Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [70]
“Elizabeth.”
“Right.”
Isabella sipped her coffee and stared out the window. She was excited about going to Boston, even if she didn’t care about seeing these people or meeting their baby. It was October and Isabella felt like she should be going somewhere. Fall always did that to her. It made her restless, like she was late getting back to school; like she should be registering for classes, and buying pencils and notebooks and folders that matched.
She’d bought a pink outfit for the child with little polka dots on the feet. She’d shown it to Harrison before she wrapped it. He nodded and said, “Nice.” She also bought a little pink bunny to go with it, but at the last moment left it out of the package. It was soft and worried-looking and Isabella had a feeling that the baby wouldn’t appreciate it. She pictured it lost among a shelf of bigger animals, and so she shoved it into a drawer in her bedside table and continued wrapping the present.
Harrison had gone to college in Boston too, and Isabella often wondered if they’d ever run into each other on the street or brushed shoulders at a bar. She’d asked him this once when they had just started dating and it seemed romantic to think that they might have been in the same place years ago.
“Probably not,” he said.
“No,” she agreed. “Probably not.”
Harrison had gone to Tufts and was two years older, while she’d been at Boston College, on the other side of the city. It made her sad to think they’d never be back there again, never bounce from bar to bar drinking and dancing just because they could, just because they should. It wasn’t that she wanted to be in college again, exactly. No, she just missed it sometimes, the aftermath of those nights out, inexplicable bruises and lost wallets, phone numbers being requested, make-outs with near strangers in crowded bars.
Harrison didn’t seem to miss the past at all.
“But don’t you wish you could go back, just for a week?” she asked.
“I guess maybe,” he answered. She knew he didn’t mean it.
Isabella could spend hours looking at pictures from college. She liked to set them next to the more recent pictures from weddings and reunions and compare the two. It wasn’t that they looked old now—they weren’t even thirty! It was just that they looked so young in the college pictures, so baby-faced and rubbery. Isabella studied the different shots of them, dressed up in ridiculous costumes or bundled up for a football game. It amazed her, how eager their expressions were, like they couldn’t wait to get to the next party, like there was just so much fun waiting for them.
Isabella couldn’t get over the way their skin looked in these pictures. It was dewy and pink and she couldn’t imagine what they’d ever complained about. It looked as though they were smothered in highlighting cream. Now they were duller and more matte. And she was pretty sure they were going to stay that way.
Even Harrison’s college pictures made her sad—him in a dirty house standing next to a keg, his arms around friends and a half-drunk smile on his face. It made her homesick that she would never know him there. They’d met after they both had jobs, and it broke her heart that she’d never know the college Harrison. She studied the pictures of him with his college girlfriend, trying to figure out what they were like, jealous that the girl in the picture knew Harrison in a way that she couldn’t.
The ride to Boston took a while and they listened to NPR for most of the way. Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! was on, which was Harrison’s favorite show. He laughed at things that Isabella didn’t find funny. She wanted to ask him what he was laughing at, but knew that the answer would probably be a look that said, You’re not as smart as I am so you don’t get it, and so she stayed quiet.
Isabella fell asleep toward the end of the drive, and woke up confused and cranky as they pulled into the driveway. Her mouth was open and she had drool on her cheek. She wiped it away and looked at Harrison, annoyed.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” she asked.
“You’re already up,” he said