Actually, I was hoping Mother would agree. She still had no idea how differently Haylee dressed after she arrived at school, and I did not want to be mistaken for her.
Mother looked as if she wasn’t going to answer. She seemed to be in deep thought about something else, something I was sure had to do with the divorce. Then, as if the words had just arrived in her ears, the way the sound of a jet plane doesn’t come down to earth until the plane is way off in the distance, she looked at Haylee and said, “What’s that? What would you wear?”
“I don’t know, Mother. Maybe you could help us pick out something,” Haylee said, with such sweet timidity you could gain weight hearing her.
Mother relaxed her shoulders. I thought again how clever Haylee was at manipulating people, even our mother, who right now looked overwhelmed and vulnerable. She thought for so long that I believed she wasn’t even going to respond. Maybe she was simply tired. She did look older. Despite how strong she tried to appear about the divorce and Daddy’s adultery, her face was showing more wear and tear. This breakup of their marriage hadn’t just happened, either. She had kept so much from us, but that didn’t mean she was keeping it outside of herself. It had been swirling inside her for a long time, tearing at her in little ways.
The wrinkles at her eyes were deeper, and the shadows were darker under her eyes. She had let her hair go, not going to her salon for more than two months, and I could see strands of gray sneaking in. She wasn’t wearing much makeup when she went out on errands or when she took us someplace, the way she always used to. Because she had once been a model, her appearance was important to her. She was always coordinated with her outfits and shoes, her jewelry and makeup.
“You two look so beautiful when you dress alike,” Mother said, sounding mournful. I thought she was close to tears, and Mother never cried in front of us.
“Oh, we won’t change anything else about us. We certainly won’t change our hair, will we, Kaylee?”
I looked quickly back at Mother to see if she could tell how sneaky Haylee was being, but it was as if her eyes had glazed over and the world she saw was on the other side of smoked glass.
“Very well,” Mother said, after a sigh as deep as the Grand Canyon. “I’ll go look in your closets and choose something for each of you.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Haylee said quickly. “You can go to Kaylee’s closet first. I’m going to take my shower. What color are we doing our nails?” she asked me, as if she had forgotten what we had decided, when in truth we hadn’t discussed any of our preparations for the party.
“Whatever you do with your nails,” Mother said, “depends on what you wear. I’ve told you often about the harmony you must have in your appearance.”
“Oh, right,” Haylee said.
“You have to pay attention to these things,” Mother said.
I knew what she meant, and so did Haylee. She was just being too anxious and too ingratiating. I thought she was way over the top, and I remained surprised that Mother didn’t pick up on how phony Haylee was being.
“Oh, we know, Mother,” I said quickly. “We were going to do a neutral anyway.”
Mother nodded. “Of course you know what to do. I’ve brought you up the way a mother should bring up her daughters today. Little was your father aware of what work has to be done raising girls to be perfect ladies. He thinks, like everything he does, it’s just a simple click of the computer mouse,” she said. “Click, and you delete a wife.” She pretended to press a button. “Click, and you delete a family. Click, click, click, and the past is gone!”
Haylee looked halfway between amused and confused. She glanced at me. I was wondering if everything we did and everything we said would somehow, some way, wind its way to a nasty comment about Daddy. Was Mother going to become one of those man haters now, comfortably
blaming what happened to her on the gender and not the individual? The romances and marriages she had once dreamed up for us like a master storyteller would be lost and forgotten or filed away with other childhood fantasies. No matter whom we liked and eventually loved, Mother would find fault with him. I had seen this in some of my classmates, too, as if it somehow made them feel better when someone was poisoned with the same bitterness. They had to share it and make someone else feel miserable. After an argument with Mother, Daddy often would walk out, leaving the saying “Misery loves company” floating in his wake like ugly car exhaust. I hadn’t fully understood it until now.
Mother followed me to my room reluctantly. She was muttering to herself, which was also something I caught her doing much more lately. Sometimes she was so loud I would look in on where she was, expecting to see someone else with her, a visitor. But visitors, especially her friends, had become almost nonexistent. When she was a teacher’s assistant, she’d rarely had time for any of her friends, even on weekends.
“I don’t know why I agreed to this,” she said, shaking her head as she sifted through my clothes. She paused. “What kind of a party did Haylee say it was?”
“Just a party, Mother. No special occasion.”
“Hmm,” she said. “You both look so beautiful in this.” She took out a black jacquard rose fit-and-flare dress with pink and cream panels. “You’ll both at least wear the pink fleece jackets. It’s spring, but the nights still have a winter chill.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
“You know what shoes go with this,” she said. “You both have those sterling-silver white-sapphire bracelets with the earrings that match. I wouldn’t wear anything more.”
“Okay, Mother,” I said.
No matter how depressed she was now, I would always trust her when it came to fashion. Before she and Daddy had become so estranged, she would buy him his clothes, especially his shirts, sweaters, and jackets. She would often bring home a new shirt or a new sports jacket for him and tell him it was what he must wear. He didn’t mind, or at least I didn’t think he did. He appeared grateful and behaved as though it was all perfect. He did look handsome in anything she chose. Who would choose his clothes for him now? Was his new girlfriend as good at it? How could she be?
Mother left to pick out Haylee’s dress and tell her what else I was wearing and what she would have to wear. There would be no objections. Haylee would wear a crown of thorns if it meant she could get to this party.
The dress Mother picked for her was an all-over sequin skater dress. I suspected Haylee had influenced Mother’s choice. I knew Haylee thought she was very sexy in that dress. Afterward, she came into my room so we could be sure we did our hair as close to each other’s as possible, and that we used the same lipstick shade and the same perfume.
“She’ll look us over like a drill sergeant before we leave,” Haylee said, fixing a strand of my hair.
Jimmy and Matt had decided that Matt would pick up both of us, since we were going to Jimmy’s house. When Haylee told Mother, I expected she would say no and insist that she bring us to the party and pick us up, but the divorce had begun to make subtle changes already in how she would manage our lives. I suspected that Daddy’s complaints about how controlling she was had struck a note with the attorneys. She was going to prove that we were, despite all the preparations and special upbringing, healthy, normal teenage girls. He was just so oblivious to us that he didn’t notice.