Silver Girl by Leslie Pietrzyk

Author:Leslie Pietrzyk
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944700539
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Published: 2018-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

GIVE THE LADY WHAT SHE WANTS

(winter, sophomore year)

In an ideal world, Jess’s mom said she would see Jess at least once a week. In an ideal world, Jess said she would see her mom at most once a month. They didn’t say these things to each other, but to me, separately. I didn’t ask, they volunteered, each using the words “in an ideal world.” This happened on the same day, when Jess’s mom met us at the big Marshall Field’s department store downtown for shopping and lunch. It was early February, and Jess hadn’t told her parents about dating Tommy, so she warned me to keep quiet. But she wanted a new dress for Valentine’s Day that would knock his socks off. “Or better yet, his pants,” she said.

I was invited last minute, because Linda dropped out, claiming shopping was bourgeois, an opiate for the masses like TV and sports. “She’s stopped washing her hair,” Jess’s mom reported, “and now it’s baking soda instead of Crest like a normal person. She says she’s not going to college, she’s moving to Vermont to make yogurt out of goat milk, or maybe it was spin yarn out of goat hair. Who can keep up?”

We were at lunch in the Walnut Room on the seventh floor, where we’d gone straight off because Jess’s mother said she needed coffee, but she ordered a glass of white wine. Jess and I had Tab. Jess ordered a chef’s salad with oil and vinegar dressing, and her mother started out talking about salad but switched to chicken pot pie. They told me I had to try the Marshall Field’s special sandwich so I did. I was hoping toothpicks with those frilly cellophane tips came jabbed into it, which wasn’t very sophisticated, but they reminded me of Grace. She loved them, and maybe I was thinking about her, her face through the window twisting into sadness as I boarded the Greyhound after Christmas break, and how on purpose I plunked into an aisle seat.

“Who cares?” Jess said, about her sister. “Let her hang out with stinky goat lovers. Probably be good for her to move away.”

“No one’s moving to Vermont,” Jess’s mother said. “That’s too far.”

We were seated at a round table for four, smack in the middle of the room, which reminded me of a historic mansion, with stately ribbed pillars and a dizzyingly high ceiling. Jess said there was a forty-five-foot Christmas tree every year where the marble fountain was, which I hadn’t believed until now that I was scrunched here, feeling tiny. The walls were heavy oak paneling, and the tablecloths were crisply white, with cloth napkins, and soaking up any clatter was thick red carpet with twining flowery shapes. We sat in plush-bottomed chairs with wooden arms where the varnish was still shiny and unchipped. Everything felt like it cost a lot of money. I sat opposite the empty chair, imagining Linda there instead of the pile of coats, our eyes latching, both of

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