In the laundry room, I heard the sound of the dryer winding down with the load of laundry I’d put in that morning. There would be clothes to fold and put away.
I put on a Madonna CD. Not the music of choice at the Emersons’, but I could play whatever music I wanted now. As loud as I wanted. The song I wanted to hear: “Like a Virgin.”
I started in on the laundry, dancing. Hayward’s clothes first. He favored oversized T-shirts, no doubt to conceal the pudginess of his body, and boxer shorts. It felt odd, folding the underwear of a boy so close to my own age. Even when it was freshly washed, I didn’t like touching his underwear.
Jilly’s clothes were less problematic. She favored pink and mauve, and shirts with glitter on them—Care Bears, Barbie, Teddy Ruxpin, Wonder Woman,The Little Mermaid—though Regina said thoseweren’t appropriate for the club. She had tiny shorts in every shade of pastel. Ruffled socks. Day-of-the-week panties. Someone—it must have been Jilly herself; Prudence would know better—had tossed a few of her American Girl doll outfits in the laundry with her own clothes. I lifted a tiny red sweater from the pile, real wool, belonging to her Molly doll, shrunk to half its original size.
Jilly would cry when she saw it. But only briefly. They’d buy her another one.
The laundry I studied most closely belonged to Regina. She—or possibly Prudence—had placed her panties and a couple of bras in a special bag, meant to protect the delicate fabric. The panties were silk, bikini cut, each with a rosebud on the front. The bras—tiny cups, see-through lace—featured matching rosebuds.
After I finished folding, I brought each person’s stack of clean and folded laundry to their room. I left Regina’s for last. In the weeks since I’d first arrived at Wonderland, this would be the first time I’d ever actually entered her room. I held one of the bras up to my body, allowing myself to pretend I was Regina. This proved more than my imagination could accomplish. Even though I had no breasts, Regina’s bra was too small to go around my body and fasten.
I set the bra back in the pile.
All I had to do was set her things on the foot of her bed as I’d done with the others.
But nobody was home.
I opened the top drawer of her dresser.
If this had been one of the stories I cooked up for my journal, now would be the moment I’d make some shocking discovery: Letters from a lover. A pair of handcuffs. A whip. I’d heard about this kind of thing from my friend Martha at school, whose father had a collection of X-rated videos. One time, when her parents were out of town and the older brother who was supposed to be watching her was off someplace with his girlfriend, we’d gotten to watch one, but only for about a minute because they came home.
All Regina’s drawers contained were more pairs of panties. All pretty much the same, just slightly different shades of silk. Light beige, white, light pink. Same with the bras.
I opened the closet. I was familiar with much of Regina’s wardrobe, but one dress called out to me. I’d never seen her in this one.
The dress was silk, long and slim, a shade of silver like a sardine. Judging from the size, she must have bought it a long time ago, when she wasn’t quite as skinny. I’d fit into this one.
I slipped it off the hanger and pulled my T-shirt over my head, stepped out of my shorts and underpants. (Mine were the old-fashioned kind. Cotton.)
I hadn’t put my training bra on that day, so all I had on was my undershirt. I took this off too.
The fabric of the dress felt like a cloud. I shimmied into it and fastened the zipper. I stood in front of the mirror.
Next to the bureau was one of those brushes people use to remove lint from their clothes—for the type of people who care about lint on their clothes. I picked it up and held it to my face as if it were a microphone. I looked in the mirror.
The CD was still on. Madonna was singing a different song now. “Material Girl.” I wasn’t singing along with Madonna so much as I was pretending to be her.
Or maybe I was just pretending to be the kind of girl who would dance in a silver sardine dress with no underwear on, belting out a song to a few thousand fans. But it was enough being alone in a house on the shore of a lake in Maine, just singing to myself at the top of my lungs.
25
How to Talk like a Doll
The four of us were playing badminton out on the lawn—Jilly and Forrest on one side of the net, Hayward and I on the other. Regina was off on the sidelines with her knitting, half-watching from her spot on the recliner. I’d been feeling relieved that, after that one uncomfortable time when she’d confided in me over her feelings about Forrest’s sexual needs, Regina had made no further mention of the topic. In the days since the Barnetts’ visit, Brenda’s name had not been spoken again. If anything, Forrest seemed more attentive to Regina than usual. That was saying a lot. But he had been gone a lot more than usual too. Training for the triathlon took a lot of time, he explained.
Suddenly he put down his badminton racquet and shot off toward the house so fast you might have thought he’d smelled smoke. When he returned a few moments later he was carrying a glass of ice water and one of Regina’s many pill bottles. In my days at Wonderland, I’d come to recognize how many of these there were, and the care with which Forrest kept track of them all.
“I should have brought you these back at lunchtime,” he said, leaning over her, almost as if she were a sick child. “I hate it when I mess up the schedule.”
“What does it matter?” she sighed. “Whether I take these or not, I’ll still feel like shit.”
What could you say to that? He didn’t try, just rubbed her back and rearranged the cushions under her feet.
“Just give it a few minutes,” he said. “I won’t be late with these again.”
Some men—my father, for instance—might have shown annoyance at a moment like this. (More accurately, my father would probably have broken a plate, if one had been within reach.) Not Forrest. It occurred to me that as annoying as it must be, looking out for Regina in all the ways Forrest did, some part of him seemed to love his role as her protector. Maybe it made him feel needed.
