Dip
Iwas ironing one of Jilly’s party dresses for the Bastille Day celebration at the club.
Regina was upstairs, taking a nap. Pam Oliver was dropping Jilly and Hayward off from the run-through of their Bastille Day skit.
“I thought I’d just pop in to say hello,” she said. But there may have been more to it.
When I met Pam at the door, the first thing that hit me was her perfume. She was wearing a lot of it. Also full makeup and a tank top that revealed her nipples and a skirt that came to within inches of her crotch.
“Is Forrest here?” she said. “I know we’ll see each other at the club tonight, but I wanted to give him this now.” There was a piece of paper in her hand.
She held tight to the paper. It was clear her plan was to give it to Forrest. For a moment I was unsure whether she’d place it in my hand. I was definitely not the person she wanted to see.
“He’s out on a bike ride,” I said. “He’s been training for the triathlon.”
“Well, tell him Pammy said hi.” She turned to go.
It turned out Regina had been on the stairs, watching. Once Pam’s car pulled out, she took her place by the window, watching it disappear down the driveway. You could still smell Pam Oliver’s perfume in the air.
“Poor woman,” she said. The whispery voice with which she’d confided in me about Forrest’s affairs had disappeared. Her tone now was hard, businesslike. Sarcastic.
“She keeps hoping to start things up again. Did you check out that little skirt she was wearing? She doesn’t even play tennis.”
I was still holding the piece of paper with the dip recipe. I could probably toss it.
“She had it all planned out, no doubt,” Regina said. “If Forrest had been here, she would have invited him over to help her fix her drain or something. Her husband’s always out of town.
“And the thing is, Forrest would have done it too. Not that he knows anything about fixing drains. He just likes to make women happy. But he never carries these escapades of his into the next season.”
Nothing about Regina at this moment seemed soft or vulnerable.
But for some reason I felt like putting my arm around her—the thing my mother never did with me when I was sad.
That probably would have looked dumb to Regina, coming from a fourteen-year-old.
Her babysitter. Even though she had recently told me I was her only friend. My guess was she’d forgotten by now.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. Not that I’d done anything.
I was just sorry about how sad she was, but mostly I was sorry that Forrest Emerson had turned out to be so much less perfect and wonderful than I had wanted to believe.
Though his recent and surprising change in behavior had not altered my love for him, it had damaged my respect.
But that wasn’t the hardest part. The hardest part was recognizing that with Brenda Barnett’s arrival on the scene, it appeared I wasn’t Forrest’s favorite after all. Not in the way that mattered.
Regina, floating up alongside me in her caftan, seemed to read my mind.
“Don’t let it get to you, Frances,” she said. “You wait and see. Next summer, it’ll be Brenda Barnett that’s stopping by with a recipe for my husband. Or some article from the newspaper. Tips for firming your abs, not that he needs them. A quote from Khalil Gibran, possibly.
“And you know the funniest part?” (It didn’t sound as if she found any of this funny.) “Forrest doesn’t know the first thing about cooking. In his whole life, he’s never prepared dip.” She made a noise that was probably meant to resemble a chuckle, but it came out more like a snarl.
I could hear Prudence upstairs, reminding the children to get dressed for the club and explaining to Jilly why she couldn’t bring her American Girl dolls to the celebration. Regina needed to change too. But it felt as though she wasn’t finished talking to me.
“I don’t want to shock you, but there was a time not so long ago when I thought maybe I should just do myself in,” she said. “I figured it would make everyone’s life so much easier. But you know what? Forrest would miss me. The children might not care much, but my husband would.
“I’d miss them too,” she said. “You might not believe this, but I love them all. In my way.”
Upstairs, back in my room, I got dressed for the Bastille Day celebration, to which I would wear my same blue dress—the second party in two weeks. The five of us piled into the Wagoneer and headed to the club.
The thought came to me, sitting in the back seat, between Jilly and Hayward, as I looked out the window, that for all the discussion Regina and I had that day—about Brenda, about Forrest, about herself, about sex—one character in the family drama she’d never mentioned was me.
Maybe because I was never really all that important to anyone here after all.