“Larry’s really excited to dance with you.”īoth Dena and Larry laughed, and I felt a lurching panic that Dena had, via Robert, made some promise to Larry about my physical availability for the evening. The yellow and blue streamers crisscrossed above our heads, and the yellow-and-blue-frosted cupcakes were being consumed enthusiastically-I scanned to see how mine were faring, though with all of them lined up on tables against the wall, I couldn’t tell my own apart from anyone else’s-and a cover band from Madison called the Little Brothers, four men in tuxedos, were standing onstage playing “Who Put the Bomp.” Robert had driven us, and sitting in the backseat next to Larry, I’d first felt my optimism for the night dimming when Larry made one perfunctory attempt to affix my corsage to my dress and then held out the pale pink rose and said, “Can you just do this yourself?” From Tatty’s, we drove to school, where the gym was hot and loud and crowded, which seemed to me exactly how it ought to be. This was Riley tradition, to get all dressed up in your finery and then go have a greasy hamburger, and, remembering stories of girls who ended up in tears well before they got to prom, their silk dresses splattered with ketchup or relish, I took care to fold my white gloves into my purse and spread three separate napkins across my lap. ROBERT AND LARRY and Dena and I ate dinner at Tatty’s. Don’t let your date take advantage of you tonight.” When I was upright again, my father said softly, so my grandmother and mother couldn’t hear, “You’re a very pretty girl.
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