The Rules of Love & Grammar (7 page)

“Oh,” she says with a shrug. “Well, too bad. It should be a fun evening.”

She runs her hands down her sides and hips and continues to view her reflection. I can't believe how tall and skinny she is. I wonder why such a great body has to be wasted on her. Life is so unfair.

“I'll just take the dress the way it is,” she tells the saleswoman, who looks delighted. She's probably calculating her commission.

“Well, I'll see you there, girls.” Regan throws back her shoulders and moves like a lynx down the platform's little steps and into the dressing room.

I look at myself in the three-way mirror, and the rose-colored dress looks dull and archaic, like something that would be in the final-sale rack in the back of a thrift shop.

“I'm not taking this,” I tell Cluny. “I'm going back for one more look.”

The crowd at the front of the store has doubled. There must be twenty women hovering around the sale racks, like coyotes feasting on a carcass. They're pushing and shoving and emitting strange guttural sounds I've never heard humans make. There's so much grabbing and jostling, I'm afraid to get too close. Now I'm in the middle of the store, where nothing is on sale. I look around aimlessly. I don't know what I'm doing here. I'm just about to give up. And then I see it. Regan's sequined dress. It's here. Maybe I'm in the right place after all.

Every piece of clothing in this area of the store has something a little different, a little trendy, about it. I pick up a black one-shoulder dress with two big, rectangular cutouts that would expose part of my stomach and back. Forget it. I keep looking, combing through the racks, and then I spot a dark-green dress. Green was Peter's favorite color when we were in high school. He had a dark-green baseball cap he practically wore out one year.

The dress is sleeveless, and most of the body is made of a stretchy fabric, except for the accents, which are lace. It looks like a great combination of sophistication and sex appeal. I check the price. Three hundred and ninety-nine dollars. There's no way I can afford that. I start to put the dress back, but then I see Regan saunter out the door with a little flick of her hair and a bounce in her step, and I can't let go. It's as though the hanger has grafted itself to my hand, and I know I have to do this. It's like an investment in my future. Mine and Peter's. What could be more worthwhile than that?

“I'm trying this on,” I tell Cluny when she walks up to me.

She throws back her head. “Va-va-voom! Wow. You'd really wear that?”

“Sure,” I say. But now she's got me worried. “Why? Do you think it's a little too young?”

“No, no, if that's what you want to wear, go for it. It's just different from your usual style. Just because Regan's wearing that sequined—”

I wave her off. “Regan who?”

She puts up her hand for a high five, and I slap it.

I step inside the dressing room and pull the green dress over my head. It's tight, but I know it's supposed to be tight. It's short, but I know it's supposed to be short. I suck in my stomach and evaluate my reflection. I put my arms over my head. The dress inches up a little, but not too much. So far, so good. But the lacy parts are another matter. There's no lining under them, so you can see right through to my skin. That's okay for the shoulders and the V-neck. And I can pull in my stomach so it doesn't pop through the lace diamonds on the sides. But I'm not so sure about the big triangles that go down the outsides of my legs. They start as points, at my hips, and then get wider as they race to the bottom of the dress.

Yikes. That's a lot of bare leg. And I don't have the legs of the college girl out front, or of Regan Moxley. I wonder if I can pull this off. And if I'm going to spend four hundred dollars to do it. I draw in my stomach again and take another look. And then, without considering it a second longer, I wriggle my way out of the dress and march to the checkout counter, my Visa card firmly in hand.

Yes, I can pull this off.

I
'll never pull this off.

I stand in front of the mirror in my bedroom, minutes before Cluny and Greg are due to pick me up, and I feel as if I'm dressed in a sausage casing. It might be green and lacy, but it's still a sausage casing. What was I thinking? The mirror in the store must have been the kind that makes you look taller and thinner than you really are. The mirror in my bedroom is more like the one in
Snow White.
It doesn't lie.

I should never have bought this dress. Peter doesn't expect me to look like some Hollywood starlet wannabe. He expects me to look like the grown-up version of the girl he knew in high school. And this isn't it.

The doorbell rings, and my heart jumps. It's Cluny. She's here. I walk down the stairs, slowly, carefully, in the black strappy sandals she loaned me. When I step outside, she's standing there in her new dress, the light from the lanterns falling softly upon her. “Wow, you look great,” I say.

“Thanks,” she says. “So do you.”

I glance at the lace panels running brazenly down my legs. “No, I look awful. I'm going back into the house to change.”

“Change into what?”

“I don't know. Sweats?”

“You can't go to the party in sweats.”

“Exactly.”

“What? You're not going?”

“You'll have to make my excuses and—”

“No,” Cluny says. “I'm not letting you spend the night with Ben and Jerry. Come on, Peter invited us to this party. He wants to see you. And you look great.”

I don't move.

Greg steps out of his Tahoe and whistles. “Whoo-ee, look at you, Miss Grace.” He's got the kind of effervescent smile that artists doing character sketches love to exaggerate, and a big, six-foot-four frame to carry it off.

“Greg, stop it right now,” I tell him.

“What are you talking about?” he says. “You look great! You look sexy!”

“Sexy good or sexy bad?”

“Grace, you're overthinking this,” Cluny says. “Come on.” She points to the Tahoe.

“I'm not going.”

“Sexy good!” she says.

“Really?”

“Yes. I promise.”

“All right.” I follow her across the gravel driveway, teetering in the heels.

Greg opens the back door and motions toward the seat like a limo driver inviting his passenger to enter. I slide into the car, the dress shinnying up my legs like a snake. I tug it back down.

“So,” Greg says as we pull onto Salt Meadow Lane, “sounds as if this Peter Brooks is really interested in you, Grace.”

“He was in high school, but it's been a long time since then.” I pop a breath mint into my mouth as we round the curve.

“Well, he sure seemed interested this morning,” Cluny says. “I could tell by the way he was looking at you. It reminded me of when Greg and I first met.” She glances at her husband. “You sat down next to me in the lecture hall. I think it was a psych class.”

“It was,” he says. “And I pretended I needed a pen.”

Cluny smiles. “As if I didn't know. You just had that vibe. I could tell you were interested.”

“Really? And I thought I was being so clever with that pen excuse.”

“I just want a little time to talk to him alone,” I say, imagining a walk under the stars, a chance to catch up.

“If anyone can figure out a plan,” Cluny says, “it's you.”

Greg glances at me in the rearview mirror. “I'm going to check him out, you know. I'm not letting some guy from Hollywood waltz into town and think he can just run off with our Grace.”

I shake my head and laugh. They're so good to me, Cluny and Greg, and I feel a little pang of guilt when I think about the jealousy I felt when Cluny first met him. Seniors in college at the time, Cluny and I spent hours burning up the phone lines between her apartment, in Antioch, Ohio, and mine, in Middlebury, Vermont. She would explain, in excruciating detail, their every encounter, every conversation, every
everything
.
I thought he was going to take away my best friend, but all he wanted to do was make her happy and become part of her world. When Greg and I finally met and he told me how nervous he was that
I
wouldn't approve of
him,
I couldn't help but fall for him as well.

The night glides by through the car window, and a few minutes later we're on Mill Pond Lane, where the houses sit on two-acre parcels and old, leafy trees line the long driveways. As we go around a bend, I see lights from a line of cars, and a valet, with glowing orange sticks, directing them into a driveway. This can't be it. Peter said
a few
people were coming. This looks like a hundred. How am I ever going to get him to break away for a romantic walk if he's surrounded by an entourage? I have a sudden, sour taste in my mouth.

“This must be the place,” Cluny says. “Wow.”

“No kidding. This is huge. This isn't
a few people.
” Maybe I should have stayed home, curled up in bed eating Chunky Monkey and watching
Sleepless in Seattle
on Turner Classic Movies.

We crawl toward the valet in a tedious conga line of cars and then turn into a long gravel driveway bordered by hundreds of flickering luminaries. At the end is a circle and, behind it, a large, stone English country–style house with gabled roofs and three chimneys. The house looks vaguely familiar, and I wonder if I ever came here for a high school party or a babysitting job. Honeyed yellow light pours from the downstairs windows as clusters of people move around inside. The sounds of conversation, laughter, and music carry from the house to the car.

“It's showtime,” Greg says as valets open the doors for us.

I pop another mint into my mouth, step out, and give my dress one final tug. Greg steps between Cluny and me and links his arms in ours, walking us up the path to the open front door and into a large foyer that's scented with something sweet.

“What's that smell?” Greg whispers.

“I think it's jasmine,” I whisper back. “Probably because Sean Leeds is here.”

“Jasmine?” Greg asks, looking confused.

“I'll explain later,” Cluny tells him.

He obviously doesn't know that in Sean's last movie,
The Only One for Me,
he played a perfume-company executive who travels to South America to win back his ex-girlfriend. In the final scene he presents her with a bottle of Catch Me!, a perfume he created just for her. A perfume company recently produced a jasmine scent called Catch Me!, and now women everywhere are following Sean with their bottles, spraying the air around him.

A server stands in the foyer, a tray of glasses in his hand. “May I offer you white wine or champagne?” he asks. I'm not sure, but I think he's staring at the diamond cutouts in my dress. “Or, if you'd like a mixed drink, the bar is straight ahead, in the living—”

I grab a flute of champagne before he can finish his sentence. Cluny takes one as well, and we follow Greg into the living room, where he heads to the bar. There are at least a hundred and fifty people here, standing in groups, seated on the white sofas and chairs, and perched on the oversized white ottomans. The room is packed. I don't see Peter anywhere.

I also don't see anyone dressed like me. No one is wearing anything even close to this. The women are all in chiffons and silks in pastel shades; dresses with flowing ballerina skirts, dresses with layers of ruffles, dresses with jeweled necklines. I glance at my right leg and the green lace that travels down it like a wide highway. People are staring at me. I lift the flute of champagne and empty it in one motion.

“Nice house,” Cluny says, looking around.

I scan the room, noticing French doors in the back that open onto a patio, and a doorway on the side that leads to a library with ebony floor-to-ceiling bookcases. I can't help but feel I've been here before.

“Does this place look familiar?” I ask Cluny. “Did someone we went to school with live here?”

She waves to Greg, who is still in line at the bar. “No, I don't think so.”

I look for Peter, but I'm suddenly hemmed in by a crowd of people, and they're talking about vacations in St. Bart's, their favorite farm-to-table restaurants, the advantages of Guatemalan over Colombian coffee, the shooting schedule for tomorrow, the rewrites and the dailies, and problems with the air-conditioning in some of the trailers. I feel out of place.

I spot Brittany Wells, chatting with someone who looks a lot like Christian Taft, the actor who recently did a film about a man and his clairvoyant dog. I see Kip McDonald and Nancy Grohl, members of the board of selectmen, the town's governing body, and Wade Fisher, head of the chamber of commerce. Bibi Anderson, the cheerleading-team captain when we were in high school, is in line at the bar, talking to a man who I think is the chief of police. Bibi's gone blond, and she looks great. Dressed in a pair of flowing white, silky pants and a fitted jacket, she looks as though she should be in a movie herself. Or running a movie company.

“Let's find Peter,” I tell Cluny.

We skirt a tufted, blue leather coffee table and weave through groups of people and in between couples. I hear a woman say she was
talking to Halsey the other day,
and I wonder if she means Halsey Sherman, the producer. In another group, a man in a black shirt with rhinestone buttons and a skinny black tie says, “I'm trying to get them interested in the project, but I don't think they'll invest. She only likes to do movies about divorced women over forty who come from dysfunctional families.” The man next to him sips his drink and says, “I heard he only likes to do movies about married men who have affairs with divorced women over forty who come from dysfunctional families.” They nod, mulling this over.

There must be a DJ, although I don't see him. Adele's “Rolling in the Deep” is playing from speakers hidden somewhere. A man walks by with a tray of wasabi shrimp and avocado canapés, and my stomach rumbles, but I look away, pretending not to notice. I'm afraid if I eat one bite, I'll burst right out of this dress.

I spot Buddy Rance pop an hors d'oeuvre into his mouth. He sees us and waves. Six feet tall and two hundred fifty pounds, Buddy still has the same round face and dimples he had in high school, making him look perennially young.

“Oh my God, there she is,” he says, walking toward us. “Grace Hammond.” He clutches me in a bear hug. “Great to see you.”

“How are you, Buddy?”

“Pretty good. You know, same ole, same ole.” He gives Cluny a kiss on the cheek.

“You look great,” I say.

Buddy pats his stomach. “Aw, no. Too much pasta. I gotta do something about that.” He sighs. “But you…” His eyes zero in on the lace snaking down my legs, and he gives me a mischievous grin. “Nice dress.”

I shake my head. “Stop it, Buddy.” I want to tell him,
It's all Regan's fault,
but he'd never understand.

“No, I like it, I like it.” He motions for me to turn around. I oblige. Nobody but Buddy could get me to humiliate myself even further than I already have.

“Okay,” I tell him. “Show's over.”

He leans closer to me. “Your ears must have been burning the other day. Dave Lewendowski and I were talking about the time in middle school when we took your sneakers outside and threw them on the roof of the gym.”

“I remember that,” Cluny says.

“Me too,” I say. “I could have killed you guys. Mrs. Jenks got so mad when I tried to play basketball in my bare feet. And then I borrowed Sandy Farley's sneakers out of her locker and ended up with a foot fungus.”

Greg walks toward us, holding a tumbler filled with ice and a clear liquid I'm guessing is vodka. “That took forever,” he says. “Long line at the bar.”

“Jeff Bromley's here,” Buddy says. “Have you seen him?”

I shake my head. “No, not yet.”

“And Marylou Felk—or, uh, Watson, I mean. And Krista Baroni, or whatever her last name is now.”

“Oh, Krista's here?” I ask. I'm surprised at this. The last time I ran into her was in Manhattan, and she told me she'd been living there for two years. We made small talk about getting together, but we never did it.

“Krista's married again,” Buddy says. “Living back here.”

I try to wrap my brain around the fact that Krista's on marriage number two when I haven't even had marriage number one.

Cluny sips her champagne. “We heard Peter did some filming at the marina.”

Buddy's face glows. “Oh man, that was fun. I got to talk to Brittany Wells. She's here tonight, you know. She asked me where the organic juice bar was in town. I told her I'd take her there, but she said she could find it herself.”

“Buddy, you're happily married.” I give him a playful slap on the arm.

“Just window shopping,” he says. “I never touch the merchandise.”

“Speaking of marriage, where's Jan?” I ask.

“Home with the kids. Sitter got sick and canceled at the last minute.”

“Well, tell her we missed her.”

A server walks by with a tray of olive crostini, and Buddy takes three. “You know, my Rance Marina sign's going to be in the movie,” he says. “Peter told me.”

“A little product placement?” Greg asks.

“Gotta get it where you can.” Buddy looks at the crostini for a second before slipping them all into his mouth at once.

Oh God, I'm so hungry. I think about grabbing three of them myself, but this dress is so tight, there's just no room for error. And, with my luck, somebody would see me, and by tomorrow it would be all over town.
Did you see Grace Hammond at the party last night, wolfing down the canapés? No wonder she couldn't fit into that dress.
I look at my empty glass. I shouldn't be drinking anything either, but I've got to get my protein somewhere.