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The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Silent Night: Difference between revisions
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Carol’s house was two down from mine. We were friends from childhood up through high school, though she was a year behind me. I graduated and got a full-time job filing and answering phones and filling in pink “While You Were Out” slips. Carol cheered at Homecoming and made culottes in Home Ec. That first year of work, I went to my company Christmas party at the Sheraton ballroom downtown. I wore a peach satin halter dress, one that I imagined Carol would have worn herself. I had the money, finally, to buy the clothes I always wanted—still living at home, paying a small car loan. The only coat I owned was a parka, and I didn’t think it matched the dress, so when Paul Ruskin picked me up in his truck I rushed down the front walk of my mother’s house with nothing on but the dress and a pair of black velvet heels. I never brought a purse with me on dates. The house was always left open, and I knew I didn’t have to pay. | Carol’s house was two down from mine. We were friends from childhood up through high school, though she was a year behind me. I graduated and got a full-time job filing and answering phones and filling in pink “While You Were Out” slips. Carol cheered at Homecoming and made culottes in Home Ec. That first year of work, I went to my company Christmas party at the Sheraton ballroom downtown. I wore a peach satin halter dress, one that I imagined Carol would have worn herself. I had the money, finally, to buy the clothes I always wanted—still living at home, paying a small car loan. The only coat I owned was a parka, and I didn’t think it matched the dress, so when Paul Ruskin picked me up in his truck I rushed down the front walk of my mother’s house with nothing on but the dress and a pair of black velvet heels. I never brought a purse with me on dates. The house was always left open, and I knew I didn’t have to pay. | ||
. . . | I think of this now in light of Carol’s disappearance—how we’d grown up with the desire to be unencumbered. No one carried a purse to the keg party by the reservoir. You had some bills in the pocket of your jeans and that was for cigarettes if you were low. The boy paid for the alcohol he plied you with, and condoms, and the motel, if he lived at home, too, and wanted to have sex somewhere other than his car. It was considered romantic to get a room— something couples did on the night of prom. Even if the room was at the Grantmoor on the Berlin Turnpike. | ||
{{Review}} | {{Review}} | ||
{{DEFAULTSORT:Silent Night}} | {{DEFAULTSORT:Silent Night}} | ||
[[Category:Short Stories (MR)]] | [[Category:Short Stories (MR)]] | ||