Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,53
I couldn’t think of the right word. The red swirl on the television flashed across the blue Atlantic. By the time it reached South Florida—if it even made it that far—it would be no more destructive than a rainstorm. “Reserved,” I said.
He nodded.
“Take off your shirt,” I said.
He thought I was getting frisky, but I’d spotted yellow on the fabric under the arm, and I was pretty strict on this issue, even when times were lean. I threw the shirt across the room, into a rusty metal trash can with the motel’s logo printed on the side. Dennis shrugged, and all at once I saw where Margo had gotten the gesture. I felt a surge of fondness for this ability to discriminate between battles, large versus small. Then, because hotels and motels—anonymous, ghost-ridden, seedy—have always inspired me, we got frisky.
In the fourth grade, Margo had worn a pair of purple denim jeans that I loved. Like me, she was mostly legs, and her stomach puffed charmingly over her waistband. I might have admitted to Margo that I loved those purple jeans—I certainly never concealed my opinion of her more questionable preferences—but I never did. To me, those jeans represented the perfect balance of tomboy and girly girl. If the jeans had been black, it would have been another story.
The Saturday before sixth grade started, Margo and I had brunch with Marse—she had just broken up with a professional golfer whom Dennis and I had liked a lot, and who had given Margo a set of clubs and several lessons—and afterward, Margo and I went shopping for school clothes. I’d started work at the bank that week, and on Friday had received a check for the sum total of my earnings, which I planned to spend entirely on Margo’s wardrobe. The purple jeans, I discovered that morning when she put them on, were fading through the knees, and soon would be too short at the ankles and too tight through the hips. I planned to find the perfect replacement. I believed new clothes put a spring in the step. Never, though, had the stakes been so high. For years, Margo had watched the big kids with longing and trepidation, and she was about to be catapulted into their world as if holding on to the end of a long, bendy pole. For sixth grade, Margo would need jeans in every color. She would need heart-shaped jewelry and brightly colored Duotangs and teen idol book covers. She would need armor.
“Do you know what the sixth-graders are wearing?” I asked Margo on the way to the mall.
“Sure,” she said. I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t, so I summoned from memory what I knew of middle school fashion. I’d parked in front of Sunset School every weekday afternoon for five years, waiting for Margo to emerge with Carla at her side, two droplets in a maelstrom. I’d studied the older kids as closely as the younger ones: many of the girls kissed each other’s cheeks in greeting and valediction. They had good posture. They did not carry lunch boxes; instead, they slung backpacks over one shoulder, and each girl’s backpack was a different color, as if they’d all drawn straws. The girls spent a lot of time sneaking glances at the boys, who slouched with their hands in their pockets and their legs apart, and whose clothes were too big and didn’t match.
Margo led the way through the mall. We wound up in the juniors section of the department store, among clusters of paisley and polka-dot blouses, neon leggings, and plaid blouses and matching skirts. Margo took several pairs of pants, two skirts, and half a dozen blouses into the dressing room, and I sat on a stool in the corner as she pulled each item on and off. I returned the items to their hangers, checking the prices, alternately relieved and disappointed. In an hour, she’d chosen two pairs of jeans, one pair of black pants, and five blouses—shirts, she said—that looked more or less the same to me. I told her to choose three of the five, and she did. Before she put her old clothes on again, I said, “What will it be for the big day?”
I held the new clothes in my arms. She picked through them, then matched the black pants to a pink cotton blouse with red stripes. She stepped into the pants and buttoned them, then pulled on the blouse. Price tags dangled at