Kimberly Emerson

In case you didn’t know, editing a book is a lot of work. My book and I have struggled through the good, the bad and the ugly these past couple of weeks.  After combing through it as best I could and cleaning up the rough parts, I passed it on to family and friends for their commentary.  This is a neat little adventure, where you send pages or chapters of the work you have slaved over to others, saying, “Here’s a little bit of my soul. Tell me what you think.” These people, who really want to help you and take your work seriously, will give your pages back with all the comments they can muster about where your story offends them, irritates them, or loses their interest, and in return, as you pick up your bleeding ego off the floor, you get to say, “Thanks for your help!” with all the enthusiasm you can muster.  (You may want to write that down.  It gets a little hard to remember in the moment.)

I definitely have battle scars, but overall, I am pleased with the result.  Their comments were valid, and after I stopped grumbling and fixed the passages in question, I saw improvement.  

Without further ado, I give you the new and improved opening to Perfectly Acceptable Woman.  Here’s a little bit of my soul.  Tell me what you think.

PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE WOMAN

by Kimberly Emerson

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 short, it’s not too tight, it’s not too sheer and it’s usually floral.  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 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, wore to my best friend Dean Lytle’s engagement party…and on which I dropped a marinara sauce-laden meatball.

Great.  Like I didn’t feel awkward enough already.  I looked around.  Nobody was paying attention, thank goodness.  Dean’s mother had invited over a hundred people to this celebration, and most of them showed up, but they clung to small groups strewn around the great room and back patio, engrossed in their own conversations. Plummeting meatballs may be messy, but they’re quiet.  I put the fallen hors d’oeuvre on a discarded plate nearby.  If I could just do something about the marinara stain, none of Dean’s guests would have to know that I had all the grace of a spastic monkey.

I tried scrubbing at the spot with my napkin.  The stain increased in direct proportion to my effort.

That was it.  When I got home, I was burning this dress.  I never wanted to wear it in the first place.  I had fantasies of attending this party in something elegant and daring that brought blonde highlights to my light brown hair and sexy shadows to my dark brown eyes.  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 when I remembered that Dean’s family is, well, rich.

Okay, maybe they’re not rich, exactly, but the Lytles are definitely comfortable.  They own a five-bedroom house with seven bathrooms (each bedroom has an ensuite bath) and a guest cottage in the back.  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 vacation every year for a week somewhere in driving distance.  When life overwhelms them, they complain.

This economic discrepancy has never created a problem between me and Dean.  We’re friends because we both regard a Hitchcock movie and ice cream as pretty much the zenith of Saturday night entertainment.  Around his family and friends, however, I always feel like the tomato in the fruit salad.  We’re in the same scientific family, but somehow, they belong there and I don’t.  The times I’ve overheard Mrs. Lytle saying, “Dean, should we offer Charlotte some money for clothes?” probably haven’t helped.

Not being able to afford anything that would impress, I had hoped at least to avoid embarrassment by wearing something unremarkable, but that dream was fading fast.  I stared at my dress.  Rubbing at the stain with a dry napkin was not going to do it.  I headed to the restroom, hurrying by Dean’s mother with my arm blocking the stain.  Normally she would have noticed, and commented.  She has an eye for things like that.  Just now, however, Mrs. Lytle was talking animatedly with Dean’s fiancée’s parents.  “Ted and Mary Robertson, of the San Francisco Robertsons,” as she had introduced me.

At least she did introduce me.  There were a lot of Dean’s friends she was surreptitiously avoiding.  It could be that she decided I was okay because I won a national environmental essay contest fifteen years ago and got on TV for two minutes.  Mrs. Lytle respects fame, even of the has-been variety.  (Or, in my case, closer to the never-was variety.)  More likely, however, I owed the nicety to the fact that, over the years, Mrs. Lytle developed a grudging respect for me.  I’d been around long enough that she had accepted I liked Dean for himself, not his money, and while it seemed to puzzle her, she was human enough to be pleased that her son had a loyal friend.

The nearest bathroom downstairs was occupied, so I headed to one on the second floor.  Water and soap didn’t do much.  Maybe I could just keep my arm bent over that spot for the rest of the night.  The mid-June sun would stay up for another couple of hours, but I could stay inside.  The lighting in the house wasn’t perfect.

On the way out of the restroom, I saw Dean at the top of the stairs, leaning over the railing that trailed along the exposed hallway on the second floor.

Dean and I have been friends since we both attended the Santa Emilia Community Church camp, the summer before seventh grade.  We each 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 from throwing up, there was nothing else to do.  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 his engagement party in an inoffensive dress, helping my best friend to celebrate the fact that he was going to marry the wrong girl.

Kimberly will have more bits of her soul to give away soon, in case you’d like to know what happens to Charlotte next.

Tags: books, editing, ego, feedback, Perfectly Acceptable Woman