The Right Thing

CHAPTER 12


It was a week and a day before the Snow Ball and my debut. For better than forty years, Miss Pettie Gompert had made debutante dresses for girls all over Mississippi, from the Delta to Natchez, from Jackson to the Gulf Coast, and she was thoroughly out of patience with me this Friday afternoon in early December.

“If you don’t hold still,” she gritted through the mouthful of straight pins held in her teeth, “I’ll call Miz Isabelle.” That was a threat and a half: my grandmother might be castled in her house over on State Street this afternoon with an attack of the shingles, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t lay down the law in this cramped sewing room all the way across town in west Jackson. Grandmother Banks and Miss Pettie knew each other of old. The State Street mansion being one of the last houses in town where Miss Pettie still made house calls, she sewed all of my grandmother’s clothes, including her foundation garments and underwear.

The sewing room was so crammed with debutante dresses it resembled a bakery where the icer had lost control of the frosting gun, spraying the low-ceilinged, dress-filled space with mounds and rosettes of sugar-leavened lard, spandrels and ribbons of white ganache. There were twenty-five of us debs that year, and Miss Pettie was swamped. I was tired and cranky myself, having just driven down from Oxford after taking a sociology final that morning that had left me with a pounding headache. The last thing I wanted was to be standing in my four-and-a-half-inch, high-heeled satin pumps under the brilliant lights of Miss Pettie’s workroom, getting my deb dress hemmed. My feet hurt.

“Yoo-hoo?” The bell over the front door tinkled while a blast of frigid air set the white dresses to swaying on their racks. Julie Posey and her mother, Squeaky, had arrived for Julie’s last fitting, too. “We brought the shoes.”

“Close up that pneumonia hole!” Miss Pettie commanded, jerking her tightly permed gray head from around the back of my skirt. Unless you wanted to drive all the way to New Orleans or Atlanta for fittings, Miss Pettie’s was the only game in town for custom-made dresses, so she could say anything she pleased. “Hurry up and get changed, Julie Posey,” she snapped. “Your gown’s on the rack next to the changing room. Miz Posey, you can sit down over there and wait.” Under her breath, Miss Pettie muttered, “Ninnies. Heat costs money.”

“Hey, Annie,” Julie sang out as she passed me on her way to the changing room. Mrs. Posey, a stout woman done up like always with thick foundation the color of cotton candy, collapsed onto one of the folding chairs arranged along the single free wall. Her feet must have hurt, too.

“Oooh,” Julie said. “I like your dress.” Her eyes told me she didn’t, no matter what her mouth said.

“Hey, Julie,” I said. “Thanks.” I couldn’t very well tell her I liked her dress because I wasn’t sure which one of the fabric ice floes was hers, and besides, since second grade, our mutual understanding had progressed to the point where we heartily hated each other and pretended we didn’t. It was a social survival skill I was still struggling to master.


“Miss Pettie, it’s too tight,” I complained, tugging at the fabric around my waist. “This dress is trying to strangle me.”

“Don’t touch,” Miss Pettie ordered with a swat of her pincushion to my plucking fingers. “You’ll smudge it. You’ve gained weight since your last fitting,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s that time of year—finals. All the girls do it. That’s why I always leave an extra inch or two in everyone’s waistlines so I can let ’em out.” Round-shouldered Miss Pettie sat back on her little house-slippered heels, looking discouraged. “I hate finals,” she said. “More work for me.”

“More French fries for Annie, you mean.” Julie’s observation carried from behind the curtain. Her mother smirked but didn’t look up from her magazine. “Most everyone loses their freshman ten by sophomore year, but not Annie,” Julie trilled. “But then, Annie’s so little an extra ten pounds looks like fifty on her.” It took my last ounce of self-control not to retort that at least I had breasts, unlike some girls who threw up on a regular basis so they could resemble extension ladders in platform heels.

Unfortunately, though, my dress told the whole story. It was daringly different from all the others—a sleeveless sheath of plain and unadorned silk peau-de-soie with a short fishtail train—and I loved it. The dress glowed with a lambent, hammered sheen, and in the highest pair of heels I could find I’d imagined looking almost tall and elegant. Now I surreptitiously peeked in the floor-to-ceiling mirror, at my backside packed in straining peau-de-soie like Spam in a can, and wanted to cry. Well, I’d be damned if I let Julie know her barb had hit home. We were both Chi Omegas, which in theory should have made us friends, but Julie and I got on like hair and gum. Worse, my big sister in Chi O had appointed Julie my “Diet Buddy” to help keep me on track since my most recent weight gain and Julie never lost an opportunity to twist the knife.

Well, two could play that game. “Hey Julie,” I said, sounding perfectly innocent. “Who’s your escort again?” This was going to be so satisfying, better than a big plate of salty French fries.

My Diet Buddy didn’t answer right away. There were sounds of fabric rustling in the dressing room, but it appeared she was pretending not to have heard me. Squeaky Posey jumped right in, though, on her daughter’s behalf.

“Julie’s going with Laddie Buchanan,” she said, a definite frost overlaying her usual fan-belt squeal of a voice. She licked her index finger and turned the page of her magazine. “And you, Annie?” Mrs. Posey looked up then, accusation in her eyes.

“Oh, Du’s my escort.” I was only just able to mask the triumph in my reply. Wide-shouldered, good-looking, six foot four and two hundred pounds of to-die-for muscle, Duane Sizemore was a starter for the Ole Miss Rebels’ football team, a senior, my first real conquest and the ex-boyfriend of Julie Posey. Having had the misfortune of being broken up with exactly eight weeks ago and now without a new boyfriend lined up in time for the Snow Ball, Julie was reduced to going with that perennial loser Laddie Buchanan. Laddie might still have a weak chest, but he was in regular demand as the last-minute, all-players-on-the-field variety of escort.

And Du and I had been going together for exactly eight weeks, ever since Homecoming. Julie had made a legendary scene in a library carrel when he broke the news to her during their last study date. Du wouldn’t talk about it. Word was, however, she stabbed him in the jaw with a pencil before she threw his books out in the hall, then lobbed herself on him like a grenade and sobbed into the blood trickling down his neck.

Anyway, that was a long time ago and by now Du and I were an established couple. My sorority sisters hadn’t warmed up to the idea right away, though, and I suspected that they’d inflicted Julie on me as a punishment. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that I had an escort to the Snow Ball who was universally recognized as a catch, and that fact gave me a shot of badly needed confidence. Standing up in public on display to a bunch of people I barely even knew and in the company of girls like Julie to boot—the prospect of making my debut was giving me regular fits of high anxiety and foreboding. If it hadn’t been for the unlikely and historical alliance of my mother and Grandmother Banks ganging up on me, I’d have refused this honor in a flash. My weight gain hadn’t helped either, but it seemed that the more anxious I became, the more I ate—and it showed.

“You’re done, missy,” Miss Pettie said to me, finished pinning the hem of my dress. “Now go take that off and don’t touch it!” Wondering how I was going to accomplish that, I stepped down from the dressmaker’s stagelike drum. Julie emerged from behind the curtain in her dress, a classic antebellum battleship of silk chiffon, bugle beads, and looping alen?on lace. Julie’s thin, sallow face was waspish, her eyes a yellow jacket on the back of my neck. It was bound to be payback time for the Laddie question.

“Don’t forget, Annie,” she remarked, stepping up onto Miss Pettie’s drum. “You’re supposed to lose ten pounds by next Saturday.”

“She better not,” Miss Pettie announced, sounding dire. “That dress is done. No last-minute alterations.”

Only the thought of my mother kept me from remarking that even if Julie gained ten pounds, her chest would still be flat as a popped balloon. I left Miss Pettie’s as soon as I got out of my dress and wrestled into my jeans, burning with the humiliation of it all.



Home for the holidays. My mother had a wreath on the door, but she wouldn’t be putting the tree up until a few days before Christmas. All her formidable powers of concentration were currently fixed upon my debut, undoubtedly fueled by Grandmother Banks’s telling anyone who would listen that my mother was certain to prove to be unequal to the task of launching me into society since she had no background herself whatsoever.

Sitting in my car outside on the driveway, I fished in my purse for the pack of cigarettes and the lighter I’d bought on the way home. “Here goes,” I said to myself as I lit up. With only a little over a week before the Snow Ball, I’d made up my mind: nothing was going to stop me from losing those ten pounds so I could wipe out my Diet Buddy’s reason for living. And, remembering the way the white silk had pulled across my behind, I’d lose them just so my beautiful dress wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen on me.

The Marlboro Light tasted flat and hot. Determined, I took another deep drag and coughed up a gray cloud. I’d never really smoked before. Oh, I’d had a token cigarette at frat parties, but mostly I’d waved it around without inhaling. However, one of my sorority sisters, Libby Suggs, had told me that she’d lost fifteen pounds in two weeks last year by smoking a couple of Virginia Slims before she was supposed to eat.

“It flat kills your appetite, Annie,” she’d confided. We’d been sitting on the front porch of the Chi O house, waiting for the rest of the girls going to the Kappa Sig mixer to finish their eternal primping and come on downstairs. Libby was having a cigarette, and I was drinking a Diet Coke. I liked Libby a lot. An upperclassman, she drank with a sophistication, style, and dedication that I found inspiring and wished to emulate. No throwing up in the shrubbery for Libby, no waking up horrified and naked in the wrong bed like some girls. If she said smoking was the way to lose weight, I could take that to the bank.


It was getting cold inside the car. I stubbed my cigarette out in the ashtray. Sure enough, I felt queasy. Food was the last thing I wanted, and a good thing, too, because every principle Methyl Ivory stood for demanded huge pots of fattening stuff simmering on the stove inside the kitchen,just lying in wait to assault my hips.

That evening at the table, I pushed my meal around on my plate and drank water.

“Annie,” my mother asked, “are you feeling all right? You’ve hardly touched a thing.” It had been a real Southern dinner of gargantuan proportions to welcome me home: smoked ham, buttered sweet potatoes, collard greens swimming in an oil-sheened lagoon of bacon drippings, Parker House rolls, and Methyl Ivory’s justly famous red velvet cake for dessert.

Expecting this shot across my bow, though, prior to dinner I’d had a couple of cigarettes out in the backyard, down by the Allens’ fence in the dark. The smoke rising in a wreath around my head, I looked across their tended lawn to the rental house where Starr used to live. The lights were on. I wondered who lived there now, and for a moment, I curled my fingers in the wire mesh, remembering the afternoon I’d tried to break in through Starr’s window, looking for clues. Sometimes I’d thought about it: if I’d succeeded in getting into her house, would I have been able to find her?

If only. In all the years since that terrible day I learned she was gone, I’d never had another friend like Starr. Oh, I’d learned how to get along with the other girls and pretend that we were close, but deep down where it counted I’d always kept them at a distance. Their frothy chatter about hair, makeup, and boys and all the other things that matter so much to teenagers were like cartoon thought balloons in Japanese to me, disconnected and beside the point to the life I was living inside. My social survival skills, rudimentary and unreliable as they were, had somehow become a wall, an invisible perimeter defense that kept everyone out of Annie Land. My sorority sisters, those madly self-involved butterflies, probably never suspected a thing. Why should they? Likely the time for that kind of profound attachment had passed for us all. We were too assured of our exalted place in the grand order of the world; we all knew the rules by now. Like migratory birds, we flocked without our wings touching, each traveling the instinctive routes and flyways of our kind. The other Chi O’s tolerated my peculiarities and gaffes because I was a Banks from Jackson, never noticing the high-wire act I performed so that I could pass as one of them.

But what if Starr had never moved away? Would our friendship have survived high school and the sniper wars of who was who and who was nobody? My debut? Would she be here now at the fence, smoking with me? I smiled to myself. She probably would have been. We could have laughed at the small-town rituals that Jackson took in such deadly seriousness, and that would’ve been like water in the desert to me—sustaining, clean, and life-giving.

I tugged at the wire mesh, rusted now. I could still climb over, I thought, but then my daddy called from the back door that dinner was on the table. I took a drag and threw my cigarette to the ground, grinding it into the grass with my tennis shoe, but not without a last, lingering glance at the discouraged-looking rental house. Where was she now?





“Annie, aren’t you hungry?” Above her empty plate, my mother’s face was concerned.

I looked at my own nearly full plate with satisfaction. “I had a burger at McDonald’s. I’m still stuffed,” I lied, feeling thinner already. Oh, I was in control at last. Later that Friday night, I drank two big glasses of water and smoked another cigarette right before I went upstairs to bed and never had the slightest urge to eat.

The next morning saw only me at the kitchen table. Methyl Ivory was engaged in making deviled ham salad for lunch with the leftovers from last night’s prodigal spread.

“You want some eggs, Miss Annie?” she asked. “I could scramble you up a couple, make you some toast.” Methyl Ivory’s back was to me, but her tone said that she didn’t approve of my having slept in until after eleven o’clock. Her wide shoulders said that they had things to do and cooking me breakfast right before lunch was not supposed to be on the list.

“Oh, I’ll just make myself some coffee,” I said, yawning. A cup of steaming black coffee in hand, my pack of cigarettes in the pocket of my Ole Miss sweatshirt, I went outside and sat on the front steps. It was a cold, glorious day, the gem-blue canopy of sky shining a thousand miles above me like a promise—high, wide, and handsome. This Saturday morning felt like the start of something important, and when I went inside to take my shower, I weighed myself.

I’d lost a pound.

The rest of that Saturday was even easier than the first day of my off-the-radar diet. I smoked, drank black coffee, and used another excuse at dinner (a fictitious large lunch with an equally fictitious friend), and later that night, after I’d gone out and bought another pack of cigarettes, I talked on the phone with Du in the smoky privacy of my bedroom.

“I’ve lost two and a half pounds!” I crowed. “It’s working.” I ran my finger around the waistband of my jeans, and to my delight it was noticeably looser. “And the best part of it is, I just got started.”

“Aw, baby-cakes,” Du said. “You’re perfect already.” I heard him sigh. “ ’Sides, aren’t you kinda asking for trouble? I mean, everbody’s gotta eat, right? You’re not gonna turn into one of those arexonemia girls, throwin’ up all the time?”

Falling across my bed because in truth I was feeling a little tired and empty, I lit another cigarette and immediately perked up again. “I’m not anorexic, Du, and throwing up is just gross. I’m on a temporary, extreme diet. That’s all.”

“Well, if you say so.” He sounded dubious, but then his voice changed, dropping into that deeper register that meant he was thinking about sex again. “I can’t wait to see you, honey.” I hadn’t slept with him—or anybody else—yet, but knew it was only a matter of time. With a catch like Du, you either put out or you got out. I didn’t want to think about that yet, though.

I rolled over onto my elbows to reach the ashtray I’d begun keeping in my room. “Just six more days, and then we’ll be together,” I said. Tonight Du was at home in Tupelo, but he was driving down next Saturday morning to escort me to the Snow Ball that night. It was the first time I’d ever had a boy home from school, and I wasn’t sure how he and Daddy were going to get along. What if they didn’t?

Trying not to think about that possibility either, I said, “I’m glad you’re going to be with me. I’m scared I’m going to do something heinous, like trip on my dress, or drop my bouquet, or . . .”

“Don’t you worry, sugar-bunch.” Du laughed. “I’ll bring somethin’ to take the edge off.”

We hung up twenty minutes later after a lot of sighing and I-love-yous. I wasn’t sure about the “I love you” part. It seemed to me as though by saying that I was crossing the border into a country I wasn’t sure I wanted to visit. All the boys—all three of them—I’d dated before had said that same thing sooner or later, but with Du I was pretty positive that this time I was going to have to do something about it. This was a disquieting thought, but that was just the way it was. Everybody assumed that life flat wasn’t worth living without a presentable boyfriend, and Du wasn’t just presentable, he was a prize.


I’d gotten myself this far, though, and with such a substantial investment already in this gratifying, high-profile relationship, I was well aware that I was going to have to work at keeping Du happy so everyone would be happy with me. At least I was on the right track with my new diet. I knew that if I could maintain the momentum of my weight-loss campaign, it’d be a very different Annie meeting him at the front door next Saturday morning. Good-bye, chubby sophomore; hello, slim, sophisticated new me. Take that, Julie Posey.





Emerging victorious from the battlefront of Sunday dinner, by midweek I’d lost seven pounds and my mother was raising her eyebrows at the plates of food I wasn’t eating. Oh, I had to take a token mouthful of something when she was watching, but the rest of the time I managed to move the food around on my plate in a purposeful way. Miss Pettie grumbled at having to take in the waist of my deb dress when we went for an emergency fitting Thursday morning, but she swore she’d have it ready by two o’clock.

Later that day, after my mother and I went back to pick my dress up, she suggested we stop on the way home and have coffee together at the Olde Tyme Delicatessen. What a minefield that was. The Olde Tyme’s bakery was renowned for its fabulous pastries: apricot Danish, chocolate croissants, éclairs, napoleons, fruit tarts, fudge brownies so good they’d make you weep. All the help, from cooks to counter help to the cashier, were round as sugar doughnuts and looked damned happy about it, too. Now, normally I could never have passed up a whack at the Olde Tyme’s pastry case, but I’d had a cigarette in the car after my fitting. We ordered at the counter, and when I asked for black coffee, my mother gave me a long look and then requested the same.

We sat down at our table in the crowded, bustling deli. My mother took off her mink and gloves. I shrugged out of my coat and braced myself. Sure enough, after she took a sip of coffee, my mother put her cup down in its saucer and said, “I’ve noticed you’ve lost some weight, Annie.”

I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair, rearranging sugar packets in their dispenser, before I muttered, “It was about time, don’t you think? I mean, before I looked like a white Sears side-by-side in my dress.”

My mother raised one eyebrow. “Surely not. You’d gained a little weight since you went to Ole Miss, but that’s normal. A lot of girls do that.”

The sugar packets were well sorted by now, so I finally had to look her in the face. “I was sick of it,” I said. “Besides, it’s only a couple of pounds.”

“It looks like more than a couple, honey,” she said gently. “Annie, you’re smoking a lot. Your clothes are hanging on you. I’ve noticed you’re not eating your dinner, and Methyl Ivory says you don’t have breakfast or lunch anymore. You can’t live on black coffee and cigarettes.” She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “Your father’s concerned, too.”

I sighed a long-suffering sigh. “Look—I never wanted to do this debut anyway, but you and Grandmother Banks ganged up on me. So if I’ve got to be a deb, at least I’m not going to look like, like some, some . . . refrigerator in front of half of Jackson. I’m just dieting. Don’t worry. I’ve got it all under control, okay?”

She didn’t look convinced, but let the subject drop. I was extremely grateful. My hand shook as I picked up my own cup. It had occurred to me that all the coffee I was drinking was probably contributing to my jitters, but I needed the caffeine almost as much as I needed the cigarettes: coffee and nicotine were almost the only materials my body had to work with.





Late Saturday afternoon, a day dry and warm for December, I’d already been to my mother’s hairdresser, Lily, that morning for a shampoo and set. I’d insisted that my long, thick blond hair be piled high in a chignon because I was convinced that wearing it up would make me look taller and thinner. My shellacked hair felt heavy and unnatural on top of my head, but thanks to all the hairpins Lily had jammed into my chignon, at least I wasn’t worried about it falling apart. My mother’s pearls around my neck, my makeup applied, the dress hanging on the door of my closet in a long snowfall of purest white—for the next two hours all I had to do was hang around in my panty hose, robe, and underwear until it was time to put on the dress and go.

I couldn’t sit still but paced between my bed and the window, smoking and looking down into the backyard, where Du and my daddy were sitting in lawn chairs, drinking beer and talking football. At least that seemed to be going well, thank goodness. My mother hadn’t yet returned from her own appointment with Lily, and even Methyl Ivory had left to go home. My nerves shrieked for action, but there was nothing to do but wait. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore: I went into my parents’ bathroom to weigh myself again.

Glory be, I’d done it. I’d lost ten pounds in eight days! Practically fizzing with glee, I opened my bathrobe to look in the full-length mirror and marveled at the delicate hollow between my prominent hip bones, the frank spareness of my ribs. My newly slender neck seemed like a flower stalk, only just able to hold up the crown of my hair.

I came back to earth with a thud, stricken again with the gnawing certainty that, ten lost pounds or not, I was sure to make a mess of tonight, that I’d do something awful, embarrass my parents and send Grandmother Banks rocketing into the stratosphere in her wheelchair, jet-propelled on I-told-you-sos. In an unexpected blessing, though, the old dragon wasn’t going to be able to attend tonight, being still laid up with shingles, so whatever I did, it wasn’t going to be in front of her at least.

My eye caught my flushed reflection in the wavy old mirror of the white-painted medicine cabinet. Desperate for a little relief from constant anxiety, I opened the door to see if the pharmaceutical rep-fairy had left a present there for me. A blister packet of something called Librium lay on the glass shelf, next to a bottle of the Seconal my mother took for her insomnia.

Librium. The name recalled equilibrium, a state I would do anything to achieve right now. I dropped the two capsules in their sample pack in my robe’s pocket and went downstairs to get something to drink. Popping one of the pills free, I washed it down with a cup of lukewarm coffee while standing over the sink. Fifteen minutes later I felt calm enough to head out in the backyard in my robe and slippers, to sit down with Daddy and my boyfriend. Their conversation had moved on to the topic of where Du was going after he graduated this spring. He’d been accepted to Ole Miss law, but he wanted to see if he could make it in the NFL. Daddy thought law school was the better choice, and Du was politely listening. He looked so handsome, and Daddy seemed to like him well enough. That was one less thing to fret about, and maybe now I could relax. Maybe even my mother would quit worrying about me, now that I had such an indisputably suitable boyfriend.

My aimless thoughts drifted to the deepening evening sky overhead, the clean, green smell of the pine trees. A pair of crows had built their nest high in the branches of the live oak, and they were returning home with desultory, welcoming noises. I was so grateful for the sweet sense of chemically induced peace stealing through my body that my eyes closed, the heavy weight of my chignon resting against the back of the lawn chair. Du and Daddy went inside to shower and change into their tuxedos. I could’ve fallen asleep then, but after some time—how long, I don’t know, time had lost its terrible urgency—my mother came down the steps into the backyard with a plate in her hand.


“Here,” she said, holding the plate out to me. “Eat this.” Her green eyes were steady on mine. I looked at the inoffensive pimento cheese sandwich with misgiving. “You need something on your stomach, Annie Banks. It’s going to be a long night.” I could tell she wasn’t about to go away until she’d seen me eat it, so I took the plate and somehow choked the sandwich down, every last bite.

And then it was finally time to get dressed. I could have sworn I saw the outline of that pimento cheese sandwich lurking under the taut silk across my stomach. Panic rose again, so before I left my room to go downstairs, I palmed the second Librium from the sample pack and dry-swallowed it, just to be sure. Everybody loaded up in my mother’s new Lincoln, and after the dreamlike drive out to the country club, I was feeling so outstandingly mellow that when we got out of the car and Du grabbed my hand, I sailed along behind him like a kite on the end of a string as he led me toward the corner of the parking lot by the overgrown gardenia bushes.

“Go on.” I gaily motioned to my parents. “We’ll meet you inside.” My mother paused, looking at us, and for a moment it seemed she was going to follow Du and me to the outskirts of the parking lot. “Seriously!” I called. “Y’all go get some champagne and we’ll be right along.” With a wave, my father took my mother’s hand then and they turned up the sidewalk to the front doors of the country club, the covered breezeway lit with tiki torches and lumieres in paper bags.

When they were out of sight, Du said, “Here, baby. I tole you I’d take care of you. Have some of this.” He took a pint bottle out of his coat pocket and put it in my gloved hand. “Take you a few swigs of Ol’ Granddad, and he’ll settle you right down.” I looked at the flask dubiously, wondering if I ought to be putting bourbon on top of pimento cheese and Librium, but decided it couldn’t hurt. I screwed off the cap on the bottle, lifted it to my lips, and took a big swallow. Cheap bourbon cascaded in a harsh burn down my throat and ignited like a frat-party bonfire in my stomach.

“Whoa,” I coughed. “You got a hankie?” I needed to wipe my mouth and didn’t want to ruin my gloves. Elbow-length white kidskin fastened with twelve pearl buttons, they were emblematic deb wear. I could only imagine my grandmother’s reaction if she heard I’d gotten lipstick on them.

“Here.” Du gave me his pocket square, and I dabbed at my lips. “Take one more, baby,” he said encouragingly. I tipped back my head and took another gulp, then another. In my stomach, the bourbon seemed to be having a one-sided discussion with the pimento cheese sandwich already in residence. It felt like the bourbon was getting its point across just fine, so I had one more pull on the pint bottle before I handed it back to Du.

“Thanksh, honey,” I said. My mouth felt numb. I took Du’s arm. “Thanksh. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Aw, Annie,” Du said. “I wouldn’t a missed this for the world. I’m afraid to touch you, you’re so pretty.”

I rested my forehead on his black wool shoulder. “Y’mean it, Du?” I was slurring my words, but only a little.

“A ’course I do,” he said, putting the pint bottle back in his pocket. “Those other girls give you a hard time, but you’re gonna be the best-looking gal in the place. Bet on it.” I felt a surge of accomplishment: maybe all this would turn out to have been worth it if Du felt that way about me. We were walking toward the entrance to the country club now. My feet hurt, and I had to be extra careful in my four-and-a-half-inch heels, but Du’s arm and the bourbon and the Librium held me up admirably.

Inside the lobby, I blearily patted Du on the cheek. “I’ll shee you later, after the dancing starts.”

“Where you going?” he asked. “Need me to come, too?”

Touched at this evidence of Du’s devotion, I smiled. “I’m off to the ladies’ room for a lipshtick check. G’on, now—get yourself a glass of champagne.” With a lighthearted wave, I listed down the wide, dimly lit hallway, not really lurching at all, but when I pushed open the door to the ladies’, I almost ran into Julie Posey in that aircraft carrier of a dress. She was just leaving, followed by Lisa Treeby wearing what looked like her mother’s yellow-tinged wedding gown, a big lace flounce obviously added to its hem so her dress would hang all the way to the floor. This recycling was a sign that Mr. Treeby’s legendary cheapness must have triumphed as usual.

“Watch out, Annie!” Julie snapped, glaring. She paused in the doorway, looking me up and down in the bathroom’s bright lights. She didn’t mention the fact that I was remarkably thinner, that my dress now fell in a smooth line from waist to floor, that I had rendered her services as Diet Buddy obsolete.

She didn’t have to say anything because Lisa did. “Oooh, Annie!” she exclaimed. “That dress is just, just beautiful on you.” Good ol’ Lisa—we weren’t ever particularly close, but she had always been nice to me. Julie sniffed, swept up her skirts, and left the ladies’ room like a galleon under full sail without another word.

“Thanksh, Lisa,” I said, and burped. The smell of bourbon on my breath was strong, even to me. I reddened ever so slightly, but the Librium carried the day and I managed to say, “You look wonnerful. I love your hair.” Poor Lisa’s hair was woolly as a sheep’s. She’d tried to corral it in a lace snood and had stuck some big old rosebuds behind her ears. “Did you do it yourshelf?”

Lisa’s smile was as wide as if she’d won first prize at the 4-H show. “Yes,” she replied. “You really like it?” Self-consciously she touched her hair and a rosebud fell out from behind her ear and onto the floor.

I bent down to pick it up for her, and it was only then I realized that leaning over or any other move involving reaching downward was going to be a very bad idea. Still, I managed to grab the rosebud before I toppled over onto the bathroom’s marble tiles.

“Here.” Straightening, I held it out to her on the palm of my glove, feeling foolish.

“Thanks!” Lisa flashed me another smile, returning the rosebud to behind her ear. “I better go,” she said. “It’s almost time.” Damned if Lisa didn’t sound thrilled with anticipation. I almost envied her but decided to be happy for her instead. Good ol’ Lisa. I checked my makeup in the mirror one last time. Good to go, Houston. Rocket ship Annie left the launch pad and began burning through the atmosphere of the country club in a wobbly trajectory toward the ballroom.





It all went pretty well until I had to descend the steps for the promenade.

I’d managed to present myself as they announced my name like a contestant in some bizarre game show, even managed to curtsy and not fall over in a heap. Flashbulbs popped in a galaxy of blinding light. Daddy met me on the stage, and I laid my gloved left hand on his arm with an exquisite relief. This ordeal was almost over and I hadn’t outraged or embarrassed anyone yet. Clutching my bouquet of white roses and baby’s breath in my right hand, I remembered to lift the skirt of my dress so I wouldn’t trip over it and took the first step down the little stairs in front of the stage. My daddy patted my hand on his arm.


“You okay, honey?” he asked me under his breath. I couldn’t answer because the next step was coming up, my heels were wobbling like pine trees in a high wind, and I needed to concentrate. Clutching his arm now, I prayed that I could navigate the next two steps without incident, so intent on staying on those damned heels that I never even saw the rosebud underfoot until it was too late.

I stepped squarely on it, and my ankle turned with a twist of agony that shot right up through my leg into my spine. Daddy caught me as I missed the last step, and to everyone else it might have looked as though we were just sharing a quick hug before we made the circuit of Jackson’s biggest ballroom. If it hadn’t been for Daddy, I would have fallen. If it hadn’t been for his steady arm, I could never have made it around the circuit of that throng of clapping, champagne-guzzling strangers.

But if it hadn’t been for catching a glimpse of my mother’s face—so proud, so very proud of me—I couldn’t have done it without limping like a three-legged horse. For her, I gritted my teeth in a rictus of a smile and stayed on that ankle until we finally got back to the stage.

Racehorses who run even when they’re hurting are said to be “game.” Well, I guess I was only half-game that evening because while I was standing on one foot up there on the stage, waiting for the other girls to make their own debuts, I could lean on Daddy’s arm and tell myself that I’d pulled it off. But halfway through the presentations, I felt a delicate sheen of perspiration break on my upper lip while a strong message issued from my stomach from the pimento cheese sandwich, which had apparently won out over the bourbon and Librium. Thank goodness I was on the far end of the stage.

“Be right back,” I managed to gasp to Daddy before I slipped off into the wings, elbowing my way through the last half of 1975’s crop of debs. Bracing myself on the wall, I hobbled pell-mell down the long hallway to the bathroom. I almost made it to the toilet, but Julie Posey was coming out as I was going in, and while I didn’t precisely ruin her dress, an orange-ish portion of bourbon and that pimento cheese sandwich splashed on the hem. My own dress I missed completely. As I staggered past her into the bathroom stall to finish the miserable business of throwing up, I could hear Julie outside the door, shrieking that I had destroyed her debut.

I, on the other hand, now felt much better, so much better in fact that after I’d sponged my face with a damp paper towel and rinsed out my mouth, I decided that it was time to go out and enjoy the rest of the Snow Ball. Dancing was likely going to be out of the question—my ankle still felt like it was broken and was about to fall off—but after all, I did look fabulous.

And it seemed dancing wasn’t entirely out of the question. My daddy, looking relieved, claimed me as soon as I limped into the noise and big-band music of the ballroom. We were able to have an abbreviated, careful dance together along with all the other debs and dads.

“Nerves got your stomach going?” he asked me. I nodded vigorously because it was better than the truth. Then, with a hug, Daddy handed me off to Du so he could go dance with my mother. From across the ballroom her eyes asked me if I was all right. I gave her a thumbs-up and an exaggerated wink. I didn’t want to get too close, not wanting to spoil her triumph with even a whiff of whiskey on my breath. She and Daddy looked so perfect together—she in her long apple-green velvet and diamonds, he in his white tie and tails—as they swung into the dance with the grace of long years as partners. I think the band was playing “Pretty Baby.” Du basically held me up in his linebacker arms, my weight entirely on my left foot, my right one dangling in its four-and-a-half-inch heel as we swayed in place to the music.

“Gonna marry you, Duane Sizemore,” I mumbled into the front of Du’s tux. If I could pull this night off, I could do anything in the world I had to do.

“Say what, baby?” Du looked down at me, his big, handsome face smiling.

I tipped my head back to look him in the eye. “I said,” I enunciated carefully, “I am going to marry you.”

Du laughed, but that laugh sounded perplexed. “Hon, I haven’t asked you yet,” he said.

“You will.” In that moment, I was sure of it. And rocking in his arms in the darkness, under the fractured reflections of the mirror ball, in the midst of a thousand perspiring people smelling of warm wool tuxedos, mothballs, and too much perfume, I could see it all. The next white dress, my ten sorority-sister bridesmaids, Libby Suggs catching my bouquet, a shower of rice and a honeymoon in Mexico, my mother relieved and vindicated at last in her heretofore doomed quest to see me doing what everybody else was doing for a change. I could see it all, that promise—high, wide, and handsome.

Thin, married, and safe.