Chapter 7 - Winnie
WINNIE
“There are two more boxes in my car,” Carolina calls as she navigates around Fidget into my living room.
“We’re just going to a cocktail party. Why do we need all this?” I protest.
“Girl.” Carolina thumps the box down on my hardwood floor, freshly cleaned even though I literally just cleaned them last week. Thanks, Mom.
“This is the event—not just in the city, in the country—shoot, in the world! There are billionaires flying in from Europe.”
“I wasn’t actually planning on going…”
“We have one shot to make a good impression.” She grabs my arm. “Especially if I have to be a bridesmaid for Loony Laura. Now, they won’t let you in with Crocs and unwashed hair,” Carolina says flatly. “Please, go take a shower. And shave!” she calls as I stomp upstairs.
My office has been turned into a salon. I sneeze, padding in after my shower, nose to my phone, managing the various online dates I’m setting up as backup plans for Operation Remove Family from Dream Home.
I freeze. The makeup artists and hairstylists coo over Kathy’s perfect ballerina body and her pretty face, telling her that she looks like a model, like a fairy, how pretty she is.
And she is. My little sister is ethereal—that natural, innocent girl-next-door beauty that still shines through even though we’re both well into our thirties.
I will never be as pretty as that, no matter how hard I work. As always, it’s a punch in the ever-expanding gut.
This is a good thing, I remind myself firmly. This means a man at the party is going to see her, fall in love, and whisk her and my family off to Monaco.
“What do you think, the black dress or the blue?” the stylist asks me.
“Or should I wear the green?” Kathy gushes to me, holding it up. “And this jewelry.” She admires herself in the mirror. “So shiny!”
“This is rented. We are renting this. If you want your own jewelry, you need to dig deep, work hard at the cocktail party,” I remind Kathy. “Make one of those rich guys fall in love with you.”
The makeup artist uses a sponge to meticulously dab at the corner of Kathy’s eye. “Oh, they are going to fall for her as soon as she walks in,” the stylist gushes. “And it has to be the blue with those eyes.”
“Don’t worry, Winn. I bought you a dress.” Gran holds up a firetruck-red halter-top dress.
“No, Gran. I can’t wear a bra with that. I don’t go outside without a bra.”
“Braless is in right now,” Carolina urges.
The boutique consultant who brought all the dresses and accessories for Kathy sniffs. “Your sister’s wearing a dress with no bra.”
“Yes, but her boobs are stuffed with plastic. Mine are stuffed with doughnuts and pasta, and they sag. Besides, it’s Seattle, Gran. No one wears red here. Neutral tones only. I’m wearing my gray dress.”
“You can’t fit in the dress. You haven’t worn it in years…” Carolina grimaces.
“I’ll squeeze. I have that shapewear,” I tell her flatly. “I cannot fit in that dress.” I point.
“Stretchy material.” Gran waves the red dress at me. “I have those fancy adhesive bras. It’s a new product. A gal in my knitting circle sells them.”
“You’ve got a new knitting circle?” The eye twitching is back. They’re all setting down roots. Even as we speak, my mom is out in my overgrown backyard, directing my dad to dig up planting beds because she wants to plant tomatoes this summer.
“We watch porn and knit male genitalia of different shapes and sizes. They fetch a high price on the interwebs. By the by”—she leans in conspiratorially—“how do you get one of them tickets? Norma Jean and I are looking for a rich man.”
“I think they want younger women, Gran.” I sigh as she peels the sticky tape off the silicone.
“Girls in your generation give up too easily. You have to hunt a rich man down like the last woolly mammoth on the tundra. Now, hold ’em up, Carolina,” Gran directs.
“We are way too close,” I complain.
“Desperate times.”
I yelp as Gran slaps the sticky adhesive on my boob. “That hurts!”
“I told you to shave.”
“Well, all that hair on her nips is coming out when you take those off, so you’re getting waxed one way or another.” Carolina yanks down my underwear.
“No, no, no. I’m not going commando.” I yank them up.
“Damn right you’re not, with that overgrown vacant lot you’ve got down there.” Gran snaps the band of my underwear.
“You were supposed to do an everything shower,” Carolina tsks.
“I’m just doing the bare minimum not to get kicked out of the Billionaire’s Ball.”
“No,” Carolina warns. “We’re going hard. All the way. You don’t want the reason Kathy doesn’t find a rich boyfriend to be because you’ve got hair poking through your dress.”
Gran shakes her head. “I’m calling in reinforcements. This is too big a job for me.”
And that’s how I find myself butt naked in my laundry room with several elderly women crowded around my back end, trying to decide the best way to tackle the jungle.
Fidget licks my face nervously.
“I’m eating a corn dog after this,” I try to pep-talk myself as the smell of burning wax hits the air. “You can have a bite too,” I tell the dog. I’m feeling charitable.
“No. No one’s eating anything,” Carolina scolds.
“I can’t go into this event on an empty—AHH! Fuck.” I collapse on the floor.
“You should try giving birth,” Gran snorts.
“No, thank you.” I groan.
“Bum up.” Gran swats my hip. “We have to do the other side.”
I moan in agony.
“Beauty is pain,” Carolina chirps as she helps me up, wincing after I’m smooth as a newborn piglet.
“You better find a billionaire to fuck. Shame to waste a good wax.”
One of the elderly women holds up a jar. “I make it myself. You should come to our next waxing party.”
“I told her you could host a wax party in your café. I’m assuming your groans of pain are a yes?” Gran swats me on the backside and hands me the dress.
The red dress slips on like a second skin. The fabric is buttery soft but still sturdy enough to give the dress some structure.
“You have to admit…” Carolina says as I turn in the mirror in the upstairs bedroom.
“I just think the red is a little much, especially for me.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, girlie.” Gran rummages through the makeup Carolina brought. “Color of aged wine. Looks great wrapped around a cock.” She makes a kissy face at me. “Let me see those Marilyn Monroe lips.”
Carolina drapes a velvet-and-crystal choker around my neck.
“Oh, Winnie, is that what you’re wearing?” My mom frowns from the doorway. “What about that pantsuit I bought you for Christmas?”
“You look great. Don’t listen to her. She’s jelly of those gourds hanging from your chest. All that diet food she ate in the nineties messed up her brain and her gut health.”
Mom glares at her mother-in-law. “I’m trying to help my daughter look her best so she can finally find a husband.”
“Now”—Gran narrows her eyes at me—“I hate to agree with cottage cheese here, but you need to get serious about finding a man. I need a great-grandbaby. You have birthing hips. I don’t know if your sister’s gonna make it out of that cave. She’ll bust a breast implant.”
“Maybe Fitz will be there,” Carolina whispers to me.
I feel sick. “Maybe I shouldn’t go. I could order a pizza. I have that new Netflix special.”
“Really gonna put the ‘ho’ in ‘homebody,’ huh?”
“Aw!” Kathy claps her hands as she floats into the room. “Winnie, you look so good!”
Not next to her, I don’t. My little sister looks like a million dollars. The deep-blue dress shimmers as she walks.
She better, I think grumpily. I’m paying the stylists enough.
Carolina shoves me in a chair. The stylists tug my hair and slather me in makeup, all while making annoyed sounds.
“Hurry up, we’re going to miss the ball!”
“This is the best I can do without putting in ten thousand dollars’ worth of extensions.” The hair stylist throws up his hands.
“There better be food at this event.” I blow at the tendril of hair in my face. My feet hurt in my peekaboo black patent-leather pumps since Carolina insisted I show off both toe cleavage and boob cleavage. “I wish I had my headband.” I sigh.
“Wine?” a waiter offers.
I grab two glasses. “Go mingle,” I order Kathy. “Look for a lonely billionaire.”
There aren’t any, though. My little sister looks nauseous as we survey the room. There must be at least five girls for every guy, just as pretty and sweet as Kathy, and they’re all younger than she is.
“I don’t know if I can do this, Winnie.”
“You want a rich boyfriend, don’t you? Shopping, travel, exotic locations, expensive presents…”
Kathy grabs my hand. “Yeah, of course, but first I want to go home.”
“I had to wax my vagina for this. We are not leaving here without a man with a ten-figure net worth,” I hiss.
It’s going to be a little harder than I originally planned. The other twentysomethings are predatory, possessively running their hands up and down the arms of the billionaires they’ve claimed.
“Maybe we should have gotten here earlier,” Carolina whispers to me. My little sister whimpers.
I square my shoulders. “You’re prettier than any of these girls here,” I tell Kathy. “They look cheap. You look expensive. You’re wife material. They aren’t. Stand up straight. Take charge.”
“Yeah, fuck them bitches,” Carolina says around the miniature lobster roll some blessed waiter is passing out.
Kathy doesn’t move.
I desperately want to go find an out-of-the-way corner with a plate of snacks and two glasses of wine, but… I look at my anxious little sister.
I hoist up my boobs.
“Come on, Kath. Let’s go find you a boyfriend.”