The Peach Housecoat

Short Fiction ~ Jackie Bayless
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When Molly was younger, she spent a few weeks each summer with her grandmother.  Her grandmother worked as secretary at a publishing company.  When she came home at five o’clock, the first thing she did was to take off her girdle and stockings and put on her housecoat.  A housecoat was more than a bathrobe—it had more style and was constructed of nicer fabrics. You could answer the door in a housecoat, but not in a bathrobe. Her grandmother’s housecoat was a royal blue velvet with rhinestone buttons. She put it on over her slip and made herself a restorative martini while she made their dinner.
“Gramma, you look like a queen,” Molly said, “Can I try it on please?”
“Of course,” said her grandmother, draping the housecoat around Molly’s skinny shoulders. Molly was small for her age and worried about it as she was approaching an age where her friends were growing breasts and having their periods.

***

When Molly turned fourteen, her grandmother mailed her a box filled with promise.  
“Molly, a package came for you,” said her mother.
 Molly carefully lifted the tissue paper away from her gift.  It was a beautiful, velvet housecoat in a soft peach with rhinestone buttons.
“What the heck is that,” asked her younger brother.  He was ten and a total pain in the neck.
“It’s a housecoat,” she breathed. “Just like Gramma’s.”
“Don’t you think you’re a little young for a housecoat,” said her father.
“Hush, Bob, it’s beautiful.  Why don’t you put it on Molly?”

***

When Molly was fifteen, she finally got her period and started to develop.  She was no longer afraid to undress for gym class.  She went to Lerner’s and bought a red lacy bra and petti-pants, kind of like a slip but with legs.  This was the same year her braces finally came off.  She was in the tenth grade and boys, more than one, were starting to pursue her. 
“Mom, I don’t know what to do,” she told her mother. “Drew really likes me, but I really like Joe and Joe’s best friend Mike asked me to go to a concert with him.”
Her mother looked at her as if she was crazy.
“Really Molly, you’re too young for this nonsense.  Just study hard and be sweet,” she said.

***

Saturday morning is a bright late spring day filled with promise.  Molly, now a senior in high school, takes the bus to Marlow Heights, a new shopping center recently built in this rural, becoming suburban, community. She just wants to walk from store to store, gloriously independent.  She is feeling hyper aware of herself as a pretty young woman on the edge of something wonderful.  She is tan and wearing a sleeveless, flowered shirtdress that curves in at the waist.
Walking by Britches, a men’s shop, she recognizes Larry, a classmate, through the window.  He beckons her in.  Larry is cute, in a kind of squashed nose way, and popular, but not her type.  He is just a friend, but fun to flirt with.  Larry is folding shirts.
“Molly, hey, looking good, girl.  What’cha doing here?” he asks.
“Just shopping, free from babysitting my bratty brother for the day.  I might take myself out to for a hot fudge ice cream cake at Howard Johnson’s,” she says.  She pushes her long dark brown hair back over her shoulders and smiles at Larry. 
Larry smiles back and gives her a kind of hug. “What are you doing this summer?”
“Working at the library, returning books to the stacks, and I get to do the story hour for the four-year olds, and I’m finally going to earn some money,” she says.
“Oh,” Molly turns around as she feels someone grab her waist.
“Hey Jim,” Larry said, “This is Molly, we go to school together. Molly, this is Jim.  He’s an old married man.”
Molly gives Jim a flashing smile and says hello, backing away from his touch.  He is a good looking man, old, maybe in his mid-twenties.  He stares at her.  It makes her feel excited and anxious. 
“Well, nice to meet you, see you at school, Lar.  I’m out like a light.”

***

Molly has a boyfriend.  He is a year older than she is.  He goes to community college and has a job.  They are going to the movies tonight. She wonders if she and her boyfriend will go parking afterwards.  He works on a new construction project and he had taken her the previous week to sit in the darkened driveway of one of the houses under construction.
The first time she and Fred did this it felt a little scary. 
“It’s fine,” Fred says.  “We’ll just sit in the driveway at the back of the neighborhood.  No one will see us with the lights off.”
Fred, long and lanky in a flannel shirt, reaches into a cooler, offering her a beer. The crack of the pop top, the music on the radio, Hot Town, Summer in the City, makes her feel hyperaware again. Something wonderful is happening, she thinks, she loves being older. 
Fred pulls her close and kisses her, his mouth hot and moist.  She doesn’t stop him when he unbuttons her blouse and slips her breast out of her bra. She trembles with excitement but stops him when he tries to take her blouse completely off.
“No, I’m afraid, someone might see us.  Let’s talk,” she says.
Fred laughs.  “Ok, let’s talk.” He pops open another beer.  It is a beautiful balmy night with a lovely cool breeze coming through the window of his 442 Oldsmobile.
Molly is torn when Fred stops.  She feels as if she is melting.  This is a new sensation, but she is glad Fred doesn’t push it. She feels responsible or, at least, he is.

***

Molly is alone, loving having the house all to herself. Her parents and younger brother have gone to Howard Johnson’s Friday Fish Fry Night.  She showers and puts on her beloved peach velvet housecoat.  It has a mandarin collar and three-quarter sleeves.  The color is perfect against her long dark hair.  She is thinking of what to wear to the movies.
There is a knock at the front door.  Molly frowns, wonders who it could be.  There is an unfamiliar car parked in front of the house.  She opens the door cautiously.
“Hi beautiful,” says Jim.  “Larry told me where you lived and I am just a few miles away.  I thought I’d stop by.  I hope it’s okay.
“Jim, uh,” she stumbles from polite to a little frightened.  “You mean you and your wife live in this neighborhood?  This is not a good time.  I’m leaving soon.”  She keeps the door at an angle, peering across the street.  What if the neighbors see this strange man here?
“Molly, Molly, right?” he says.  “I thought you were so pretty the other day in the store and I kind of thought you liked me a little, too.”
“I don’t even know you.  I’m in high school and you have a wife and a baby,” Molly backs away a bit as Jim opens the screen door and pushes the front door open.
“Hey, you can’t come in,” Molly stammers. “I’m leaving soon.  My boyfriend is coming to get me.  She moves away until her back is against the back of the sofa.  Jim reaches out and touches her cheek.
“Stop, please. You have to leave right now.”
Jim moves his hand to the front of her velvet housecoat, stroking the fabric where it covers her right breast.  She gasps.  He unbuttons the top two buttons.  Molly turns and flees into the kitchen. Jim follows, pinning her against the refrigerator where her head bumps into her mother’s to do lists.  He grabs both her breasts, squeezing until it hurts as she tries to spin away from him.
There is a knock at the front door, followed by a call from Fred. “Molly, I’m here. Where are you?”
Jim grins at her nastily, giving her breast a final tweak, and slips out the back door.
Molly calls out to Fred, saying she is not quite ready and he should sit down on the couch.  “I’ll be right out,” she calls, as if nothing at all happened.  She takes off her peach housecoat and tosses it crumpled into the corner. She quickly dresses in jeans and a loose sweatshirt. She stares at herself in the mirror. Why did this happen? Was it her fault? Why would a grown man do such a thing?

***

Fred and Molly go to the movies and then park in the darkened construction site.  She has more than one beer this time.  She allows Fred to take off her bra.  She never tells anyone, ever, what happened with Jim.

~

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Jackie Bayless is a writer living in Laguna Niguel, CA.  She has written newspaper and magazine articles for publications ranging from the Washington Post to the Laguna Beach Independent. Her short story, “The Red Suit,” was published in The Wall, a literary publication of Saddleback College, her story “Mirage,” was published on Strands Lit Sphere, “John Watson,” and “Inn” on Down in the Dirt, and “Jean” in Computer Lit. Two stories inspired by art at the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts were published in two chapbooks, Art Inscribed.

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