Girls In White Dresses (25 page)

Peggy alternately repulsed Isabella and made her sad. She complained about her almost every night to Harrison. Then one day she came into work and found out that Peggy had been fired.

“They got rid of half of the copy editors,” Cate told her. “Crazy Pantsuits is gone.”

Isabella went home that night and cried. “I feel so bad,” she said to Harrison. He rubbed her back and said, “I know.”

Lauren had been trying to plan a trip for all of their college friends for the past year. She’d started out suggesting that they go to the Bahamas, but was met with too much resistance. Finally, she planned a weekend in the Hamptons. “This is pathetic,” she kept saying. “This was supposed to be a trip for our thirtieth birthdays, and it’s a whole year later. And all we’re doing is going to the beach?”

“It will be fun,” Mary told her. “The Hamptons will be perfect.”

Beth White was excited about the weekend. She kept sending e-mails out to the whole group that said things like “Watch out for the divorced lady” and “It’s like a reverse bachelorette party for me!” It was making everyone uncomfortable.

“I think she’s lost it,” Mary said.

“No kidding,” Isabella said.

Harrison lay on the couch and read the paper while Isabella packed for her trip. Winston was curled up on his chest. Every so often, Winston lifted his head and licked Harrison’s chin. Winston was a little white fluff of a dog and when he sat still, he looked like a stuffed animal. Isabella loved him more than anything. As soon as she got her suitcase out, he wouldn’t look at her. He turned his head away and only paid attention to Harrison.

“Harrison, if we break up, would you give me the dog?” Isabella asked.

Harrison lowered the paper and looked at her. “Excuse me?”

“Beth White is getting the dog, but she said that she had to fight Kyle for him.”

“Oh,” Harrison said. “I see.”

“So would you give me the dog?”

“No,” Harrison said. “If you broke up with me, I would kidnap Winston. Then I would take him around the country and photograph him in different states, so that I could send you the pictures and taunt you.”

“Fair enough,” Isabella said. She sat down on the bed and rested her head on Harrison’s chest, right next to the dog.

“I love you,” she said.

He took the end of her hair in his hand, twirled it around his finger, and said, “Good to know.”

“You look tired,” Isabella said to Mary. They were sitting on the top level of the double-decker train to the Hamptons. Mary stared out the window with dark circles under her eyes.

“I didn’t sleep well last night,” Mary said. “Can I tell you something weird?”

“Always,” Isabella said.

“Okay, but you have to promise not to tell anyone else. It’s really weird.”

“I promise.”

“I woke up from a nightmare and I was biting Ken on the arm,” Mary said.

“Jesus, what was the dream?” Isabella asked.

“Well, I dreamt that Ken was marrying this big black woman. And he kept saying, ‘Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry. We can still be together, but I have to marry her.’ And I was crying, and then the woman came over and started fighting me. I bit her ankle, and then I woke up to Ken screaming.”

“That is really weird,” Isabella said.

“I know. What if that’s what I do now? What if I just keep biting Ken in my sleep?”

“I don’t think that will happen,” Isabella said.

“It might. Plus, I’m a bad mom.”

“No, you aren’t,” Isabella told her. “Where did that come from?”

Mary sighed. “Henry was sick last week, and I didn’t even notice. He was rubbing his ear on the floor and whining,
Niii, niii
, before I noticed anything.”

“So? You took him to the doctor in time.”

“I guess so. Now I feel bad for leaving him this weekend.”

“I pushed someone on the subway last week,” Isabella told her.

“Really?” Mary asked.

“Yeah, it just happened. Does that make you feel better?”

“Yeah, it kind of does.”

Lauren bought about a million bottles of wine for the house, and when everyone walked in they said, “Oh, that is too much wine. We’ll never get through that.”

“I planned for five bottles a girl for the weekend,” Lauren said. “Believe me, we’ll go through it.”

“No,” everyone said. “No, that’s too much.” By the second night, more than half of it was gone and everyone stopped talking about it.

Beth White talked the whole weekend. From the moment she got there, she went on about her divorce. “Such a hard decision,” she said. “But I’m in a much better place now.”

Isabella tried to avoid getting caught alone with her. “I know she needs to talk about this,” she said to Lauren, “but she has a therapist, right?”

Lauren shrugged. “God, I hope so. I know way too much about their bedroom life now. Way too much.”

“I’m not changing my name back,” Beth told them. “I thought about it, but I’m going to stay Beth White.” Isabella didn’t think this was a wise decision.

“Why wouldn’t she go back to Beth Bauer?” she asked Lauren. “She doesn’t have any kids. It’s so weird.”

“I don’t know,” Lauren said. “Maybe she’s afraid no one will remember who she is.”

“Maybe,” Isabella said. The thought left her uneasy.

The last night, they went out to a seafood restaurant. They returned to the house stuffed and tired. Everyone was drinking wine and talking when they noticed that Beth White was crying in the corner.

Her head was down and her shoulders were shaking. She was crying so hard that no one could understand what she was saying. “What happened?” Mary whispered to Isabella. She just shook her head. “I have no idea,” she said. They sat and listened to Beth gasping for breath. “She’s choking,” Isabella thought. She tried to remember the proper steps for
CPR
in case they needed to use it. They all stood around and watched until Isabella stepped forward and knelt in front of her. She touched Beth’s leg and said, “This is a normal reaction.” Lauren was standing to her right and shook her head at Isabella. Finally, their friend Sallie took Beth by the arm and walked her upstairs. The rest of them dispersed in silence. No one wanted to talk about what they had just seen.

Mary and Isabella sat on the porch, and Isabella smoked a cigarette. “I thought you quit,” Mary said.

“I did,” Isabella said. “This is an emergency.”

“I don’t really miss smoking as much as I used to,” Mary said.

“You sound disappointed,” Isabella said. Mary shrugged.

“Where’s your wine?” Isabella asked her.

“Oh, I left it inside, I guess.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“What?”

“Oh, my God, you are! You’re pregnant, you fucker.”

“Most people say congratulations.”

“I can’t believe you’re pregnant!”

Mary smiled and looked embarrassed but pleased. “It’s really early. I haven’t even told my mom. I’m like, three days pregnant.”

“Wow,” Isabella said, “you’re going to have two kids. You’re going to have two kids before I’m married.”

“I wish you were pregnant too,” Mary said to her.

“So you would have someone to be sober with?”

Mary nodded. “Yeah. I’d be happy. If you got knocked up right now, I wouldn’t even feel bad. I’d just be happy for me.”

“You,” Isabella said, “are a good friend.”

Mary laughed. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? It’s so early. Anything could happen.”

“Okay,” Isabella said. “And I’ll make you a deal. If you wait for me, I’ll time my first pregnancy with your third. Then we can be pregnant together. Deal?”

“Deal.”

They all woke up on Sunday morning with headaches. Mary had to take an early train and was gone by the time Isabella got up. The house was a mess, and they all walked around in silence, throwing out cans and bottles. Lauren attempted to sweep the floor, but there was so much sand that she gave up after a few minutes.

Beth White came downstairs with her packed bag. Her hair was wet and slicked back in a ponytail. She looked young standing there, like a high school girl who’d just finished swim practice. Abby and Shannon stood a little behind her on either side, like they were her jailers or her bodyguards, ready to step in if needed. “I’m sorry,” Beth said. “I’m sorry I caused such a scene.”

“Don’t apologize,” they all said. “Don’t be silly.”

Isabella left to catch her train. “Fun weekend,” she said to Lauren.

“Yeah,” Lauren said. “That’s one word for it. What a way to celebrate our thirties.”

“Everyone says it’s the best decade,” Isabella said.

“I know,” added Lauren. “But I think it’s just to make you feel better, like when people say it’s good luck that a bird poos on you, or it rains on your wedding day.”

“Maybe,” Isabella said.

“Maybe not, though.”

“Yeah, maybe not.”

Isabella fell asleep on the train ride back, and woke up cranky and thirsty as they pulled into Penn Station. Everyone on the train jostled one another to get out first. Normally, Isabella elbowed her way out with the best of them, but now she just let everyone go past. She climbed up the steps to exit Penn Station, and then noticed that the man in front of her had stopped and was taking his pants off.

“Excuse me,” she said and ran past him.

The sun was bright as Isabella waited for a taxi. She stood and watched all of the people returning to the city. They popped out of Penn Station, one by one, in their wrinkled clothes. Sunburned and sweaty, they raced to get cabs. Girls carried bright paisley-covered bags stuffed full of wet bathing suits and sandy shirts, and walked quickly in their flip-flops as they typed on their cell phones. Everyone was tired from too much sun and too many drinks, and they all just wanted to get back to their apartments.

They were all scrambling, Isabella thought. Scrambling, scrambling.

She got in a cab and rolled down the window. Harrison sent her a message that he was making dinner. Harrison knew how to make exactly two things: Manwiches and fajitas. Her phone buzzed again and she looked down. “It’s fajitas,” Harrison wrote. Isabella smiled.

The air blew through the window, and she watched all of the people moving like ants outside. She was happy to be sitting still in a cab, happy to be on her way home. She imagined Harrison and Winston sitting on the couch waiting for her. The cab stopped at the corner of Fifty-ninth and Eighth, and she saw a man standing there wearing all white. He was a tiny man, with a perfectly round face. “Jesus is coming,” she heard him say, and she laughed out loud. The cabdriver looked at her in the rearview mirror. “I know him,” she said. It felt lucky to her. What were the odds? She couldn’t explain it, but she was so happy to see him. She smiled at the man and waved her hand out the window. He looked up and waved back to her as the cab pulled away, and she leaned her head back and closed her eyes and let the breeze blow over her face.

O
n their second date, Mark brought Lauren a goldfish, which made her nervous. Lauren knew that the normal life span of a goldfish was about five days, but growing up she’d had one that lived for five years. And so, it seemed a big commitment when Mark gave her the plastic bag with the fish in it.

“Here,” he said, “I got you this.” He held out the baggie like he had just found it in the hallway before he came into her apartment, like it was a normal thing to do to hand a goldfish to a girl you barely knew.

“Oh,” Lauren said. “Thank you. I guess I should put these in some water.” Mark didn’t laugh. Either he didn’t get the joke or he didn’t think she was funny. She couldn’t decide which was worse.

Mark stood by the door while Lauren looked in her cabinets for an appropriate fish bowl. She finally settled on a glass mixing bowl she never used. Was the water supposed to be lukewarm or cold? She didn’t know. She settled on lukewarm so that the fish wouldn’t be chilled, and dumped him into the water. It smelled.

Lauren had won her other fish at the Pumpkin Festival when she was seven, and named her Rudy, after Rudy Huxtable from
The Cosby Show
. Her parents were annoyed. “You won a fish?” they asked when she came home. They rolled their eyes and warned her that it would probably die soon. They dug up an old fishbowl from the basement and bought fish food. “Don’t get too attached,” they told her. But little Rudy raged on. She swam fiercely year after year. When they finally found Rudy floating belly-up at the top of the bowl, the whole family was shocked. It was as though they’d expected her to live forever; as though they’d forgotten that her dying was even a possibility.

Lauren watched the new fish swim around. He looked weak. Not like Rudy at all. “I guess I’ll need to stop and get fish food,” she said.

“Just give it some bread crumbs,” Mark said. He sounded like he wasn’t the one who’d brought her the fish in the first place.

“I’m not sure that fish can eat bread,” Lauren said. Mark just shrugged.

“What are you going to name him?” he asked.

Lauren considered this. Should she name the fish Rudy as a good-luck gesture? Maybe it would help strengthen the little guy.

“Willard,” she finally said. “After Willard from
Footloose.
”

“Where?”

“
Footloose
. The movie?”

“Never heard of it,” Mark said. He looked at his watch and then back at Lauren.

“Well then, we’ll have to watch it,” Lauren said. “It’s amazing.”

“You ready?” Mark asked. Lauren nodded and put her coat on.

“Good night, Willard,” she said to the bowl. She left the light on in the kitchen so that he wouldn’t be disoriented.

Mark was odd. Lauren knew that. She knew from the time that he approached her in the deli that he was not normal. He interrupted her while she was putting Equal in her coffee. “Hello,” he said, and she jumped in mid-stir.

“Hi,” she said. She was running late to meet a client and didn’t have time for pleasantries with a stranger.

“I’ve seen you here before,” he said. “Every morning around this time, I see you here getting your coffee and sometimes a bagel.”

Lauren stared at him. She had never noticed him before. “Really?” she asked. It didn’t occur to her until later that she should be nervous.