That Summer(11)
Author: Sarah Dessen

Ashley went too; as a Vive cosmetics girl she was required to stand at a booth and offer free Blush n’ Brush gift packs to all the contestants. She said every butt-ugly girl from five counties around had showed up with too much eyeliner and lipstick on, posing up and down a plastic runway that was set up in Dillard’s Sweaters and Separates department. The paper covered it and reported that there was crying, laughing, joy, and sorrow, as there always was at the Lakeview Model tryouts since most of the girls got sent home because they were normal looking, short and round and big and small and not Gwendolyn Rogers. They picked fifteen girls who could now proudly claim that they got to go to official mall functions like the Boy Scout soapbox car display and stand around smiling with twelve-year-olds or the garden and home show and do compost and recycling demonstrations. They also got to be in the Lakeview Mall fashion shows, the first of which was the Fall Spectacular!, which appeared to be in rehearsal that Sunday.

There was a woman in a purple jogging suit who seemed to be in charge, or at least thought she was since she was walking around yelling at everyone to be quiet. The Lakeview Models were all grouped around the edge of the stage, posing and giggling and looking important. They were wearing red Lakeview Mall T-shirts and black shorts, as well as high heels that were clacking all over the place and making a huge racket. One of them, a brunette with her hair in a French twist, looked over at me, then poked the girl next to her so she turned and looked too. I felt myself slouching and imagined myself dwarfing the Lakeview Models in their heels and lipstick, a freak among fairies.

“Girls, girls, listen up.” The woman in the jogging suit clapped her hands, bringing quiet except for the pop pop pop noise of the staple gun a guy on the stage was using to attach giant leaves to a backdrop. “Now, we have less than three weeks until this fashion show must come off, so we’ve got to get serious and get working. As the Lakeview Models it is critical that you present the best possible image to the community.”

This seemed to calm everyone down but the staple-gun guy, who just rolled his eyes at no one in particular and hoisted another leaf up on the stage.

“Now,” the woman continued, “we’re going to do it just like we practiced last week: you enter, walk down the center aisle, across the stage, pause, and then go back down the way you came in. Remember the beat we learned last week: one, two, three.” She snapped her fingers, demonstrating. One of the models, a short girl with long black hair, snapped her own fingers in time to make sure she got it. I finished my Coke and tossed the cup in the trash.

“Okay, let’s line up and do it.” The woman climbed down the small steps at the side of the stage, with the Lakeview Models clackety-clacking along behind her. Their voices and hair tossing melded into one long stream of girl, a blur of makeup and giggling and clean skin. They lined up just to the right of me and I could feel my hipbones sticking out and wanted to cut myself to half my size, small enough to fit in a corner, under a table, in the palm of a hand.

I got up quickly as they were still shuffling into order, red shirt after red shirt, curve after curve, the same white toothy smile repeated into infinity. I turned and walked back to Little Feet while the purple-suited woman clapped out the beat behind me and the first girl started down the aisle, mindful of the pace: one, two, three.

Chapter Four

Lydia Catrell had changed my mother’s life. With her tan and frosted hair and too many brightly colored matching shorts-and-sandals outfits, she had brought out a side of my mother that I believed would otherwise have lain dormant forever, never shown to the world. My mother, who had spent most of her life smiling apologetically while my father entertained and offended everyone around him, had to wait until he had stepped out of the spotlight before she finally came into her own. And like it or not (and I usually didn’t), Lydia Catrell had shown her the way.

Lydia was a widow, like all women from Florida seemed to be. Her husband had been involved in the plastic utensil business and her house was filled with more colorful plastic bins and spatulas and bathtub mats than you could shake a stick at. She moved in with a flourish of bright furniture all making its way up the driveway right next to ours; a pink couch, a turquoise easy chair, a lemony-peach divan. My mother went over the next day with a mason jar full of roses and zinnias and stayed for three hours, most of it spent listening to Lydia talk about herself and her children and her dead husband. Lydia was all color and noise, in her bright pink shorts and sequined T-shirts with fringe, zooming through the neighborhood in her huge Lincoln Town Car that seemed to suck up the road as it passed. Lydia blew in like a cyclone, altering the landscape around her, and my mother was pulled in immediately.

Within a month you could see the change. My mother was wearing sandals and even the occasional sequined shirt, frosting her hair, and going out every Thursday night to Ranzino’s, the bar at the Holiday Inn that featured easy-listening hits, dancing, and tons of paunchy men in toupees out for a good time. My mother came home with her cheeks flushed, tossing her newly frosted hair, saying she couldn’t believe she’d ever go to such a place and Lydia was such a card and it wasn’t her thing, not at all, only to head right back the next Thursday. I sat upstairs and listened to my mother pour her heart out to Lydia Catrell over coffee, thinking these were things she could never share with me. She cried and cursed my father as Lydia clucked her tongue and said Poor dear, it must have been so hard for you. Ashley had Lewis and my mother had Lydia but I was alone on Thursday nights, waiting for the rumble of the Town Car in the driveway and my mother’s key in the lock on the kitchen door. I couldn’t get to sleep until I heard her trying to tiptoe past my door in an effort not to wake me.

The newest thing was the trip to Europe. Lydia belonged to a travel club called The Old-Timers, which was a bunch of single women over forty who got a cheap group rate by taking trips together to exotic locales, usually Las Vegas. My mother had been on one of those trips a few months after Lydia moved in. I’d spent the weekend with my dad and the Weather Pet, picturing my mother playing blackjack, seeing Wayne Newton, and going to the Liberace Museum, all of which were listed on The Old-Timers travel itinerary. After three days and four nights my mother had returned with a new white shorts-and-sandals set, winnings of about fifty bucks, and a million stories about these middle-aged women taking Vegas by storm. She said it was the best time she ever had, so it was no wonder she was interested in the trip to Europe. That was a four-week extravaganza through England, Italy, France, and Spain, with stops along the way to see the bullfights, tour Buckingham Palace, and sunbathe nude in the South of France, the latter being something my mother chose to pass on. If she went, she’d be leaving two weeks after Ashley got married.