Chương 11
I listened.
“Then it isn’t the same jacket.”
“No.”
“What are you going to do?”
She looked at me.
“You’re supposed to tell me.”
“I’m retired.”
“From parenting?”
“From pretending I know fashion.”
She smiled faintly.
Then the smile disappeared.
“If I say no, I might not get another store.”
“Maybe.”
“If I say yes, people can actually buy something I made.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re being incredibly unhelpful.”
“I’m trying something.”
She sighed.
“That line again.”
For three days, she did nothing.
Then she called the buyer herself.
She proposed a smaller order.
Fewer jackets.
Same fabric.
Same construction.
Higher retail price.
The buyer said no.
Emily thanked her and ended the call.
Then she went into the bathroom and cried.
That evening, she still did her calculus homework.
Tuesday morning had arrived.
There was no applause.
The next Sunday, Lauren came to dinner.
Nobody announced that she was coming.
Daniel opened his mother’s front door and nearly walked into her.
They both stopped.
“Hi,” Lauren said.
“Hi.”
She looked thinner to me, though I immediately hated myself for noticing after everything that had happened.
Her hair was tied back.
She wore jeans.
No designer bag.
Emily was already in the dining room with Madison.
When Lauren entered, conversation became awkward in measurable increments.
Daniel’s mother offered everybody rolls twice.
Chloe asked whether someone had changed the thermostat.
Nobody had.
Lauren sat across from Emily.
For almost forty minutes, they did not speak directly to each other.
Then Emily asked for the salt.
It was beside Lauren.
Lauren passed it.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
That was all.
After dinner, I found Lauren in the kitchen washing plates nobody had asked her to wash.
I dried one.
She looked at me.
“You don’t have to help.”
“Neither do you.”
She kept scrubbing.
For a while, water filled the silence.
Then she said, “I lost two clients.”
I looked at her.
Lauren worked in residential real estate.
“What happened?”
“They saw the article.”
I did not know what to say.
She laughed without humor.
“Apparently people care deeply about kindness when choosing someone to sell a four-million-dollar house.”
“Lauren.”
“I’m not blaming Emily.”
The speed of the sentence suggested she had practiced it.
“I’m blaming myself.”
She set a plate in the rack.
Then added, “Mostly.”
There was the Lauren I recognized.
I almost smiled.
She noticed.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You have a face.”
“Apparently everybody thinks that.”
She turned off the water.
“I was horrible to her.”
“Yes.”
Lauren flinched.
I could have softened it.
I didn’t.
She dried her hands.
“I keep trying to find a version where I was teasing.”
“And?”
“There isn’t one.”
Her voice dropped.
“I wanted her to feel small.”
I stopped drying the plate.
Lauren stared at the dish towel in her hands.
“I knew exactly what I was doing.”
For the first time since the birthday dinner, the truth in the room belonged entirely to her.
I looked at Lauren long enough that she finally looked away.
The faucet dripped once into the empty sink.
“Why?” I asked.
She folded the dish towel into a square, then unfolded it.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not true.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I don’t have a good answer.”
“I didn’t ask for a good one.”
She leaned against the counter.
From the dining room came the scrape of a chair and Daniel laughing at something his mother had said.
Lauren lowered her voice.
“Emily makes me uncomfortable.”
I stared at her.
“She’s seventeen.”
“I know how that sounds.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“I don’t mean I’m threatened by a teenager.”
“You just said she makes you uncomfortable.”
Lauren pressed both palms against the counter.
“When I was her age, I would’ve done anything to look different.”
The sentence came out flat.
Not confessional.
Not dramatic.
Almost irritated.
I said nothing.
She looked toward the doorway.
“My mother put me on my first diet when I was eleven.”
I felt my shoulders stiffen.
“She called it getting healthy.”
Lauren gave a short laugh.
“We weighed ourselves every Saturday morning.”
I thought of my mother-in-law passing rolls around the table twenty minutes earlier.
I thought of Lauren at seventeen in photographs I had seen, narrow as a fence post and smiling too hard.
“That doesn’t excuse what you said to Emily.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
“It explains something, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
Lauren looked down at her hands.
“When I saw her standing there, not hiding, not embarrassed enough to change anything, I hated it.”
The honesty of that made me cold.
She continued before I could answer.
“I hated that she could be comfortable in a body I spent my whole life terrified of having.”
I set the plate down.
Lauren’s eyes were wet now, but she did not wipe them.
“And then she started making clothes.”
Her voice cracked.
“Beautiful clothes.”
I waited.
“I thought it was ridiculous.”
“You thought she was ridiculous.”
“Yes.”
She swallowed.
“And when everybody else started taking her seriously, I felt stupid.”
“That happened after the dinner.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“Madison showed me some of Emily’s sketches months ago.”
That surprised me.
“When?”
“Spring.”
“Why?”
“She was trying to convince me to let her take a sewing class.”
I stared at her.
Lauren rubbed her thumb along a chip in the countertop.
“I told her it was a waste of time.”
“Madison wanted to sew?”
“She wanted to learn.”
“And you said no?”
“I said she should focus on things that would help with college.”
I almost laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.
“So you knew Emily was serious.”
“I knew she was talented.”
The kitchen seemed smaller.
“Then the birthday dinner wasn’t just you being thoughtless.”
Lauren closed her eyes.
“No.”
“You knew exactly where to hit her.”
“Yes.”
The word was barely audible.
I felt anger rise again, cleaner this time.
“You don’t get to make this about your mother.”
“I’m not.”
May you like
“It sounds like you are.”
“I’m trying not to.”
