says you should get married again. She says boys are nice.”
Her mother touched the small snags on the gown’s bodice and said, “Wendy should know.” She sighed. “I probably shouldn’t have let you wear this thing to play in, but I just thought it was such a waste sitting up in my closet; what’s the point?”
Her mother seemed to be talking to herself, and no amount of cartwheels was going to derail her. “You don’t have to get married,” she’d said, finally. “It’s not lonely being alone. In fact, sometimes being married can be lonelier than being single.”
“Mom,” Tig sighed.
“It’s okay. If you don’t ever get married, I won’t care,” her mother had said.
Tig had placed her hands right on her mother’s shoulders. They were eye to eye, looking at each other. “Mama, I’m eight!”
This stopped her mother, and Tig, eager to recreate a happy family scene, walked into the kitchen. She glanced at her mother holding her wedding gown and rubbing her fingers on the frayed hem, the yellowed lace, the torn tulle. She picked up the dress and pressed her face into the folds and said, “Tig, if it’s okay with you, I think I’ll just hang this back in the closet; maybe the memories have some life left in them.”
As if the last line of the memory was a lullaby, Tig drifted off. The last thing she heard was Thatcher sigh.
Chapter Eight
Big Yellow Taxi
After two weeks of yoga, spa visits, Hope House, and talking herself out of calling Pete, Tig felt more groomed and sick of herself, her problems, and her own thoughts. She left the first of several meetings with Jean and executives at WXRT studios feeling ready to work. Anything to stop thinking about herself, her mother, or her stalled love life. Tig drove home through the University Heights residential area and admired, as she always did, the solid wood porches, dormers, and ruddy masonry decorating one historic home after another. She turned onto her street, marked by an ancient, all-knowing oak, and slowed. An unfamiliar silver car was parked in her driveway. A petite woman stood on Tig’s front stoop, stretching, hands on the small of her back. She wore a tight white T-shirt with a pair of black yoga pants. Even from this distance, Tig could discern the protruding belly button of a woman near the end of her pregnancy.
As Tig approached, her sister Wendy turned and held her hand up in a halfhearted wave.
The slow rush of feelings from white hot anger to love, from irritation to envy, and back to anger again made Tig feel like she was taffy being pulled in every direction on a hot day. She gripped the steering wheel hard as she tried to reframe her anger into something positive like,
Wendy’s here! Yay!
rather than,
Fucking Wendy
.
In her driveway, Tig rolled the window down. “Oh my God, look at you.” Her voice didn’t sound as kind as she’d hoped.
Wendy’s belly was the size of a large Weber kettle grill. “Yup. Look at me.”
Tig said, “You know that word for when you’re hungry and angry?”
“Hangry, yeah.”
“What’s the word for angry and super angry?”
“I don’t know. But I should, shouldn’t I? I make everyone super angry. Isn’t this baby going to be lucky?” There was self-awareness in that statement and something else Tig hadn’t seen much in her sister. Humbleness? Neither sister spoke. A fat, lazy bee bumbled by Tig’s ear.
“You’re pregnant.”
Wendy nodded.
Tig said, “Wow, Wen. I might have been a little nicer when I called, if I’d known.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“No. I wouldn’t have been. You are such a selfish little shit.”
Wendy lifted her chin, “Wow, you must be an awesome counselor. Thanks.”
Tig laughed bitterly. “In fact, I’m not awesome.”
Wendy ignored this and leaned against the front door. “How’s Mom?”
Tig gave her a look. Wendy said, “Look, I came as soon as I was able, Tig. I had to make arrangements.”
“It’s not that. I’m just