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SUMMER 2006 SHORT FICTION CONTEST FIRST PLACE WINNER Jackie O's Dress Tessa sent up a hasty prayer for forgiveness as she slipped on the
dress Mom had bought her in exchange for a promise not to marry Al. "I'm a Hindu now. What?! Zip me up." I sincerely doubted the integrity of the dress' fifty-year old zipper. If I broke it, Tessa would kill me, stuff me, and sell me on eBay, just like all the other bites of useless Americana and collectabelia she traded in. More merchandise flowed through my big sister's hands each month than your average pawn broker's. "I know, I know-I shouldn't have taken it out of its preservation box. Shouldn't have even broken the hermetic seal. It's completely devalued now. But I want Marilyn to see that-do you understand? That I don't care about the resale value at all. That the dress means absolutely nothing to me. It'll kill her. She wanted it so much!" The zipper glided smoothly upward. Thank Lakshmi. "Besides. She could never fit into this thing even if she wanted to. Fat smug cow." Tessa planted her hands on her hips and swiveled side to side, eyeing herself in the mirror. She had Jackie O's figure, that was certain-with a fire-engine red Sarah Jessica Parker mop balanced incongruously on top, like a fluffy cherry blossom. The slim silver-blue cocktail dress was all minimalist angles and precise folds. "I mean, the fact that a certain someone is going to be there has nothing to do with the dress. Nothing! Seriously! What exactly did Mom tell you, Janie?" I shrugged and traced drugstore lipstick over my lips. "Nothing. Just that Daddy's making a speech, and she doesn't like the jokes he wrote." Tessa adjusted the slim straps on her shoulders and tweaked the hem straight. "Huh. It was designed by Oleg Cassini, you know. Technically, it's haute couture. Marilyn will never find anything even remotely resembling it. It's one of a kind." "Just how much did Mom give you for that dress, Tessa?" Tessa suddenly seemed to realize the perilous road she was heading down and jerked her eyes to meet mine in the mirror. I was deep in hock to my college. They were hunting me down, stalking me. Mom and Daddy had never given me a cent, claiming aging-parent poverty. "Didn't your boyfriend break up with you on the radio? Mom said it
was horrible!" *** "Did you hear that someone broke into the police station and stole their toilet? So far, the cops have nothing to go on!" Oh, hell yeah, Daddy's cronies appreciated that one! Mom, seated next to Tessa at our round table draped with generically-classy hotel linen, pursed her lips into a cotton candy colored thread. Thank goodness Daddy was finally ending his career as a plumber. His retirement banquet was her last trial in a lifetime of unfunny septic tank jokes and Holiday Inn merlot. "I got a private offer from a gentleman who's dying to get his hands on my pink Teenie Beanies," Tessa informed Mom in a non-whisper. "A very private offer, understand?" Anyone else hearing this might have suspected hanky-panky; however, after years of Tessa's eBay-fueled collection and liquidation habits, I knew she had gotten herself a live human customer on the phone, for once. "How much, honey?" Mom seemed relieved to turn away from Daddy on the podium, waving a monkey wrench of some sort and cracking up the roomful of Local 552 Union Plumbers. Tessa was scanning the faces at tables identical to ours, her gaze distracted. "Let's just say, I won't be hurting for carnival glass this summer. Three or four candy dishes, can you believe it?" Mom gave an appreciative, "Good job!" as Tessa craned her neck to
scour the rear of the banquet-hall-by-night, conference-room-B-by-day. Her Jackie O
dress caught the light from the brassy-classy chandeliers above, sending off "I've got my eye on a set of 1934 water goblets. Complete set, near-mint condition. Some old gal in Alabama kicked off, and I've got a pipeline into her pre-estate-sale sale." Tessa snagged her eyes on something, and her body suddenly jerked up
stiff like a wire in the insulating blue coil of her dress. As I watched, her
body split up into a whole bundle of wires: sinews in her neck and arms
going taut, jaw and eyebrows stiffening into hard lines, hair standing at
attention, losing a bit of its bouncy curl. I'd seen this electric zing go *** By the time Tessa was eleven years old, she had:
*** "Shut up, shut up-here she comes!" Tessa hissed around the rim of her plastic champagne flute as we stood drinking watery, but free, booze at the open bar. Tessa painted a dazzlingly fake smile over her lips and called out, "Marilyn! Hi there-come try this champagne. It's absolutely awful! It tastes exactly like that case of Moet de Whatever you bought off that woman in Missouri last October!" Ah. It suddenly all made sense to me! Marilyn wove through the half-inebriated gaggle of middle-aged plumbers with a triumphant smile on her face and Al dangling on her arm. So that was what had made Tessa turn against her high school Best Friend 4 Ever and fellow eBay aficionado! "Tessa," Marilyn nodded with a tight smile, then spied me and spread her lips into a full-blown smirk. "Janie! Janie, Janie, Janie-what happened, you poor thing?" Such pursed-lipped sympathy; such head-shaking regret! Al, big blond Nordic dufus, retained his cellophane grin of non-comprehension. "Hi, Marilyn." I am a gracious, unflappable young woman, I chanted silently. Marilyn kept one hand on Al's thick, plaid sports-jacketed arm while
snagging a glass of champagne with the other. "Well, at least you got your fifteen minutes of fame out of it. More
like fifteen minutes of drive-time shame, though, wasn't it! "Janie's boyfriend-ex-boyfriend, I guess I should say-is a radio personality. Of sorts. He broke up with her on his radio show last week," Marilyn explained. "Ah! Wow-za!" Al guffawed, square jaw masticating up and down manfully. Tessa squirmed on, smoothing a non-existent wrinkle in the skirt, brushing invisible lint from her glossy neckline. "It really was quite funny, though. You have to admit. Better than getting dumped the old fashioned way. Or having him send you, oh, I don't know. A voicemail." Tessa's wriggling abruptly ceased. That was how she nixed the deal with Al, according to Mom. Tessa's mouth turned down slightly at the corners. Then it fell open, wide. Something on Marilyn's hand was glinting more aggressively than Tessa's ill-gotten gown. "Oh-you noticed!" Marilyn lifted her left hand from Al's arm and
brandished it. "We were planning to keep it on the quiet for a few more
weeks, but it's just too exciting!" *** Mom was never a collector, but she wanted desperately to be. Mom was a settler. She settled for the economical college, the first respectable guy willing to marry her, the simple wedding, the small house, the two kids instead of six, the cesarean sections, the modest layettes, the hand-me-down baby clothes from her sisters. Then it all went sideways. She kept right on settling for herself, but she began encouraging
Tessa to collect things. She became Tessa's funding source; her backer. If Tessa
had lived in Holland in the 1600's, she would have been the biggest maniac
of the tulip mania, scouring the green earth for the rarest bloom, the most
delicate shading of sunset and dawn captured in fragile petals. It would
have been Mom, however, who liquidated her family fortune, sold everything
including herself, to fund her daughter's collection. Tessa always made Mom proud, until Al. Al was not a guy who would increase in value over time. Al was not rare or unique; not worth settling for. Mom explained this to Tessa at great length, and Tessa seemed to agree. She had no regrets, as far as I could tell, when she sent Al a voicemail and traded up for a used dress. That night, however, she looked at him as if she'd been duped. If Marilyn had settled for Al, there must have been something rare and unique under that blond cheese head of his. He must have been one-of-a-kind. He must have been, secretly, priceless. "So, Marilyn, did you know that I'm a Hindu now? I'm selling off all my Buddhist paraphernalia and whatnot next week; completely redecorating my meditation room with authentic Hindu religious artifacts. There are hundreds of gods and goddesses, you know. I'm getting miniature paintings of each and every one. I have a fabulous source in New Delhi." "I'm not big on religion, I'm afraid. Modern Bride is my Bible these days! You know, they have the most exquisite wedding dresses available online through this resale website I just discovered. $10,000, $20,000 gowns for half-price! I would prefer to try them on first, of course, but you can't argue with-" Marilyn stopped hard on a consonant and her eyes bugged at Tessa, as though she was seeing her for the first time. "Wait. Wait-is that the Jackie O? You're wearing the Jackie O?!" She dropped Al's hand. "What kind of sick freak are you? It was priceless!" Katherine Luck is a novelist and playwright living in Bothell, Washington. She's never traded a man for a dress. Yet.
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