Window Dressing. Nikki Rivers
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he had his business shirts custom made. I glanced in the rearview mirror again. Gordy did look like his father—which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like his father, my son was a brown-eyed blonde—handsome with an athletic body. But I knew that he also got some of his beauty, style and grace from his grandmother. My mother. Who I am nothing like.
“How can he not be nervous?” was my question. The fact was, Gordy seemed as cool as the Abercrombie and Fitch clothes and the hundred and fifty dollar sunglasses he was wearing—all gifts from the shirt.
“Honey, how can you not be relieved?” was Moira’s comeback.
Moira was that rare thing in Whitefish Cove—the suburb of Milwaukee where we were neighbors—a mother who’d managed to completely let go of her children. Kenny and Gina had gone east to school and stayed to work on Wall Street and the Garment District, respectively. They made one trip home every year and Moira and her husband Stan made one trip to NYC every year and everyone seemed satisfied. But here I was having heart palpitations at the thought that I wouldn’t see my son until he came home for Thanksgiving break. I was already planning the first meal in my head.
His favorite meat loaf. Garlic mashed potatoes. Glazed…
The blare of a semi’s horn and the hoots of its driver snatched me from my recipe revelry.
“Nice rack!” the trucker yelled before blasting on his horn again.
“Are you crazy?” I demanded.
“Just trying to liven this funeral procession up a little,” Moira said as she stuffed her sizable boobs back into her sweater.
I frantically checked to see if Gordy had witnessed Moira’s flashing but his mouth was hanging slightly open as he softly snored, oblivious to the recent show. Of course, chances are, he’d already seen something of what Moira had to offer. She was fond of sunbathing topless in the back yard and exercising semi-nude in the living room with the drapes open. Whitefish Cove’s Junior Leaguers didn’t quite know what to make of her. But I liked her. I thought she was funny and audacious—different from anyone I’d ever known. My ex had never shared my appreciation of Moira’s quirkiness so I didn’t start to really get to know her until after my divorce. Now, after a few years of dancing around each other, we were starting to become best girlfriends and I was loving it.
I did, however, expect her to stay completely clothed on interstate highways.
“It’s a wonder you don’t get kicked out of Whitefish Cove,” I snapped as I stepped off the gas and pulled in behind the semi, hoping the driver would see the maneuver as a sign that the show was over.
“That’s the beauty of being married to a brilliant CPA, girlfriend. Half the men in Whitefish Cove have Stan on retainer. Several, who shall remain nameless, of course—”
“Of course,” I hastened to agree.
“—would be peeling potatoes in some country club prison if it weren’t for Stan.”
Although I didn’t know any details, nor did I want to, I knew she wasn’t kidding. Stan might have been the neighborhood savior as far as the men were concerned, but to the women, Moira was the neighborhood thorn. She loved to shock the uptight wives and flirt with the bewildered husbands. More confident in her sexuality than any woman I’d ever met, she made no apology for carrying around twenty extra pounds while I seemed to be constantly apologizing for my extra fifteen. Although on Moira the pounds were mostly in the right place while I tended to be somewhat lacking in the rack area. Under similar circumstances, I was pretty sure that truckers would not be honking in my honor.
“Are we there, yet?” Gordy moaned sleepily from the backseat.
“Such enthusiasm for higher education,” Moira drawled.
“Nah,” my son, the college-bound, said, “I just gotta take a whiz.”
I flicked on the van’s blinker and took the next exit.
A huge bag of potato chips and three diet sodas later, we were there.
Indiana University looked like it had stepped out of central casting. It was that perfect. Big, ancient limestone buildings, gorgeous landscaping and students who didn’t know the meaning of the word acne.
“Stepford U,” muttered Moira.
“Behave yourself,” I hissed as I pulled the van onto the U-shaped drive in front of the residence hall Gordy had been assigned to and claimed a parking space just vacated by a Mercedes. A few dozen kids were lugging trunks and duffels and what looked like several thousand dollars worth of electronics out of upscale SUVs. Gordy spotted his roommate—a boy named Dooley from Michigan that he’d been getting to know via email for the past month—and was out of the car and shaking hands before I even had a chance to turn off the engine.
“Isn’t that cute,” Moira said. “Acting like little men.”
I gave Moira a stern look. “Am I going to have to make you sit in the car?”
“You and what fraternity?” she asked over her shoulder as she got out.
I opened my door and stepped into cloying humidity. “Holy hell,” I gasped.
“You’ve got that right. What floor did you say Gordy is on?” Moira asked as she fanned herself with the empty potato chip bag. “Maybe I’d rather wait in the car, after all.”
I slammed my door. “Nothing doing. You’re hauling. In this heat it’ll be no time at all before you’ll be too dehydrated to open your mouth.”
Close to the truth. Several trips to the second floor later, we were gasping for breath and begging for bottled water from some kids who’d had the foresight to bring a cooler full of drinks.
Moira and I sat under a tree to catch our breath while we re-hydrated and watched Gordy mingling and laughing and acting like this was a homecoming instead of a goodbye.
“I don’t think I was ever that confident,” I said.
“You did a good job, girlfriend,” Moira stated.
“Can it be as easy as it looks for him?” I wondered.
Moira sighed. “In my experience, hon, it’s never, ever as easy as it looks.”
By the time we’d finished unloading, Gordy had gone full sail into his brave new world.
“Call if you need anything,” I said for the hundredth time as I lingered outside the car trying to hold back my tears.
Gordy rolled his eyes. “Mom, if you cry, I swear I’ll—”
Moira, waiting in the car, started to honk the horn.
“I’m just a little misty,” I promised. Moira honked again and I said, “Just take care of yourself, okay?”
“Deal,” he said, then added, “You, too,” and looked at me long enough for me to know he meant it. Finally, he grinned. “See ya, Ma,” he said, then turned and ran from me without a backward glance.
Which was a good thing.
So how come it made me so sad?
I sniffed back tears and went around to the driver’s side of the car.
“Well, that was subtle,” I said when I got in.
“Someone had to save the kid from humiliation.”
I sniffed again, turned the radio to a classical station, which I knew Moira would hate, and started the long drive home.
But I can never stay mad at Moira for long and by the time we pulled off the interstate north of Indianapolis in search of more road snacks, I’d changed the station to oldies rock.
The convenience store/gas station that beckoned us from the night had seen better days. The florescent lighting inside was so cheap it hummed like a tree full of cicadas and I could feel my shoes stick ever so slightly to the badly