Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,97
even apply for a credit card on my own? When your dad and I first bought this house, it needed a new washer-dryer. We looked at the catalog, we picked one,” she said. Now she took a sip of her whiskey and went to retrieve a can of Cheez Balls from the counter. “Anyway, we decided I’d go to the store and open a credit card to pay for it. When I told the salesman at Sears, he laughed in my face. I needed my husband to cosign my application, like I was too dumb to understand what I was getting into. With a Sears credit card.”
“And that’s why you divorced dad?”
“No! He was as appalled as I was. I’d always been the one who handled the finances at home. But applying for these jobs, it just brings back all the same frustrations. It feels like all these people, they’re already thinking that a man would be better at the job before they even know me.”
“Why are you doing it, then?” I dipped a hand into the Cheez Balls.
“Because if I quit trying now, I’ll always know it’s because I was afraid of being hurt and disappointed,” Mom said. “And I know hurt and disappointment are survivable feelings.”
“But what about all the time you put in?”
“It’s a commitment, sure, but I’d rather risk it not working out than knowing I gave up because I was too scared.” She gently pulled the bag of peas away from my eye. “It’s kind of like your black eye. It looks like hell, but I bet you still want to play.”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “They made me team captain tonight.”
“Wow, captain,” Mom said, and held her glass up. “Sounds like a toast is in order.”
We clinked on it.
Friday, Mom called me in sick from school. I phoned Tina in the morning to tell her what was happening, so she wouldn’t worry. “Tell everyone I’m fine. I look like Apollo Creed fucked me up, but I’m fine. I have to do last-minute wedding stuff.”
Mom had had plans for a while to head out of town for the weekend, to see some friends in Michigan—her way of avoiding the wedding hubbub. I was still letting her assume the game on Saturday was against another girls’ team, not St. Mark’s. She had enough to worry about.
I was meeting Polly at Wieboldt’s Friday afternoon to pick makeup for the wedding; then I was spending the night at their condo. I had a duffel bag with both my soccer gear and my pajamas, and Polly had my dress and wedding shoes, which I’d bring with me to the game. Tina had promised to drive me to the banquet hall where the ceremony would be; Joe was meeting me there after Rachel’s recital.
When we got to Wieboldt’s, Mom parked instead of dropping me off. She took a shopping bag out of the back seat and said, “I want to give something to Polly.”
“You’re weird, Mom,” I said.
“I know.” She waited for me and we walked into the store together.
Polly was waiting by the makeup counter. She wore a cream mohair sweater that girls at my school would have killed for, over matching cream pants. When her eyes landed on my eye, she put a hand to her mouth and dashed toward us. “Susan, what happened?”
“I’m so sorry,” Mom apologized on my behalf. “If I’d known soccer was so rough, I’d have told her not to play right before the wedding.”
Polly took my face in one of her cool hands. “You did this playing soccer? Wow. You are one tough cookie,” she said. She smiled at Mom. “I can’t be mad at that.” She turned my face from one side to the other and I let her. Maybe it was a good thing I’d decided to be nice to her from the get-go. She was impossible to piss off.
“Well,” she said, clapping her hands together. “We’re in the right place. We’ll get some concealer and no one will be the wiser. Did I ever tell you I used to sell Avon?”
“I bet you were the top seller,” Mom said. She pulled a wrapped box from the shopping bag and extended it to Polly. “A wedding gift.”
Polly flushed. She touched the bow and met Mom’s eyes. “You didn’t have to,” she said. “This is so thoughtful.”
Mom waved her off. “It’s a gravy boat,” she said. She reached into her bag again and this time emerged with a book, Creative Visualization, which