we don’t enjoy it too much,” I joked.
“Yeah, and as long as we’re not frigid and holding out, either,” Dawn said with a laugh.
“Hey, but if we have sex, we can get a boyfriend out of it,” I said.
Dawn put a hand over her heart. “I’d love to score a meathead boyfriend, but I’ll only want to have sex when he wants to. I don’t want him to think I’m a slut.”
I helped her clear some space on a rack for a froofy wedding dress she was trying to rehang. “Yeah, why is it that only boys can want things?”
“Oh, we can want things, as long as it’s having a house and looking super pretty for our man,” Dawn said. “Just ask my mom.”
Maybe I wasn’t the only girl who fantasized about something better than the gropey, dopey guys from Powell Park. But a bridal store was no place to compare masturbation techniques. “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t ask you what really happened last year. It wasn’t fair of me.”
“What is fair?” Dawn pulled a few orange-looking dresses off the rack and handed them to me. “You’re dusty peach, right?”
“So I’m told,” I said. “Thanks.” I took the armload of dresses, half dumbfounded. Maybe Dawn didn’t care about the rumors, but next time I heard someone whispering about her, I could say something—“You don’t know that for sure,” or even, “Who cares if it’s true?”
The dresses were heavy, and they lay limp across my arms like a dead body. “You found some already! You’re the perfect maid of honor,” Polly said, lifting the fabric of the top dress, which seemed to have four hundred skirts piled on top of each other. “Which one do you like?”
I looked down at the dusty peach pile, not sure where one dress ended and the next began. “I guess I need to see them on,” I told her. “And what the other bridesmaids like.”
Polly squeezed my arm affectionately. “It’s your pick. I have two cousins in the wedding from out of town—Mother’s orders—but I’ll ship them what you choose so they can get alterations. Why don’t you go to the dressing room?”
Dawn appeared at my side, taking the dresses from me. “This way, miss,” she said, and smiled in a friendlier way than she ever had before. As soon as we’d stepped away from Polly, though, she relaxed. “Good luck with those,” she said as she put me in a fitting room. “Taffeta can make anyone ugly.”
She wasn’t wrong. The first dress clung to my midsection but drooped around my boobs. “I look like what happens when summer commits suicide,” I said aloud to myself, but when I came out, Polly exclaimed in delight.
“You’re a vision! A harvest miracle.” She came up and zipped the dress the rest of the way, and it looked slightly less bad.
I went to the mirror at the front of the store, pulling up the fabric pooled around my feet, when the door chimed again. “Susan, you left your purse in my car,” I heard my mom say, and I spun around.
“You look nice,” we said to each other at the same time. Only the way she said it to me was complimentary, and the way I said it to her definitely sounded surprised. My mom wasn’t in her usual somewhat frumpy work clothes—she had on a straight skirt slit to just above her knee, and over it, a belted blazer and a creamy silk scarf at her neck. The color and fit worked to make her look taller, like she’d had the suit made for her. The outfit had to be new, like the black heels she wore over black pantyhose. Her hair was done and she had on red lipstick. My mom was normally a Lip Smacker person, like me.
Polly poked her head out of her dressing room, “Oh, Dierdre, you look wonderful. I love that jacket on you. Good luck with the interview!”
The interview? What interview? And why did Polly know?
“Thanks so much, Polly,” Mom said. “Fingers crossed. And good luck with wedding dresses.”
As Mom set my purse down on a white upholstered chair, I asked, “Were you going to tell me you had a job interview?”
“I was, but after it happened.” She reached out and fixed one of the flounces around my shoulders. “I’m superstitious.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, and the ruffle over my boobs instantly enveloped me to my elbows. “You told Polly. Is it good luck to tell your ex-husband’s bride?”
“Susan,