Kimberly Emerson

The writers’ conference is a scant few days off, and a thought just occurred to me today: I should probably be ready to pitch the book that I’ve already finished to agents, instead of the one I’m working on.  Agents and editors are funny; when it comes to fiction, they want the book finished before you try to sell it to them.  If you’re talking non-fiction, they’re more understanding.  Then you can write an outline and the first chapter, and not bother writing the rest until after someone’s interested in promoting it.  Fiction writers, alas, are doomed to do all the work first.

So, I beg your input for the very beginning of one of my other books, Perfectly Acceptable Woman.  Same input needed:

1. Your favorite sentence

2. Authors you’d put the book next to

and the bonus, Snack food desired.

Thank you again, my friends!

I had the idea for this story while shopping with my BFF. I tried on a dress.  Standing outside the dressing room, she asked what I thought. I looked in the mirror and said, “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a – perfectly acceptable dress.”
It went back on the rack.

PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE WOMAN

Deep in the recesses of every woman’s closet, in between the business suit and the basic black, hangs the Perfectly Acceptable Dress.

It’s easy to spot.  It’s not too low, it’s not too short, it’s not too tight and it’s usually floral.  The skirt can be straight but will more likely be flared.  Long, short and three-quarter sleeve versions are all available.  Necklines can be jewel, turtle, square, vee, or boat, but absolutely not plunging.  Variations of fabric are almost endless.  The wearer will be told that she looks “nice,” but at the end of the evening no one will be able to remember exactly what it was that she wore, if indeed they can remember her being there at all.  The Perfectly Acceptable Dress exists for the purpose of offending no one.  Few women ever set out to buy this dress, but somehow every woman ends up owning one.

This was the dress that I, Charlotte Meyer, ended up wearing to my best friend Dean Lytle’s engagement party.

It wasn’t the dress I wanted to wear.  I had fantasies of wearing something elegant and daring that brought blonde highlights to my light brown hair and sexy shadows to my dark brown eyes.  Something that made my sallow ivory skin look radiant and glowing.  Something that made people describe my 5’10” frame as “striking,” instead of “sturdy, like her brothers.”  A lot to ask from a dress, you say?  Perhaps.  It didn’t matter.  I lost my nerve to wear anything the least bit interesting every time I remembered that Dean’s family was, well, rich.  Sort of.  I’m not sure exactly what’s considered rich these days, but the Lytles are definitely comfortable.  They own a five-bedroom house with a guest cottage in the back.  They bought the land and had the house built to their exact specifications.  Every year they vacation in Europe.  When life overwhelms them, they spend a long weekend at their condo in Maui.

My parents own a three-bedroom house.  They’ve lived in it since I was five.  They paid it off two years ago and my twin brothers and I threw them a barbeque.  They vacation every year for a week somewhere in driving distance.  When life overwhelms them, they complain.

It’s hard to remember that Dean comes from money.  I’ve known him for so long that he’s like part of the furniture.  My parents treat him like he’s another son.  He can almost always tell my brothers Tim and Jamie apart when they’re trying to fool him.  I forget sometimes that but for a couple of quirks of fate, we might never have met.  Okay, not really quirks of fate so much as quirks of Dean’s parents, but still.

You see, I may get confused about whether the Lytles are technically rich, but they don’t.  They are aware that they’re only sort-of rich.  As Dean explained to me once, the sort-of rich celebrate their anniversary by having a meal prepared by a famous chef at a five-star restaurant.  The really rich would celebrate by eating the same meal, but they’d eat it at home because the five-star restaurant chef works for them.  As a result of this difference, and the emotional distress that it apparently brings them, Dean’s parents spend much of their lives trying to bridge the chasm between them and the really rich.  Part of this effort involves latching onto whatever cause is in fashion with the really rich at the moment.  In California in the mid-1980s, it was fashionable to go to church.  The right church, of course.  The doctrine can’t demand actual lifestyle change.

Our parents’ houses, different as they are, are only two miles apart, in the city of Santa Emilia, California.  It’s a little bedroom community that drifts along the 10 Freeway, nestled into the San Gabriel mountains about twenty miles outside of Los Angeles.  The whole city sits on the side of a hill.  The Lytles’ house is near the top.  My parents’ house is near the bottom.  (On the other side of the hill is the ForestLawnCemetery, to make sure the rich people have quiet neighbors.)  In between our families’ houses is the Santa Emilia Community Church.  It was founded about 80 years ago by an Episcopalian man and his Presbyterian wife, who couldn’t agree about which denomination they were going to be, and so decided to create their own.  I guess the Lytles decided our church wouldn’t ask too much of them, so they showed up periodically.  Our church has many very devout folks, my family included, but you can attend without meeting any particular requirements.  Periodically the Lytles make an appearance, and every so often they make a large donation.  I think they figure that’s as involved as they need to be.  (I don’t believe you can pay your way into Heaven, but I’ve been on the church’s finance committee and I have to admit, it’s a really big donation.)  I saw Dean at church a few times, and said “hi,” or something equally unmemorable, when he came to Sunday school.  But we didn’t really become friends till we both went to church camp, the summer between sixth and seventh grade.  We both came down with the flu and spent most of the week in the nurse’s cabin.  Nothing bonds you to someone like hearing them throw up.  We talked because aside of throwing up there was nothing else to do.  Who’d have thought the short kid who looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy was actually cool?  He liked almost all the same music I did.  He played the saxophone as badly as I played the flute. Best of all, he’d watched the movie Top Gun, which my parents wouldn’t let me see, and described the whole thing for me in such detail that I felt like I’d seen it myself.  By the end of the week we were best friends.

That was twenty-one years ago.  Now we were both on the better side of thirty, and I was at an engagement party in an inoffensive dress, waiting for my best friend to announce that he was going to marry the wrong girl.

Tags: agents, authors, critiques, dresses, fiction, friends, wealth, writers' conventions