Page 107 of ClickBack

I don’t explain how much. She has known me since ninth grade. She hears enough in the answer to smile at me before somebody calls her name again.

“That’s my twelve minutes,” she says. “Call me Sunday after the matinee. And get the dress fixed. I refuse to have spent my break arguing for bare shoulders that don’t even belong to me.”

I call the tailor when we hang up. She can see me that afternoon.

At the appointment, I stand on a low platform while she pins the shoulders and asks me to turn. She checks how the dress sits when I move, then has me lift my arms. There is no discussion of what I ought to lose before Friday. She works with what is standing in front of her. I watch the fabric settle against me and stop trying to hold my stomach differently.

“Friday morning?” I ask.

“After eleven.”

I take the claim ticket. Outside, I walk past a lingerie shop, stop, then go back to its window. A wine-colored set hangs beside a cotton nightshirt. I have come out to make one dress wearable. Apparently I have time to consider where else I have been settling.

The woman inside asks whether I need help. I tell her I’m looking. She points out the fitting rooms and lets that be true.

I take the camisole and shorts, then a larger size because I know what silk can do when I sit down. The second set fits. The camisole follows my breasts and falls loose over my middle, with lace that lies flat instead of scratching. I turn sideways. Then I sit on the little bench, cross one leg, and stand again. Nothing pulls.

I look good in it.

The thought is so uncomplicated that I nearly spoil it by turning toward the mirror to check again. I have worn attractive things before. I have also spent a great deal of time qualifying the occasions on which I’m allowed to enjoy them. This is sleepwear. I go to bed every night. The argument should be over.

At the register, the woman asks whether it’s a gift.

“For me,” I say.

She folds it into tissue and asks whether I want the receipt in the bag. I tell her yes.

Rae is in my kitchen when I get home, wearing my apron over her scrubs and piping red stitches onto the cereal baseballs I promised Coach Leo. Every bowl I own appears to have contributed to the effort. A trial baseball sits on a napkin beside her, missing a bite.

“You started without me.”

“I got off early. Also, you said you’d be here at four.”

I check the clock. “It’s four-twenty.”

“Those were important minutes.” She points the piping bag at my shopping bag. “What did you buy?”

“Clothes.”

“That bag has rope handles.”

“Observant.”

“I’m choosing not to be more observant.”

I put the bag on the hall table and wash my hands. Rae pushes a tray toward me. Half the cereal balls are oval, which she attributes to Zion helping before his friend’s mother picked him up for practice.

“He says those are for the pitchers,” she tells me.

“Because?”

“He didn’t elaborate.”

We work beside each other, Rae steady with the piping bag, me dipping and trying to match the ones she has already finished. She tells me about a woman at work who keeps asking what she plans to do with all her free time now that school is ending.

“Does she know you have a child?” I ask.

“She has met him.”