A Life of Bright Ideas Read online

  The bell on the door chimed and Linda looked up. Her face went wedding dress white, and she hurriedly folded the bodice lengthwise. “Jo,” she said. I grabbed the length of the smudged skirt that was hanging over the front of the desk, and folded it. But it was too late. “Is that my dress?” The excited giggles gave way to oooos. I turned to see Jo Lanski and three of her friends rushing toward the desk. “It is my dress. I can tell by the sleeves!”

  “Oh, no peeking yet,” Linda said. But it was too late. Jo grabbed the shoulder of the gown and unfolded it.

  “My God, what happened?”

  Linda and Jo were talking at once then, the bridesmaids gasping. Jo was horribly upset, and Linda was pretending she wasn’t. “We’ll get the stains out, honey, and no one will be the wiser. Don’t you worry. It was an accident.”

  “Get them out? How? Stick it in the washing machine?”

  “No, no, we’ll spot-clean it.”

  Jo was livid, and she turned to me as if I could rescue her, maybe because I was her peer. “I don’t want an already-washed wedding dress. If I wanted that, I would have worn my mom’s dress like she wanted!”

  What choice did Linda have but to promise Jo that we’d sew the gown from scratch again? (At least after she asked to use the phone to call her mother.)

  “Oh honey, don’t cry,” Linda said after Jo and the girls left, and Winnalee called Jo a “rag.” “Marge is back from Vegas, so—”

  “I’ll do it,” I said, blinking. Embarrassed about my watery eyes. “Marge shouldn’t have to do it. I’m the one who ruined it. Well, Boohoo did, but you know what I mean.”

  “That’s okay, dear. It wasn’t your fault. I’m sure Marge won’t mind.”

  Everything in me was screaming, I want to do it! Please let me sew it! but I knew Linda wouldn’t give me the job. She’d known me since I was nine, and to her I was still a kid, even though I’d moved past “easy” patterns by my twelfth birthday.

  “Honey, I think we’ll let Marge handle it. But you’ll have to be on call to get the beading done stat, as soon as she has it finished.”

  I couldn’t say a thing. Linda was every bit as old to me as I was young to her, and the thought of pushing for the job made my whole body itch. Plus, I knew Linda thought I worked too slowly. And I did when it came to the finishing work that needed precision, so that the long row of buttons lined properly and wouldn’t bunch, and the appliqués would lie smoothly. But I didn’t work slowly when I was cutting a pattern or sewing seams. And Ma herself said that I could hand-stitch a hem faster than she could, and just as neatly. Not that Linda would know this since I worked at home. Sometimes I just wished that Linda—sweet as she was—knew more about sewing. Then she could take one look at the bridesmaids’ dresses I produced and see how perfectly they draped, and how polished the seams were. Then she’d know that I was ready to take on the most important gown in the ensemble.

  “Did you have any problems with that one?” she asked, nodding toward the apricot dress.

  “No,” I said. “It was a cinch.”

  “Then maybe you could give us a jump-start on our next project.” She nodded toward the counter to our right, where she had stacks of bridesmaid dress “kits” put together in four stacks (gathering together the pattern, fabric, notions needed for each dress was Linda’s favorite task). “I was going to give this one to Marge, but she’ll be busy now.”

  “I could take all four of them—the flower girl’s, too.”

  “Well, let’s just start with two for now. The others are going to need adjustments, but these two—the two size eights—don’t need any.”

  As she bagged the kit for me, she asked if I had the pattern for Jo’s dress, or if Marge still had it.

  “Marge must have it. But it’s a Simplicity pattern, number 9218. The bride’s dress is a size seven.”

  Linda shoved past Winnalee, pulled out the pattern, then went in the back room to hunt for the same fabric.

  I went to stand beside Winnalee, who had now climbed up inside the display window and was circling the mannequins who were bent in romantic poses, heads tilted sweetly, virginal smiles on their plastic faces. She scrinched her nose as she pulled out the yellowed skirt of the bride’s dress, then tugged at the boat neckline and boinged the small, stiff bow set at the fitted waist as if she expected it to twirl. “What’s this in the window for? It’s butt-ugly and old. Why don’t you guys put a dress in here that at least looks like it came from this century?”

  “It’s Ma’s wedding dress,” I said. “The first bridal gown she sewed. She put it in the display window when she opened this place.”

  “Well why’s it still here?”

  I fidgeted. “Well, because it’s Ma’s.”

  Winnalee shook her head. “Your ma had a good sense of fashion, Button. And if she was marrying Uncle Reece today, you can bet your right boob she wouldn’t be wearing this outdated thing. She’s probably rolling over in her grave. And who wears elbow-length gloves anymore?”

  Hazel came out of the fitting room with a tousle-haired bride-to-be, their chatter interrupting our conversation—not that Winnalee’s comments themselves wouldn’t have ended it, because to us she might as well have suggested that someone change the way we depict Jesus hanging on the cross.

  After the bride left, I introduced Hazel to Winnalee, then had to explain all over again what happened to Jo Laski’s dress. Hazel, tall and bony, gasped, then patted my arm with fingers cool to the touch. “I was wondering what the ruckus out here was,” she said. “But these things happen, dear.”

  When we got outside, Winnalee said, “At least you got out of having to make that dress over.”

  “But I wanted to make it,” I told her. “It’s my fault it got ruined in the first place, so I should have to.” In some ways, I suppose it was odd that I felt comfortable telling Winnalee about the vacuum cleaner hickeys, yet couldn’t make myself tell her that the primary reason I wanted to sew it was that Ma always talked about the day I’d sew an entire wedding gown, as if it would be my initiation into womanhood. I wanted that initiation.

  “Really?” Winnalee asked, as we opened the doors to my Rambler. “Then why didn’t you tell her you wanted to sew it?”

  “I did.”

  “It sounded more like an offer to me. And a half-assed one, at that. Come on, let’s go back in there and you insist on doing it.” Winnalee came around the car and grabbed my arm. She tried dragging me back to the cement step, but I dug my heels in tight. “I can’t do that,” I told her. “It’s her store. Her decision.”

  Winnalee frowned. “Well, that’s fucked-up,” she said. “It was your ma’s place.”

  “But it’s Linda’s now.”

  I was glad to get out of there, and eager to get home to start working on the bridesmaids’ dresses. But Winnalee was hungry and wanted to stop at the A&W first. After we parked, she leaned over and honked the horn—as if that would get the carhops to us any sooner, it being the noon hour and every space in the lot taken.

  “Oh my God!” Winnalee shouted, leaning over and looking around me. “Is that Tommy Smithy in that car? Second one over …” I turned and squinted, and saw Tommy’s arm crooked in the passenger window of Brody’s Mustang.

  Winnalee jumped out of the car and hurried to theirs. She opened the door and tugged Tommy out, wrapping her arms around his chest for a quick hug. “I knew that was you, you dumb son of a bitch,” she said, so loud that I could hear her—and so could just about everybody else in the lot. “How in the hell are you?”

  Tommy’s cheeks might have been pink from his sunburn, but he wore that bloated look guys always get when a girl who looks out of their league gives them the time of day in public.

  Brody slipped out of the car and gawked at Winnalee over the roof. She was still staring up at Tommy, asking him if he knew who she was, so Brody took the time to dab at his golden hair. “Course I know who you are,” Tommy said. “You still cuss the same, sound the same, and you�
��re still a shrimp.” Winnalee socked him playfully in the arm, and Tommy added, “And you still can’t hit hard enough to leave a mark.”

  Tommy quieted down some then, so I couldn’t hear his words, but his tone was pretty much the same as when he spoke to Winnalee back in ’61. Like she was a stupid little kid. But he sure was looking at her differently, his eyes dipping for quick peeks at her boobs, which, as he obviously noticed, were naked under her T-shirt, and her tanned legs that were bare under a miniskirt.

  “Hey, buddy. You gonna hog all the good-looking girls for yourself, or are you gonna introduce me?” Brody came around the Mustang, grinning, his thumbs dipped in his jean pockets.

  The way Winnalee’s body moved as she took a few steps toward Brody made it obvious that she’d inherited more from Freeda than her penchant for cussing. “Hi. I’m Winnalee Malone.”

  Brody introduced himself, then eyed Winnalee from head to toe, his tongue jutting out the side of his cheek. “Now aren’t you a sight for Dauber’s sore eyes,” he said. He glanced at Tommy like they had a secret.

  That’s when the carhop came to the Rambler. Winnalee called over her order, then yelled at me to join them.

  I groaned inside because I was wearing a too-small knitted shirt that Aunt Verdella bought me on a closeout sale so I couldn’t exchange it for a bigger size—she always thought I was smaller than I was—and it was clinging to me like Saran Wrap. Brody would notice, too. I gave the shirt a quick tug, but it just sucked right back to my bra, so I kept my shoulders curled forward.

  “Hi, Button,” Tommy said.

  “Evy,” I reminded him.

  “Hey, you just let Winnalee call you Button.”

  “That’s different,” I said, and I hoped he wouldn’t ask why, since I didn’t know.

  “So is your friend,” Brody said with a grin.

  I wanted to grab Winnalee and whisper in her ear that Brody was married. Instead I just stood there, arms crossed, gawking at the line of cars, hoods glistening in the sun, so I didn’t have to watch the guys watching Winnalee’s boobs—or mine.

  Winnalee asked them if they knew of any places that were hiring bartenders or waitresses.

  “I know of a place,” Brody said, with a grin that made me want to bite my cheek.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. The new bar down past Evy’s old man’s place. Used to be Marty’s Place. Some dude from Chicago bought it and I guess he’s looking for a couple girls yet.” His gaze brushed over Winnalee and me, and I tugged at my shirt some more. “You two might want to look into it.” Tommy looked down and shook his head.

  The carhop came and latched our tray on to the window of my car, calling over to us so we could pay her. I made a move to head back to my Rambler, and Winnalee grabbed my arm, clamping me beside her. “Why don’t you boys come by one of these nights,” she said. “Bring a little beer, and we’ll have a smoke and a little fun.”

  I suppose Winnalee didn’t realize that in Dauber, beer and marijuana were horses of a different color, and that guys like Tommy (the jury was still out on Brody), who didn’t think anything of getting smashed on beer, were appalled by pot. I’m sure Tommy would have let Winnalee know this, too, but he thought she meant cigarettes.

  The guys left, and while Winnalee and I ate our burgers and had our root beer, I told her that Brody was married. “Your point?” she asked.

  “His wife is pregnant, too.”

  Winnalee turned to me. She had a splotch of ketchup on the corner of her mouth. “What? You think I make a habit of stealing other women’s husbands?” She sounded indignant.

  I sighed with relief, then tripped over myself trying to take the insinuation back. “I should have known better.” And I should have. Even Freeda didn’t sleep with married men.

  Winnalee’s eyes narrowed. “Look, Button. I don’t have any use for husbands.”

  I almost felt sick to my stomach. “I’m sorry. Sorry. Forget I said it, please.”

  Winnalee snapped her last french fry between her teeth as she watched me. “Button, you’re a beautiful piece of work, you know that?” She downed the last of her root beer and thumped the mug back on the tray propped on the window. She honked for the carhop.

  “Nope,” she said. “I don’t steal husbands. I just ball ’em, and give ’em back.”

  My mouth probably dropped open big enough to drop a root beer mug in without chipping my teeth, and Winnalee laughed. Hard. And so I laughed, too, even though I was embarrassed that I’d taken her seriously.

  CHAPTER

  9

  BRIGHT IDEA #55: Just because your friend talks to somebody you don’t like, doesn’t mean they can’t be your friend anymore. Maybe runny noses don’t bother them.

  We were on Highway 8 when Winnalee shouted, “Wait, stop! There’s your dad!”

  Dad was in the driveway, hunched over the hood of his car. He craned his head around, saw it was my Rambler, then turned back again.

  Winnalee didn’t wait for me to put the car in park before she leapt out, shouting, “Uncle Reece! Uncle Reece!” Dad turned and squinted into the sun. “It’s me,” she called. “Winnalee!” Dad tossed the empty oil can he was holding onto the mound of empty plastic containers piled at the corner of the house.

  I shut the car off and gingerly stepped out, watching, as Winnalee leapt up to wrap her arms around Dad’s neck, her feet dangling above the ground. I looked down, feeling every bit as confused as I’d been as a child over the ease with which Winnalee could cozy up to Dad—and him to her—while I chewed my cheek when I had to talk to him. I stepped back, my foot leaving the drive and sinking into grass that was as scraggly as his hair.

  “Man, Uncle Reece. You look like a dog-chewed bone,” Winnalee said after she dropped back to the ground.

  “It must be the same dog who chewed off the bottom half of your skirt,” Dad said, his brows bunching with fatherly disapproval.

  Winnalee looked offended, then slapped him on the arm, right over the tattoo of a knife jabbed through a heart. “It’s a miniskirt, Uncle Reece. And stop changing the subject.” Dad was wearing work pants, the thighs smeared with greasy handprints, and a gray T-shirt that looked as dusty as his skin. Winnalee gave his concave stomach a whack. “What the hell … you give up eating?”

  “What? I eat,” he said, sheepishly.

  “It sure as hell don’t look like it,” Winnalee said. Then she half smiled, half frowned. “It’s good to see you again, Uncle Reece. But I’m so sorry about Aunt Jewel. Christ, who gets struck by lightning?” She wrapped her arm around his middle, leaned in, and gave him a hug.

  Dad didn’t say anything, but he gave her shoulder a comfort squeeze. I lifted my foot and scratched at my ankle.

  Dad had to wash the oil from his hands, so we tagged along inside … or should I say, I tagged along inside after them.

  Apparently Winnalee didn’t notice that the house had fallen to ruins, because she didn’t say anything. She just followed Dad into the kitchen, while I wandered off into the living room to check Ma’s bells. I could hear water running in the sink, and Winnalee’s voice chattering. Woodstock … a job … her van … random words peaked above the murmurs, along with an occasional “Hmm” or chuckle from Dad.

  I ran my finger over the shelf that Ma’s bell collection sat on and the dust made a gray smudge. I glanced toward the kitchen, wondering if I could dust them without getting caught. I decided not, so merely blew and dabbed at the grime the best I could.

  “Button?” Winnalee called. “Where are you?”

  “I need something from my room,” I called, then hurried off. I dug around the near-empty drawers and closet to find something I could grab to support my excuse, and ended up taking a summer nightgown that I hadn’t worn in two years.

  I was hoping to drag Winnalee out of there right away, but she wouldn’t budge. As they talked—mostly Winnalee—I watched Dad as he opened a beer. I knew his profile so well that if I was artistic like Winnalee, I could
draw him to a T. I knew every bend of his ears, and the precise spot alongside his nose that glossed when he was overheated. I knew the exact outline of his beard when the stubble built, and the spot near his jawbone where a twitch would crop up when he got irritated. And I knew, by the stiffening in his neck, the exact moment when he’d feel me staring and glance up and we’d both turn away.

  Dad walked us to the car. “You’d better come see us, too!” Winnalee warned, her voice scolding, yet playful. “We’ll cook you something yummy so you can beef up and get your hunky body back. Won’t we, Button?”

  “Sure,” I mumbled.

  “You been checking the oil?” Dad asked as he thumped the hood of my car, probably because he felt he had to say something to me.

  “Yeah,” I said, and he reminded me—again—that I could crack the engine block if I ran out of oil.

  “You and your dad are weird together,” Winnalee said as I backed us out of the drive. “Like strangers.”

  I didn’t comment.

  “But then,” Winnalee said, “I guess you two were always like that with each other.”

  But we weren’t. Not for that stretch in between when you left and when Ma died. We weren’t so much during that time.

  I watched Winnalee from the corner of my eye, wishing I could say those words out loud, because keeping them to myself made me feel like the tree in the picture Uncle Rudy gave me, only with my roots dangling loose in midair.

  “It’s kinda weird, isn’t it?” Winnalee said, as we rumbled down Peters Road, the ruts bumping our ride, the wind thumping through the windows tossing our hair. “They made us … we share half of their genes … seems like it should be easier getting along with them, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and the roots of my sadness reached over to twine with hers.

  CHAPTER

  10