Girls In White Dresses (4 page)

For the most part, Ellen’s boys were harmless. That’s not to say that they all had sparkling personalities or quick wit to make up for their appearance. No, some of them were truly blessed with nothing. But still, the girls never really objected to Ellen’s choices. “Different strokes for different folks,” their friend Mary always said whenever Ellen brought home another one. And they all laughed and let her be. “What harm could it do?” they asked each other. And so they let Ellen have her ugly little fun.

But then she met Louis. And Louis was awful.

Louis weighed about ninety pounds, had soft, wispy blond hair, and wore the same pair of rust-colored corduroys their entire junior year. He was pretentious and socially awkward and Ellen was crazy about him. Louis sat in their apartment and chain-smoked cigarettes while he ignored all of them. Once, when Lauren asked Ellen for an opinion on which shirt she should wear out that night, Louis weighed in. “It can be dangerous to care too much about clothes. It makes you shallow,” he said. Then he reached into his pants pocket, took out a paperback copy of
Why I Am So Wise
by Nietzsche, and started reading.

“I hate that guy,” Lauren said later that night. “He’s such a dick.”

“Relax,” Isabella said. “It won’t last. They never do.”

The first time Louis dumped Ellen, they silently cheered. But a week later, the couple was back together, and Louis showed up again in their apartment, smoking cigarettes and making comments about how silly girls were in general. Louis broke up with Ellen over and over again, and she kept going back to him. None of them understood it.

“He looks like Ichabod Crane,” Lauren said once. “I mean, what I think Ichabod Crane would look like if he wore the same pants for a year, you know?”

“I just don’t understand when he has time to wash those pants,” Mary said. “He wears them every day. That’s just so gross.” They all agreed.

After graduation, Louis broke up with Ellen again. He told her that he couldn’t be tied down, that he was going to travel through Europe alone and needed his freedom. “Please let this one stick,” they said to one another. Sure, Ellen was devastated now, but she’d meet someone else, someone who would make her happier. They were sure of that. It was all for the best.

They all spent a year after graduation living with their parents in their respective suburbs, saving money and looking for jobs. It was miserable, sleeping in twin beds in their childhood rooms, sending out millions of résumés, and trying not to get annoyed when their parents said things like “What time will you be home?” and “No drinks upstairs.”

Lauren, Ellen, and their friend Shannon all moved to Chicago that summer. Ellen had gotten a job offer in Boston but had turned it down, claiming that she had always wanted to live in Chicago. “It’s such a fun city,” she said. “The lake is so great.” Lauren and Shannon rolled their eyes at each other. They knew she was lying about the lake. Louis was from Chicago and Ellen was just hoping he’d come back there soon. It was sad, really. Even a little pathetic, they thought.

But they didn’t really care that much. One year after graduating, they were finally on their own. They rented an apartment on Armitage with two and a half bedrooms, one tiny bathroom, no air-conditioning, and a giant deck. It was almost like college, except they had to get up and go to work every morning.

It was so hot that summer that no one could stay inside. They tried (for the sake of being grown-ups) not to go out every night. They sat on the deck in ponytails and shorts, reading magazines and painting their nails, trying to imagine a breeze from Lake Michigan. Eventually, someone would suggest having a beer or a glass of wine. They’d sit awhile, and someone would suggest going to the bar below them, just for one drink, just to sit in air-conditioning for a while. And before they knew it, it was two in the morning and they were listening to Karen, the crazy bartender with missing teeth at Shoes Pub, tell them about Craig, the asshole who broke her heart.

Lauren blamed the weather for a lot of what happened that summer. It drove them out of their apartment, to bars and street fairs and concerts. It made them restless and irritable while they waited for something to start. They all knew they ought to feel different in their new lives, but they felt the same and it put them on edge. Hot and impatient, they fidgeted in the heat, grumbling and asking each other, “What next? What next?”

Ellen was at a loss without Louis. She hadn’t so much as flirted with an ugly boy since he’d left for Europe. He sent her postcards from Paris and Florence that said things like
Be yourself or be nothing
and
Live humbly but live true
.

Lauren and Shannon snatched these cards from the pile to read them before Ellen did. It was one of their greatest sources of entertainment.

“Live humbly?” Shannon said. “Uh, yeah. I’m pretty sure his parents are paying for his humble trip around Europe.”

They always put the cards back in the mail so that Ellen could take them to her room and read them over and over again. They knew she was pining over him in there.

“We’ve got to get her over this,” Lauren said. So they dragged her to bars and scouted for unattractive men. A few times she even met some homely boys, let them buy her a drink, and talked to them for a while. But when the girls got close, they heard what Ellen was saying to these guys. “He really broke my heart,” she’d say. “I just really miss him.”

“What can we do?” they asked each other. They shook their heads in disappointment. Why couldn’t she just let it go?

They all got tickets to a concert at the old steel factory down the street, to see a young, handsome singer who wrote tortured love songs and whined about the troubles of being twenty-five. Their friend Isabella was visiting from New York, and she came over before the concert to drink beers on the porch, but all she did was wander around and say, “This place is huge. Your apartment is huge.”

“Yeah, we like it,” Lauren said.

“No,” Isabella said. “You have no idea. You should see my apartment in New York. It’s teeny. And expensive. This place is a mansion.”

“Then move here,” Lauren told her. “Move to Chicago!” Isabella just smiled and continued to look around in wonder.

Lauren and Shannon were in a fight that started when Shannon called Lauren a slob. “Isabella, don’t you think it’s disgusting when someone leaves Q-tips on the sink?” Shannon asked. Isabella shook her head and kept quiet.

“You’re the one who sits in that bathroom for an hour and plucks your hairy eyebrows,” Lauren said. “If anyone’s a pig, it’s you.”

Isabella just smiled and looked happy that she didn’t have to weigh in. Now Lauren and Shannon were sitting on the porch, sighing and scoffing to let everyone know that they weren’t speaking to each other.

Ellen was in the kitchen pouring wine when Isabella asked her, “So, have you seen Louis since he’s been back?”

It was like a movie: Ellen spilled her wine, Isabella jumped, and Lauren and Shannon forgot they were ignoring each other and looked at each other with wide eyes.

“Louis is back?” Ellen asked.

“Yeah.” Isabella made a face. “Sorry, Ellen. I thought you knew.”

Ellen shook her head and swallowed some wine. “No,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“Sorry,” Isabella said again. “I just assumed he would have called you. I saw Phil last weekend and told him I was coming here for the weekend and he mentioned it. He just got back a couple weeks ago. I’m sure he was going to call you.”

They all looked at Ellen, who was now calmly drinking her wine. Lauren could tell that she wasn’t upset. Surprised, yes. But not upset. They’d known Ellen long enough to be able to read her mood by the way she held herself, and right then, she was as straight as a pole, alert, and excited.

“Fuck,” Shannon said softly.

“Yeah,” Lauren answered. “I know.”

They went to the concert, where Lauren and Shannon made up, then got in a fight again when Shannon forgot to watch the Porta-Potty Lauren was in, and let a man open the door, which had a broken lock. “Everyone in line saw me with my pants down,” Lauren screamed.

“So what’s new?” Shannon asked.

They went to a bar called Life’s Too Short near the old Cabrini-Green buildings. The whole area was under construction and the streets were lined with half-built condos and shells of townhouses. Because nothing was around it, the bar paid no attention to the city’s rules about shutting down by four a.m. The bartenders let everyone stay in the bar’s outdoor area. Nothing good ever came of this, but they kept going back.

They sat in a corner of the patio where they could see everyone that walked in. They were fascinated with watching Margaret Applebee, a girl they knew from college. She’d always been kind of fat, but had dropped about forty pounds that year and was, according to Shannon, “whoring it up all over town.” She was talking to their friend Mitch McCormick, pressing herself against his arm, and they were all waiting for him to tell her to go away.

“Who does she think she is?” Shannon asked. “Like Mitch would ever be interested in her. It’s so embarrassing.”

“She’s persistent, though,” Lauren said. “You gotta give her that.”

“I don’t even recognize her,” Isabella said. “She lost forty pounds? She’s a whole different person.”

None of them saw Louis walk in. They were all so focused on the Margaret Applebee fiasco that they didn’t notice him until he was standing at their table saying, “Hey, Ellen.” Ellen tried to smile and then immediately burst into tears.

“She’s really drunk,” Lauren said to Louis.

He took her by the arm and led her away from them. Now they watched the two of them, heads bent together, talking quietly to each other.

“Oh shit,” Shannon said. “Margaret Applebee is gone. We missed it. Where’s Mitch?”

Ellen came back over to the table, crying harder now. She couldn’t really talk, but they could guess what had happened.

“He’s a jackass,” Lauren said.

“He’s not worth it.” Isabella rubbed Ellen’s back.

“You should just forget him,” Lauren said.

“I think Mitch went home with Margaret Applebee,” Shannon said.

Ellen was up and out before any of them the next morning, and she came back to the apartment with Bloody Mary ingredients, a large block of cheddar cheese, and a log of summer sausage.

“I’m sorry, you guys,” she said. “For how I freaked out last night.”

“No worries,” Shannon said. She’d already made herself a Bloody Mary and was now cutting off hunks of cheese and sausage to shove in her mouth. Isabella lay on the couch, listening to the conversation. She was too hungover to move, but made a noise and motioned for some cheese and sausage. Lauren cut some off and brought it over to her.

“I called Louis this morning to apologize to him too,” Ellen told them.

“Why?” Shannon asked.

“Because I want to be friends,” Ellen said. “I at least want to be friends with him.”

“Do you think that will work?” Lauren asked.

“I think it’s my only choice,” she said. They were quiet for a few moments.

“There’s something weird about summer sausage,” Shannon said.

“There’s a lot of things weird about summer sausage,” Ellen said.

“It should be disgusting,” Lauren said. “I mean, you leave it wrapped up and unrefrigerated forever, but when you open it, it’s still delicious. It’s one of the great world wonders.”

“I think it’s curing my headache,” Isabella said. She tried to sit up and then lay right back down. “Never mind,” she said.

“I think you guys might still be a little drunk,” Ellen said.

Later, they all agreed that she was a disaster waiting to happen.

Lauren met Tripp at a bar in Bucktown that had maps all over the walls and pool tables in the corner. He wasn’t much, but she kept seeing him. For her birthday, he gave her gift certificates to the bar downstairs and a dirty romance novel that you buy at a grocery store. “I know you like to read,” he told her. The card read
Dear Lorin, Happy Birthday. Sincerely Tripp
.

“Do you think he knows he spelled your name wrong?” Ellen asked.

“He didn’t even put an exclamation point after ‘Happy Birthday,’ ” Shannon said. She frowned at the card. “So serious. Happy Birthday—period.”

“I’m just calling because I’m bored,” Lauren explained to her friends when she dialed his number.

“You must be,” they answered.

Chicago was small that summer. No matter where they went, they ran into people they knew: Tripp, Louis, and even Margaret Applebee were always around. If they didn’t see them at Shoes or Kincade’s, then they saw them at Big John’s or Marquee Lounge. And if they didn’t see them at any of those places, they always found them at Life’s Too Short.

Every once in a while, Ellen would announce that she wanted to meet someone. She’d talk to the first boy who offered to buy her a drink. They would smile, encouraging her from across the bar. Then Louis would show up and Ellen would stop talking to the boy and come back to them. “Ignore him,” they’d tell her, and she would nod. About thirty minutes later, she’d decide to just say hello to Louis. “I have to be civil,” she would say. She would cry a little and tell him that it was hard to just be friends with him. Some nights he would enjoy the attention, pulling her aside and talking closely to her. Other nights he would get angry and tell her that he couldn’t deal with her, then storm out of the bar. Almost always, she’d cry back at the apartment, while they drank beer and ate late-night macaroni and cheese.

“You can find someone else,” Shannon would tell her as she chewed the bright orange noodles.

“This whole thing is getting really predictable,” Lauren would say.

They could have changed their patterns, Lauren thought later. They could have tried to go someplace new so that they wouldn’t see the same people over and over again. It just never really occurred to them at the time.

Their new favorite thing to do on Sundays was to sit on the back porch, drink Bloody Marys, eat summer sausage, and talk about the weekend. Shannon was mildly obsessed with Margaret Applebee, and wanted to talk about her all the time.