The Great Man by Kate Christensen Read Free Book Online

said.
    “Maybe,” said Lila, obviously comforted.
    “What are you going to wear?” Teddy asked, stifling another yawn. She hadn’t slept well the past few nights. All the wine and reviving old memories with Henry had kept her awake after he’d left; then she had dreamed vividly about Oscar during the short time she’d been able to fall into a trance deep enough to be called sleep. The past few nights had followed a similar pattern.
    “Oh God,” said Lila. “Clothes…I need help here, Teddy. I don’t think I have anything…. It’s been so long.”
    “Let’s go in and see what you’ve got.”
    “I’m telling you, nothing.”
    “Come on.”
    Upstairs in Lila’s bedroom, Teddy rifled through her closet.
    “Maybe I don’t want to wear a dress,” said Lila. “I don’t want to seem old. Aren’t dresses sort of old-seeming?”
    “Look,” said Teddy. “I can’t believe you’ve still got this.” She pulled out a bottle green granny dress with an embroidered bodice. Lila had worn it all weekend once at a rock festival in the late sixties. She and Teddy had taken the kids, all five of them. Lila’s three boys were older than Teddy’s twin girls, so they couldn’t all play together in one satisfying clump; they had to be monitored in two distinct groups. Lila and Teddy, with the help of Lila’s boys, had pitched two big tents side by side in a field, spent the entire weekend soaked with rain, marshaling their offspring to and from makeshift outhouses, feeding everyone peanut butter sandwiches, making sure no one drowned in the creek, while all around them, people not much younger than they were, tripping on acid, danced to meandering guitar solos in the downpour, flowers in their hair and beads around their necks. Still, it was a weekend they’d looked back on together through the years with a sense that it had been memorable and amazing in some way they couldn’t quite identify; the memory of it made them both nostalgic for something, although they weren’t sure what or why.
    Lila and Teddy looked together at the dress for a moment; then Teddy put it back into the closet. “I don’t think dresses per se are old-looking,” she said. “Look, what about this one? This one is beautiful and youthful and I think it’s very sexy on you.”
    Lila took the dress Teddy handed her, a deep blue sundress with fitted bodice and full skirt. She held it against herself and looked down, patting the dress against her stomach. “You think this is all right? My arm dingle-dangle won’t gross him out?”
    “He’ll fall at your feet,” said Teddy.
    Lila laid the dress on her bed and wandered out of the bedroom and down the curved staircase. Teddy quickly cased the boudoir, pretending to be a potential suitor, looking for any telltale old-lady signs. Nothing but a pill bottle, which she knew contained Lila’s hormone-replacement therapy, which she’d told her for years not to take because it probably caused cancer (although really, what didn’t these days?), and a threadbare flannel nightgown that very well might have hailed from Lila’s first marriage. She scooped up both and hid them in Lila’s underwear drawer, then went out to the landing and called, “Where did you go?”
    “What are you doing up there?” called Lila, who was tidying the living room with exactly the same thing in mind as Teddy, hiding her copies of
Active Senior
magazine and the special pillow that allowed her to sit without bothering her occasional hemorrhoids.
    “Hiding your grandma nightie and your hormone pills in your underwear drawer,” called Teddy on her way downstairs.
    “Come in here, Teddy,” Lila said in a different tone. “Look what I found.”
    When Teddy came into the living room, Lila handed her an envelope. “It was on the floor by the front door. I must have missed it when the mail came yesterday. Look, it’s from Oscar’s sister.”
    “Maxine? Why is she writing to you?” Teddy opened the envelope and