. “Appletinis,” Meg had said brightly. “Do you want one?” It was the last complete sentence she said that night. Isabella’s brother Joseph quietly ignored his appletini-loving wife, leaving Isabella to high-five her alone.

Brett had barely spoken since he’d tried to submit “whore” in the category of “things that are sticky.” Isabella’s mother had exclaimed, “Sweet Jesus” and closed her eyes in horror. Never mind that the letter for that round was
H
, and Isabella’s mother should have been concerned that her twenty-seven-year-old son couldn’t spell.

Molly talked about Ben, and Isabella regretted ever introducing him to her family. “He was so cute with the girls,” Molly was saying. “Just really adorable.”

Isabella saw Caroline run by in a flash of blue, and soon all of the kids were rumbling downstairs from the playroom. Most of them were in costumes, and carrying plastic teacups for reasons they never explained. Scattegories was forgotten. Molly suggested that all of the kids could sleep in Isabella’s room, as a treat, but only if Isabella agreed, of course.

“Can we, Auntie Iz?” they asked her. “Can we sleep in your room?”

Isabella looked at Molly, who didn’t look back. “Sure,” Isabella said. “You can sleep in my room.”

Caroline cheered, then tripped herself on the long blue dress she was wearing and started crying. Isabella picked her up and held her in her lap. Caroline had always been her favorite. When she tried to whisper, she talked right into people’s mouths. Last Thanksgiving, when she’d dropped a drumstick on the floor, she’d said, “Fuck it.” And when Molly had asked her where she’d learned that word, she shrugged and said, “Grandma Kathy.”

“Did you get me a present, Iz?” Caroline asked.

“Caroline, that’s rude,” Missy said. She patted Isabella’s arm. “Auntie Iz doesn’t need to get us presents.” Missy, still worried about Isabella’s possible poverty, treated her like a homeless person that the family had taken in.

Molly looked over at her girls, and her eyes narrowed at Caroline’s costume. “Is that my bridesmaid dress?” Molly asked.

“No,” Isabella said. “That’s my bridesmaid dress.”