“I know, I was just . . .” He trailed off.
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s great. I just wanted to make sure that everything is great with you as well. Just wanted to make sure you didn’t think you were missing out on things other girls your age do. Like go to parties. And have jobs.”
“I definitely don’t miss going to parties. That’s for sure. I hadn’t really thought about a job. Do you think I should get one?”
“I think you should if you want to. You don’t need to, obviously, but I had the thought. They’re hiring at Blethen’s Apothecary.”
She’d applied and been hired at the end of her interview by a manager not a whole lot older than she was, a stutterer named Jeff who was almost skeletally thin. She’d thought she’d hate the job, especially after Jeff informed her that treating customers with respect was her number one priority, but she turned out to love it, even the menial tasks, like restocking the shelves, making sure that everything along the row was displayed neatly and perfectly. She liked this part of the job actually better than running the cash register, but she didn’t even mind that. Her favorite part was cashing out at the end of her shift, adding up the register contents against the receipts, making sure it balanced. She didn’t mind dealing with the customers, but she didn’t like when people recognized her from high school, either old classmates or past teachers. They always asked her what she was doing now, and she’d say that she was taking classes at MCC, and sometimes, though not often, they’d ask her where she was living, and she would simply say that she was still at home. A couple of times, she saw the memory that her mother had died pass across their features. They would blush, or avert their eyes, not knowing what to say. It was awkward, but it didn’t last, and most of the time she never saw them again.
That was not the case with Mrs. Bergeron, Gina’s mother, who came in frequently and always sought out Alice, asking her how she was doing, and telling her all about Gina as though the two of them were still best friends. “She had to drop out of NYU because she just couldn’t keep up with her courses and her modeling schedule at the same time. My husband said that she should have dropped some of her modeling work, but I said, well, she can always go back to school and finish, and she won’t always be able to be a model. I mean, strike while the going is good, right?” She reminded Alice so much of Gina, the way her words would speed up while she was talking, ending her sentences by taking a deep breath.
Once, when Alice was working in the deodorant and bodywash aisle, Mrs. Bergeron, visibly elated, approached her holding the latest copy of Cosmopolitan.
“You’re not going to believe this, Alice,” she said, thumbing the issue open to an ad for Jordache, and there was Gina, in high-cut shorts and long socks with two other girls in what was supposed to be a high school cafeteria. The ad was selling a new line of knitted socks, and Mrs. Bergeron said, “She also did a session for jeans, but doesn’t know if they’re going to use those pictures yet. Can you believe it?”
Alice did believe it—she’d always known Gina was going to be a star—but shook her head at Mrs. Bergeron and said, “Amazing.”
“I know, right? I might have to buy every last copy.”
Gina’s mother ended up buying most of the copies, but not quite all of them, and Alice took one home with her, first reading the magazine cover to cover while Jake watched a hockey game, then later, cutting out the ad, and hiding it in the desk in her old bedroom. She kept wondering if Gina was happy, and if she had a nice boyfriend now that she was a model. It was a possibility, but she doubted it. Gina looked very skinny in the ad, and Alice wondered what kinds of drugs she was taking.
Over the following year, Gina went from appearing in the Jordache socks ad with two other models to appearing in a denim campaign all by herself, wearing skintight jeans and an unbuttoned silk blouse. Mrs. Bergeron informed Alice that Gina had started to book runway shows, and magazine layouts, and was going by the professional name of simply Bijou. “You should visit her, Alice,” she would say. “She’d love that.”
“I’m pretty busy up here,” Alice would reply.
“I’m sure they’d let you take a few days off from work, and your stepfather . . . he wouldn’t care if you spent some time in New York, would he?”
Whenever Mrs. Bergeron mentioned Jake—always calling him “your stepfather”—Alice could hear the disdain in her voice. It was obvious that Gina had told her mother that she thought Alice was sexually involved with Jake, and that her mother disapproved. “I have school, too,” Alice said.
“Not in the summer you don’t. Look, if it’s money, I’d be happy to buy you a train ticket to go down. Tell the truth, you’d be doing me and Don a favor, just to have you check on her. She could use a friend from home, I’m sure.”
“I’ll think about it,” Alice always said, the words that would end the conversation.
In truth, Mrs. Bergeron’s pleas to Alice to visit her daughter in New York made Alice feel good. It was clear that something was wrong, that the modeling life wasn’t all nice restaurants, and handsome men, and glittering New York parties. Was Gina falling apart? Alice began to imagine visiting her, finding her drug addicted and abused in some grungy loft apartment downtown like the ones in Desperately Seeking Susan. Gina would be miserable, track marks up and down her arms, constantly crying. This became one of Alice’s favorite stories to tell herself, so much so that she began to seriously consider visiting Gina in New York, to make it actually happen.
She never went, but in early fall, before the beginning of her junior year at college, Mrs. Bergeron came into the drugstore to tell Alice that Gina was coming home for a few weeks, that she was simply exhausted from all the work and needed a break. “You’ll come over some night, won’t you, Alice?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“Okay,” Mrs. Bergeron said. “But I’m going to keep asking, whether you like it or not.” She waved a finger at Alice but she was smiling, an impossibly wide, toothy grin that Gina had inherited. She did keep asking, and finally Alice relented, a Friday night in late September, because both Mrs. Bergeron and Gina showed up at the drugstore and begged her to come over for dinner that night.
“Do you have plans?” Gina asked. “If you have plans, then . . .”
Alice did have plans, but only with Jake. It was a Friday night, which meant he would return home with flowers or a nice bottle of wine. Sometimes he would stop at the new video store that had opened up over in York and pick out a movie to watch. But, even so, he’d probably be okay with Alice going to dinner at the Bergerons’. Well, not okay, exactly, but he’d be stoic about it. Alice just wanted to go in order to get it over with. If she didn’t go tonight, they would keep pestering her. “Okay, I’ll come tonight,” she said.
“Yay,” both Gina and her mother said at the same time.
“God, it’s sloppy joes tonight, but they’re homemade, at least,” Mrs. Bergeron said.
“My favorite,” Gina said, stretching out the vowels.
That night Jake came back from the bank with a large bottle of white zinfandel but no flowers and no movie. He seemed tired, and when Alice told him she was thinking of going over to the Bergerons’ for dinner he made a face but didn’t say anything negative. Right before she left, however, he said to her: “You won’t tell them anything, will you? About us?”
“I won’t, but don’t you think . . . I mean, it’s been two years, and I’m a grown woman now.”
“Trust me, Alice, they won’t understand. They’ll think that I’m taking advantage of you. We live in America. We were founded by Puritans. In other countries, they would totally understand what was going on between us, but not here.”