Free Dedication by Emma McLaughlin Page A

more off beneath each item until I’m down to my underwear and mom’s knee-high argyle socks. Laura, sitting on the makeshift cushion of her down coat, pulls her hair back with her scarf to better keep up with rehanging the heap of discards as she gives me her vote. “Uh…. no.” “No.” “Nope.” “Do you missworking with Sonny?” “Definitely not.” “Out of the question unless a revival of Carousel comes to town.” And she finally collapses in giggles, managing to snort out, “You…look…like…Charo!”
    I slump down in front of her and drop my head into my hands. “I’ve done this all wrong.”
    Laura dries her eyes, “No! No you haven’t. But, Kate, come on, why do you care so much what you’re wearing?” She takes a wistful breath. “You’ve had great boyfriends. I mean, you date fabulous men—”
    I snort.
    “You have big sex.” She pushes the remaining outfits off of her.
    “Sometimes,” I concede, unzipping myself from the velour bustier. “You have a husband,” I volley back.
    “A very very tuckered husband. You’ve got this great career doing important altruistic things. You fly to Buenos Aires at a moment’s notice.”
    “I was on a plane, in a hotel, in a factory, and then back on a plane. I could’ve been in Cleveland.”
    “With framed pictures of Eva Peron behind every cash register?”
    “No, probably not. That part was cool,” I concede. “I had to keep reminding myself they were portraits of the actual woman and not Madonna.”
    “See? You’ve had an adventure.” She pulls out a pack of gum and pops a piece from its foil pocket. “And the farthest I ever got is visiting you in Charleston.”
    “Okay, you’re not eighty—‘the farthest I ever got’—and you have a family!”
    She crosses her arms over her belly. “You still have your body.”
    “Which I work at for the express purpose of some day having what you’ve already achieved, which is a man who’ll pledge to love me when I’m senile and two—three great kids! Laura, if I told you, in three hours, you could have a face-off with Rick Swartz, what would you do?”
    Her eyes glaze over. “Take out a second mortgage…get Chanel to whip something up for me to drape this and minimize that. Get every square inch, new square inches included, highlighted, waxed, buffed and polished so I’d look so fucking great that all of mankind would be stopped in their fucking tracks and little Rick Swartz would have no choice but to regret his entire fucking existence.”
    “Right, and all he did was tell the seventh grade you made a phone call.” I hand her the angora shrug.
    Her face refocuses with renewed resolve. “Okay, let’s just try to find you a decent pair of jeans and then get you some makeup. Here.” She reaches into the bottom of the pile and tugs out an array of denim. I stand back up. “So, what are you going to say to the little shit anyway?”
    “What would you say to Rick Swartz?” I push the first aborted pair off with my socked feet and she hands me another.
    “I told you I think he’s in prison now, delightfully enough.”
    “Merry Christmas to you.”
    “That was last year’s present. Ah, Croton High, the gift that keeps on giving. But should I deign to visit him and address that whole chlamydia—”
    “Malaria,” I correct her, swiping another pair.
    “Right, malaria. Oh my god, chlamydia, can you imagine? Anyway, I would purse my perfectly lined lips and ever so slightly push out my currently humongous cleavage and tell him the whole thing was so not cool.”
    “Yes.” I turn to show her where the majority of my butt-crack is exposed. “Basically along those lines. There will most definitely be a not-very-subtle theme of So Not Cool.”
    “You don’t have an exact plan? Really? We didn’t pack some notes or bullet points in that bag?”
    “I don’t want to talk about that bag and it’s been forever since I’ve given this any serious thought. Thank God. I mean,