All Dressed Up (4 page)

She went out
with him to the vehicle, carrying his soft canvas bag by its long
shoulder strap and still thinking about how she could keep him here
for longer, how she could show him her love in a way he’d accept.
He had locked the car, Lainie found – or it had enough computerized
intelligence to lock itself – and the dress was still there. The
rest of his things were packed in his new honeymoon bags, which
he’d left in the house.

“You sure you
don’t want to stay to eat?” she asked him. “You’re going to have to
stop somewhere. I could scramble some eggs.”

“I’m not
hungry, Mom. I’ll eat when I get in.” His body bounced back from
this kind of treatment all the time. He wouldn’t eat for fifteen
hours straight at the hospital. She’d known this even before Emma
had let it slip one day. And then he would fill up on slices of
pizza or huge plates of pasta at midnight.

She’d seen him
in her own kitchen in the past, standing there with the fridge door
still open, spooning in great mouthfuls of potato salad or
ice-cream direct from the carton as if someone was about to come
snatch the food away. When she caught him out, he would grin at
her. It was such a complicated gift, that grin. It said he could be
normal, human, fallible, when he wanted to be, instead of
frighteningly gifted and intelligent and wise. Lainie never saw the
grin often enough.

They hugged
good-bye.

She was still
surprised by his size and strength in her arms sometimes. The best
thing in the whole world would be if you could visit certain times
in the past like flying to Florida for the weekend. One of the
first days she’d visit would be the day he’d learned to smile, when
he was six weeks old. She would fly back to that day and just hold
him in her arms and beam at him and watch him beaming back, then he
would fall asleep on her shoulder and she would sit there rocking
him on the porch swing and inhaling his baby scent for hours,
perfectly happy, until it was time to come back to now.

As usual, as
it had been since he was twelve, only the promise of the next hug
allowed her to let go of this one at the appropriate point. Charlie
always pulled away first. Gently, as if he knew it hurt, as if he
did have Chippewa blood and it mystically allowed him to see into
her soul. She struggled with that. “Call me,” she said, “to tell me
you got in safe.”

She watched
him down the street and kept watching even after he’d disappeared
from sight, thinking about everything he and Emma would need to do
and how awkward and wrong it would be. Emma had been living back at
her parents in Saddle River, New Jersey during her internship year,
because she’d taken it at Hackensack Hospital which wasn’t far from
there, but she had a lot of her things at Charlie’s Manhattan
apartment.

He would have
to pack all that up for her. He’d have to pack up the dress, too,
and Lainie knew he wouldn’t do it right. It wouldn’t be a priority,
he’d take it too casually. He wouldn’t have the skills. In fact, he
should not be in possession of the dress – of such a dress – at
all. Emma, her so-nearly-daughter-in-law, would regret letting it
happen.

Oh, Emma would
never forgive herself for it, when she cooled down.

Stopping only
to lock the front door and not even thinking to contact Charlie on
his cell, Lainie jumped into her Buick Lucerne – a good car for a
realtor from the wrong side of the tracks – and went after him,
thinking, “Why is this important to me, what business do I have
with the dress, wanting to protect it like this? Why do I care so
much about how Emma feels when we never really got close?”

And would
probably never get close, now.

She caught up
to her son when he'd just turned southbound onto the Northway at
Exit 17, flashed her high beams and sat the heel of her hand on the
horn until she caught his attention. He pulled over onto the
shoulder, jumped out and almost ran back.

Lainie climbed
from her seat. It was full dark by this time, and chilly breaths of
night air rose from the ground. As Charlie came closer, she saw an
eager look on his face, a complicated look, with other things in it
besides eagerness that she didn't have the time or skill to
interpret.

All she could
think was, “He’s hoping I’m chasing him to tell him Emma came to
the door begging for another chance.” And she knew she couldn’t let
him go on thinking this for another second. It worried her that
such a big part of him obviously thought they’d made a mistake in
calling it off, that he loved Emma so very much.

“Charlie, I
don’t think you should take the dress to New York.”

“This is why
the high beams and the horn and running me down at seventy-five
miles an hour? This is why we’re illegally pulled over on the
Interstate? Are we going for completely farcical, now?”

It was
farcical. And also not. Lainie blurted out, “I think she’s going to
hate you for having the dress.”

“Since she
already has several other better reasons to hate me – ”

“Just let me
take it, Charlie. You won’t know how to hang it and store it right.
It’s so beautiful. When she calls to arrange about getting it back,
tell her I’m taking real good care of it for her.”

“She won’t
call.” Could he see into Emma’s soul, too?

“Whatever.
When she gets Amber or Sarah to call.”

“Okay, take
the dress. You’re right, I’d just stuff it in the top of a
closet.”

They both
stomped along the grassy shoulder to his car. He opened the door
for her then stood back while she lifted the dress out, folded it
as tidily as she could and cradled it against her front. She would
press it as soon as she got home, in case Emma followed up on its
whereabouts tomorrow. If Emma didn’t, the gown would need cedar
balls and blue tissue paper, a full-length garment bag and a dark
place in back of a tall closet.

It had a very
demanding personality, just like its owner.

“Talk to you
during the week,” Charlie said.

“No, call me
tonight to tell me you got in safe,” she reminded him, then they
saw a patrol car on the opposite carriageway. You really weren’t
supposed to conduct covert wedding gown exchange operations on the
shoulder of the highway, so they didn’t hug again. Charlie had
already driven off by the time she had the dress laid along her
rear seat.

Chapter
Three

Sarah was
helping Mom clear up dinner when she heard familiar music. Dad had
taken out his battered old guitar, sat down in his battered old
guitar-playing chair on the screened-in porch, and was tuning up
the instrument ready to sing. He had a voice just a tad more
tuneful than Bob Dylan’s, and an enormous repertoire of favorite
songs from folk to country to rock and roll, nothing more recent
than about 1989.

He played for
his own pleasure – or sometimes as a way of opting out – and didn’t
usually expect an audience, but he would get one tonight, the
audience he intended. Emma had already gone to bed. Her bedroom
window looked out over the porch roof, and the sound of voice and
guitar would float up to her just the way Dad had planned. From
childhood, Emma had loved to drift to sleep with the sound of Dad
and his guitar in her ears.

“I hope he
doesn’t play the wrong thing,” Mom murmured.

“He won’t
tonight,” Sarah predicted. “Even Dad won’t tonight! But he’ll hum
all the wrongest possible things tomorrow when he’s not thinking
about it.”

Dad had a very
associative brain when it came to music, was the problem. He
couldn’t drive through West Virginia without singing John Denver’s
Country Roads and even the frequently traveled New Jersey Turnpike
often led to renditions of Simon and Garfunkel’s America.

Mostly he
didn’t have the slightest clue that he was doing it. When Sarah and
her long-time boyfriend Creep (not his real name) had broken up
earlier this year, Dad had hummed Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover
for weeks, with Mom vainly trying to shush him whenever it slipped
out.

You had to
laugh about it.

Sarah had.

But Emma
probably wouldn’t.

“Tonight he’ll
play her favorites and it might help her to cry more,” Sarah told
Mom. “I don’t think she’s cried enough yet. She went tight and
cope-y too soon, the way she always does.”

“And that’s
why I love him, you see,” Mom said, shy and bright as a girl. She
still seemed so young, sometimes, even to her daughters. She’d kept
her athletic figure almost absent-mindedly. Her whole look was
absent-minded. The ponytail of silver-threaded hair scraped back.
The shiny layer of sunscreen smeared on outdoorsy skin. The shorts
and jeans and tees. Even her name, Terri, was a young name.
“Because he doesn’t say a word, he just finds the right thing and
does it, and makes me believe that things might just be okay, after
all.”

“Well, that’s
nice, Mom.”

“Thank you,
dear.” Sarah liked her mother. And loved her. And saw her faults.
“Tight and cope-y too soon?” Mom echoed belatedly.

“Yes, don’t
you think? She skips the grieving period.”

Mom froze.
“You’re right. You are absolutely right. She skips the grieving
period.” It was a revelation! It was the answer to everything!

Sarah
shrugged. “And my fees are so reasonable.”

“Okay, we
won’t talk about it.” Mom knew when Sarah needed obedience.

“Good girl,
Mom.” Sarah folded down the top of the last carton of Chinese
take-out leftovers and stacked it in the fridge, left the plates
and silverware to drain in the draining basket and put the
coffee-maker on.

Dad had
started on Wichita Lineman. Mom went to the open door leading from
the lounge-room to the porch and stood there to listen. Sarah
slipped past her, picked up the book she’d left lying on a chair
arm last night and sat down. She suspected she wouldn’t take in the
story.

Dad’s brother
Uncle Garth slouched in another ancient armchair with a mellow grin
on his face as he listened. Aunt Sandy, his wife, did her
cross-stitch. Billy had his game player locked in his hands, thumbs
working wildly, sound turned down so it didn’t compete with the
guitar.

The house was
old but pretty. It had been a farmhouse once, and dated originally
from around 1910. Mom and Dad had bought it, hauled it here, laid
it on a good foundation, put in modern fittings, had it re-wired
and added the wide screened porch that ran right along the
lakeward-looking front of the house. The whole family spent most of
the summer sitting out here.

The atmosphere
had no right to be this peaceful and pleasant. There was a lot to
get done – and get through – tomorrow.

Dad sang on
for Emma.

He was a
sturdy man, long legs, broad shoulders. He’d always had a little
spare padding on his frame and some thickness around the waist,
even when he was young. He’d never been athletic, and still seemed
entranced by Mom’s springiness and capability. He walked, but that
was about it.

Physically,
Sarah took after him the most. Big bones. She would one day no
doubt get his wiry pepper-and-salt hair, too, not Mom’s own silkier
and more youthful fall of silver and beige.

Which would go
to Emma, naturally.

He looked up
and saw Mom and they smiled at each other, a life’s-too-complicated
kind of smile, then he turned his mouth down and she shrugged at
him. After almost thirty years of marriage, there were a lot of
things they said to each other without words. Mostly good things,
it seemed to Sarah, because as Mom had indicated, they were happy
together, appreciative of each other, mutually reliant.

Which wasn’t
the same thing as co-dependent at all.

Mom listened
to a couple of verses of Wichita Lineman, then asked Dad, “Should I
go up to her?”

He stopped
singing and dropped his playing to a background strum. “She’s
exhausted, Terri. Leave her alone for tonight.”

“I think I’m
going to go up.” She stood, stubborn.

“Do you hear
what you do?” Dad declaimed, angry and indulgent at the same time.
“You ask what I think and then you ignore it and do the exact
opposite.”

“Mostly I
don’t ignore it.”

“I’m going to
start a tally. Mostly you do ignore it, unless I say what you
wanted to do in the first place.”

“Mostly I know
what you’ll say without having to ask and I accept that you’re
right so we never get to this. I’m going up.” She came back down
after two minutes, humbler and quieter. “I didn’t go in, you were
right, she has her door shut and the room is dark, I had to see for
myself, okay, Eric, so don’t yell at me.”

Dad never
yelled at her. It was typically wild and inaccurate of Mom to
suggest that he might. There was a certain role specialization in
their marriage. Mom did emotionally volatile. Dad did steady as a
rock. It seemed to work for them.

Dad kept
playing and Mom went back to the kitchen to check on the coffee.
Sarah put down her book and followed her, too restless to sit.

“Is Billy
okay, do you think?” Mom asked her. She always acted as if Sarah
was the authority on Billy.

Yeah, which
she probably was. “From what he said down at the lake, he’s wisely
planning to stay out of the whole thing.”

“What else did
he say down at the lake?”

“Just that.
Plus that if he was Charlie he wouldn’t want to marry Emma, either,
he’d rather go on the witness protection program.”

“Earrgh!”

They took a
minute’s silence for mourning. The whole family liked Charlie.

“What did you
do down there?” Mom asked.

“Played in the
sand. Went out in the canoe.”

“Did you see
ballet camp?” There was some carefulness in her voice.

“It can’t have
started yet. The boats weren’t put out or anything.”