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think about saying hello, but she doesn’t know me at all.”
    “Oh, she loves to sit in the park and read the newspaper,” I said, getting excited. “You should go say hello to her next time you see her. My grandmother is really cool .”
    “She must be if Lucy designed this dress in her honor.” The saleswoman smiled as she took the dress off the mannequin. “Here, this should fit you perfectly.”
    “Well, I’ll just try it on. I’m in a hurry to get home with these cakes.”
    “For your grandmother’s birthday?” she asked. “Lucy was telling me your grandmother turned seventy-five.”
    “I know! Can you believe it?” I exclaimed, going into the dressing room behind the curtain and taking off my clothes. “Can you believe my grandmother is seventy-five? She looks like she’s fifty!” I waited for the compliment.
    “It’s hard to believe,” she said as the dressing room curtain suddenly opened. “Now, let’s see how the dress . . .” She paused.
    “Oh, sweetheart,” the saleswoman said and sighed. “You’ve got to get out of those granny panties and get some cute underwear for that figure of yours.”
    I was mortified. “I know. They’re dreadful.” I smiled sheepishly as I shut the curtain.
    As I, Ellie Jerome, slipped into my Ellie Jerome dress, Icouldn’t help but stare at myself in the mirror for just a few seconds. This was what I wanted to see; it was like seeing a childhood friend after many years. Did I even look this good when I was twenty-five? Barbara was already nine years old by this point. No, I didn’t look this good, because I already had varicose veins and stretch marks. So not only was I twenty-nine, but I was twenty-nine without the post-pregnancy body!
    “How is it?” the saleswoman asked.
    “I’ll take it!” I shouted.
    I went back up to the front desk as the saleswoman rang up the dress.
    “I would think that your cousin would give you a discount if you got it from her,” she confided.
    “She would,” I said, trying to think quickly. “But why not help with sales?”
    “You’re a good cousin,” she said as I handed her my credit card.
    “Oh, is this your credit card? Is your name Ellie, too?”
    “Uh, yes. I was named for my grandmother.”
    “Oh, how sweet,” she said as I breathed a huge sigh of relief. And just when I thought I was in the clear, the phone rang.
    “Plage Tahiti?” The saleswoman smiled as I signed the receipt. I watched as she wrapped the dress in tissue and put it in a bag.
    “Lucy!” the saleswoman shouted toward me with glee. “You’re not going to believe this! Your cousin Ellie is here, and she just bought your dress!”
    Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh god, no. Oh god. No.
    Oh, I was in such a panic. I could see this poor saleswoman’s face going from excited to shocked in about two seconds.
    “Your cousin Ellie,” she enunciated into the phone. “She looks just like you, and she says she’s your cousin.”
    I was caught. How would I explain myself? There was nothing I could do. I had no choice.
    So, like a crazy lunatic, I did what any normal crazy lunatic would do.
    I ran.
    I grabbed the bag with the dress and my three birthday cakes and hightailed it out of there, running down the street as fast as I possibly could. I ran clear past Walnut Street and nearly dropped everything when I almost ran right into the guy with the umbrella stand just past Lil Pete’s restaurant. When I got to Rittenhouse Square, I turned back to see if the saleswoman was chasing me, but she wasn’t.
    What a morning.
    I finally got back to my apartment building and said hello to Ken, the doorman.
    “Excuse me, can I help you?”
    Aw, crap.
    “Yes, I just left here a little while ago? My grandmother is Ellie Jerome?”
    “I’ll call up,” he said as he went to pick up the phone.
    “No!” I stopped him. “Uh,” lying again, I said, “she’s in the bathtub. I must have forgotten to tell you when I left.”
    “Well, technically I’m not