Ten Girls to Watch (4 page)

But Lily had checked the “Yes” box. Looking at her was like looking into some sort of fun-house mirror. If I’d gone to law school, would I be her right now?

At the very moment I was thinking this, Lily said, “I’m summering at Craven & Swinton, in their tax practice.” She actually used the word “summering.” From which I inferred—as if the seersucker and pearls weren’t enough—that she belonged to the class of people for whom “summer” was regularly employed as a verb. So really, it would take a lot more than some fun-house glass to turn me into her.

My face was starting to hurt from smiling so pleasantly.

“Let’s find some food,” Robert said during a conversational lull. “There’s this new mustard we’re testing.”

After every Thanksgiving, Robert had returned to school with a case of different mustard types to sample. We’d sat on his futon and carefully tried out various mustard and pretzel combinations—Bronson’s honey mustard with the garlic pretzel. Heneman’s dijon with the low-sodium pretzel twigs—Robert writing notes as if it were a wine tasting. When he said “mustard testing” he looked at me, and it felt like the first time he’d actually
looked
at me since I’d arrived. We exchanged knowing half smiles. How much mustard could he and Lily have shared? Certainly nothing to rival our mustard history.

I wanted to interpret the moment to mean he didn’t love Lily, he still loved me. But after our glancing exchange, he took Lily’s hand, which I knew, coming from Robert, was not uncalculated. He’d grant me our history, but he was with her. I wanted to walk away without saying a word, hail a cab, and disappear. But that would have been so dramatic, so over the top, so final. Instead, I followed along as if I hadn’t noticed the gesture.

We’d just started across the lawn together, me a step behind, when Lily planted her feet and spun around dramatically. “Dawn, there’s someone you have to meet!” she said.

I felt like all sensation had already left me, like I was an empty piñata. “Okay” was all I could muster. She looped her arm chummily through mine, and I let her lead me toward a small circle of partygoers a few yards away.

“Regina,” she said, gently touching the arm of a lovely and somehow vaguely familiar petite, dark-haired woman in red silk. “I want you to meet Dawn. She’s an old friend of Robert’s and the most terrific writer.” Then she turned to me. “Dawn, Regina just moved in down the street from the Rollands, and she definitely knows a thing or two about the magazine business.” And then Lily winked and walked away.

Off-kilter and dazed, I stood there, trying to return to myself and marshal my forces to attempt a passable rendition of a charming person. I’d applied for dozens of magazine jobs, most of which asked for experience I didn’t have. And then there were the internships. What a great idea, except most of them didn’t pay, or required that you were a college student receiving credit for the work, which I wasn’t anymore. While the engine of my brain tried to chug forward on these unhelpful fumes, Regina, who actually
was
a charming person, provided the conversational fuel to get us going.

“So what kind of writing do you do, Dawn?” she asked in the most warm, interested way, like she’d just made me tea and cookies and now we had an entire kettle’s worth of chitchat to enjoy.

“Well, lots of things.” I laughed a little. “Short stories, you know, for the money. Ha-ha. But mostly, well yes, mostly, I’m a lawn expert.”

I’d expected questions along the employment line, and I’d prepared my “lawn expert” answer in advance.
LawnTalk.com
hadn’t given me a title. It wasn’t like I had business cards. I didn’t even use my real name. And it certainly wasn’t a full-time gig. But I couldn’t stand saying “Well, actually, I graduated a year ago and I’m still looking for a real job.” That either stopped conversation or unleashed a river of comforting, even wistful advice from older adults, intoned as if my problems were a quaint reminder of their younger years.

“A lawn expert?” Regina smiled and leaned in. “Do you take care of lawns? Do you have a lawn?”

This was a much better approach.

“Actually, don’t ever tell anyone”—I leaned in conspiratorially—“but I’ve never had a lawn. I mean, my parents had a lawn for a while, though I never helped take care of it, but eventually my mom ripped it out and put in a rock garden. And now I guess I can
see
grass from my apartment window in Brooklyn . . .”

“So how did you become a lawn expert?” she asked, wide eyed.

I heard myself taking on a slightly swashbuckling tone. “Well, actually, Craigslist . . . This website was looking for a writer who could write about lawns, and I told them I’d seen neighbors mow their lawns, I’d run through sprinklers on lawns, I liked lawns, and somehow they were hard-up enough that they signed me. I have about half the Brooklyn Public Library system’s lawn care books on my floor at home right now. But I’ve been doing it for a few months now. I write a little weekly column and then answer all the questions users post, and somehow, it’s worked out.”

I expected a “Gosh, that’s kind of funny” reaction, but that’s not what Regina was giving me. As I talked, she actually bent toward me like a tennis player, crouching and tensed, ready to spring at the ball the second it left my racket. It made me nervous, and I wondered where things had gone wrong.

“I’m sure the lawn care expert world must be pretty small,” Regina rushed, “so I have to ask, do you know a writer named Kelly Burns?”

I felt a terrific zing all the way from my toes to my fingertips. “Kelly Burns?” I said. “I’m Kelly Burns! That’s my online pen name.”

She snatched my forearm. “No way.
LawnTalk.com
Kelly Burns? We just bought a house down the street, and my husband is obsessed with having the perfect lawn and has this total crazy need to do it himself. He seriously reads your site every night. He actually says ‘Time for Kelly Burns’ and cracks his knuckles as he sits down with his laptop. You’re Kelly Burns?! Oh, he’s going to love this.”

A few users on the site had sent me nice thank-you messages after I helped them diagnose their mysterious lawn diseases or choose the best grass type for their yard, but a real-life, in-person fan? I felt a glow of pride, the first time I’d felt any such thing in a long, long while. Forget my air conditioner–free digs, forget that Robert seemed to have found his dream sorority-girl counterpart, forget that I still wasn’t getting interviews and that the idea that I’d ever publish any fiction seemed totally laughable. Someone in this world cracked his knuckles every night, logged on to
LawnTalk.com
, and said “Time for Kelly Burns.”

Regina released her grip on my forearm, only to grab my bicep, mafia-escort style. “I think he’s out back. Let’s go find him,” she said, and just like that we were swerving through the crowd (I saw Alec Baldwin out of the corner of my eye), out onto the deck by the pool, and from there down to the west garden. We stopped at a table up near the band, where a group of handsome men, one of whom was apparently Regina’s husband, were sitting around enjoying fancy foreign beers and a bowl of Rolland’s Bavarians.

“Tony,” she said, looking at the curly-haired one with super-thick-framed nerd-cool glasses, “I’d like to introduce you to Kelly Burns, the lawn expert.” She waved her hand up and down over me, like a manic version of a model on
The Price Is Right.
The other men looked a little bewildered—who was this slightly sweaty, blushing lawn-expert person?—but Tony jumped up to shake my hand.

“Kelly Burns? Kelly Burns of Lawn Talk?” He beamed. “No way. I’m Buddy 7468.”

“For real?” I answered giddily. “Have you treated the bindweed yet?”

“Oh yeah, did exactly what you said. Double treatment of dicamba, cut off their water supply. Worked like a charm.” He turned to his wife. “How did . . . ?”

“Robert’s girlfriend just introduced us,” Regina said.

Robert’s girlfriend. Robert’s girlfriend. Robert’s girlfriend. The words were a cartoon echo in my head.

“And actually,” Regina continued, “it’s not Kelly Burns, it’s Dawn in real life, right?”

I nodded. “Kelly Burns is just a pen name.”

“Crazy,” Tony said. “I always figured Kelly Burns was a fifty-year-old dude living in Ohio.”

“Don’t tell anyone I’m not,” I whispered.

Just then the band started playing “Blue Skies,” and Lily swung by our table and touched my shoulder, a dainty interruption. “Dawn, I wondered if I could grab you for a minute.”

I could have said no, but anything other than gracious acceptance would have sounded strident after Lily’s dulcet request.

“So great meeting you, Regina, Tony, everyone.” I put my hand up in a wave and turned toward Lily.

“I’m sure we’ll talk again before the night is over.” Regina smiled.

I nodded, smiles all around, and let Lily take my arm.

“I’m sorry to pull you away,” she said in a low tone as we made our way across the lawn. “I got stuck talking to this horrible horseradish distributor, and I needed an excuse to leave and I saw you across the way and told him I had to give you a message. I think the horseradish guy is still looking, so try to look superengrossed in conversation.”

Confident presumption seemed to define Lily. She talked to me like she naturally deserved to be in charge. And I recognized it because it reminded me of Robert. Like the time Robert picked me up after my last final sophomore year and drove us straight to Portland, Maine, where he insisted on instructing me in perfect lobster-eating technique. He’d sat down beside me and practically moved my hands for me. I’d loved it. It had felt so caring and fun. On the way home, though, he’d told me I should stop holding my head at an angle when I talked, and I felt assaulted by such minute criticism, so there’d always been both sides. But there was a gleam to it, being singled out for attention by someone so obviously striding wherever he pleased. I didn’t want to feel drawn in by Lily. I wanted to find her undynamic and dismissible. But she wasn’t either of those things.

Lily led us to a place by the pool, where she sat on the edge, took off her shoes, and dangled her feet in the water. I joined her.

“Robert says that after you guys broke up, you didn’t talk for a little while, but then it was pretty much normal and friendly.” She kicked the water and little droplets splashed back onto our dresses.

So, she wanted to get right into it, did she? I was surprised Robert had told such a massive lie. I held my breath, waiting for whatever was coming next.

“I think that’s awesome.” She splashed the water with her feet again, this time a little harder. “The guy I broke up with before Robert and I started dating—or who broke up with me, actually—I sent him squirrel heads in the mail and programmed my e-mail to send him a message every single morning for a whole month that just said ‘Fuck you,’ nothing else. I’m sure he figured out how to block it, but it felt great sending it anyway.”

None of this was what I expected from the rose of Texas.

“Rewind,” I interrupted, “squirrel heads?”

“Oh, it’s the best thing I ever discovered.
Roguetaxidermy.com
. They’ve got amazing stuff. Bags of bird wings. Pickled sheep brains. You can do cleaned squirrel heads so it’s just the bones, or mummified squirrel heads. Mummified is the way to go. Much freakier.”

“Wow.” I nodded with real admiration. “I mean, I guess the most I’ve ever really done is write mean e-mails, but then not send them.”

“You’re a killer, Dawn,” she said, and then after a long and what seemed appraising pause, “I think we should be friends. That way you can give me the dirt on Robert.”

I smiled without saying anything, then looked away, almost embarrassed. Announcing friendship felt like too much, not just for us but for anyone. What was I supposed to do if I didn’t want to be friends? Say no? Then I’d seem confrontational when in fact she’d introduced the demands.

Robert arrived just then. “I wondered where you two disappeared to!” he said in his jocular host voice. I watched his eyes flick between us while his mouth held a steady smile.

He gave a flourishy little bow and offered his hand to Lily to pull her up. She took his hand and glided to his side. Before Robert could extend the same courtly hand to me, which would have been awkward, or leave me to get up from the pool deck by myself, which would have been even more awkward, Lily reached her own hand down to me. “Heave-ho, up we go!” she groaned as she pulled me up.

There was nothing dainty about her grip, and when I was finally standing beside her, she smiled and nodded, like we’d just sealed the deal on our agreement to be friends. I glanced at Robert. He looked away.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s get some dinner.” And again, it was diffuse, an invitation to Lily, to me, to the air.

We got some of the chic pretzel pastrami sandwiches, put our feet in the pool again, and talked to Alec Baldwin. (In all my years at the party I’d never talked to him before. In real life he was nicer and had fatter fingers than expected.)

After sunset, crickets now chirping all around us, guests began to leave. Still in our awkward but seemingly inescapable trio, Robert, Lily, and I were sitting near the koi pond when Regina and Tony walked by. I popped up, and Regina saw me, waved, and quickly walked over. Gosh, she was stylish, her red dress swishing around her legs like she was some jazz-era singer as she moved across the lawn.

She gave me a quick air kiss on the cheek, then took a card from her purse and leaned in close. “Call me Monday, Kelly Burns.”

She pulled away and walked off with Tony, turning back to wave over her shoulder. I looked at the card. In big pink letters it said: Regina Greene, Editor in Chief,
Charm
. For years, I’d been reading
Charm
magazine in doctors’ offices and hair salons, and even, occasionally, off the periodicals shelf at the library when I just couldn’t study for one more second. (I’d always hid in one of the carrels in the back when I executed that move, since reading about lip liner and layering when you were supposed to be reading critical interpretations of
King Lear
struck me as embarrassing.) Surely, I’d seen Regina’s photo inset on the editor page any number of times. I felt dopey for not recognizing her.