The Right Thing (16 page)

But what if Starr had never moved away? Would our friendship have survived high school and the sniper wars of who was who and who was nobody? My debut? Would she be here now at the fence, smoking with me? I smiled to myself. She probably would have been. We could have laughed at the small-town rituals that Jackson took in such deadly seriousness, and that would've been like water in the desert to me—sustaining, clean, and life-giving.

I tugged at the wire mesh, rusted now. I could still climb over, I thought, but then my daddy called from the back door that dinner was on the table. I took a drag and threw my cigarette to the ground, grinding it into the grass with my tennis shoe, but not without a last, lingering glance at the discouraged-looking rental house. Where was she now?

 

“Annie, aren't you hungry?” Above her empty plate, my mother's face was concerned.

I looked at my own nearly full plate with satisfaction. “I had a burger at McDonald's. I'm still stuffed,” I lied, feeling thinner already. Oh, I was in control at last. Later that Friday night, I drank two big glasses of water and smoked another cigarette right before I went upstairs to bed and never had the slightest urge to eat.

The next morning saw only me at the kitchen table. Methyl Ivory was engaged in making deviled ham salad for lunch with the leftovers from last night's prodigal spread.

“You want some eggs, Miss Annie?” she asked. “I could scramble you up a couple, make you some toast.” Methyl Ivory's back was to me, but her tone said that she didn't approve of my having slept in until after eleven o'clock. Her wide shoulders said that they had things to do and cooking me breakfast right before lunch was not supposed to be on the list.

“Oh, I'll just make myself some coffee,” I said, yawning. A cup of steaming black coffee in hand, my pack of cigarettes in the pocket of my Ole Miss sweatshirt, I went outside and sat on the front steps. It was a cold, glorious day, the gem-blue canopy of sky shining a thousand miles above me like a promise—high, wide, and handsome. This Saturday morning felt like the start of something important, and when I went inside to take my shower, I weighed myself.

I'd lost a pound.

The rest of that Saturday was even easier than the first day of my off-the-radar diet. I smoked, drank black coffee, and used another excuse at dinner (a fictitious large lunch with an equally fictitious friend), and later that night, after I'd gone out and bought another pack of cigarettes, I talked on the phone with Du in the smoky privacy of my bedroom.

“I've lost two and a half pounds!” I crowed. “It's working.” I ran my finger around the waistband of my jeans, and to my delight it was noticeably looser. “And the best part of it is, I just got started.”

“Aw, baby-cakes,” Du said. “You're perfect already.” I heard him sigh. “ 'Sides, aren't you kinda asking for trouble? I mean, everbody's gotta eat, right? You're not gonna turn into one of those arexonemia girls, throwin' up all the time?”

Falling across my bed because in truth I was feeling a little tired and empty, I lit another cigarette and immediately perked up again. “I'm not
anorexic,
Du, and throwing up is just gross. I'm on a temporary, extreme diet. That's all.”

“Well, if you say so.” He sounded dubious, but then his voice changed, dropping into that deeper register that meant he was thinking about sex again. “I can't wait to see you, honey.” I hadn't slept with him—or anybody else—yet, but knew it was only a matter of time. With a catch like Du, you either put out or you got out. I didn't want to think about that yet, though.

I rolled over onto my elbows to reach the ashtray I'd begun keeping in my room. “Just six more days, and then we'll be together,” I said. Tonight Du was at home in Tupelo, but he was driving down next Saturday morning to escort me to the Snow Ball that night. It was the first time I'd ever had a boy home from school, and I wasn't sure how he and Daddy were going to get along. What if they didn't?

Trying not to think about that possibility either, I said, “I'm glad you're going to be with me. I'm scared I'm going to do something heinous, like trip on my dress, or drop my bouquet, or . . .”

“Don't you worry, sugar-bunch.” Du laughed. “I'll bring somethin' to take the edge off.”

We hung up twenty minutes later after a lot of sighing and I-love-yous. I wasn't sure about the “I love you” part. It seemed to me as though by saying that I was crossing the border into a country I wasn't sure I wanted to visit. All the boys—all three of them—I'd dated before had said that same thing sooner or later, but with Du I was pretty positive that this time I was going to have to do something about it. This was a disquieting thought, but that was just the way it was. Everybody assumed that life flat wasn't worth living without a presentable boyfriend, and Du wasn't just presentable, he was a
prize
.

I'd gotten myself this far, though, and with such a substantial investment already in this gratifying, high-profile relationship, I was well aware that I was going to have to work at keeping Du happy so everyone would be happy with
me
. At least I was on the right track with my new diet. I knew that if I could maintain the momentum of my weight-loss campaign, it'd be a very different Annie meeting him at the front door next Saturday morning. Good-bye, chubby sophomore; hello, slim, sophisticated new me. Take
that,
Julie Posey.

 

Emerging victorious from the battlefront of Sunday dinner, by midweek I'd lost seven pounds and my mother was raising her eyebrows at the plates of food I wasn't eating. Oh, I had to take a token mouthful of something when she was watching, but the rest of the time I managed to move the food around on my plate in a purposeful way. Miss Pettie grumbled at having to take in the waist of my deb dress when we went for an emergency fitting Thursday morning, but she swore she'd have it ready by two o'clock.

Later that day, after my mother and I went back to pick my dress up, she suggested we stop on the way home and have coffee together at the Olde Tyme Delicatessen. What a minefield
that
was. The Olde Tyme's bakery was renowned for its fabulous pastries: apricot Danish, chocolate croissants, éclairs, napoleons, fruit tarts, fudge brownies so good they'd make you weep. All the help, from cooks to counter help to the cashier, were round as sugar doughnuts and looked damned happy about it, too. Now, normally I could never have passed up a whack at the Olde Tyme's pastry case, but I'd had a cigarette in the car after my fitting. We ordered at the counter, and when I asked for black coffee, my mother gave me a long look and then requested the same.

We sat down at our table in the crowded, bustling deli. My mother took off her mink and gloves. I shrugged out of my coat and braced myself. Sure enough, after she took a sip of coffee, my mother put her cup down in its saucer and said, “I've noticed you've lost some weight, Annie.”

I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair, rearranging sugar packets in their dispenser, before I muttered, “It was about time, don't you think? I mean, before I looked like a white Sears side-by-side in my dress.”

My mother raised one eyebrow. “Surely not. You'd gained a little weight since you went to Ole Miss, but that's normal. A lot of girls do that.”

The sugar packets were well sorted by now, so I finally had to look her in the face. “I was sick of it,” I said. “Besides, it's only a couple of pounds.”

“It looks like more than a couple, honey,” she said gently. “Annie, you're smoking a lot. Your clothes are hanging on you. I've noticed you're not eating your dinner, and Methyl Ivory says you don't have breakfast or lunch anymore. You can't live on black coffee and cigarettes.” She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “Your father's concerned, too.”

I sighed a long-suffering sigh. “Look—I never wanted to do this debut anyway, but you and Grandmother Banks ganged up on me. So if I've got to be a deb, at least I'm not going to look like, like some, some . . .
refrigerator
in front of half of Jackson. I'm just dieting. Don't worry. I've got it all under control, okay?”

She didn't look convinced, but let the subject drop. I was extremely grateful. My hand shook as I picked up my own cup. It had occurred to me that all the coffee I was drinking was probably contributing to my jitters, but I needed the caffeine almost as much as I needed the cigarettes: coffee and nicotine were almost the only materials my body had to work with.

 

Late Saturday afternoon, a day dry and warm for December, I'd already been to my mother's hairdresser, Lily, that morning for a shampoo and set. I'd insisted that my long, thick blond hair be piled high in a chignon because I was convinced that wearing it up would make me look taller and thinner. My shellacked hair felt heavy and unnatural on top of my head, but thanks to all the hairpins Lily had jammed into my chignon, at least I wasn't worried about it falling apart. My mother's pearls around my neck, my makeup applied, the dress hanging on the door of my closet in a long snowfall of purest white—for the next two hours all I had to do was hang around in my panty hose, robe, and underwear until it was time to put on the dress and go.

I couldn't sit still but paced between my bed and the window, smoking and looking down into the backyard, where Du and my daddy were sitting in lawn chairs, drinking beer and talking football. At least that seemed to be going well, thank goodness. My mother hadn't yet returned from her own appointment with Lily, and even Methyl Ivory had left to go home. My nerves shrieked for action, but there was nothing to do but wait. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore: I went into my parents' bathroom to weigh myself again.

Glory be, I'd done it. I'd lost ten pounds in eight days! Practically fizzing with glee, I opened my bathrobe to look in the full-length mirror and marveled at the delicate hollow between my prominent hip bones, the frank spareness of my ribs. My newly slender neck seemed like a flower stalk, only just able to hold up the crown of my hair.

I came back to earth with a thud, stricken again with the gnawing certainty that, ten lost pounds or not, I was sure to make a mess of tonight, that I'd do something awful, embarrass my parents and send Grandmother Banks rocketing into the stratosphere in her wheelchair, jet-propelled on I-told-you-sos. In an unexpected blessing, though, the old dragon wasn't going to be able to attend tonight, being still laid up with shingles, so whatever I did, it wasn't going to be in front of her at least.

My eye caught my flushed reflection in the wavy old mirror of the white-painted medicine cabinet. Desperate for a little relief from constant anxiety, I opened the door to see if the pharmaceutical rep-fairy had left a present there for me. A blister packet of something called Librium lay on the glass shelf, next to a bottle of the Seconal my mother took for her insomnia.

Librium. The name recalled equilibrium, a state I would do anything to achieve right now. I dropped the two capsules in their sample pack in my robe's pocket and went downstairs to get something to drink. Popping one of the pills free, I washed it down with a cup of lukewarm coffee while standing over the sink. Fifteen minutes later I felt calm enough to head out in the backyard in my robe and slippers, to sit down with Daddy and my boyfriend. Their conversation had moved on to the topic of where Du was going after he graduated this spring. He'd been accepted to Ole Miss law, but he wanted to see if he could make it in the NFL. Daddy thought law school was the better choice, and Du was politely listening. He looked so handsome, and Daddy seemed to like him well enough. That was one less thing to fret about, and maybe now I could relax. Maybe even my mother would quit worrying about me, now that I had such an indisputably suitable boyfriend.

My aimless thoughts drifted to the deepening evening sky overhead, the clean, green smell of the pine trees. A pair of crows had built their nest high in the branches of the live oak, and they were returning home with desultory, welcoming noises. I was so grateful for the sweet sense of chemically induced peace stealing through my body that my eyes closed, the heavy weight of my chignon resting against the back of the lawn chair. Du and Daddy went inside to shower and change into their tuxedos. I could've fallen asleep then, but after some time—how long, I don't know, time had lost its terrible urgency—my mother came down the steps into the backyard with a plate in her hand.

“Here,” she said, holding the plate out to me. “Eat this.” Her green eyes were steady on mine. I looked at the inoffensive pimento cheese sandwich with misgiving. “You need something on your stomach, Annie Banks. It's going to be a long night.” I could tell she wasn't about to go away until she'd seen me eat it, so I took the plate and somehow choked the sandwich down, every last bite.

And then it was finally time to get dressed. I could have sworn I saw the outline of that pimento cheese sandwich lurking under the taut silk across my stomach. Panic rose again, so before I left my room to go downstairs, I palmed the second Librium from the sample pack and dry-swallowed it, just to be sure. Everybody loaded up in my mother's new Lincoln, and after the dreamlike drive out to the country club, I was feeling so outstandingly mellow that when we got out of the car and Du grabbed my hand, I sailed along behind him like a kite on the end of a string as he led me toward the corner of the parking lot by the overgrown gardenia bushes.

“Go on.” I gaily motioned to my parents. “We'll meet you inside.” My mother paused, looking at us, and for a moment it seemed she was going to follow Du and me to the outskirts of the parking lot. “Seriously!” I called. “Y'all go get some champagne and we'll be right along.” With a wave, my father took my mother's hand then and they turned up the sidewalk to the front doors of the country club, the covered breezeway lit with tiki torches and lumieres in paper bags.