Small Changes (2 page)

The day was already hot with flies buzzing at the pane but she felt cold and strange. Finally she ran to the bathroom and waited till her Uncle Bob came out. It was impossible to sit on the toilet in the dress. It took ten minutes to get into position. When she came back to the bedroom, Marie started fussing that she was getting the dress wrinkled.

“No, you can’t sit down!” her mother snapped. All the funny curls danced. Usually her mother had her thin gray-brown hair pulled back in a hairnet. She always wore a hairnet, Beth didn’t know why. Now her hair was skinned into tight rings like something you might use to clean a pot. “Don’t you want things nice, on your own day? That dress cost enough, so you might as well enjoy it while you can!” Mother gave her a poke. They never did embrace much. She had not thought about that before she hung around with Dolores, whose family was always kissing and yelling. People in Beth’s family turned things in and carried them off to brood on. When her parents argued, usually over money because there was never enough, they argued in low voices that would begin hissing and rise with anger like a saw cutting into wood and then compress again so that the children would not hear, although of course the children always heard.

“You’ll get plenty of time to rest later. In the car I mean!” Dolores giggled and hugged her around what were usually her ribs.

“Don’t muss the dress!” Mother warned. She had been lost in a fret of anxiety for days, seeing disaster in each broken glass.

“Why, you’ll get to lie down flat for days and days on your honeymoon—I mean in the sun!” Dolores said singsong.

She made herself push her lips into a pretend smile. Getting dressed up meant being uncomfortable. Putting on extra underwear that bound you and shoes that pinched or clopped and dresses in which you could not move. Putting stuff on your face and watching the wind did not get in your hair and make it look as usual. Trying to appear as little like Beth as could be arranged. She felt embarrassed, whether it was for a party or the senior prom with Jim, as if she were caught out in
the open trying to be someone else. Getting dressed up meant everything about her was saying
LOOK AT ME
when she would just as soon nobody would bother.

Mostly people didn’t. She was small, like Nancy and Mother, although Mother by this time was so wide she wasn’t exactly invisible. Mother was round and had trouble with her legs, bursitis. But Beth was five feet one and weighed a hundred pounds exactly and Jim’s sweet name for her was Little Girl. Of course she could look in the family album and see photographs of her mother looking just as slight. Her mother would refuse to eat potatoes at supper because she was watching her weight, and then in midmorning she would sit down to a snack of coffee with cream and sugar and a danish and at three o’clock have coffee with cream and sugar and Sara Lee cake. A sweet tooth never filled, a hunger for sugar greater than a hunger for food. In repose the expression on Mother’s face was a worried sadness, a look of things missed and wasted, a look of bills coming home to roost and nothing gained.

Beth had always felt the wrong size. She was convinced she had been bred to be miniature, like a toy poodle or a dwarf peach tree, in the world where everybody else was twice her size and ready to push through her like a revolving door, ready to step on her and overlook her and keep her from seeing whatever the rest of the crowd was yelling about. In chairs her feet never quite touched the floor. If she sat forward, then her back was without support. Shelves were out of her reach and she was always groping impossibly for straps in buses and clawing at luggage racks and she never could shut windows. Now her littleness was swallowed by a dress standing as if on a padded hanger.

“You can still see her freckles, Mom.” Nancy was squinting in Beth’s face. So they got towels from the bathroom to protect The Dress and painted on more make-up slathered over the old make-up. They told her to close her eyes and open her eyes and make faces and be still. When they finished, her face looked like rough plaster but they all had to admit, you could still see her freckles.

“Well, it’s because she has such a fair skin that she freckles,” Dolores said protectively.

“Now, that’s true.” Mother rubbed idly at the rose taffeta where an old stain faintly showed. “She bruises easily too.
Why, you lay a finger on her and it shows. She’s the sensitive one.”

“And hickeys,” Dolores whispered, giving her shoulders a squeeze, because when Beth had been seeing Jim on the sly she had used to worry that her father would see the marks on her neck. “The headpiece is coming untacked!” Dolores wailed. “Mrs. Phail, look, it’s coming off of her!”

“It’s almost one and I have so much to do, and you keep undoing what I’ve done already. That’s a thirty-five-dollar headpiece, Bethie, so hold your head up proud and stop dancing around like a flea on a hot griddle.”

“Mom, don’t worry!” The sour waves of anxiety coming off her. “Mom, what does it matter? It will be all right.” Beth tried to smile.

“Yeah, take it easy,” Marie said with a sigh. She had been looking in the hand mirror with a puzzled smile at the way Dolores had done her hair. It did look nice. “It’s too hot to get so excited. Beth’ll do fine.”

“Did you ever see a girl fidget so? Your family’s giving you a real wedding, and don’t you forget it,” Mother said. “We haven’t cut any corners. This is no hole in the wall at the courthouse or in the front room to save on the trimmings. You’re getting married in church with flowers and bridesmaids and your father rented a hall for afterward with real caterers. And I want
you
to remember this, Nancy Rose Phail—that’s how it’s supposed to be. Just like we’re doing for your sister Bethie, if you’re a good girl and do right by your parents, your parents will do right by you.”

Of course Dick’s wife Elinor had come swishing in and Mother had been talking as much to dig at Elinor as to warn Nancy. “Where’s the blooming bride?” Elinor cried out as if she hadn’t heard. “Why, doesn’t she look good enough to eat! Whats wrong with the veil? Is it supposed to stick straight out that way?”

“Oh, she’s jiggling around so much she’s twitched it loose again. How many pins can we put in her? It stays or it doesn’t. I wash my hands of it.” Mother made a hand-washing gesture.

“Poor lamb, she’s all excited. Well, you got quite a day for it, happy’s the bride the sun shines on, they say. What are you going to do with those three blenders? What a shame.”

“She’s going to take them back and get an electric knife and a bathroom scales!” Mother’s warning voice rose to a
whine. Elinor wanted to help herself, and Beth would just as soon she did. All that heap of stuff to write letters for, strange silver thingies and glasses that cost too much to use. It had been going on for weeks. “Your Aunt Emma could have done fairer than that! Why, I saw that vase on sale downtown for five ninety-five and I’m going to let her know she can’t pull the wool over my eyes!”

“What’s that big china contraption Jim’s sister-in-law gave you? She told me it’s an antique soup tureen, but I’ll tell you, cross my heart and hope to die, I think it’s a big old chamber pot!”

“Isn’t it an eyesore?” Mother forgave Elinor for saying that because she already didn’t like Jim’s relatives. Dad made a practice of liking his in-laws, on principle, because they were family and you always put up with family. Mother made a practice of disliking in-laws on principle, because they were only pretending to be family and they were making comparisons and out to take advantage.

The day was sunny and hot. Beth was sweating in her gloves by the time they left for church. Mother had spread out a sheet in the back seat of the car and they sat on it very stiff, Dad driving with Nancy and Mother in front, and Marie and Dolores on either side of her in back. She had not seen Jim since yesterday. It was strange that she was not permitted to talk to him, to know how his morning had been. He was supposed to be the one to hold her when she felt frightened, she was supposed to be the one to understand and make him feel all right. “Why can’t men and women see each other before a wedding?”

“Maybe so the groom won’t take a last look at the bride and change his mind, ha-ha,” her dad said. He was wearing a gray hat that smelled of dry cleaning and she could not see his face.

The scent of the mock oranges in the church was overpowering. Across the street kids were playing softball. It was crowded in the little room with everyone babbling and Aunt Susie bawling. Someone had been drinking. Gin crept under the mock orange and grass clippings from the church lawn and the smell of camphor heavy from a closet where vestments were stored. An invitation lay on the table and she picked it up. “Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Phail are pleased … their daughter Elizabeth Ann to James Hayes Walker … June 22,
1968.” She saw herself start down the aisle and trip on her train and go rolling headfirst over and over to end up sprawled on her back, dress piled over her head at the altar. She could not make the picture go away. Again and again she saw herself rolling like a snowball of stiff organza over and over down the aisle to end up sprawled knees apart, legs spread, and dress up over her head in rape position.

Nancy would love to slip into this gown. In Dad’s and Uncle Bob’s jokes at the family dinner, there had been such a sense of relief at only one more girl to marry off, and that the pretty one.

Nancy was the pretty one, everybody said, and Marie was the one who wanted to be a nurse and wiped their noses when they were little and helped in the kitchen. Everybody said Marie would be a good mother. Marie was twice a mother and Beth could hear her yelling all day long, “No! No! No! Now shut up your lousy mouth, Joey, or Mother will shut it for you! Will this stupid baby ever stop crying? Now shut your face and keep it shut, or I’m going to cream you, Joey, you hear me? I’m going to wring your neck!” Her voice sounded like a teacher’s. Her mouth was getting pinched. The flat upstairs was too small but what could they find? Gene had been out of work for close to a year before he finally got hired at Carrier.

She remembered Marie saying to her when she had panicked, two weeks ago, “Now look, Jim’s not perfect, no man is. But you’ll get away from home. Right? Just don’t start having babies before you have a little saved. Have some fun together first. At least you’ll have a place of your own!”

Yes, Nancy was the pretty one and Dick was to be the success. He did okay as a salesman in an appliance store downtown on Salina, but he was always pushing Elinor around and they kept moving into houses a little farther out of Syracuse than they could afford. Marie had wanted to be a nurse but everyone said she was the Little Mother. Beth was the quiet one. Such a good girl. She was the one who liked school and did well but nobody said she was smart because she was too quiet. She had wanted to go to college. For all of her junior year she had brought home catalogs. Mother’s
good
little girl. You don’t have to bother to love the good ones.

But now she would be loved. Now it would be safe to love. Here was the real beginning. Now she would have her life. She
would be loved for herself and would love Jim without being afraid things would turn ugly and jagged and painful. This day was the narrow gate through to Jimbo and she must go on to the thumping music. She must stand while they twitched at her veil and pinched her hair, while they pulled at the skirt, while they flapped the train. Inside the marshmallow she endured their tweaking and tugging. Now Marie was shaking the train like a scatter rug so it would float properly and the music was booming into the processional and Nancy was parading back and forth looking haughty with a sly smile.

Here comes the bride, big, fat and wide.

Look how she wiggles, from side to side.

Here comes the groom, lean as a broom.

He would wiggle too, if he only had the room!

That’s what they used to sing when they were children, and sometimes they would stick pillows under their dresses to make themselves pregnant. Like Dick’s wife Elinor. To have to get married. If there were other words to that music, she had never heard them. Going to be given away. Her father grinned bleakly, tugging at his bow tie. Take two, they’re small: ad from an adoption agency in the bus she used to take to work after school. But love came after this. After.

She had been taught to count going down the aisle, trying hard not to feel how everyone was looking. The air was thick hot pudding. Her hands were damp. Her scalp felt sticky under the headpiece. She could make up a ceremony prettier than this in half an hour, but nobody had asked her and she understood prettiness had nothing to do with it. They were giving her away. When she wanted to go to college—she had wanted badly to be a lawyer, like Portia in the play, like Perry Mason, and everybody thought that was funny—they had told her there was no money. But they had spent enough money on this day for two years of studying. She must not think about that. She would be married to Jim, and that was the important thing.

Jim looked like somebody else. His face was red and his long hair was cut to just brushing his shoulders and he was dressed in a rented outfit of striped baggy trousers. Frankie, who worked with him at the garage, was got up the same way.
She looked for Jim’s eyes. His eyes were gray with a green tint that made her think of stones and water and ferns that grew in the woods. Once they had driven all the way to Watkins Glen with his brother Dan and his wife. Jim had a beautiful smile like a huge daisy but now he was not smiling. She could not find her way into his eyes. After all, he could not open to her any more than she could to him: they would run out the door together from all this strange nonsense.

Dad was wearing his best suit—he had two, best and second best—tight as Mother’s rose taffeta. They looked like salami and little sausage, sweating and breathing heavily in the heat. Now her father was giving her away when he’d never had that much to say to her. Dick was the apple of his eye, and, sometimes he said, his biggest disappointment. Nancy was his favorite among the girls. Mostly he just called them The Girls, including their mother. But Nancy was the one he let sit on his lap and teased till she giggled and sometimes till she cried, and the one he threatened the most. He was scared Nancy would go bad, he said often enough. The bouquet in her hands was wilting: her nervousness was shriveling it.