Page 2 of Best Woman
A few minutes later, Lorraine leads me into a sumptuously appointed dressing room.
“Thank you.” I toss my bag on the ground and look around,realizing something is missing. It takes me a minute because I’ve only had one cup of coffee today and there’s currently an Adderall shortage in New York City. “Where’s the mirror?”
She crosses her arms. “All the mirrors are out here,” she says, pointing toward the pink hallways branching out into dressing rooms. “People usually come here with friends and family and want to share the experience.”
“How fun for them,” I manage through clenched teeth. There is nothing I hate more than trying on clothes in front of a communal mirror and fielding commentary from salespeople, other shoppers, and the odd security guard trying to get my number. The last one is mostly wishful thinking;nothingis more gender-affirming than being desired by people you don’t want to have sex with.
“I’ll be back in just a moment.” Lorraine marches off to a hidden back room, stiletto heels sinking into the blush carpet with every step.
“You’re being such a BITCH.” The frizzy-haired bride stands in the doorway of the dressing room across from mine, the skirt of her dress as wide as the doorframe. Her mother cowers before her. “I can’t deal with this. I can’t deal with you! Go get me a cinnamon pretzel with the cinnamon scraped off and an iced almond latte and don’t you dare come back until you’re ready to lift your fat ass off Daddy’s life insurance money and buy me the dress I deserve.”
The mother stalks past me, something shattered behind her eyes. I can’t look away from her daughter, which proves to be a mistake. She catches my eyes and mistakes loathing for sympathy, giving me a look I recognize from my face, reflected in the windows of every restaurant my mother has ever embarrassedme in. It’s a look we Jewish girls grow up with, permanently beneath the surface, never far from emerging. It saysCan you believe her?
“Sorry you had to hear that.” She is anything but contrite, walking over to the mirror between our two fitting rooms. “Weddings, you know?”
Shrug.
“My mother keeps going on and on about keeping the cost down, but I told her if we swing this thing for under 150 she’s getting a deal. And how could anyone say no tothis dress?” Her eyes glaze as she runs her hands down the mass of white chiffon.
I would, in fact, say no to the dress. It has lace in places lace simply should not be, and is at once baggy and too skintight. It’s a mess.
“You look beautiful.” That’s safe enough, right?
“I know,” she tells her reflection. Unfortunately, she’s not quite Narcissus, because she catches my eye in the mirror. “Mine’s in December, a Hanukkah wedding. When’s yours? And where are your bridesmaids? Or your mother?”
“Uh, I’m not getting married. I’m here to pick up a bridesmaid dress.” Kind of.
“My bridesmaids hate their dresses.” An ugly smile splits her face wide open. I feel another swell of sympathy for her mother, who is hopefully getting a drink at the last TGI Fridays in America or drowning herself in the food court toilets.
“I haven’t seen mine yet.”
“I’m sure you’ll look…great. You have nice”—the strain on her face is Herculean—“hair.”
“Yeah, I’m sure my hair will look great in whatever nightmare my future sister-in-law picked out.”
“Hmm.”
That’s Lorraine, standing behind me, holding the nightmare in question.
“Good luck,” says the bride, nasty grin fixed firmly in place. Perhaps her mother has walked into oncoming traffic.
I’m hustled back into the dressing room, a space draped so aggressively in pink it feels almost vaginal, which is probably the point.
Lorraine hangs up the dress and leaves me to it. Resting on a hanger, it’s benign, harmless. The dress is strappy, and slinky, and has a slit up one leg that promises to show off some of my best assets. But I understand clothes and the ways they lie, and also the truths they uncover, ones we are desperate to hide. The low, curving neckline would look fabulous on someone who could fill it out. I can’t, and my breasts are likely to look small and pointy and very, very sad sitting in it. The tiny straps might make me look delicate if it weren’t for the span of my shoulders.
At least mine will be black. Burnt-sienna-whateverthefuck isnotgonna work with my complexion.
I strip off my clothes—also black, my urban armor—and prop my phone up on the small stool nudged against the wall, opening the camera app to use as a mirror. I’m not going outside until I’m sure it won’t be humiliating.
There, on my tiny screen is my body. And it’s just that: a body. Despite all the time I spend thinking about it, all the tears I’ve cried over it for the past twenty-nine years, and all the opinions people seem to have about it, it is still just a body. It is paleand freckled and imperfect. My hips are too square, my thighs too dimpled, my stomach too curved, my ass too flat. But as I normally do, I try to find the parts of it I like, the parts I see as mine: My collarbones jut in a way that is almost delicate, the freckles on my shoulders left over from summer are sweet and girlish. Eyes wide, neck long, lips full—thank you, Juvéderm. And Bridezilla was right—I have great hair. Even when I had nothing else, I had great hair.
I slip into the dress, which looks…all right on the tiny screen, so I cautiously drag open the dressing room curtain, flinching at the screech of curtain rings. I step barefoot into the padded hallway and turn to face the large gilt mirror at the end of the pink-tunneled dressing area.
It’s not great, but it’s not terrible. The color washes me out, but I won’t be wearing this color, so that’s fine. The draping does nothing for the places I’m curved correctly and emphasizes the places I’m decidedly not, but in the grand scheme of bridesmaid monstrosities, I’ve gotten off with relative ease.
“And how are we doing here?”
Lorraine is behind me in the mirror, and I catch an unguarded glimpse of her face, and a look of naked curiosity on it as she takes in my broad shoulders, my knobby knees, my face under the harsh overhead lighting.
