was fat, there were men who wanted to fuck her; men she could rob. It was like a game, and Bethie almost always won.
* * *
Barbara Simoneaux had dated a fellow named Larry Krantz from the start of junior year through high school, and had followed him to Michigan State. Larry was a nice guy who’d grown up with three older sisters and, thanks to them, had a talent for styling girls’ hair. At the end of their dates, Bethie remembered, he would roll Barbara’s hair up in empty orange-juice containers after he’d kissed her good night. Everyone thought that they’d be together forever, but Barbara had met someone she liked better. Ronald Pearlman had been her brother Andy’s freshman-year roommate at the U of M. Barbara had dumped Larry, who, she said, had taken the news with his usual Larry-like equanimity. She and Ronald had gotten engaged the previous June.
“Remember when Andy used to want us to play Mister Potato Head with him?” Bethie asked as Barbara fussed with her dark-brown bouffant in the mirror.
Barbara nodded. “And then he got older and he’d hide under my bed when you came over and try to look up your skirt.”
“Really?” Bethie asked, and Barbara laughed.
“Don’t be flattered. He did it to everyone.” Barbara turned, peering at her teeth in the mirror, making sure she hadn’t gotten any lipstick on her incisors. They were in the bride’s room of Adath Israel, the synagogue on Rochester Avenue where Jo had gotten married and where, once upon a time, Bethie had wowed the crowd with her improvisational performance as Queen Esther. “So, what’s it like to be back home?”
“Strange. Everything looks too big.” It was true. The cars looked enormous, the yards looked as big as some of London’s parks, and the roads were as wide as football fields.
“How’s it going with your mother?” Barbara’s voice was sympathetic. Of all of Bethie’s friends, Barbara was the one who knew the most of the story. She knew how Bethie had gotten pregnant, and how she’d ended the pregnancy; she knew how Bethie had run, how she’d missed her sister’s wedding, and how Sarah had let it be known, after Bethie’s departure, that Bethie had broken her heart.
“Oh, just great. She’s happy that I’m back.” Bethie braced for questions. Barbara had to know that, even if Sarah was delighted to have her younger daughter home, she was surely less than delighted with Bethie’s appearance, and her lack of a college degree, or a husband, or a job.
Instead of asking, Barbara turned back to the mirror, twisting left, then right.
“Am I a beautiful bride?”
“You are.” Barbara had chosen a simple sheath-style wedding gown that fell just past her knees, with no train, a fingertip veil, and white pumps that she was planning on dyeing some other, more practical color after the wedding. Bethie was wearing the less awful of the two choices her mother had brought home from Hudson’s, a shapeless dark-blue polyester tent that fell almost to her ankles, with a high neck, long, full sleeves, and a large paisley print that made it look like a slipcover. Mister Jeffrey had clucked at her hair, had trimmed off an inch—“just the dead ends, hon”—and had styled it to what were undoubtedly Sarah’s specifications, so that it obscured as much of Bethie’s round face as possible. Her jaw ached from having to remain open for so long, as her dentist tut-tutted over the state of her teeth. Her feet hurt because they were crammed into a pair of beige patent-leather shoes with a kitten heel. Bethie hadn’t worn any kind of heels since she’d ditched Michigan, and when she walked she felt like a lurching freight train, graceless and huge.
Barbara’s mother, in her pale-pink mother-of-the-bride dress, stuck her head inside the door. “You gals ready?” Bethie saw the way Mrs. Simoneaux’s eyes shone when she looked at her daughter, and how her expression became sympathetic when she turned to look at Bethie. Anger surged inside her, and Bethie tried to push it aside. I could have this, if I wanted it, she told herself. She could starve herself thin again, cut her hair, find a guy, buy a little house in a neighborhood full of identical little houses. She could have everything Barbara had, everything her sister had, only she didn’t want it, not any of it.
“All set.” Barbara rolled on more lipstick, smacked her lips together, and smoothed her dress over her hips. Bethie stood up.