Chapter Five
Truth be told, I was reluctant as regards the wrong-sort-of-senior prom.
I could see that calls for formal wear might be few and far between, that the multipurpose room would too often host memorials or lectures on dirt, so taking the opportunity for music and joy was necessary.
I got that memory lane was often walked alone at this age, so dancing down instead—and with friends—was a worthy goal.
I felt silly, though. Prom is for May not September, and not just literally. We weren’t celebrating the end of high school. We were beyond celebrating the ends of things. We weren’t embarking on what came next either. What came next was to be delayed as long as possible, and it wasn’t celebrated.
But I’d promised—my kids? myself? my Episcopal priest?
—that I’d try. And anyway, prom turned out not really to be optional.
I gathered from the scuttlebutt in the hallways—just like in high school—that everyone who could was going, so skipping it seemed like tempting fate, like when you call in sick then actually come down with the flu.
Lola came over to help me get ready, despite my insistence that I didn’t need help, especially not from my fifteen-year-old granddaughter.
I wasn’t so old I couldn’t pull up pantyhose or deploy hair spray or apply makeup.
I might prove too old to bother with pantyhose, hair spray, or makeup, but it wasn’t because I couldn’t.
“Needing help has nothing to do with it,” Lola said, and indeed, she arrived with two boxes—donuts and nail polish, both in a variety of appalling colors—but didn’t really help.
Instead she lounged on the sofa and complained about Darcy while I got dressed. “Mom likes Sari better.”
“Oh she does not.” I pulled my bar mitzvah dress over my head.
It was just-below-the-knee navy crepe with a lace hem, and I’d worn it what felt like every Saturday for all the years the kids were in middle school.
It was—and looked—forty years old, but its whole point was that it worked for any level of party from “black tie optional” to “community center kiddush” to “retirement home senior prom.” And anyway, it had gotten me this far.
“No,” said Lola.
“The dress or your mother?”
“Both. She’s all, ‘Sari does dance and band and choir and soccer. Sari’s taking honors classes. Sari volunteers after school. What do you do after school?’”
“What do you do after school?” I changed into an ambiguous pantsuit.
“No,” said Lola. Then, “Hang out with you.”
“And I’m grateful. But who else besides me?”
Lola made a face. “That’s not the point.”
In fact, the time Lola was spending after school in an often-empty house with Lucas was exactly the point, but I said, “Your mother loves you and your little sister equally, and you know it.”
“I didn’t say she didn’t. She loves us equally, but she likes Sari better.”
“Then you should feel great.” I pulled on one of my favorite teaching outfits, a green cotton skirt that fell to my ankles and a T-shirt that read “Edit or regret it.”
“No,” said Lola.
“Why not?”
“It’s prom.”
“But not really,” I said.
“Still no. I like the first one best.”
“The bar mitzvah dress?”
“The white one you keep coming back to.”
“That’s my slip.”
“It’s very in.”
“It’s underwear.”
“Why should I feel great that Mom likes Sari more?” she said.
“If your mom’s like-plus-love for you equals her like-plus-love for Sari and she likes Sari better, she must have more love for you. Simple math.”
Lola rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“How’s your Algebra II grade?” I pulled on a black top, black pants, and low—but silver—heels.
“Lose the bottoms,” Lola directed. I kicked off the shoes. “No, keep the shoes, but lose the pants.”
“Then I’m just wearing a shirt.”
“No pants is very in.”
“How can something I’m not wearing be in?”
“Or you could add a belt and then it’s a dress. I have nail polish that would match perfectly.”
“It’s black,” I said. “Everything matches perfectly.”
“Dead Couture,” said Lola.
“Inappropriate joke at a retirement home.”
“No, that’s the name of the nail polish I have to match your outfit.
” She wiggled it at me. It was blackish, bluish, silverish purple with winking moments of iridescent greenish pink.
It matched perfectly. I pulled on my nicest pair of jeans—“Timeless,” Lola said knowingly—and let her paint my nails, then painted hers, an exchange we’d been making since she was about three.
“Listen, Grandma.” She alternated blowing on her fingers with waving them in front of her face. “We need to have the prom talk.”
“You can talk to me about anything,” I said.
“Not a talk. The talk. Cover your drink. Safe sex. The pill doesn’t prevent STDs. The prom talk.”
“I don’t need that talk. I’ve already had it. I’ve given it. Repeatedly.”
She rolled her eyes. “No one needs that talk. That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“To be tortured by my mother?” Lola guessed.
“I’ve already been tortured by your mother,” I assured her.
When her nails were dry, she shimmied into the bar mitzvah dress and danced around my living room, looking retro and bohemian and gorgeous and very young. “Can I have this?”
A banner masking-taped askew over the multipurpose room door read “Senior Prom” in red glitter.
Inside, fairy lights fireflied the walls.
A long table boasted cupcakes and an enormous bowl of punch.
Crepe paper streamers collapsed from the ceiling.
It was like a portal to the past. It just wasn’t a past I particularly wanted to revisit.
I knew only two people at Vista View so far, and I had already been to senior prom with Roger, so I found Moth and his companions and asked if I could join them.
“Sarge!” He stood at once, went to hug me, seemed to think better of it and clasped my hands instead, then hugged me anyway.
He was wearing a white button-down shirt and tan linen pants—getting dressed for formal events being but one of countless ways it is easier to be a man in the world—but with the flourish of a spotted pink bow tie at his collar.
He waved at his companions. “This is Maisie, and this is Dot. Maisie and Dot, this is Pepper Mills.”
“Oof,” Maisie said. “Married into that name, did you?”
And Dot added, “I can’t blame my parents, because they died before the internet, but they might as well have named me @.”
So I liked them at once.
“Pepper’s a professional car washer,” Moth informed them.
“Can you wash motorized scooters instead?” Dot asked. “No one here has a driver’s license anymore.”
“I have a driver’s license,” Maisie said.
Moth and Dot turned to her at once, agape. Indeed, Maisie didn’t look quite tall or upright enough to see through a windshield.
“You don’t have a car,” Dot said. “You barely leave the building. Why on earth do you have a driver’s license?”
Maisie shrugged. “What if I have to flee the country?”
“You can still pass a driving test?” Dot ratcheted doubtful up to disbelieving.
“That’s the other reason.” Maisie nodded, proud. “I can still pass the test.”
Then a walker squeaked to a stop in front of Moth. “May I have this dance?” its pilot asked him.
“Ivy!” He grinned. “It would be my pleasure.” Ivy looked old enough to be Moth’s mother, which was saying something. She left her walker and leaned on Moth’s arm instead. It took a while for them to reach the dance floor.
“Not really cutting a rug, are they?” Maisie said.
Dot waved away this objection with the hand that wasn’t holding a cupcake. “Oh, slow dancing was always more shuffle and sway than anything else, even when we weren’t afraid of falling. I danced exactly like that at my senior prom. I’m pretty sure that’s how I got pregnant with Petey.”
When the song ended, Moth returned Ivy to her walker and sat back down with us. “As I was—”
“Moth, are you giving out dances?”
We all looked up. “Hi, Gita,” he said. “This is Pepper. She’s new here. Pepper, Gita.”
“Nice to meet you, Pepper,” Gita said, but without taking her eyes off Moth, who smiled and followed her back to the dance floor. More swaying. Or maybe you would call it clinging?
“He’s very popular,” Maisie informed me. I could see that. And I could see why. “And not just because the male-to-female ratio here is so unbalanced, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
It was not. What I was thinking was how neatly Gita’s sari solved the sartorial problem. Also whether I had ever before looked at a man and thought the word “dapper.” Also whether the word “dapper” accounted for the faintly fizzy feeling in my chest.
“Do you have grandchildren keeping you apprised of this sort of thing?” Dot asked, but I’d forgotten what we were talking about. “Women can dance with each other now.”
“Even if they’re not gay,” said Maisie.
“Even if they’re not women,” said Dot.
“Even in Texas,” Maisie added.
When the song ended, Moth didn’t even make it back to the table. His new partner indicated an arthritic shoulder so circled her arms around his waist and led.
“I think my prom date was gay,” Maisie said. “Not at the time, but upon reflection.”
“I wish my prom date had been gay,” Dot said. “Though then I wouldn’t have had Petey.”
“What about you, Pepper?” Maisie asked.
“My prom date was Roger.” I pointed to him across the room. I hated to admit it just as we were getting to know each other, because it really did not reflect well on me, but they were unfazed.
“See, there’s a good example,” Maisie said. “Even with the unbalanced numbers, no one’s asking Roger to dance. And he still has all his hair.”
“Don’t mention it,” I warned. Roger loved to show off his hair. He saw us talking about him and raised a glass in our direction.
“God, remember prom ’dos?” Dot said. “Mine was so tall, I was afraid to touch it.”
I laughed. “I think I used a whole can of hair spray.”
“And then it was so sticky!” Maisie said. “My gay date worried he would get trapped in it, like a spider.”
“Fly,” said Dot.