The Wonder Spot (10 page)

I told him that my older brother expected me to spend the night with him in Manhattan.

“Stay with me,” he said, and his look let me know I would be doing him a favor.

. . . . .

At a restaurant on Main Street, Hugh and I sat outside, drinking scotch for dinner. We weren't talking at all. I felt awkward and tried to think up topics other than the girlfriend who'd left and the job he didn't have.

When he recognized someone he knew and called him to the table, I was overjoyed.

Hugh rose and said, “Have a drink with us.”

The guy tipped his head bar-ward and said, “I'm in the middle of something,” and his tone said,
In the middle of some girl.
Then he said hi to me, and, “I'm Michael Whitmore,” and I told him my name, and
we shook hands. To Hugh, he said, “Call me at the office on Tuesday,” and was gone.

Another year of silence passed before Hugh said, “I should've majored in economics.”

It reminded me of how I'd felt applying to college. Night after night, I sat with my father in his study while he read aloud from
Barron's
. He'd read the name of the college, the number of men and the number of women, and a description in guidebook prose; then he'd say, “How does that sound?” and I'd think,
Sounds just like the last one.

It took me a few nights to realize that my father was reading only the colleges that I had some chance of getting into—not Brown but Bowling Green; not Wesleyan but Ohio Wesleyan; not Williams or Smith, but William Smith. Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to me that my grades and test scores over the years were anything more than individual humiliations; I hadn't realized that one day all of them would add up and count against me.

My father was waiting to hear my reaction to whatever college he'd just read me the description of. He looked over at me. “What is it?”

“I wish someone had told me,” I said.

“Told you what?”

I hadn't answered. I'd already figured out that not understanding my failings was another of my failings.

Now I wanted to convince Hugh that whatever prevented him from finding a job was not a failing but a strength. “You're a painter,” I told him. “I don't even know why you're looking for a job in investment banking.”

He said, “I need to make a living, Sophie.”

“Maybe you could do something with art, though,” I said.

He asked if I had any idea how much private-school tuition was.

“No.” I waited for him to make his point. Then I realized he already had. He was talking about the cost of educating the children he planned to have with Venice.

I told Hugh that I didn't think Venice cared too much about money, but as I said it I realized I didn't know.

“She doesn't care about it,” he said, “because she doesn't have to.”

. . . . .

I worried about Hugh, but there was no need: He got a job in Michael's bank, and ended up moving into Michael's apartment.

Venice didn't like Michael, and I was there the night Hugh asked her why. “Just tell me,” he said. “I want to know.”

She shrugged.

“Because I sleep in the living room?” Hugh said. “Is that it?”

“No.”

He said, “It's his apartment.”

Venice reminded Hugh that he paid half the rent.

He asked her once more what she had against Michael. When she wouldn't answer, he said, “Michael's a good friend of mine.” His voice was serious, even stern.

She gazed at him—loving him, I think, for his loyalty to his friend—and then she said, “Okay.”

. . . . .

Venice spent almost every weekend in Manhattan, and the weekends I came in the three of us stayed at her parents' apartment, their pied-à-terre, on Seventy-ninth Street off Park. Friday afternoon, I'd take the bus down from Klondike, and Venice would take a train from Providence.

We'd meet near the apartment, at the Toy Bar. It was small and cozy, and you could ask the bartender for dominoes or checkers or practically any board game—Risk, Life, Operation, Parcheesi, Monopoly, even the Barbie Dating Game. There was a model train set, too, and a few times a night the bartender would press a switch and the train would clack and whistle around the track above our heads. The engine had a light on it.

We'd spend an hour or two there—Venice always made time for us to talk by ourselves—and then Hugh would join us. Sometimes she mentioned a party she knew of, though we rarely went; Hugh's awkwardness at parties had begun to bother Venice.

Hugh was obviously relieved to have a job, but I don't think he liked the actual work—selling bonds, I think; at least he never talked about it. When I asked him about his job, he'd say, “It's fine, fine,” and his double fine made me think it was totally unfine. He was working hard, though. There were nights when he couldn't meet us until very late.

. . . . .

Thanksgiving break was the first time Venice mentioned Anthony. He was from England, and she pronounced his name not with a
th
but a
T
and a breath, as in
Antony and Cleopatra.

We'd decided to walk all the way from her parents' apartment to Penn Station, where I would get the train home to Philadelphia and she'd meet Hugh for the one to Long Island.

Anthony was “incredibly smart,” she said, and “incredibly charming,” and “incredibly fun.”

I said, “He sounds incredible.”

She didn't compare him to Hugh directly, but she let me know that it was nice to be with someone who could hold his own at a cocktail party.

“Are you seeing him?” I said.

“God, no!” she said. “We just go to parties together.”

I gave her a look:
Are you sure?

She said, “He's a total lothario,” and by then I felt comfortable enough with her to ask what a lothario was. “A seducer,” she said. “A womanizer.”

I had a bad feeling about him, but I didn't want to say so. What I said was, “Would I like him?”

“I think he'd intrigue you,” she said. “But I'm not sure you'd like him.”

We were in the Thirties on Fifth Avenue when someone handed us flyers for a sample sale, and Venice looked at hers. She said she'd heard of the designer and the showroom was on our way and, “Let's go.”

Venice hated shopping, and I thought maybe she wanted to go to the sale to avoid more questions about Anthony.

On the elevator up, I said, “Does Hugh know?”

She said, “There's nothing to know.”

Then we were in the frenzy of the sale, and Venice asked me to keep an eye out for a floor-length gown she needed for a formal party Anthony had invited her to—“a ball,” she called it.

She found one, in cobalt silk, with a low, drapey back.

There were no dressing rooms—we had to try on our dresses in an aisle between racks—and no mirrors, either, so we had to rely on each other's judgment.

Venice said, “Don't be kind.”

The cobalt dress looked fantastic on her, but I said so hesitantly; it occurred to me that if I could talk her out of the dress, maybe she wouldn't go to the ball with Anthony.

She didn't seem to hear me. She was staring at me and what I was wearing—a strapless black taffeta cocktail dress with a tight, boned bodice and a skirt that flounced and swirled to my knees.

Her voice was almost awed when she said, “Sophie.” Then: “Take your bra off.”

I looked at her,
Really?

Her look said,
Obviously.

I did as I was told, and she nodded.

I looked at the tag. “It's four hundred dollars.”

She said, “These dresses go for thousands,” and asked if I had enough in my checking account to cover it.

I said, “Are you kidding?”

She said, “Do you have a credit card?”

I did, but my father had given the card to me with specific instructions for its use—emergencies, and once a week I was to take myself and a friend out for a good dinner. I had, but never Venice; I'd been afraid she'd order a lot of drinks or an expensive bottle of wine, and then the big bill would go to my father, and he'd know I was turning out wrong.

I said, “I'm just supposed to use it for emergencies.”

“This is an emergency.”

I unzipped the dress.

She said, “Have I ever told you to buy anything before?”

We'd only shopped together once, at the Salvation Army thrift shop in Klondike, where she'd tried to talk me out of a sweater. “Of course it's not perfect,” I'd said. “It's a dollar.”

Now I said, “Name one place I could wear it.”

She said, “I'm going to buy it for you if you won't.”

I said, “Name one place.”

She said that maybe I could go with her and Anthony to the ball. She thought for a minute. “You can wear it anywhere as long as you show up late. People will think you're coming from somewhere else, a gala or whatever.”

I reminded her that I wasn't the kind of gal who went to galas.

“You don't understand,” she said. “This is your one perfect thing.”

When I told her it was just too expensive, she said that hers cost twice as much.

We were in line for the cashier before I thought of the ball she was going to with Anthony. For Hugh's sake, I said a doubtful, “Is yours a perfect thing, do you think?”

She said, “Perfect enough.”

. . . . .

That night, at home in Surrey, in my childhood bedroom, I tried on the dress and looked in the mirror.

What I saw was so foreign to me that I couldn't take it in at first. In the dress, I was glamorous. I was elegant. I was a movie star, there in my bedroom with its canopy bed and Bob Dylan posters.

Venice was right: The dress was perfect, and it was perfect on me. The low-cut bodice accentuated my large breasts and made my waist appear tiny and my hips merely full. I wasn't used to seeing my bare shoulders, and especially not the flesh above my breasts, which even at a standstill called to mind the word
heaving.

I looked at myself for a long while, and I remember it as one of the only times in my life when I saw myself as beautiful.

When my father knocked on my door, I told him that I was undressed, not a complete lie.

“Come say good night,” he said.

I put on my nightgown and bathrobe and went into my parents' bedroom. I sat at the foot of their bed. My mother put down the old
New Yorker
she'd been reading.

“I have something to tell you,” I said.

My mother looked worried, but my father, a judge, appeared as imperturbable as ever.

“I bought a dress,” I said. “It was expensive.”

“How expensive?” my mother said.

I couldn't make myself say the price out loud. I told my father that I would skip taking friends out to dinner for the rest of the year.

My father said, “You don't have to do that.”

“Yes,” I said, “I do.”

My mother said, “How much was it, Sophie?”

I said, “It was on sale.”

She kept her eyes on me. I said that it was by a famous designer, but then I couldn't remember who, and the label had been cut out of the dress.

Finally I told them the price.

Neither of my parents spoke.

I said what Venice had: The dress was worth thousands of dollars.

My father said, “And you feel you need a dress that's worth thousands of dollars?”

I didn't answer.

My parents took turns talking about my values. We all agreed that it was not appropriate or reasonable for me to buy a dress this expensive. We all agreed that I would return the dress. Then I remembered that my receipt was stamped
FINAL
SALE
.

I said, “I'll pay you back.”

My father nodded.

Then my mother said, “Do you love it?” which was what she said whenever we were shopping and I wanted to buy something expensive.

She'd say, “Do you really love it?” If I said yes, she'd go on to say
that I could wear that expensive garment forever, for years and years, and all year round; whatever the fabric—sheerest cotton, heaviest wool—she'd proclaim it seasonless. She'd name places I could wear it, events in the near and distant future: I could wear it to a cousin's bar mitzvah, my brother's graduation, my own wedding, and I could be buried in it.

On the rare occasions when I could sustain the enthusiasm required for the purchase—there was always one final “Do you really love it?” at the register—at home the garment would hang in my closet like a cinder block around my neck.