The Pretty One(9)

Naturally, he never, ever asks Lucy if she masterminded the cookie’s escape or if she finished off the container of ice cream or if she agreed that Jennifer Love Hewitt probably works out. Fortunately, my dad is hardly ever home. Which is good, since my mom has never once suggested that I had seen the cookies hop on the last train out of town.

Still, despite my apprehension, on the morning of our father-daughter bonding day, I arrive downstairs dressed and determined to be cheerful. Lucy is sitting at the table reading the newspaper and Dad is at the stove stirring a giant batch of scrambled eggs with cheese. The fact that Mom has gone grocery shopping at nine in the morning and is not there is extremely suspicious. I must say, this whole father-daughter-shopping-for-fall-festival-dresses has her stamp all over it. Every now and then my mom decides we’re in desperate need of some father-daughter bonding time, and realizing that both Lucy and I would prefer to be with her, she conjures up some excuse, creating a situation where it’s either my dad or nothing at all.

“What is that thing?” my dad asks, motioning toward my diorama, which happens to be in the center of the table, with his spatula. Even though I’ve been working on my diorama almost nonstop for two months, it figures that this is the first time he’s noticed it.

“That thing is Jay Gatsby’s living room,” I say, annoyed.

I did my first diorama last year for a set design class and it has become a sort of hobby for me. I make at least one every other month, usually based on the books we are reading in school. Since I can wield a circular saw with ease (even though I pretty much just use hand tools for my diorama creations), they are pretty elaborate, with real wood paneling, dollhouse furniture I pick up on eBay or make myself, and, as in the case with The Great Gatsby, wallpaper I design and paint with tiny little stencils. Mrs. Bordeaux always said she was giving me extra credit for them, which was kind of a joke between us, since I always got an A in English anyway.

“Well, it doesn’t belong on the table,” he says, totally unimpressed by Mr. Gatsby’s varnished wood floors, heavy tapestry drapes, Oriental rug, miniature potted palm, and velvet furniture.

“Well, there’s really no other place for it,” I say defensively.

My dad stops stirring the eggs. “Find a place,” he says in a tone that lets me know he’s about to blow.

Lucy looks up from the paper and shoots me a nervous look like, Please don’t get him all upset on our shopping day!

I grudgingly take the diorama upstairs and set it in the middle of my bed.

By the time I get back to the kitchen, the table is set and Dad is dishing out the eggs.

“None for me, thanks,” Lucy says, waving them away. “I’m just going to have toast.”

“You feel okay?” he asks, concerned.

That’s another thing. If I said I didn’t want any eggs he never would have assumed I was sick. Instead, he would have assumed I was dieting and congratulated me on my willpower.

“I just don’t want to be all bloated when I try on dresses,” she says.

My dad glances at the eggs he has already dished out on my plate, like, Uh-oh.

I’m half expecting him to rush back over and spoon some off my plate, so I take my seat and (even though I’m not hungry in the slightest) shovel a giant forkful in my mouth. What he doesn’t know is that, unlike Lucy, I don’t have to worry about bloat. Yesterday I stopped at the mall in the Inner Harbor and purchased some SPANX Power Panties with Tummy Control. Desperate times called for desperate measures.





After breakfast I wedge myself into my father’s convertible Cabrio and we drive to the Towson Town Center. Both my dad and I follow Lucy through the mass of stores and into Lucy’s favorite, Mein-U. Lucy flips through rack after rack like a cranky Simon Cowell dismissing contestants before finally yanking out a bright fuchsia silk dress with spaghetti straps. I can tell it’s for me, since Lucy’s dresses involve just enough material to dry a wet dish. I can also tell that I already hate the way it looks on me, even though I haven’t tried it on yet. “What do you think?” she asks.

“I’m not sure about the color,” I say, chewing on my thumbnail. Actually, I love bright colors, but everyone knows that they’re not slenderizing, so I prefer to stick with basic black.

“I like it,” Dad says from behind us.

I accept the dress from Lucy and hug it to my chest and stand there waiting patiently while Lucy pulls several pastel-colored dresses for herself and two more for me, one black and one red. Finally, she takes her seven dresses and I take my three and we head toward the dressing room, where, even though it is really crowded and Lucy sees me naked every day, I still insist on getting my own room. I don’t want Lucy to know about the SPANX, and besides, I have a feeling the dress Lucy chose for me isn’t going to work out and I have no intention of humiliating myself any more than necessary.

I walk into the dressing room and lock the door behind me. I take the SPANX out of my purse and step into it, yanking it up slowly. It feels like my butt is in an iron vise and a rubber band is wrapped around my belly. I can’t help but wonder if it will even be physically possible for me to wear it more than two seconds. What if I pass out from loss of oxygen?

I start with the black dress first, since it’s my official color, not to mention it’s the only size thirteen. (The other two are elevens.) I undo the zipper and step into it, pulling it up over my shoulders. So far so good, but the zipper is not up yet. Because of the SPANX it’s impossible to suck in my stomach, so I hold my breath as I twist my arms behind me to pull up the zipper. It gets halfway up and stops. This is a size thirteen? Have I gotten too big to fit into a size thirteen? Even though I suspect the answer is a big fat yes, I’m not ready to admit defeat since that would mean having to take a size fifteen off the rack (although it’s doubtful it even comes that big) and having to deal with my father’s look of shock and horror.