Free Under the Influence by Joyce Maynard Page B

legs were, and the long dresses. She owned more basic clothes, too—though of only the highest quality. This was the section she studied, for me.
    â€œWe need to find you some good black pants,” she said. “That’s a given. Black pants are a foundation of everything. You can build from there, but the pants are the starting point. Sort of like sexual attraction in a relationship. If you don’t have that, it doesn’t matter what other stuff you layer on top.”
    She pulled a pair of crisp black linen trousers from a hanger and held them out to me. “We’re about the same size,” she said. She pulled one of the cashmere sweaters off the rack then—a shade of blue somewhere between a robin’s egg and the sky, and a scarf, mostly mauve and green, with a glittery blue thread running through it, unlike anything I’d ever worn or ever imagined wearing. She picked out everything, even stockings. Then a skirt—black leather—and a pair of boots, also black, to go with it.
    â€œI couldn’t take this,” I told her, catching sight of the label and fingering the leather, the softest kid.
    â€œOf course you can,” she said, almost impatient. “This stuff is just hanging here. I’d love to see you put it to use.”
    There was more: a wrap dress (“a little conservative, but you might go on a date with some investment banker type someday”) and another dress on the totally opposite end of the spectrum—short skirt, plunging neckline, draped to hug the body.
    â€œOne thing about this one,” she said. “You can’t wear anything underneath it. Panty lines.”
    I thought she’d probably leave me to try the clothes on by myself then, but she sat there waiting.
    â€œLet’s see,” she said.
    I felt a little odd, but I pulled my T-shirt over my head.
    â€œOh my god, your bra,” she said. “You’re way more buxom than me, so I can’t help you with that one. But we definitely need to pay a visit to Miss Elaine.” This turned out to be Ava’s lingerie consultant. A good bra fitter made all the difference, she told me.
    I stepped out of my yoga pants.
    â€œYou have a great butt,” she told me. “But I knew that already. It was the first thing Swift said about you.”
    I pulled the pants up and buttoned the waistband. As she had guessed, they were too long by a couple of inches, but otherwise the fit was perfect. Same with the cashmere top. I ran my hands over the sleeves, taking in the feel of the wool.
    â€œThere’s nothing like cashmere against your skin,” Ava said. “Well, almost nothing.”
    I stepped out in front of the mirror, arranging the scarf. “Try these,” she said, reaching into a drawer that turned out to contain earrings. She lifted out a pair of silver hoops and a cuff to go with them.
    â€œAmazing,” she said, as she snapped the bracelet onto my wrist. “You could almost be me.” I had never seen the slightest resemblance between us, but I actually knew what she meant. “Me, if I were fifteen years younger with fabulous tits.”
    She laughed. A long, soft trill, like water over rocks. “And ambulatory,” she added.

14.
    A t the time I met Ava, I had been spending time—though not a lot of it—with a man named Jeff, a bank manager I’d met on Match.com (moniker: “EZDuzIt”). He hadn’t divorced his wife yet, so I knew this was going nowhere. But more than that he showed so little enthusiasm about me—and truthfully, I didn’t possess all that much for him, either.
    I told myself it was good to have the company, and that at least when he was around, I was less likely to do things like writing long letters to my ex-husband that I knew better than to send, or crying on the phone to Alice about missing my son, and about the court-ordered parenting classes I still had to attend twice a