Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [10]
Our friend Ellen dates ugly boys,” Lauren used to say. She said it all through college. She said it to warn attractive boys who were interested in Ellen. “You’re not her type,” she’d try to explain. “It’s weird, I know, but you’re far too good-looking for her.” Most of the time, these boys didn’t listen. They’d just nod and keep staring at Ellen, thinking about how they were going to approach her, as Lauren insisted in the background, “Our friend Ellen dates ugly boys.”
All of Ellen’s friends accepted this. They weren’t surprised when she introduced them to boys with receding hairlines and mild cases of rosacea. They didn’t laugh when she picked out the one guy in the bar with braces and said, “Look at him!” When she got breathy and excited about someone new, they all mentally prepared themselves to meet a guy with a creepy carnival mustache and a mean case of dandruff. Even in first grade, when the only acceptable boys to like were Jon Armstrong and Chris Angelo, Ellen announced that she liked scabby Matthew Handler. It was just who she was. Ellen dated ugly boys.
It was surprising, mostly because Ellen was pretty—and not just your average, well-groomed and well-dressed kind of pretty. She was the kind of pretty that people noticed, the kind of pretty that made people watch her walk by. She had long eyelashes and skin that didn’t seem to have any pores. There was a glow about her, something that always drew boys to her side. If she’d been anyone else, Lauren might have been too jealous to be her friend. But it never mattered, because Ellen would look at all of her admirers gathered round, and point to Mr. Fatty and say, “I choose you.” Lauren got to keep the rest of them.
Some friends are gossips and some are sloppy drunks. If you like them well enough, you ignore this trait and continue to be their friend. And that’s what they did with Ellen—they tolerated her taste in men.
Once, in college, Ellen kissed a guy who lived down the hall from them. They called him the Wildebeest because he was portly with wild curly hair and he snorted when he laughed. He was the guy who got drunk at parties, stripped naked, and did the worm on the floor in a pool of keg beer. They all knew him. They all liked him well enough. And they were all shocked when Ellen announced that she’d kissed him the night before when he’d walked her to her door.
“Hold on,” Isabella said. “Please back up. You made out with the Wildebeest?”
Ellen shrugged. “I didn’t plan it,” she said. “He offered to walk me home and he’s so funny.”
“Of course he’s funny,” Lauren said. “He’s a Wildebeest. Wildebeests are supposed to be funny. But Wildebeests are not for making out with.”
Ellen was unashamed. She just smiled and shrugged and went back to her room. All the girls stared at each other and shook their heads. “Making out with a Wildebeest,” they whispered to one another. “What will be next?”
For the most part, Ellen’s boys were harmless. That’s not to say that they all had sparkling personalities or quick wit to make up for their appearance. No, some of them were truly blessed with nothing. But still, the girls never really objected to Ellen’s choices. “Different strokes for different folks,” their friend Mary always said whenever Ellen brought home another one. And they all laughed and let her be. “What harm could it do?” they asked each other. And so they let Ellen have her ugly little fun.
But then she met Louis. And Louis was awful.
Louis weighed about ninety pounds, had soft, wispy blond hair, and wore the same pair of rust-colored corduroys their entire junior year. He was pretentious and socially awkward and Ellen was crazy about him. Louis sat in their apartment and chain-smoked cigarettes while he ignored all of them. Once, when Lauren asked Ellen for an opinion on which shirt she should wear out that night, Louis weighed in. “It can be dangerous to care too much about clothes. It makes you shallow,” he said. Then he reached into his pants pocket, took out a paperback copy of Why I Am So Wise by Nietzsche, and