Free Food for Millionaires (9 page)

Casey was mum because she was trying to figure out how to dispose of Joan, who clapped at Ella as if she were a poodle doing tricks. There was nothing wrong with the dress per se; Ella merely looked as though she were wearing someone else’s clothing. The style of it aged her, stripping the bloom from her face. The dress was generic and traditionally elegant—a pricey costume for a girl with Grace Kelly dreams. Ah, Casey thought, the dress would have suited an older blonde better. She tilted her head. She’d never thought about it much before, but a woman should be hopeful and soaked with good wishes on her wedding day. And the bride should embody a purity—if not sexually (Ted made audible sex noises from Ella’s bedroom on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays), then at least romantically. Ella had a face like a white rose. She deserved to be distinct from every other woman that day and yet the same as every bride on her wedding: The bride should be the ideal for her intended, and the dress played a part in that ritual. Wasn’t that right? Casey said none of this, however. She closed her eyes and waited for a picture to pop up in her mind of Ella’s dress; sometimes this worked with her customers at Sabine’s. One came very quickly, but it looked nothing like the one Ella was wearing.

Ella waited for Casey’s verdict.

Casey shook her head no.

Ella turned to Joan. “Is it too late?”

The sales associate nodded. She pulled back her shoulders, smiled stiffly. “It’s too late to cancel the order.” Joan refused to look at Casey.

Joan had made a mistake. Casey noted this. Among the cardinal rules of retail marketing was never to disregard the opinions and feelings of spouses and friends who were there to advise the customer of her purchases. Joan was being arrogant to think that the deal was closed.

“It was ordered a month ago.” Joan smiled with an implacable authority.

Ella was defenseless against her.

Casey almost admired Joan’s dominant style. It looked so effective. Casey sighed then, amused and pleased by it all. She loved a good fight. She pronounced tartly: “But it won’t do. It doesn’t suit her.”

“Ella looks stunning in it,” Joan replied, taken aback by Casey’s unflappable tone. “That’s quite obvious.” Her own tone of voice was far nastier than she’d intended, and she quickly regretted it. But the truth was that there was no way in hell this bride could return the order without Joan having to call in every favor in the book, and she saw no need in this case to piss off the manufacturer for a bride’s friend’s whim—no doubt motivated by jealousy.

“Ella would look stunning in any of these dresses.” Casey waved her hand across the parade of mannequins in silk taffeta, shantung, and brocade. She kept smiling. So, you want to play tough, little girl, Casey thought. Her eyes never strayed from Joan’s eyes.

Joan adjusted her pearls. The rhinestone ball clasp had shifted toward her collarbone.

“Joan.” Casey extended the vowels, relishing the sound of her name in two syllables.

The sales associate rolled her eyes, then remembered herself. She wasn’t used to having her opinions confronted in this way by someone like this. Perhaps it had been a mistake to sell Ella the most expensive dress she’d tried on. But the bride’s buyer’s remorse didn’t seem to stem from the price.

“It’s not her dress,” Casey said.

“What do you mean?” Joan snapped.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Casey said, her tone of voice growing more syrupy as Joan’s grew more sour. “Look at how unhappy she looks in it.”

The bride slumped in the armchair next to the dressing room, feeling certain that both women were angry with her stupidity. It was all her fault. Then, right away, as if Ella could cover her shame with her posture, she sat up and folded her hands in her tidy way. She wished she were sitting in her office at St. Christopher’s.

Joan recognized that there was no winning this argument. She shut up and smiled, her lips covering her even white teeth. She studied Casey, giving her the once-over. The bride’s friend wore the upcoming season’s pieces from three. That gray skirt alone, by the Dutch designer whose name escaped her, must have been seven hundred dollars. Sometimes Joan hated rich people. They got everything and never stopped complaining. Joan believed in hell. As a hardworking middle-class person, she found the idea of justice comforted her.

That morning, Casey had dressed anticipating this appraisal. The image of this conflict had surfaced as soon as Ella had asked Casey to come look at the dress. Retail salespeople on the whole were the greatest snobs in the world. Virginia used to tease her about how much Casey fussed about her clothes. But after a while Casey retorted, hand cocked on her hip: “Well, gee, honey, but you never get confused for a Japanese tourist, nanny, mail-order bride, or nail salon girl when you walk into a store, do you? What the hell do you know about it?” Virginia, with her biracial looks that gave her the appearance of a beautiful dark Swede, never raised the issue again.

Casey glanced at Ella’s defeated expression, and she tilted her head back. How little faith Ella had in her. Casey turned to Joan. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your title.” She smiled.

“Senior sales associate.” Joan was growing more detached. She just didn’t care anymore.

Casey nodded but said nothing for a few moments. Silence made people crazy.

“Would you like to speak to the manager? I’m happy to call her for you,” Joan offered. In these situations, it was better to leave the kitchen before the fire went out of control. Joan wasn’t actually afraid of the bride’s friend.

“No need, I think. Not yet. ” Casey wondered if she was angry enough to humiliate Joan. If Joan backed down, Casey would back down.

Ella then stared at Casey silently—her head lifted as if a string pulled it taut from the ceiling. She had no wish for Joan to get into trouble because she had picked poorly.

Casey pulled out the receipt from her pocket and glanced at the back of the sheet quickly, knowing full well what was written on the paper.

“There’s no carve-out for custom orders or bridals at Bayard’s. I know you must know that from your years here. We women, so fickle, shop at Bayard’s and pay its premiums precisely because we can return anything, change our minds, and be pleased ultimately with our choices. Don’t you think it is a privilege to see growth in one’s aesthetic point of view, Joan, even in a month? So why are we pretending that the sale is carved in stone? Even monuments can be broken. The alternative, of course, is to cancel the order entirely and go elsewhere. And you have already been so kind. I would hate to do that.” Casey smiled, not mentioning the commission, because it was implicit in everything she’d said.

“It was four weeks ago,” Joan said quietly. This felt personal somehow.

“Joan. Be reasonable. A bride should feel no less than thrilled with her dress on her wedding day. You know that.” Casey shifted her focus to the wall and began to point. “Ella, be a dear and try on those dresses over there.” Casey crossed her legs and said in Joan’s direction, “Yes?” She nodded once for emphasis.

Joan exhaled quietly, her contempt escaping her nostrils in small measure. She retrieved the samples that the friend had chosen and hung them up in Ella’s dressing room.

7
DERIVATIVE

M
ARY ELLEN CURRIE FOUND HER BY ACCIDENT.
She’d taken the day off to work on her manuscript at the big library on Forty-second Street. Mary Ellen could never write in her house or at the Trenton Public Library, where she’d served faithfully as head librarian for nine years and staff librarian for an even dozen. At one o’clock, she’d strolled across the street—dreamy in her thoughts of Emily Dickinson, whom she referred to as “ED”—to the sandwich shop on Fifth, and there, seated on a stool reading the want ads, was Casey, her younger son’s girlfriend of three years. Her face appeared more drawn than usual, her shoulders thinner.

“Casey! Hullo, hullo, hullo!” Mary Ellen cried. She raised her arms and rushed toward the girl. “My sweetie, I haven’t seen you in months.”

Casey looked up and let herself be folded into Mary Ellen’s embrace.

“Where have you been?” She squeezed her again, then kissed Casey on the brow. “Never mind that. I wanted to go to your graduation, but Jay said he couldn’t go, either.” Mary Ellen chuckled. “I thought I’d hang back, wave from a safe distance.” She felt happy to see Casey so unexpectedly, and she kissed her again; her hands held on to Casey’s upper arms.

Casey burst into tears. It had been several weeks since anyone had actually touched her. The touch of a person she loved was almost too much to bear.

“What? What’s the matter? Oh, I’m so dumb.” Mary Ellen slapped her own forehead as if she’d forgotten something. “I know you wanted me to come. It’s not your fault. I understand. Truly. I do. Your family—it was their day.” Mary Ellen hoisted her knapsack from her sloping shoulders. She lifted Casey’s chin toward her own face with her square hands. She used to do this when she talked to her sons when they were young. They’d never let her do this now.

Casey pulled away as gently as she could. It was so good to see Mary Ellen’s floury face with its soft creases, her pretty hazel eyes beneath the pale, intelligent eyebrows. This face had welcomed her from the very beginning of her relationship with Jay, and his loss had been made worse because Casey had lost Mary Ellen as well.

Mary Ellen stroked Casey’s hair, not paying attention to the customers in the sandwich shop who were straying from their lunches to take peeks at the sobbing girl. She rested her hand on Casey’s back—so bony under her fingers. Her height was oddly diminished by her thinness. Casey seemed small. “It’s all right, little one. It’s all right.” She’d already sensed that there was something amiss between her son and Casey, but she’d been uncertain as to what exactly. Jay was a very good son; by that, she meant, unlike her older son, Ethan, Jay had done well in school, gotten an excellent job, effectively made her proud through his achievements. He was the son who’d justified her labor and sacrifices as a mother. But Jay did not confide in her. Neither did Ethan. Mary Ellen envied mothers with daughters. With girls, it seemed possible to remain involved in their lives. Even when her boys were little, she’d ask them how school was, and they’d reply, “Good,” and in their simple expressions, she saw shut doors. One of the lovely by-products of Jay’s dating Casey was that she’d gotten to know her child better because Casey talked to her. As a mother of two grown men, she was still gleaning scraps. After her boys were out of school, she’d missed parent-teacher conferences and report cards, because news of her boys had become even less periodic, shrinking down to nil.

“Take a breath,” Mary Ellen said, taking a dramatic one herself, as if she were reading the part of the Big Bad Wolf for the neighborhood children during story hour.

Casey did as she was told, breathing in a vast gulp of air. She swallowed the last of her cold, milky coffee, the same cup she’d been nursing for the past hour—her meager rent for occupying the stool.

“Are you all right? I asked Jay how you were last week, and he had to get off the phone because of work. So he said. And I haven’t been able to reach him since then.”

Casey nodded, knowing how Jay could use work as a way to avoid talking. Wasn’t there always another fire to put out at the office? His job was a career, not like her temporary stint at Sabine’s, where she could walk out the door at closing hour and be done until the next day.

Casey looked around the shop. No one was looking at them now.

“Are you at home with your parents this summer?”

She shook her head no.

“Where are you staying, then?”

“At a friend’s on the Upper East.”

“Why aren’t you staying at Jay’s?” Mary Ellen looked carefully at Casey. “Are you two fighting?”

Casey held up the want ads, not wanting to talk about Jay. “I’m looking for a job, Mary Ellen.”

The woman who’d finished her soup and crackers got up from the stool next to Casey’s. Mary Ellen sat in her spot.

“Okay. How is that going?”

“I have an interview tomorrow.” Casey did not mention that it was at Kearn Davis where Jay worked. She’d yet to get a call from any of her cover letters. In her wallet, she had eight dollars, and her credit limit was tapped. That morning, she’d considered calling her sister to ask for more money.

“You look a little tired, honey,” Mary Ellen said. That morning, Casey hadn’t bothered with concealer. “Are you all right?”

Casey stared into her empty cup—a thin ring of coffee remained lodged in the bottom seam of the paper cup.

“Oh, Casey, what can I do? What won’t you children tell me?”

“We broke up. There isn’t much to say,” Casey said, feeling the tears spring up again.

“What?” Mary Ellen was stunned. “Why? He loves you so much. I’m so certain of that.”

Casey blew her nose on a milk-stained napkin.

Mary Ellen made a face, then she knew. “What did he do?”

Casey remained silent. Knowing Mary Ellen, she’d feel responsible. “I can’t say.”

“You are still talking to each other, right?”

Casey shook her head no.

Mary Ellen sighed. She’d never seen Casey like this before. The girl was utterly bereft.

“It’s like someone cut off my limbs. Like I’m an ugly stump.” Casey said this without intending to, then felt bad right away. It didn’t seem right to say this to Jay’s mother.

Mary Ellen’s lower lip quivered the tiniest bit. That was precisely how she’d felt after Carl left.

“But we’re still friends, Casey.” Mary Ellen peered into the girl’s eyes, making sure that she was being understood. “You’re better than a daughter to me,” she said. “We’ll always be in each other’s lives. We have our own bond.” She pulled out a pad from her knapsack. “Tell me where you’re staying.”

Casey felt ashamed—by her crying, by talking to Mary Ellen about the breakup before Jay had told his own mother, for being so inarticulate. And she looped back again to that night. How could she have stopped that? Was there a way to keep a lover from ever wanting someone else? All the smart answers she had didn’t seem to make that question go away.

“You’re heartbroken.” Mary Ellen felt angry at Jay. He’d given her no grief over the years, but she knew Casey was protecting him out of some stupid sense of loyalty or propriety. If it had been Casey’s fault, she would’ve just confessed it. “You look so thin. Did you eat today? I hope you’re not dieting again.”

“I’m not dieting.” She laughed at the thought of it now. Casey wiped her eyes. “I’m always hungry lately.” She was starving, actually.

“Can I get you something?” Mary Ellen asked. She had no appetite herself.

“No, it’s all right. I ate, actually,” Casey stammered, lying poorly. The moment before Mary Ellen had walked into the shop, Casey had been debating whether or not she should spend the last of her money on a roast beef sandwich and a bag of kettle-fried chips. The sight of these things behind the glass case had made her mouth water.

“I have to go,” Casey said. She wrote down Ella’s number on the pad. “Promise me you won’t give it to Jay.” Mary Ellen nodded, then put her hand lightly on Casey’s forearm.

Casey stood there, looking at the tiled floor.

“I’m just trying to understand,” Mary Ellen said. The worry made her appear older than her age of fifty-one. “I know you’re the one who should be upset. I should be comforting you.” She blurted this out, not knowing the full story. But it was the not knowing that was making her so nuts. What could be worth this? she thought. What Jay and Casey did not know was that love was this rare thing. A connection between two people like them—Mary Ellen had marveled at the way they laughed, talked, and saved stories for each other—wasn’t something to take lightly.
Can’t you work this out?
she wanted to say. Looking at Casey’s suffering, Mary Ellen thought, the loss was real because the love was real. She wanted to shake Jay. And Casey, too. “I’d somehow imagined us growing up together,” she said. “Do you know that? I love you very much, Casey.”

Casey swallowed, unable to speak. Her parents had never said anything like that in her entire life. Korean people like her mother and father didn’t talk about love, about feelings—at least this was how Casey and Tina had explained it to themselves for not getting these words they wanted to hear.

“Would you take him back?” asked Mary Ellen. The heart is so full of hope, she thought.

Casey looked over Mary Ellen’s shoulder and read the labeled thermoses of milk set out on the counter near the door: cream, half and half, whole, 2%, skim. Why were there so many choices? It didn’t seem to make life any richer, she thought. All these things made you feel less grateful. Casey couldn’t imagine talking to him ever again, yet all she yearned for was to be near him, to be held by him, to listen to the pulse of his heart—it was as pathetic as that. Why would she want the person who had carelessly humiliated her to hold her? That made no fucking sense. She wanted things to be the same—to love someone like that again, with a kind of endless trust. Then she saw that she had loved him fully. But judging from how awful she felt now, she decided that she couldn’t let herself love like that again, not even him. Especially not him.

“Did he cheat?” Mary Ellen asked.

Casey found herself nodding yes.

Mary Ellen nodded sadly herself. There wasn’t a day when she didn’t think about Carl, about her marriage, and how on the day he left, it seemed her life was over, with no money, no job, and two little boys who had no understanding; yet in a way, there was relief, for it had been awful to live with a man who made you feel so lacking in femininity. “Mary Ellen, I just don’t want to anymore,” Carl had said to her one night after five years of marriage. “I don’t need to,” he’d said. Then a few weeks later, he took the car and left them. Nine hundred dollars in the bank account. Through Carl’s parents, she’d heard that he’d moved to Oregon and that he was living with a male cousin whom he had loved since he was a child.

Her husband’s departure had made her older boy, Ethan, give himself over to whatever cause angry boys took up. Jay had been different. He had worked so hard to please everyone, including her, and she had let that happen, because it had made her life so much easier.

“I’m so sorry, Casey,” Mary Ellen said, her pale cheeks wet.

“I know,” Casey said.

They walked out of the shop together. Mary Ellen lit a cigarette on the street, and Casey couldn’t refrain from asking her for one, too, even though she had never before smoked in Mary Ellen’s presence, following some Korean notion to not smoke in front of your elders. Mary Ellen handed her the pack, and Casey lit hers. The first drag was euphoric; the miasma in her head parted instantly, and Casey felt a kind of clarity she’d been missing for quite some time.

They hugged each other good-bye. Mary Ellen watched Casey walk uptown, then turned and went back to the library. At her empty space at the long wooden table in the Great Reading Room, Mary Ellen remembered that she’d forgotten to eat, and when she fumbled through her skirt pocket, she realized that Casey still had her packet of smokes. She gathered her papers for ED’s biography that she’d been working on for eight years. Another day would hardly matter. She was a biographer who did not understand her own children’s lives. Life was just guesswork even if you were an eyewitness. Mary Ellen searched for her cigarettes again, then planned to buy some on her way to Penn Station. She put her bare arms through the straps of her knapsack and left the library.