Page 76 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
Letty is dressed as a miniature Chappell Roan with a huge red wig and blue eyeshadow that I watched her diligently apply as she stood on the counter of Bram’s bathroom sink, because the only way to achieve her look was to have her nose pressed to the mirror. As someone who values a strong wing eyeliner, I cannot agree more.
And Berry—sweet Berry—is dressed as an ant. A fuzzy and startlingly accurate ant. Specifically, a sugar ant. Since he was out of commission at a seminar last weekend—something about butterfly perverts—Bram and I spent the last four nights working on her costume until the wee hours of the morning and finally, today at breakfast, she deemed it a success.
“Did kids always go trick-or-treating this early in the day?” Joey asks as his wife—Riley—and Fern walk ahead of us and he pushes the stroller with his two toddlers, who are both dressed as little trees. Riley is dressed as Bob Ross, their oldest is dressed as a paintbrush, and Joey is a giant easel. The costume is incredibly unwieldy, and I think it might be some sort of punishment on Riley’s part.
“When we were kids, we went trick-or-treating after dark and took our candy to be x-rayed for razor blades,” says Bram, who is dressed exactly as he always is but with the insistence that today he is the Brawny paper towel man. Hester Prynne’s leash dangles from his fingers as the dog walks unusually slowly as though the foam shark fin strapped to her back has somehow interfered with her legs.
I was unprepared, so the twins took to their dress-up wardrobe, and I am currently wearing a unicorn horn and have a red lightsaber tucked into the sash of my jumpsuit.
“What exactly are you supposed to be?” Joey asks. “There’s a vision here. I’m just not seeing it.”
I shrug. “A Force-sensitive unicorn?”
Beside me, Letty stomps her foot. “You are not a unicorn!”
Berry nods as she hands her bucket to Bram to carry. “She’s right. You’re a narwhal.”
Bram grins, nearly laughing at an outraged Letty. “Clearly a narwhal.”
Letty nods and then passes along her candy bucket to Bram as well, and the twins race off to Fern, who announced earlier this week that she is too old to dress up. I watched Bram nod and attempt a smile as his heart broke in real time when she told us. He was a little too pleased when she walked downstairs before we left this evening in a slouchy red sweatshirt with tiny little devil horns clipped into her hair.
When we both stared at her, she just rolled her eyes, a coy little smile curling along her lips, and said, “What?”
Bram’s neighborhood is the kind of place you see in movies. The streets are shut down from nonresidential traffic and kids run freely up and down and across the neighborhood without having to pay too much mind to cars. Parents are at ease, and while I always loved Halloween growing up, it is nothing like the street I grew up on, where nearly every porch was dark. Mom always drove us to one of the richer neighborhoods or over to the Lieberman house, where we would join forces with Nolan’s best friend’s very large and very extended family as they prowled the streets of their HOA-controlled neighborhood.
As we turn the corner, Bram and Joey are intercepted by some other dads who they seem to know from high school, and I continue on, following behind the twins, who are now safely sandwiched directly in between me and then Riley and Fern.
I love watching them huddle together as they line up to approach a house. Both of them—even outspoken Letty—feeling clearly shy, but finding confidence in each other.
“What the fuck kind of AI-conceived Halloween costume is that?”
The voice on the other end of the scathingly good burn is Veronica Balentine in a historically accurate aubergine Edwardian gown with a matching feather hat and umbrella.
“Veronica? Are you— Do you evenhavea family? I thought you just pulled your body up to an electric car charger every night and then woke up the next morning fully charged and ready to take someone’s money.”
She laughs, like she is actually delighted by my admittedly rude question. “You will be surprised to know that you do not need a family to celebrate Halloween, but since you’ve asked, yes, I do.” She says it in a hushed tone, like she is not actually comfortable with anyone knowing any sort of concrete information about her outside of her life as a hired political gun.
“Mommy! That house had the big candy bars!” A young boy slightly older than Berry and Letty storms Veronica at the knees. He’s dressed as... a Victorian urchin turned thief, perhaps? I can’t tell between his cable knit sweater and the too big watch on his wrist, so rather than guess at what he might be and dash his little Halloween dreams, I simply smile and wave as he becomes suddenly shy when he realizes that there is a stranger in his midst.
“Paxton, this is Mommy’s friend Maddie,” Veronica tells him in an uncharacteristically soothing voice.
My jaw drops for just a second before I recover. “Nice to meet you, Paxton.”
“Come on, Pax,” another woman says as she strolls up behind Veronica wearing an absolutely dashing Edwardian tuxedo with tails. She pushes a stroller with a very chill cat inside who seems in no way troubled by the red wig and red-and-black satin and lace dress she has been dressed up in.
The woman nods to me, her hair slicked back into a low bun, and guides the boy to the next house while Veronica turns back to me. She sighs. “Pax developed an obsession with bothTwisterandTitanicthis summer but the cow costumes were on back order, so my wife, Holly, handmade that Rose costume for Giovani.”
“The cat’s name is Giovani?”
She doesn’t even entertain my question. “And she had luck sourcing the rest of the costumes from a rental shop in Kansas City.”
“Titanicis an interesting obsession for a kid Paxton’s age.”
“Well, he requested to see some of his namesake’s films.”
“You named your kid after Bill Paxton?”
Her expression is unflinching as I piece together that she is dressed as the Unsinkable Molly Brown and that her wife is dressed as Billy Zane. Amazing.
