“Really.”
“Yes,” she said solidly. Then she leaned closer. “If you think that girl from the restaurant yesterday can hurt you, you just wait. All the bitchy girls in the world are just a training ground for what men can do to you.”
The bedroom door opened and Morgan stood there, phone under her arm. Even with her green face I could tell she was mad.
“What is your problem?” she snapped, dropping the phone onto the couch. “He heard what you were saying, Isabel. He heard you.”
“Good.”
“I don’t understand,” Morgan huffed, “why you have to bad-mouth him to anyone who will listen.”
“I’m not the one coming to work and sobbing over him, Morgan,” Isabel shot back. “I’m not the one bringing in deviled eggs.”
“This isn’t about deviled eggs,” Morgan said.
“No, it isn’t.” Isabel picked up her pack of cigarettes, turning it over and over in her hand. “This is about how Mark does not respect you. About how he uses you.”
“Shut up,” Morgan said in a tired voice, walking into the kitchen.
“Why doesn’t he ever ask you to come to the games? And why can you never get a number or place where he’s at or going to be since you surprised him in Wilson?”
“He’s never sure where exactly he’ll—”
“Bullshit!” Isabel yelled. “You can go down to the drugstore and buy a poster for ninety-nine cents with their entire schedule on it. They’re a baseball team, Morgan. They have a season. They don’t just travel around playing random teams when they feel like it.”
Morgan put her hands on her hips. “It’s more complicated than that. You don’t know—”
“I know this,” Isabel said, standing up. “I know he comes into town, sleeps with you, and books out of here the next day before breakfast. I know when you went to surprise him on your anniversary you found that stripper in his hotel room.” She was ticking things off on her fingers, one by one. “And,” she went on, “I know that since he gave you that ‘ring’ ”—as she said it she made quote marks with her fingers—“he has not said one word about your wedding or your future. Not one word.”
Morgan absorbed this, blinking. She’d put one hand over her ring, protectively, when Isabel mentioned it.
My face was so tight my eyes were starting to hurt. But getting up to wash the mask off meant stepping between them, and I wasn’t about to do that.
“Can’t you see, Morgan?” Isabel lowered her voice and took a few steps closer; with their green faces, they looked like aliens meeting on a foreign planet. “There’s something wrong here.”
Morgan blinked again. I wondered if she was going to cry.
Then she straightened up to her full height and took a deep breath. “Jealous!” she shouted, pointing a long bony finger at Isabel, who just rolled her eyes. “You always have been! Since the very beginning!”
“Oh, please,” Isabel said indignantly.
“You are,” Morgan said, turned on her heel, and went down the hallway to the bathroom. “Because you weren’t his type.”
“Oh, that’s right, Morgan,” Isabel yelled, following her even as the bathroom door slammed shut. “I want to be the one engaged to a baseball player who’s already balding, cheats on me with other women, can never give me a straight answer about the rest of our lives, and couldn’t get over the Mendoza Line if his life depended on it!”
There was a silence. Then Morgan opened the door.
“His batting average,” she said coolly, “has greatly improved this season.”
“I don’t give a shit!” Isabel screamed.
The door slammed shut again.
“Mendoza Line?” I said.
Isabel stomped back to the living room, cranking up the music. “It’s a baseball thing. It means he sucks.”
“He does not!” Morgan yelled from the bathroom. “He doesn’t even lead the team in errors anymore!”
Isabel grabbed her cigarettes and kicked open the screen door. I watched her strike a match, its orange glow lighting up her face, before she moved down the porch, out of sight.
The disco was still blasting. My face felt like it had been dipped and set in concrete. From the kitchen window I could see Mira’s house, quiet and peaceful. I wondered if she knew that she didn’t really need wrestling at all. Morgan and Isabel were like Triple Threat and Saturday Cage Fights rolled into one.
I turned down the music, then walked down the hallway and knocked on the bathroom door.
“What?” Morgan said.
“I really need to wash my face,” I said.
“Oh.” I heard her get up. “Okay.”
She unlocked the door and I pushed it open, sliding inside. She was sitting on the edge of the tub, her mask streaked and muddy from crying. I pretended not to notice.
I went to the sink and ran the water until it was warm, then carefully washed off the mask, watching the green run down the drain. Morgan handed me a towel.
“Colie,” she said as I patted myself dry, noticing that my skin did actually feel very nice, “do you have a best friend?”
I looked down at the towel, folding it carefully. It was, after all, Morgan’s. “I don’t have any friends,” I said.
“Oh, that’s not true,” she said in the quick, knee-jerk way of guidance counselors and teachers.