Annabel - Kathleen Winter [84]
“Did you ever wear one like that?”
“I’m not that old, Wayne. I was thinking of my mother. My mother would have worn a dress something like this one when she went to dances with my father, before I was born. Only hers wouldn’t have had the satin. She wouldn’t have had the money. What’s this one?” She looked for the tag.
“A hundred and ninety-nine ninety-nine.”
“Pretty expensive. Your girlfriend could get this one,” she fingered a rose polyester dress with a lace belt, “for only one nineteen. You don’t like, it do you?”
“No.”
“The truth of the matter is, you get what you pay for. Who are you taking?”
“The person I’m taking isn’t really the one I was thinking of. For the dress.”
“Ah.” Eunice held the elegant dress against her body. “There’s someone you wish you were taking.”
Wayne was glad there were shadows in the store. He wanted the part of him that was Annabel to try the dress on. He longed to take it home and let her dance in it, just one night.
“Well, don’t go breaking the heart of the one who wants to go with you, all for the sake of the one who never will.” Eunice looked at him as if her whole life had been about that very tale. “Do you want me to put this away?”
Had Eunice seen him hide the dress the other times he had been in to see it? He had hooked it inside a winter coat on the sale rack.
“So you can tell the girl you’re thinking of to come in and look at it?”
“Not really.”
“Who are you going with? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Gracie Watts.”
“Gracie Watts.” Eunice held out the dress and stared at it. “I can’t see Gracie Watts in this.”
Wayne couldn’t either. He could see Gracie in the rose-coloured dress with the lace, or the mint green one identical to it.
“The truth of the matter is . . .” Eunice was always saying that. The truth of the matter is, no-name peas are made in the same factory as Aylmer peas. The truth of the matter is, by the time fresh milk makes it up here there’s no more than two days left before it turns sour. The truth of the matter is, Quebec blueberries might be twice the size of ours but they don’t have half the flavour. Now she finished. “I can’t see this dress on anyone in your class. The girl who could wear this dress would have to have what I’d call her own style. Someone who didn’t mind not going with the crowd. Someone elegant herself. An artist, one who acts in plays. You’d have to be what they call striking to pull this dress off. On Gracie Watts it would look like she was wearing a mushroom. Not that I don’t think Gracie’s a nice girl. The truth of the matter is, she’s my grand-second-niece. She’d do well in nursing school. Too bad her father is an alcoholic. You know who would look nice in this dress? Wally Michelin. Wally Michelin could carry it off in a heartbeat. But the truth of the matter is, she already has this other one over here on layaway.” Eunice opened the cabinet behind her counter and took out an armload of red satin, glimmering in the shadows like the cummerbunds.
Wayne was not prepared for the transformation that took place among the girls on prom night. The girls, of course, had prepared for months, slathering their chests with self-tanning lotion and experimenting with curling irons, rhinestone combs, and baby’s breath. There was a dinner of stuffed chicken breast, mashed potatoes, and green beans in the gym, followed by Donna Palliser’s valedictorian speech, then the lights went down and Rodney Montague fooled around with his disco equipment for half an hour before blasting Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, singing the song from which Donna Palliser had extracted this year’s prom theme: Donna and her prom committee had festooned the gym with banners that read, CLASS OF '85: WHERE EAGLES FLY.
Gracie led him onto the floor. She placed his arms around her where she wanted them and she snaked her own hand inside his jacket and let a chilled lump slip into the pocket that had the turina superior menswear made in romania label on it. He knew