Maybe if she phoned right now, she could get a hair appointment Monday morning. Maybe she could buy a new dress; maybe even lose a little weight. She said, “What’s a good place? Do you still like Myrtle’s?”
“Myrtle’s?”
“Myrtle’s Family Restaurant?”
“Oh, Myrtle’s is long gone. I’d forgotten about Myrtle’s,” he said. “But I believe there’s something catty-corner from where Myrtle’s used to be. The Oak Tree, the Elm Tree — some such name. I don’t know how good it is, though. I’ve never eaten there.”
“Well, at least I’ll be able to find it,” she told him. “Shall we say seven o’clock?”
“Seven o’clock. All right.”
She said, “I’m really looking forward to it.”
“Well, fine,” he said.
He didn’t say that he was looking forward to it.
When she had hung up, she let out a long breath. “That was my very first boyfriend,” she told Peter.
He raised his eyes again from the Scrabble board.
“My only boyfriend, not counting Joe Davitch,” she said.
Then she plopped down two tiles to make another three-point word, and she didn’t even apologize.
* * *
Saturday morning she dropped Peter off at Patch’s house, after which she drove to a giant shopping mall. She forged grimly through each clothing store fingering fabrics, holding dresses under her chin in front of mirrors, and twice even trying things on. It appeared that without her noticing, the fashion world had been edging back toward the skimpy styles of the seventies. All she found were off-the-shoulder necklines, tight cap sleeves, and skirts that showed her underwear seams. In the mirrors she looked sweaty and unhappy. By noon she was still empty-handed, and she couldn’t spend any more time because the dining-room ceiling at home had dropped another chunk of plaster and Rick Saccone had agreed to come fix it before the tea-dance.
“Peter’s just finishing lunch,” Patch said when Rebecca arrived to pick him up. Then she lowered her voice. “This was not a big success. The kids tried to get him involved, but all he wanted to do was read his book. It wasn’t their fault, I swear.”
“Never mind,” Rebecca told her. “He read all through breakfast, too.” She was navigating Patch’s foyer, which was the usual jumble of sports equipment — gloves, bats, lacrosse sticks, and every conceivable size of ball. “Peter?” she called. “Ready to go?”
“Stay and have a sandwich with us,” Patch said.
“I can’t; Rick’s coming.”
“Not again!”
Anyway, Rebecca planned to skip lunch. The memory was still vivid of how she had looked in those dresses she’d tried on: the material strained taut across the broad mound of her stomach.
Peter emerged from the kitchen reading his book as he walked — some old science fiction paperback he’d found in the guest room — and during the drive home he continued reading, in spite of her attempts to start a conversation. “How was lunch?” she asked him.
“It was okay,” he said, with his eyes still on the page.
“How’d you get along with Danny?”
“We got along okay.”
But then on Eutaw Street he looked over at her to ask, “If you were offered a trip on a time machine, would you take it?”
“Well, certainly!” she said. “I’d have to be crazy not to!”
“Would you go to the past?” he asked. “Or the future?”
“Oh, the future, of course! I’d like to know what’s going to happen.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said.
“My grandchildren, for instance. How will they turn out? What’s that funny Lateesha going to do with her life? She’s such a little character. And Dixon: I just have this feeling Dixon’s going to amount to something.”
“I’d also like to know if scientists ever discover the Universal Theory,” Peter said.
Rebecca laughed.
He said, “What’s funny?”
She said, “Oh, nothing,” and he went back to his book.
* * *
As soon as they reached home, she went upstairs to her closet and took out all her dresses and piled them on the bed. One by one she tried them on, standing sideways to the mirror and surveying herself critically.
She had never aimed for the emaciated look; it wasn’t that. In fact, some part of her had always wanted softness and abundance — the Aunt Ida look. (Which may have been why she had slipped off every diet she’d ever attempted: the first pounds she lost invariably seemed to come from her cheeks, and her face would turn prim and prunish like her mother’s.) The problem was, soft and abundant women were seen to their best advantage when naked. It wasn’t her fault clothes had belts to bulge over, and buttonholes that stretched and gaped!
When Rick showed up to fix the ceiling, she met him at the door in an eggplant-colored gauze caftan that wafted unrestricted from neck to ankle. But she could tell from the way his eyebrows rose that it was a little too noticeable. “I’m having dinner with my high-school sweetheart Monday,” she explained, “and I’m nervous as a cat. I guess this won’t do, huh?”
“Well,” he said cautiously, “the color’s nice…”
“Oh.”
He said, “What about those harem pants you had on that time I was patching the bathroom?”
“I can’t wear pants to a restaurant!”
“Why not?” he asked. He heaved his ladder over the doorjamb. “Now, me: I have dinner with my high-school sweetheart every evening.”
“You do?”
“I’m married to her.”
“Deena was your high-school sweetheart? I didn’t know that!”
“I thought I’d told you.”
“I’d have remembered if you had,” she said.
After she saw him into the dining room she went upstairs again, this time to the hall cedar closet where she stored items she couldn’t quite bring herself to throw away. There she found what she was hunting: the powder-blue dress she had worn the night she met Joe. So she must have worn it with Will, too, on some occasion or other. (It wasn’t as if she had owned that many clothes.) But it would barely cover her crotch; she could tell by holding it up against her. “Would you believe it?” she asked Peter. He was heading into the family room with his book. “I actually used to go out in public in this! It reminds me of that Mother Goose rhyme where the old woman wakes from a nap and discovers her skirts were cut off.”
“Is that what you’re wearing to the tea-dance?” he asked her.
“No, honey, I don’t suppose I’ll ever again wear it in all my life,” she said. “I just hang on to it because it’s what I met your grandpa in; stepgrandpa.”
“Well, the color’s nice.”
She laughed and turned back to the closet.
It was silly to worry about her appearance. This wasn’t a date, for heaven’s sake! This was two middle-aged ex-classmates catching up with each other. Having a bite to eat and then, no doubt, parting for good, because the chances were they had nothing at all to talk about anymore.
When she hung the blue dress in its place, a wistful, sweet, lilac scent drifted from its folds. But she supposed it was just the smell of aged fabric. It couldn’t be Amy’s engagement party, after all these years.
* * *
On Sunday afternoon, NoNo and Barry came back from their honeymoon. NoNo had a toasted look while Barry, who was fairer-skinned, had turned a ruddy pink with a brighter patch across his nose. (They’d borrowed a friend’s beach cottage in Ocean City.)
NoNo made a big fuss over Peter, kissing him hello and asking about his weekend, offering him his choice of restaurants for tonight’s first meal as a family. Peter dug a toe into the carpet and mumbled that it would be nice to eat at home. NoNo said, “Oh. At home,” her forehead cross-hatched with worry because she had never had the slightest talent as a cook. But Barry said, “Great. I’ll grill some steaks.” Then he and Peter went upstairs for Peter’s belongings.