The Twilight Swimmer (23 page)

“Why didn’t you say so before?” asked Brandi, unsure why Dallas was making a big deal out of such a small admission.

“I’m not sure why I didn’t. Thought maybe she was a sensitive subject for you. And honestly, I didn’t know her well. I was a year ahead of her in school, but she was smart. Had two of the same classes as me. Maybe three.” Dallas waited for Brandi to acknowledge anything he had just said, but she kept walking as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “Is she a sensitive subject? I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have—”

“No, it’s fine. There will never be a time when it’s easy to talk about her, but I’m not going to spend my whole life not talking about her.”

“Still, if you’d rather not—”

“Did you ever hang out with her? Were you friends?”

Dallas exhaled a sigh of relief. “Not that I remember. Hanging out, that is. Actually, I think I did bump into her at a birthday party once. Or a barbecue. She didn’t come out that much, did she? Not a very social person?”

“She was ill.”

“I didn’t know that. She seemed healthy enough at school.”

“Come on, Dallas. It’s one thing to bring her up. Nothing rude about that. But pretending you don’t know the rumors about her, that’s not nice.”

Dallas stopped in his tracks. Brandi took a few steps past him, then stopped and turned. He was kneading one hand with the other and chewing on his lower lip, looking very much like Cody after she snapped at him for any number of run-of-the-mill, preteen offenses. “You’re right,” he said softly. “I don’t know the right way to talk about it, obviously. I’m clumsy when it comes to stuff like this.”

“’Stuff’ like mental illness? Or ‘stuff’ like suicide? You’re clumsy about that kind of ‘stuff?’” Every time she said the word ‘stuff’, she laced it with a mocking tone that was meant to wound him, and worked very well to that effect.

“I’m sorry,” he stuttered. “I’m a jerk. A dope. An idiot. You probably know lots of synonyms that are way worse and even more accurate.”

“Lout. That’s a good one.”

“I’m a lout,” he agreed.

Brandi wanted to continue abusing him. He made it so easy it almost felt like an invitation. But his remorse was obvious, and she found herself feeling sudden pity for him. A grown man humiliated by a skinny girl in a baggy green sweater. And for what? Not knowing the exact proper way to talk to her about the most painful thing that had ever happened to her? No one knew the proper way to talk about Jenny. There was no proper way. Just degrees of improper. And the approach Dallas had taken wasn’t so bad at all.

“Don’t be sorry. You’re not a lout, and you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just… difficult.”

Dallas cracked a smile. “You really are, you know. You’re kind of scary.”

Brandi laughed. “You’ve got me by about a hundred pounds. How scary can I really be?”

“You’ve got me by about a hundred IQ points, so,
very
scary.” He lumbered forward to retake her side and continue their walk.

The one advantage of being confined to her home was that Brandi had a legitimate excuse to skip Prom. It didn’t matter that she’d promised Spider to be his date if keeping the promise was impossible. And she had reminded him of that harsh reality on several occasions when he cornered her at school, in the hallway, in the cafeteria, in the library, in the parking lot. Every time he had her cornered, he inquired with a hangdog expression if her father had lifted his medieval punishment. Every time, Brandi forced herself to look disappointed that no, her father still had her on lockdown. Spider was also concerned that her father was interrogating her about the liberation of the Swimmer and would eventually unearth his involvement. He pictured hard wooden chairs and blinding lamps, hypodermic needles filled with secret chemical compounds that could force you to confess your deepest fears and darkest secrets.

But he was more concerned about Prom.

“What’s the latest? I mean, it’s been like two months. He’s your dad. He must be, you know, softening.” Spider had once again cornered Brandi, this time just outside the girl’s bathroom as she attempted to go inside.

“When is Prom, again?” she asked, shifting her weight uncomfortably to communicate the fact that her bladder was a pressing concern.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” said Spider. “Instead of just saying that you’re still being imprisoned, you’re asking when Prom is. That implies certain things. Certain exciting things. Like the embargo has been lifted, or will soon be lifted, perhaps in time for the dance.”

“You’re misusing the word ‘embargo’,” said Brandi as she tried to slip past him.

“Don’t change the subject. Are you still grounded?”

“There’s another bathroom down the hall, Spider. You don’t have as much power as you think you do.”

“Answer the question!”

Brandi sighed, resigned. “Yes, I can go to the dance, but I’m going to have to pee at least once between now and then.”

He was grinning stupidly, his face a little flushed, and didn’t resist at all when she pushed him out of the way with a pointed elbow and scooted past him to enter the bathroom.

When her mother found out that Brandi had a date to Prom, and that Prom was exactly one week away, there was no stopping her. She hustled Brandi into the car that Saturday morning, just after dawn, and drove her yawning daughter into nearby Providence for a proper day of shopping. The coastal city was gleaming in the morning sun. To Brandi’s rural eyes, it looked as mighty and majestic as New York, even though it was only a fraction the size.

They found a restaurant with an inexpensive champagne brunch to kick off the day, and her mother allowed Brandi a full glass despite the alcohol. She had to drink it quickly, while the waitress wasn’t looking, and the onslaught of delicious bubbles made her cough. Sherri proudly ordered another glass for herself, pretending that the first had gone down so quickly because she was only getting started. The warmth in Brandi’s belly made her mother’s small deception more amusing than it really was, and she joined her mother in cackling happily.

They toured every boutique in the city in a whirlwind. Brandi must have tried on two dozen dresses before noon, in every shade of pink, purple and blue the city of Providence could produce. Her mother forbade her to try on an orange dress with a chiffon wraparound, proclaiming that Brandi would have to have an autumn skin tone to pull it off and, in her mother’s estimation, she had an obvious winter complexion. The traditional feminine colors were more adaptable to the seasons residing in the cheeks of teenage girls, apparently. But Brandi’s champagne was wearing off, and she dug in her heels. The standoff ended with a brilliant compromise brokered by a sales clerk in a bouncy bob. Brandi walked out of the store in possession of a dress the color of coral, somehow both subdued and vibrant. Both Brandi and her mother smugly felt as though they had won the debate.

Over lunch they flipped through fashion magazines, searching for the perfect haircut. Brandi had tried to refuse any change to her hair on the grounds that she liked it fine the way it was, but Sherri had already knocked down her defenses by getting her excited about her dress. There was no use resisting the momentum that carried her, with a box full of model photos under her arm, into the Rhode Island Salon. It was a school for hairdressing students who offered their services at a substantial discount in exchange for the customer’s promise not to sue if they chopped off an extra centimeter or two by accident. The team of college-age women manning the swivel chairs and shampoo sinks helped Brandi settle on a style that would cost her only two inches of length but would, when properly curled and swept and piled and pinned, give the impression of a much more dramatic cut.

She would walk into the dance feeling like a new woman, they promised, but wake up the next morning still feeling like herself. They scheduled her appointment for the following Saturday, the morning before Prom. Sherri paid in advance, just in case.

On the drive back to Edgewater, Sherri prattled on about the dance and how lovely Brandi would look. She hoped that Brandi’s mysterious date, this Jesse boy who she had not yet met, would be sensible enough to rent a tuxedo as nice as Brandi’s dress. Just as important, he needed to order accessories that would match the color of the dress or their photos wouldn’t turn out right.

Brandi wasn’t listening. Instead, she stared out the window at the trees bursting with leaves of red and orange and yellow. She imagined herself walking through them. Walking through the forest, with Jenny just ahead of her.

One week later, Brandi found herself staring at her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. She’d been staring long enough to lose track of time, fascinated by the way her newly cut hair was crowded onto the top of her head in organized chaos. She was equally fascinated by the way her skin picked up the color of the dress and seemed to absorb it, as though the material was merely an extension of her body and not a costume. She wore no makeup, as a rule, but her mother had persuaded her to apply a thin layer of eyeliner, just to see how it looked. She was mortified to discover how dramatic an effect one small detail could have on her appearance. Still worse, she was mortified to discover how much more confident she felt. What did it mean that she liked herself better when the face staring back at her was glamorous and exotic and… false? Was she as shallow as the other girls at school she reviled for their obsession with the image in the mirror? For a moment, she considered wiping off the eyeliner, shredding the dress, and shampooing her hair until the artificial waves were gone.

But then she heard a gentle knock on the door.

“Come in,” she answered reflexively.

It was her father, nervously peeking past the cracked open door to make sure she was decent. He first caught a glimpse of her reflection, his eyes going wide to take in this new version of his daughter. He was unable to muster any words, and his expression betrayed nothing at all.

“It’s that bad?” asked Brandi, crossing her arms protectively.

Conrad shook his head ‘no’ and one corner of his mouth turned up in a nervous grin. “You’re no more beautiful than you always are, sweetheart. But my god, you are beautiful.”

Brandi feared she was blushing, but the coral dress coloring her skin would mask the effect. “Thank you, Dad.”

“He’s here. Looks like a cornered raccoon.”

“A cornered giraffe, you mean?” she asked.

With a chuckle, Conrad pulled the door shut.

Spider had stubbornly refused to describe his tuxedo to her, insisting that it was a well-known breach of custom for prom dates to know such details in advance. She assured him there was no such custom, but he wouldn’t risk it. As the week of the dance drew to a close, she became progressively more paranoid that he would arrive at her house wearing a powder blue monstrosity with white ruffles and black trim. She’d invested time and energy in her own getup, and she had to admit that the thought of him spoiling it all with a weak attempt at ironic detachment would be devastating.

Gulping so adamantly that he was in danger of swallowing his Adams apple, he watched her descend the stairs. To her great relief, Spider had rented a traditional black tuxedo. He wore a handkerchief that matched her dress perfectly, as did the vest underneath his jacket. His hair was neatly clipped and swept back to reveal his face. She had always thought he had a pleasant enough face, but he usually looked so boyish it was difficult to take him seriously. Cleaned up and buttoned down, she saw him differently. When he extended one long arm and flattened his hand, she saw a corsage sitting in his palm.

“I’ve been practicing my pinning to make sure I don’t, you know, poke you,” said Spider with a quick glance at Brandi’s parents. “I destroyed about a dozen orange peels, but it was worth it. You look great by the way.”

“You couldn’t find tuxedo shorts? A cane and top hat? There’s nothing eccentric about your outfit at all.”

“I thought I’d go classic.”

“Good choice.”

She strode past her parents to stand before Spider, turning her head to give him a clear path to her dress shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that his fingers were shaking just slightly.

“Even if you do stick me with the pin,” she whispered, “I promise not to call the sheriff.”

Spider smirked, and his hands stopped shaking. He deftly pinned the corsage and backed away to admire his work. “What do you think?” he asked Sherri.

“You did a lot better than Conrad here, my clumsy high school sweetheart. I needed five stitches on my shoulder after he got done with me.”

“Should have practiced on oranges, I guess,” said Conrad with a playful groan.

They posed for obligatory photos, and Brandi was pleased to find that her smile came naturally. All she had to do was glance up at Spider’s beaming face, his white teeth never hidden behind closed lips for more than a second or two. His enthusiasm was infectious. When it was time to leave for dinner, Spider spent a full minute shaking hands first with Conrad, then Sherri, then Conrad again. He made dozens of promises regarding his intentions and Brandi’s curfew. Every chivalrous proclamation went over better than the last until Conrad, shaking his head with amusement, finally pushed them out the front door.

“Just bring her back in one piece and you won’t be the best-dressed guy in my jail.”