"Pearl"

Pearl used to give me little pillow-shaped pastries called kolatches. They were buttery and flaky and the insides oozed with sweet apricot filling. She let me play with her collection of 1950s Barbie dolls (their arms stiff and held straight out, tiny rubber feet pointed up on tiptoes, ready to receive itty-bitty open-toed shoes, faces foreign and ancient-looking with red-mouthed sneers) and didn't even mind if I turned her elaborate bookcase into a doll-sized apartment building – complete with curtains made from Kleenex.
They were beautiful, those books. Hardcover, some old and leathery, smelling of sharp age, the pages a dry yellowy-white like rustly vanilla ice cream. In the fifth grade I tried to read War and Peace, simply based on the fact that it was the most enormous book I'd ever seen. I had a high reading level, my teachers said. But even that couldn't get me through more than a page of complicated Russian names with more letters than the longest word I knew: semisomnambulant. Instead I found a Tennyson poem about a mermaid, and pretended to be an elegant 19th century lady on Pearl's window seat.
Pearl's house was next door to mine; our yards were bisected by an enormous row of blue hydrangeas. My mother always said that she didn't know how Pearl did it – blue hydrangeas were impossible. And she didn't even add lime to her soil, how in the world . . . My mother wondered this every spring like clockwork.
Before we knew Pearl, I loved her house. Before I was even old enough to love any building, I stared at it with childish wonder. My mother would pull me down the sidewalk in the Radio Flyer, its wheels squeaking out a lazy rhythm, and I would reach down to gather the little red-brown berries that collected on the concrete; refuse from the juniper trees that lined the yards on our street. I would collect them in the bottom of the wagon, watching them roll like tiny billiard balls into the corners1. Pearl would usually wave hello, or walk to the edge of the yard to talk with my mother, the two of them swapping what were, to me, the dull pleasantries of adulthood. But Pearl had a lovely lined face that was full of mischievous winks and asides for me – she was rare for an adult, seldom getting impatient or looking exasperated over children. She didn't mind toys in her yard or if a particularly intriguing flower was picked from her pretty gardens. (At age four, I came triumphantly bounding into the kitchen with a grubby fistful of her lovely irises, awash in a beautiful purple that was regal enough for a queen. My mother dropped her coffee cup in horror).
The house was of undetermined age - most likely an early 19th century building, according to my Dad; though how he knew that, I wasn't sure. The entire place was sturdy red brick, and the window frames were carefully painted and maintained white wooden scrollwork. It wasn't especially large, but the structure was rambling, with gables and dormers and an odd carport instead of a garage – very southern, my Dad said.
One of the windows was circular, a little round eye that, I found out later, peeked out from the library. I loved that small window. To me, it was the essence of charm and mystery. My own home contained all square windows, boring shapes that were to be expected in a house. I imagined that if I owned that round window I would lean my chin on the edge and peer out at the world when it was raining, pretending it was a porthole or the glass in a castle while the water ran translucent streaks down the pane.
Pearl's furniture was haphazard, a mix of antique pieces, new-ish sofas and her mother's 1940s kitchen table. She indulged my need for pretty, ladylike things and let me have tea parties in the library with her china cup collection. I was careful down to a science, setting the painted teacups in their matching saucers as delicately as I possibly could. The table I sat at was the most magnificent thing in the house, at least to me. Small and oval, just low enough to the ground for a child, it was dark mahogany, its surface a fairytale carving of knights and ladies, castles and renaissance scenery. An oval pane of glass was fitted perfectly over this carved story, and, best of all – four little stools were tucked underneath, cut with angles and curves that exactly mirrored the shape of the table, so that when they were not in use, they could be cleverly hidden. Someday, Pearl said, she would give it to me, when I was grown up and had a house of my own. But that was something I couldn't even begin to imagine.

New flash fiction: "They Say He's Sentimental"

You always loved the classic Ford Mustangs. Not so much the muscle-car image of the 70s, but the somewhat chunkier models from around 1965, with their glowing red taillights and crackly factory radios that had once blared the Kinks, the Stones, the Association. Some golden flat-topped son of the Midwest trying to sneak a hand around a chaste, angora-clad shoulder to the chimes of “Cherish”. California blondes with eyes like the Pacific, dressed in white and breezing down the Ventura freeway like Brian Wilson's lyrics come to life. The baby boomers who stored their red ragtop beauty and only took it out for Sunday drives, lovingly polishing and tuning their lost youth. When you saw one once, abandoned and stripped next to the rusting hulks in the junkyard, you cried.
The man in DeKalb was selling his '65 convertible because, he said over tinny country phone lines, his wife wanted to turn the extra garage into a scrapbooking studio.
You agree that it's not exactly a fair trade-off, and drive all the way down from Wisconsin, past Chicago and then corn and soybeans and windmills, to see a slice of 1965.
Dan lets you in the kitchen door of the big yellow farmhouse, and his wife offers you lemonade, which you notice is actually sickly-sweet yellow Kool-Aid when it hits your tongue. She flits around like a hummingbird, and you are grateful when Dan finally takes you out to look at his “baby”, which he says with a sheepish grin, and he holds the screen door open with one work-browned arm.
Dan's farm has maybe seen better days. The driveway is crunchy with gravel and the outbuildings are all peeling with red paint. He has chickens but no other livestock; the fat white birds spill out onto the lawn.
The car is in a converted pole barn. Sunlight streams in, gently, dusty, through cracks in the walls and sparrows flutter up to the roof beams.
Dan has the Mustang carefully covered, and he removes the canvas cover as if it were swaddling on an infant. The car is ice blue, all silver chrome and white vinyl and it makes you catch your breath in the hot air.
“I bought it in Florida in 1970 and drove it all the way back to Chicago.” Dan is watching you watch the car, and his eyes are kind when he looks at you.
You run your hands along the side of the car, taking everything in and savoring that first moment, like meeting someone for the first time, someone you might have known in some other life. You notice that the passenger door seems a bit off-center, and ask if it needs repair or was left ajar.
At the same time, you offer the envelope of cash in your outstretched hand, as if afraid that he'll change his mind.
“No, it ain't ajar - it's a door.” Dan grins at his own wit, and tucks the envelope in the pocket of his jeans.
From the corner of your eye, you see his face change from playful to serious. His eyes get a little red, then a little watery, and then you have your arms around him in a hug; you just can't help it. When you drive away, he doesn't wave, but he stays there, watching, until all you see is a speck in the distance.

Short fiction: "Pie"

“Pie”


When Willa was 9 years old her Mama wouldn't let her have pie. So she stole quarters from the jar above the refrigerator, standing on a kitchen chair with chunky legs quivering and sneakered feet on tiptoes. Pockets heavy with change, she stood up on her flamingo-pink Huffy pedals all the way to the store and bought a can of frosting. It was the fluffy butter cream kind – the type that made a perfect creamy-sugary-crunchy sandwich with graham crackers. She stowed it under her bed; the lacy white dust ruffle concealed any contraband beautifully.
Allison Reed lived across the street, and her mother kept M&Ms in a crystal dish on the coffee table. Willa would stare at the bowl, with all its facets distorting the hundreds of colored candy spheres, and dig her little fist inside to fill up her pockets with sticky handfuls. She didn't understand why her friend didn't take advantage of this delicious treasure, which was right in her very own house.
Allison shrugged, and watched Willa's rainbow-stained hands warily as they brushed the platinum hair of her new doll. “It's just always here.”
Allison and her doll had matching hair. She took piano lessons and tennis lessons and ballet lessons – she had everything and shared nothing, because there were no brothers or sisters in her house. She wore a little two-piece bathing suit at the city pool, and her slim brown legs flicked through the water like elegant scissor blades. Willa sat on the blue edge of the pool - where the butt of her swimsuit snagged on the concrete – extending one chubby pale leg out, then another, then another, until both were held out in disgusting tandem, chlorine-scented water beading over the baby-hair of childish limbs. All around her the other kids splashed, laughed and the teenage lifeguards lounged in their high red plastic seats, wrapping their bleached hair into endless ponytails and tilting their heavily-made up tan faces towards the sun.
In the mornings Mama pulled Willa's thick dark hair into a tight French braid – so tight that her brown eyes arched up at the corners – and sent her off to get on the school bus with Allison. Willa dreaded the bus, with its greasy-dirty smelling rubbery seats and ear-piercing child shrieks, so she walked in wide circles, crossing the street in a series of loops to waste plenty of time. Allison always brought two strawberry Pop-Tarts wrapped in a paper napkin. Sometimes she would give one to Willa, whose chilly Special K breakfast paled in comparison to a nice toasty pastry. When she bit into it, the sprinkles scraped the roof of her mouth and the sugary jam insides stung her tongue with sweet.

People called Willa's Mama beautiful. She had lovely large eyes and thick, dark curly hair – but what Willa noticed the most was that she was delicate, small and thin, like a doll. Her soft hands always had long fingernails, sometimes painted red or pink, and she watched herself in the bathroom mirror with a critical eye.
“You'll grow up, sweetheart,” she said with a pinched smile, squeezing Willa in a petite hug. “And you'll be so pretty.”
Mama always told Allison she was pretty. She would beam her bright-white smile and stroke Allison's hair whenever she said hello. Willa was old enough to notice that Mama never told Allison that she would be pretty when she grew up, but that she was pretty now. It made her stomach feel funny, like she was mad at Allison but sad with Mama at the same time. After that Willa started chewing her fingernails whenever Allison came over.

In the summers Allison and Willa would ride their bikes to the farm where Allison had a horse – it was a little doll house barn just outside of town, and a short 10-minute trip down sunny gravel roads. Willa would close her eyes and sail down the pebbled hills, legs and hair flying.
The horse was a dirty-white color with flaring nostrils and pink-tinged eyes – not the fairy-tale cream-colored animal of little girl fantasies. But when Allison rode it through the golden late-summer sunlight, Willa held her breath. Her light hair would stream behind her, and she bent her legs at the knee in two straight, clean bronze lines, squeezing the horse's belly with her heels, flying faster and faster around the bumpy field. Her pointed features remained dutifully serious, and when she let Willa sit behind her on the smooth English saddle, she kept straight and silent. Willa would clasp her hands around Allison's wisp of a waist, a clumsy passenger – she rose and fell haplessly on the horse's broad back, the grass swishing past, seemingly miles below her dangling feet. But the sky was so big and blue, streaked with clouds, and she leaned back into it, into the loud quiet of the country.

Afterwards they would sometimes get ice cream, and Willa would feel guilty about it, while she watched Allison casually eating some enormous bowl of chocolate-peanut butter-covered sundae. Allison's mother even gave her money for ice cream. Willa did not want to ask her Mama, because she knew what the answer wouldn't be. When she rode her bike into the garage, there was a single drip of melted vanilla on the pink handlebars. She wiped it clean with one finger, before the screen door slip-slapped and Mama, prettily flushed and wiping her hands on a dish towel, came out to ask how her day was. Willa would talk, but carefully leave out the ice cream part. This was not unusual – it just was.

When they were fourteen, Allison moved to a bigger house out in the country – rumor had it that she even had a bedroom in an honest-to-god tower. Willa didn't know, because Allison didn't talk to her anymore. She smiled beatifically, when she floated past in the hallways at school, but there were no more strawberry Pop-Tarts or shared squeaky bus seats. Most unfortunate was that Allison had gotten beautiful, just as predicted. Her white-blond hair reached the middle of her back, and her legs were still two clean bronze lines. She was on the honor roll and the track team. She seemed to be always happy; her laugh echoed across the school cafeteria like wind chimes. She made boys nervous. She made Willa nervous.
It was a fall afternoon that Allison came to the front door. Willa was home alone and making popcorn, the kind that came in little pressed red and white bags and slowly grew in the microwave, amid an angry flurry of bursting noises . Since Mama was gone, she melted a chunk of butter and dumped it over the bowl; the white pieces of fluff shrank under the warm greasy weight.
Willa saw Allison out of the corner of her eye – she was standing on the front steps, one hand bending a sleek leg back, stretching her quadriceps. She rang the doorbell again – pulled a tan arm around and above her head, first the right, then the left. From the corner of the bay window, Willa could see her blond ponytail and the heels of her pricey running shoes.
She swung the door open a little too quickly, and Allison looked up with the pearl-toothed smile that Willa remembered. As a child Allison had a mouthful of tiny, perfectly straight teeth, and it seemed that they had decided to stay that way. As she stared at them now, however, they seemed almost freakish – but Willa couldn't tell if that was the truth, or if she just really wanted it to be.
“Hi, Willa!” Allison's voice was breathless and too high. She gazed down from her considerable height, and smiled at Willa as if she were talking to a little child. “Is your mom home?”
Willa slouched in the door frame and wrapped her arms around her stomach, almost protectively. She was suddenly uncomfortably aware of her slouchy cotton shorts, and the old t-shirt she wore around the house in the summertime.
“Um . . . no. Why?” It became a flat statement instead of a question.
“Oh. We're selling raffle tickets for track.” Allison peered around the door, into the living room and the kitchen beyond it. She was flushed but not sweaty, and she held her slender frame almost regally, as if standing on front porches and obtaining money for sports was just about the most important thing she could do in her life up to that point. “Is your dad here?”
“No, no one else is home.” Willa felt the rising irritation that was nagging at her throat. Furious prickles of heat dotted her cheeks, like they did when she had to give a speech in school. She surveyed Allison, who, she now noticed, had grown actual breasts.
“Well, I'll check another time, OK? Bye!” Allison smiled again, a quick one this time – then she turned and sprinted down the driveway and into the street, a teenage gazelle with willowy limbs.
Willa watched her move gracefully, gradually getting smaller and smaller as she disappeared into a running dot at the end of the street. She looked at her bowl of popcorn, now soggy with melted fat, and thought better of it. The box of SnackWells fat-free chocolate cupcakes would do very nicely. The small cellophane wrappers ripped open easily, and the leftover frosting print made on each little paper square pedestal was easily scraped off with a metal-studded overbite. Willa sank into the couch cushions, while the late afternoon light bathed the living room in yellow and gold, and wondered if Allison ever had anything to be sad about.

In the summertime, Willa watered plants for Mrs. Henley across the street – lugging large, green plastic watering cans and dumping the sun-warmed contents of the garden hose into potted petunias and bleeding hearts, ducking into the dark, dusty garage to wipe the mud from her shoes. Mrs. Henley paid in thin, crumpled dollar bills that looked about as old as she was. The day before high school started, she handed Willa her usual handful of crinkly singles, and a blue Wedgwood dinner plate covered with an apple pie slice the size of Texas.
“I know you like my pie,” she remarked, gazing proudly at her baking handiwork.
Willa thanked Mrs. Henley and went out into the garage, standing perfectly still in the dim light, under the wooden beams covered with errant spiderwebs. The plate felt heavy in her hand.
“Good grief,” Mama spat when Willa set the plate on the kitchen counter. “Just what you need, pie. Well, save a little for your dad, and toss the rest.” She Looked at the pie plate as if it were something vile, evil, disgusting. “Can't that woman just pay you in cash?”
Willa scraped the pastry into the trash, watching the cinnamon-flecked filling ooze in over coffee grounds, eggshells, soggy paper towels. “She did.”
“Well. She doesn't have to worry about you, you're not her daughter.” Mama watched Willa's eyes watching hers as they surveyed chubby adolescent curves of flesh, the small bust, thickish legs ending in two dirty white tennis shoes. She held her thin hand at her throat, where the flesh was tight against her collarbone and the tiny gold chain of her usual pearl-pendant necklace lay, reposing over olive skin. To Willa, she looked for all the world as if she was getting herself ready for disappointment.
Willa's Mama took the Wedgwood plate in her hand, holding it over the sink, up to the light. Crust flakes and apple slid down the china, over the little painted dancing figures; men in old- fashioned suits and women wearing balloon-sleeved dresses with tiny waists drawn up tight by invisible painted corsets. “This sure is a pretty plate, though.”

In Willa's dream, Allison was slender, sylph-like and shiny-faced. Her eyes were hard and cold, like two round blue stones, and she wore her track uniform – maroon and white shorts up-to-there and a matching jersey tank emblazoned with the number 5. Her socks barely covered her slim ankles, and her shoes were those space-age shaped Nikes with the cratered rubber soles. But for some reason, she looked as beautiful as if she were wearing a prom gown. She stood in the middle of the high school gym, and stared up at the bleachers, which were filled with people, alternately staring back at her. There were boys, girls, old ladies, children. They all looked awestruck and, somehow, small. Allison stood in the center, perfect, taut, well-muscled limbs rooted to the spot. Her platinum hair was in a neat ponytail, so one could see the nape of her neck, tanned and smooth with a tiny mole in the hollow at the base of her skull. Willa imagined there were countless boys who were enamored with that spot; the boys who sat behind Allison in class and stared at the back of her neck, down past the elastic clasp of her bra, the bumps of her spine, the small of her back against the hard orange particle-board desk chair. She was sure that when they went to sleep at night, all sloppy-sweaty in their mysterious boy rooms, their dirty adolescent dreams ran rife with secret girl encounters. She, Willa, would never find her way into sleepy teenage male brains, because it seemed that the Allison Reeds of the world would stand in her way, with their perfect slender legs affixed to the floor – their slow, sweet smiles betraying their knowledge of what it was like to be always happy, always beautiful, always adored.
Willa was thinking about her dream when she saw Allison in the school parking lot, where all the yellow buses were lined up in a row, waiting for passengers and spewing exhaust fumes. Allison was alone, for once, her pale blue backpack dangling from her straight back, her French book clutched to her chest. Willa caught her eye over the packs of kids threading their way through the crowd. She was hesitant to wave, but then Allison gave her a tiny smile. She smiled and then she wrapped her arms around herself, either for warmth or security, Willa couldn't tell which. In that after-school mob, all alone like that, Allison actually managed to seem small. Willa found a seat on her bus, and leaned her head against the window, her temple cooling from the damp, dirty glass. When the bus started to move, she traced her finger along the dust, making swirls and curlicues, and she imagined herself on Allison's horse again, thundering over the same bumpy field, legs held tight to the animal's flank and the ground speeding past underneath. But this time she was alone, and it was she who urged the horse faster, laughing, leaning her head back into the loud quiet of the country and melting in with the blue sky. It was summer, it was bright and clean and pretty, and pie didn't seem so important anymore.

Dear Clothes: An open letter to my past transgressions.

(1989) Dear Paula Abdul L.A. Gear sneakers,

You were blindingly white and covered in pink and purple trim, and you just sucked me in during the first second of that flashy commercial where Paula does a fairly tame imitation of the “Cold Hearted” video. You were the female version of Zack Morris' clunky hightops. The Berlin Wall came down, and still, you obstructed my view with your skating-rink neon colors. You were Straight Up.


(1993) Dear over-sized sweater and matching stirrup pants from County Seat (audible gagging),

Gross. I wore you with white socks and brown pennyloafers from the Bass outlet store. But frankly, I don't think you were worth the paltry coinage in those shoes. You were either navy blue or a vomity dusty rose color; more often than not the sweater was patterned in some hideous cross-cultural hybrid of a Navajo print and a Swiss ski sweater. I also had a perm at this time. I have absolutely nothing to say about that or the stirrup pants.


(1996) Dear chartreuse 'Juliet Dress' from the Delia's catalog,

I coveted you. In between the pages of glitter nail polish, platform oxfords and corduroy carpenter pants, you were there in all your empire-wasted glory, hanging from a swizzle-stick teenage model with stringy waist-length brown hair. After I wore you to the sophomore Homecoming dance, you stayed in every clothing drawer I ever owned, languishing with my senior class t-shirt (which now barely even covers one boob. Sniff).


(2001) Dear stupid black platform flip-flops,

You were only popular for a season or two, and thank god for small favors. Sporting that sky-high foam sole was like wearing a black steak strapped to my foot. You hung out in my various closets for way too long, hunkered down in dusty corners, until I trotted you off to Goodwill. I should have kept you, the way one keeps a leisure suit - to dig out and giggle at, incredulously, 20 years later.

(2004) Dear dark green flouncy skirt with useless dangling gold hardware,

I bought you at Wet Seal while it was still acceptable for me to shop there. I proceeded to wear you with a harrowing combination of pieces: black satin jacket, black tights, pink stilettos and matching pink clutch. Wherever you are, you are covered in various cigarette burns and the clear stains of Absolut Mandarin presses. Oy vey.

The Never ending Saga of Ugg Boots: Because surfers have unlimited funds, and Pamela Anderson is a faux vegetarian.

I remember it clearly from those candy-coated Us Weekly photo spreads, circa 2003: blonde L.A. Girls crossing the the street in ultra-short denim skirts, white tanks, and sand-colored sheepskin footwear; beach bunnies cavorting on the California sand wearing bikinis, their feet ridiculously encased in thick fleece. Tabloid angels sporting short-shorts and knee-high tan beauties; rail-thin reality starlets showing off bronzed gamine limbs wrapped in cream-colored sweaters and fitted suede boots.

And, like a sucker, I bought the whole thing. From that minute on, I desperately wanted a pair of Uggs. I wanted to pose adorably in knee-high flat boots that were supposedly so comfortable, one didn't even need to wear socks. (Which, I discovered later, was a complete sham. At least for my not-so-delicate feet.). I wanted to roll the cuffs down like big, fluffy marshmallows. I wanted to wear them in the airport (the measly one time of the year that I even set foot on an airplane), exuding casual-coolness. “Hey, I'm wearing Uggs. I'm fashion forward, but, as you can see, totally into being comfortable. I'm like those supermodels who claim that Chapstick is the only makeup they own.”

Trends don't get to the Midwest on a very timely basis, so I had to go through a few years, one pair of purple Target knock-offs, and a failed attempt at an eBay purchase (my Classic Tall pair in Sand arrived mysteriously from China and resembling cardboard more so than sheepskin) before I purchased the coveted real pair from a shoe store in Black Earth, Wisconsin. Said shoe store more commonly stocked Red Wing work boots and tennis shoes, but, over five years after the emergence of the style, they'd started carrying Uggs.

I discovered that the Classic Tall boot that I'd been lusting over since college didn't quite pull on over my calves (a problem I've gritted my teeth over for years), but found a shearling pair with a roomy calf circumference and winter-ready rubber soles.

I wore the crap out of them, including slogging through ankle-deep puddles during a chilly December layover in Chicago. (The resulting smell of wet wool forced me to buy cheap-o socks in the O'Hare airport). I now own two pairs, nearly a decade after the trend first began, and, ridiculously, I want more. I do, I do!

So what if they turn legions of female feet into so many cloven-hoofed blobs? Who cares if the wooden-headed Pamela Anderson claims to be a PETA spokeswoman and veggie-freak while simultaneously tramping (hee!) around all of southern CA in sheepskin? And, even though I highly doubt that Australian surf-bums had $140 to plunk down for warm after-wave footwear (if you believe the story of Ugg's humble beginnings), well, I still don't care. I'm already eyeing that turquoise knit pair on Zappos.com.

"The Queen Rides Again"

Her eyelids were covered in crushed blue; shades and shades of cobalt, cerulean, aqua, turquoise, all expertly blended so that the inner corners were pale ice, stretching into darkest navy at the outside edge. The lashes were lined in a similar deep hue, melting effortlessly back into the drama of the lid, which fluttered with heavy fringe.

And on Daisy, it didn't look stupid. Even with that deep red hair, and those pale-ish hazel eyes that were a mix of gray, brown and almost chartreuse – it looked like it was supposed to be there.

She was already at the reunion when I arrived – sitting on a stool in slim dove-gray jeans, the heel of one tall suede boot hooked over the metal rungs of the worn-out chair. Those heels would add at least four inches to her already considerable height, once she stood up. But she languished at that spot, her long fingers waving with numerous large lucite cocktail rings, and cumbersome earrings winking from beneath her smooth auburn bob. As usual, there were boys crowded around her, only now they were men. Given that I was a certifiable adult, I should have noticed the fact that they weren't noisy, kick-ball playing pre-adolescents with bowl cuts anymore. Some of them were even married, but that didn't stop me from flashing back to gym class in 1990, my hair permed, clumsily kicking at that huge maroon ball that was always dusty and reeked of rubbery sweat. They all yelled at me to run, run, and on rubbery legs I would make the half-hearted journey to one of those flat plastic orange bases while some little shithead with shingles shaved into the sides of his head bonked me with the ball, gloriously crowing, “you're out, you're out!”

And through it all, Daisy remained enviably cool, lanky in her gym shorts and joking easily with the boys. She had kickball prowess and a trendy prettiness that was half-quirk, half-classic. I hated her.

In high school, Daisy didn't pay much attention to me. She roamed the hallways between classes, flirting with older boys and shrieking with delight at their antics; she aced advanced Chemistry and made gorgeous paintings in art and slid into home during gym-class softball like a bad-ass bitch, even though everyone knew she really wasn't one. Because Daisy was able to have facets, dimensions to her personality, which, normally, teenage life just didn't accommodate for.

And now she was here, most likely back from some enviable globe-trotting adventure, drinking a gin and tonic (no lime, thank-you) and 32 years old. Good god, what had we gotten ourselves into?

Daisy lived in New York and was a stylist for some fashion magazine nobody had heard of – but that didn't matter, because it was real, and she did – I knew it, because I Googled her. So that made her even more mythical; she probably had a comfortable-but-chic walk-up apartment in Soho, something not filled with Ikea furniture, but instead dotted with whimsical thrift-store finds, antique suitcases and the odd cashmere throw. She probably fed pigeons in Central Park and laughed her way out of crowded theaters on balmy summer nights, brisk traffic and hurried pedestrians surrounding her like so many buzzing insects. She was That Girl, Helen Gurley Brown, Zelda Fitzgerald; she was Mary Tyler freaking Moore.

“God, it was so funny,” Daisy was drawling, her body turned towards the baseball-hatted guy with whom she was reminiscing. I keep smiling, waving to people I know, but it's hard not to be distracted by her movements and sparkling voice. If only I could say hi, if only I weren't still haplessly playing kickball in my head.

Daisy was good at leaning in close to people, making vague comments sotto voce and then smiling dazzlingly, leaving that person feeling as if they'd just been given a gift or a rare secret. Surprisingly, she did this as I was waiting for a fresh glass of wine (sour and watery, from a dusty Franzia box), standing about a foot or so away at the bar, hands on the smooth wood. It was old, as VFW bars tend to be, with 60 years of nicks and gouges spattered liberally over every available surface. I scoffed inwardly; it was a shabby place to hold a reunion, that was for certain.

“I don't know how many times I have to say 'no lime'.” Daisy's hair tickled my cheek as she leaned in, closer to my ear. “It's bad enough that they only have Tanqueray.” In less than five seconds she had already retreated to her original sitting position, fishing a ragged lime slice out of her glass with one burgundy-painted fingernail. It landed on the bar in a soggy green clump, oozing juice and gin-tainted ice water.

Someone asks me if I'm still “working on those paintings”; I smile awkwardly and say yes, quickly explaining away my crappy hostessing gig and loudly assuring everyone that I am indeed still a painter, still at least minutely impressive. With a rock in my stomach, I think about those bare canvases, some half-filled with wide slashes of color, propped against the walls at my apartment.

Across the room, Daisy is gesturing theatrically, her designer purse hanging from the crook of her arm, her face expressive and close to Robert. Robert, who had floppy chestnut hair and perfect report cards, who had beautiful hands and whose picture I used to dog-ear in the yearbook. Robert, who'd played hockey and dated girls who didn't love him, is now successfully and curiously cornered by Daisy – though he doesn't look any worse for the wear.


Daisy is outside, and her silver rental BMW has a flat tire. It's raining pretty good now, so I'm standing under the tin VFW awning, arms around myself, waiting for the chilly downpour to let up. Daisy yammers on her cell phone, all furious shrieks and sighs of exasperation.

“Hey!” The shriek turns towards me, as she runs up the wooden stairs, clackety-clack, her wide black umbrella straining and pulling with the wind. She leaps up onto the porch, and, predictably, the storm hasn't disrupted a single hair on her head.

“Wait with me? The tow truck won't be here for another hour.” Daisy's aquiline nose crinkles in disgust. She's wearing over-sized black sunglasses, which I find slightly ridiculous, given that it's nearly 10 p.m. But then, I don't have to meet her enormous eyes with my own timid brown ones, and I feel a bit braver because of it.

“Uh, OK.” I decide that it couldn't have come out more lackluster. I feel like a hick, like a hillbilly.

The rain slows to a cold trickle, draining noisily from the sides of the tin awning. Daisy is looking up at the slate-colored sky, where the clouds are beating a hasty retreat towards the East. She leads me to one of the paint-chipped Adirondack chairs on the deck and wearily sinks into it, her thin frame next to me, folded like a half-open jacknife. She chats rather amiably, and her jewelry jingles, bracelets clinking together with the slightest movement of her hands. She leans over to adjust the tall boots that barely cover her long calves, and the silver bangles slide up and down her forearms, filling the space with noise.

“Sorry, I just had to get out of there.” From the corner of my eye, I can see her Sephora-glossed lips curved into an apologetic smile; a shiny slash of deep coral in the dark.

I swallow. I pretend to be laid-back. “No, that's totally fine. I was getting bored anyway.”

“Yeah, there weren't many people there, huh? I wasn't even planning on going, but I figured, as long as I was in town visiting my parents, it would be rude not to make an appearance.”

I let her sit on that one, think about how stupid it was – that the whole fate of a lousy high school reunion at the freaking VFW rested on her being there or not.

Baseball Hat Guy comes out onto the deck then - he's got a wad of Skoal in his mouth the size of a Volkswagen, smelling of tobacco-minty spit; this in fact makes him resemble a retarded gopher. I vaguely remember him as one of those smugly sporty boys, no doubt among the ranks of the relentless youthful kickball players. Corey? Jeff? He's semi-cute, but stupid as the day is long. He's looking at us both with leery-beery eyes, and then suddenly he is slinging Daisy over his shoulder and running down the length of the porch with her screaming, bellowing like a calf. When he comes thundering back up the rise in the wheelchair ramp of the deck, she is laughing, her perfectly sleek bob overturned into rusty ribbons, streaming over his shoulder like a burgundy jellyfish. He drops her back into the chair like a giggling gunny sack, and her legs hang over the armrest, kicking playfully at his figure as it retreats back through the door, under the weak-lit neon Old Style sign. She turns back to me, her grin self-satisfied and completely insouciant. Her hair burns in the darkness.

I didn't think of it until later, but maybe all I really wanted was for some grown-up boy to choose me for such shenanigans - picking me up in an arbitrary joyride, some celebration of long-forgotten teenage irresponsibility, a sparkling juvenile mating ritual that I'd missed out on.

“Sorry”, she said with a childish breathlessness, “he's such a flirt.”

I wondered if Daisy had ever dogeared the pages of her yearbook.


When she finally walked to her car, the stacked heels of her tall boots sunk into the gravel parking lot, now sloppy with mud and chocolate-milk puddles. I stood in the doorway, and heard the beep of her key chain remote, saw the quick flash of lights on the late-model foreign car. Before Daisy got in, she brought one calf up, bending it behind her at the knee, momentarily looking like an elegant red-headed crane in the light, gray mist. She flicked a muddy droplet from the suede surface of one boot, and then she was gone.

Taming the beast; or, My stress level is more obnoxious than that incessant Twilight display at Barnes and Noble.

I'm fairly confident that I would have made an excellent 19th century woman. You know – corsets, big billowy dresses, gentlemen callers, fainting couches. Aside from the outhouses, winter salted-meat diet, and the marketing of Lysol as a feminine hygiene product, I think I would have fared pretty well.

See, these fragile females were almost expected to be constantly nervous. Granted, the treatments for their varied mental ailments were somewhat sketchy – rest cures, sleep cures, bizzare-o drugs (for anyone who hasn't read “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman – please do so immediately. It's deliciously harrowing).

I have no idea how I became such a freak. Maybe it was my early childhood fear of bugs in the garage. Or the adult level of paranoia I achieved after my accident-prone sister fell 25 feet from a pine tree in our backyard. (She would go on to walk the length of rusted boxcar roofs, sled down ice-covered, rock-strewn hills and whitewater raft; I finally had to cut the sisterly apron strings).

As an adult, my heart goes into goofy rhythms thinking about my husband backpacking for a week in the Oregon wilderness. (What if he breaks his leg? What if he gets sick? What if a ten-ton grizzly bear EATS him?).

Although I'd rather not consider myself as helpless as the blushing 19th century belles, being alone and in charge of the the house for two weeks presents new problems. I mean, huge problems. Specifically, holy-crap-there's-a-bat-in-the-house-and-it's-three-A.M. problems. I also get to make the shaky decision of putting $600 on our recently paid-off credit card for an aptly named “bat exclusion” to be performed by. . .well, let's just call him the BatMan. (In all fairness, the BatMan did regal Melissa and I with valiant tales of exotic pest removal, smoking cigarettes with us on my porch on a random Tuesday night).

I'm breathing. I'm trying some of that meditation recommended by my batty Pilates instructor. I'm glancing suspiciously at that bottle of leftover Prozac. I'm figuring, I can get through all this, the random ridiculousness of life, without smelling salts and a mahogany chaise lounge.

Thankfully, the BatMan is coming today. And yes, Bonnie Tyler, I am indeed holding out for a hero.