Chapter 8 #2
I haven’t worn a strapless dress since my prom, and let me tell you the technology has improved significantly.
Once I’m zipped into this long celery-green column of satin with a sweetheart neckline, there is absolutely no fidgeting or boob shoving to be done.
I am locked and loaded. Octavia arranges the bottom of the dress and smiles at me in the dressing room mirror.
“This is the one, dear. I refuse to sell you a different dress.”
It’s the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen, I’ll admit that. But it’s way too much. It screams for attention. Look at me and my shoulders and my boobs—behold and judge!
Octavia walks out ahead of me. “Green it is,” she announces.
Busy gasps. “I love it.”
I say, “It’s kind of a lot.”
She steps closer to me. “The other dresses are sequins, I think this is your best bet. Also, you’re absolutely gorgeous in it.”
I look at myself in the mirror behind her. I squint and I see Stewart Whitfield’s girlfriend. That’s the shape and form I’ve agreed to take on. “I don’t feel like myself,” I say.
Busy reaches out and squeezes my arm. “Of course you’re yourself. But it’s kind of fun to try to feel like someone else for a bit, right? You’re you, but sprinkled in pixie dust.”
I have never been sprinkled in anything but regular dust.
“Is there jewelry?” Octavia asks. “We can bring in a few things.”
“Damion had a few things sent over from Kingsmouth.” Busy reaches into her tote bag and pulls out three velvet boxes. The first is a thick braided gold chain with diamonds inset throughout. I don’t know what my face does as I look at it, but Busy says, “There are more, don’t worry.”
The next is a thinner platinum chain that cannot be expected to support the dime-sized diamond that hangs off it.
The third is a thin gold chain with a flower pendant, a dahlia, fashioned out of yellow and rose gold.
The flower is the size of a nickel, elegant enough that you’d wear it with a dress like this, but subtle enough that you might just put it on and never take it off.
I want to be as casual as a Whitfield with this precious necklace.
I want to wear it with my fish house T-shirt.
I want to put it on and never take it off.
“Do you have a preference, Busy? Does it matter to you which one I wear?”
“Of course not, pick what you like. And honestly, in that dress, no one’s going to notice your necklace.”
I pick up the dahlia and let Octavia put it on me. One day in, and I’ve already forgotten how to do things for myself. “I won’t take it off,” I say, lowering my voice. “Like until this is over, I’m just going to wear it all the time so I don’t lose it. Okay?”
I look up and see Naomi standing in the dressing room doorway, stunned.
I greet her by demurely raising my glass of champagne, and we both start to laugh.
“I honestly don’t know what’s happening here,” I say.
“But I’m wearing this dress to Providence on Wednesday, and I have so much stuff in that dressing room you’re going to freak. Busy, this is my friend Naomi.”
Busy takes Naomi’s hand in both of hers like she’s precious, which she is. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Busy says. “I think we have everything we need, but I wonder if you have thoughts on her hair?” The diplomacy is impressive.
Naomi laughs. “Do I? It’s almost all I think about.”
They turn to me, and Busy moves my hair behind my shoulders. “I would literally die to see your hair cut. Your jawline is so Olivia Wilde, you know?” I do not know. “Can we?”
Naomi smiles her most radiant smile. “We must,” she says.
Lee, Busy’s favorite hairstylist at the Willa Bernard Salon, does not crack a smile as she stands behind my chair and surveys me in the mirror. “You shouldn’t even be allowed to have hair,” she says.
“Lee!” Busy swats her arm.
“I totally agree,” says Naomi.
“It’s all too much,” Lee says. She starts to brush out the ends of my hair, working from the bottom until it’s all smooth.
I relax into the chair and try to enjoy the strangeness of it.
I don’t even remember my mother doing this for me.
I did it for Patsy, brushing and braiding and curling and straightening, and I washed Christopher’s hair forever.
“What I really want to do is give you a bob. A straight line right across your jaw.” She folds my hair up to demonstrate, and I see what she means.
It’s like she opened a curtain and now you can see my eyes.
“I need to be able to put it in a ponytail,” I say.
“Because you’re competing on the U.S. volleyball team?” Naomi asks. “You don’t need a ponytail.”
Lee says, “You actually have the right kind of hair for it. A little product and you can tuck it behind your ears when you need to.”
I do not want a dramatically new haircut.
My hair has been the same, cut twice a year and often by me, for decades.
Every other change is already drastic. That celery-green dress is a drastic step out of my comfort zone.
But maybe a drastic haircut will help shift me into this new role.
Maybe the strange woman with the chic haircut will be perfect in yellow pants.
I look at Lee in the mirror. “Let’s do it,” I say. Busy squeals with delight.
I turn my head to accept Naomi’s hug and kiss, and Lee drags my chin back to the mirror.
Giant chunks of hair fall to the floor. My heart rate ticks up a bit because I cannot turn back.
There is so much of me exposed—my face, my neck.
I push my shoulders back because now I can see them.
It’s as if someone has come into my bedroom and ripped off my covers.
My second phone rings. “Shoot, sorry, I have to get this quick. Work.” I grab it on the second ring.
“Good Sports. You’re on a recorded line.
How can I help you?” Busy steps back and folds her arms to watch me.
“I’m sorry to hear that. If you want to initiate a return, please go to our website and select returns.
Yes, return the weights too. In the original packaging.
” This goes on for a while because he doesn’t have the original packaging. They never do.
“So what’s your job?” Busy asks when I’ve been assured there is nothing more I can do to be of assistance.
“I’m a teacher, but I also answer calls for a sporting goods company.”
“How did you know that’s what you wanted to do?”
I laugh, but I shouldn’t. I understand why she’s asking, the world is full of people trying to identify their passion.
When I was a kid, my passion was baking.
I was going to grow up and sell cakes and cookies and every pie my grandmother thought up.
I was going to be a baking tycoon. Brick Fish House and Bake Shop.
The events of my actual life have left me with more of a passion for providing protein and health insurance for my kid.
“Well,” I say. “I studied to be a teacher because I like kids, and I think what happens to you when you’re little matters.
That worked out great because I had a baby at twenty-six and I could be around in the summers for him.
The call center is just extra money because everything is more expensive than I thought. I also drive an Uber sometimes.”
“And the fish house,” she adds.
“With my dad, yes.”
“You’ve figured out four things to do, I can’t figure out anything. I keep thinking I should go to med school and then I don’t go, and then I feel lazy about it all.”
“I hear med school is kind of a commitment,” I say with a laugh into the mirror.
My wet hair is cut at an exact angle. It’s even blacker when it’s wet like this, and my eyes look bluer than usual.
I look like a flapper, I think, and I like the playfulness of it.
I look like I could get into some trouble while looping a long strand of pearls around my fist. Stewart Whitfield’s girlfriend would totally do that.
“If you want to know,” Naomi says. “I opened a T-shirt shop because I live in Whitfield and there aren’t that many choices.”
“That might be your problem,” I say to Busy. “You have too many choices.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s like when you go to a TGI Fridays.
” I narrow my eyes and read her expression.
She’s never been to a TGI Fridays. “Like a restaurant with too many things on the menu. You walk in hungry but end up overwhelmed. The only thing to do in that situation is just make a decision and live with it.”
“Like just go to med school, and that’s that.”
“Do you want to be a doctor?”
“Not at all,” she says, no hesitation.
We all laugh, and Lee starts blowing my hair dry.
“Can I make you up?” Lee asks when my bob is dried to shiny perfection. I can’t quite manage the smile on my face, it embarrasses me how changed I feel by this haircut.
“Sure,” I say. I’ve come this far.
I watch as she darkens my lashes and my eyes go a shade bluer.
“Stewart’s going to go nuts,” Busy says.
“I’m not going to recover from today,” Naomi says on the drive home. “You look like a princess, and I can keep cutting your hair like that when this is over. I watched how she did it.”
I run my fingers along the straight line of my bob. I really do like it. I feel lighter. “It was very fun. And Busy is a dream.”
“I wish this was all real so I could come to your wedding.”
I laugh. “In their chapel. I’d wear this necklace, because I am in love with it.” I finger the dahlia around my neck.
“You should be,” she says.
“We’re sharing the stuff I get to keep. You can borrow it all. The lavender dress would be gorgeous on you.”
“It’d be worth driving to your place in Boston to pick it up,” she says. I smile at the thought of Naomi and me wearing these clothes for the next twenty years until they’re threadbare.
My phone dings with a text from Stewart: Go okay?
“It’s my fake boyfriend,” I say. Me: Yes, thank you
Stewart: Good
“Super romantic,” I say to Naomi. “The bland boyfriend check-in.”
“Kind of nice, actually. Checking in.”
“He probably set a reminder on his phone,” I say.
“Is he really that stiff? Such a waste of lips.”
“He’s not. He’s focused. Definitely goal-oriented. I have the feeling he’s good at sex but not intimacy,” I say.
Naomi laughs. “Sounds like you’ve met your match.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shoots me a look.
“Fine,” I say. “But I don’t even remember if I was good at sex.”