I looked at Haylee. I knew she wasn’t fond of the dress, because she thought it made her look too young. It had been advertised for “tweens.”
“That’s a great idea,” she nevertheless said quickly. “And we have those shoes you bought us to go with it. Should we wear any special jewelry? We have those diamond bracelets.”
“Not for this. My advice is always to lean toward understatement when it comes to fashion. There’s a point where ostentation becomes offensive, especially to your girlfriends who don’t have good advice about appearance and will only be envious. Now, you’ll have to excuse me,” she added, smiling. “I need to spend some time planning my appearance.”
We watched her walk off.
“We can change after she leaves,” Haylee said.
“I don’t really mind wearing the dress.”
She shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. I won’t be wearing it all that long anyway,” she said with a wry smile.
We knew Mother would want to see us dressed before she left for her dinner party on Friday, so we waited for her in the living room. We were both taken by how beautiful she looked in her new dress. She did a little fashion walk for us the way she used to when we were younger and would clap and laugh.
Then she paused and turned serious. “I have a good feeling about all this now,” she said. “With your support, I know we’ll come out of it stronger than we were. For a while there, we were three small boats on a rough sea, but we’re in control now.”
“Thanks to you, Mother,” Haylee said.
“Yes,” I added quickly. Sometimes I felt like I was holding on to Haylee’s tail to keep up—and the devil was sometimes pictured with a tail, I thought.
Mother made sure we had no questions about the food and then hugged us and wished for us to have a wonderful party. “I don’t want you to worry about me.”
“We’ll try not to, but we will,” Haylee said.
“Yes,” I said.
Mother smiled and kissed us. For a moment, she stood there looking at us. My heart ached with how deeply I had gone into Haylee’s pit of deception.
“We’ll have so much to gossip about tomorrow,” Mother said, and she giggled like a teenage girl.
Haylee was smiling with such self-satisfaction that I felt a little nauseated.
We stood in the doorway and watched her drive off.
“I’ll see to the food,” I said, knowing that Haylee didn’t care and thinking that if I threw myself into the preparations, I would quiet my nagging conscience.
“Good. I’ll see to the music. They’ll be here soon. Jimmy wanted to pick up Matt, but he insisted on coming on his own. He’s not the easiest boy for Jimmy to make friends with.”
“I wonder why,” I said, and left the answer hanging out there. As with most such things, Haylee ignored it.
Jimmy arrived so soon after Mother had left that I suspected he had been waiting and watching. Haylee hadn’t told him anything about the food and was annoyed that he hovered over me admiring it all as I began to set things up.
“Don’t disturb the help,” she told him. She hooked her arm through his and dragged him into the living room. She turned up the music immediately. It was good that we had no close neighbors.
Ten minutes later, Matt arrived. He immediately began to help me. When we began to bring food into the dining room, Haylee and Jimmy appeared. It looked to me as if they had already been into something, but Haylee would know better than to smoke anything in our house, and I had frightened her by telling her that I had seen Mother measure the amount of liquor in every bottle in the cabinet. I hadn’t, but I thought it was a good idea to tell her that.
“Let’s eat first,” Jimmy said. “I think I’m going to need my strength again tonight.”
Haylee was giggling at everything he said and did. The first chance I got, I pulled her aside and asked her if she had taken anything.
“Did he bring something?”
“Relax,” she replied. “I’m in control.”
“You’re going to mess this up badly,” I predicted, and started to dish out food for the boys.
Haylee was quickly over the top with her behavior, sitting on Jimmy’s lap and feeding him sloppily.