Free Love Anthony by Lisa Genova

as a “little black dress.” The first is the dress she wears to wakes and funerals—high neck, long sleeves, no waist, hem at her ankles. She originally bought it for Jimmy’s dad’s funeral because it looked respectful and nondescript, and she liked that it didn’t call attention to her in any way, but as she’s inspecting it now, she’s embarrassed by it. It looks like a costume for a school play, and the play is about a seventeenth-century Quaker spinster.
    She turns her attention to the other dress, hoping it might be her savior. It’s a scoop neck, short sleeve, Empire waist, with a flowing skirt hitting just below the knee. It’s not bad. It couldwork. It’s actually kind of cute. She holds it up and studies herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door, trying to figure out if she looks cute, but suddenly she remembers the last time she wore it, and any possibility of pulling off cute flies right out the window. She checks the tag. Mimi Maternity. She was nine months pregnant with Gracie the last time she wore this dress. She can’t wear a maternity dress to Salt, even if it is the sexiest thing she owns, and no one will see the tag.
    She chews her nails as she scrutinizes her only two dresses, hating them. She returns them to their spot on the rod on her side of the closet and searches through her black clothes. Her old, dowdy, stupid black clothes. She can’t do this. She can’t go. She can’t.
    She grabs the phone from her bedside table and dials.
    “I can’t go,” she says to Petra.
    “Why not?”
    “I have nothing to wear.”
    “What are you, sixteen? Wear a black top and a skirt.”
    “I need to go shopping first. Let’s go next weekend.”
    She needs time for a trip to the Hyannis mall, an involved and expensive excursion requiring ferry tickets and bus schedules. Even if she could afford to shop downtown, which she most certainly cannot—hell, even if they were giving the clothes away for free—she wouldn’t be caught dead wearing ninety-nine percent of it. She’ll never understand why women who can afford anything and everything would choose to wear pineapple-print dresses, Pepto-Bismol-pink tops sporting sequins and embroidered dogs, skirts patterned with starfish and whales.
    “Next weekend is Figawi, we’ll never get in. Come on, you’ve been putting this off all month. Put on some jewelry and some makeup, you’ll look great.”
    She’s right. Next weekend is Memorial Day weekend and Figawi, an internationally celebrated sailboat race from Hyannis across the sound to Nantucket harbor. It’s also the grand,official kickoff to Nantucket’s summer season. There are clambakes, fancy fund-raisers, award ceremonies, and parties all over the island. And all the restaurants will be jammed.
    “I don’t know.”
    “You want to check this woman out or not?”
    “I think so, but—”
    “Then let’s go check her out.”
    “What does she look like?”
    In the infinite pause that follows, Beth presses her fingers to her lips and holds her breath. Her heart pulses in her temples. She’s wanted to ask Petra this question so many times since book club last month, but her fear of every conceivable answer has always shoved it down, silencing her. If Angela is beautiful, then Beth must be ugly. And ugly is being kind. Hideous is the word Beth has been trying on for size, feeling as if it might fit her perfectly, better than any black thing hanging in her closet. And if Angela’s not beautiful, then she must be sweet or funny or attractive in some other compelling way that Beth is not, else Jimmy wouldn’t have to stray to find it. So if Angela is beautiful, Beth is ugly, and if Angela is ugly, then Beth is a bitch, either way redefined by whatever Jimmy sees in this other woman.
    “That’s what we’re going to find out tonight.”
    “Yeah, but you’ve seen her. What do you think?”
    “I think she doesn’t hold a candle to you.”
    Beth smiles, but then her