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.I can take fashion or leave it alone.“That Mrs.Morris is very nice, Daddy,” Patsy said.“She told Nora lots of interesting things about Mother when she was little.Maybe you should ask her for a date.”“Sure,” Daddy said, “fine.” And he disappeared.“I don’t think Mrs.Morris’s divorced,” Patsy said.“She didn’t look divorced.”“Give it up,” I told her.“And get off my bed.If I’m going to eat this mess, I want peace and quiet, not some great lump bouncing on the mattress.”That was a mistake.Patsy started bouncing up and down vigorously, and the tea slopped over the cold toast and hit the marmalade.“I don’t have a dress,” Patsy said.“I’m wearing my fake leather mini and my denim shirt.If The Tooth doesn’t like it, tough.”“You wear that and you might have to stay home,” I said.“Daddy’d have a fit, never mind The Tooth.”“Yeah.” Patsy grinned her evil grin.“I might have to stay home and brood all night about you guys having a good time in Darien.” I listened to her cackling like the wicked witch of the West all the way downstairs.You know how sometimes you think something’s going to be absolutely awful? Like a school dance in the gym.Or a party someone asks you to and you don’t know a soul except the person who asked you, but you go anyway because you talk yourself into going? Mostly, when you expect the worst, things turn out to be not as bad as expected.Well, our dinner with Daddy and The Tooth turned out to be so much worse than I thought it would be it wasn’t even funny.By the end of the evening I wanted to slide under the table and disappear.In the first place, Chuck Whipple was at the dinner theater with his family.Sitting three tables away from us.I had just sat down when I saw Chuck.He saw me and waved a little.Patsy had cleaned up her act and looked pretty nice in her navy blue dress, which is way too tight across her bust.I looked sort of cute in my red-and-white striped dress, which resembles a beach umbrella.It is also pretty long, halfway to my ankles, which was just as well because I could feel the big rip in my panty hose getting bigger and bigger as I ate my soup.Every time I breathed, that rip expanded, up and down my leg.Probably by the time I got up the whole leg would be dragging on the floor as it followed me like a puppy all the way to the ladies’ room.“Such a pretty frock,” The Tooth purred, checking me out.She does that, sort of purrs when she’s being insincere, which is most of the time.She takes inventory of you with her eyes, checks out every wrinkle, every spot of mustard, sees every safety pin holding your underwear together.She herself, as we already knew, bought Victoria’s Secret stuff up the wazoo.“She looks at me as if she thinks I have hairy armpits,” Patsy had said after her first experience with The Tooth’s X-ray vision.“But you do have hairy armpits,” I had reminded her.Patsy doesn’t shave under her arms or eat red meat.If there’s a connection there, it escapes me.Now, to set matters straight, I said, “It’s not a frock, it’s a dress.”The Tooth looked at me oddly, then said to my father, “Perhaps we should have some champagne, Sam.” She laid her hand on Daddy’s arm.“In celebration of this momentous event, being with your family tonight.I’m thrilled to be a part of it.”Daddy called the waiter over and ordered champagne.“Two glasses, please,” he said.That meant none for us.I have never had champagne.Patsy sneaked some last year at our cousin’s wedding.It made her tipsy, as well as sick as a dog.Patsy says she may never drink champagne again.The waiter brought two champagne glasses and two plain glasses for Patsy and me.“Are we having Shirley Temples?” Patsy asked, wide-eyed.I kicked her under the table.We were at the awkward age when we were too old for Shirley Temples and too young for champagne.We drank Perrier with a twist of lemon.I managed to sit so I could keep Chuck Whipple under scrutiny.He kept looking over at us.Too bad there was no dancing here.Maybe he’d ask me to dance.The Tooth kept putting her hand on Daddy’s arm.Oh ho, I thought.It’s the old territorial imperative routine.A dog pees on a tree, the next dog who comes along pees on the same tree, only higher up.That’s territorial imperative.So I put my hand on Daddy’s arm, a little higher than where The Tooth’s hand rested, sending her a message she could not fail to understand.Speaking of peeing, during the lull between dessert and the beginning of the play, I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room.Never miss an opportunity to pee, as the Duke of Wellington once said.Patsy was gabbing to Daddy about something so I went without her.When I came out of the ladies’, I bumped smack into Chuck Whipple.He acted surprised to see me, even though we’d been tossing goo-goo eyes at each other all evening.“Come on over and meet my parents,” Chuck said.“Sure, that’d be fine,” I said.I followed him to the table.Chuck’s father stood up and shook my hand.His brother did, too.The girlfriend hardly acknowledged my presence.Chuck’s stepmother was friendly and nice.Without warning, Chuck’s stepmother got up and said, “Nora, come along with me, dear,” and she sort of pushed me in front of her, all the way to the ladies’ room.“But I was just there,” I said.“I don’t …”Chuck’s stepmother reached behind me and tugged at my dress.I backed off.“What’s the matter?” I said.“Your dress got tucked up inside your panty hose,” she said.“I just pulled it down.Now everything’s fine.I got you in quick before anyone saw.There now.Turn so I can make sure it’s right.”Face aflame, I did as she said.My dress had been hiked up high, tucked inside the waistband of my panty hose, showing my bare behind, not to mention my panty hose full of holes, hanging out there for the world to see.“I’m sure no one saw, Nora,” Chuck’s stepmother said.“Rest easy.”I could die.The rest of the evening was ruined.I tried to act as if I was enjoying the play, but I was in the pits.He had seen my rear end hanging out, my panty hose that looked like Swiss cheese.He must’ve had a good laugh.Oh, I could just die, go right through the floor and not come back up for fifty years
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