A Little Hope(29)

“Lisa, yes. Well, we do the things they weren’t able to,” Mrs. Crowley says. “We vote because they can no longer vote. We look at the ocean because they can’t. We think about them when we put up a Christmas tree, and later when we sit there and gaze at the lights. We do all the things they can’t. That is how we love them when they’re gone.”

Suzette swallows. She hopes her eye makeup isn’t running. She wipes her face and checks her hand. “I just wanted her to wear a wedding dress first.”

“I know.”

She snorts. “I think I picked these green dresses so she wouldn’t feel bad. Maybe in the back of my mind, I didn’t want my wedding to be nicer than hers, even though hers didn’t happen.”

“Oh, darling.”

“I moved to Finland because I was so sad. Because I wanted to try to be happy. But I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t make it work.”

“It’s good to try as many things as you can. Who knows what will stick.” Mrs. Crowley comes around and holds out her arms. The woman never seemed like the hugging type. Suzette holds the candy cane in her fist and laughs through tears as the older woman wraps her arms around her.

“Thank you.”

“I think you should give this a try. This guy. This future that might be happy. You might like it.”

Suzette digs a tissue out of her vest pocket and blots her eyes. “Thanks.”

The door dings then, and Mrs. Crowley ducks away and heads back behind the counter. “Ms. Tyler.”

“Sorry,” Freddie says. “Dead cell phone, and a dead car battery. Both on the same day.” Her eyes water from the cold, and her fine hair in a ponytail bounces as she hurries to her station.

“Oh no,” Mrs. Crowley says.

“How horrible,” Suzette says.

The three women look for a moment at each other, and then Suzette walks toward the bag with her dress in it. Freddie Tyler takes off her coat and grabs her materials from her station. Mrs. Crowley puts two new candy canes into the ceramic gingerbread house. The radio plays a holiday jingle.

Suzette holds the dress bag over her arm, and as she slides the curtain closed, she imagines Lisa standing outside the dressing room, smiling, hands clasped, waiting to see her. Wouldn’t she tug the curtain open before Suzette was ready? Lisa! Wait! Wouldn’t Lisa sigh as she saw her little sister, grown now, holding the layers of tulle on the skirt as she tiptoed out into the light?

Suzette slips the dress on, and it doesn’t feel as heavy as she remembered. She wants to see Damon at the end of the aisle, beaming as she walks toward him. She wants to walk toward him. This isn’t Finland. This isn’t Finland. She wants what’s next.





11. Homesick




The dresses aren’t all that bad. Ginger lines up with the other bridesmaids in the high-ceilinged reception hall at Oak Gate Country Club. Maybe she can see what Suzette was going for. The seamstress did a good job. All their dresses fit well, the fur capes on their shoulders look almost regal, and with her hair up and the pearl necklace, Ginger feels elegant. The other girls smile for the camera in a comfortable way, in a way that says they feel what she’s feeling.

“One more,” the photographer commands. “Stay close together.” The groomsman assigned to Ginger is named Ahmed, Damon’s best friend since nursery school. He keeps his hand on Ginger’s hip and smiles mechanically. “Death by flashbulbs,” he whispers. Ginger laughs. The band has started playing, and she sees the lead singer out of the corner of her eye and for a second convinces herself it’s Luke Crowley, her ex-boyfriend. Maybe the one who got away, if she believed such things.

Only he didn’t get away. They veered directly away from each other ten years ago. She won’t look at the singer full-on because his build is similar, his hair the same color. Luke. What would he say to see her there in this dress, listening to the music?

After the pictures are through, she sips a Mistletoe Martini and goes to find Suzette’s parents. People linger around tables in the large banquet room as the band plays in front of the dance floor. This room with its twinkling Christmas lights leads into a lounge area with a long polished slate bar. She finds Suzette’s parents near a raw bar of shrimp and oysters on ice. “Ginger’s the veterinarian,” Suzette’s mother says to an elderly aunt.

Ginger nods and half laughs. “Does anyone have a cat or dog in their purse that needs checking?”

“No, dear, I’m allergic,” the aunt says seriously. “But you look the nicest in your dress.”

“Oh, thanks.”

The aunt is wearing a gardenia corsage. Ginger can tell she had her hair done today because it’s perfectly in place. The woman touches the top of her hand. “Some of the other girls are too skinny.”

Ginger smiles and moves on. Does that make her fat? No, that’s not what the woman meant. She is fine.

Ginger thinks about how she will return to Johnny in a few days. How he’ll probably give her a belated Christmas gift, maybe some chocolate from his stops in Argentina and Peru, and she’ll give him that brown attaché bag she got from the Coach Men’s store: not wrapped, maybe just a bow around it. Why can’t she wrap a gift for him? Does she love him that little?

She wishes Martin, her cat, weren’t alone in the apartment in Savannah. She hopes their neighbor will check in often. She wonders if everyone her age feels this unsettled.