And then one night everything changed.
Chapter 6
I heard the laughter first.
I crept to the window and looked out, still chewing on my chicken sandwich. The usually empty drive was filled with girls getting out of their daddy's cars, squealing and running to catch up with other girls who were posing on the steps while boys in white jackets stood close by, looking at them but not talking, not yet. Girls, peering into compacts, lying to each other about how pretty the other one looked. Girls in petticoats and stockings, hair brushed one hundred strokes, perfume from the bottle they got for Christmas. Girls laughing at nothing. Girls going to a dance.
They wore corsages and were dressed in foamy dresses with skirts that fanned all the way down to their ankles. During the war, skirts were shorter because we had to save material for Our Men in Uniform, but now that the war was over everything was bigger. Cars, buildings, skirts.
The perfume! I could almost smell it from the window. Jungle Gardenia and Evening in Paris. I hummed with all the wanting I had inside. I wanted to be those girls. I wanted to be blond like my mother. I wanted to have a dress with a full skirt.
I looked at them and I wondered: What would it be like to come as a stranger to a dance like that? At home, I would be one of the wallflowers, one of the ones a teacher would muscle a boy to ask to dance. Here, I could be anybody. Here, I didn't have to be me.
I opened my closet door.
Gloom. What I needed was tulle and net and petticoats and shoes dyed to match my dress. I had cotton dresses and white anklets and saddle shoes.
What I needed, of course, was a fairy godmother. But I wasn't Cinderella.
I didn't even have to touch my hair to know what a mess it was. I hadn't washed it after swimming in the ocean that day. It was thick and wiry with salt, not glossy and groomed the way it should have been, like the bouncing pageboys out the window.
I wandered into Mom and Joe's room through the connecting door. Mom had gotten dressed in a hurry and had left her compact behind, open on the mirrored vanity. A dress was flung on the bed, something she'd rejected. High-heeled sandals were kicked off underneath it. A towel stained with powder was draped over a chair; bobby pins were flung like jacks on the dresser.
I opened the closet. Shoes kicked off and left on the floor all crazy, nylons in a little silky ball. A woman's closet. Not like mine, which smelled of salt water and perspiration.
Her perfume rose from the dresses and the beach-wear. I passed my hand along the dresses. Lots of them were new; Joe had followed through on his promise to buy her clothes. I pretended to hesitate, but there was only one dress I really wanted.
It was spring-green silk with violet flowers scattered on it, and if that combination sounded ugly, it wasn't. The funny thing was, I didn't think it looked so swell on Mom. The pale green color didn't suit her. I liked the deep V of the bodice and the pleated sash. It would fit me, I knew it. But I needed one of her bras, and tissues to stuff inside. Plenty of tissues.
I flung the dress on the bed alongside the other one. I felt greedy as I pulled out a lace brassiere that stood up at attention in the drawer. I didn't look in the mirror while I slipped my arms through the straps and stuffed it until there was no gap between the material and my skin. Then I slipped into the crinoline petticoat, all stiff and crackling with purpose.
I was just adjusting the tissue in the bra when the door opened and my mother and Mrs. Grayson walked in. I had my hand right in the cup.
Mrs. Grayson's eyebrows arched over her dark eyes like blackbird wings. My mother had a cigarette in her hand with a long ash. I watched as it dropped to the carpet.
We all froze, like we'd been flung into our poses like a game of statues. Then they laughed.
Mrs. Grayson put a fist to her mouth, but her laugh came out like a little yelp. They leaned against each other and giggled like girls.
I looked in the mirror. My hair was frizzy. My arms were skinny and I was too tall. I looked like a dog on its hind legs. I felt tears spurt into my eyes, and my humiliation was complete.
"No, no," Arlene Grayson said. "We're not laughing at you, petal. We were just surprised, that's all." She clicked over to me on her high heels. "You look pretty. You just need a few ... touches."
I smelled their cocktails and their hair spray and their confidence in their own allure. "She's in such a hurry," Mom murmured to Mrs. Grayson.
"Weren't you?" Mrs. Grayson asked. "I was. We need to fix her hair, Bev." She was all cool and soft, like iced sweet butter. She tucked my hair behind my ears. "We should wet it down."
My mother looked at the green dress I'd flung on the bed. "I know one thing. She doesn't need a girdle like I do for that dress."
"Look at that waist," Mrs. Grayson said. She placed her hands around my waist. "Those were the days. Come on, Bev, let's fix her up."
Mom hesitated, but I knew she wouldn't refuse Mrs. Grayson. They pulled me forward, digging for lipsticks and combs. I felt part of a conspiracy, a conspiracy I'd always watched from the sidelines, girls pulling their friends into powder rooms, or pinning broken bra straps.
They dragged me to the sink and mercilessly ran a wet comb through my tangles, laughing at the faces I made. They put setting lotion on it and pushed it one way, then the other. Mom fussed over me with lipstick and powder while I felt my hair being tugged into a French twist. My back was to the mirror so I couldn't see what she was doing, only the line between her eyebrows as she concentrated.
"Don't look yet," Mrs. Grayson warned me. The amusement in her voice was gone now. She was taking the job seriously. Hope made bubbles in my chest. If anyone could make me pretty, I thought, it was Mrs. Grayson. Mom had always put the kibosh on my attempts to be pretty. She said I had plenty of time. Mrs. Grayson seemed to understand that I didn't.
Mom cradled the dress in her arms like a newborn and carefully pulled it over my hair. She did the hooks in back. Then she pulled down the skirt in a professional way. Mrs. Grayson brought over a pair of high-heeled white sandals. I slipped into them and wobbled.
"Keep your head up," Mrs. Grayson ordered. "Don't look at your feet. Straighten your spine!"
I straightened my back and lifted my chin.
"Good," they said together.
"Now look," my mother instructed.
I looked in the mirror. I expected to see a version of my mom. Somehow I'd hoped that the dress would look better on me than on her. It didn't.
"Smile," Mrs. Grayson said, and I smiled. "There. You're beautiful."
She said it seriously. Not like Joe did — and I realized at that moment that when Joe said I was beautiful, he always lumped me in with Mom, as though I was the giveaway and she was the real prize. Sure you're beautiful, kid — look where you came from!
In the mirror, I exchanged a glance with Mrs. Grayson. I was surprised to see sadness there.
She leaned over to speak in my ear. "This is your time, Evelyn. Grab it."
Just one dance. Just one. That's all I wanted.
I know now how you can take one step and you can't stop yourself from taking another. I know now what it means to want. I know it can get you to a place where there's no way out. I know now that there's no such thing as just one. But I didn't know it then.
"Come on," Mrs. Grayson said. "Before you turn into a pumpkin."
They spun me around and pushed me out the door, wobbling like a top winding down. Now I had no choice. I went.
Chapter 7
Luckily the band was playing, and mostly everyone was dancing. I walked straight to the punch bowl and poured myself something red in a crystal cup. I did it slowly, hoping that some boy would come over and offer to pour for me. No one did.