Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [5]
“That’s why she’s not allowed to get another doll for at least a year,” Missy said. She fed her doll some tea. “Because five-year-olds don’t really know how to take care of them.”
After tea, Ben met them in Central Park and chased the girls around like a monster, while Molly and Isabella sat on a bench. “He looks like a keeper,” Molly said. She elbowed Isabella. “Maybe this is the one?”
Isabella sighed. Molly had been trying to marry her off since she was in seventh grade.
“You know, Isabella, you need to make sure that he still respects you. The only thing a girl has is her reputation.”
“Oh my God,” Isabella said. “Molly, please stop.”
“You can listen to me now or learn it on your own later,” Molly said.
“If you talk about the cows and the milk, I’m done,” Isabella said. “You sound just like Mom.”
Missy came running up to them, her hair escaping from her ponytail and her cheeks flushed. She looked adorable, and for a moment, Isabella wanted to grab her in a big hug. Then Missy said, “Ben is so funny.” She turned and smiled at Isabella. “I hope you marry him.”
Missy leaned in close to Molly and whispered something. She looked concerned, but Molly told her not to worry. Missy ran back to Ben, who raised his arms and started stomping toward her. She squealed and ran.
Molly said, “Missy just asked me if you were poor. She asked if you needed to move in with us. She said she’s never seen a place to live that’s so small.” Then Molly tilted her head back and laughed and laughed with her mouth open so wide that Isabella could see her fillings.
Isabella had always thought that New York would be devoid of animals, but that wasn’t true. They were everywhere. They were just the kind of animals you didn’t want to see. “I read somewhere that in New York you’re never more than five feet away from vermin,” Mary said. This knowledge haunted Isabella. The building posted a sign-up sheet once a month for exterminators, and each time the list went up, it was immediately filled with capitalized, underlined descriptions of what people needed to get rid of. “MICE!!!” the list read. “ROACHES AGAIN!!!” it said.
Isabella and Mary could hear scratching between their walls, and they were sure it was a mouse, although they’d never seen him. “I hear it,” Isabella would say. They named him Brad and pretended he was the only mouse in the place. When he scratched at night, it made Isabella squirm in her bed. If she heard him, she wouldn’t get up until it was morning, afraid that she’d run into him on her way to the bathroom. Even if she had to pee, she’d wait. The mouse was probably giving her a bladder infection.
Because their apartment was approximately a hundred degrees on any given day, the sliding windows had to be left open. They had no screens, so very often Isabella woke up to the butt of a pigeon facing her. They called the pigeon Pete, and tried to figure out why he only came to Isabella’s window. Pete perched there almost every morning and cooed and pooped on her windowsill. It was possibly the grossest thing she could imagine.
“Pete, get out of here!” she would scream.
“Don’t yell at him,” Mary would say. “You’re going to scare him and he’ll fly into the apartment.”
Isabella thought she was overreacting, until one morning when she screamed at Pete and he flew backward into her room. She ran to get Mary, who grabbed a broom and slammed Isabella’s door shut. She was always good in these types of situations.
“Okay,” she said. “When we open the door, you run to the window and open it as far as it will go. I’ll shoo him out.”
“You’re so brave,” Isabella told her.
It took almost an hour and a lot of screaming, but Pete found his way back outside. They stood sweating and panting, shaking their heads at each other. “I never thought there’d be so much wildlife in New York,” Isabella