Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (10 page)

ONE OF OUR LITTLE DETAILS DISAPPEARS

The house was in its usual state of hysterical chaos when I got home. My family may be hopelessly ordinary, but they’re not quiet. My mother and my sisters were in the kitchen, screaming at each other. Two of them were crying. None of them paid any attention to me.

I stood in the doorway for a few seconds, thinking of poor, only-child Ella, all alone in her big quiet house with her doting parents listening to her every word. Boo hoo.

My close female relatives suddenly noticed me standing there. Not that it occurred to them to say “Hello” or “How are you?” or anything like that. Instead, the three of them immediately began telling me what had happened as quickly and loudly as they could. It was hard to follow – and not worth the trip. As far as I could make out, Pam took something of Paula’s and broke it, so Paula hit Pam, so Pam ran crying to my mother, so my mother yelled at Paula, so Paula started crying, and then, while my mother was giving them Lectures 288 and 289: Sharing and Violence, Pam threw an apple at Paula and my mother whacked Pam with the dish-towel.

“Ah, Lola,” I shouted into the general din. “How was your day? How did rehearsals go? What will you be wearing on opening night?”

Paula and Pam kept shrieking, but my mother stopped talking and looked at me for less time than it takes a spark to die in a tornado.

“I should think you’d be wearing your costume on opening night.”

I gestured despairingly. “I mean
after
. At the cast party.”

“This isn’t Broadway,” said my mother. “You have a closet full of clothes. Wear whatever you want.”

What I wanted was a drop-dead gorgeous dress that would make me look twenty-five and so sophisticated I should have a perfume named after me.

“But everyone’s going to be really dressed up,” I informed her. “Carla Santini—”

“Please,” begged my mother. “Not Carla Santini again. Isn’t there anyone else at your school?”

You’d think she actually listened to me now and then.

“It’s my big night,” I reminded her. “I want to look right.”

“Forget it,” said my mother. “There’s no way you’re getting a new dress, Mary. Last week it was the boiler, and this week it’s the car. I can’t afford it.”

“Who asked?” I snapped back. “I didn’t ask for anything. God knows I would never expect anyone in this house to worry about
me
. To care about how I look on one of the most important days of my life. I’ll just don my usual rags, shall I? Maybe you’d like me to wear a bag over my head as well. That way no one will be able to report you to the NSPCC for neglect of a minor.”

Paula looked at my mother. “What’s Mary talking about?”

My mother rolled her eyes.

Pam looked at me. “Why are you wearing a bag over your head? How are you going to be able to see?”

My mother patted Pam’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, honey,” she said kindly. “Mary can cut eyes in the bag.”

“How typical!” I proclaimed. “How typical that you would mock me in my torment.”

“What does torment mean?” asked Paula as I turned on my heels and marched from the room.

“It means Mary’s had a bad day,” said my mother.

*     *    *

Ella hadn’t thought about what she was wearing, either.

“I’m trying not to think about it,” she admitted. “I get cold chills every time I do. It makes it seem so real.” She shuddered. “I just know something’s going to go wrong.”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” I assured her. “My plan is awesome in its simplicity.”

Ella would ask her mother if she could stay over at my house; I’d ask my mother if Ella could stay at ours. Mrs Gerard would call my mother to make sure it was all right. Then, after that was all settled, I’d tell my mother we’d changed our minds and I was going to Ella’s instead. My mother would never think of calling Mrs Gerard to make sure it was all right. She’d just assume that it was.

I flopped down on the couch beside Ella. Mrs Gerard wasn’t there. Mrs Gerard was taking a course in aromatherapy. She said essential oils helped her to de-stress. I couldn’t see that Mrs Gerard had the kind of life that stressed you out, but, as the great philosophers say, everything is relative.

“Well, you’re going to have to think about it. It’s not that far away.”

“I know,” said Ella. “I know.” She bent down and took two uncreased magazines from the neat stacks under the coffee-table. “Here.” She handed me one of the magazines. “I guess the first thing we should do is decide what
kind
of thing we want to wear.”

We spent the afternoon flicking through her mother’s magazines. The only magazines my mother subscribes to involve ceramics, but Mrs Gerard gets every women’s glossy going. Reading them one after the other was like being in a hall of mirrors; you know, lots of images but they’re all the same.

On every page were beautiful models wearing beautiful clothes and stunning accessories.
Shoes: $175, Handbag: $250, Dress $900…

I leaned back in frustration. If Mrs Gerard wanted to know about stress, she should have my life.

“What’s the use?” I cried. “You can get something perfect, your parents give you money just for breathing, but I can’t afford more than a pair of tights.” It was galling to think that such a great and noble enterprise should be brought to its knees by a mere dress.

Ella leaned over and put the magazine I’d abandoned back in its place.

“Well, why don’t I lend you some money to buy something?” she suggested. “You can pay me back whenever.”

“No.” I shook my head firmly. “I appreciate the offer, but I can’t accept charity. We Ceps have our pride.”

“It isn’t charity,” reasoned Ella. “It’s a loan. Only no time limit, and no interest.”

I shook my head even more firmly.

“I still can’t. I don’t like to borrow money.” This is my mother’s fault. My mother hates debt. “If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it,” my mother always says. She’d rather eat rice and beans for a week than bounce a cheque at the supermarket. That’s why we waited so long to move out of the City; if she hadn’t inherited some money from an aunt in Seattle, none of this would ever have happened.

Ella heaved with exasperation. “Well, let me give you some as a present. An early birthday present?”

“Thank you,” I said. “Really. But I just can’t accept.” I didn’t see that much difference between charity and a birthday present months in advance.

Ella held up her hands and slapped the air. She was becoming a pretty good actor herself.

“All right … all right … what if I lend you a dress? I’ve got tons of things.”

I didn’t know how to say no. I mean, Ella’s the best friend I’ve ever had, the sister of my soul. How do you tell the sister of your soul that you’d rather spend the rest of your life doing toothpaste commercials than wear something of hers? Ella’s taste in clothes had been loosening up since I’d known her, but it was still pretty tight.

“That’s a great idea.” I sounded pleased and excited. “Let’s take a look.”

Ella likes pastels. Winter, summer, spring and autumn, Ella wears shades, not colours. And white. I tend to avoid white; I like to wear things more than once before I have to wash them. I also like to wear things that move and flow; Ella is more partial to the simple, tailored look favoured by businesswomen.

Ella pulled a powder-blue dress from her closet. “What about this one?” She sounded pretty fed up with pulling dresses from her closet.

I cocked my head to one side, pretending to be considering it as carefully as I’d considered all the others. It was a sleeveless A-line with a row of tiny pearls down the front. I’d rather wear one of those old-fashioned black nun’s habits. At least they’re mysterious and dramatic.

“I don’t think so,” I said carefully. “It’s a little young.”

“You’re a little young,” snapped Ella. She put the dress back, then turned to me with her hands on her hips. “Why don’t you just admit it, Lola? You can’t stand the way I dress.”

“It’s not that,” I lied. “It’s just that this has to be really special. It has to be glamorous and sophisticated. It has to make a statement.”

“You mean like Eliza’s ball gown,” said Ella.

I gazed back at her, slightly stunned. Maybe her dress sense was better than I’d thought.

Eliza’s dress for the ball – in our adaptation, a celebrity charity ball – was absolutely perfect. Because most of the women in Deadwood take classes the way other people take vitamins, Mrs Baggoli doesn’t have any trouble finding seamstresses to make the costumes for our plays. Mine had been copied by Mrs Trudeo from an
haute couture
design. It was red satin and long and devastatingly simple. As I said, I prefer full, flowing skirts, but even I had to admit this dress was hot. My mother was lending me a pair of red satin stilettos, left over from the days when Elk used to drag her out dancing, that nearly matched.

I spread my arms, already feeling the warmth of hope beginning to run through me.

“Exactly.” Even Mrs Baggoli said it made me look at least twenty. “That’s exactly the kind of dress I mean.”

“Well then, your problem’s solved, isn’t it?” said Ella sarcastically. She was still smarting from my rejection of her clothes. “All you have to do is ask Mrs Baggoli if you can borrow it.”

I was so excited at supper that night that it took all of my considerable professional skills to act like the only thing I had on my mind was washing my hair. I forced myself to eat even though about ten million miniature ballerinas were dancing in my stomach. I forced myself to listen to the two-headed monster’s description of the day’s thrilling events. I made myself laugh at my mother’s jokes. I even made a show of paying attention when she explained the problems she was having with the glaze for her new line of mugs.

But all the while, I was thinking about that ball gown. At least now I knew what I wanted to wear. In a dress like that I would make an entrance; a statement. It didn’t even worry me that Carla would see me in the dress. So what? She was going to be so stunned, not just to see me there, but to see the way Stu Wolff reacted to the sight of me, that she wasn’t going to know what I was wearing. And Stu Wolff
would
notice me in that dress. He couldn’t help but notice me. Notice me? If I turned up dressed like that he’d probably trip over himself trying to get to meet me. I could see him blush shyly; hear him say, “I hope you won’t think I’m too pushy, but I’d really like to dance with you…”

“Why’s Mary smiling like that?” asked Paula, loud enough to blast me from my fantasy.

“It must be something I said,” said my mother. “Was it about going back to the electric blue, or was it about mixing softener with the slip?”

I made a face at Paula. “I was just smiling, that’s all. Is it a crime to smile in this family all of a sudden?”

“Not a crime,” said my mother. “But it means you weren’t really listening. It could be considered a misdemeanour.”

I gave her a mocking smile.

Obviously, I couldn’t actually ask Mrs Baggoli if I could borrow Eliza’s dress, if for no other reason than that she’d say no and I would have no recourse. Not only were all the costumes school property, but mine was Mrs Trudeo’s Advanced Dressmaking project; it had to go back after the last performance to be graded. But I couldn’t
not
ask Mrs Baggoli and just take it home for the weekend, because all the costumes were locked away in the drama club cupboard for safekeeping. Only Mrs Baggoli and Mrs Ludley, the janitor, had a key.

But at least I knew what I was aiming for. I would comb the second-hand clothes stores of Deadwood and all the nearby towns. I was bound to come up with something. I could feel it in my bones.

“So, Lola, you’re all right to do that for me tomorrow?” shouted my mother, rather as if she’d said it before.

“Do what?”

“Pick up the car at the garage. I have to get this order finished by Sunday.”

“In the afternoon,” I said quickly. “I have something to do in the morning.”

That night I dreamed Ella and I were at the concert. We were in the front row, right in the middle. Carla Santini was there, too, of course. She was sitting in the front, but to the side. She was wearing a very expensive and sophisticated dress – black to match her heart – but she might as well have been wearing a blue flannel and a baseball cap with her Calvin Klein jeans as far as Stu Wolff was concerned. He must have walked past Carla at least a hundred times as he danced around the stage, but he never gave her a second look. He noticed me in my red satin dress, my hair down and my eyes dark and passionate, looking like a gipsy queen while he was singing my all-time favourite Sidartha song, “Only with You” (
Only with you does this world seem all right … only with you do I see a true light…
) From then on he sang every song right to me. I didn’t smile or giggle or do anything silly like Carla would have done, I just sat there, my eyes looking into his, reading his heart and his soul as surely as he read mine. At the end of the last encore, Stu picked up a red rose someone had thrown at him earlier, leaned over the stage and handed it to me as though it were a precious jewel. I stood on my tiptoes to reach his kiss.

I could still feel his lips on mine when I woke up.

I was outside the first store by ten.

“Describe it to me again?” said Mrs Magnolia. Mrs Magnolia ran Second Best, the sixth store I tried.

“It’s the kind of dress Scarlett O’Hara might have worn if she’d wanted to break every heart in Atlanta,” I explained for the third time. “But modern. No hoops or anything.”

Mrs Magnolia shook her head, her eyes moving past the racks of sweatshirts and sweaters that took up most of the store.

“I don’t think we have anything even close to that,” she informed me sadly, “but you’re welcome to look in the formal-dress section.”

“I have looked.” The formal dress section contained nothing but bridesmaid dresses in the colours of cheap candy. I gave her the hopeful look of a kid on a Christmas card. “I was just wondering if maybe you had stuff in the back. You know, stuff that hasn’t been put out yet.”