The Season (6 page)

The second was that boob tissue actually imparted the ability to “speak boy,” and if you didn't have enough, it left you somewhere between a nasty speech impediment and positively mute. Mine were decidedly on the lean side—perky, but they lacked real heft, a pair of plums vying for attention in a market bursting with oranges, grapefruits, and ripe melons. I sometimes worried that a decade of lashing them in sports bras had stunted their growth.

“Don't worry. I'll be right there with you,” Julia said, reading my
mind.

“I'm not worried,” I replied way too quickly, unsurprised by her clairvoyance.

“Uh-huh.” Julia was unconvinced. More than any other person, she knew that fathoms beneath my surface bluster lurked a gushing vent of anxiety about dating, boys in general, and the now-looming debutante season, which would be the ultimate public test of my femininity.

Spectacular failure is by far the most likely outcome
.

Six

In Which Megan Proves Sir Isaac Newton's Second Law of Motion

WHEN MOM ADDED “SHOW DOG” TO MY OTHER
identities as “college junior” and “Division I athlete,” my already busy days became a nonstop sprint of workouts, classes, shopping, practice, dance classes, shopping, homework, games, and—oh yeah, shopping.

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays began at five o'clock in the a.m. with breakfast—a cup of oatmeal loaded with blueberries, peanut butter, and honey. Then I rode my bike to the gym, where I lifted weights and did box jumps until drained and often dizzy. After showering, I downed two chocolate Muscle Milks for second breakfast on my way to my eight o'clock class. With no workouts on Tuesdays and Thursdays I slept in till the luxurious time of 7 a.m.

Because of my soccer schedule, I only took morning
classes, and though that semester I took the required twelve hours for my scholarship, I went light on substance—my only real course was History of Ancient Rome, and I padded with electives in Mayan Art, theater set building, and personal finance. After class I crammed in a few thousand calories at the athlete's cafeteria, and then had practice five days a week from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m.

After an early dinner (never forget food!) the second half of my day started. Monday and Wednesday nights were reserved for homework, and Tuesday and Thursday nights for a month, Julia and I waltzed around the Studio 22 dance floor. There were eight of us in the Intro to Ballroom class—two middle-aged couples looking to rekindle the pilot light, and a wedding couple nervous about that first dance.

Ernesto and Gloria, our instructors, had four weeks to get us on our feet. The women wore dresses and heels, the men slacks and leather-soled shoes, and the first time I stepped onto the waxed floor in my pumps I immediately concluded that walking in those shoes on the dance floor was not for the faint of heart, and dancing in them was downright perilous. For two weeks I clung to Ernesto, terrified he would let go and I'd spin off like a rogue planet into the outer galaxy—or worse, out the door, over the railing, and into the parking lot below.

Julia, a veteran of ballet and jazz from childhood, and a stalwart in heels, used that month as a tune-up, and several nights after class she led me around our living room slowly
counting the steps. With her help and a lot of encouragement, sometime in week three it clicked. I wasn't going to win
Dancing with the Stars
, but I was capable of moving in a gentle circle around a room without careening into the furniture. It would have to do.

On the weekends we shopped—relentlessly. Julia and I met Mom and her Chase Platinum card promptly that first Saturday at quarter to ten, before Northpark Mall opened.

“I've hired a stylist,” Mom announced as we stood outside Neiman's. “She comes highly recommended.” I cringed.
Recommended by whom?
I wondered, and then recalled my Debutante Bible. No doubt our stylist featured prominently in there.

Mom seemed harried and distracted, like a young mother at the grocery store trying to push the cart, read her list, find the Cheerios, and keep an eye on a couple of toddlers. She eyed her watch again. “She said she'd be here at ten.”

“Still five till,” I offered, but in Mom's world five minutes early was still late.

“She charges a fortune . . .” Mom said, and sighed.

I was now on the lookout for a severe, heavily made-up woman past fifty, a bloodless vulture in a black knit dress and pumps wearing little glasses on a chain. Her eyebrows, long since tweezed away, would be drawn on with eye black, and her pursed lips would be as wrinkled as scrunched-up aluminum foil. Once squired away in the sanctum sanctorum—the ladies' dressing rooms at Neiman's—she'd examine us with a cold and
calculating eye like we were sweaters on a sale rack, and behind her back Julia and I would speculate that she enjoyed spanking naughty men and made extra cash as a dominatrix on the weekends. Her name would be Doris.

A dusty brown Vanagon, circa 2005, squealed into the parking lot sporting Minnesota plates and a faded
Widespread Panic
bumper sticker. It stopped with a jerk, and a very tan white chick emerged. She was in that gray area between thirty and forty. Her hair was a nest of dreadlocks, and she wore heavy, horned-rimmed glasses, an Irish flag wife-beater, shapeless jeans, and the clunkiest green shoes I had ever seen. She flung a nylon, caution-yellow Marmot backpack over her shoulder and slammed the door, but it didn't close, so she slammed it harder until it shut, then locked it with the key, which she shoved in her front pocket.
Probably stopping by to stock up on patchouli
, I thought. But when she saw us she walked straight over. Mom stiffened as she approached.

“Mrs. McKnight?” she asked. Her voice was very low, raspy, and she spoke in a heavy French accent.
She probably smokes cigarettes!
I thought.
And weed out on the lawn during the summer tour. Cool!

“Yes?” Mom answered unhappily.

“I'm Margot Jaffe.” She stuck out a hand and we all saw she had full underarm hair. Mom was torn between pointing and falling to her knees in shock.

“Oh,” Mom managed, trying desperately not to stare at her unshaved pits, and Julia and I shared a look. If Mom
was looking to score backstage passes to Coachella, she'd hit the jackpot. For cocktail dresses and gowns to wow a Dallas debut crowd, maybe not so much.

“You must be Julia.” Her pronunciation of
Julia
was so exotic I half expected a plume of blue smoke to come out of her mouth.

“Yes—so nice to meet you,” Julia said, holding back an impish smile. As they shook hands we both enjoyed Mom's obvious discomfort. She was absolutely mesmerized, and probably a little queasy, that Margot didn't shave her underarms and had the brass to wear a tank top in broad daylight to go shopping at Northpark with clients.

“I'm Megan—great to meet you!” I said, delighted to keep Mom squirming.

“Megan—
enchantée
.” She said my name with a long
E
—Meegan—then looked at Mom without a speck of discomfort. “
Bon—allons
.” When nobody moved, she said, “Shall we go?”

“Yes, of course,” Mom answered distantly, and Margot held the door for us. We entered in the cosmetics department, and the poor saps who lived there were just opening the shop. They looked wan and thirsty in the harsh daylight. At the second counter a tall black woman with square shoulders smiled when she saw Margot.

“Margot!
Ça va?
” she asked, waving like she was on a float at a parade.

“
Ça va, cherie. Et
toi?
”

“
Comme ci, comme ça
,” the woman said, shrugging her enormous shoulders. “
À bientôt
.”

“
À bientô
t
,” Margot answered.

In a strange way this worked to establish Margot's bona fides, and Mom mulled her next move as we worked our way past handbags toward the couture stuff.

“So you helped Claire Munson's granddaughter Mackensie with her debut last year?”

“
Oui
,” Margot said. “She's a real doll, no?”

“Yes, she is—her pictures were absolutely fantastic,” Mom answered. And that would have to do for Mom's interview, though clearly she harbored reservations.

“Now, we won't need white gowns for the final ball. My sister and I are taking the girls to New York for those with their cousin . . .”

Julia and I exchanged a look. Shopping trip to New York? Perk!

“But both girls will need cocktail dresses and gowns for the other balls, and many have themes, so we'll need to be aware of that. And what the other girls are wearing, of course. And then they'll need shoes and handbags and—”

“Mrs. McKnight,” Margot interrupted, and stopped in the aisle. Mom faced her.

“Lucy, please.” Margot tilted her head down and looked up, so she could see Mom above her heavy glasses.

“Lucy. Let us just start with measuring them. We must let our eyes and minds be open to their natural beauty, and
then hope that will tell us their style. Later, we will discuss exactly which parties and which dresses. Okeydokey?”

Margot waited while Mom absorbed all this.

“Okeydokey,” Mom answered, and smiled for the first time.

In the dressing room Julia and I stood in our underwear. Of course Julia was wearing a matching bottle-green silk set, while I had gone with my habitual Hanes cotton bikini and a gray sports bra. We were similar but never exact copies, and the years had pushed us further apart. Julia was slender, feminine, all gentle curves. I was more—uneven.

Margot removed an orange tape measure shaped like a snail and a box of pins from her backpack and went to work. First she measured Julia—precisely, to a sixteenth of an inch.

“A perfect size four!” Margot exclaimed to no one in particular, and then took a pink Sharpie and began making notes in a brown Moleskine notebook. “Five foot seven inches, breasts thirty-four B, waist twenty-seven, hips thirty- five.” Now she walked back and looked at Julia from ten feet. Mom went and stood next to her, and Margot had a stream-of-consciousness dialogue with herself. “
Alors
, blonde hair, wonderful complexion, warm eyes, green with yellow, neck long, legs slender—well, we can do practically anything with her, but I think we should first stick with the classics. She will look fantastic, of course, but the clothes will speak about her, tell everyone who she is, and not just what she is wearing.” She turned to
Mom.

“
Oui
,” Mom said, and Margot smiled. Now she measured me.

“Five foot six and three-quarters,” she said.

“Five foot seven!” She ignored my protest, wrote
5' 6 ¾"
in the book.

“Thirty-four A,” she said, after measuring my chest.

“B!” I cried.
Bitch is gonna cheat me out of a cup size?

But she wrote down
34A
in her book.

“Waist twenty-eight, hips thirty-six, hair brown.” It all went in the book. I was starting to sweat, realizing that I was not a perfect size four, and we hadn't even gotten to the really bad stuff, like my farmer's tan and my scarred, muscular legs. Margot went to the back of the room and did her gazing thing, and Mom fretted beside her like a guy who had bet big on a bad horse and was now forced to watch the damn thing run.

“We can get her a push-up bra. And cutlets for the gowns,” Mom said.

“I'm not wearing those!” I said.

“And a spray tan—”

“Nope,” I said.

“A haircut and color and—”

“What's wrong with my hair?” I asked, but Mom was ignoring me.

“We can get her eyebrows waxed and colored and maybe her lips dyed and—”

“Not gonna do it!” I cried out.

“This is how she is,” Mom said to Margot. “She'll fight you the whole way and have something to say about everything.”

“Only seems fair,” I said. “I'm the one that has to wear this stuff so I think it's pretty damn reasonable that I should have some say.”

“You see,” Mom said to Margot, who had been watching us intently.

“Lucy—I think there is a Starbucks in the mall,” she said. “Would you mind terribly going and getting me a small coffee?”

“Um, all right,” Mom said. “Just a coffee?”

“A venti macchiato with cream, light on the foam.”

Mom left to go get Margot's coffee, and when she was gone Margot walked over and led me to a bench in the dressing area away from Julia, who made herself scarce by looking at dresses. She sat me down and held my hand.

“Megan, please listen to me now. Your mother has hired me, and is paying me, to style you impeccably, and I will do it. But the most beautiful dress in the world will look horrible if you are not comfortable in it. And yet there are a lot of parties and you must wear something, yes?”

“Yes,” I said.

“So please, you must trust me. I promise there is a middle of the road, a place where your mother is happy, but you are too.”

“Promise?” I asked. If I had to put myself in
someone's hands, better this French lunatic than my mother.

“I swear it,” Margot said, and looked as if she meant it. “You are full of fire, and we will find a way to bring that out.”

“Okeydokey,” I said, and Margot laughed.

“Now, what do you absolutely hate, the things you cannot wear?”

“Nothing pink,” I said. “And no bows.”

She held out her hand and we shook on it.

It turned out that Margot had a great eye and brought me loads of stuff over the next month that I would never have picked, in colors I would have shunned, but when I tried them on they looked way better than I expected. I relaxed a little, and she and Mom chatted the weekends away as the four of us stormed Neiman's, Saks, Barneys, and Nordstrom in a blitzkrieg of eyeing and buying that soon approached the GNP of a modest European country. It was ultimately embarrassing, and exhausting.