Beside me, on the bed, lay a set of matching underwear, lace bra and panties, in a pale shade of pink. I slip into them and drift to the open closet doors, reaching deep inside. In the back I find what I’m looking for, hung from a department store hanger, still covered in plastic sheeting, a knot tied at its base. Never worn. I loosen the knot and gently lift the plastic from the dress. Dropping it to the floor, I remember the day I made the purchase, some seven months ago, the day I called Chris’s favorite steakhouse in the old, refurbished brownstone on Ontario Street, and made reservations for a quieter table away from the bar, the very one where Chris proposed to me. I’d planned for Zoe to stay with Jennifer and Taylor, had left work early to get my hair done, a side-swept chignon to partner with the new dress, a pair of black pumps with a kitten heel.
I release the dress from its hanger, remembering how Chris had called before I ever had a chance to wear it, griping about some last-minute task, and in the background, there was her voice—Cassidy’s—beckoning my husband, stealing him away from our anniversary date.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he’d promised, his disappointment diluted over the phone, as if maybe, just maybe, he didn’t care at all, “Soon.”
I run my fingers over the dress, a crepe shift dress with buttons up the back, black. I drape it over my head, letting it slide down, over the pink bra and panties, and then stare at my reflection in the full-length mirror. I remember that October night, the night of our anniversary, I remember that it was Graham who had come over instead, beckoned by the sound of the TV on a night he knew I shouldn’t be home. He stood in the doorway, sympathy carpeting his face, knowing, without my needing to tell him, what had happened: me, in a robe and slippers in place of the little black dress, my hair dazzling in its side-swept chignon, The Price Is Right on the TV. A frozen TV dinner baking in the oven.
“He doesn’t deserve you,” was all he said, and then, in a throwback to long lost college days, we played a round of century club with Chris’s adored pale ales, until we were drunk and bloated and my memories of being stood up by my work-obsessed husband had become hazy and opaque. I passed out on the sofa, waking the next morning to empty bottles of beer—over a dozen of them strewn upon the coffee table and floor—a vase of flowers set at their center, Chris’s weak attempt at a pardon.
He was out the door before I awoke.
I trace my eyes in a dark liner, sweeping a smoky shadow across the lids. I smear Bordeaux lipstick onto my lips and smack them together, wiping away the excess with a tissue. I tie my hair into a messy knot on the top of my head, sad in comparison to that beautiful sixty-dollar chignon, I think, reaching into the depths of the closet for the box containing the black pumps with their kitten heels. I roll a pair of nylons up my legs and slip into the heels, standing before the mirror.
I pass by the baby, sound asleep on the pink fleece blanket, on the floor. I watch her for a short time, refusing to stay too long and divert my course. I watch to make sure she is asleep, that she will not notice my absence, and then I walk into the hallway and gently close the door.
I don’t take the time to catch my breath; I refuse to slow down and think.
Graham opens the door before my knuckles rap for a second time. There he stands, impeccable and smiling, in a pair of jeans and an undershirt. He takes in the dress and hair, the overblown makeup, eyeing me from top to bottom. “Ooh la la,” he says as I reach back and begin to unfasten the buttons from my dress. His laptop sits on the tufted sofa cushions, abandoned; Nina Simone warbles throughout the room.
“What are you...?” Graham starts, leading me inside and closing the door. I lift that dress up over my head, exposing the pale pink beneath. His eyes fall to the pink, to the lace, getting lost long enough to affirm that Chris’s perception of Graham is far from true.
“You don’t want to do this,” he says to me, but I say that I do.
I step toward him, taking in the paragon, the ideal that is Graham, letting his warm hands wander across my midriff, wrapping around to the small of my back.
And Graham, being the good friend that he is, is happy to oblige. He’s more than happy to do me this favor. An act of goodwill. A common courtesy, I think as he leads me past the tufted sofa and onto an unmade bed.
WILLOW
It was late. The house was silent. Joseph had come and gone.
I was awoken by a scream, a thick, throaty scream that forced me straight up in bed.
I remember the moon through the window, incandescent on an otherwise black night. I remember that there was silence following that scream, so much silence that I wondered whether or not it had only been a dream. I lay in bed, staring at that moon, willing my heart to slow down, my breath to return to me from wherever it went when I heard that scream. The clouds floated by the moon slowly, lazily, the knobby arms of the big, old trees now shadows in the night. They stirred in the air, their branches reaching out to touch one another, to clasp hands.