Elizabeth J Church - All the Beautiful Girls

ONE EVENING WHEN Lily, now a senior in high school, got off work, the Aviator was waiting for her. He leaned against the waxed black shine of his car, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses.

“You need to watch yourself,” he said without preamble. “You’re asking for trouble.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“What you’re doing. With men. I’ve seen you,” he said, dropping the end of his cigarette to the asphalt and crushing it beneath his boot. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

She couldn’t see his eyes, but the set jaw, the taut striations of his neck muscles, told her that he was dead serious.

“I’m not doing anything with men,” Lily said. “I don’t even date.” High school boys stared at Lily but were too intimidated to approach her, and she did nothing to encourage them.

“Boys are one thing.” The Aviator picked up the cigarette butt and folded it into his handkerchief. “Leading men on—men who would be only too happy to take what they see—that’s another story entirely.”

“You’re talking about flirting ? You’re telling me not to flirt? Who do you think you are?” She paused and then daringly added, “It’s not as if you’re my father.”

The Aviator moved to within a foot of her, and she felt the implicit threat of his height, his muscles. His shadow covered her. But there was a surprising tenderness in his voice when he said, “No, Lily, I’m not your father. I am your friend, and I’m trying to watch out for you.”

Before she could come up with a sarcastic, dismissive response, he climbed into his car, started the engine, and left her there to decide.

LILY FREQUENTED THE thrift store in the basement of the Episcopal church. She’d just this year discovered that the wealthier women of the congregation regularly donated nearly new clothing; some pieces even bore designer labels. Lily had found a pair of Balenciaga boots’black suede that came up and over her knees—for just five dollars. And, there was more: silk blouses, sunglasses, fringed leather purses. She found more fashionable pieces and at better prices than she could at J.C. Penney or Sears, and no one was the wiser.

When she came across a particularly pretty cardigan sweater in a lovely teal, she brought it home for her aunt who, standing before her bedroom mirror, said, “But with this open weave. It’s a little impractical, isn’t it? What will the girls in Bible-study class say?”

In that moment, Lily felt sympathy for the girl who’d been named Tatum, who’d endured a younger sister who was much, much prettier than she, who’d had to watch her sister marry well. And then who’d been saddled with a bewildering, cast-off child and a husband who night after night sat in his chair, adhered like fungus to the Naugahyde. Lily saw her aunt’s stoicism, her self-defensive rigidity, how desperately she tried to conceal her confusion and fears of inadequacy. And Lily saw that her aunt would never, ever go anywhere. She would never leave Kansas.

It made Lily wonder. Would Mama be thick around the middle, and would Daddy be balding and forgetful? Would they still live in Salina, or would they have moved to a new town, to new sights? What would Dawn be like? Would she be in nursing college or married to a farmer or a railroad engineer or an aircraft mechanic? Would she already have toddlers who would call excitedly for Aunt Lily when she stopped by with Popsicles? Would Dawn make Mama’s Swedish meatball recipe and plan elaborate picnics next to the Smoky Hill River? Would she admire the dance costumes Lily designed and applaud when Lily stood on stage?

“Do you ever think about them?” Lily asked in her sentimental moment of weakness.

“Never,” Aunt Tate said, pulling her arms from the sweater and heading for her bedroom. “And you shouldn’t either,” she added. “Pure self-indulgence.”

Lily heard her aunt’s closet door open and close with finality, and she knew Aunt Tate would never permit herself the treat of the delicate sweater. She’d keep it in that closet, undisturbed, and she’d instead relish her ramrod austerity. Lily nearly went to embrace her aunt. Tate was suddenly such a sad creature, believing that her habitual ferocity could protect her from loss and pain. Walls, Lily thought, keep out the good as well as the bad. She was determined to remember that, not to let fear overtake her, never to risk losing her joy.

FOR THE FIRST Annual Tah-Dah! Dance Studio Scholarship Fundraiser, Mrs. Baumgarten rented the Fox-Watson movie theater on South Santa Fe Avenue and managed to get ahold of a print of Ocean’s 11 with Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson and—best of all—Sammy Davis, Jr. Lily sold all of the five-dollar tickets she could at school and work, and she bought a Simplicity pattern for a clean-lined, spaghetti-strap dress. She made it in dark gold satin and hemmed it so that it ended two thirds of the way up her thighs. Even though it was almost too warm for them, she paired the dress with the Balenciaga boots, and she tied a length of black satin ribbon around her neck as a choker. For added drama, Lily moistened her cake of black liner and outlined her eyes as usual, and then she added a third dark line along the crease of her eyelid, like Twiggy. Using an eyebrow pencil, she extended the outer edges of her eyebrows. She applied a pair of false eyelashes and a light-blue cream eye shadow, and finished with Yardley beige-pink lipstick.

“You’re not leaving my house dressed like a whore,” Uncle Miles said when he spied her trying to make a quick exit through the kitchen door. He put both his hands on her forearm and twisted them in opposite directions—a version of what the kids called an Indian burn. When he released her arm, Lily stepped back and accidentally smacked the back of her head against the furnace door.

She felt her upper lip reflexively lift into a snarl. “You’re calling me a whore?” she said, and then waited a meaningful beat. “Quite a statement for a man who Fucks. Little. Girls, ” she spat, and then caught sight of Aunt Tate standing in the entry to the kitchen.

Aunt Tate sagged heavily against the doorjamb as if her skeleton had been dissolved in acid and all that was left of her was limp, loose skin. Lily cut past Uncle Miles and reached for her aunt’s arm.

“Stay away! Get away from me! I don’t need your help!” Heavy-limbed, Aunt Tate kept a balancing hand against the wall until she reached the kitchen stool and dropped into it. She pressed her lips together, looked from Lily to her husband and then back again. In her aunt’s eyes, Lily saw a teeter-totter of indecision, of weights and balances. And then, it happened. Lily knew before her aunt said a word, and so the words when they came were mere confirmation: “Your uncle ’s right. You look like a hooker.”

Lily closed her eyes, dropped her chin to her chest, and slumped against the wall. She wanted darkness. And tears. The release of ten years’ worth of tears—everything she’d held back seemingly forever. But she would never give them that. Instead, she envisioned using her nails to pinch the soft skin inside her upper arm and thought about the relief of leaving half-moon bruises. Or maybe stabbing a fork into her thigh. Razor blades. Any kind of distracting pain.

A thick silence settled over the kitchen. Lily thought she smelled the garlic and onion of ten thousand meals, the sulfur of rotting eggs, hamburger meat gone bad.

Don’t let them diminish you, Scallywag, she told herself, and then, wordlessly, Lily straightened her shoulders and left through the kitchen door. No one tried to stop her. When she reached the curb, she used trembling fingers to light a cigarette and stood in the spot where she habitually waited for her friend from dance class to come pick her up. Even though the evening was mild, she wrapped her arms around her shoulders and began shivering. Her whole body vibrated; she could feel her legs shaking, her lips trembling. She shuddered—big shudders that hunched her shoulders suddenly, made her throw her head back as if she were having a seizure. She stomped her feet, did a little softshoe to warm herself, tried to trick her body out of its inclination toward a state of shock. She felt as though she’d been hit, and hit hard, by something harsh and unforgiving.