Last Dance (25 page)

At last the doorbell rang. She ran down to get it, relieved to be away from her mirror, glad not to be alone in the house anymore. The phone call had spooked her. I won’t tell Kip that Jamie called, she thought. Sometimes Kip gets awfully tired of four brothers, and she’s as nervous as I am over how George is going to behave.

Beth Rose flung open the door to greet George and Kip and Mike.

A huge gorilla stood on her front steps.

Beth Rose screamed and tried to slam the door shut.

The gorilla put his foot in the door. “Get out, get away, go home!” Beth screamed.

“No, no, no! It’s okay! I’m in a costume. I deliver balloon bouquets. I’m just making sure this is the right house! I’m not really a gorilla!”

Beth said, “Well, I am really having a heart attack. Why can’t you deliver balloon bouquets like a normal person?”

“Oh, it’s kind of an abnormal job, that’s all. Sorry I shook you. Most people are half expecting these things, see.”

Beth Rose opened the door. It was quite odd to chat with a gorilla, and it was also cold. The snow drifted over the gorilla’s shoulders. “Be right back with the bouquet,” the gorilla said, and he jogged out over the snow, doubtless starting a Big Foot legend in Beth’s neighborhood, and came back from his van bearing a bouquet of Mylar balloons.

They were dinosaurs.

“Like it?” the gorilla asked anxiously. “It’s a new one. I haven’t delivered many yet. Your young man was very excited about it.”

Beth Rose took ten strings in her hand, and ten dinosaurs in silver, blue, scarlet, and gold bumped into her ceiling. “I was expecting flowers.”

“Oh. Well, you could pretend it’s a wrist corsage. Here. I’ll tie them to your wrist,” the gorilla said. His ordinary hands stuck out from the ends of his gorilla costume.

“I’m not sure I want them permanently attached, thank you,” Beth Rose said. So this was what Kip was going to shoot George for. A reasonable decision. She almost hoped Kip would. She said, “Thank you so much. And on New Year’s Eve, too. You have quite a job.”

“Yup. Nine to go.”

“Nine more dinosaur bouquets in that van?” Beth Rose said.

“Oh, no. Nobody but you is getting a dinosaur bouquet tonight,” the gorilla said, as if this was an honor. “Everybody else is getting boring old hearts and Snoopys.”

“How nice,” Beth Rose said.

She walked into the house with her snow-dusted dinosaurs. With difficulty she tied the dinosaurs to the ruffle of brocade. All things considered, it seemed best not to look at herself in a mirror again.

The phone rang.

It was Jamie.

“Did he do it?” piped the five-year-old.

“Yes.”

“Did you like the gorilla?”

“I loved the gorilla.”

“George thought you would. Kip said it was a good thing George was only kidding.”

“I guess he wasn’t kidding,” Beth Rose said.

“Elliotts never kid,” Jamie told her.

A
NNE AND EMILY WERE
fixing each other’s hair. Emily had just taken the hot rollers out of her dark brown hair, and Anne was holding up the elegant braided switch to be fastened onto her gleaming yellow hair.

Emily was suffocating in the little dressing room off Anne’s private bathroom. Anne had had ruffled curtains with a dozen yards of fabric put on the one tiny window, so that pale pink ruffles were everywhere, tightly packed on the little rod, and falling by the armload to the pink tile floor. The closets had shutter style doors, and the tall narrow white folding doors seemed to jut out, preventing Emily from taking a deep breath. Emily pulled up the narrow pink designer blinds, saw the snow falling outdoors, and felt a little better.

Anne stopped brushing. “Somebody might see in.”

On the second floor—in the middle of the woods—at night—when the snow was falling and visibility was six inches?

Emily sighed. They had had to make a great many compromises when Emily’s parents threw her out and she moved in with Anne. Emily had made more than Anne, which was only fair—it was Anne’s house, Anne’s generosity. So Emily said, “Whoops. Sorry about that.” She pulled the blinds down and pretended not to care that the room had gotten tight and pink and small again.

How thrilled she had been to move in!

There was an extra bedroom which Mrs. Stephens let Emily redecorate. (Her own mother had never given Em a cent to spend on her room.) Em had always known when she decorated, she would pick the colors of sunshine: yellow on white. She wanted the darkest days to be lit up and warm. Yellow silk daffodils in a white china vase, white curtains, yellow coverlet, and a yellow framed mirror like a window to sunshine. Decorating her new room had truly been a breath of fresh air in Emily’s dark life.

It surprised her that Anne’s rooms were done in pink, when Anne’s color was so clearly gold, too. Anne’s hair gleamed like precious metal. If Emily had hair like that, she’d be in front of the mirror all day just admiring herself and her golden tresses.

Just the right thickness, too: not so thin it slipped out of pins, and not so thick it was hard to put up. Tonight Emily was fixing Anne’s hair to match her evening gown.

The gown was black. Emily detested it. Okay, so black was sophisticated. So black was fashionable. So Anne looked fantastic in it: like a jewel on velvet.

But black hardened Anne and aged her. Anne had a lovely Laura Ashley dress: cotton with tiny flowers sprinkled among tiny vines, with puffy sleeves and a sash that doubled her waist and tied gently and was still long enough to fall to the faraway hem. That was what Emily wanted Anne to wear.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Anne said. “I might wear that to a party next April. On somebody’s verandah, overlooking the tulips. But to a New Year’s Eve Ball?”

Anne was right, of course. Anne had perfect fashion sense, and her mother and grandmother had all the money in the world to cater to that fashion sense.

The black dress was very dramatic: the skirt was satin and velvet in horizontal bands, while the top was a wool knit into whose lace thin black velvet ribbons were threaded. Into Anne’s hair switch Emily was braiding three glittering rhinestone and velvet ribbons. The thick golden braid lay on Anne’s slender back, sparkling against the black wool and the suggestive holes of the lace.

Anne would, as always, be the loveliest girl from Westerly High.

Emily often wondered how it felt inside to be so beautiful. She had thought once she began living with Anne she would learn, but Anne seemed to accept being beautiful as if it were the same thing as having a nose, or two elbows. It was just there. Anne never remarked on it and did not actually seem to notice it much.

Emily was wearing one of Anne’s old dresses to the ball because she had no money to buy one of her own.

“I’ll buy you one, of course, dear,” said Mrs. Stephens. But the endless borrowing from Anne’s family was exhausting. The Stephenses were terrific to Em, and yet it was driving her crazy. This was why people returned to bad situations: after a while, you couldn’t mooch another minute.

Anne told Emily she was silly to worry about it; her mother was rich and she liked spending money on Emily, too.

But that didn’t matter—whether the Stephenses liked doing it.

Emily didn’t like receiving it.

Charity was the pits when you were the taker.

The new bedroom was no longer sunshine. Now it was just a yellow motel. She was just waiting there, waiting for things to turn better, or at least turn differently. But right now, the road into the future stretched straight ahead: the Stephenses providing room and board and evening gowns, and Emily mooching.

Her parents had split up.

Her mother, who never thought much of Em to begin with, was living in a two-room apartment in Lynnwood. Em had spent a weekend there last month. Talk about a suffocatingly small space! The fighting between them was wall-to-wall and room-to-room.

Her father stayed in the old house in Westerly. He would ask Em to visit, but when she came, he didn’t hug, didn’t welcome, didn’t ask about her day. He would bark, “Why don’t you move back in here and keep this place clean?” Emily couldn’t even bring herself to sit down, let alone scrub the kitchen.

She didn’t really want her mother and father to get back together. They did not make a husband and wife; they made a war. But if they didn’t get back together, Emily had no family.
Forever and ever, no family
.

She was grateful to the Stephenses for taking her in.

Emily hated feeling grateful. She was almost eighteen. And then what? She couldn’t go on borrowing dresses from Anne forever.

Anne was creaming her hands. She owned every hand cream that existed, and Em had tried them all. The two girls had the softest hands in Westerly. Or at least the best creamed. Emily stroked the velvet of her borrowed gown with her soft fingers. She felt like a princess wearing velvet. When I get married, I’ll wear velvet, she thought. Guess I’d better not get married in July.

The borrowed dress was a rich deep cranberry color with a white lace collar: very English country. Its neckline was demure, and from a straight simple seam, the velvet fell in tiny gathers to a high waist, and from there it cascaded to the floor and even the tips of her dancing shoes didn’t show. When she walked she lifted the skirt, and it was a graceful old-fashioned feeling to walk like that. Emily had practiced twice, in secret, without any of the Stephens family seeing her. She loved the dress a hundred times more than Anne had. But then, Anne had so many dresses, none of them became special to her.

Matt would love the dress. His hands were rough, because he liked the outdoors and machines. He had a backyard full of old cars he was rebuilding (he referred to the cars as “antiques” but Emily considered them “wrecks”). He had called her up this afternoon to promise that he had used a brush on his fingernails and was very presentable.

“What you are,” Emily said softly into the Stephens’ telephone, “is perfect.”

“I know that,” Matt said. “Perfection is my stock in trade, always has been. Listen, Em, I hope you’re going to be perfect tonight, too, because I have something going, it’s this surprise I’ve got and it requires perfection. So nothing average, nothing dull. Got it?” Emily was laughing. Matt’s voice always cheered her up. She always thought of Matt’s voice as having geometry: width, height, and depth. It was a voice that filled her life. “Bought you yellow and white flowers, Em, and they look great. I’m even getting to like the color yellow. I used to think it was noisy. I don’t now.”

“Loud,” Emily corrected. Too late to tell him she wasn’t all that fond of yellow any more herself. Or that yellow flowers were not right for a cranberry-red gown. Besides, Matt giving them would make them right.

“I am a short a car, Em, it’s true, I finally sold one. The 1954 Cadillac, I found a buyer, it’s been sold, and there is a space in the yard. Hard to see because of the snow, but it’s true, Em, if you were here you’d be dancing around with my mother. Nothing she likes better than another wreck gone. One car sold, seven to go.”

“That’s great, Matt,” she told him. “Now you’re rich.”

“Nah. Now I’m poor. I already spent it all.”

She laughed. No doubt he’d bought another car and the space in the yard would be full as soon as the snow melted. There was an old heap over on Seventh Avenue Matt kept driving by: a rusted out, engineless, 1924 pick-up truck he yearned for with a passion.

Thinking of Matt was sunshine enough for Emily. Who needed yellow? Smiling to herself, she put the last pin into Anne’s hair switch. “You’ll be the belle of the ball, Anne.”

Anne stood up, with the delicacy she always managed. Anne in black and Emily in dark crimson. The girls stood together, like sisters, before the full-length mirror in the corner of the room.

Why am I crabby? Emily thought. I have wonderful friends, and a romantic dress. Matt loves me. What more could a girl ask?

Full of love, her heart expanding with pleasure, Emily turned to see Anne’s blank expression. Anne could look happy, or content, but she rarely looked sad, angry, or wistful: if she felt bad, she just sank into her beauty and the crummy emotions never showed. She was like a photograph then: perfection without personality. Sometimes it gave Emily the creeps.

“I wonder what Jade will wear,” Anne said. Her voice gave her away; she was aching all over.

“Who cares?” Emily said. “She won’t be able to hold a candle to you no matter what.” Nobody had met Jade. They were all a little curious, of course, but—“Anne,” Emily said, thinking the thought for the very first time. “You’re not sorry you broke up with Con, are you?”

“Of course not,” Anne said. “Con is an immature, shallow, selfish teenager.” Emily would drink to that. They could box Con up and use him for a living example of immature, shallow, and selfish. “I’m going with Lee,” Anne said, as if she had to remind herself of this because it was so easy to overlook. “Lee’s a good, solid, steady person.”

Emily did not think that “solid” and “steady” were the most lovestruck words she had ever heard.

“I’m a grown woman,” Anne said. Her voice trembled like a scared first-grader’s, though. “I’ve had—I’ve had—” Anne looked into her mirror, as if the beauty she reflected might steady her. “I’ve had an illegitimate child,” Anne said. Emily thought that after all this time, it still shocked Anne as much as it had shocked everybody else. Anne was the least likely person in Westerly for that kind of scandal. “Con was a very adolescent boy who didn’t want to think about it,” Anne continued, as if she were giving home-study lessons to herself. Lessons in morals and manners. “It’s over. He’s not part of my life now. He’s going out with Jade. I’m glad.” Anne held a tissue beneath her perfectly made-up dark eyes.

“Oh, yeah, really glad,” Emily said. “I can tell. You’re thrilled about the whole thing.”

Anne adjusted the tissue. “It’s just that Jade is such a strange name. Cold. Green. Inhuman.”

Emily giggled. “Hey, I can hardly wait to meet a girl like that.”

“Some sister you are. Laughing in the face of tragedy.”

Downstairs, the doorbell was ringing. “Matt,” Emily happily identified. Matt got excited about almost anything. Punching the bell sixteen times in a row was ordinary for him: he was playing on the chimes, presumably the song he was singing at the top of his lungs on the front steps, but since Matt had a terrible voice, the girls couldn’t recognize the song.