Three Tennis Skirts. One White.
I’m taking you shopping,” Regina told me.
It was two days before Labor Day weekend, three days before my father was scheduled to drive up to Maine to bring me home.
We were having our tuna fish sandwiches in the kitchen.
Jilly had set up a restaurant for her American Girl dolls in the living room, enacting a discussion between Samantha and Molly about who was the prettiest. Hayward was eating his on the deck, his eyes glued to the ever-present video game, though now and then—in a way that continued to unnerve me—he’d cast his eyes in my direction, as if he knew something about me. And he did, of course.
So it was just the two of us, Regina and me, sitting at the kitchen island. As usual, Regina had removed the bread from her sandwich, leaving only a very small portion of tuna fish. She’d taken three bites. For her this was lunch.
I hadn’t planned on buying new clothes for ninth grade. I would have liked a new outfit, but getting to work with Jonathan mattered more, and the truth was, I hadn’t grown out of my clothes from the year before.
“I want to buy you some nice pants and a few sweaters,” Regina said. I hadn’t mentioned anything about my lessons with Jonathan, but she seemed to know I didn’t have any money.
She spoke the next words almost as an afterthought.
“It seems like you’re spending a lot of time at the club. We’ll get you a good pair of sneakers. The ones I gave you are looking a little beat up. And we can get you a couple of cute tennis skirts with matching tops. A good tennis skirt can make a big difference in a girl’s life.”
Regina brought me to the Gap, a very different kind of store from the one we’d visited to purchase my Bastille Day dress. When I picked out a pair of jeans from the sale rack, Regina shook her head.
“Those look like last year’s style,” she said, though I couldn’t imagine how she’d know this. She just wanted to get me the more expensive kind. Those, and two other pairs of pants, along with three sweaters and a sweatshirt.
I told her this was enough. More than enough, more than any shopping trip I’d ever been on, though that didn’t say much, considering that my mother had probably only taken me shopping twice, ever.
But Regina said no. We were going to Macy’s. She had decided I should have pajamas and a nice warm bathrobe for the cold months coming up. This was Regina for you. One aspect of Regina, anyway. The problem was, you never knew which one was going to show up.
After that came the tennis shoes. Then the skirt. Three of them, actually, one blue, one green with pink stripes, one white.
When we were done with our shopping, we got lunch in the food court—hamburgers and fries and milkshakes. (For me, anyway. Regina had her usual: water.) Regina seemed more lighthearted than I could ever remember—uncharacteristically cheerful and filled with energy. For once I was the tired one.
She wanted to know what classes I’d be taking in ninth grade, what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I told her I was interested in history, World War II in particular. Reading Anne Frank’s diary had inspired me to find out about the Holocaust. But what I loved best was reading. I’d finished nine Stephen King novels over the summer.
“It’s probably impossible,” I told Regina. “Me, actually getting to be a writer.”
This was a moment when Regina might have offered some encouragement. But that wasn’t her style.
“I used to love physics,” she said. “I won a prize for a paper I wrote one time.” I could tell she was thinking about something precious and wonderful then.
Wonderful and gone. The look that passed over her face was about more than the smell of Cinnabon filling the food court.
“But the truth is, a lot of things you hope in life aren’t going to happen. ”
“I’ve been playing some tennis,” I told her. It was the first time I’d spoken of this to anyone other than Jonathan. “I’m going to be in a tournament at the club this weekend. I’ll probably lose.”
“You never know,” she said. “Unlike me, you just might be the kind of person who can hang in there. How’s anybody else supposed to believe in you if you don’t believe in yourself?”
“All those kids at the club have been taking lessons for ages,” I said. For just a moment, it was almost as if she were my mother, and I was confiding in her. Something I never did with my actual mother.
Regina looked at me closely. Here was that same intense focus that seemed to have revealed itself only since she’d stopped taking all those pills.
“I can picture you smashing a ball hard,” she told me.
“You probably have some anger in you, and if so, fair enough. Maybe a tennis court is a good place to let it out.”
Or alone, hitting against the backboard at midnight. She didn’t know that part.
“You’re holding on to some things. If you aren’t careful, you could explode. It’s unhealthy keeping everything inside.”
“I’m not—” I started. But her words had opened a door. Maybe Regina was right about me.
“I know what I’m talking about,” she said. “I know all about anger. How do you think it’s been for me, dealing with this business between my husband and that redhead?”
My head hurt. This was what I had come to hate about life with the Emersons.
The way all the mess going on between the two of them always ended up spilling over into my life and becoming my mess too.
I looked at the shopping bags on the floor by my chair—a few hundred dollars’ worth of clothes, including the skirt I’d longed for.
Three of them, actually. I wished we’d never come to this mall.
“Wear the yellow sweater with the blue buttons for dinner tonight,” she said. It took me a minute to know she was talking about one of the new cardigans. We’d bought so much that day I couldn’t even remember everything anymore.
“Forrest will love you in that one,” she said. “Forrest loves yellow.”