The Night Before(4)

I put on the dress, wrapping it around my body and tying it at the waist. We’ve always been the same size, though Rosie has boobs and curves and high cheekbones and gold highlights that light up her face. Sometime I think I willed those things away too, when I was a little girl. Still, I let myself look in the mirror and see what I knew I would see. It is pretty. I am pretty.

I put on the one pair of high heels that’s not in a box in the basement. Black pumps. I can’t stop now.

Dark circles erased. Lips bright red. Rosy cheeks. Pretty dress. I’m feminine and fun-loving. Smart but obedient. Ready to move into some man’s life like a new piece of furniture. I look just as good in jeans as I do in a black cocktail dress. That’s what men say they want. That’s what women say they are.

It feels dishonest, but what I feel doesn’t matter. Not tonight.

Rosie has been teaching me—how to be sexy but not sleazy. How to be smart but not intimidating.

It’s a game, Laura. Do what you have to do to get the first date. Then you can be yourself. People don’t know what they want until it’s right in front of them.

Yes. That’s true.

Joe was more pragmatic.

Men don’t read the profiles. They look at the pictures and measure their hardons.

Sometimes I think I will lose my mind trying to understand. The shrink told me that I would find it here, at home. The answer to this question about me and men. Me and love. Why I lack the skills to find it, and why I beat it away when it finds me. Me with my fists for hands. The girl no one can love. So here I am.

Our mother was beautiful and she did everything that was asked of her. She would have killed it on findlove.com. Even so, our father left her when I was twelve. He left her, left us, for a woman who was older than our mother. A woman who didn’t wear dresses. He left us and moved to Boston with her. Now our mother lives alone in California, still trying to get past that first date.

Our father’s name was Richard. He hated when people called him Dick, for the obvious reason.

I haven’t seen Dick in sixteen years.

I’m tired of not knowing the answer about me and love.

But tonight I will not ask questions. I will not wonder why Jonathan Fields clicked on my profile—if it was because my new pictures gave him a hard-on or because he read my fake profile and it made him feel good about himself. I’m so tired of all of this. I just want to be done. I want it to be over. I want to stop fighting. I want to be happy like Rosie and Joe. So happy, I talk shit about it.

I take a deep breath and gather the cherry-red lipstick from the counter. I turn off the light. Walk out the door and down the stairs. I find Joe and Rosie in the kitchen, cooking something with too much garlic. Gabe has gone home to his wife, reluctantly no doubt. Still, I envy that he has someone waiting for him. He’s torn, but he’s also happy. Nothing is perfect. I would settle for that.

“Oh!” Rosie gasps. “You wore the dress!” She stops cooking and presses her right hand over her heart like she’s about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. She’s not sure if she’s happy that I’m going on a date. We’ve been walking this thin line of hope and worry since the day she came to fetch me in New York. But the fact that I’ve worn her dress somehow makes her feel better. Maybe it will just be a normal first date if I look this pretty.

“You look very nice.” Joe nods with the approval of a teacher handing back a test. A teacher who’s not a pervert. A test with a good grade.

“Thanks,” I say with the smile that got lost upstairs.

I feel naked arms around my naked legs and look down to see a little creature looking up. “Lala,” Mason says. He closes his eyes like he’s savoring his knowledge of me, my smell, and my name (sort of) and how I will now bend down and pick him up and give him a giant kiss. He tires of it quickly and squirms away, bare down to a diaper, and filled with joy that is unstoppable.

I wonder if I ever felt that way. I can’t imagine it.

Rosie gives me her car keys. “You’ll be back, right? Otherwise I can call you an Uber.…”

I take the keys. I will not stay out long with this man. Just enough to entice him. Rosie has told me how this works, and I am finally going to get it right.

I take the keys to make sure of it. Driving your sister’s minivan is better than not shaving your legs to ensure abstinence. I’ll be home tonight.

“Don’t forget the purse!” Rosie says. She points to a black purse that goes with the dress and that sits on the counter. “I emptied it for you.”

I take the purse. I put the lipstick inside.

I walk to the side door that leads to the driveway.

“You’ll be home?” Rosie asks again.

“Don’t worry,” I say.

I give them one last smile. They look at me across a room that has grown silent. I see a flash of hope wash over Rosie and it kills the hope inside me. Because right on its heels is the bone-deep fear that never leaves her when she looks at me.

I say nothing, swallowing the words.

You don’t need to worry, because I’m not going to be me tonight.

I have not convinced her with the lipstick and the dress. But she’ll see. I’ve left old me upstairs in the attic. I’ve done everything right this time. And I’ve chosen Jonathan Fields. A man with a proven track record in the sport of love and commitment.