"Peyton".
She pauses above the keyboard, fingers poised in thought.
"Such an ambiguous name, inviting the perennial question:
male or female? There are other names that a girl should belong to; Mary Cadis,
Lila, Jackie, luscious, curving, pink-ribbon names. But Peyton, no, Peyton demurs.
Peyton clomps in all asexual and gamine and uneasy, all sharp hips and angles
and probably carrying a lacrosse stick. However, for
once, I might retire the permanent dissatisfaction, because in this instance, I
am at an advantage. Who knew? Evidently, the richer you are in the South, the
more you name your girls after your grandfathers. And so Peyton now can sail
in, right between Bondurant Ballou and Sterling Sargent, unnoticed and unremarkable in any way, thus
perhaps masking the obvious – she doesn't belong there in the first place. What
more could a bandit debutante ask for, except maybe to cop a feel from Moynahan Raines( our 90 year old
Rotary President) under the table? The South Rises Again! Yip yip hurray!"
She saves the document and clicks off.
She rarely deletes stuff anymore, not like she used to.
Outside, a warm spring night is blooming. The breeze gently ruffles her white lace curtains, blowing in the scent of heavy, dark honeysuckle. The twilight is ending, darkness taking over the purple lit sky, shrouding the blooming magnolia, its thick, stiff blossoms like ghosts in the yard. A single lone star hangs over the wide crown of the blossoming tree, the moon not low enough yet to see, a faint streak of long lost sunset electric blue barely hanging to the horizon. She turns a lamp on, inviting the evening in, whispering to the night. Her legs slowly curl up to her chest, her eyes closing, the warm breeze stroking her bare shoulders like lacy dogwood petals. It makes something inside her shudder.
"Frankly, it fairly makes me ache for a fuck", she thinks, and her eyes pop open stunned with surprise. A delicate blush springs to her face; she tries to push the thought away, the crass wording from which it sprang so unbidden into her mind. But a smile seizes her face, one that she can't push down, a terrible smile; she tries to push it with her fingertips, but it won't leave. With a screech she flings herself onto her bed, curling up inside herself with her mind racing, her chest cracking open because this smile, it's springing, cutting itself straight out from her heart. The ache unfolds like damp wings opening; melancholy touches her with a silent whisper, suggesting things.
The night thrums outside, the song of the crickets keeping silent rhythm, the stiff magnolia blossoms trembling, closing for the night.
She's tried so hard for so long to push this down. She's tried not to think of his sweet-shaped mouth and lean body instead of the warm hand and innocent smile he offers her. She knows that he's done the same thing, but tonight with the evening reaching her inside her room with its honeysuckle poison, the thought is back. It's opened in her and struck something hard in that secret place, fragrant like mint and tasting like sugar-bourbon, caressing, suggestive, dizzy; she wonder if he ever thinks of her that way.
The thought makes her pale; she wants to know if he ever wakes up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, eyes damp and full, body weak and betrayed by a dream of her, sheets damp and twisted around him. She knows sometimes he's like corded iron with restraint, she knows by the thinness of his mouth, betrayal of his hand, harsh retreat.
"I want you to," she tells the evening honestly. "But I'm so afraid of ruining it all. We're not like other people, you know. Things aren't allowed to be easy."
The evening says nothing, the curtains gently dancing again, reaching towards her, a cool undercurrent fragrant and heavy with damp curling around her. There is a hint of the river.
She touches her lips, closing her eyes.
Sometimes, if she lets her mind wander into those regions, she is lost for hours.
Lila Slater's dress is watered silk, shipped straight from New York. It got packed in a box, standing upright, full of tissue stuffing; it has a Cinderella skirt and it looks "just like Jessica Simpson's wedding dress, you guys, except no daisies!" Lila flips back her pale blond hair and blinks her pale blond eyelashes, basking in the glow of attention.
Since it's gotten warmer, they've moved to the tables outside, the jocks and cheerleaders and other minor successes. Lila's marked off the cheer squad table unofficially with a big blue and white ribbon bow; they cluster here at lunch today, gazing at her either enviously or nonchalantly. She applies pale gloss and continues.
"Of course, my dad's getting me a big orchid corsage. Everyone knows anything less would just be too tacky; do you know Honey Chastain actually had roses last year? Everyone was shocked, and she was humiliated into tears; figures, anyone who names their child Honey would let her wear roses as a corsage. Peyton, you might want to take notes since you're so ….new at this."
She smiles venomously at the lanky girl sitting there, chomping on a soggy peanut butter sandwich dripping with jam. Peyton cheerfully gives her the finger and grins good naturedly, placing her fist on her chest and letting out a dainty little burp, then returning to her magazine.
Lila pauses for a moment, unsure. No reaction still. Peyton flips a page. She pales a trifle, not understanding; the table waits for the usual scenario, but there is nothing.
"I just wouldn't want you to embarrass yourself terribly, since you haven't had anyone probably train you for a twelve place setting," Lila continues sharply, and a few girls blanch at this, a muted whisper or two flying. The unspoken word, Mother, hangs in the air like a bolt of lightning. Behind a waterfall of hair, Peyton's mouth trembles and stills. Her head raises slowly, her tone even.
"I may not know an ice spoon from a soup spoon, Lila, but you don't know how to behave in public and be polite. And that makes you even less of a precious lady."
They both stare at each other, and Lila knows her own maliciousness too well; it stares starkly back at her. The ultimate accusation, thinks Peyton. Your own weapon. For shame.
For the first time, Lila's cheeks redden and her eyes gleam wetly. She turns away quickly, and Peyton goes back to her magazine.
No one is watching now; they're all absorbed in Maimie Vandross' recount of the last lake house party where Bunny Cross threw up all over Mrs. Cross' chenille.
The two blond girls look back up at each other. Peyton is quiet and steady. Lila is thin and furious with helplessness. She turns away, joining Bunny's conversation.
Over her shoulder, before her eyes even reach him, she can feel his smile. She looks out of the corner of her eye shyly, knowing that he's watching.
His mouth forms two words: game over. The grin that follows is blinding.
The screen door bangs shut behind her, making the chain on the porch light swing in a gentle tapping rhythm against the glass.
She pauses, listening to it for a moment. How many years, how many times? The noise is an echo in her memory, stirring heavy things. Flies and moths buzz around the bulb, specks in a blinding little halo around the pale white center; outside the dark,mossy night presses in heavily, thick and damp from the river.
He's sitting in the easy chair, not particularly looking at anything, bottle of Icehouse in his hand.
She locks the door behind her, and moves silently towards the kitchen. She stands in the dark of the living room awkwardly for one second, looking at his dark outline.
"C'mere," he says, his voice coming up from the darkness, raspy. "I want to show you something."
They stand in his room. Her room. A dim light casts shabby shadows. They look at the corpse of the white thing lying on his bed.
She touches the thin, invisible bones of the basque, the silky curve of the arm, the thin, delicate skin of it. The skirt, infinite and blooming like a magnolia, feather light, spreads out covering miles of carpet.
"It was her cotillion dress. She saved it. Said she had it when she was 17 in 1976. I dug it up from a box in the old garage."
"How come you never told me?"
He shrugs.
"Her dad was in the Rotary. He owned a Ford dealership. She didn't want you to think she'd been better than me or somethin'. That was her way, always thinking ahead, making plans 'bout how to raise you to respect both your parents and know your ABC's and be a liberated woman and what not. It was the seventies."
His voice is heavy. Slow.
"You can take it to the shop if it needs fitting. It's kinda-fussy-I know girls now have these-dresses-without tops-"
"Strapless" she replies in monotone, staring down.
"Strapless," he echoes. She can hear his labored breathing.
"I think it's really pretty," she replies, and he breathes out, a heavy exhalation.
"Ok then," he says. "Ok then."
He's tired. She can feel his exhaustion, pressing, falling around him, crowding her out to the margins far away from him where she stands cold and alone.
Wouldn't it be, she thinks, such a perfect occasion for both of us to break into tears, hug, and start a better life? Wouldn't it?
"Oh Dad," she says then, madly. "Poor Dad. Poor Mama."
He's crying, a tall man with bent shoulders and stubble and thin legs like Peyton's, his gaunt face so sad in that nasty light. His cheeks are wet, tears dripping off his jaw. He sinks into a chair, his head in his hands, bent like an old man, crooked.
"Poor Peyton," she finishes. A pause. "Ah Daddy don't," she says dully. "Don't just now."
He stops.
They stay there frozen awkwardly, like characters in a stage play waiting for the cue.
"I see you bringing that boy around now," he says. "I hope you're being a lady. I never told you much about that but I guess now that you're seeing boys I should since she isn't around. You be good now, and don't let them come in past the porch when I'm not home, and don't let them get up too close on you. I'm no idiot, I know how boys are."
She says nothing, listening blindly. Oh Dad. If you only knew. Poor Mama. Poor Dad. Oh Peyton.
"And you mind your manners at the Rotary and don't go around making out in places where people can see you. It just doesn't seem right. Boys like nice girls – that's the kind they come back to."
She nods, unseeing, looking at that dress, the tiny waist, the elegant, fitted bodice, the three quarter sleeves and little pearl buttons.
"Sure Daddy," she tells him.
"She was…….she was … a nice girl," he says then, and his voice sags, dead and tired.
She takes the dress. It trails behind her like a dead body, stiff with tulle.
"Get some sleep before you get on the barge," she tells him. She pauses. "Luke's uncle's gonna walk me at the ball-he's in the Rotary too cause he owns the Autoshop."
He says nothing.
"Goodnight," she finishes, and closes the door.
She twists and turns on her bed, her eyes full of damp and dark and trembling. The night presses in around her, the clock keeping silent time. Oh Daddy. Poor Mama. Poor Peyton, the echo tells her, her own mad voice, crazy voice, echoing deadly in that room hitting the nastily lit wall and falling like blocks to the floor. Weak, pitiful Daddy, sad poor Daddy.
Not like me, she says to no one. I'm like Mama.
Mama wouldn't have cried.
Mama would've said, oh fuck it, fuck your dead whatever, you're alive, that has to be enough because that is what it is! Stand up straight Peyton and stop scratching. I love you.
She cries then, touching that silky dress, stroking it like a kitten on the chair beside her, breathing in its musty scent, daring to hold it for the first time.
She has to sometime.
I can't be hard forever, she thinks, sobbing. I have to be soft sometimes. I'm a fucking walking disaster. I'm allowed to cry about that at least.
But she's careful not to let tears get on the dress.
She can't afford dry cleaning, not for this thing.