Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [1]
“Whoa,” Isabella’s friends would say when they saw it.
“I know,” Isabella would say. “It’s horrendous.”
Before Isabella moved to New York, her mom made her clean out her closet. “There are things in there that you haven’t worn in years,” she said. “Let’s get it all cleaned out and I’ll give it to the Salvation Army.” She said it in an upbeat voice like it would be a fun thing to do. “You’ll feel so much better when it’s done,” her mother added.
“I really doubt that,” Isabella said.
Isabella sorted through old notebooks and shoes. She threw out T-shirts from high school sports teams and collages she’d made in junior high. In the back of her closet she found the blue floral beast. It was even worse in person. Isabella thought the color would have faded over the years, but it was just as vivid as ever. She held it up for a moment and then brought it to the dress-up chest in the playroom. Maybe her nieces would like to play with it. She shoved it in with the pirate costumes and princess dresses and forgot about it.
New York in September was busy, like everyone was in a hurry to get back to real life after the lazy summer. Isabella liked the feeling of it, the rushing around, and she let herself get swept along the sidewalks. She walked quickly, trotting beside the crowds of people, like she had somewhere important to be, too, like she was part of the productivity of the city, when really she was just going to Bed Bath & Beyond to get a shower curtain.
Isabella had decided to move to New York because she didn’t have a plan, and New York seemed like a good one. Her friend Mary was moving there to go to Columbia Law. When Mary announced this, Isabella was floored. “You got into Columbia?” she asked. “How?”
“Thanks a lot,” Mary said. But Isabella knew she didn’t really care. It wasn’t that she thought Mary was dumb. She just didn’t know when Mary had found the time to make a life plan, study for the LSATs, and apply to schools. Isabella had barely finished her final photography project senior year.
“That’s not what I meant,” Isabella told her. She thought for a moment, and then she said, “Maybe I’ll move to New York too.” Isabella hadn’t considered this before, but as soon as she said it, she knew it was a good idea. She had a roommate and a city all picked out, and that was something.
Isabella told her parents that she was moving to New York. She expected them to ask more questions, to want to know the details of what she planned to do there. But Isabella was the youngest of six, and her parents were not nostalgic about their children moving out of the house. Each time one of their children left, another one returned, and they had started to think they would never be alone again. “New York sounds great,” they told her. “We’ll help you pay rent until you find a job.”
Isabella was almost insulted, but she understood. They wanted her out of the house and on her own, so that she didn’t end up like her brother Brett, who graduated from college and then moved back home for two years, where he spent most of his time playing video games in his pajamas. During those two years, her parents had many whispered conversations where her dad said things like, “Five years to graduate from that college, and the kid’s just going to sit around here and pick his nose? Not on my watch.”
The apartment that Isabella and Mary found was barely bigger than Isabella’s bedroom at home, but the broker told them this was as good as it would get. “For this neighborhood,” she said, “with a doorman, this is the size you can expect.” She sounded bored, like she’d given this speech to thousands of girls just like them, who were shocked at the amount they would have to pay to get their own shabby little corner in the city. The broker didn’t really care if they took it or not, because