The Dress From the Cedar Chest
Tiffany had the bags lined up on a lunch table in the school commons, five white paper bags with rope handles and the name of a boutique in Mankato printed on the side in gold. She was handing them out one at a time, like diplomas.
I had come in the side door by the gym to pick up Makayla from volleyball. I was still in my scrubs from a double at the county nursing home, and I smelled like the lotion we use on Mrs. Halvorson’s heels.
“Kaylee,” Tiffany said, and held out a bag. “Hannah. Ava. Brooklyn, honey, here’s yours.”
Four girls took four bags. They peeked inside and squealed a little, the way girls do. I could see navy blue fabric and a flash of something white folded on top.
Makayla was standing at the end of the table with her volleyball bag still on her shoulder and her knee pads pushed down around her ankles. She was smiling the way she smiles when she is waiting to be told she did something wrong.
“Makayla,” Tiffany said. Her voice did not change at all. It stayed bright and friendly, like she was reading the lunch menu over the intercom. “I still don’t have your one-fifty.”
The four girls went quiet. Hannah folded the top of her bag down like she wanted to hide what was in it.
“I told my mom,” Makayla said. “She said after payday.”
“Well, payday has to be by Wednesday,” Tiffany said. “I have to return whatever isn’t paid for. And if it isn’t paid, that’s fine, you can walk behind the float. It just has to match. The whole thing is about it matching.”
She said it like she was doing my daughter a kindness. Like walking behind a hay rack in your school sweatshirt while four girls in navy blue wave from the bales was a perfectly nice thing to offer a girl who had been voted onto homecoming court by her whole class.
I did not decide to move. I was just moving. I crossed the commons, past the trophy case and the vending machine that only takes exact change, and I put my hand on the back of my daughter’s neck, where her ponytail starts.
She was warm from practice. She did not turn around, but I felt her lean back into my hand about a quarter of an inch.
“Hi, Tiffany,” I said.
“Oh, Jess. Hi. I was just telling Makayla about the dresses.”
“I heard,” I said. “Thank you for picking them up. That’s a long drive to Mankato.” I looked at the four girls, and I made sure I smiled at each one of them, because none of this was theirs. “You girls are going to look beautiful.”
“So you’ll have the money Wednesday?” Tiffany said.
“Thank you, Tiffany,” I said again. “We’ll figure it out.”
Then I picked up Makayla’s water bottle off the table and we walked out to the car together, and I did not let go of her neck until we got to the parking lot.
Tiffany Ostrander is my husband’s cousin. Their mothers were sisters. She is three years older than me, and she has run the homecoming court float in our town for nine years, ever since Brooklyn was in the third grade and the woman who used to do it moved to Rochester to be near her grandkids.