The Secret Lives of Dresses (31 page)

It wasn’t the kind of day you see in Kodak commercials, with the softly diffused sunlight making the massed roses glow; it was a little too bright, and I remember the best man squinting all the way through the service, and seeing sharp flashes of light reflected from some guest’s watch. And there weren’t massed roses, anyway; she wanted daisies, and that’s what she got. Bright gerbera daisies, almost as bright as the day. She held them so tightly, though, that she loosened all the carefully wrapped florists’ tape, so they were wilting almost before the “I do’s”.

If you’re wondering how I noticed all this, well, when you’re only going to be worn for one day, you pay attention. Even if you are lucky, and preserved well, and fit your bride’s daughter or granddaughter or niece, there’s a kind of “reset” button, I think. Even the oldest dress, one passed down for generations, comes to a wedding day as new as the day it was made. The newness of the new bride’s feeling sort of soaks into the dress, and the other, older weddings fade off into a haze of orange blossom and ringing bells, like a face that looks familiar but doesn’t bring a name immediately to mind.

From the minute I knew what I was, I started paying that kind of attention, to everything. To the girls and women who came into the store, especially. The girls giggled and preened when they tried us on. They were playing princess, or starring in some romance. They didn’t really talk about their grooms, except to say how impressed the grooms would be when they saw them, in that dress. (In fact, it took me a long time to realize that such a thing as men existed at all; it was months before I saw one.) Their friends oohed and aahed. Sometimes they applauded, as if the girl were a performer of some kind. The mothers would flit around, relegated to carrying and fetching. The girls made big shows of capriciousness, first calling one of us “the one” and then switching their attentions to another.

The women were more focused. Sometimes they were just as young as the girls (and sometimes the girls were old enough to know better), but they knew themselves. The tall, elegant ones, with their hair already pulled back in bridal chignons—they didn’t try on the pouffy, encrusted, cupcake dresses, or the ten-foot trains. The pocket-sized curvy ones didn’t cram themselves into slipper-satin columns, or dresses so low-cut that they needed industrial-strength adhesives to avoid indecent exposure. Sometimes they didn’t even try anything on, no matter what their mothers or friends pleaded with them to attempt. They’d look through the racks purposefully, and if the dress wasn’t there, well, it wasn’t there. On to the next shop.

My bride was a woman, although she walked like a girl, with a bit of a skip in her step. She was excited in spite of herself. She came in by herself, which was unusual, but it wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment visit, and she wasn’t a “tourist,” someone not even engaged coming in to try on dresses for entertainment, the way other people might go to the movies. She had an appointment; she had the right underwear and shoes with her in a bag. She had her hair up in a loose knot, held with an ordinary rubber band.

We all paid rapt attention. Whenever a bride came in, all the dresses were like puppies in the pound, begging to be taken home. We weren’t samples, like some stores had, dresses just to try on, never to be worn in a real wedding. Well, some of us were samples, and returns, and discontinueds—some of us even claimed to have been ordered for brides who had been jilted or died, although none of us liked to think about that. But we were all real. If a bride tried us on and liked us, we were going to be in a wedding, not hung back on the rack while our newer, fresher doppelgängers were made to order at some factory.

I myself had been part of the inventory of a fancy designer, one who had overstretched and gone out of business, leaving hundreds of us in a warehouse. We were auctioned off, not even taken out of the shipping boxes. The shipping boxes were boring; I had been glad to be lifted out of mine and hung on a rack. I didn’t even mind being attacked with a steamer.

When my bride walked in, I don’t think I’d ever even been tried on. The girls hadn’t liked me, because I wasn’t covered in little shiny bits—I didn’t even have any ruffles. And I’d never struck a chord with any of the women, either. I hadn’t fit their mental checklist.

But she pulled me off the rack right away. I remember trying not to get my hopes up; so many dresses were tried on, but so few were chosen.

The changing rooms didn’t have mirrors—all the brides had to go out to the little dais. The girls pranced out there, still giggling; the women either sidled out, a bit self-conscious about what they saw as the absurdity of it all, or were completely businesslike. She almost strolled out; I’d never seen anyone so confident.

Antoinette—she went by “Antoinette,” although her name was actually Kelly—said what she always said when a bride stood up on the dais, which was “Oh, honey, that dress was made for you!” Only this time, it felt true. I didn’t fit her exactly—I could feel that I was a little big in the waist—but that was no deal-breaker. I fit her in all the ways that mattered—not just the physical ones, but the emotional ones. We felt right together. I didn’t feel like a bride costume, I felt like a wedding dress.

Now, I don’t want to be like some of the other dresses, who overestimate their own importance. After all, you don’t need a wedding dress to get married; people get married in jeans and sneakers and overalls and giant banana costumes, for all I know. Nobody stands up during the ceremony and objects to the union because the bride and groom aren’t appropriately dressed. Sometimes it seemed like the brides—the girls, especially—were so focused on the dresses because they didn’t want to think about the marriage. I wanted to tell them that the dress is not the marriage, it’s only part of the doorway to the marriage. We’re liminal; boundaries, not countries.

But I didn’t feel as if my bride needed that warning.

Antoinette fussed around her, arranging the skirt. “I’d forgotten this skirt was so heavy,” she said, panting a little. (Antoinette was heavy herself.) “It’s silk faille. We don’t get a lot of that here; most people prefer satin. Faille’s not as shiny.”

“I like it,” my bride said. “I like the weight of it. I want it to feel serious.”

She did what all the brides did, smoothing the dress over her hips, pulling her hair down and knotting it up again. She craned over her shoulder to see the back. But it didn’t feel necessary. It was like a ritual kicking of tires; the decision had already been made.

Antoinette knew it, too. “Unfortunately, the tailor’s not in on Tuesdays,” she said. “But if you can come back any other day we can get this pinned for the alterations; you don’t need very much. . . .”

“Oh, my mother-in-law—my future mother-in-law—is going to do the alterations, actually. She offered to make the dress, too, but she runs her own business, and I thought it would be imposing too much. But Teddy—Teddy asked if I would let her do the alterations, if I needed any. He said she liked to do them.”

I could tell that Antoinette secretly doubted that anyone liked doing alterations, much less someone’s future mother-in-law, but she didn’t argue. Antoinette never argued, especially with brides who wanted to do their own alterations. “Once they find out how awful it is to take apart those seams, they’ll be back here. And then we’ll charge them a rush fee.”

I didn’t think my bride would be back, though, and I was right.

When she tried me on again, she was standing on a kitchen stool, and she was laughing. There was a tall man with dark hair sitting backwards on a chair, and he was laughing, too. The woman putting pins in me was trying not to laugh. “If y’all make me laugh I’ll stick a pin right through Hannah, and then where will you be?”

“Stuck,” said the man, and that set them off again. I never did figure out the original joke, but they didn’t seem like the kind of people who needed a joke to laugh.

When the pins were all in, I was carefully taken off and laid on what was obviously a spare-room bed. I was a little worried—I’d seen dresses brought back to the shop with butchered alterations, and it wasn’t pretty. But the woman knew what she was doing. She opened up my seams so gently that I barely felt it, clipping the threads with a pair of tiny scissors, and when it came time to put me under the machine, she didn’t jam me through, but let the feed dogs carry me, the needle moving in and out like breathing.

It didn’t seem like all that much time, then, until the day. Hannah got dressed mostly by herself, although the older woman came in to help, dressed in a dove-gray suit. “Oh, Mimi, thank you,” Hannah said, although Mimi hadn’t done anything yet.

Before Mimi could say anything, another woman came in, all in a rush, nearly upsetting a little table, and catching the strap of her fringed leather bag on the doorknob. While she worked herself free, she never stopped talking. “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late, I know, and I don’t know where those shoes are you wanted me to wear, and I don’t think I have the right underwear, either, and—oh!—did I tell you I met someone last night at the rehearsal dinner—one of the waiters—and he’s going to India next month, and—India!—it sounds so exciting! Hannah, should I go to India? I mean, not with that waiter, although he was really cute—I mean, just, in general?”

I could feel Hannah sigh, but Mimi took over. “Rachel, dear, it’s so good to see you. You’re not late, and I have your shoes and all your underthings here; remember?”

“Oh, Mimi, I wish you were my mother. My mother always yells at me if I forget my bra. Although Hannah’s mother may have been like you, it’s totally possible, I don’t really remember. I mean, Hannah’s like you, isn’t she? All calm and stuff? But if you were her mother, then Teddy and Hannah wouldn’t be getting married, now, and that would be, just, like, miserable.”

Hannah and Mimi laughed. Rachel didn’t. “What’s funny?” She turned and managed to pull the curling iron off the table somehow. While Mimi rescued it, Rachel grabbed another dress, wrapped in plastic, off the door. “I’ll just shimmy into this, back in a jiff!”

Hannah started “Rachel . . .” but Mimi stopped her. “I’ll go give her the right underwear, before she runs back here starkers to get it,” she said.

There’s a lot of other stuff I remember, but I won’t bore you with all the details, like how Rachel managed to drop and step on her bouquet twice before walking down the aisle, and how Hannah and Teddy walked in together hand in hand, and exactly how many people cried (not including babies), and what color the frosting garlands were, and who had too much champagne at the reception (Rachel). But if you ever do want to hear all the details, I’m happy to tell you.

I should tell you just one last thing, though. Most people think weddings are all about the bride (mostly because she has the best clothes), but when I was there, in front of the minister, I could just feel the love pouring off the groom. It was warm, like you’d imagine love to be, but at the same time it gave you goosebumps, and that little shiver that some people describe as feeling someone walk over your grave. I don’t know if I was feeling it myself, or just feeling Hannah feel it. But I’ve never forgotten it.

I hope you feel it someday. I hope you are wearing me when you feel it. I’d like to feel that again.