The young woman in the picture is my mother.
I have a stone heart, a scrappy backyard in Fitchburg where my mother used to draw monsters, a Western Union in Connecticut, a twentieth anniversary, and now this: an inky sketch of fishermen. I don’t know what it adds up to, but I know it leads somewhere. And how do I know that?
Faith. In Dad, and in mysteries.
I’m floating so high on that hope that when Jessa calls, I forget how awkward and uncontrollable parties can be, especially parties with boys, and tell her sure, I’ll come over, I’ll come hang out with Chad and the soccer team, count me in.
By the time Jessa and I descend into the Prices’ basement, the sort-of-party is under way.
On a pair of beanbag chairs in front of the TV, Chad and his old teammate Omar Wolcott lean into their Wii Wheels as they steer Bowser and Wario across the rickety bridges of Shy Guy Falls.
At the Ping-Pong table, Jeremy slaps a ball across the net to Mike Wazchowitz, who whiffs it. Jeremy gives Jessa a head-jerk nod while Mike scrambles around for the ball under Chad’s plaid blanketed pullout bed.
Down on the floor, Omar does a cramped victory dance, constricted by his beanbag. Chad drops his controller, groans, turns, and sees us. He blinks, and I swear so does the silly, bloody muscle in my chest.
“Look at you, Imogene,” he says.
I blush and tug down my dress. “Yeah, look at me.”
I had a pretty specific idea of what I wanted to wear tonight, but nothing right in my closet, so after walking to Jessa’s through a cold, spattering rain, I borrowed from her: a minidress with swirls of lace over a silver slip. Because it was “retro,” according to Jessa, tight on top and sort of triangled out at the bottom, the loose fit in the waist and hips meant I could wedge myself in. The hem of it barely reached my palms when I held my arms straight for inspection, so Jessa gave me a pair of thick pink tights. She was thrilled I was letting her play life-size Barbie for a simple basement party, and never asked the reason. It’s not that I don’t like makeup and heels, or girls who wear makeup and heels. I’m on board with third-wave feminism and whatever. It’s just, it feels as if girls like Jessa, women like Lindy, had some kind of how-to-be-pretty handbook passed to them that was never passed to me. True, Dr. Van Tassel couldn’t teach Jessa about dresses and mascara any more than Dad could teach me. But I remember the afternoon she enlisted her glamorous sister, Annette, who works for some glittery boutique on Newbury Street. She arrived with armfuls of Cosmo, a caboodle of lipstick. “Red lipstick can be ladylike,” she said once Dr. Van Tassel had fled Jessa’s bedroom, “but it can also be a great ‘Fuck you, world!’” I left before the lesson began; Dad was taking me to the Friendly Toast that night.
Then there was Mrs. Patel, who let us try on makeup at her daughter Lavender’s twelfth birthday sleepover. Perched on the rim of the Patels’ Jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom, we passed around jeweled eye shadows and disks of blush and lip glosses like tubes of cake icing. The next morning, our cotton pillowcases were like pale faces, imprinted with red lips, violet eyelids, rosy cheeks. When I turned mine over for washing, Dad, who was in a rare mood, laughed and called me Madam de la Scott for the rest of the day. Would Madam de la Scott desire her juice in le plastic cup or in le crystal champagne flute?
In eighth grade Mrs. Botstein took a little group of us shopping before Danica’s bat mitzvah, and though Danica’s the kind of girl pained by a teacher’s attention, under her mother’s spotlight she glowed. “Try these boots,” Mrs. Botstein said. “Oh, look at this! What about this blazer? Look at my daughter,” she said, stepping back. “Isn’t she just blossoming?” At which Danica blushed and the rest of the girls giggled, but I didn’t.
Mrs. Tuzzi with her yoga body is only a size up from Katie, both of them short and small-boned with doll feet, and they switch off jackets and shoes with the speed of a pit crew changing tires at the Indy 500.
Ms. Nelson gave Shalmar her wedding necklace to wear to junior prom. Shalmar fingered the crooked pink pearls while we stood by the punch bowl, her nose so high in the air she’d have been the first to die in a fire.
Last Thursday, for Valentine’s Day, Mrs. Rivers gave Jaime a school ring that belonged to her own mother, who’d died of breast cancer when Jaime was seven.
I don’t like how it makes me feel to think of these things.
But I’m grateful for one thing: at least I have Jessa, and she has the manual dexterity of a stylist. I described to Jessa the exact updo I wanted, and asked for an eighties-style pink lip, which I do not wear. I sat at the little silk-covered bench at her vanity as she fiddled with my slippery, winter-static hair, leaning my head back into her hands and telling Jessa about the brochure.
“Huh. Fishes. So what next?”