Writings

Here was Candi at Lord & Taylor’s Paper Round-Up Boutique at last. She had been waiting for this moment for months. She’d removed all the cloth in her house; she had stripped away the bed sheets, the upholstery cushions, the curtains, and her wardrobe, and given everything to charity. She was, you see, going all paper. Unwovens—everything from bathing suits to bath towels—were hot. “The Paper Revolution,” McCall’s was dubbing it, and she was going to be right at the head of it, carrying its banner high. She’d already decided she was going to get married in an all-new mod paper wedding dress. It didn’t cost nearly as much as a cloth gown, and hey, she was only going to wear it once anyway. Her bridesmaids, that triumverate of trouble, were going to wear matching paper dresses.

Candi’s friends were coming to give her a bridal shower. Her always-a-bridesmaid, never-a-bride days were over, and so were the days of being tortured by her friends. Counseling Estelle through loser lovers, Sonnie through boyfriend blues, and Linda through husband hell—ended today. She was torn between two patterns when she spotted a complete kit: BRIDAL SHOWER BOUQUET. The package included a smock for the guest of honor, dresses for the attendees, a tablecloth, plates, napkins, café curtains, living room drapes, cushions, doilies, hats, favor boxes, four bags of confetti, matchboxes, even paper ashtrays (“Treated for fire resistance!”).

It wasn’t odd that A: this party wasn’t a surprise; B: it was being held at her house; and C: she was paying for everything. All those three girls were capable of doing was providing refreshments, and even then, she’d been careful to stock the liquor cabinet; Estelle had a thing for pre-noon vodka stingers and Linda liked her wine spritzers. The only one who would bring her own booze was Sonnie, who preferred beer from the bottle, then rinsed the bottles out and took them with her: Sonnie loved the earth. She had been the least incendiary, Candi thought, during The Incident that had triggered The Husband Crusade.
Oh, once they had been four, their friendships verdant as four-leaf clover. They’d all worked as diner waitresses, high hair and flaming lipstick and all, smoking each other’s cigarettes and bitching about disastrous dates between orders of pancakes. Estelle was after the man who could buy her everything she wanted; Linda wanted a man who would make a supreme father; Sonnie wanted someone who liked to hike. Candi wanted…a man. Period. Just someone who would love her back. She wasn’t choosy. And one by one, her friends found what they were looking for. But Candi, who was the least picky of all, was left behind. Polishing silverware in the kitchen with the stain-spattered cooks on the Christmas Day shift. And the anger burned within her. On some days, it flared like a grease fire.

“Having a man isn’t everything, you know,” she snapped at Estelle. “I can buy my own things and this way I’m not subject to returns.”

“On Christmas Day? How cliché is that?” she responded to Linda’s news of engagement. “What a cheapskate! So tell me, how many presents didn’t you get because he used the excuse he had to spend all his money on the ring?”

She couldn’t recall that she’d ever said anything like that to Sonnie. Sonnie didn’t brag. She just drank more beer. But Sonnie hadn’t hesitated to lash back at Candi. When the three of them had overnighted her letters explaining that she was kicked out of their lives, Sonnie had signed her name as well.

You certainly should not be jealous of us because we’re prettier and more accomplished, darling. Perhaps you ought to think of moving out of that diner, like I did, Estelle wrote. I had to leave there to find a man and you should be doing the same thing. Perhaps he would finally buy you some decent clothes.

I can’t believe it’s come to this. Oh, my, I sure hope you transform yourself. You really do need the work. Just go and…deal with yourself, Candi. Look at your own ugliness. You’re such a downer, my husband doesn’t even want you around, and I am so afraid to have you around as a model for my kids, Linda wrote.

Sonnie’s letter was all of three sentences: It’s really just that you can’t relate to our changing social status and that’s creating a serious conflict and making you bitter. You just need a man to fit into the circuit, to help you embrace this new social landscape, do you know what I’m saying? Call us when you have a man.

She hadn’t answered, choosing instead to cry for hours over Amaretto sours in bars that stayed open all night. “I haven’t any friends,” she told her filthy reflection. And then the light bulb blew out. And at Christmas, there was no one to invite her over for eggnog or Blue Nun.

After her pity party ended, she figured out that more than anything, more than angry or sad or wounded, she was shocked. Shocked and embarrassed.

Shocked that they had dumped her.

Embarrassed because they’d been talking about her behind her back. Dropping her name over the cocktail peanuts.

Her cheeks burned hot. She needed a husband. Then they would start talking to her again. She would get her friends back. They would be four again. They would never be mean to her again. She had to get a husband, yes, that is what she had to do.

She lost weight, bought new clothes and make-up, got a secretarial job and set about hooking a young corporate man. Which was not easy, for they were cardboard characters, into nothing but their expensive cars or red wines. She dated man after man but was not happy with any. But at last she found one who was a bit more sturdy than the others. And after they’d decided on a wedding date, she’d called her old friends, her fingers quaking as she dialed. After going to a swank bar to have drinks, the triumverate had decided that the new Candi was the sweetest ever.

“There is no need to apologize or bring up the past,” Estelle had declared, “after all, it was a blessing in disguise. We should celebrate the encroaching nuptials with a bridal shower.”
“Oh, and we should meet this guy, right?” Sonnie pushed her hip glasses up on her nose and gripped her beer.

“Yes! Yes!” Linda clapped her hands. “Have him stop by at the end of the shower so we can all meet him!”

And now, the day of the bridal shower, July 19th to be exact, Candi hummed “London Bridge is falling down…take the key and lock her up,” only those two phrases, over and over, as she tossed confetti high into the air and watched it grace her floors and furniture like rainbow ash. She hung the paper café curtains on the windows and unwrapped the plastic packaging on each of the paper dresses. They were supposedly one-size-fits-all, so she wasn’t worried. Estelle was tall and big-boned and had a penchant for stack heels; Sonnie was a bird of a woman with thighs the circumference of sticks; Linda, who’d pumped out three kids, was short and fat, but didn’t quite have rolls other women had—she was apple-shaped, so her belly just stuck out a tad. Candi hangered each dress, set it on the coat tree, then christened it with a purple ribbon. They were, after all, party gifts.

She admired the security grates that were over the outside of all of her windows, including on the second floor, and smiled, thinking that perhaps she could at least tie paper streamers to the cages on the first floor. They were white with intricate scrollling, but still, they should look less…

She heard the roar of the crowd on the afternoon football game. Ken was in the back room watching TV, waiting for his entrance.

Candi plugged in a pair of lamps made of laminated paper. Both were brownstone houses that glowed like stained glass. She frowned that these items didn’t quite fit in with the banner that read HAPPY BRIDAL SHOWER; it was done in red and white, not in the traditional pinks, yellows, greens and silvers. She understood the marketing concept: those colors and patterns would probably not have made packages attractive to busy jet-setters. Those who went with non-wovens were not into conventionality, that’s what McCall’s reported. Only the chic loved paper pajamas that could be worn to cocktail parties or to the beach. Still, it bothered her. Something wasn’t quite right. She sucked in a breath and surveyed her apartment and her work; it would have to do, and she supposed, in light of the circumstances, it probably didn’t matter anyway. She was ready.

Read Part 2 next month.

Kristi Petersen Schoonover’s “King of Bull” took 1st place in Toasted Cheese’s 2007 “Dead of Winter Contest”, and her short fiction has been featured in The Adirondack Review, Barbaric Yawp, The Illuminata, Chick Flicks, Afternoon, The Circle, Citizen Culture, I Like Monkeys, New Witch Magazine, MudRock: Stories & Tales, Waxing & Waning, The Wheel, and a host of others, including Susurrus Press’ I Am This Meat anthology. She is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College in Vermont. Her website is www.kristipetersen.net

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