Kiss Crush Collide (7 page)

“When are you getting married?” Freddie asks, her index finger slipping down the last page of the book in her lap.

Curious about why she is reading on the sly, I lean back and read the title,
France: Rough and Ready.
No wonder. I don’t think my mother is in favor of any of us roughing anything, anywhere, at any time.

Yorke is sipping her iced tea. Her glass is so full ice is rushing the rim, threatening to go overboard.

“The end of the summer.” My mother answers for her, starting the bowl of potatoes on their one-way trip around the table.

Yorke swallows quickly and confirms with a nod. “End of the summer.”

I scoop some mashed potatoes onto my plate and set the heavy bowl down next to my dad’s elbow.

“So soon?” I ask, turning the spoon toward him.

“We have to . . .” Yorke says as she pauses to examine each piece of chicken on the platter before reaching over and dropping a severely burned one on Freddie’s plate and a less burned one on her own.

“You know,” she continues, licking her fingers, “before Freddie leaves for France.”

She hands the platter to me. All the good burned ones are gone.

“Freddie is my maid of honor after all,” Yorke says. “So she needs to be there.”

“Do I need to be there?” I ask, stabbing at a piece of chicken.

Feeling my mother’s eyes boring into me, I realize my blunder and recover quickly.

“I mean, for the shopping,” I say, and add clearly, “not the wedding.”

“Of course you need to be there,” my mother says.

Yorke drops her fork onto her plate with a loud clink and flops back into her chair dramatically.

“When you get engaged,” my mother continues, “Yorke and Freddie will be more than happy to shop with you.”

Whoa, I think, one sister at a time, please.

I bet she has little cake toppers already made for all of us. She probably ordered them in bulk. A little porcelain me in a pink dress and a little porcelain man in a white suit and pink bow tie are waiting for the big day, wrapped in tissue paper and stowed away in the hope chest at the foot of her bed.

“It’s just that I have to work,” I say, looking over at Yorke’s unsympathetic face.

“Can’t you just take the day off or switch with somebody or something?” she asks, circling her fork in the air. For her, it’s as easy as pie. Believe it or not, Yorke has never had a job. Go figure.

“That job,” my mother huffs as she pours more chardonnay into her half-full glass, “is more trouble than it is worth.”

It’s only one short week into summer, and she is already bitching about my job.

Setting the bottle down a little too hard, she asks me, though I know it is meant for my dad, too, “I thought we agreed that you would work early in the day at the pool so that we could still enjoy our summers as a family?”

Next to me, Freddie is sawing away at her black chicken with a thick wooden-handled steak knife. If I didn’t know her, I would think she wasn’t paying attention at all. But I know Freddie. She is always listening.

“What time are you shopping?” my dad asks, sliding the chardonnay bottle out of my mother’s reach.

“Four,” Yorke says. She leans back and crosses her arms, ready for a confrontation.

“And what time do you have to be at the pool?” my dad asks me, his eyes saying, Help me out here, Leah.

“Six-thirty.”

“Well, there you go,” my dad says with a smile, proud of his ability to take a situation and simplify it. Such a dude. He picks up his fork. “Plenty of time,” he says. “Problem solved.”

But nothing is that simple for my mother. You would think my dad, of all people, would know that by now.

She purses her lips and adjusts the placement of her wineglass before she complicates things by saying, “Except that Leah will have to leave early to walk to the pool.” She lifts her glass and drains the chardonnay in one golden gulp.

“Or,” she continues, “one of us will have to leave early to drive her there. Either way,” she says with a shake of her head, “it hardly seems worth it.”

“Maybe she could drive herself?” Freddie says, breaking her vow of silence with a most useless contribution.

I give her a woeful stare.

“For once.” Yorke agrees emphatically. “I don’t know why you bought her that car anyway.”

“You got a car,” my mother says.

“Yeah, that I
drive
,” says Yorke.

My dad holds up his hands.

“Leah will drive her car when she wants to,” he says calmly.

Doubtful, but I do appreciate his support. My mother reaches past Yorke for the bottle of wine and refills her glass. Afraid she is just adding more fuel to the fire, I raise my hands and admit defeat.

“I’ll get Shane,” I say, looking around the table to be sure everyone understands the terms of my surrender. “Shane will drive me.”

“What about his two-a-days?” my dad asks, needing to be sure that all bases are covered before he signs off on this plan.

“They’re done by then,” Freddie says.

I know that Freddie knows the summer practice schedule because Evan played football even though he was only the kicker, but I think she is really just trying to make up for her car comment.

“Okay then,” my dad says, rubbing his hands together briskly and giving a little clap. He seems pleased. “Okay?” he asks, looking at each one of us expectantly.

“Okay.” Yorke agrees with a nod.

Freddie nods, too, but we know it all hangs on my mother.

She agrees reluctantly, pointing her fork at me, punctuating each word. “Tomorrow. Four o’clock. Sharp,” she says.

I nod. It seems that this meal, like everything else in my life, starts and ends with her approval.

Yorke is looking for something princessy with an empire waist. “Not too ornate, but definitely with beading,” she says, lifting the silk skirt of a sample dress limply between her fingers. “And white. Definitely white,” she adds. The bridal shop ladies scatter in every direction, hell-bent on being the one to find the perfect dress for the perfect bride, and make the commission, too.

My mother and I are sitting on a cream-colored chintz love seat kind of thing with a bony, curved spine made of wood that presses into your back right where you want to lean in and get comfortable.

The entire bridal shop is white, ivory, and cream. The walls are covered in a white-on-white flowered fabric, or maybe it’s velvet wallpaper, if there is such a thing.

There are no sharp edges or harsh angles, everything is curved or soft or poufed. An ornate coffee table, loaded with lilies and every other kind of white flower imaginable, sits between us and the dresses that Freddie and Yorke are flicking through indiscriminately.

“Explain to me please, Leah,” my mother says, smoothing her hand lightly across my back and lowering her voice, “why you are wearing a bathing suit under your dress?”

She fingers the lump between my shoulder blades where I twisted the straps of my red suit together with an elastic band to make it shorter, less boy cut, and more user-friendly.

“I don’t like to change at the pool,” I say, sliding out from under her grasp and developing a sudden interest in wedding dresses. “All those girls stare.”

“Get used to it,” Freddie says, her head poking out of a slinky, long, super-low-cut satin dress.

“Why aren’t you used to it?’ Yorke asks.

She is standing on a raised dais that is covered in thick creamy shag and sits in front of three gilded full-length mirrors. She rotates slowly, checking her reflection in each mirror before she looks at me.

“You do have a lot to stare at,” she says.

Freddie laughs from somewhere behind yards of tulle, and Yorke turns back to the mirrors. I look at her double A chest reflecting back at me. Even in triplicate it still doesn’t amount to much.

“I’m not trying on dresses today anyway,” I say. “You are.”

“But if we find a bridesmaid dress that I like, you’ll need to try it on,” Yorke says, her eyes searching the mirrors for my mother. They nod together.

“Freddie can do it,” I say, inspecting the lace on a hideously ugly dress with a hoop skirt and some kind of boning inside. “You can just pretend it’s me, but, you know, without any boobs.” I grin.

Freddie drops the dress she is holding and stalks past me.

“Besides,” I say to Yorke, watching the assistants marching down the hall toward us, their arms laden with white gowns zippered away in clear plastic bags, “it is going to take you a hundred years to find your dress.”

Freddie turns to me. “She doesn’t have a hundred years,” she says.

“Girls, girls.” My mother shushes us in a low voice. She clears her throat and sits up straight on the little love seat, tucking her feet primly underneath her. She angles her head toward the arriving assistants and smiles. “The dresses are here.”

It’s sad but true—Yorke must buy off the rack. Her wedding date is too soon for anything custom made. I settle in and watch my mother and Yorke slowly coming to terms with the true meaning of these words and then lean back, ready for the show.

Yorke steps onto the pedestal, wearing the first off-the-rack option, her politely disguised look of disgust reflecting back at us from every angle.

“Oh, Yorke.” My mother gasps, turning away from the dress in horror. Lifting her hand to shield her eyes, she says, “That one is too . . .
Gone with the Wind.
”

It does have incredibly big shoulders. My mother dismisses Yorke, and the dress, with a brisk wave of her hand, and Yorke disappears into the dressing room to try again.

Freddie takes Yorke’s place on the pedestal, forced by my mother to try something on since all gown-related decisions have been switched into high gear. She steps up in front of the three mirrors, slumping her shoulders and taking my breath away.

I know what my crime was. I was found guilty of wearing a bathing suit as an undergarment to a dress fitting and am serving my time here, sitting next to my mother on the smallest of sofas. I am not certain of Freddie’s offense, but the punishment is clear. She is wearing the ugliest tangerine satin dress ever, with a low-slung bow at the waist and satin pumps, dyed to match.

Choking on my tea, I manage to say, “All you need is a corsage of carnations and baby’s breath.”

My mother raises her arched brows at me and lifts her teacup to take a sip. There is only one coral lip print on the rim. She hits it exactly, every time.

“You look like a prom reject from 1982,” Yorke says as she sweeps back into the room wearing a tight white mermaid gown, pulling a long train behind her. “Take it off.”

“Jinny has that particular dress available in a variety of colors,” my mother explains, smiling at Jinny, the shop owner with the bouffant black hair, who is discreetly orchestrating her assistants from the edge of the room.

My mother clasps her hands together and suggests, wistfully, “Leah could wear it in pink, and Freddie could wear it in yellow.”

Freddie is a citrus blur against the velvety white walls as she spins toward my mother, shouting, “No!”

“Mother,” Yorke snaps, as she steps up onto the dais, “no!”

Knowing that I am most likely prolonging my time in the chintz-covered penalty box, I look over at Jinny and ask, sweetly, “Does that particular dress come in a light blue?”

Her assistants are ready to scramble, eager to break the tension that is rising in the showroom, happy to find a blue dress or any dress at all.

My mother shakes her head at Jinny, admitting defeat, calling off the color-coded wedding and the assistants without a word. She wraps her fingers around my leg and presses down, squeezing. “Yorke will be wearing something borrowed, and something blue, and a beautiful
white
gown,” she explains to the room as if Yorke, preening around in front of the mirrors in the tightest wedding dress ever made, her nonexistent chest squeezed right up and almost out of the top to touch her chin, were the epitome of the vestal virgin bride.

“But not that one.” My mother sighs loudly. “It’s too tight,” she says. She lays her hands lightly across her girdle-wrapped middle. “I can practically see your lunch.”

One pot of Earl Grey and fifteen white dresses later, we are still searching for “the one.” Well, really, my mother and Yorke and Freddie are searching. I am staring out the front window of the bridal shop, sipping my tea and watching the street for a car to pull up and take me away. The room is full of hot air and high tea, and I am steeped.

I see Shane driving up the street toward us, right on time for once.

The sun gleams off his chrome vanity plate as
SHN
ROX
swings out wide, comes in fast, and angles against the curb. He checks himself in the rearview mirror, flicking his bangs to the right before he steps out of the car and into the perfumed bridal shop. The clatter of the bells hanging over the door and the rush of the bracelets down my mother’s arm announce his arrival.

“Well, there he is.” My mother laughs, stretching out her arms to greet him.

“Any luck?” Shane asks as he leans down to receive my mother’s kiss.

Yorke strides out of the dressing room, toes lost in the thick cream carpet, wearing nothing but a strapless bra under a loosely tied short satin robe.

“Nope,” she says.

Shane’s eyes bulge out of their sockets as her robe slips open when she slides down onto the love seat, shoving me over and squeezing me out.

“I’m ready,” I say abruptly, standing and blocking Shane’s view.

“And Fred?” Shane asks hopefully, his eyes searching the room.

I point to her feet, just visible under the curved door of a dressing room.

Shane stares at the door, his dreams dashed. I guess he was hoping for three Johnson sisters in a state of undress today. He is totally pissing me off, so he will be lucky if he makes it to two.

“So, we’re good to go?” Shane asks, looking past me and doing the standard double check with my mother before he reaches down to grab my bag.

“You can take her away,” my mother replies. “We are done with her.”

Sliding into Shane’s car is the same as diving into a pool of warm water on a hot day. It feels thick, soupy, and unsettling. He shifts into drive and automatically drops his hand onto my leg. I lean my head back and close my eyes tight against that heavy feeling, but it glows burning and red against my lids, no matter how hard I try to shut it out.