Natalie Bevilacqua

Paper Dolls

Excerpt

A westward breeze breaks over my neck. Waves pop foam against boulders and resound like fireworks in the distance. Like all large, dark masses, the water compels me to jump into it, dive headlong. On the green that leads down to the deck of the boathouse, there’s a long plastic table being dressed in linen. The two-room cottage behind me is my grandfather’s, though we lived there for several years when my father couldn’t find a job. My mother and I upkeep it now that my grandfather’s in the nursing home in Buffalo. A few of the neighbors are year-rounders, though most are snowbird retirees who summer on the lake. Everyone arrives at the potluck house wearing stripes. Coincidental dress code, one of the wives coins it. Of course, I’m wearing solids, a spaghetti-strapped sundress that refuses to stay down in the wind. The men greet me with waves of their crepe-y hands. 

And how old is she now? one asks my mother. 

I butt in, She’s twenty-one. 

Well, twenty-one, what are you drinking? His stripes are blue and white, and there’s an excitement in his voice that I can’t place. More men have joined the standing circle. They wait for me to make my response. 

Wine is fine, I say. Any kind. My answer kicks off a conversation about wine preference, and my mom looks at me surprised, as if she were learning new information. Shortly after the man disappears to the liquor table, a wife asks my mother and me to help set out the appetizers. My mother agrees for the both of us. Usually I dislike this about her, but here I’m glad to for a reason escape into the house, a moment of respite from the eyes of the men. We follow the wife into the house. The walls are planked with wood, the ceilings are beamed. I’m directed to the refrigerator told to grab this and this and that if I can manage. I end up with a shiny cardboard tray of hors d’oeuvres and a gravy boat of hummus. As I step through the door and onto the grass, I catch my eye in the warped reflection of the board and startle myself. 

There’s ninety percent visibility tonight for the meteor shower, says the wife. 

Why at the same time every year? I ask the wife as she hands me a cheese board to set on the far end of the table. She says that she doesn’t know. 

There’s so little we know, I say as I pull the cellophane away from the board.

The internet knows, she says with a sigh. The foil she’s collected from the warm appetizers rattles tinny in the wind and she flattens then folds the pieces into neat little squares. My dress balloons, and I clench my left hand around the fabric, force it down in a gesture that feels childish. 

Key to that is pennies, she says, completing the last square. Sew them into the seam. Weighs it down, so you won’t be flashing your fanny to everyone. 

Something in me asks, What if that’s what I want? But I snatch the question before it makes its way out of my mouth and bury it deep where the forgotten things go. 

How’s your father? she asks. Her earrings are hoops with small dangling spheres in the center that jingle when she moves her head. She says, I thought he’d said on the fourth that this had been a good year. Jingle. 

He actually relapsed, I respond, holding back the grin that wants to paint itself across my face. I can’t lie to people. That’s my mother’s field. 

I’m sorry, honey—my skin pricks at the pet name. You and your mother have been so strong all these years.

I want to laugh, let the truth unravel like the green ribbon around the girl’s neck in that scary story. Instead, I say that it has been a difficult couple of months and don’t break eye contact with her. Her eyes are an unhappy blue and scramble uneasily. I’ve learned to enjoy the apologies and collect the after-silences. In my head I line them up like the little trophies arranged on my childhood dresser. 

In the middle of the silence, the man who got my drink approaches, strangling the stem of a wine glass. The wife setting the table looks at me, as if I were a lost cause, and I allow him to escort me to a semicircle of camping chairs where the rest of the men sit. The wives sit over at the picnic table by the house minding a group of small grandchildren, who’ve just arrived with their parents. The old men have facts, and the old women have grandchildren.

  Ontario’s has the second deepest average depth despite having the smallest surface area, says the one in green stripes. What you see isn’t what you get. 

So what do you get? I ask. 

A disappearing shoreline. I’ve lost ten feet in the last twenty years. 

The men are still looking at me, leaning in to mumble retorts in my ear like we have inside jokes. They want to hear what I have to say, see what I do. Sometimes I want them to want me, sometimes I want to spit on them, sometimes I want them to teach me things, sometimes I want to kick their kneecaps and steal their wallets. Other times I want to say to them, No, you are mistaken, I’m not what you desire, I’m only new. Instead, when they ask who my favorite composer is, I take the position of a person thinking, though the only music that comes to mind is that anxious song about bumblebees. Eventually, I twirl my wine and say John Adams, because the man I was sleeping with the previous month had talked at me about him. I said I was pretty sure that was a president, and he said there can be two people with the same name and tried to kiss me. I redirected his face into the headboard. 

John Adams, the men in the circle of chairs on the deck nod. Wise choice. An old soul. The browns and blues of their eyes sting like ringworm on my skin. The more I scratch the more it itches. They look charmed when I reference Freud, as if a circus animal were taught algebra. What is it with men and Freud? 

It would be dangerous to differentiate them beyond the colors of their shirts, bring in families and how they are with the grandchildren, so I keep the men at arm’s-length, in the dim of an audience beholding an object. They want me to be smart but contained. Funny, but not mean. I want to keep them interested, invested, entertained. The wives want me to stop. They shield the grandchildren’s ears as they pass, and for a moment I feel small but powerful, like a contaminate. Though, after an hour in the men’s circle, I’m ready to be done—to let the curtain fall around me, stand there bare and boring—and I’m thankful when my mother glides over to our circle of chairs, drops her hand onto my shoulder and announces to the group, Dinner. 

About the Author

Natalie Bevilacqua is a writer and nap enthusiast currently based in New York. She writes long and short fiction about interpersonal relationships, technology, and the multiplicity of feeling. She can be reached on Instagram @natalietryingherbest.