The outfit that ruffled his feathers was a mod, zip-front minidress colorblocked in red, white, blue, and black. It ended midthigh, which left an expanse of skin between the bottom of the hem and the top of my white patent leather boots.
The summer before I moved out of Proper, I bought a box of patterns from the ’60s at a yard sale and made myself this dress. The bandleader at the local high school stopped me one day and asked where I got it. They were planning a Beatles tribute concert and thought dresses like mine would be perfect for the choir. He came to the store and placed an order, and I spent the next two weeks knocking out dresses just like it. One by one the girls came in and bought up our inventory of white patent leather boots, plastic hoop earrings, and colorful fishnet stockings. I didn’t always dress like a go-go dancer, but when I got the call from Nurse Number Three that my dad was trying to inventory the costume shop against her direction, there hadn’t been time to change. So here I was in the white patent leather go-go boots he’d bought me before I moved to Las Vegas seven years ago—the perfect complement for my mod minidress but not so practical for balancing on a ladder while your father glares at you—reaching for a rubber knife that someone had hung on the Western wall by the fake pistols and plastic holsters. Everybody knows you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.
I extended my reach the way I’d been taught in the ballet class I took last year and nudged the peg until the knife fell. It dropped—the peg, not the knife—and landed by my dad’s brown shoe. The knife landed by his black one. I picked up both and set them on the counter.
“Dad, I don’t get why this is so important. Inventory can wait until you’re better.”
“We’re heading into spring. Remember what that means? Outdoor birthday parties and the Sagebrush Festival. I have to know what props we already have stocked so I can start planning concepts.”
“You can’t expect to carry on business as usual while you’re recovering. It’s too much.”
“That’s right. I can’t, but you can. You grew up here. You know as much about the costume business as I do.”
He was right. While other children were playing on backyard jungle gyms, I was playing in the store. My birthday presents had come from costume suppliers and my clothes had come from our inventory. By the time I’d turned sixteen, it was natural for me to work part-time hours after high school.
After graduation, I took the occasional night course but most of my time had been inside these four walls. I’d been responsible for painting the walls around the gangster clothes black with white chalk stripes and also the psychedelic flower-power mural by our ’60s section. It was my dad who encouraged me to move away—he wanted to make sure I knew there was a whole world out there before I accepted Proper City as my home base—and kicked me out on my twenty-fifth birthday. I moved to Las Vegas—which was only about forty miles from Proper but might as well have been the moon for how different it was—and experienced independence for the first time. It was far enough to feel as though I was on my own but close enough to come home for major holidays. I’d been in Vegas ever since.
“I can’t stay indefinitely. You know that. I think you have to sit this season out.”
“Nobody’s sitting anything out. You got that, sister?” asked a black woman from the doorway. She held a small, white bichon frise under one arm. His fur was brushed out in the same manner as her natural Afro.
I rushed forward and flung my arms around her. “Ebony!”
The small dog yipped from inside the hug. I backed away and patted his puffy head. “Hello to you too, Ivory,” I said.
The woman assessed me from head to toe. “Margo Tamblyn, as I live and breathe. You’ve grown into a fine young lady. I bet this old man wants to take the credit for that, doesn’t he?” She winked at me.
“I think we all know you had a little something to do with it.”