“Yes.” Donna blushes. “Or maybe.”
She had been so proud of herself. Scheming up the idea to get an out-of-state cell phone number. But Paul still hasn’t answered, nor has he been curious enough to call her back. And then there was the thing the salesman at the AT&T store had said. He’d asked her why she wanted a new phone, and she’d just come out with it: explained Paul, and his silence, and how she needed to con her own child into picking up when she called.
“Why don’t you just e-mail him or something?” the salesman had asked.
“I’ve tried. He just ignores me.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, then fingered a zit at the corner of his mouth. “Man,” he said. “If I tried ignoring my mom for even two days, she’d go nuts and strangle me.”
Donna nodded. “Yes, that’s an option I’ve also considered.”
With a few chords the medley shifts, and “Imagine” blooms into “Bridge over Troubled Water.”
“You’ve picked out some gorgeous pieces,” Kim says. She hangs the dresses on a hook next to the mirror.
“Have I?”
“Absolutely. That purple scoop-neck is one of my favorites.”
Donna knows that Kim’s paid to be sincere—she’s not fooling anyone—but still, she’ll take it. She can’t remember the last time she was prepared to spend this much money on a dress. Paris, maybe. Or possibly during the first few years she and Eloise were back in Chicago. But that was over three decades ago now—what if her tastes haven’t kept apace with trends? She’s tried to choose dresses that might impress Eloise, dresses she thinks of as chic and sophisticated. A champagne A-line. A navy tunic. But those garments were designed for younger women, weren’t they? Women whose bodies haven’t started to sag and settle and surrender to gravity. Earlier, at the Nordstrom on the opposite end of the mall, she’d tried on a violet shift and had just about wept when she turned to inspect herself in the mirror: she looked like a sausage, dipped in cheap nail polish and stuffed into a casing fit to burst. She saw herself escorting Eloise down the aisle (because God knows Henrique won’t be there to do it), not walking, but waddling alongside her daughter as her statuesque in-laws tried their best not to gawk at her ass.
So, yes, Donna thinks. Kim can lie through her bleached teeth as much as she’d like. She’s just happy to have someone who’s complicit in this Decision of the Dress.
“Are we looking for something for a special occasion?” Kim winks. “Or are we just treating ourselves?”
Donna fixes the strap of her purse so it rides higher on her shoulder. “Actually, my eldest daughter’s getting married. In England.”
“How exciting!” Kim claps. “In London?”
“In Dorset. In the southwest. But I’ll be staying with her in London for a week or two before.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to England.” The last dress—a cream-colored wrap—won’t fit on the hook, so Kim drapes it across the bench. “The closest I’ve ever been is Toronto.”
“Hm.” Donna nods. “I’ve actually got a picture of her.” She rummages around for her pocketbook. “Would you like to see it?”
“Of course.”
Donna hands Kim the wallet-size photo that she keeps in her purse. The edges of it are brown and worn.
“Gorgeous,” Kim says. “Though, she’s … young?”
She takes the photo back. “Oh, she’s just a little girl there.” She looks down at it. Eloise stands on the Champ de Mars; the Eiffel Tower poised in the background looks to be the size of a cheap souvenir. Three and a half years old. She’s sporting her beloved tiny pink backpack and a pair of Lacoste sneakers (Donna’s still got those things, she thinks, stashed away in the attic somewhere), and her hair’s so light, so blond, that you can hardly tell it’s there at all. It’s April: the sky is a tepid blue that threatens to revert back to gray; clouds hang like lazy brushstrokes.
Donna runs her finger along the picture’s edge, feeling the stock of the photo paper. Henrique, her husband, had been supposed to meet them that day, but hadn’t.
“Paris as a little girl, and now living in London.” Kim rolls the clothing pins in the palm of her hand. “Quite a life.”
“We lived there. In Paris. That’s where I met and married her father.” Donna knows she sounds boastful, but she can’t stop. “Eloise—sorry, my daughter—she was born there.”
“Born in Paris!”
“We had a lovely home. Well, actually, many lovely homes.” She grins. “But the one in Paris was the loveliest. Right in the heart of the Sixteenth. An old nineteenth-century revival with a chambre de bonne that we used as Eloise’s playroom.”
Kim’s still smiling: she has no clue what any of this means, but it’s important to Donna that she knows it. It’s terrible, this need to gush over her past—a past that was hardly ever hers in the first place. It flies in the face of the Midwestern humility to which she’s always subscribed. Still, though, she can’t stop herself once she’s started. It’s as if she’s suddenly infected by this awful snobbery, a need to list and catalog the privileges she once enjoyed before her unceremonious return to Illinois, and the PTA meetings that followed. Before Alice fled to a far-off city and a disaster that won’t leave her; before Paul left for a man and a life and years of cruel silence. Before the word widow became a part of her daily vocabulary.
“Two blocks from the Palais de Tokyo, and an exquisite view of the Arc from the master bedroom, if you can believe it. A formal dining room with all the original windows and the perfect amount of chinoiserie. Really, a complete dream.”
Kim looks over her shoulder.
Donna hears herself; she stops.
“In any event, that was a long time ago.” She slips the picture back into her pocketbook. “But that’s her. That’s my Eloise.”
“Well, you and her father must be thrilled.”
“I … well.” Donna swallows and feels her throat bulge. “Her father’s no longer with us.”
“Oh, God. I am so sorry.” Kim brings a hand to her mouth and Donna notices her fingernails: acrylic, French-tipped. “Did he … did he pass on?”
“You mean did he die? Yes. He did.”