All Dressed Up (35 page)

Mom came back
with his favorite homemade bean and pasta soup in a flask and might
have attempted to pour the whole lot down his throat with a funnel
if Emma had given her one. Sarah and Dad wanted to witness the
miracle of Billy drinking soup, so the whole family sat and watched
him, laughing and teasing, then Dad thrashed him at computer
Monopoly and Mom hid in the bathroom and cried again.

On Sunday, he
had the tube taken out. The nurse promised it would be fast, and by
the time the panicky look formed on his face the tube was gone and
he gave a big grin. An hour later, they decided he could go
home.

The dry
cleaner’s smelled of hot lint and cleaning fluids. Angie picked up
her business suits from a man she didn’t know, then saw Carol
coming from in back. “Oh, Angie, I was going to call your friend
today and tell her the gown is ready.” It was Wednesday. Brooke’s
wedding was in three days.

“Is it here?
Could I see it? Can I tell her it turned out perfect? Or even take
it myself and drop it off at her place?”

“Well, it
didn’t come out quite perfect.”

“Can I see?”
Carol had such an eye, maybe no one else would be able to tell.

“It’s not
here, it’s in my workshop at home.”

“Can I tell
Lainie when to pick it up?”

“Any time
after four.”

“When you say
it didn’t come out quite perfect…” Her heart had begun to thud.

“Only if you
look close.”

“Oh, that’s
great news. It really is. That’s wonderful.” The slick sheen poured
onto her skin.

“If she’s a
fussy bride… Is the wedding back on?”

“She’s an
extremely fussy bride. But I don’t think that wedding is ever going
to happen.” Despite everything, all her vows and resolutions, all
her guilt, Angie felt a satisfaction in saying it, a kind of
release.

“Then I hope
it’s good enough to sell,” said Carol.

Angie
bargained with herself for the rest of the day. There was a raging
battle between good and evil in her heart. If I tell Lainie it was
me who wet the gown, I don’t have to tell her anything else. If I
tell her something else, I don’t have to tell her about the
gown.

But what else
was there to tell?

Really, only
one other thing, and this was something to be proud of. Only one
other thing she’d actually done, even though there were other
things she’d said or wanted to do or felt. Like going into real
estate with the deliberate idea of out-selling Lainie five times
over, which of course hadn’t ever happened.

So there was
just the one thing. It was worse than the dress, but it was so long
ago. Which meant in all this time, in their whole life of
friendship, Angie had only done two bad things to Lainie, and
wasn’t that an achievement, really? Could other people seriously
claim their relationships with sisters or cousins or friends were
any more pure? It was like that bumper sticker you saw.
“Christian’s aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” Well, she wasn’t
perfect, so Lainie would just have to forgive her for it.

She will, I
know she will, if I tell her...

But she
couldn’t, so help her, she couldn’t.

She tried.

She gave
Lainie Carol’s message over the phone and offered to be the one to
pick up the dress from Carol’s workshop and drop it off at
Lainie’s, not thinking that Lainie would say yes to this, but she
did. “Oh, Angie, would you? That would be so helpful!” Lainie was
really meeting her half way after what they’d said to each other
last Saturday night at Brooke’s shower. They were both being so
nice and so warm.

“It’s nothing,
Lainie,” she said, meaning it. “I’m only happy to do it.”

“If you could
possibly get it to me today, I can take it up to the Deans’
tomorrow afternoon. I have to see a client on East Schroon River
Road.”

At Lainie’s
house at six that evening, they looked at the dress together –
really, you only saw the re-sewn section if you were looking for it
– and Angie said, “May I stay for a drink? Do you have time?”
because maybe a margarita or a bourbon and coke would give her the
courage.

Or the
insanity.

Because,
really, why was she pushing herself to do this? Honesty was such an
over-rated commodity. What if honesty ended a friendship? Weren’t
both of you worse off?

They sat on
Lainie’s deck, which was all clean lines and hardwood and bright
little touches, just like the rest of Lainie’s house. Angie’s décor
was different. Fussier. Busier. She loved Lainie’s tranquil colors
and airy spaces but didn’t know how to do those things in her own
place. It wasn’t laid out right, or something. She couldn’t
envisage the changes she would have to make. As a realtor she
worked by rote in this area, advising people, “Put in another
bathroom and bedroom in the space over the garage,” and, “Open up
the back of the house with an extension and a deck,” but in her own
place she couldn’t find the magic.

Pits of
silence opened up as they sipped their drinks, and she knew she
should step into them, but she couldn’t say the words.

I did it. It
was me. I poured water on the dress. And twenty years ago I did my
best to steal your boyfriend.

What do you do
when you’re not as nice and good a person as you want to be? When
you’re nice and good enough to see that you’re not, to see your own
sins and faults, but not good enough to do something about them?
What do you do when you see it being effortless for some people,
but it’s not effortless for you?

What do you do
when you want so badly to let certain things go, but you just
can’t? Who are these incredible people who can control their own
thoughts this way? Angie’s thoughts were like bugs in her head.
They swarmed and massed and had their own life.

“I am stricken
to the heart, Lainie,” she burst out at last, put down her empty
drink glass, stood up, stumbled across the space between them.

“By what,
Angie?” Lainie was on her feet at once, reaching out her arms. “By
what, for heck’s sake? More than what we talked about on Saturday?
What has gotten into you, honey?”

“I can’t tell
you. I can’t.”

Lainie hugged
her without speaking. “Then don’t,” she soothed. “Don’t. Not today.
I understand.”

This was no
damned help.

The golf ball
rolled down its sandy chute, wobbled and stopped. “We’ll have to
build it up more at the top, then dig it out lower down,” Emma told
Billy. But they’d spent too long over it – she hadn’t had Sarah’s
practice in such things, and Billy’s track design had been
over-ambitious – so he was bored with it and wanted a swim
instead.

He still
looked way too thin in his swim shorts. The first couple of days
home from the hospital he was weak and tired and obsessed with
food. They tried to make him take it slowly, not to eat too much
fat or refined starch, but he was so ravenous and didn’t have any
kind of stomach trouble so by yesterday, three days after his
discharge, they’d let him eat anything he wanted. His energy had
begun to rebound.

Mom had done a
major grocery shop for him, and all sorts of cooking. For dinner
last night he’d had spaghetti bolognaise, corn on the cob, and
cheesecake with fresh strawberries and cream. Tonight he wanted
tacos with homemade salsa and guacamole, refried beans and Mexican
rice.

Emma followed
him into the water, leaving Mom and Sarah lolling in plastic chairs
on the sand, both of them taking full advantage of her new
determination to play with him. She’d called Charlie on Sunday
night to tell him Billy was safely home and he’d called her a
couple of times since, just to say hi. They’d both worked very
carefully over the conversations. No expectations, no accusations,
no promises. Taking it slow. Baby steps, not giant leaps for
mankind. Hanging on each other’s careful words. Not knowing where
it would end up.

Emma
remembered how she’d tried to splash Billy three weeks ago and how
it hadn’t worked because Sarah was the one he knew as the fun
sister. Today she tried it again and he splashed her back,
grinning, and they had a whole big water fight, chasing each other
like bear cubs. For Billy it was probably more about being out of
the hospital than about discovering that Emma could be a fun
sister, too, but that was okay, that was fine.

Baby steps.
Works in progress. No rush.

“Wanna make
moss fairy houses by the creek?” Emma suggested when he had gotten
cold in the water.

“Okay.” Mom
had him in three towels, but he threw them off and put on a
T-shirt.

“Take the
towels,” Mom said.

“I’m
warm.”

“Are you sure,
Billy?” Emma caught a glimpse of the fresh scar slung across his
skin. It looked purple and so did his lips. He conceded to drape
one thick towel around his body and they walked up the track to the
creek and found a good spot.

She showed him
how she used to make fairy houses – the little roofs made out of
moss, the pebble pathways. Billy had ideas of his own. He made a
creature house – he wasn’t going anywhere near the word fairy –
with a creature swimming pool and a creature pool cabana. Emma
broke sticks up for him into uniform lengths. They tried lashing
the sticks together with pine needles to make tanning beds and
tables, but the needles were either too springy or too brittle and
the pool cabana furniture project went sour. Billy was just
pretending with it, now, fiddling with the bits of stick. Out of
the blue, he asked in a slow way, “Am I dying?”

After a short
jolt of icy shock at the question, Emma said, “Billy! No! Of course
not! They sent you home, you’re fine. Are you having pain?” They’d
been told to bring him back if he did.

“No.”

“And you’re
feeling good, right? You’re eating like a horse.”

He broke some
sticks in half. Snap, snap, snap. “So if I’m not dying, why are you
spending so much time with me?”

Oh God.
“Because I care about you. I love you.” All true.

He seemed to
flinch at the L word. “So it’s not because you won’t have much more
time to be with me?”

“Oh, Billy,
no! We’ve all been so worried about you, that’s all, and now it’s
just so good that you’re better.”

True again.
But not enough. He broke another three sticks. “So what did
Charlie’s mom mean when I was in the hospital and she said to you,
‘Billy’s yours.’?”

Emma went cold
all over again. “You heard that?”

“I was in the
bathroom. She spoke pretty loud.”

Oh God, of
course. She remembered the back view of his figure that she and
Lainie had both seen nine days ago as they’d walked along the
corridor after their talk. The I.V. stand, the hospital gown, the
little shoulders.

“How come you
didn’t say anything?” she asked stupidly, before remembering that
Tuesday was the day he’d had the tube put in. He hadn’t said a
word, and when he started talking again they’d all had the threat
of further surgery hanging over them. Billy’s appetite had come
back with a vengeance. He’d had other things on his mind. After a
week and a half without eating, food fantasies took precedence over
contemplating cryptic utterances from adults and starting to wonder
who was his real mom.

“I am saying
something,” he said. “I’m saying it now. What did she mean? She
said, ‘You were only seventeen,’ and you said, ‘Pretending Billy
was my brother.’ Did you have me, not Mom? Did you give me to her?
Are you my real mom instead of her?”

He looked at
her with London Guy’s handsome eyes demanding the truth, at which
point she discovered that Charlie had been the easy person to tell,
because what did Billy need from her? A comforting lie that kept
his world the way it had always been? She didn’t think so, even
though the whole family had been perpetrating the comforting lie
for ten years.

She thought he
needed the truth, the way she had discovered that she and Charlie
needed the truth, but she had no opportunity to run this theory by
anyone else for their approval or their horrified dissent. What
would Mom and Sarah and Charlie say regarding what she was about to
do?

Can I get back
to you on it, Billy? First I need to ask Mom what I should say, in
case the truth is the worst answer in the world. “I gave you to
Mom,” she echoed. “Because I loved you so much – ”

“So why didn’t
you keep me, if you loved me?” He broke some more sticks.

Emma wanted to
do it, too. “Can I hug you? These are important questions, and I
need – ”

“No. Don’t
make it like a sitcom, okay?” His posture had changed. He’d lifted
his thin shoulders like shields.

“Like a
sitcom?”

“When the
audience stops laughing and the adult sits with the kid and it gets
all serious and they work it out.”

Right. “Ooh,
no,” she agreed quickly, “and sometimes there’s emotional music and
the studio audience goes Ahh. No, we’re not doing any of that. I
just knew she would do a better job with you, that’s all.”

“Yeah, but –
”

It suddenly
occurred to her… I mean, surely he did, but, “Do you know how it
all works, Billy? I mean – ”

“When two
people love each other and the man puts his blah blah blah...?”

“Yeah,
that.”

“Dad told me,
and, you know, kids, TV. Sex is everywhere.”

“Yeah, well,
that happened, but my boyfriend and I split up and he left town,
and I’ve never seen him again, so I had you growing inside me and I
was scared, and I told Mom.” She took a breath. “And Mom had lost a
couple of babies. I don’t mean lost lost.” Billy broke sticks. “You
know, sometimes a baby dies inside the mom when it’s too early to
be born, and that was sad for her, and she was so thrilled to have
you and I knew what good care of you she’d take.”

“So Dad isn’t
my dad, either?” This had apparently only just struck him.