Girls In White Dresses (7 page)

When Abby was thirteen, her parents sent her to boarding school. They talked about sending her to the local high school, they even entertained the idea of enrolling her in the hippie high school that took place on a VW bus and drove around the country, to teach kids through real-life experience. But in the end, her parents decided on Chattick, a really well-known and snobby boarding school in Connecticut, where all the kids had parents who were lawyers or bankers, and everyone bought their chicken in grocery stores.

At boarding school, Abby learned to study. When she arrived that first year with a canvas bag of clothes and a homemade patchwork quilt for her bed, she knew she had her work cut out for her. She studied hard, taking notes on the silver link bracelets all the girls wore and the bright patterned duffel bags they carried home at the holidays. She made lists and bought these things for herself, quickly and quietly, so that no one remembered that she hadn’t had them before, no one knew that she looked any different than when she’d first gotten there. Sometimes she thought she should have been a spy.

By the time she was a freshman in college, she had it down. When she met her freshman roommate, Kristi, she appeared totally normal. But still, she told Kristi about her family as soon as it was acceptable. Abby had perfected her five-minute rant about her parents, and she performed it well. Kristi laughed in all the right places, and Abby was sure that they would be friends.

And still, Abby tried to keep her friends at a distance. She was quieter than the rest of them, always listening, always watching to see if there was something she was supposed to be doing. It was exhausting, but she knew the alternative was worse. By senior year, she had been to stay with the families of all of her college roommates. She’d been to Chicago and Philadelphia and even California, but she’d never invited anyone to Vermont. She also discouraged her parents from coming up for Parents’ Weekend. “It’s no big deal,” she always said. “No one is really coming.” This was a lie, of course, and she felt bad about that, but she didn’t have a choice. It was one thing to hear about her family. It was another thing to see them.

Kristi was the one who brought it up one weekend when most of their friends were out of town for one reason or another. “I’m so bored I could die,” Kristi said. She rolled over onto her back and sighed. “I could literally die.”

Their friend Isabella laughed. “Don’t be dramatic or anything.”

“I’m serious,” Kristi said. “We can’t stay here this weekend. There’s nothing going on. Let’s do something.”

“What do you want to do?” Isabella asked. Abby stayed quiet. They were in her room, which always put her on edge. After freshman year, wherever the group of them lived, Abby always got a single. It calmed her to at least have a place where she could go and shut the door and not have to worry about anyone watching her. She hated when they gathered in here.

“Let’s take a road trip,” Kristi said. She rolled over and sat up. “I know! Let’s go to Vermont.” She pointed at Abby. “Come on, we’ve never been there. I want to see the farm.” She started bouncing up and down on Abby’s bed. “Come on! Please! Let’s go to the farm!”

“You guys, it’s so boring there,” Abby said. She tried to stay calm. “You think it’s boring here? You’ll really die there.”

But the girls kept insisting and Abby didn’t want to protest too much, in case that would seem weird, and so it wasn’t long before the three of them were in Kristi’s car on the way to Vermont.

Abby knew as soon as they arrived that it would be a disaster. Her mom answered the door with unbrushed hair, wearing thermal pants and a T-shirt. “Welcome, girls,” she said when they walked in. She hugged each of them, and Abby noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra. “We’re so glad you could make it,” she said. “Leonard is off somewhere, but he’ll be back for dinner.” The girls nodded and followed Abby upstairs with their bags. They stared out the windows at the farmland, and Abby wished she’d grown up in a suburb.

Her dad never returned, and so they started dinner without him. “I just don’t know where he could be,” her mom kept saying. They were almost done eating when he got back. “Mary Beth, I need your help,” he said. Then he turned to look at the full table and said, “Oh, hi, girls. Welcome to Vermont.” Isabella and Kristi smiled at him and said, “Thanks for having us,” but he wasn’t listening.

“Dad, what’s going on?” Abby asked.

“The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” her dad said. He stood in the doorway and stamped his feet on the welcome mat. “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” he repeated, and her mother just nodded, as though this was a normal thing to say. “I know,” she said. “It’s so sad.”

“The neighbors have just let the birds out of the pen. They’re wandering all over the property and we need to get them. Mary Beth, can you help me find a flashlight and a bag large enough to fit a peacock?”

Abby wanted to die. This was worse than she ever could have imagined. Isabella and Kristi sat in silence and her mom got up to gather supplies.

“The neighbors have these birds,” Abby started to explain.

“Exotic birds,” her dad said.

“Right,” she said. “Exotic birds. And they aren’t taking care of them.” She turned to her dad. “Are you going to steal them?” she asked.

“No,” her dad said. “We’re just going to convince them to come here. Bob up the street is helping me.”

“Bob’s a vet,” Abby explained to Isabella and Kristi. She felt like she was interpreting.

“We have to wait until it’s dark,” her dad said. “Peacocks are blind at night, so we can just put it in the bag and get it to the truck. The peahens are easy. They follow wherever the peacock goes. Did you know that?”

“Fun farm facts,” Abby said under her breath.

“Be careful,” her mom said. “I don’t want you to get arrested because of the peafowl.” Her dad nodded, took the bag, and he was gone. Abby looked at her friends and tried to think of something to say.

“Your parents are so cool,” Isabella whispered to Abby later that night. They were lying in bed after smoking her dad’s pot on the back porch. Kristi was passed out in the other bed. Abby had offered them the pot as soon as they were done with dinner. It seemed the least she could do after the exotic bird hoopla.

“They really aren’t,” Abby said. “They’re horrifying.”

Isabella laughed. “That’s not true,” she said. “You just can’t see it because they’re your parents.”

“You wouldn’t feel that way if they were your parents,” Abby said. “Trust me.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But I think they’re great.”

When Abby stayed at Isabella’s house, her mom made them spaghetti and meatballs and they ate at the kitchen table with the whole family. They watched movies in the basement, and Abby slept in a guest room with a flowered comforter that matched the wallpaper border in the room. Her mom wore a bra the whole time. It was the perfect weekend.

Later that night, Abby heard her dad’s truck drive up the road. She got up and went to the window. Isabella got up and stood next to her. Kristi snored behind them. “What’s going on?” Isabella asked.

“I think my dad has the birds,” Abby said.

They watched as he unlatched the back door to the truck and then stepped back and began making a series of loud noises.

“Oh my God,” Abby said. “He’s making bird noises.”

“How does he know how to do that?”

“He doesn’t.” But they watched as a peacock bobbed its way out of the truck and followed her dad to the pen.

“Oh!” Isabella said. “Oh!” The two peahens hopped out after him. “Look at that,” she said. “Look at that, they’re following him!”

They were both still a little stoned, and they stared as the birds made their way to the new pen. Once they were there, the peacock opened up his feathers into a tall spray of blues and yellows. The peahens stood on either side of him. They were pure white, which made his feathers seem brighter.

“Wow.” Isabella sounded like she had just witnessed a miracle. Kristi snorted in her sleep.

“Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?” Abby asked her.

Isabella nodded but didn’t take her eyes off the birds. “Okay, sure.”

Abby had asked her mom once why they’d sent her to the schools they had. Why couldn’t they have put her in public schools? “We just wanted you to get a good education,” her mom said. Abby found this a stupid reason. Didn’t they know she’d be all alone? Didn’t they know that as soon as they sent her away, she’d be separated from them and she could never really go back? Didn’t they know that they couldn’t send her to those schools and walk into the kitchen and say, “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” and expect her to be okay with it?

When Abby met Matt, she knew that he was going to save her. He was the answer, of course, the thing that would make her really normal. He worked at Morgan Stanley, was from a suburb of Boston, and liked the Red Sox. He was so normal that it made her heart pound.

“He’s a great catch,” Kristi said to her. Abby knew this before Kristi told her, and for once she didn’t care whether Kristi approved.

New York made Abby happy. This was, she thought, because she was not even close to the weirdest person there. Every day she was there, she started to relax a little more, and soon she wasn’t looking around at people wondering what they were thinking of her. She left the apartment without looking in the mirror a hundred times, and when she walked down the street and tripped a little, she wasn’t even embarrassed.

Abby and Matt moved in together after a few months of dating. “That’s really quick,” Kristi said to her. But Abby didn’t care. And when they got engaged, she knew that all of her friends were surprised, but again she didn’t care. She was on her way to a normal life, and she wanted to get there as fast as she could.

Matt came to the house in Vermont only once. He’d met Abby’s parents twice before, when they came to the city for a visit. Out of their element, they could almost pass as normal. But after the engagement, Abby decided it was time to bring him home. She warned him that her parents were different in the house. “Abby,” he said, rolling his eyes, “I get it, okay? I don’t care if your parents are nudists. I can handle it.”

“How did you know about the nudist part?” Abby asked him. He looked at her for a moment and then smiled. “You think you’re so funny, don’t you?” he asked. “Just relax. It will be fine.”

Abby’s sister, Thea, came home for the weekend too. “I should meet your intended,” Thea told her on the phone.

“Sure,” Abby said. “I guess you should.”

Thea came home and brought her new baby girl, Rain. Thea and Rain lived on an organic farm in Vermont. “We work the farm and earn our keep,” Thea explained to Matt that night. She was breast-feeding Rain and let her breasts wag back and forth as she switched Rain to the other side. Abby could tell that Matt was trying hard not to look at them.

“Is this making you uncomfortable?” Thea asked him.

Matt shook his head. “No. No, this is fine.”

Thea smiled. “Breast-feeding is the most natural thing in the world, Matt. I forgot what it’s like with most people on the outside. At the farm, if Rain is hungry and I’m not around, one of the other lactating mothers will feed her.”

“What kind of farm does she live on?” Matt whispered to Abby in bed that night. They had shared a joint walking around the farm and now he was giggly. “That’s like Jim Jones shit,” he said. “Lactating mothers … what the hell is that?”

“So you don’t want to move there with me?” Abby asked, and he laughed.

“I’d move anywhere with you,” he said, sliding his arms underneath her shirt and around her stomach. He rested his head in her neck and she thought he was sleeping until she felt his shoulders shaking. “But I won’t drink the Kool-Aid,” he managed to get out above his laughter. He lifted his face to look at her. “Even for you, Abby. Even for you, I won’t drink the Kool-Aid from the lactating mothers.”

After Matt’s visit, Abby felt herself slipping back in time. It took her hours to pick out which shoes to wear, and when she finally did, she immediately regretted her choice. Her clothes seemed to fit differently, tight in places they never were before, too loose in others, and she pulled at them, trying to figure out why they didn’t look right. “Do I look okay?” she asked more often. She stared at herself in the mirror until Matt grew impatient, telling her she looked fine when he wasn’t looking at her at all.

Abby couldn’t help what was happening. She needed Matt around all the time, felt confused when he was gone, followed him around the apartment, her toes hitting his heels when he stopped short. “Your wanting,” he said one night, “is overwhelming.” It sounded poetic, but Matt was not a poetic person. One night, she woke up holding a fistful of his shirt. Matt stared at her across the darkness, then shook his shoulders like a dog does when it’s wet, and rolled over to face away from her. She knew he would be gone soon.

Three months after Abby woke up holding Matt’s shirt, she arrived alone at her parents’ house. As she pulled into the driveway, she thought, “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds.” That was not unusual. Ever since the peacock incident, that sentence came into Abby’s head at the oddest of times. “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” she wanted to say when there was a lull at a dinner party or a friend told her that she was pregnant. And so she wasn’t surprised that on the night she came home to tell her parents that she wasn’t getting married, it was that thought that ran through her head:
The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds
.

It was no stranger than what she had come to tell them: that the wedding was off, that Matt had moved out, and that they would probably not be able to get a refund on anything. She turned off the car and thought about her options. “The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds,” she said out loud to no one. Her breath made little puffs of white in the winter air, and she sat in the car until it was too cold to bear, and then she walked inside the house.

“Mom, I’m not getting married,” Abby said as soon as she walked through the door. Her mother was reading a book on the couch, and she marked her place with her finger before she looked up.