“Oh, right,” Mrs. Bella said. “It’s probably one of those—what do they call them, recessive genes? Only pops up every other generation or so.”
My mother murmured softly, trying to move Mrs. Bella along. Ashley was walking around the room in her dress and bare feet while the assistant followed, fixing the train behind her. More employees were passing through now, with the clock nearing twelve-thirty. I could feel my face getting red. I felt gargantuan, my head almost brushing the ceiling, my arms dragging past Mrs. Bella to the pins on the floor. I had that image of pulling down the banners in the center court of the mall again, my hands clutching the fabric as it billowed before me. I imagined myself monsterlike, plodding like God zilla through the aisles of Dillard’s, searching out Mrs. Bella with her pin-filled mouth and recessive genes and hoisting her above my head in one fist, triumphant. I envisioned myself cutting a swath of destruction across the mall, across town itself, exacting revenge on everyone who stared at me or made the inevitable basketball jokes like I hadn’t heard one ever before. My mind was soaring, filled with these images of chaos and revenge, when Mrs. Bella’s voice cut through: “Okay, honey, the back’s unpinned. With a little creative sewing I think we can get this dress to look right on you.”
I looked down to see Ashley below me in her own dress, a vision of white fabric and tan skin, her face turned upward, hand clamping her headpiece. “Just don’t grow for two weeks,” she said to me, half-serious. “As a favor to me.”
“Ashley!” my mother said, suddenly fed up with everyone. “Get out of the dress, Haven, and we’ll go to lunch.”
I went to change and slipped off the dress, careful not to stab myself with any of the hundreds of pins in the fabric. I put on my clothes and brought the dress out folded over my arm, handing it back to Mrs. Bella, who was now absorbed in sticking pins into Ashley, who deserved it. We left her standing there in all her white, as if waiting to be placed in the whipped-creamy center of a cake.
We had to eat at the mall, so we chose Sandwiches N’ Such, which was a little place by Yogurt Paradise that sold fancy sandwiches and espresso and had little tables with white-and-red-checked tablecloths, like you were in Italy. We sat in the far corner, with the espresso machine sputtering behind us.
We didn’t talk much at first. I ate my tuna fish on wheat and looked out at the crowd walking underneath the fluttering banners of the mall. My mother picked at her food, not eating so much as moving things from side to side. Something was bothering her.
“What’s wrong?”
As soon as I asked she looked up at me, surprised. She’d never been comfortable with how easily I could read her, preferring to think she could still fool me by covering what was awful or scary with the sweep of her hand, the way she chased monsters out from under my bed when I was little.
“Well,” she said, shifting in her chair, “I guess I just wanted a little time alone with you to take stock.”
“Stock of what?” I concentrated on my food, picking around the mushy parts.
“Of us. You know, once the wedding is over and Ashley moves out, it’s just going to be the two of us. Things will be different.” She was working up to something. “I’ve thought a lot about this and it’s best, I think, if I kept you apprised of what’s happening. I don’t want to make any major decisions without consulting you, Haven.”
This tone, this jumble of important-sounding words, seemed too much like the kitchen-table talk we’d gotten the morning my father moved out. They’d come to us together, while I was eating my cereal, a united front announcing a split. That had been a long time ago, before my mother bought all her matching shorts-and-sandals sets and my father sprung new hair, a new wife, and a new beginning. But the feeling in my stomach was the same.
“Are you going to Europe?” I asked her.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I really want to go, but I’m worried about leaving you alone so soon after your sister moves out. And of course the fall, with you in school ... the timing just isn’t so good.”
“I’d be okay,” I said, watching a baby at the table next to us drooling juice all over himself. “If you want to go, you should go.” I felt bad for not meaning this, even as I said it.
“Well, as I said, I haven’t decided.” She folded her napkin, over once and then again: a perfect square. “But there is something else I need to discuss with you.”
“What?”
She sighed, placed the napkin in the dead even center of her plate, and said quickly, “I’m thinking about selling the house.”
The moment she said it a picture of our house jumped into my head like a slide jerking up onto a screen during a school presentation. I saw my room and my mother’s garden and the walk to the front door with day lilies blooming on either side. In my mind it was always summer, with the grass short and thick and the garden in full color, flowers waving in the breeze.