Girls In White Dresses (21 page)

“Probably not,” he said.

“No,” she agreed. “Probably not.”

Harrison had gone to Tufts and was two years older, while she’d been at Boston College, on the other side of the city. It made her sad to think they’d never be back there again, never bounce from bar to bar drinking and dancing just because they could, just because they should. It wasn’t that she wanted to be in college again, exactly. No, she just missed it sometimes, the aftermath of those nights out, inexplicable bruises and lost wallets, phone numbers being requested, make-outs with near strangers in crowded bars.

Harrison didn’t seem to miss the past at all.

“But don’t you wish you could go back, just for a week?” she asked.

“I guess maybe,” he answered. She knew he didn’t mean it.

Isabella could spend hours looking at pictures from college. She liked to set them next to the more recent pictures from weddings and reunions and compare the two. It wasn’t that they looked old now—they weren’t even thirty! It was just that they looked so young in the college pictures, so baby-faced and rubbery. Isabella studied the different shots of them, dressed up in ridiculous costumes or bundled up for a football game. It amazed her, how eager their expressions were, like they couldn’t wait to get to the next party, like there was just so much fun waiting for them.

Isabella couldn’t get over the way their skin looked in these pictures. It was dewy and pink and she couldn’t imagine what they’d ever complained about. It looked as though they were smothered in highlighting cream. Now they were duller and more matte. And she was pretty sure they were going to stay that way.

Even Harrison’s college pictures made her sad—him in a dirty house standing next to a keg, his arms around friends and a half-drunk smile on his face. It made her homesick that she would never know him there. They’d met after they both had jobs, and it broke her heart that she’d never know the college Harrison. She studied the pictures of him with his college girlfriend, trying to figure out what they were like, jealous that the girl in the picture knew Harrison in a way that she couldn’t.

The ride to Boston took a while and they listened to
NPR
for most of the way.
Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!
was on, which was Harrison’s favorite show. He laughed at things that Isabella didn’t find funny. She wanted to ask him what he was laughing at, but knew that the answer would probably be a look that said,
You’re not as smart as I am so you don’t get it
, and so she stayed quiet.

Isabella fell asleep toward the end of the drive, and woke up confused and cranky as they pulled into the driveway. Her mouth was open and she had drool on her cheek. She wiped it away and looked at Harrison, annoyed.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” she asked.

“You’re already up,” he said and turned off the ignition.

Brinkley was outside the house with their golden retriever, and Isabella watched him wave and wished that they hadn’t come. She wiped her mouth again to make sure she got all the drool off and ran her fingers through her hair.

“Ready?” Harrison asked. She opened the door and got out.

Brinkley walked over to greet her and kissed her on the cheek. All of Harrison’s friends had impeccable manners. She resisted her impulse to curtsy.

“Coco’s inside with the baby,” he said.

The baby (Isabella had to admit) was gorgeous. There was none of the ruddy-faced pimply skin newborns sometimes have. This baby was pink and cream, with dark hair and deep blue eyes. Isabella didn’t want to be in love with her but immediately was.

Coco was funnier than she remembered, which was maybe due to the fact that she’d gotten a little fat during her pregnancy. She had always been a tiny girl, but now on her short frame was the unmistakable blubber of leftover baby.

“All I want now is sausage,” she told Isabella with wide eyes. “It’s unreal. Red meat and sausage.”

She offered Isabella a glass of wine and poured some red into two oversized glasses. “I’m not really supposed to drink if I’m breast-feeding, but fuck it. I just went nine months without a drink. Plus, I go crazy by the end of the day with just this little blob to keep me company,” she said, smiling at the baby.

Isabella liked Fat Coco more than she’d ever liked the other one.

They drank until dinner and nibbled on cheese and crackers. They passed around the baby and Coco opened the present. Isabella held Elizabeth and wished that she’d brought her the bunny. By the time they sat down, they were all a little drunk.

Brinkley put the steaks on everyone’s plates and gave Coco the largest one, which struck Isabella as incredibly kind. She’d always thought Brinkley would be the kind of husband who wouldn’t want a chubby wife. But he didn’t care! Coco had just had their baby and he was grateful. Isabella felt tears come to her eyes and made a mental note to stop drinking the wine.

Harrison and Isabella made a plan to go to Newbury Street to walk around and have lunch, but by the time Isabella was showered and dressed and got down to the kitchen the next morning, there was another plan all set. Coco was packing a picnic basket for them to bring to Boston Common. Who owned a picnic basket? Did everyone have one except for Isabella?

Isabella kept looking at Harrison to catch his eye. This was not the plan. But he didn’t seem to notice. He poured himself a cup of coffee and talked to Brinkley about some guy they knew who’d been fired for stealing from clients. Isabella wasn’t sure, but she thought the guy’s name was Mortimer.

Harrison leaned over his coffee, stuffing his nose right over the top as he inhaled. “Now, this,” he said, looking at Isabella, “this is real coffee.”

Isabella hated him so much she almost spit. His nostrils looked huge when he smelled the coffee, and she felt nauseous. She smiled and asked for Advil.

Isabella hadn’t been on a picnic for as long as she could remember. Maybe even longer. And she knew why. It was uncomfortable to sit outside and awkward to pass around thermoses filled with soup, trying not to spill them on clothes, holding on to napkins as they blew away. She was smiling, though, so as not to be rude. Her head hurt from the wine and she wished that she were still in bed. It was cold when the wind blew—too cold, certainly, to be sitting outside for a meal.

Boston Common was pretty, especially with all of the leaves changing colors and the beautiful brownstones in the background. Everyone in Boston looked cleaner and more awake than people in New York. But Boston Common was not Central Park, and it looked small and eager to Isabella, like it was trying too hard.

The baby was bundled up to the point of insanity. All Isabella could see was a teeny nose sticking out of a pile of blankets. Coco leaned over and touched her nose to the baby. Isabella felt something that was certainly jealousy, although she wasn’t sure why. She wished that she wanted to sit closer to Harrison and have his arm wrapped around her, but she didn’t.

Harrison was explaining how the hedge fund he worked for was adjusting to the economy and how their outlook was changing. Every time he said the word “derivatives,” Isabella’s temples throbbed. Coco and Brinkley listened intently, and not just to be polite. They were interested in what he was saying.

He was boring, Isabella realized. She watched him tell a story about work and it hit her: He was boring, and his friends were boring, and this picnic
right now
was boring. Harrison probably had a secret desire to get married and move to Boston and get a golden retriever and be boring all the time. She didn’t know him at all.

And worse, what if he didn’t want to marry her and move to Boston? She wasn’t quite sure she wanted to be with him, but she was quite sure that she wanted him to want that. Her brain swirled inside her head, and she closed her eyes and tilted her head back to face the sun.

Sometimes Harrison seemed like an old man, crooked and worn out. He was cranky at the end of workdays, loosening his tie and watching the evening news. They probably shouldn’t have moved in together so soon, but rent in New York was insane and both of their leases were up and they were spending almost every night together anyway. It seemed like a good idea. Now Isabella couldn’t imagine how they would ever get out of it even if they wanted to.

“Do you ever hate Ken?” Isabella had asked her friend Mary a couple of weeks ago. They were getting manicures on a Wednesday night after work and the question just came out. Ken was Mary’s new boyfriend, a nice guy who made all of their friends comment, “Oh, there he is. That’s what she’s been waiting for,” as if finding your perfect match was a guarantee as long as you were patient enough.

Mary raised her eyebrows and looked closely at a nail she’d just smudged.

“Hate him?” she asked.

“Yeah. Hate him,” Isabella said. “The other night I looked at Harrison and I just … I don’t know.”

“I don’t know if I ever
hate
him,” Mary said. “But he sure bugs the living fuck out of me sometimes.”

That night they all went to the North End for Italian food. They ate pasta and drank less wine than they had the night before, and Brinkley, Coco, and Harrison all exchanged information about people they’d gone to school with.

“Cathleen’s pregnant again,” Coco said. “But she’s not really telling anyone yet, so don’t say anything.”

Coco always knew the best gossip, and almost everything she said was followed by a disclaimer that she wasn’t supposed to repeat it. The first time Isabella had met Coco was at a wedding of Brinkley and Harrison’s friend Tom. Coco spent most of the reception sharing bits of information with Isabella. The bride had cheated on the groom in college with another friend, Dave, who hadn’t been invited to the wedding, and also one of the bridesmaids had been in love with the groom since freshman year!

Isabella took these confidences to mean that Coco really liked her, that she wanted to be friends, and she was flattered by the attention. But after a few more encounters, Isabella realized there was nothing special about her. Coco just couldn’t keep a secret.

Back at their house, Coco put out cookies and poured everyone some wine. The baby was wide awake, and lay on the floor on a pink blanket with a mobile of stuffed farm animals above her. She babbled at them like she was telling a story.

“You have a lot to say tonight, don’t you?” Coco asked the baby.

“Just like her mother,” Harrison said, and they all laughed.

For some reason this made Isabella feel left out, like she was crashing a reunion. She sat on the floor next to the baby, pretending to be so interested in Elizabeth that she didn’t care about the conversation around her. The three of them were still trading information about people from college, but they had moved on to peripheral friends, people Isabella had never even met.

“Dorothea got laid off!” Coco almost yelled this one, so happy that she’d remembered it. She tucked her legs underneath her, gearing up to tell the whole story. “She was just about to be promoted too, or that’s what she thought. And she was looking at places to buy in the city when they called her in. Can you believe it?” She took a sip of wine for dramatic effect. “She’s pretty embarrassed about it, so don’t broadcast it or anything. She had to move back in with her parents on Long Island. Can you imagine? Ugh,” Coco shuddered.

Isabella actually could imagine it and she wondered if she was the only one. Her life, as it was, felt very thin, very transportable. If she were to lose her job, moving back in with her parents might be exactly what she’d do. She wasn’t married to Harrison, and they didn’t have a child. She could just sell her bed and couch and pack up and move home to her parents’ house, easy as pie.

This wasn’t normal, she didn’t think. But was Coco more normal? They were almost the same age and Coco had started a whole other life with babies, and golden retrievers, and picnic baskets. It was a life that felt miles away for Isabella.

Isabella sat cross-legged in front of the baby and started tickling her toes. “This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home …,” she began quietly. Elizabeth’s eyes grew very round and she looked serious. “This little piggy ate roast beef, and this little piggy had none.” Elizabeth was almost completely still, her eyes fixed on Isabella. “And this little piggy went weee weee weee, all the way home!” Isabella finished and tickled the baby up her legs onto her stomach. Elizabeth looked frightened for a moment and then started to laugh and snort.

“You’re so good with her,” Coco said. Isabella was offended that she sounded surprised.

“Isabella has a lot of nieces and nephews,” Harrison said, not unkindly, though it made Isabella feel like an awkward teenager who they were trying to praise and include. She excused herself shortly after and went upstairs to bed. The three of them stayed up late talking and it felt lonely to listen to their voices from another room.

Isabella didn’t sleep well that night and was up and dressed, sitting by her packed bag, before Harrison was even out of the shower. Coco had bagels and muffins and coffee ready, so they sat down to eat, and Isabella was sure that this weekend was never going to end. She sipped her coffee, wanting the good-byes and hugs and promises to visit soon to be over already. Harrison was slow to gather his things and lingered at the table. Isabella thought she might stand up and scream.

Finally they were on their way. Isabella wanted to drive by Boston College, maybe stop in the bookstore to buy a sweatshirt. The car windows were down and the wind blowing in was such perfect fall wind that it made Isabella happy. She put her hand outside and felt the crispness mixed with leftover summer.

“Did you have fun?” Harrison asked her, looking sideways and reaching over to put his hand on her thigh. “I’m sorry if it wasn’t exactly what you wanted to do.”

“Would you ever want to move to Boston?” she asked.

“No,” he said. He looked over at her again. “Why? Is that something you think you want to do?”

She felt immediate relief and shook her head no. She smiled at him.

“It’s a nice place to visit, a great city for college, but I can’t picture living here again,” he said. “It’s like a fake city, you know?”