twenty minutes. Nice to catch up. I opened the boutique’s door for her too, and the feminine bell matched the saleswoman’s delighted greeting.
“Adora!” And then a frown. “My goodness, darling, what’s happened to your hands?”
“Just an accident, really. Doing some work around the house. I’ll see my doctor this afternoon.” Of course she would. She’d go for a paper cut.
“What happened?”
“Oh, I really don’t want to talk about it. I do want to introduce you to my daughter, Camille. She’s visiting.”
The saleswoman looked at Amma, then gave me a wavering smile.
“Camille?” A quick recovery: “I think I’d forgotten that you have a third daughter.” She lowered her voice on the word “daughter,” as if it were an oath. “She must take after her father,” the woman said, peering into my face as if I were a horse she might buy. “Amma looks so much like you, and Marian too, in your pictures. This one, though…”
“She doesn’t take after me much,” my mother said. “She has her father’s coloring, and his cheekbones. And his temperament.”
It was the most I’d ever heard my mother say about my father. I wondered how many other salesladies had received such casual tidbits about him. I had a quick vision of chatting up all the store clerks in southern Missouri, putting together a blurry profile of the man.
My mother petted my hair with gauzy hands. “We need to get my sweetheart a new dress. Something colorful. She’s prone to blacks and grays. Size four.”
The woman, so thin her hip bones poked from her skirt like antlers, started weaving in and out of the circular racks, creating a bouquet of splashy green and blue and pink dresses.
“This would look beautiful on you,” Amma said, holding a glittery gold top to my mother.
“Stop it, Amma,” my mother said. “That’s tacky.”
“Do I really remind you of my father?” I couldn’t help asking Adora. I could feel my cheeks get hot at my presumptuousness.
“I knew you wouldn’t just let that go,” she said, touching up her lipstick in a store mirror. The gauze on her hands remained impossibly unsmeared.
“I was just curious; I’d never heard you say my personality reminded you of…”
“Your personality reminds me of someone very unlike me. And you certainly don’t take after Alan, so I assume it must be your father. Now, no more.”
“But Momma, I just wanted to know…”
“Camille, you’re making me bleed more.” She held up her bandaged hands, now pocked with red. I wanted to scratch her.
The saleslady bumped up on us with a swatch of dresses. “This is the one you’re absolutely going to have to have,” she said, holding up a turquoise sundress. Strapless.
“And what about sweetie-pie here,” the woman said, nodding at Amma. “She can probably already fit into our petites.”
“Amma’s only thirteen. She’s not ready for these types of clothes,” my mother said.
“Only thirteen, good god. I keep forgetting, she looks like such a big girl. You must be worried sick with all that’s going on in Wind Gap now.”
My mother put an arm around Amma, kissed the top of her head. “Some days I think I won’t be able to take the worry. I want to lock her away somewhere.”
“Like Bluebeard’s dead wives,” Amma mumbled.
“Like Rapunzel,” my mother said. “Well, go on, Camille—show your sister how pretty you can be.”
She trailed me into the dressing area, silent and righteous. In the little mirrored room, with my mother perched on a chair outside, I surveyed my options. Strapless, spaghetti straps, cap sleeves. My mother was punishing me. I found a pink dress with three-quarter sleeves and, quickly doffing my pants and shirt, pulled it on. The neckline was lower than I’d thought: The words on my chest looked swollen in the fluorescent light, like worms tunneled beneath my skin. Whine, milk, hurt, bleed.
“Camille, let me see.”
“Uh, this won’t work.”
“Let me see.” Belittle burned on my right hip.
“Let me try another.” I rifled through the other dresses. All just as revealing. I caught sight of myself again in the mirror. I was horrifying.
“Camille, open the door.”
“What’s wrong with Camille?” Amma chimed.
“This won’t work.” The side zipper was sticking. My bared arms flashed scars in deep pink and purple. Even without looking directly in the mirror I could see them reflected at me—a big blur of scorched skin.
“Camille,” my mother spat.
“Why won’t she just show us?”
“Camille.”
“Momma, you saw the dresses, you know why they won’t work,” I urged.
“Just let me see.”
“I’ll try one on, Momma,” Amma wheedled.
“Camille…”
“Fine.” I banged open the door. My mother, her face level with my neckline, winced.
“Oh, dear God.” I could feel her breath on me. She held up a bandaged hand, as if about to touch my chest, then let it drop. Behind her Amma whined like a puppy. “Look what you’ve done to yourself,” Adora said. “Look at it.”
“I do.”
“I hope you just loved it. I hope you can stand yourself.”
She shut the door and I ripped at the dress, the zipper still jammed until my furious tugs yanked the teeth apart enough to get it to my hips, where I wriggled out, the zipper leaving a trail of pink scratches on my skin. I bunched the cotton of the dress over my mouth and screamed.
I could hear my mother’s measured voice in the other room. When I came out, the saleswoman was wrapping a long-sleeved, high-collared lace blouse and a coral skirt that would come to my ankles. Amma stared at me, her eyes pink and darting, before leaving to stand by the car outside.
Back at the house I trailed Adora into the entryway, where Alan stood in a falsely casual pose, hands stuffed into his linen trouser pockets. She fluttered past him toward the stairs.
“How was your day out?” he called after her.
“Horrible,” my mother whimpered. Upstairs I heard her door close. Alan frowned at me and went to tend to my mother. Amma had already disappeared.
I walked into the kitchen, to the cutlery drawer. I wanted to just look at the knives I once used on myself. I wasn’t going to cut, just allow myself that sharp pressure. I could already feel the knifepoint gently pressing against the plump pads of my fingertips, that delicate tension right before the cut.
The drawer pulled out only an inch and then jammed. My mother had padlocked it. I pulled again and again. I could hear the silvery clink of all those blades sliding onto each other. Like petulant metal fish. My skin was hot. I was about to go call Curry when the doorbell insinuated itself with its polite tones.
Peering around the corner, I could see Meredith Wheeler and John Keene standing outside.
I felt like I’d been caught masturbating. Chewing the inside of my mouth, I opened the door. Meredith rolled in, assaying the rooms, letting out minty exclamations of how beautiful everything was and sending off waves of a dark perfume more suited to a society matron than a teenage girl in a green-and-white cheerleading outfit. She caught me looking.
“I know, I know. School days are over. This is my last time to wear this actually. We’re having a cheer session with next year’s girls. It’s sort of a torch-passing thing. You were a cheerleader, right?”
“I was, if you can believe that.” I hadn’t been particularly good, but I looked nice in the skirt. Back in the days when I limited my cutting to my torso.
“I can believe it. You were the prettiest girl in the entire town. My cousin was a freshman when you were a senior. Dan Wheeler? He was always talking about you. Pretty and smart, pretty and smart. And nice. He’d kill me if he knew I was telling you this. He lives in Springfield now. But he’s not married.”
Her wheedling tone reminded me of just the kind of girls I was never comfortable with
, the types who peddled a sort of plastic chumminess, who told me things about themselves only friends should know, who described themselves as “people persons.”
“This is John,” she said, as if surprised to see him beside her.
My first time seeing him up close. He was truly beautiful, almost androgynous, tall and slim with obscenely full lips and ice-colored eyes. He tucked a shock of black hair behind his ear and smiled at his hand as he held it out to me, as if it were a beloved pet performing a new trick.
“So, where do you guys want to talk?” Meredith asked. I debated for a second about ridding myself of the girl, worried she might not know when, or how, to shut up. But he seemed in need of company, and I didn’t want to scare him off.
“You guys grab a seat in the living room,” I said. “I’ll get us some sweet tea.”